Mr. Talbot, the head-master of the Newcastle Grammar School, has
a remarkable article in the Hibbert Journal for April en " English Education in the Light of the New Psychology." He is puzzled by " the contrast between our success as a nation and our national attitude towards the intellect." We have persistently " muddled through " ; in other words, we have relied on our instinct, which has usually been right, because " there has been extraordinarily little mental repression in English as compared with Continental history." Moreover, the fighting instinct has been " sublimated "—not repressed but transferred to other uses—in the national love of sport. British schoolmasters have " developed a technique for training the Unconscious which is . superior to that existing in any other nation in the world." Character is the " unconscious mind as exhibited in behaviour," and it has been trained largely in organ. ized games and the house system at public schools. On the other hand, the exclusive training of the intellect, as in Germany, tends to weaken the character and leave the unconscious mind untrained and helpless. Just as M. Jourdain had been talking prose all his life without knowing it, so, if we are to believe Mr. Talbot, the British schoolmaster had for generations been applying the " new psychology " before that science was invented.
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