WILL AND ITS EARLY MANIFESTATIONS
It is open to doubt whether any modern psychologist has yet given a
better definition of fully developed Will than that given by Froebel
eighty-seven years ago:
“Will is the mental activity of man ever consciously proceeding
from a definite point, in a definite direction, to a definite
conscious end and aim, in harmony with the whole nature of
humanity.”--_E., p. 96._
With this definition compare what Professor Stout has to say:
“In its most complex developments, mental activity takes the form of
self-conscious and deliberate volition, in which the starting-point is
the idea of an end to be attained, and the desire to attain it; and the
goal is the realization of this end, by the production of a long series
of changes in the external world … it belongs to the essence of will, not
merely to be directed towards an end, but to ideally anticipate this and
consciously aim at it.”[12]
Between these two definitions the difference is in the omission in
Froebel’s definition of any mention of desire, and this is supplied a
little later, when, having stated that “by school here is meant neither
the schoolroom, nor school-keeping, but the conscious communication of
knowledge for a definite purpose, and in definite connection,” he ends up
with:
“By this knowledge, instruction and the school are to lead man
_from desire to will_, from activity of will to firmness of
will, and thus continually advancing, to the attainment of his
destiny, of his earthly perfection.”--_E., p. 139._
Now Professor Stout’s whole psychology is founded on his conception of
mental activity. Towards the end of his second volume he says: “The
reader is already familiar with my general doctrine. It has pervaded
the whole treatment of psychological topics in this work. The aim of
the present chapter is to present it in a more systematic form, and to
guard it against objections. Our starting-point lies in the conception of
mental activity as the direction of mental process towards an end.”
It is distinctly significant, therefore, to find how closely Froebel’s
ideas on the subject resemble Professor Stout’s conception of mental
activity.
“Conscious process,” writes Professor Stout, “is in every moment directed
towards an end, whether this end be distinctly or vaguely recognized by
the conscious subject, or not recognized at all.”
Froebel writes:
“In all activity, in every deed of man, even as a child,
yes the very smallest, an aim is expressed, a reference to
something, to the furthering or representing of something; …
thus the child strives, even if unconsciously, to make his
inner life objective, and through that perceptible, that so he
may become conscious of it.”--_P., pp. 237-240._
The same idea, that conscious process is directed to an end, though there
may be no consciousness of that end, is given in another passage, where
Froebel is speaking of the need for satisfying a child’s normal desire
for playthings.
“Very often the child seeks for something, nevertheless he
himself does not know at all what he seeks; at another time he
puts something away from him and again knows not why.”--_P., p.
168._
Of the earliest mental activity Professor Stout writes:
“In its earliest and simplest form, mental activity consists in those
simple reactions which without being determined by any definite idea of
an end to be realized, tend on the whole to the maintenance of immediate
pleasure and the avoidance of immediate pain.”
The movements of the organism at this earliest stage “seem primarily
adapted to the conservation and furtherance of vital process in
general.”[13]
Froebel speaks of the child’s efforts:
“to put far from him that which is opposed to the needs of his
life and yet would break in upon it.”--_P., p. 167._
He tells the mother that, in the first stages at least, the restlessness
and tears of the infant will warn her of the presence of anything in his
surroundings hurtful to his development, while his laughter and movements
of pleasure will show “what according to the feeling of the child is
suited to the undisturbed development of his life as an immature human
being.”
Mr. Stout goes on to say that such simple reactions are adapted
“secondarily and by way of necessary corollary to the conservation and
furtherance of conscious life.” He tells us that: “The primary craving
with which the education of the senses begins, so far as it does not
involve such practical needs as that of food, may be described as a
general craving for stimulation or excitement … this conation being in
the first instance in the highest degree indeterminate.”
Froebel, who speaks of the nurse “soothing the restless child _vaguely
striving_ for definite and satisfactory outward activity,” tells us that:
“if his bodily needs are satisfied and he feels himself well
and strong, the first spontaneous employment of the child is
spontaneous taking in (selbstthätiges Aufnehmen) of the outer
world.”--_P., p. 29._
He writes to Madame Schmidt, the cousin for whose assistance he has
begged in observing children:
“This spontaneous activity of limb and vividness of sensation
natural to infancy, and I may say inseparable from it, must
also be carefully studied.”--_L., p. 110._
And, in the Mother Songs, he says:
“You can see how his bodily activity, the movement and use of
his limbs, like the activity of his senses, all turn towards
one point: Life must be grasped, experienced and perceived …
he wants to appropriate the outer and to re-embody it … his
susceptibility for all that gives and takes up life will strike
you as something that elevates his life in every way; even
as young plants and animals are susceptible to the faintest
workings of light and warmth, or the impressions of their
environment, however delicate. Moreover, this receptivity
is most closely related to great general excitability and
sensibility (Erregbarkeit, Reizbarkeit).”--_M., pp. 119-121._
Froebel’s views as to the nature both of early and of later mental
activity then bear a strong resemblance to the modern view as stated by
Professor Stout.[14]
In searching Froebel’s writings to find what he has to say about the
stages lying between early mental activity and fully developed will,
between what he calls “natural activity of the will, and true genuine
firmness of will,” it soon becomes clear that it is impossible to
separate what is said about will development, from what is said about
intellectual development.[15] This is a natural consequence of Froebel’s
constant insistence on the unity of consciousness, and it is the position
of modern psychology, whether written from the analytic or the genetic
point of view. Mr. Irving King writes: “The functional point of view
emphasizes first of all the intimate inter-relation of all forms of
mental activity and the impossibility of describing any one aspect
of consciousness except with reference to consciousness as a whole.”
Professor Stout, in his “Analytic Psychology,” has a section entitled
“Conation and Cognition developed co-incidentally,”[16] while Froebel
says:
“Thought must form itself in action, and action resolve and
clear itself in thought.”--_P., p. 42._
Froebel speaks of his projected institution at Helba as “fundamental,”
“inasmuch as in training and instruction it will rest on the
foundation from which proceed all genuine knowledge and all
genuine practical attainments; it will rest on life itself
and on creative efforts, _on the union and interdependence of
doing and thinking_, representation and knowledge, art and
science. The institution will base its work on the pupil’s
personal efforts in work and expression, making these, again,
the foundation of all genuine knowledge and culture. Joined
with thoughtfulness, these efforts become a direct medium of
culture.”--_E., p. 38._
Professor Stout’s account of how the unconscious mental activity of early
childhood becomes transformed into the definite and conscious activity of
fully developed will is, stated briefly, something to this effect. It is
of the essence of conation to seek its own satisfaction, and this is only
possible as the conation becomes definite. “Blind craving gives place to
open-eyed desire,” as the original conation tends to define itself. So
“the gradual acquisition of knowledge through experience is but another
expression for the process whereby the originally blind craving becomes
more distinct and more differentiated.” The grouping of cognitions is not
produced by the conscious needs: “It is the way in which the conation
itself grows and develops.”
For this account we can find a wonderfully exact parallel in one of
Froebel’s less well-known papers, that on “Movement Plays.”
“All outer activity of the child has its ultimate and
distinctive foundation in his inmost nature and life.
The deepest craving of this inner activity is to behold
itself mirrored in some outward object. In and through such
representation, the child himself grasps and perceives the
nature, direction and aim of his own activity, and learns
also further to regulate and determine his life, that is his
activity, according to these outward phenomena.”--_P., p. 238._
This craving for outward representation, by satisfaction of which the
child gains knowledge of the ends of his activity, is an exact equivalent
of Stout’s blind craving which gives place to open-eyed desire as
it tends to define itself. Froebel’s conclusion, that only as this
unconscious or blind craving for action is satisfied does the child
become “conscious of the nature, direction and ends of his own activity,”
is but another way of stating Professor Stout’s conclusion, that the
grouping of cognitions, which is the gradual acquirement of knowledge
through experience, is “the way in which the conation itself grows and
develops.” So, cognition and conation are developed simultaneously, or,
to repeat Froebel’s own phrase, “Thought forms itself in action, and
action resolves and clears itself in thought.”
Professor Stout goes on to say that in this defining process one conation
springs out of another, whereby as one conation is satisfied and so comes
to an end, another becomes in its turn the end of activity. He takes as
illustration the child learning to walk, saying, “The mental attitude of
the child learning to walk is one of conscious endeavour. When he has
become habituated to the act, he performs it without attending to his
movements, his mind being fixed on the attainment of other ends.” Froebel
proceeds in the same way, using the very same example. He has already
said that at first the child:
“cares for the use of his body, his senses and limbs, merely
for the sake of their use and practice, but not for the sake of
the results of this use. He is wholly indifferent to this; _or,
rather, he has as yet no idea whatever of this_.”--_P., p. 48._
Now, in the paper on movement, he goes on:
“Each sure and independent movement gives the child pleasure,
because of the feeling of power which it arouses in him.
Even simple walking produces this effect, for it gives the
child a threefold feeling, a threefold consciousness: First,
the consciousness that he _moves_ himself; secondly, that he
moves himself from one place to another; third, that through
this movement he attains or reaches something.… It is a
well-established fact that his first walking gives the child
pleasure as an expression of his power. _To this pleasure,
however, are soon added the two joy-bringing perceptions of
coming to something, and of being able to attain something._
These several perceptions should all be fostered at the same
time … he should get his limbs, and indeed his whole body,
into his own power. He should learn to use his bodily strength
and the activity of his limbs for definite purposes.… _The
effort to reach a particular object may have its source in the
child’s desire to hold himself firm and upright by it, but we
also observe that it gives him pleasure to be actually near
the object, to touch it, to feel it, to grasp it, and perhaps
also--which is a new phase of activity--to be able to move it._
Hence we see that the child when he has reached the desired
object, hops up and down before it, and beats on it with his
little arms and hands, in order, as it were, to assure himself
of the reality of the object and to notice its qualities. It is
well, _while the child is making these experiments_, to name
the object and its parts. _The object of giving these names is
not primarily the development of the child’s power of speech,
but to assist his comprehension of the object_, its parts and
its properties, _by defining his sense-impressions_.”--_P., p.
241._
Another passage runs:
“The present effort of mankind is an endeavour after freer
self-development.… Therefore the more or less clear aim of the
individual is to attain to clearness about himself and about
life, to comprehension and right use of life, to both insight
and accomplishment.… Therefore the educator must understand the
earliest activity and encourage the impulse to self-culture,
through independent doing, observing and experimenting.”--_P.,
p. 16._
To say that a conation tends to define itself is only to say that
unconscious ends tend to be replaced by conscious ends, and we have
seen that both Froebel and Professor Stout give unconsciousness or
consciousness of the end, as the difference between earlier and later
forms of mental activity. Professor Stout’s conclusion is that “apart
from the perpetual germination of one conation out of another, the
characteristic features of the mental life of human beings would be
inexplicable.”
Now, to be conscious of one’s ends or aims is, in a certain sense, to be
self-conscious, so the transition from earlier to later forms of mental
activity is practically the development of self-consciousness. It is
interesting, therefore, to see that just as Professor Stout gives as his
explanation of human life, the perpetual germination of one conation out
of another, so Froebel gives as his explanation, his meaning of life, the
gradual development of self-consciousness.
Self-consciousness, involving true volition, or self-determination, is to
Froebel “the end of man, for which he first was planned.” It is, as he
constantly put it, man’s “destination.”
“To become clearly conscious of all the conditions and
relations in which and by means of which man exists makes man
first become man in consciousness and in action.”--_P., p. 12._
“For man is destined for consciousness, for freedom, for
self-determination.”--_E., p. 136._
“Self-consciousness belongs to the nature of man, is one with
it; to become conscious of itself is the first task in the life
of the child as a human being, as it is the task of his whole
life.”--_P., p. 40._
“Who amongst us,” exclaims Professor Royce, “conceives himself in his
uniqueness except as the remote goal of some ideal process of coming
to himself and of awakening to the truth about his own life? Only an
infinite process can show me who I am.”[17]
Froebel never loses sight of this. In his Autobiography he tells how
he began “unwillingly” to write something in the album of a friend who
was the owner of a beautiful farm, and he concludes: “Then my thoughts
grew clear and I continued, ‘Thou givest man bread; let my aim be to
give man himself.’” That he verily believed that the gradual development
of self-consciousness is the first task in the life of the child is
abundantly evident. In the very beginning of his Mother Songs he tells
the mother to give her child something to push against, “to bring the
child to self-knowledge as soon as possible,” and at the end he says,
“When a child or human being has found himself and has firm hold over
himself, he is ready to walk joyfully through life.”
In “The First Action of a Child,” Froebel writes:
“The nature of man, as man, is that he is self-conscious, and
this is stamped with distinctness enough to be observed in
the quite peculiar character of childish activity,[18] in
his impulse to busy himself self-actively, spontaneously: an
impulse which awakens simultaneously with mind, and which is
in harmony with feeling and perception. If this tendency to
spontaneous activity is fostered, man’s triune nature--energy,
emotion and intellect--is satisfied.”--_P., p. 21._
A realization of what Sir Oliver Lodge calls “the universal struggle for
self-manifestation and corporeal realization, which plays so large a part
in all activity,” underlies all that Froebel has to say of the progress
from unconscious activity to self-conscious volition. His view of the
Universe is exactly that tentatively suggested by Professor Lodge, viz.
that something akin to this universal struggle “is exhibited in a region
beyond and above what is ordinarily conceived of as ‘Nature.’ The process
of evolution can be regarded as the gradual unfolding of the Divine
Thought or Logos, throughout the universe, by the action of Spirit upon
matter.”
This takes us out of the region of psychology, but Froebel’s subject was
not psychology, _per se_, but child development, as a part of the whole
plan of evolution, man being the most highly developed of creatures.
The whole universe is an expression of the Divine, but man alone can
become conscious of his origin.
“All things are destined to reveal God in their external and
transient being.… It is the special destiny of man, as an
intelligent and rational being to become conscious of his
divine essence and to render this active, to reveal it in his
life, with self-determination and freedom.”--_E., p. 2._
“Made in the image of God,” meant to Froebel self-conscious and
self-determined. The relation of man to God is expressed by Froebel as
the relation of the thought to the thinker “_could the thought but become
conscious of itself_.” In a letter of 1843, he says:
“At the basis of the Kindergarten lies an idea which serves
alike for all the interstellar spaces, for all systems of the
sun; the fulfilment of the divine will and the manifestation
of the same. _In order to become such a manifestation
of the divine, man has first to attain the basis of
self-consciousness_; to which end serves the early culture of
the spirit of humanity in the world of childhood.”--_L., p.
133._
In a paper entitled “A Second Review of the Plays,” which really deals
chiefly with evolution, we read:
“We must see clearly the conditions of development in Nature
and then employ them in life. Thus only can we raise man upon
his own plane, that is, the spiritual plane, at least to such a
degree of perfection as is shown on their plane by the types of
Nature.
“Man--the all-surveying--must develop himself by gradual growth
of consciousness, must raise himself eventually to clear
consciousness of the foundation, conditions and goal of his
life.”--_P., p. 198._
It was as clear to Froebel as to Professor Lloyd Morgan that the lower
animals are kept from reaching self-consciousness by the definiteness
of their instincts,[19] but to Froebel as to Browning “in completed Man
begins anew a tendency to God.” Like Browning again, Froebel finds that
man has “somewhat to cast off, somewhat to become,” he, too, “finds
Progress man’s distinctive mark alone, not God’s, and not the beasts’;
God is, they are, man partly is, and wholly hopes to be.”
“Man in his first period of life on earth is to be regarded
while a child in three separate relations, which are united in
themselves.
“(_a_) As a child of Nature, that is according to his
earthly and natural conditions and connections, and in this
relation bound, chained, unconscious, subject to impulses
(als ein gebundenes, gefesseltes, unbewusstes, den Trieben
unterworfenes).
“(_b_) As a child of God, and in this relation as a free being,
destined to self-consciousness.
“(_c_) As a child of Humanity, and in this relation, as
a being struggling from bondage toward freedom, toward
consciousness.”--_P., p. 11._
And the beginning of all he finds in “The First Action of the Child.” In
the paper to which he gives this title Froebel writes:
“Helplessness and personal will, a mind of one’s own, soon
become therefore the turning-points of child-life, the fulcrum
of which is free spontaneous activity, self-employment.”--_P.,
p. 27._
It is because Froebel believes this, that we hear so much of creative
activity. Consciousness, which Meredith calls “the great result of mortal
suffering,” is the outcome of all the unconscious striving.
“The child, although unconsciously, strives to make his life
outwardly objective, and thus perceptible and so to become
conscious of it.”--_P., p. 240._
“Man only comes to the power of self-examination and
self-knowledge in any relation whatever with the greatest
difficulty, and must first learn to study himself … in the
mirror of Nature and of all creation.”--_L., p. 57._
“The child must perceive and grasp his own life in an objective
manifestation before he can perceive and grasp it in himself.
Such mirroring of the inner life, such making of the inner life
objective, is essential, for through it, the child comes to
self-consciousness and learns to order, determine and master
himself.”--_P., p. 238._
Froebel realizes then, that true volition is the outcome of unconscious
striving, that it can only come through action, and, what is most
important, through action which is the outcome of feeling, “worthy his
effort.” So, while stating that the formation of “a pure, strong and
enduring will” is the main object of education, he takes care to point
out that unless the boy is allowed to carry out in action “that which is
within,” ideas which have appealed to him, and which he has already made
his own, that main object will not be easily attainable.
“To raise activity of will to firmness of will, and so to
arouse, and form a pure, strong and enduring will, for the
representation of a characteristic humanity, is the chief aim,
the main object of the school.… The starting-point of all
mental activity in the boy should be energetic and healthy,
the direction should be simple and definite, the aim certain
and conscious, and worthy of his effort. Therefore to raise
the natural activity of the will to true genuine firmness of
will, all the boy’s activities should have reference to the
development and accomplishment of what is within him. Activity
of will proceeds from activity of the feelings, and firmness
of will from firmness of the feelings, and where the first is
lacking, the second will be difficult of attainment.”--_E., p.
96._