HOW CONSCIOUSNESS IS DIFFERENTIATED.--THE PLACE OF ACTION IN THE
DEVELOPMENT OF PERCEPTION AND OF FEELING
Once objects have begun to emerge, differentiated out of the formless
indistinctness, comes what Froebel calls the “sucking-in stage,” where
the child “makes the external internal.”
Here, more than anywhere perhaps, Froebel shows his genius, his
originality as a student of child psychology, in that he perceived that
this mental sucking-in is not merely a matter of sense organs, but that
it is also a muscular performance.
Who, before Froebel, understood the importance of motor activity from the
very earliest days, as a means of gaining ideas, or realized as we now
begin to do, that this is the true explanation of the “endless imitation
which is the child’s vocation”?
In speaking of the “new-born child,” it is activity or action which
is again and again repeated and emphasized as the outstanding
characteristic, “an activity and action devoted to working with and
prevailing over the outer.”
“As rest appears to be the earliest requirement of the bodily
life, so movement soon appears as the demand of the soul
life.”--_P., p. 63._
The baby’s “feeble strength” is to be drawn into the game, where
possible, “particularly that he may experience and perceive, directly
through and in his own activity” (durch und in Eigenthätigkeit
unmittelbar selbst erfahre und wahrnehme).--_P., p. 78._
It is “through spontaneous activity, as well as through the mother’s
instinctive knowledge of his needs” that the child gains “the first
impressions of the soul, as it were, the first cognitions.”
Out of forty-nine Mother Songs, two only deal specifically with the
senses, though all deal with action, and Froebel takes care to point out
the close connection of sense and movement.
“Limbs and senses seem to have very different provinces of
activity, and so they have; yet so deep-seated is their linked
interchange that neither of them fails to react on the other.
And no Games for the limbs have presented themselves to us, not
even the ‘Kicking Song’ which have not also made demands upon
the sense of sight.”--_M., p. 168._
“The use of the body and of the limbs is developed
simultaneously and in the same proportion as the use of the
senses, the order being determined by their own nature and the
properties of the material world. Outer objects are near, or
moving away, or fixed at a distance, and either invite rest,
seizure and holding fast, or invite him who would bring them
nearer to move towards them.”--_E., p. 47._
Froebel’s account of the significance of the ceaseless activity of
the young child anticipates to a certain extent that of Mr. Irving
King, who, in his most interesting “Psychology of Child Development,”
deals expressly with “the functional relation of consciousness to
activity.” But the views of Professor Stout as expressed in his “Analytic
Psychology,” and with which Froebel’s writing has already been compared,
and those of Mr. Irving King do not appear to clash in any way.
Mr. King begins by discussing the “sort of consciousness” a young child
must have, and concludes that it must from the very first be a unified
consciousness, however vague, any discreteness being on the part of the
object. He also states that the consciousness of a human being must
differ from that of the animal entering life with many “ready-made
complexes of adjustment,” because “Consciousness is related not to
activity, but to the growth of activity.” We have just seen that Froebel
too insists on a unified consciousness, that he too says that “the
external world,” though composed always of the same variety of objects,
“comes to the child as ‘an undifferentiated unity.’” Froebel is also
quite sound as to the difference between the mental possibilities of the
animal “whose instincts, as they are called, are at birth so definite
and strong,” and that of the child “born in the extreme condition of
helplessness,” by whom “everything external is to be overcome.”[22]
Reflex and instinctive acts which the child brings into the world
with him, says Mr. King, are unconscious, as are reflex and habitual
activities to the adult, but “the checking of a movement must make the
child more definitely conscious of it … it is no longer mere movement,
but movement-stopped-by-something. As soon as movement stands out, as
soon as the consciousness of it is interwoven with something that is not
movement, we have the basis for indefinite advance.”
Froebel says the same thing in the first of the Mother Songs, where
he takes as the point of departure for all future training this
movement-stopped-by-something, to which Mr. King refers as the earliest
beginning of consciousness. The mother is told that when her baby
“strikes out with his small arms, as he kicks with his feet,” it is a
challenge, to which she instinctively responds by giving him her hand or
her chest, “against which he tramples with alternate feet and so measures
and increases his strength.” So, he reaches “that first consciousness of
self, which is born of physical opposition to and connection with the
external world.”--_P., p. 171._
Every one knows that Froebel laid much stress on the necessity for what
is usually called “expression,” which he called _Darstellung_--often
translated “representation.” One of his reasons for this emphasis is,
however, by no means always understood, viz. that it “induces clear
perception.”
It is in discussing and criticizing Professor Baldwin’s description of
imitation as a circular process, that Mr. Irving King brings out two
points of view from which we may regard imitation, that of the observer
and that of the so-called imitator. Imitation, he says, is a term for
the observer only, and not a term for psychology at all. Baldwin says
that “real or persistent imitation is the reaction that will reproduce
the stimulating impression and so tend to perpetuate itself.” But as Mr.
King shows in the case of the child who imitates his mother’s poking of
the fire, “the response of the child to the copy does not reinstate the
original stimulus.… What the child gets is not a reproduced stimulus, but
a new experience.”
In “The Education of Man,” written years before his whole attention
was given to the young child, Froebel had emphasized the necessity for
“representation” which “induces and implies clear perception.”
“For what man tries to represent or do, that he begins to
understand.”--_E., p. 76._
As we have seen that Froebel sets before himself the self-same task which
Mr. King states as the business of the genetic psychologist, so it should
be no surprise that he gives virtually the same answer to the question:
What do the imitative activities mean to the child?
Mr. King’s answer is that the child’s emphasis is not on the copying of
a certain act, but on the attainment of a certain experience that comes
through the copying or imitating. “The child,” he says, “is seldom or
never imitating from his own point of view, but is always trying to sort
out some of his own ill-organized experiences.”
Froebel’s words are:
“The child, though unconsciously, strives to make his inner
life outwardly objective and thus perceptible, and so to become
conscious of it, to see it mirrored in the outward phenomena.
It is for this reason that the child tries to do himself
whatever he sees done.”--_P., p. 240._
“If your child is to understand any action, you must let him
carry it out himself, deeply rooted in this fact is his prompt
and delighted imitation of whatever he finds around him.”--_M.,
p. 16._
“Thought must form itself in action, and action resolve and
clear itself in thought.”--_P., p. 42._
Every stimulus, says Mr. King, is a suggestion to activity, and it is
interesting to notice how two minds working on the same lines, though
separated not only by years but by difference of language, can fall into
almost the same phrases. Mr. King unconsciously uses almost Froebel’s
very words when he writes: “_The sight of the object tends to set the
activity free_.”
Froebel writes:
“As the ball stirs, moves, goes, runs and rolls, the child who
is playing with it begins to feel the desire to do likewise.…
The smallest child moves joyfully, springs gaily, hops up and
down or beats with his arms when he sees a moving object. This
is not merely delight in the movement of the object before him,
but it is the working of the inner activity wakened in him by
the sight of outer activity. _Through such vision the inner
life has been freed._”--_P., p. 239._
We have seen that according to Froebel the earliest consciousness is a
kind of self-consciousness. Mr. Irving King says that the very beginning
of consciousness is “movement-stopped-by-something,” and Froebel says
that when the baby kicks out or tramples with his feet and the mother
responds by giving him her hand or chest to push against, the child
reaches that “first consciousness of self which is born of physical
opposition to and connection with the external world.” Here again we
come to a point in which Froebel’s insight shows well in comparison
with a typical modern genetic psychologist. “Many writers,” says Mr.
Irving King, “have tried to select out certain kinds of activity as
peculiarly connected with the development of the infant’s sense of
self.” Preyer, for instance, connects this development specially with
painful sensations; Baldwin, with experience associated with people, as
contrasted with experience of things. His own conclusion is that “it
seems more correct to say that all the child’s activities are factors
of very nearly equal importance for developing the sense of self, as
distinct from things and other people,” and it is this view that we find
in Froebel’s writings. Even in “The Education of Man” we find:
“If man, in accordance with his destiny, is truly and
thoroughly to know each thing of the surrounding world; if
_with the aid of each thing he is truly and thoroughly to know
himself_.…”--_E., p. 92._
And among his later writings, in connection with the child’s play with
bricks Froebel says:
“True and early knowledge of Nature and of the outer world
and _especially clear self-knowledge_ come to the child by
this early dismembering and reconstruction and perception
of real things, though not as yet, by any means, through
verbal designation of the various productions of childish
activity.”--_P., p. 123._
“Self-consciousness,” says Mr. King, “is essentially a relative and
variable term for all of us. It stands for a process of definition, that,
strictly speaking, proceeds till maturity, or even later.” And Froebel,
writing about how, through the mother’s play with a ball, a child may
gain his earliest perceptions of object, space and time, says that by the
coming and going of the ball, etc.,
“there goes forth to the child the object, recognized as such
by the mind and so held fast, the consciousness of the object,
and so consciousness itself awakens in the child.”
And without a pause he goes on:
“Self-consciousness belongs to the nature of man, and is one
with it. To become conscious of itself is the first task in
the life of the child, as it is the task of the whole life of
man. That this task may be accomplished the child is, even
from his first appearance, surrounded by a definite place and
by objects: by the air blowing around all living creatures, as
well as by the arousing, human, spiritual language of words.…
Thus it is with the attainment of man to consciousness and
the speech required and conditioned by that attainment to
consciousness.”--_P., p. 39._
It is rather interesting to notice that in her translation of this
passage in which Froebel declares that self-consciousness comes to
a child as a result of all his surroundings, Miss Jarvis omits the
word “self.” She begins her paragraph with “Bewusstsein,” instead of
“Selbstbewusstsein” as it stands in the original. To quote Mr. King,
“It is generally held that these are two distinct attitudes, that
consciousness may exist without an accompanying consciousness of the
self as separate from the objects, activities and persons of the rest of
the world.” Probably this was Miss Jarvis’s own view, and she left out
the word “self” as having no place or meaning in the context. It was,
however, not meaningless to Froebel himself.
Mr. King continues: “The really important point is not to be able
to put the finger down on some one thing that proves a developed
self-consciousness, but to be able to show at every point that the
process of definition is a function of the growing complexity of the
child’s activities.” And, in “The First Action of a Child” Froebel writes:
“The nature of man as a being intended for self-consciousness,
shows itself in the quite distinctive nature of the child’s
activity, even at the end of the so-called three months’
slumber, in the totality of the first childish action. This
cannot be better comprehended than by the expression ‘to busy
himself’ (sich beschäftigen) in the impulse of the child--an
impulse awakening simultaneously with his inner life--an
impulse in close union with feeling and perception, to be
active for the increasing development of his life: in this
lies the nature of man as a being intended to grow towards and
ultimately to become self-conscious.”--_P., p. 22._
Speaking of his second plaything, intended for a child six months old, he
says:
“And so his play, and through his play, his
surroundings--finally Nature and Universe--may become a mirror
of himself and of his life. But this cannot be too early
facilitated, that the child at once, from the first beginning
of his self-developing feeling of life, may grow up in exchange
and comparison with Nature and life, and as he impresses his
life in form, and as form on things outside, so he may again
perceive his life therein.”--_P., p. 95._
Froebel was bound to watch for early developments of self-consciousness,
because his whole philosophy and pedagogy are based on his firm belief
that while everything in the universe is an expression of the Divine, man
alone is “destined” to express the God within “with self-determination.”
So, of the little child, he writes:
“Because the child himself begins to represent his inner being
outwardly, he imputes the same activity to all about him, to
the pebble and chip of wood, to the plant, the flower, and
the animal. And thus there is developed in the child at this
stage his own life, his life with parents and family, and
particularly his life in and with Nature, as if this held life
_like that which he feels within himself_.”--_E., p. 54._
As the child grows older, the mother, Froebel continues, tries to teach
him to feel the complexity of his own body, “Give me your arm,” “Where is
your hand?” she says, and she “playfully leads him to a knowledge of the
members which he cannot see,” and the passage ends:
“The aim of all this is to lead the child to
self-consciousness, to reflection about himself in the
approaching period of boyhood. Thus, a boy ten years old,
similarly guided by instinct, believing himself unobserved,
soliloquized: ‘I am not my arm, nor my ear; all my limbs
and organs I can separate from myself, and I still remain
myself; I wonder what I am; who and what is this which I call
myself?’”--_E., p. 56._
Nor does Froebel forget the idea of the self as the boy grows older.
Once the activities of running, jumping, etc., are familiar, the boy’s
play takes on a new complexion. His games are now “trials of strength,”
or “displays of strength.”
“The boy tries to see himself in his companions, to feel
himself in them, to weigh and measure himself by them, to know
and find himself by their aid.”--_E., p. 114._
“The life of the boy has, indeed, no other purpose but that
of the outer representation of his self: his life is in truth
but an external representation of his inner being, of his
power, particularly through plastic material. In the forms he
fashions, he does not see outer forms which he is to take in
and understand; he sees in them the expression of his spirit,
of the activities of his own mind.”--_E., p. 279._
Surely it is another touch of genius that makes Froebel spring to the
nascent idea of self as _the_ reason for the child’s craving for tales of
all kinds.
“Knowledge of a thing can never be attained by comparing it
with itself. Therefore the boy cannot attain any knowledge of
the nature and meaning of his own life, by comparing it with
itself … everybody knows that comparisons with somewhat remote
objects are more effective than those with very near objects.
Only the study of the life of others can furnish such points
of comparison with the life he has himself experienced.… It is
the innermost desire and need of a vigorous boy to understand
his own life.… This is the chief reason why boys are so fond
of stories, legends and tales.… The story concerns other men,
other circumstances, other times and places, yet the hearer
seeks his own image, he beholds it, and no one knows that he
sees it.”--_E., p. 305._
As Froebel shows so much insight into the paramount importance of action
in the development of self-consciousness, it is not surprising to find
that he recognizes also its special importance in the development of
feeling.
It is probably to the late Professor James and his sparkling paradoxes
that the educational world owes its grasp of the importance of expression
in connection with feeling; we feel because we act, we are told, we do
not run away because we are afraid, but we are afraid because we have run
away. But all Froebelians had already learnt the truth at the bottom of
this from Froebel’s Mother Songs.
When he wrote his earliest and greatest book, “The Education of Man,”
Froebel was already far enough advanced to point out the necessity for at
least verbal expression of feeling. He then advocated giving to young
boys simple prayers or words by which they can express childish gratitude
for care and protection, so that these feelings may be retained and
deepened.
“It is natural that religious feelings and thoughts should
spring up.… In the beginning these sentiments and feelings will
only manifest themselves as an effect, a fullness without word
or form, without any adequate expression of what they are,
merely as something that uplifts our being and fills the soul.
At this juncture, it is most beneficial, strengthening, and
uplifting for the boy to receive words--a language for these
sentiments and feelings--_so that they may not be stifled in
themselves, vanish for lack of expression_.”--_E., p. 246._
The same remark is made in connection with the teaching of poems and
songs. When feeling is aroused by the contemplation of Nature, it must be
expressed. When Spring brings “gladness,” and Autumn “longing and hope,”
and when Winter awakens “courage and vigour,” then:
“Man, too, would express the thoughts and feelings that are
awakened in him and for which he cannot find words, and these
should be given him.… the thoughtful teacher can easily
interpret the thoughts and feelings of the boys, as well as
the phases of Nature, in living fitting words.… In general,
all that was said concerning the appropriation of religious
expressions is true here.”--_E., p. 267._
Froebel had also noted even thus early how “the natural mother” from the
very beginning cultivates feeling through expression, through gesture or
action.
“Mother love seeks to awaken and to interpret the feeling of
community between the child and the father, brother and sister,
when she says, ‘Dear Daddy!’ as she caressingly passes the
child’s hand over the father’s cheek. ‘Love daddy, love little
sister,’ etc.”--_E., p. 69._
In the Mother’s Songs, written much later and after Froebel had made
careful observation of young children, he is more emphatic, and his ideas
of expression are both wider and more definite. In “The Education of Man”
he had said that literature exercises and tests judgment and feelings,
and he had added that this should be followed up by some constructive
action. But now he knows that feeling when stirred ought to express
itself in actual service, just as James suggests “speaking genially to
one’s grandmother, or giving up one’s seat in a horse car, if nothing
more heroic offers.”
The mother is told that at first she should help her little one
to understand her care of him and his dependence on her by “the
looking-glass of outer life,” by letting him, for instance, watch the hen
caring for her chickens, and the parent birds feeding and brooding over
their young in the nest. In the rhymed motto of “The Nest” she is told:
“Already the baby likes to see pictures showing the loving care
of a mother. Let him do so often, that his life experience may
become clear to him.”
But the longer explanation has an important addition:
“The way lies through our imaginative, tender and emotional
observation of Nature and of man’s life, and through the
child’s affectionately taking their most intimate meaning into
the life of his own heart, _and expressing by representation
what he thus takes in_.”--_M., p. 149._
So, as the child begins to realize what he owes, comes the next little
play, “The Flower Basket,” the key-note of which is given in its motto:
“Try to let the child give outward form to what stirs his
feelings, for the love even of a child dies away if not
carefully fostered.”--_M., p. 38._
And the baby makes of his tiny hands a basket for flowers wherewith to
celebrate the father’s birthday in orthodox German fashion. In Froebel’s
own phrase, the “inner meaning” of the little finger play with its
picture, is “to cherish thoughtfully the bond, which is invisible, yet
which can be felt, whereby the life of humanity is bound together, the
first opportunity for which is afforded by the life of the child and the
family.” What is important here is that Froebel has pointed out the way
in which this bond can be strengthened, that is by expression, by giving
“outward form to what stirs feeling.”
This idea of service as expression of feeling comes into Froebel’s
description of the ideal child, “merry, happy, strong and busy,” when the
mother:
“Kissed upon his brow her blessing,
Then, his love for her expressing,
Off he starts his mother serving
All he can do, she’s deserving.”--_M., p. 191._
Again, in connection with childish productions, the little baskets,
napkin rings, etc., that they have made, Froebel wrote:
“The use made of these little productions is very important to
the civilizing and nourishing of the child’s being and mind,
for I consider the fact that many children receive so much
and can give hardly anything to be one of the most essential
causes of the frequent retrogression of childish love and
sensibility.”
Froebel always emphasizes the essential importance of family bonds in the
development of feeling, and he not only instructs the mother to see to
it that the child recognizes the family circle, but he tells her that he
will realize his “kinship” by service done for the family.
“Family, family, you are more than School or Church … without
you what are Altar and Church.…”--_M., p. 159._
“That many things are in a whole
Soon dawns upon a childish soul.
Then let the mother teach him carefully
To know the circle of the family.”--_M., p. 46._
“Duties are not burdens, duty fulfilled leads to light, this is
why every healthy child likes and enjoys doing duties, provided
they speak to him clearly and simply, above all inexorably.…
See how happy a child is feeling he has done his small duties.
He already feels his kinship with you thereby. Cherish this
feeling, and it will be salvation and blessing to him.”--_M.,
p. 174._
As the feeling of the adult is called out by the helplessness of a child,
so, too:
“the child’s sympathy is roused by the young creatures’
necessities more than by anything else, and among these
chiefly by their nakedness and softness: ‘… Mother, the poor
little birds are so lonely, I am so sorry for the poor little
things.’”--_M., p. 150._
And in this connection too comes the warning that feeling must not be
allowed to evaporate without action:
“If your child’s to love and cherish
Life that needs him day by day,
Give him things to tend that perish
If he ever stops away.”--_M., p. 84._
The child is “to feel within himself Nature’s close interdependence”:
“Whenever opportunity occurs, make this inner dependence of
life clear, visible, impressive, tangible and perceptible to
your child, even though it be in only a few of the essential
links of this great chain, until you come to the last ring that
holds all the rest, God’s Father-love for all. The baker cannot
bake if the miller brings him no flour, the miller can grind no
flour if the farmer brings him no corn, the field can yield no
crop if Nature does not work towards it in harmony, and Nature
could not work in harmony if God had not placed in her power
and material, and if His love did not guide everything to its
fulfilment.”--_M., p. 148._
And again, as always, follows the need for expression of some kind. The
children are not to be disturbed while they “say grace” over their doll’s
feast.
“It is no drawing down of the sacred into outer life; no, this
is the germ which gives the outside actions of life the inner
meaning and higher consecration, which life so much needs. For
how is your child to cultivate innocently in himself a lively
feeling for what is holy, if you will not grant that it takes
form for him even in his innocent games.”--_M., p. 148._
It may be as well before leaving the subject to notice here one or two
other points in connection with feeling that are touched upon by Froebel.
Though, as we have seen[23], the feeling side is always kept in closest
connection with those of knowledge and action, yet the fundamental
importance of the emotional side is stated quite distinctly. The child
is “living, loving and perceiving,” or “creating, feeling and thinking,”
still:
“The cultivation of boyhood rests wholly on that of childhood;
therefore activity and firmness of the will rest upon activity
and firmness of the feelings and of the heart. Where the latter
are lacking, the former will scarcely be attainable.”--_E., p.
97._
This is put more strongly in connection with the child’s imitation of the
music of the bell note, the “bim-baum” or “ding-dong” sung by the mother,
while she swings the ball to and fro, which according to Froebel “serves
the emotional side.”
“The children thus early and definitely point out that the
centre, the real foundation, the starting-point of human
development is the heart and the emotions, but the training
to action and thought, the corporeal and mental, goes on
constantly and inseparably by the side of it; and thought
must form itself into action, and action resolve and clear
itself in thought; but both have their roots in the emotional
nature.”--_P., p. 42._
Another point Froebel makes in this connection, is that feeling alone can
awaken feeling, and that those who complain of want of feeling in their
children have probably themselves to blame. Want of good feeling and the
prevalence among boys of egotism, unfriendliness, etc., is explained as:
“clearly due not merely to the failure of arousing at an early
period, and of subsequently cultivating in the child a feeling
of common sympathy, but also to the early annihilation of this
feeling between parents and children.”--_E., p. 122._
The elders must show sympathy with the child’s thoughts and feelings,
they must not rest content with caring for his bodily welfare. If the
child fails to find sympathy, for example in connection with his interest
in Nature, if he “fails to find the same feelings among adults who
suppress his germinating inner life” then, says Froebel:
“a double effect follows, loss of respect for the elder and a
recoil of the original anticipation.”--_E., p. 164._
“Mothers and Fathers, is it not almost incredible how early
the child appears to distinguish inner intellectual and loving
gifts from outer bodily ones, or, rather, to be conscious of
the heart and mind of the giver to feel the giving spirit?
Who does not see this in the effect of a friendly glance, of
a sympathizingly spoken word, of a tender care which often
affords little more than sympathy and companionship?… It is a
remarkable fact that the mere love for the outward person, the
mere bodily care, does not satisfy him; indeed, the nobler the
child is in his nature the less does he cling to the giving
person. Through this consideration we have found and recognized
what we sought, namely, that the respect and love--yea, the
reverence--of children and youth are gained and secured to
parents in proportion to what the latter are doing for the
education of the mental life of the children.… If the lively
appreciation of what has been done to cultivate his inner world
fill the soul of a child, then will true love and gratitude
towards parents, respect and veneration for age, germinate in
the mind of a child.”--_P., p. 111._
We have spoken in this chapter of what is popularly called the instinct
of imitation, and we have seen that Froebel makes much of what he calls
the instinct or impulse of activity (Thätigkeitstrieb), or the instinct
for employment (Beschäftigungstrieb).
It may be well now to consider what, considering the ideas of his day and
generation, Froebel could find to say on a subject so important as the
instinctive activities of human beings and of other animals, concerning
which so much has now been written and which, according to Professor
Dewey, Froebel regarded and rightly regarded as the foundation-stones of
educational method.