CHAPTER VI

INSTINCT AND INSTINCTS

“The older writings on Instinct are ineffectual wastes of words,”

writes Professor James, “because their authors never came down to this

simple and definite idea (that the nervous system is to a great extent

a pre-organized bundle of reactions), but smothered everything in vague

wonder at the clairvoyant and prophetic power of animals--so superior to

anything in Man.”[24]

Froebel was certainly not in a position to know much of the nervous

system, but what he wrote about instinct cannot be classed with these

older writings. For even without modern knowledge, he waxes indignant

over the opinions of those who created James’ “ineffectual wastes

of words.” Far from allowing that instinct in the lower animals is

superior to anything in man, Froebel maintains that the very weakness,

indefiniteness of man’s instincts or impulses (Triebe) is a sign of his

superiority.

“Notwithstanding the early manifestation in the human infant

of the impulse to employment (Beschäftigungstriebe), much

has been said from an entirely wrong point of view about

man’s helplessness at birth, and his slow development to

independence, which necessitates for so long a period the

care and help of the mother. It has even been said, that,

in this respect, man’s position is behind and below that of

other animals. But that very point, which has been cited as

evidence of man’s imperfection, is a proof of his worth. For we

recognize through this helplessness, that man is called to ever

higher self-consciousness.”--_P., p. 24._

At the same time it should be pointed out that Froebel does not make

the opposite mistake of supposing that man has no instincts. Since he

approached psychology from the biological side, so far as it could be

known to him, Froebel was bound to have faith in instinct, in race-habit,

in tendencies which, because they have been of use to the race, are

bedded in the nature of each individual. It is to Froebel’s later

writings and especially to the little paper, on “The First Action of a

Child,” that we must turn to see how wonderfully correct are his views on

the whole question of instinct.

It may be better to give first the position of modern writers on the

subject by quoting from the last chapter of Professor Lloyd Morgan’s

“Habit and Instinct,” a clear and concise passage showing that the

contrary schools of thought represented on the one hand by the Darwin and

Romanes and on the other by Professors James and Wundt, can after all be

resolved into a matter of definition.

“If, then, the question be asked, whether man has a large or a small

endowment of instinct, the answer will depend upon the precise definition

of ‘instinct.’ If we take congenital definiteness as characteristic

of instinct, we shall agree with Darwin, that ‘the fewness and the

comparative simplicity of the instincts of the higher animals are

remarkable as compared with those of lower animals;’ and with Romanes

that ‘instinct plays a larger part in the psychology of many animals

than it does in the psychology of man.’ If, on the other hand, a broader

definition of instinct be accepted, so as to include what is innate,

in the sense before defined, we shall agree with Professor Wundt that

human life is ‘permeated through and through with instinctive action,

determined in part, however, by intelligence and volition;’ and shall not

profoundly disagree with Professor Wm. James, who says that man possesses

all the impulses that they (the lower animals) have and a great many more

besides.”

In Mr. McDougall’s important contribution to the discussion of human

instinct, he says that the view which is rapidly gaining ground is that

the gradual evolution of intelligence “did not supplant and lead to the

atrophy of the instincts, but controlled and modified their operation.”

As Mr. McDougall goes on to state his belief “that the recognition of the

full scope and function of the human instincts will appear to those that

come after us as the most important advance made by psychology in our

time,” it is important to the purpose of this book, to make clear to what

extent Froebel’s views on the subject approach those of modern writers.

Mr. McDougall makes a very clear distinction between specific tendencies

to which he limits the word instinct, and non-specific or general

tendencies. Naturally Froebel did not reach this standpoint, but he

does seem to have thought out his terminology. He felt strongly as

to the use of words of foreign origin, and generally uses “_Trieb_,”

“_Lebenstrieb_,” “_Drang_” or “_Lebensdrang_,” where we might use

instinct. But he does occasionally use “instinct,” notably in a passage

quoted below “whose impulses, powers and abilities, whose instincts

as they are called” (dessen Lebenstriebe Kräfte und Anlagen, dessen

Instincte wie man es nennt), where he seems to be feeling about for

the right expression. Other words in constant use are “_Neigung_,”

“_Streben_” and “_Richtung_,” probably best translated by “tendency.” It

can be argued, however, that to the word Trieb Froebel does seem to have

attached a more definite meaning, and his use of this word is certainly

limited.

Professor James’ account of instinct begins with the statement that

“Every instinct is an impulse,” a driving to action, but the use of the

words “_Trieb_” and “_Drang_” makes such a pronouncement unnecessary to

a German writer, and if this root idea is not implied by the noun, it

generally, in Froebel’s writings, makes its appearance in the verb. Thus

we frequently read of “a longing which drives the child to,” etc. (die

Sehnsucht die das Kind treibt).

The merest glance through Froebel’s writings is enough to show his belief

in the existence of instinct in the human being. His references to it are

constant. It is an impulse (Trieb) “which the child did not give himself,

which came without his will, in later life even against his will,” but

which “urges to action” (drängt ihn dazu). It is a force so strong, that

it “holds captive mind and body.” The child is described as “driven by

impulse” (des von Lebensdrang getriebenen Kindes). The boy again is “held

captive by harmless, even praiseworthy, impulses” (sogar lobenswerten

Triebe), or “gives himself up entirely to the impulses of his inner life”

(dem Treibenden innern Leben).

In his earlier work, “The Education of Man,” Froebel is first concerned

with urging that the young human being, “a product of Nature,” has

instincts quite as trustworthy as those of any other young animal, and

the following eloquent passage is very well known:

“The undisturbed working of the Divine Unity is necessarily

good, and this implies that the young human being, still as it

were in the process of creation, would seek as a product of

Nature, though still unconsciously, yet decidedly and surely

that which is in itself best: and, moreover, in a form wholly

adapted to his condition, disposition, powers and means. Thus

the duckling hastens to the pond, while the young chicken

scratches the ground, and the young swallow catches his food

upon the wing and scarcely ever touches the ground. We grant

space and time to young plants and animals because we know that

in accordance with the laws that live in them they will develop

properly and grow well. Arbitrary interference with their

growth is avoided because it is known that this would disturb

their development; but the young human being is looked upon as

a piece of wax, a lump of clay, which man can mould into what

he pleases.… Thus, O parents, could your children, on whom you

force in tender years forms and aims against their nature,

thus could your children too unfold in beauty and develop in

harmony.”--_E., p. 7._

It is true that to Froebel evolution is “the working of Divine Unity.”

But there seems to be no special reason why this should invalidate

what Froebel has to say, any more than Sir Oliver Lodge should be

disqualified as a scientist, because he has produced a book in which he

writes: “Development means unfolding latent possibilities … growth and

development are in accordance with the law of the universe … the law

of the universe and the will of God are here regarded as in some sort

synonymous terms.”

This is exactly Froebel’s position; he writes that

“Nature and man have their origin in one and the same eternal

Being, and their development takes place in accordance with the

same laws, only at different stages.”--_E., p. 161._

That Froebel not only recognized the presence of instinct in human

beings, but that he also saw, as Professor Wundt puts it, that this

is “determined in parts by intelligence and volition,” he states very

plainly:

“Natural instinct and good example will do much, but here,

as in all human concerns, one must proceed by extension of

knowledge, and by careful scrutiny, or both the one and the

other may mislead or be misdirected. Experience cries aloud

to us, to warn us of this danger. _Assuredly man ought not to

neglect his natural instincts, still less abandon them, but he

must ennoble them through his intelligence, purify them through

his reason._”--_L., p. 222._

“In the progress of development three stages differentiate

themselves and fall apart; and these stages are seen both in

individual men, and in the race as a whole. They are:

(1) _Unconsciousness, the merely instinctive stage_;

(2) _Vague Feeling, the tendency upwards towards

consciousness_; and

(3) _Relatively clear Conscious Intelligence_.

Everything that is acquired by a great unity, say by a family,

a community, a nation, must in its beginnings be acquired by

the single members of that unity; and further it will take

them in one of the three grades of development, either that of

mere unconsciousness, or of vague feeling, or in the third and

highest grade, that of conscious intelligence, so far as it has

been maintained by mankind up to the present time.”--(Letter to

Madame D. Lutkens, dated March, 1851.)

It is in “The First Action of a Child” that we find Froebel contrasting

the instincts of the lower animals with those of man. Here curiously

enough, Froebel, according to Professor Stout, is almost more correct

than Professor Lloyd Morgan himself, whose statement “that animals do not

perceive relations” Professor Stout regards as misleading. His correction

is, “unless an artificial restriction is put on the meaning of the term

_relation_, this statement would imply that animals cannot perceive the

position of objects in space or their motion.… Hence we should say,

not that the perception of relation is deficient in animals, but only

that definite perception of relations is deficient which depends on

comparison.”

Now it is this very point of comparison which Froebel takes as the

essential intellectual difference between the animal independent from

birth thanks to fully developed instinct, and the child helpless and

apparently inferior at first, yet destined for progress “self-active and

free.” He writes:

“The animal whose life impulses, powers and abilities, whose

instincts as they are called (dessen Lebenstriebe, Kräfte

und Anlagen, dessen Instincte wie man es nennt) are at once

so definite and strong, that in natural conditions it never

fails, indeed cannot fail to overcome every hindrance within

its life’s reach, the animal just on this account can never

arrive at a knowledge of its powers, its qualities, its nature

… _for it lacks all points of comparison. It lacks all points

of comparison, which, in the case of man proceed from the fact

that the weakest output of strength meets with obstacles_ which

increase as the strength increases, and which will only with

difficulty be conquered or overcome and annihilated.

“It is quite different in the life of man, in the beginning

of which practically nothing can be accomplished without help

from without. Nothing especially can be accomplished through

a preponderance of inner power such, for example, as the

newly hatched duckling shows on the water. Thus everything

external must, by Man, with his preponderance of helplessness,

be overcome as an obstacle solely through inner advancing,

and outer strengthening and increasing of power through free

activity of the will.”--_P., p. 25._

With this passage from “The First Action of a Child” we can compare the

following from Stout’s “Analytic Psychology”:

“The peculiar feature in the life of animals which prevents progressive

development is the existence of instincts which do for them what the

human being must do for himself. Their inherited organization is such,

that they perform the movements adapted to supply their needs on the

mere occurrence of an appropriate external stimulus.… In man, a blind

craving has to grope its way from darkness into light in order to become

effective; in the animal the means of satisfaction are provided ready

made by Nature at the outset.”

After having stated that “Every instinct is an impulse,” Professor James

goes on to say that instinct depends upon the biological fact that the

nervous system is “a pre-organized bundle of re-actions,” and that when

impulses block one another, an animal with many impulses, and whose mind

is elevated enough to discriminate, “loses the instinctive demeanour and

appears to live a life of hesitation and choice, an intellectual life.”

Notwithstanding the very obvious fact that Froebel could know but little

of the nervous system and its re-actions, it is still quite evident

that his observation had led him to a clear recognition of the earlier

stage, when “hesitation and choice” are impossible. The child, he says,

“acts in obedience to an instinct which holds captive mind and body,”

he is “incredibly short-sighted in his obedience to instinct.” That he

also recognized the beginning of hesitation and choice is shown in his

defence of the child who “in spite of abandonment to momentary impulse,”

may have “an intense inner desire for goodness,” which, “if it could

be appreciated in time,” would make of him a good man (_E., p. 125_);

and also in his plea for the early awakening and training “of judgment

and of that reflection which avoids so many blunders and which, _in a

natural way_ (i.e. without training), does not come to man sufficiently

early.”--_E., p. 79._

“Another source of boyish faults is in the precipitation,

want of caution, indiscretion, in a word the thoughtlessness,

the acting according to an impulse quite blameless, even

praiseworthy, which holds captive all activity of mind and

body, but whose consequences have not as yet entered into his

experience, indeed it has not yet entered into his mind to

define the consequences.”--_E., p. 122._

Froebel gives from real life a few well-chosen examples of what the

boy so “incredibly short-sighted in his obedience to impulse” may do;

telling how one deliberately aims a stone at a window “with earnest

effort to hit it, yet without even saying to himself that if it does

so, the window must be broken,” and how he “stands rooted to the spot”

when this happens. Another, a “very good-hearted boy, who dearly loved

and took care of pigeons, aimed at his neighbour’s pigeon on the roof,

without considering that if the bullet hit it the dove must fall.” No

wonder that he urges the early awakening of that reflection (Nachdenken)

which would avoid so much, and in this connection it must be remembered

too that Froebel emphasized the indefiniteness of human instinct which

makes comparison possible. It is also worth remarking that Froebel knew

that it is only by noting consequences of actual deeds that reflection

comes, and this he shows in one of his quaint parallels between “the

history of creation and the development of all things.”

“Similarly in each child there is repeated the deed which marks

the beginning of moral and human emancipation, of the dawn

of reason--essentially the same deed that marked the dawn of

reason in the race as a whole.”--_E., p. 41._

It must have been a somewhat unorthodox view in 1826, but some pages

further on Froebel speaks even more boldly of “the fall or--since the

result is the same--the ascent of the mind of man from simple emotional

development into the development of externally analytic and critical

reason.”--_E., p. 193._

Professor James goes on to state two other principles which make for

non-uniformity of instinct. The first of these is that instincts are

inhibited by habits, and the second that instincts are transitory.

The physiological fact of “plasticity” in which these principles are

grounded, was of course quite out of Froebel’s ken. Nevertheless, the

principles themselves do not escape his shrewd observation. Mr. McDougall

points out that even acquired habits of thought and action, so important

as springs of action in the developed human mind, are in a sense

derived from and secondary to instincts. He goes on to say that “in the

absence of instincts no habits could be formed,” so it is interesting

to find Froebel arguing that the phenomena of habit is a proof of the

existence of what in the infant he calls the impulse to activity or to

self-employment.

“The helplessness of the new-born human being in regard to

all outer things is the opposite of his future ability--since

life is a whole--to help himself through the enhancing of

his will-power.… Helplessness and personal will, therefore,

become the two points between which the child’s life turns, and

the fulcrum is free activity. Herein lies for the educator a

key to phenomena of child-life which seem to contradict each

other. For out of the impulse to activity (Thätigkeitstriebe)

and to free self-employment, or rather out of the united

three--helplessness, personal will, and self-employment--soon

proceed custom and habit, often indolence and too facile

yielding.

“Consideration of custom, and of the spontaneous acquiring

of habit in the child, especially in regard to what causes

it, and to its effect upon the child, is just as important

for the educator, as is the consideration and guidance of his

instinct of activity. This very phenomenon that the child so

early accustoms and inures himself to something, this early

phenomenon of child life, the growing together and becoming

one, as it were, with his surroundings, is a proof of the

existence and inner working, even thus early, of the impulse

for activity or employment, even where the child appears

outwardly inactive and passive: in that the child accommodates

himself to outer surroundings, relations and requirements in

order to provide more scope for his inner activity.”--_P., p.

27._

This proof may not be quite so clear to others as it was to Froebel,

but at least the passage shows the close connection in his mind between

instinct--the impulse towards activity and employment--and habit, and

that he had noted the interaction between the two.

There are many references to the transitory nature of at least childish

impulses.

“What delight a child takes in noticing what is smooth, woolly,

hairy, sparkling, round, etc.… But if you do not cherish this

and do not set it going in the right way, it becomes a lost

thing; it grows rusty, and loses its power as a magnet loses

its power when it is not sufficiently used. Power that is not

at once used, effort that does not at once meet the right

object--perishes.”--_M., p. 181._

“Now, at last, we would fain give another direction to the

energies, desires and instincts (Kräfte, Neigungen und Triebe)

of the child growing into boyhood; but it is too late. For the

deep meaning of child-life passing into boyhood we not only

failed to appreciate, but we misjudged it; we not only failed

to nurse it, but we misdirected and crushed it.”--_E., p. 75._

“See parents, the first impulse to activity, the first

constructive impulse (Bildungstrieb) comes from man according

to the nature of the working of his mind, unconsciously,

unrecognized, without his will, as man can indeed perceive

in himself in later life. If, however, this inner summons to

activity (diese innere Aufforderung zur Thätigkeit) meets

with outer hindrance, especially such a one as the will of

the parents, which cannot be set aside, the power is at

once weakened in itself, and with many repetitions of this

weakening, falls into inaction.”--_E., p. 100._

“The neglect of inner power causes the inner power itself to

vanish.”--_E., p. 133._

“It is true there are few such children; but there would be

more, were we not ignorantly blunting so many tendencies in our

children, or starving them into inanition.”--_E., p. 220._

Writing of the origin of boyish faults Froebel says:

“When we look for the sources of these shortcomings … we find

a double reason, first, complete neglect of the development

of certain sides of human life, secondly early misdirection,

early unnatural stages in development, and distortion, through

arbitrary interference with human powers, qualities and

tendencies good in their source.… Therefore at the bottom of

every shortcoming in man, lies a crushed, frustrated quality or

tendency, suppressed, misunderstood or misguided.”--_E., pp.

119-121._

When we come to the enumeration of the various human instincts we find

that Froebel can hardly be said to have omitted any that are important

from an educational point of view, except perhaps the instinct of fear,

and to this he would be loth to appeal.[25] Moreover, it can be shown

that his explanation of certain tendencies suggests a better basis of

classification than is supplied by certain recent writers, who might be

expected to surpass him with ease.

Before the publication of Mr. McDougall’s “Social Psychology,” there were

but few attempts at any classification of instincts within at least the

reach of English readers. In July, 1900, there appeared an article in

“The Pedagogical Seminary” in which Mr. Eby proposed to reconstruct the

Kindergarten on the basis of natural instinct. The writer had apparently

no dawning idea that this was the original basis[26] of the institution

he proposes to reform, but Froebel’s account of Instinct shows in certain

ways a clearer understanding of the subject than does his own.

Mr. Eby’s tabulation was:

I. Language--with gesture and expression.

II. Curiosity, or Instinct for Knowledge.

III. Play Instinct.

(_a_) Motor Plays.

(_b_) Hunting and Wandering.

(_c_) Imitative.

(_d_) Constructive.

(_e_) Agricultural.

(_f_) Improvised.

IV. Artistic and Aesthetic Instincts.

V. Social Instinct.

VI. Instinct of Acquisition and Ownership.

VII. Number Instinct.

VIII. Interest in Stories.

Another classification, well known at least to teachers, is that given by

Mr. Kirkpatrick in his “Fundamentals of Child Study.”[27]

His list comprises:

I. Individual or Self-preserving Instincts.

(Feeding, Fear and Fighting.)

II. Parental Instincts.

III. Social or Group Instincts.

(Gregariousness, Sympathy, Love of Approbation, Altruism.)

IV. Adaptive Instincts.

(Imitation, Play, Curiosity.)

V. Regulative.

(Moral, Religious.)

VI. Resultant and Miscellaneous.

(Including such tendencies as those of

collecting and constructing, and the

tendency to adornment, with the

æsthetic pleasure of contemplating

beautiful objects.)

Interesting, helpful and suggestive as these lists are, they both serve

as examples of the difficulty, if not impossibility, of any hard-and-fast

lines of classification. For example, regulative instincts, which Mr.

Kirkpatrick divides into moral and religious, must be derived from social

instincts; gregarious instincts cannot be satisfactorily separated from

instincts of self-preservation, and surely all instincts must be adaptive.

Froebel’s account of the instincts of a child in some ways resembles that

of Mr. McDougall, and it is certainly in some points more enlightening

than either of the others.

Under the heading of Investigation, Froebel brings both the Number

Instinct, and the Interest in Stories, to which Mr. Eby gives a position

as fundamental as that of the Social Instinct. The constructive instinct

which Mr. Kirkpatrick brings under “Resultant and Miscellaneous,” has a

very special place in Froebel’s account, as being one way of imitating,

that is another mode of investigating the surroundings, and also what is

equally important, a way by which the child gains a knowledge of his own

power, reaches Self-Consciousness.

It is because of the emphasis Froebel continually lays upon the

developing self-consciousness that his views somewhat tend to resemble

those of Mr. McDougall, though it would be absurd to attempt to draw

any parallel. For Froebel, though he in no way minimizes the importance

of Imitation, and although it is as the apostle of Play that he is

most widely known, yet, like Mr. McDougall, he never speaks either of

an Instinct of Play nor of Imitation, that is, he never uses for these

his special word Trieb; nor has he any Instinct for Religion. Curiously

enough, too, Froebel, with his constant insistence on the threefold

aspect of mind, partly forestalls Mr. McDougall’s view that “instinctive

action is the outcome of a distinctly mental process, one which is

incapable of being described in purely mechanical terms, … and one which,

like every other mental process, has and can only be fully described in

terms of the three aspects of all mental process, the cognitive, the

affective, and the conative aspects.”

It is in connection with the very earliest activity that Froebel writes:

“The first phenomenon of awakening child-life is activity.

It is an inner activity, showing itself by consideration of

and working with what is outer, by overcoming hindrances and

subduing the outer. The nature of man as growing towards, and

destined to reach self-consciousness, is shown in the quite

peculiar character of childish activity even as early as when

the infant awakes from its so-called three months’ slumber. It

is shown in the child’s impulse to busy himself (in dem Triebe

sich zu beschäftigen) in the instinct, _one with feeling and

perception_, to be active for the progressive development of

his own life.

“We are repeatedly impressed with the conviction that

everything that is to be done for the specifically human

development of the child must be connected with the fostering

of this instinct to employ himself. For _this instinct

corresponds to man’s triune activity of doing, feeling and

thinking. It corresponds to the essential nature of humanity,

which is to have power and understanding, to become ever more

and more self-conscious and self-determining._”--_P., p. 24._

In the last sentence of this passage, which refers to the merest infant,

and which immediately precedes Froebel’s comparison of human instincts

with those of the lower animals, are indicated the lines on which we

may say Froebel classified though he never did so formally. He deals

only with the “purely” or “specifically” human, as he never tires of

reiterating, so that fundamental animal instincts, self-preserving and

race-preserving, such as feeding and the sexual impulse, are little

noticed, and only in connection with the necessity for self-control.

But, as with Mr. McDougall much is made to depend on self-feeling,

so with Froebel still more does everything centre round that

self-consciousness which to him is of the very nature of man, and which

is made possible by the undefined or undeveloped character of human

instinct.

The instincts and impulses noted by Froebel, all, be it clearly

understood, in the service of the growing self-consciousness, and

self-determination are: the instinct to independent activity (der

Trieb zur Frei- und Selbst-thätigkeit), the instinct to investigation

(Forschungstrieb), with which Froebel deals very thoroughly and by which

he explains a great deal, the impulse of acquisition, the instinct of

construction or formation (Bildungstrieb Gestaltungstrieb), the social

instinct and the maternal instinct.

Froebel himself never tabulates, yet his apparently careful use of the

word Trieb, taken along with his convincing explanations of various

tendencies (Richtungen, Neigungen, Streben) seems to show that in

relation to instinct there were in his mind two pairs of ideas, so

closely related as to be inseparable, viz.:

(_a_) Investigation and Control of Surroundings, and (_b_) Consciousness

of Self and Self-Determination.

It is impossible to become conscious of one’s self except by becoming

conscious of a world of objects.[28] It is equally impossible to

become self-determining without gaining control over these objects,

over the surroundings. In order to control the surroundings, one

must first investigate them, and this investigation brings with it

self-consciousness, knowledge of one’s own powers and consequent

self-determination. All this seems fully in accordance with what has

been already stated as to the close connection between volitional and

intellectual development.

The two main lines on which instinctive action must run, if it is to be,

as it must be, adaptive, are given in Froebel’s words, “to have power

and understanding.” To adapt ourselves to our surroundings we must first

know them, and secondly, have power over them. Even this separation

into firstly and secondly is more a matter of words than of reality.

No one knew more clearly or emphasized more strongly than Froebel that

action, by which alone we gain power, is also the child’s royal road to

knowledge. This he states very plainly in the “Plan” which he drew up for

the school at Helba, which unfortunately never came into existence.

“The institution will be 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

effort, 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; joined with reasoning, they

become a direct means of instruction and thus make of work a

true subject of instruction.”--_E., p. 38._

Knowledge of his surroundings is however not the only knowledge that the

child gains through action; this is his only way of gaining knowledge of

himself, of his power and of his weakness. It is through outward activity

that, as Froebel says, he “comes to self-consciousness and learns to

order, determine and master himself,” and it is in connection with the

earliest Impulse to Activity that Froebel writes:

“The present effort of mankind is an effort after freer

self-development, freer self-formation, freer determining of

one’s own destiny.… Therefore the more or less clear aim of

the individual is Consciousness, the attaining of clearness

about himself and about life in its unity as well as in its

thousand ramifications, to attain to _comprehension and right

use_ of life.… That this highest aim may be accomplished,

the present time lays upon the educator the indispensable

obligation--to understand the earliest activity, the first

action of the child, the impulse (Trieb) to spontaneous

activity, which appears so early; to foster the impulse (Trieb)

for self-culture and self-instruction, through independent

doing, observing and experimenting.”--_P., p. 15._

“The first spontaneous employments of the child are noticing

his environment, and play, that is, independent outward action,

living outside himself.… The deepest foundation of all the

phenomena, of the earliest activity of the child is this; that

he must exercise the dim anticipation of conscious life, and

consequently must exercise power, test and thus compare power,

exercise independence, test and thus compare the degree of

independence.”--_P., pp. 29-31._

“All outer activity of the child has its distinctive and

ultimate ground in his inmost nature and life. The deepest

craving of this inner life, this inner activity, is to behold

itself mirrored in some external object. In and through

such reflection the child learns to know his own activity,

its essence, direction and aim, and learns also to order

and determine his activity in correspondence with the outer

phenomena. 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. The child must perceive and grasp his own life

in an objective manifestation before he can perceive and grasp

it in himself.”--_P., p. 238._

It may seem very presumptuous to venture to discuss here the

classification of instincts adopted by Mr. McDougall, yet there are in

it a few points which would not have appealed to Froebel, and it is

conceivable that Mr. McDougall might make alterations in a future edition

and attach even more importance to positive self-feeling as Froebel

would undoubtedly have done. It is impossible to imagine Froebel having

any dealings with an Instinct of Self-Abasement, though the Instinct of

Self-Assertion is in full accordance with his ideas. And while it is hard

to see the biological utility of an Instinct of Self-Abasement, it does

seem as if the frustration of the Instinct of Self-Assertion might be

made to cover all that is brought under its opposite.

It is difficult, too, to imagine Froebel allowing an Instinct of

Pugnacity, and Mr. McDougall allows that this presupposes the other

instincts, and that it cannot strictly be brought under his own

definition of instinct. He allows, too, that this instinct is “lacking in

the constitution of the females of some species,” and it seems impossible

not to notice the difference between little boys and girls in this

respect. Surely it puts too much to the credit of mere pugnacity to say:

“A man devoid of the pugnacious instinct would not only be incapable

of anger, but would lack this great source of reserve energy, which

is called into play in most of us by any difficulty in our path.”[29]

The Instinct of Self-Assertion, if it is worth anything, ought to be

sufficient not only to produce anger,[30] but also to call up reserve

energy to deal with difficulties. Certainly Froebel would have said so.

No doubt it is because of her weaker physique that the woman has not

the pugnacity of the man, but Froebel too wrote mainly of the boy, and

he puts boyish tussling and fighting down to the instinctive desire to

measure and to increase power and this can easily be matched on the

female side, though the power measured may not be that of muscle.

“At this age the healthy boy brought up simply and naturally

never evades an obstacle, a difficulty; nay he seeks it and

overcomes it. ‘Let it lie,’ the vigorous youngster exclaims to

his father, who is about to roll a piece of wood out of the

boy’s way--‘let it lie, I can get over it.’ With difficulty,

indeed, the boy gets over it the first time; but he has

accomplished the feat by his own strength. Strength and courage

have grown in him. He returns, gets over the obstacle a

second time, and soon he learns to clear it easily.… The most

difficult thing seems easy, the most daring thing seems without

danger to him, for his prompting comes from the innermost, from

his heart and will.”--_E., p. 102._

“Many of the plays and occupations of boys at this age are

predominantly mere practice and trials of strength, and many

aim simply at display 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 with

their help._”--_E., pp. 112-114._

In passing, it may be suggested that it hardly seems worth while to

postulate an Instinct of Repulsion with the impulses or actions of

rejecting evil-tasting substances from the mouth and of shrinking from

objects which are slimy or slippery. Surely the rejection of unsuitable

food might be a compound reflex action tending to the preservation of

health; while shrinking from slimy objects, and even from the touch of

fur, might have had their uses in the case of children left in caves, and

might be drawn under the instinct of fear.

There does not seem to be anything to which Mr. McDougall would take

exception in what Froebel has to say about Play or about Imitation.

As to play, Froebel must be regarded as a pioneer in the attempt to

explain a subject all important to educators, and by his explanation

certain kinds, and notably imitative play find an appropriate place under

his instinct of investigation (Forschungstrieb).

“The means of shadowing forth to the child his own nature and

that of the cosmos are his play and playthings.”--_P., p. 201._

As the word Investigation certainly implies activity, it may be

permissible to wonder why Mr. McDougall has not made use of the terms

“The Instinct of Investigation and the Emotion of Curiosity,” the more

so that he himself has clearly a strong inclination to use the word

curiosity to express emotion.[31]

Imitation, as we have seen,[32] is, according to Froebel, action which

renders a child conscious of what is around him, conscious of his inner

life of perceptions, ideas and feelings, conscious of his own power.

Froebel also points out that imitation, as well as habit, is the outcome

of a more fundamental impulse to activity.

“It is just as important to notice the habits of a child,

especially with regard to cause and effect, as it is to notice

and to foster its impulse to activity.… As now habit springs

from free and spontaneous activity, so too does imitation, and

it is no less important for the fostering of child-life to keep

in view this origin of imitation, than it is to keep in view

the phenomena of habit, custom and independent activity. For

we see the whole inner life of the child manifest itself as a

tri-unity in the threefold phenomenon of spontaneous activity,

habit and imitation. These three phenomena are closely united

in early childhood, and give us most important discoveries

concerning child-life, as to foundation and result and surest

guides for the early correct treatment of the child.”--_P., p.

27._

Mr. McDougall notes “at least three distinct classes” of imitative

actions. The first class consists of expressive actions, secondary to

the sympathetic induction of the emotions they express, as when a child

responds to a smile with a smile, and here we remember how Froebel notes

the child’s first smile to his mother as the earliest sign of what he

calls “the feeling of community.” The third class is the deliberate and

voluntary imitation of an admired person, which does not concern us here.

The second class are “simple ideo-motor actions evoked by the visual

presentation of a movement,” and as a parallel to this we have Froebel’s

“working of the inner activity wakened by the sight of outer activity.”

“The smallest child moves joyfully, springs gaily, hops up and

down, or beats with his arms when he sees a moving object. This

is certainly not merely delight in the movement of the object

before him, but _it is the working of inner activity wakened in

him by the sight of outer activity_. Through such vision the

inner life has been freed.…”--_P., pp. 239-40._

A point to which exception may well be taken is that in the infant

Froebel notes what he seems to regard as a fundamental tendency, the

impulse or instinct of activity, or as he frequently puts it, the impulse

to busy oneself, which, however, soon differentiates into two more

specific tendencies, viz. the impulse to investigate and the constructive

impulse.

“What formerly the child did only for the sake of activity,

the boy now does for the sake of the result or product of his

activity. The child’s impulse to activity (Thätigkeitstrieb)

has in the boy become a constructive, a formative impulse

(Bildungs-Gestaltungstriebe), in which the whole outer life of

the boy finds at this stage its outlet.”--_E., p. 99._

It may be worth mentioning that Groos would like to assume a “universal

impulse to activity,” and though he “can only hold fast to the primal

need for activity,” yet according to him Ribot approaches this

assumption.--(“The Play of Man,” _p. 3_).

Even in the infant, however, this instinct or impulse to activity is

devoted to “penetrating what is outer,” and the Kindergarten, meant for

children from three to six, is intended to foster the three instincts,

activity, investigation and construction, as well as to cultivate the

social instinct by placing a little child among his equals. Froebel

describes it in his plan as:

“An Institution for fostering of family life and for shaping

the life of the nation and human life generally, through

cultivating the human instincts of activity, of investigation

(Forschungstrieb), and of construction in the child, as a

member of the family, of the nation, and of humanity.…”--_P.,

p. 6._

As regards the child, the word Trieb, which is exactly equal to impulse,

seems to be applied only in one other direction, to what we would call

the social instinct, and here again Froebel shows his recognition of the

vagueness and indefiniteness of early consciousness. As he attributes to

the infant the one impulse to activity which differentiates later into

Investigation and Construction, so in the infant he recognizes a “feeling

of community” (Gesammtgefühl), but says that it differentiates later into

something more definite.[33]

“The development of man constitutes an unbroken whole, steadily

and continuously progressing, gradually ascending. The feeling

of community (Gemeingefühl) awakened in the infant, develops

in the child into impulse, inclination (entwickelt sich in dem

Kinde der Trieb, die Neigung).”--_E., p. 95._

Under the important Instinct of Investigation, or the Instinct for

Self-Instruction, Froebel includes a great deal. Many different

activities until recently somewhat carelessly talked of collectively

as “play,” Froebel has separated and explained as the child’s way of

investigating his surroundings. Even “the earliest activity and first

action of the child,” Froebel says, shows “the instinct to self-teaching

and self-instruction.”

Imitative action or imitative play is always referred to as action which

helps towards understanding of the surroundings. In the “Mother Songs” we

read:

“Your child will certainly understand all the better if you

make him take a part--though it be only by imitation--in

what grown-up people are doing in their anxiety to maintain

life.…”--_M., p. 141._

“I have already said that this little game arose because people

felt that a child’s love of activity, and his striving to get

the use of his limbs, ought to be carried on in such a way

as to lift him at once into the complexity of the life which

surrounds him.… Pray do not disturb them in their ingenious

charming play (saying grace over the dolls’ feast), but rather

avoid noticing it if you cannot identify yourself with its

charm.… For how is your child to cultivate in himself the

feeling of what is holy, if you will not grant that it takes

form for him in all its purity in his innocent games.”--_M., p.

148._

“What man tries to represent he begins to understand.”--_E., p.

76._

Representation, however, may be carried out in many ways, by the use of

material, as well as by bodily action so that the constructive instinct

also subserves that of investigation.

“To grasp a thing through life and action is much more

developing, cultivating and strengthening than merely to

receive it through the verbal communication of ideas.

Similarly, representation of a thing by material means, in life

and action, united with thought and speech, is more developing

than merely verbal representation of ideas.”--_E., p. 279._

“The child must perceive and grasp his own life in an objective

manifestation before he can perceive and grasp it in himself.

This law of development, prescribed by Nature and by the

essential character of the child, must always be respected and

obeyed by the true educator. Its recognition is the aim of my

gifts and games apprehended relatively to the educator.”--_P.,

p. 38._

Here Froebel has plainly stated the main object of his specially selected

play-material. The ordinary parent not being “the man advanced in

insight,” who “makes clear to himself the purpose of playthings,” Froebel

often saw children supplied with expensive but unsuitable toys, toys

which would not bring the child any nearer his destination, “to have

power and understanding, to become ever more and more self-conscious and

self-determining.”

“Here, then, we meet as a great imperfection in ordinary

playthings, a disturbing element which slumbers like a viper

under roses, viz. that it is too complex, too much finished.

The child can begin no new thing with it, cannot produce enough

variety by it; his power of creative imagination, his power of

giving outward form to his own idea is thus actually deadened.

When we provide children with too finished playthings, we

deprive them of the incentive to perceive the particular in

the general (_P., p. 122_).… What presents are most prized

by the child? Those which afford him a means of unfolding

his inner life most freely and of shaping it in various

directions.”--_P., p. 142._

“The man, advanced in insight, should be as clear as possible

in his own mind about all this before he introduces his

child into the outer world. Even when he gives the child a

plaything, he must make clear to himself its purpose, and the

purpose of playthings and occupation material in general. This

purpose is, to aid the child freely to express what is in

him and to bring the phenomena of the outer world nearer to

him.”--_P., p. 171._

“To realize his aims, man, and more particularly the child,

requires material, if it be only a bit of wood or a pebble with

which he makes something or which he makes into something. In

order to lead the child to the handling of material, we gave

him the soft ball, the wooden sphere and cube, etc., discussed

in the chapters on the Kindergarten Gifts. Each of these gifts

incites the child to free spontaneous activity, to independent

movement.”[34]--_P., p. 237._

As the child grows older his constructions advance, but still they

connect themselves with investigating:

“Here he makes a little garden under the hedge; there he

represents the course of the river in his furrow and in his

ditch; there he studies the effects of the fall or pressure of

water upon his little water-wheel.”--_E., p. 105._

Investigating naturally leads to exploring, “external objects invite him

who would bring them nearer to move toward them,” and so the child once

he is able to stand begins to travel:

“When the child makes his first attempts at walking he

frequently tries to go to some particular object. This effort

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 near the object, to touch it, to feel it, and

perhaps also--a new phase of activity--to be able to move it.

Hence we see the child hops up and down before it and beats

on it with his little hands, in order to assure himself of

the reality of the object, and to notice its qualities.… Each

new phenomenon is a discovery in the child’s small and yet

rich world--e.g. one can go round the chair, one can stand

before, behind, beside it, but one cannot go behind the bench

or the wall. He likes to change his relationship to different

objects, and through these changes he seeks self-recognition

and self-comprehension, as well as recognition of the different

objects which surround him, and recognition of his environment

as a whole. Each little walk is a tour of discovery; each

object is an America--a new world, which he either goes around

to see if it be an island, or whose coast he follows to

discover if it be a continent.”--_P., p. 243._

The boy has lost none of this tendency to explore, but he goes further

afield, and it is worth noting that because the boy has a distinct

purpose in view his exploring is distinctly called work.

“If activity brought joy to the child, work now gives delight

to the boy. Hence the daring and venturesome feats of boyhood;

the explorations of caves and ravines; the climbing of trees

and mountains; the searching of heights and depths; the roaming

through fields and forests.… To climb a new tree means to

the boy the discovery of a new world.… Not less significant

of development is the boy’s inclination (Neigung) to descend

into caves and ravines, to ramble in the shady grove and dark

forest.”--_E., pp. 102-5._

Even the baby shows trace of the collecting or acquiring instinct, but to

Froebel this still falls under the head of investigation. The child who

has just learned to walk is:

“attracted by the bright round smooth pebble, by the quaint

brilliant leaf, by the smooth piece of wood, and he tries to

get hold of these with the help of the newly acquired use of

his limbs. Look at the child that can scarcely keep himself

erect and that can walk only with the greatest care--he sees

a twig, a bit of straw; painfully he secures it.… See the

child laboriously stooping and slowly going forward under the

eaves. The force of the rain has washed out of the sand small,

smooth, bright pebbles, and the ever-observing child gathers

them.”--_E., p. 72._

The boy, still only from six to eight years old, keeps up the collecting

habit with more method and with a wider range, and he demands assistance.

“Not less full of significance, nor less developing, is the

boy’s inclination to descend into caves and ravines, to ramble

in the shady grove and in the dark forest. It is _the effort_

(_Streben_) to seek and find the new, to see and discover the

hidden, the desire to bring to light and _to appropriate_ that

which lies concealed in darkness and shadow.

“From these rambles the boy returns with rich treasures of

unknown stones and plants, of animals--worms, beetles, spiders

and lizards, that dwell in darkness and concealment. ‘What

is this? What is its name?’ etc., are the questions to be

answered; and every new word enriches his world and throws

light upon his surroundings. Beware of greeting him with the

exclamation, ‘Fie, throw that down, that is horrid!’ or ‘Drop

that, it will bite you!’ If the child obeys, he drops and

throws away a considerable portion of his power.”--_E., p. 104._

This quotation brings us to another mode of investigation, that of asking

questions, which Froebel was not likely to miss.

“The child, your child, ye fathers, follows you wherever you

go. Do not harshly repel him. Show no impatience about his

ever-recurring questions. Every harshly repelling word crushes

a bud of his tree of life.… Question upon question comes from

the lips of the boy thirsting for knowledge--How? Why? When?

What for? and every satisfactory answer opens to him a new

world.”--_E., p. 86._

Professor O’Shea has an interesting section on what he calls “The

Sense of Location,” which he says is “at the bottom of one of the most

interesting and important phenomena of adjustment--the questioning

activity.” So it may be worth while to notice that Froebel, whom the

Professor has dismissed with one slighting reference, has been beforehand

with him here, and has dealt with this same early beginning in one of his

earliest Mother Songs, viz. “It’s all Gone,” where he says to the mother:

“How can the child understand that anything is “all gone,” yet

he must see sense in it or he will not be satisfied. What he

saw just now is there no longer, what was above is below, what

was there has vanished.”--_M., p. 18._

Questioning implies language, but Froebel has no language instinct. He

does, however, call speech immediate (unmittelbar), usually translated

“innate,” and he does say that because others talk to him, the child’s

capacity for speech will develop of necessity and will break forth

spontaneously.

It is in connection with the child’s earliest investigations that Froebel

brings in the learning to speak. In “The Education of Man,” he notes

how the young child brings all his discoveries, “his treasures,” to the

mother’s lap, and she is warned to give the right kind of help and at the

right time.

“It is the longing for interpretation that urges the child to

appeal to us, it is the intense desire for this that urges him

to bring his treasures to us and to lay them in our laps. The

child loves all things that enter his small horizon and extend

his little world. To him the least thing is a new discovery;

but it must not come dead into the little world, nor lie dead

therein lest it obscure the small horizon and crush the little

world.”--_E., p. 73._

All the help the mother need give at first is to supply names, since as

Froebel says, “the name, as it were, creates the thing for the child.”

Later she must help him to compare and classify.

“How little is needed from those around the child to aid him

in this tendency (to seek for knowledge). It is only necessary

to name, to put into words what the child does, sees and

finds.”--_E., p. 75._

“It is as well while the child is making these first

experiments (at walking about the room) to name the

objects--e.g. There is the chair, the table, etc.… 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. By a rich store of such experiences

the capacity for speech develops of necessity, and speech

breaks forth of itself, as it were, through heightened mental

self-activity in accordance with the nature of mind.”--_P., p.

242._

Expression, of course, of which speech is but one form, is to Froebel

all-important. “Speech,” he says, is “required and conditioned by

the attainment to consciousness,” and as self-consciousness is the

characteristic of humanity, so speech is “the first manifestation of

mankind.” In his “Autobiography” Froebel writes:

“Mankind as a whole, as one great unity, had now become my

quickening thought. I kept this conception continually before

my mind. I sought after proofs of it in my little world within

and in the great world without me; I desired by many a struggle

to win it, and then to set it worthily forth. And thus I was

led back to the first appearance of man upon our earth, and to

the first manifestation of mankind, his speech.”--_A., p. 84._

In talking of the mother’s play with an infant he says that she

accompanies every action with words, “even if obliged to confess that

there can be no understanding of the spoken word,” as “the general sense

of hearing is not yet developed, still less the special sense of hearing

words.” Froebel says she is right:

“for that which will one day develop and which must originate,

begins and must begin when there is as yet only the conditions,

the possibility thereof. Thus it is with the attainment of

the human being to consciousness, and the speech required and

conditioned by consciousness.”--_P., p. 40._

Words, says Froebel, first separate the child from the world outside him.

“Up to this stage (the beginning of speech), the inner being

of man is still an unmembered, undifferentiated unity. With

language, the expression and representation of the internal

begin; with language, organization, or a differentiation with

reference to ends and means sets in.”--_E., p. 50._

Both in the earlier “Education of Man,” and in his later writings Froebel

uses the strong expression that “the word creates the thing” for the

child, and in one passage he adds that by language the idea is defined

and retained.

“This period is pre-eminently the period of the development of

speech. Therefore in all the child did, it was indispensable

that what he did should be clearly designated by words. Every

object, every thing became such, as it were, only through the

word; before it had been named although the child might have

seemed to see it with the outer eyes, it had no existence for

the child. The name, as it were, created the thing for the

child; hence the name and the thing seemed to be one.”--_E., p.

90._

“Through her little rhymes the mother will make clear to the

little one what he has done, and so his accidental productions

will become a point of departure for his self-development. Word

and form are opposite and yet related. Hence the word should

accompany the form as its shadow. In a certain sense, giving

a form a name really creates the form itself. Through the

name, moreover, the form is retained in memory and defined in

thought.”--_P., p. 192._

Of very early speech Froebel says that it shows:

“the peculiarity and requirement of the human mind to render

itself intelligible to clarify itself by communication with

others.”--_P., p. 56._

Having investigated his surroundings, near or far, and collected

what seems to him attractive, the child, whether older or younger,

arranges his treasures in some way, and this arrangement implies some

comparison. “Like things must be ranged together and things unlike must

be separated,” says Froebel of the child “scarce able to walk,” who has

collected “the small, smooth, pebbles washed out of the sand by the

rain.” This “arranging objects of each kind singly in a row” is at first

no doubt only a recognition of the like and unlike, but Froebel notes

that it is also one way in which the child may arrive at “the capacity

for counting” by which his sphere of knowledge is again extended.

“The knowledge of the relations of quantity adds much to a

child’s life.… At first he places together similar objects.…

Who has not had frequent opportunity to observe how the child

arranges the objects of each kind singly in a row. Let the

mother supply the quickening word, saying Apple, apple, apple,

etc. All apples. Pear, pear, pear, etc. All pears.… One pear,

another apple, another apple.… Instead of the indefinite word

“another” the mother subsequently uses the numerals, counting

together with the child, thus: One apple, two apples, three

apples, etc.”--_E., p. 80._

To many children, however, counting may come through efforts to draw. I

have seen a child of four-and-a-half, in drawing a man, make a line for

the arm, then lay down her pencil to count her own fingers and then draw

five lines for the man’s hand. Froebel says:

“The representation of objects by drawing, and the exact

perception conditioned and required by the representation, soon

leads the child quickly to recognize the constantly repeated

association of certain numbers of different objects--e.g. two

eyes and two arms, five fingers, etc. Thus the drawing of the

object leads to the discovery of number.… By the development of

the capacity for counting, the child’s sphere of knowledge, his

world, is again extended.… He was unable to determine relative

quantities, but now he knows that he has two large and three

small pebbles, four white and five yellow flowers,” etc.--_E.,

p. 80._

Yet another mode of Investigation is that of Experimenting; every normal

child is what Froebel calls “a self-teaching scientist.”

“The material must be known not only by its name, but by its

qualities and uses.… For this reason the child examines the

object on all sides; for this reason he tears and breaks it;

for this reason he puts it in his mouth and bites it. We

reprove the child for his naughtiness and foolishness; and

yet he is wiser than we who reprove him. An instinct which

the child did not give himself, the instinct which rightly

understood and rightly guided would lead him to know God in his

works, drives him to this.”--_E., p. 73._

It may well be through his ceaseless experimenting that the little child

begins to draw, gains what the late Mr. Ebenezer Cooke called “a language

of line,” or as Froebel puts it, notices “linear phenomena, which direct

his attention to the linear properties of surrounding objects.”

“A child has found a pebble, a fragment of lime or chalk. In

order to determine by experiment its properties, he has rubbed

it on a board near by, and has discovered its property of

imparting colour. See how he delights in the newly discovered

property, how busily he makes use of it! … but soon he begins

to find pleasure in the winding, straight, curved, and other

forms that appear. These linear phenomena direct his attention

to the linear properties of surrounding objects. Now the

head becomes a circle, and now the circular line represents

the head, the elliptical curve connected with it represents

the body; arms and legs appear as straight or broken lines,

and these again represent arms and legs; the fingers he sees

as straight lines meeting in a common point, and lines so

connected are, for the busy child, again hands and fingers; the

eyes he sees as dots, and these again represent eyes; and thus

a new world opens within and without. For what man tries to

represent, that he begins to understand.”--_E., p. 75._

I have watched a child go through the process of discovering “linear

phenomena,” just as Froebel describes it, no doubt from his own

observation. A boy of three, having folded a piece of paper for the roof

of a house, was colouring it, by rubbing on red chalk, when he called

out, “Oh! I’m making lines.” The other children went on rubbing, but Phil

made “lines” till the roof was finished.

But Froebel does not leave unnoticed the fact that the very earliest

“drawing” is an outgrowth of the muscular action to which his instinct

of activity is urged by the stimulus of contact.

“Would you know how to lead the child in this matter? Watch

him, he will teach you what to do. See! he is tracing the table

by passing his fingers along its edges and outlines as far as

he can reach, he is sketching the object on itself. This is

the first and the safest step by which he becomes aware of the

outlines and forms of objects. In this way he sketches and so

studies the chair, the bench, the window. But soon he advances.

He draws lines across the four-cornered bit of board, across

the leaf of the table, or the seat of the chair, in the dim

anticipation that so he can retain the forms and relations of

the surfaces. Now, already he draws the form diminished.

“See! there the child has drawn table, chair and bench on a

leaf of the table. Do you not see how he spontaneously trained

himself for this? Objects which he could move, which were in

sight, he laid on the board, and drew their form on the plane

surface, following the boundaries of the objects with his

hands. Soon scissors and boxes, and later leaves and twigs,

even his own hand and the shadows of objects will thus be

copied.

“Much is developed in the child by this action, more than

it is possible to express--a clear comprehension of form,

the possibility of representing the form separate from the

object, the possibility of retaining the form as such, and

the strengthening and fitting of hand and arm for the free

representation of form.”--_E., p. 77._

Here, perhaps, is the right place to introduce what Froebel had to say

about the artistic tendencies of children, since Art, to him, is always

expression.

“Absolutely nothing can appear, nothing visible and sensible

can come forth, that does not hold within itself the living

spirit; that does not bear upon its surface the imprint of the

living spirit of the being by whom it has been produced, and

to whom it owes its existence. And this is true of the work

of every human being--from the highest artist to the meanest

labourer--as well as of the works of God, which are Nature, the

creation, and all created things.”--_E., p. 153._

So, when Froebel comes to speak of art as a subject of the school

curriculum he says: “Here, art will be considered only as the pure

representation of the inner … differentiated according to the material

it uses, whether motion, as such, audible in sound, or visible in lines,

surfaces and colours, or massive”; and he adds:

“We noticed that even at an earlier stage children have the

desire to draw, but the desire also to express ideas by

modelling and colouring is frequently found at this earlier

stage of childhood, certainly at the very beginning of the

stage of boyhood (from six years old). _This proves that art

and appreciation of art constitute a general capacity or talent

of man_, and should be cared for early, at latest in boyhood.

“This does not imply that the boy is to devote himself chiefly

to art, and is to become an artist; but that he should be

enabled to understand and appreciate true works of art. At

the same time, a true education will guard him from the error

of claiming to be an artist unless there is in him the true

artistic calling.”--_E., p. 227._

In connection with the mother’s instinctive rhythmic crooning and

dandling of the infant, Froebel says:

“Thus the genuine natural mother cautiously follows in all

directions the slowly developing all-sided life of the

child. Others suppose him to be empty.… Thus those means

of cultivation that lead so simply and naturally to the

development of rhythm are lost.… Nevertheless an early

development of rhythmic movement would prove most wholesome.…

Even very small children, in moments of quiet, and particularly

when going to sleep, will hum little strains of songs they have

heard; and this should be heeded and developed as the first

germ of future growth in melody and song. Undoubtedly this

would soon lead in children to a spontaneity such as is shown

by children in the use of speech.”--_E., p. 71._

In the “Mother Songs,” too, Froebel writes:

“Hence it is so very important to rouse at least the germs

of all this (the perceiving of harmony in sound and form and

colour) early in a human being. If they do not develop and take

shape as independent formations in life, they at least teach

how to understand and recognize those of other people. This is

life-gain enough. It makes a person’s life richer--richer by

the lives of others. And how could our earthly life be long

enough to form our being with equal perfection on all sides.

We can only do it by knowing and respectfully recognizing in

the mirror of the lives of others what we should like to carry

out ourselves. And this is as it should be, for it is by means

of knowledge, regard for and respectful recognition of others,

that the whole of humanity ought to represent the whole of a

God-like harmonious human being.”--_M., p. 162._

In what he says of the Interest in Stories, Froebel again seems to

show deeper insight than either Mr. Eby or Professor Kirkpatrick. Mr.

McDougall does not touch upon the subject. It is still the outcome of the

child’s instinctive desire to understand himself and his surroundings.

Froebel says very truly that he can only understand others in proportion

as he understands himself, and can only learn to understand himself,

his own life, by comparing it with that of others. The desire for

stories is “a striving, a longing, a demand of the mind” (ein Streben,

eine Sehnsucht, eine Forderung des Gemüthes). For the little one, the

simplest story of the mother bird feeding her young ones is a help to the

understanding of his own life, makes his own life objective; the mother’s

“effective story will hold up a looking-glass to the child, especially

if it be told at the right time.” For the boy the story does the same

and also answers to his instinctive demand not only to understand the

present, but the past:

“It is the innermost desire and need of a vigorous, genuine boy

to understand his own life, to get a knowledge of its nature,

its origin and outcome. Only the study of the life of others

can furnish such points of comparison with the life he himself

has experienced. In these the boy, endowed with an active life

of his own, can view the latter as in a mirror and learn to

appreciate its value. This is the chief reason why boys are

so fond of stories, legends and tales; the more so when these

are told as having actually occurred at some time, or as lying

within the reach of probability, for which, however, there are

scarcely any limits for a boy.”--_E., p. 305._

“The existence of the present teaches him the existence of the

past. That, which was before he was, he would know; he would

know the reason, the past cause of what now is. Who fails to

remember the keen desire that filled his heart when he beheld

old walls, and towers, ruins, monuments and columns on hill and

the roadside--to hear others give accounts of these things,

their times and causes … thus is developed the desire and

craving for tales, legends, for all kinds of stories, and later

for historical accounts.”--_E., p. 115._

Even the fairy story seems to have found its legitimate place under

the same heading, the instinct for investigation. Froebel sees that it

covers for the little child the ground occupied by myth in the primitive

consciousness. It explains the otherwise inexplicable.

“Even the present in which the boy lives still contains much

that at this period of development he cannot interpret, and yet

would like to interpret; much that seems to him dumb, and which

he would fain have speak; … and thus there is developed in him

the intense desire for fables and fairy tales which impart

language and reason to speechless things--the one within, the

other beyond the limits of human relations. Surely all must

have noticed this if they have given more than superficial

attention to the life of boys at this age. Similarly, they must

have noticed that if the boy’s desire is not gratified by those

around him, he will spontaneously hit upon the invention and

presentation of fairy tales, and either work them out in his

own mind or entertain his companions with them. These fairy

tales and stories will then very clearly reveal to the observer

what is going on in the innermost mind of the boy, though

doubtless the latter may not himself be conscious of it.”--_E.,

p. 116._

“The child, like the man, would like to learn the significance

of what happens around him. This is the foundation of the Greek

choruses, especially in tragedy. This, too, is the foundation

of very many productions in the realms of legends and fairy

tales, and is indeed the cause of many phenomena in actual

history. This is the result of the deeply-rooted consciousness,

the deeply slumbering premonition of being surrounded by that

which is higher and more conscious than ourselves.”--_P., p.

146._

The outcome of the instinct of construction, which is also so closely

connected with the instinct of investigation, is that “sense of

power” which _is_ self-consciousness. Without this there can be no

self-determination, but, says Froebel, “the sense of power must precede

its cultivation.” With this growing personality, too, Froebel connects

what is called the instinct of Acquisition, which begins when the little

child “painfully secures his bit of straw,” and the boy of six to eight

shows “the tendency to appropriate what he finds in the darkness of cave

and forest.”

“The same tendency that urges the boy to seek knowledge on

the mountain and in the valley, attracts and holds him to

the plain. Here he makes a garden, there he represents the

course of the river, and studies the effect of the presence of

water … here he has dammed up the water to form a pool.… He

is particularly fond of busying himself with clear running

water and with plastic materials. In these the boy who

seeks self-knowledge beholds his soul as in a mirror. These

employments are to him an element of his life, for now, because

of a previously acquired sense of power he seeks to control and

master new material. Everything must submit to his constructive

instinct; there in that heap of earth he digs a cellar and on

it he places a garden and a bench. Boards, branches and poles

must be made into a hut, the deep, fresh snow must be rolled up

to form the walls and ramparts of a fort, and the rough stones

on the hill are heaped together to form a castle.… And thus

each one soon forms for himself his own world; for the feeling

of his own power requires and conditions also the possession

of his own space and his own material belonging exclusively to

him. Whether his kingdom, his province, his estate, as it were,

be a corner of the yard, or of the house, or whether it be the

space of a box, the human being must have at this stage an

external point to which he refers all his activities, and this

is best chosen and provided by himself.”--_E., p. 106._

And here, just when he is emphasizing the fast developing consciousness

of self, with its demand for its own space and its own material, Froebel

brings out the strength of the social instinct in boyhood. It is here

that he points out that this effort to construct has a uniting, not a

separating, tendency. Continuous with the last quotation comes:

“When the space to be filled is extensive, when the province

to be ruled is large, when the whole to be represented is

composed of many parts, then brotherly union of those who are

of one mind is displayed. And when those who are of one mind

meet and put their hearts into the same effort, then either

the work already begun is extended or begun again as a joint

production.”--_E., p. 107._

Froebel describes such joint work first in the Keilhau schoolroom--his

own phrase is “education room”--where the younger boys are using building

blocks, sand, sawdust, and moss, which they have brought in from the

forest around and then among the older boys.

“Down yonder by the brook, how busy are the older boys with

their work! They have made canals with locks, bridges and

seaports, dams and mills, each undisturbed by the others. But

now the water is to be used to carry ships from one level to

another, and now, at every stage, each boy asserts his own

rights while recognizing the rights of others. How can they

settle their difficulties? Only by making agreements, and so,

like States, they bind themselves by strict treaties.”--_E., p.

111._

Of games of physical movement, running, wrestling, etc., Froebel writes:

“It is the sense of power, the sense of its increase, both as

an individual and as a member of a group, that fills the boy

with joy, in these games.… The boy tries to see himself in his

companions, to weigh and measure himself by them, to find and

know himself by their help. Thus the games directly influence

and educate the boy for life, they awake and cultivate many

civic and moral virtues. Every town should have its common

playground for the boys. Glorious would be the results from

this for the entire community. For at this stage of development

games whenever possible are held in common, thus developing

the sense of community and the laws and requirements of a

community.”--_E., p. 113._

Froebel had studied boys to some purpose, and he tells us not, however,

to expect too much in the way of social virtues. Justice, self-control,

honesty, courage and “severe criticism of pleasant indolence” may be

expected, but mutual forbearance and consideration for those who are

weaker or less familiar with the game, though not entirely lacking, are

referred to as “the more delicate blossoms” of the playground. It is here

that he says with wise moderation, “The feeling of power must precede its

cultivation.”

The social instinct does not suddenly spring into existence in boyhood.

It has its roots in what Froebel calls the Feeling of Community which

unites the child first with the mother, then with father, brothers and

sisters.

“We cannot deny that there is at present among children and

boys little gentleness, mutual forbearance … indeed, there is

much egotism, unfriendliness and roughness. This is clearly due

not only to the absence of early cultivation of the feeling of

community, but this sympathy between parents and children is

too often disturbed, yes even annihilated.”--_E., p. 119._

The sympathy of the little child ought to be trained and is trained by

the wise mother always through action.

“Mother love seeks to awaken and to interpret the feeling

of community, which is so important, between the child and

the father, brother and sister, saying while she draws the

child’s little hand caressingly across the face of the father

or of the little sister, ‘Love the dear father--the little

sister.’”--_E., p. 69._

In the Finger Play called “The Nest,” Froebel tells the mother:

“The way lies through our imaginative, tender and emotional

observation of Nature and of man’s life, through the child’s

taking their meaning into his own heart and expressing by

representation what he thus takes in.… The child’s sympathy

is roused by the young creatures’ necessities more than by

anything, and chiefly by their nakedness and softness.”--_M.,

p. 149._

And the action which fosters the growth of sympathy is not to be merely

representative; The Garden Song has this motto:

“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

stays away.”--_M., p. 84._

It is because “the desire for unity is the basis of all true human

development” that the child is to be encouraged to help in the work he

sees going on around him.

“Family, family--let us say it openly and plainly--you are more

than School and Church, and therefore more than all else that

necessity may have called into being for the protection of

right and property … without you, what are Altar and Church?…

Therefore, Mother, in the little finger game, teach your

child some notion of the nature of a whole, especially of a

family-whole.”--_M., p. 159._

“We have not yet touched nor even considered an important side

of child-life, the side of association with father and mother

in their domestic duties, in the duties of their calling.…

(_E., p. 84_). Do not let the urgency of your business tempt

you to say, ‘Go away, you only hinder me.’ … After a third

rebuff of this kind scarcely any child will again propose to

help and share the work.”--_E., p. 99._

It is an essential part of the Kindergarten to consider the child as a

member of the human family. It is described in one place as:

“An establishment for training quite young children, in their

first stage of intellectual development, where their training

and instruction shall be based upon their own free action

or spontaneity, acting under proper rules … such rules as

are in fact discovered by the actual observation of children

when associated in companies. (_L., p. 251_).… Practice in

combined games for many children, which will train the child,

by his very nature eager for companionship, in the habit of

association with comrades, that is, in good fellowship and all

that this implies.”--_L., p. 252._

Among his Group Instincts Mr. Kirkpatrick mentions the Love of

Approbation, and this receives special attention from Froebel at a

surprisingly early stage. It is in the “Mother Songs,” in connection with

his adaptation of an old German nursery rhyme about knights who come to

visit “a good child,” that Froebel tells the mother that:

“A new life stage has begun, and you, dear Mother, must use

your best and most watchful care, when first the child listens

to a stranger.”

In the same connection he writes:

“The child must be roused to good by inclination, love and

respect, _through the opinion of others around him_, and all

this must be strengthened and developed.… When, therefore,

Mother, observation as to the judgment of others awakes in your

child--when, separating himself and on the watch _he brings

himself before the judgment of others_, then you really have a

double task to perform.…”--_M., p. 190._

The Love of Approbation cannot be separated from what Mr. Kirkpatrick

calls the Regulative, i.e. the Moral and Religious Instincts, for it is

both social and regulative, and in the social instincts Froebel sees the

foundation of the religious instincts or tendencies, to which we shall

come presently. But he also notes a “sense of order,” as Mr. Sully does

in his delightful “Studies of Childhood,” and this he traces back to very

early beginnings, connecting it with the tendency towards rhythm.

“That disorder and rough wilfulness may never enter the games,

it is a good plan wherever it is possible to accompany each

change in the play by rhyme and song; so that the latent sense

of rhythm and song, _and above all the sense of order in the

human being and child_, may be aroused and strengthened to an

impulse for social cooperation.”--_P., p. 267._

One of the earliest Mother Plays, “Tic-tac,” deals with rhythmic

movement, and in “The Education of Man” Froebel takes the beginning

of “conscious control” still further back. His ideal mother fosters

“all-sided life,” that is, she fosters the cognitive, emotional and

conative, the first by calling the child’s attention to his own body and

his immediate surroundings, and the second by “seeking to awaken and to

interpret the feeling of community between the child and the father,

brother and sister,” and Froebel goes on:

“In addition to the sense of community as such, the germ of

so much glorious development, the mother’s love seeks also

through movements to lead the child to feel his own inner

life. By regular rhythmic movements--and this is of special

importance--she brings this life within the child’s conscious

control when she dandles him up and down on her hand or arm in

rhythmic movements and to rhythmic sounds. Thus the genuine

natural mother cautiously follows in all directions the slowly

developing all-sided life in the child, strengthening and

arousing to ever greater activity, and developing the all-sided

life within. Others suppose the child to be empty and wish to

inoculate him with life, and thus make him as empty as they

think him to be.”--_E., p. 69._

It is surprising to find that Froebel, writing so early, has nothing

at all resembling any special “moral faculty.” His references to

“Conscience” are decidedly interesting, though given in quaint connection

with games and rhymes for mere babes. He asks why the “Where’s Baby?”

game gives such delight, and shows his psychological insight in the

answer he finds, viz. that it is the feeling or recognition of self, of

personality, which gives such joy.

“Why, now, is my child so happy over the hiding game? It is the

feeling of Personality which already so delights the child, it

is the feeling of recognition of his own self.”[35]

The game which follows this repeats the hiding experience, but this time

with the cry of “cuckoo,” from some one unseen, and this is likened to

the conscience call, which is described as “consciousness of union in

separation and of separateness, that is personality, in union.”--_M., p.

98._

“In ‘Where’s Baby Been?’ parting and union seem more separate,

as though in order that each may become more and more clearly

conscious of itself; in ‘Cuckoo,’ parting and union are, as

it were, joined. It is parting in union and union in parting

that makes ‘Cuckoo’ such a peculiar game and so delightful

to a child. But consciousness of union in separation, and

of separateness--that is personality--in union, is also the

essence, the deep foundation of conscience.”--_M., p. 197._

Mr. Kirkpatrick’s second Regulative instinct or tendency is that of

Religion, but Froebel again, like Mr. McDougall, finds that Religion has

its roots in an instinct “not specifically religious,”[36] viz. in the

Social Instinct. He says this in “The Education of Man” in the plainest

of terms.

“This feeling of Community first uniting the child with

father, mother, brothers and sisters, and resting on a higher

spiritual unity, to which later on is added the discovery that

father, mother, brothers and sisters, human beings in general,

feel and know themselves to be in community and unity with a

higher principle--with humanity, with God--this is the very

first germ, the very first beginning of all true religious

spirit, of all genuine yearning for unhindered unification with

the Eternal, with God.”--_E., p. 25._

It seems quite in accordance with this that Froebel should write that he

likes better the German word _Gott-einigkeit_--union with God--than the

foreign word religion; and also that he should speak of “developing the

sense of kinship with man in every child, and the sense of kinship with

God in every man.” So, in his “Mother Songs,” he tells the mother to give

her child duties to perform, that so he may “feel his kinship” with her:

“Every age, even the age of childhood, has something to cherish

that is plain, and from doing so no exemption can be procured;

it has therefore its duties. Happy is it for a child if he

be led to deal with them adequately, and for the present

unconsciously. Duties are not burdens.… Fulfilment of duty

strengthens body and mind, and the consciousness of duty done

gives independence; even a child feels this. See, Mother, how

happy your child is in feeling he has done his small duties. He

already feels his kinship with you thereby.”--_M., p. 174._

There is never a separation between Morality and Religion:

“Religion without industry, without work, is liable to be lost

in empty dreams, worthless visions, idle fancies. Similarly,

work or industry without religion degrades man into a beast

of burden, a machine. Work and religion must be simultaneous;

for God, the Eternal has been creating from all eternity.…

Where religion, industry and self-control, the truly undivided

trinity rule, there indeed is heaven upon earth.”--_E., p. 35._

There is only one other instinct mentioned by Froebel, and that is the

parental, or, rather, the maternal instinct. He is eager that this

should be recognized as an instinct, but he is equally eager that, like

other human instincts, its action should be determined by intelligence.

In describing the “Plan” for his Kindergarten, Froebel pleads for more

careful observation of the child and his relationships, and says that

“thereby”:

“Deeper insight will be gained into the meaning and importance

of the child’s actions and outward manifestations and

also into the way of dealing with children which has been

evolved naturally by the mother led by her pure maternal

instinct.”--_L., p. 248._

As to the early beginnings of the instinct in the little girl we can find

just a few references, sufficient to show that it did not pass unnoticed,

and it seems here legitimate to say that “the girl anticipates her

destiny,” as Froebel does in speaking of doll-play, though certainly this

does not cover all such play:

“The joy of the child in its doll has a far deeper human

foundation than is generally supposed--a foundation by no

means resting merely in the external resemblance … the girl

anticipates her destiny--to foster Nature and life.”--_P., p.

93._

The boy’s destiny is “to penetrate and rule Nature,” so in the “Mother

Songs” Froebel describes how the boy is “cowering that no sign of life

in the chicken family may escape him, while the girl starts up, _all her

care of things stirred_, in order to beckon or call the hen or cock not

to forget their chickens.”--_M., p. 143._

In all his writings, Froebel refers to how much he has learned from

mothers: “It was in watching your clever mother-doings that I learnt.”

But, as he says of himself, it was “a necessary part of me to be

irresistibly driven to search out the ultimate or primary cause of every

fact of life,” and so he writes:

“The natural mother does all this instinctively without

instruction or direction; but this is not enough: it is needful

that she should do it consciously, as a conscious being

acting upon another which is growing into consciousness, and

consciously tending toward the continuous development of the

human being.”--_E., p. 64._

“Motherly and womanly instinct does much of its own accord; but

it often makes mistakes.”--_L., p. 63._

“Women’s work in education must be based not upon natural

instinct, so often perverted or misunderstood, but upon

intelligent knowledge.… Some mothers level the taunt at me that

I, a man, understanding nothing of a mother’s instinct, should

dare to presume to instruct mothers in their dealings with

their own children.… How could such a thought enter my head

as to attempt anything against the course of Nature? My whole

strength is exerted on the contrary, to the work of getting the

natural instinct and its tendencies more rightly understood,

and more acknowledged; so that women may follow its leadings

as truly as possible aided by the higher light of intelligent

comprehension, and yet at the same time in all freedom, and

with complete individuality.”--_L., p. 259._

So, in what he says of this last instinct, Froebel is faithful to what he

has said of all human instincts.

“Man shall assuredly not neglect his natural instincts, still

less abandon them, but he must ennoble them through his

intelligence and purify them through his reason.”