n these extremes there is an almost infinite series of strata,
ranging through every conceivable degree of subconsciousness. The
knowledge that is real and effective is absorbed into one or more of
the subconscious strata, from which it gradually ascends, under the
influence of attention and reflection, towards the more conscious
levels, gaining, as it ascends, in scope and outlook what it may
possibly lose in subtlety and nearness to action. When knowledge,
after passing upwards through many subconscious strata, rises to
what I may call the surface-level of consciousness, it is ready, on
occasion, to give itself off as information. This exhalation from the
surface of consciousness is genuine information, not to be confounded
with knowledge, to which it is related as the outward to the inward
state, still less to be confounded with that spurious information
which floats, as we shall presently see, like a film on the surface
of the mind, meaning nothing and indicating nothing except that it
has been artificially deposited, and that in due season it will be
skimmed off, if the teacher's hopes are fulfilled, for the
delectation of an examiner.

There are, of course, many cases in which the conscious acquisition
of information is a necessary stage in the acquisition of knowledge.
But in all such cases, if the information acquired is to have
any educative value, it must be allowed to sink down into the
subconscious strata, whence, after having been absorbed and
assimilated and so converted into knowledge, it will perhaps reascend
towards the surface of the mind, just as the leaves which fall in
autumn are dragged down into the soil below, converted into fertile
mould, and then gradually lifted towards the surface; or as the fresh
water that the rivers pour into the sea has to be slowly absorbed
into the whole mass of salt water before it (or its equivalent) can
return to the land as rain. When information which has been received
and assimilated rises to the surface of the mind, it will be ready,
when required to do so, to reappear as information, and perhaps
to return in that form to the source from which it came. But the
information which is given off will differ profoundly from that which
has been received, for between the two will have intervened many
stages of silent absorption and silent growth.

It may be necessary, then, in the course of education, both to supply
and to demand information. But the information which