CHAPTER X_Froebel as a pioneer in modern psychology

SOME CRITICISMS ANSWERED

Professor Adams ends the first chapter of his delightfully witty

“Herbartian Psychology” with a challenge to all educational thinkers to

come out of their caves and defend their idols. Throughout the book,

there is many a side-thrust at Froebel, all of a more or less disparaging

nature, in spite of the humorous twinkle which has a fairly permanent

abode in the eye of the writer.

Some of the accusations are tolerably sweeping, for example, that

Froebelianism “as a psychology is simply non-existent”; that Froebel

has failed to correlate theory and practice; that although in “The

Education of Man” “we have beautiful, if obscurely expressed, truths

about education,” yet the Kindergarten cannot be evolved from it, in fact

“between the two there is a great gulf fixed, a gulf that Froebel has not

bridged.”

But the main contention is that Froebel disapproves in theory of any

interference with the natural course of development. The Froebelian

teacher is thus, according to Professor Adams, reduced to the position

of a “humble under-gardener” who merely watches with interest and

admiration, and education becomes “a general paralysis.”

Mr. Graham Wallas, whose objections to Froebel, or at least to

Froebelianism[48], as he understands it, are well known, bases these on

the ground that because he was a pre-Darwinian evolutionist, Froebel

was bound to overrate the importance of the innate as a factor in

development, and to undervalue the other factor of environment.

Professor O’Shea disposes of Froebel in one sentence and in much the same

way, as an advocate of what he calls “the doctrine of Unfoldment,” where

“everything is inner and self-relating,” as opposed to the conception

gained from Biology, which “implies that the business of a human being is

to get properly related to the world--religious, social and physical--of

which he is an integral part.”

If Froebel really believed that development is entirely from within, as

stated by Professor O’Shea, or if he failed to realize the importance of

the surroundings, as Mr. Graham Wallas expresses it, he would naturally

disapprove of any interference, as Professor Adams says he does. The

Froebelian, being thus reduced to passive watching, the mere provision

of a Kindergarten would be an interference with the surroundings and

a contradiction in practice of the theory of non-interference. If

non-interference is really the theory propounded in “The Education of

Man,” there certainly is a gulf between it and the Kindergarten, a gulf

it would be difficult to bridge.

But Froebelians are not prepared to admit the premises of any of these

critics. It seems to many of us that these and all similar criticisms

are due to misunderstanding. This is sometimes clearly due to careless

reading, and consequent want of attention to the context, but even

where this is not the case, misunderstandings occur. Few, of late

years, have made any real study of Froebel’s writings as a whole, such

as is necessary to get at his real meaning, which is often obscured

by prolixities and repetitions, and sometimes hidden among apparent

trivialities.

Professor O’Shea, for example, does not seem to be aware to what extent

Froebel, like himself, derived his educational aim and principles

from biology. He has probably never realized the deep interest taken

by Froebel in the then all-absorbing question of natural development.

Clearly he has no idea that Froebel has given expression to a conception

of education, practically identical with that given above which he

himself draws from biology,[49] and sets in contrast with the one he

unjustly attributes to Froebel.

There is no doubt whatever that Froebel laid much stress on what is

innate. In his generation, he tells us the child was looked upon “as a

piece of wax, or lump of clay, which man can mould into what he pleases.”

Because Froebel was a student of biology he knew better. He knew, as

we have seen, that human beings have instincts, innate tendencies or

dispositions differing from those of the lower animals chiefly in their

indefiniteness. We are not so afraid of the word “innate” nowadays,

when both innate ideas and innate faculties are safely buried, and that

Froebel had no dealings with these has been amply shown.

But that this stress on innate tendencies implies that the child is to

unfold from within, the educator standing by passive[50], or that Froebel

imagined that the developing process could go on with little or no

reference to the environment, is quite another matter.

Few of Froebel’s critics have taken the trouble to look up the original

German before pronouncing condemnation, and this explains part of the

injustice that has been done to him. The passage upon which much, perhaps

most, of the adverse criticism is based is the one in which Froebel

applies to education the term “leidend,” translated “passive” in both the

English, or, rather, American editions of “The Education of Man.” The

translation of “leidend” as “passive” is not a happy one. Moreover, the

translators have endeavoured to help the reader by dividing the text into

numbered sections, a proceeding which though often helpful, sometimes

tends to break the continuity of Froebel’s thought. This effect is

heightened in Hailmann’s translation by the interpolated notes, however

valuable as some of these are in themselves. This passage, however, opens

with “_therefore_,” and those who take exception to it ought to have

considered the preceding argument. Fair criticism looks back to see why

and under what circumstances education is to be “passive or following,”

as opposed to “dictating and limiting.”

In the first place, absolutely passive education is a contradiction in

terms. Froebel begins by stating that:

“Education consists in leading man as a thinking, intelligent

being, growing into self-consciousness, to a pure, conscious

and free representation of the law of his being, and in

teaching him ways and means thereto.”

He defines the _Theory of Education_ as “the system of directions derived

from the knowledge and study of that law to guide human beings in the

apprehension of their life-work”; and the _Practice of Education_ as

“the self-active application of this knowledge in the direct development

and cultivation of rational beings towards the attainment of their

destiny.”

To go on from this to say, on the next page but one, that the educator is

to do nothing, to stand aside and be truly passive, would be absurd.

That our word “passive” is not the equivalent of Froebel’s word

“leidend,” is easily proved, for in another passage where Froebel does

mean “passive” he couples “leidend” with “inactive,” and puts passive

in a bracket beside it. The passage runs: “wo das Kind äusserlich als

unthätig, leidend (passiv) erscheint.” In the passage under discussion

“passiv” does not appear at all, and “leidend” is coupled, not with

“inactive,” but with “following,” and is contrasted with “dictating,

limiting and interfering.”[51]

A few lines further we read how the gardener may even destroy the vine

“if he fail _in his work_ passively and attentively to follow the nature

of the plant.” He cannot surely “work” and be inactively passive at the

same time.

A more correct translation of “leidend” here would perhaps be “tolerant”

or “suffering” in its old sense of “permitting,” “bearing with,” or

having patience with.

As to immediate context, Froebel has just stated that education ought “to

lift man to a knowledge of himself and mankind, to a knowledge of God

and Nature, and to the pure and consecrated life conditioned thereby.”

“But,” he goes on, “education must be founded on what is essential or

innermost, and though the real nature of things can only be known by

outer manifestations, yet it behoves the educator to be very careful

how he judges, for the child that appears good outwardly, is often not

really good, i.e. does not will the good from his own determination, or

from love, respect for or recognition of it,” while “the outwardly rough

self-willed child often has within him a vigorous struggle to do what

seems to him right.” Judging from outer manifestations furnishes constant

occasion for false judgments concerning the motives of children, for

endless misunderstanding between parent and child, and for unreasonable

demands made upon children.

And here comes the force of the conjunction: “_Therefore_,” says Froebel,

“education, instruction and training in their fundamental principles

must necessarily be tolerant, following, not dictating, not limiting or

defining, not interfering.”

What is it, then, that Froebel is telling us to follow almost passively,

interfering, in our ignorance, as little as possible? Simply the natural

order of development, the natural instincts of childhood, which in this

very passage he is arguing are as trustworthy as those of other young

animals. Here, as everywhere, man can only control Nature _by following_,

by obeying her laws.

“As the duckling hastens to the pond and the chicken scratches

the ground, so will the human being, still young, still, as it

were, in the process of creation, though as unconsciously as

any Nature product, yet definitely and surely desire what is

best for him. We give plants and animals time and space and

freedom to develop, but the young human being is to man a piece

of wax, a lump of clay, from which he can mould what he will. O

man, who roamest through garden and field, through meadow and

grove, why dost thou close thy mind to the silent teaching of

Nature?”--_E., p. 8._

Surely we have here a plea to “suffer (leiden) little children,” to

bear with the little one, still, as Froebel describes him, “still, as

it were, in the process of creation,” nay, more, a plea for the actual

recognition and fostering of these instinctive tendencies which Professor

Dewey calls “the foundation-stones of educational method,” rather than

a recommendation to “gratify every youthful impulse,” or to stand aside

altogether. For the context, the whole, is not yet complete.

Froebel goes on to say that if we are certain of any tendency to

unhealthy development we are to interfere with full severity (so tritt

geradezubestimmende, fordernde Erziehungsweise in ihrer ganzen Strenge

ein).

And now comes a sentence apparently quite overlooked by Mr. Graham

Wallas, who blames Froebel for underestimating the environment. In the

mean-time, until we are sure that our interference is justifiable,

“nothing is left for us to do but to bring the child into relations and

surroundings in all respects adapted to him.”[52]--_E., p. 11._

In many other passages Froebel shows plainly that he had no thought of

the “gratifying of every youthful impulse” in the sense of individual

caprice.

In his plea for monetary help to establish Kindergartens and training

establishments connected with them, he complains that in existing

institutions children are either “repressed and their energies crippled,

_or else we are confronted with the wild and uncontrollable character

which results when children are uncared for and are left altogether to

their own impulses_.”--_L., p. 159._

“Life has no room for wilfulness and whims,” he says in his Mother Songs;

“Boyhood is the age of Discipline” he states in “The Education of Man.”

But, as he himself sums up this discussion:

“All true education is double-sided, prescribing and following,

active and passive, positive yet giving scope, firm and

yielding.… Between educator and pupil should rule invisibly a

third something to which both are equally subject. The third

something is the right, the best … the child, the pupil has a

very keen apprehension whether what father or teacher requests

is personal and arbitrary or the expression of general law and

necessity.”--_E., p. 14._

The proof of whether or not the educator has succeeded in rightly

adjusting the claims of freedom and authority, Froebel expresses in words

recalling Kant’s, “When the ‘Thou Shalt’ of the Law becomes the ‘I will’

of the doer, then we are free.”

“In good education, in genuine instruction, in true teaching,

necessity must and will call forth freedom, law will call forth

self-determination, and outer compulsion inner free-will.

“Where necessity produces bondage, where law brings fraud

and crime, and outer compulsion causes slavery, there every

effect of education is destroyed. There oppression destroys and

debases, severity and harshness bring obstinacy and deceit, and

the burden is more than can be borne.”--_E., p. 14._

To emphasize the fact that Froebel did realize the importance of

environment, and to anticipate the criticism that this shortened

rendering is an interpretation in the light of modern educational

theories, of Froebel’s somewhat cumbrous phrases, we can turn to a

passage in his later writing, part of which has been quoted elsewhere:

“Through the child’s efforts to repel that which is contrary to

the needs of his life, indignation and discontent are awakened;

and on the other hand, from the fact that his normal desires

are ungratified, they become inordinate and mischievous. How

may parents avoid these evil results? Most satisfactorily

through a threefold yet single glance at life. Let them look

into themselves, and their own course of development and its

requirements, let them recall their own earliest years, then

later stages of development, and look deeply into their present

life. Next, let them look equally deeply into the life of

the child and what he must require for his present stage of

development. Having scrutinized what the child needs, _let them

scrutinize his environment_, and first observe what it offers

and does not offer for the fulfilment of such requirements.

Let them utilize all offered possibilities of meeting normal

needs; and when such needs cannot be met, let them recognize

this fact, and show the child plainly the impossibility of

their fulfilment. Finally, let them clearly recognize whatever

_in the child’s environment_ tends to awaken antagonism and

discontent, remove it if it be removable, and admit its defect

if it be not removable.”[53]--_P., p. 167._

It is, of course, true that Froebel was pre-Darwinian in time, but it is

equally true that he was post-Darwinian in many of his beliefs.

To find out whether or not his educational doctrines are really based

on false or exploded theories of development, as the Criticism of Mr.

Graham Wallas implies, we must gather together from Froebel’s various

writings, his most important references to the subject.

The key-note to his interest in it lies probably in the yearning for

unity and union in all relations, which was a part of his individuality.

This may have dated back to the time when, a puzzled little mortal of

eight or nine years old, he was most unwisely allowed to hear his father

exhorting and rebuking his parishioners. It seemed to the boy that most

of the trouble arose from the fact that human beings, and human beings

alone, so far as he knew, were divided into two sexes, and he felt that

he would have arranged matters differently. Comfort came to him when his

older brother, by showing him the male and female flower of the hazel,

gave him some idea of a great law of Nature. Strange comfort, too, it

seems, for a boy not yet ten years old!

The late Mr. Ebenezer Cooke pointed out long ago[54] that Mr. Graham

Wallas had not only overshot the mark in saying that “Darwin transferred

the cause of development from within to without,” but that he had himself

failed to draw any distinction between the facts of development, as

seen in the individual, and the theory of the origin or development

of species, which we associate with the names of Darwin and Wallace.

Mr. Cooke pointed to Froebel’s connection with Batch, the founder of a

Natural History Society, of which Goethe was a member, as showing that

he was in direct touch with those who were working out the theory of

development of the individual.

Froebel himself refers to this Natural History Society in his

Autobiography, saying that “students,” of whom he was one, “who had

shown living interest and done active work in Natural Science,” were

invited to become members, and that this awoke within him “a yearning

towards higher scientific knowledge.” At this time Froebel was but a

youth of seventeen, with no idea that education was to be his life work.

Three years later, he meets a private tutor, “a young man quite out of

the common, with actively inquiring mind,” who was “especially fond of

making comprehensive schemes of education.” The year after this we find

him reading what he can of anthropology and history, and saying of his

reading: “It taught me of man in his broad historical relations and set

before me the general life of my kind as one great whole.”

One year more, and while he is looking for a situation with an

architect--in spite of uneasy communing with himself as to how

architecture was to be used “for the culture and ennoblement of

mankind”--Grüner claps him on the shoulder with “Give up architecture, it

is not your vocation at all! Become a teacher.”

It is perhaps because Froebel passed thus from interest in biology to

interest in education that at this time he gives to his own question,

What is the purpose of education?--almost the identical answer that

Professor O’Shea puts into the mouth of his biologist[55], and which he

sets in opposition to Froebel’s supposed opinions:

“In answering the question, What is the purpose of education?

I relied at that time on the following observations: Man lives

in a world of objects, which influence him and which he desires

to influence; therefore he ought to know these objects in

their nature, in their conditions and in their relations with

each other and with mankind.… I sought, to the extent of such

powers as I consciously possessed at that time, to make clear

to myself the meaning of all things through man, his relations

with himself, and with the external world … it seemed to me

that everything which should or could be required for human

education must be necessarily conditioned and given, by virtue

of the very nature of the necessary course of his development,

in man’s own being and in the relations amidst which he is set.

A man, it seemed to me, would be well educated when he had been

trained to care for these relationships and to acknowledge

them, to master them and to survey them.”--_A., p. 69._

In the very beginning, then, of his educational career, Froebel

emphasized rather than overlooked “the relationships amidst which man is

set,” but he was to learn more yet about development.

Six years later he is back at a university, and “just at this time,” he

says, “those great discoveries of the French and English philosophers

became generally known through which the great manifold external world

was seen to form a comprehensive outer world.”

The English writer may have been Erasmus Darwin. The French writer was

no doubt Lamarck, to whom belongs “the immortal glory of having for the

first time worked out the theory of Descent as an independent scientific

theory of the first order and as the philosophical foundation of the

whole science of Biology.”

From some such source, at any rate, Froebel must have gained

“the key-note of development,” viz., that it is always from the

undifferentiated to the differentiated. We have already seen that he

applied this to mental development and so gained his modern conception

of the earliest infant consciousness, “an undifferentiated unorganized

unity.”

In “The Education of Man” he speaks of

“the all-pervading law of Nature according to which the general

gives rise to the particular,”--_E., p. 167._

and in the Mother Songs he says:

“Whether we are looking at a seed or an egg, whether we

are watching feeling or thought, what is definite proceeds

everywhere from what is indefinite.”--_M., p. 121._

Or, again:

“In the child as in the grain of seed, there begins a

development proceeding towards complexity.”--_P., p. 172._

Such quotations fully exonerate Froebel from belief in any

“pre-formation” theory, whether physical or mental, as indeed Mr. Cooke

made abundantly plain.

It is in one of his later papers[56] that Froebel generalizes and states

very plainly how everything is developed under the influence of its

environment.

“Taking Nature as our guide, let us endeavour to find the

essential nature of material objects and the conditions under

which this develops, for the process of development shows the

essence of the developing object.

“_Firstly_, each thing and each object manifesting existence

and life, develops itself in accordance with the highest and

simplest, the general laws of life. Thus everything manifests

these laws and their primeval cause.

“_Secondly_, each thing and each object in Nature develops

itself according to its own individuality and the laws of its

being.

“_Thirdly_, everything in Nature develops itself under the

collective influence of all things. If any object seems to be

withdrawn from this collective influence, such withdrawal is

only mediate.…

“In Nature, and in everything, all things develop as members

of the world-whole, the universal life, as members of a whole,

each perfect in its kind, because each, while standing in

the centre of the collective influence streaming upwards and

inwards--nay, in a certain sense, as the receiver, yielding

itself to this influence--yet also acts (as assimilative and

formative) and develops itself, faithful to the indwelling

laws of life universal and particular. We must see clearly the

conditions of perfect development in Nature, and then employ

them in human life. Thus only can we help man to attain,

upon the plane of human development--which means spiritual

development--a degree of perfection corresponding to that which

the forms and types of Nature show upon the plane of physical

development.”--_P., p. 196._

When child development is in question, far from minimising, as he is

supposed to do, the importance of environment, parents and teachers are

told:

“We must hold fast for consideration in life this fact, that

in the spontaneous occupation and playing of the child, not

the germ only, but the growing point of his life also, is

formed _in union with his surroundings, and under their silent

unremarked influence_ (im Vereine mit der Umgebung und unter

deren stillen unbemerkten Einwirkung).”--_P., p. 108._

Or, again:

“As the new-born child, like a ripe grain of seed dropped from

the mother plant has life in itself, and as it spontaneously

develops life _in progressive connection with the common

life whole_; so activity and action are the first phenomena

of his awakening life. This activity bears the impress of

what is innermost, it is an inner activity whose purpose is

manifestation of the inner through the outer, and, as leading

up to this, devoted to consideration of and working with the

outer to penetrating the outer and overcoming hindrances as

such.”--_P., p. 23._

This account surely makes plain, that whatever Froebel may have believed

with regard to the origin of species, he in no way believed that

development in general was a one-sided process, in which the environment

went for nothing.

In his “Criticism,” Mr. Graham Wallas remarked: “Whoever divorced his

educational system from his philosophy, would have seemed to Froebel to

have taken all force and meaning out of his work.” This is most true, and

it approaches absurdity to attribute so limited a view to a man imbued as

Froebel was with the philosophical doctrine of the reconciliation of the

opposites.[57] That all development was the result of a harmony between

opposites was one of his cardinal doctrines.

“We are living in an age,” he writes, “when we are consciously under a

law of development acting by the reconciliation of opposites.”

Mr. Hailmann gives a long footnote where Froebel is quoted as comparing

his idea of the law of connection or unification with the ideas of Fichte

and Hegel, and saying:

“It is both of these, and yet has nothing in common with either

of them; it is the law which the contemplation of Nature has

taught me.… And where do we find absolute contrasts that have

not somewhere and somehow a connection? In action and reaction

the contrasts that we see everywhere give rise to the motions

in the universe as they do in the smallest organism. This

implies for all development a struggle which however sooner

or later will find its adjustment; and this adjustment is the

connection of contrasts.”--_E., p. 42._

What Froebel knew of Hegel’s philosophy was probably gained from

discussions among his friends, for in the hearing of Madame von

Marenholz, he said, “I do not know how Hegel formulates and applies this

law, for I have had no time for the study of his system,” and he went

on to say of “the philosophical systems of others” that “most of them

belong to a theory of the world that is passing away, whose one-sidedness

becomes more apparent every day” (Reminiscences, 225). Ebers, too, speaks

of Froebel’s ideas as opposed to those of Hegel.

Even Mr. Graham Wallas allows that Froebel’s casual references to the

development of species are “surprisingly modern.” No orthodox views as

to the exact date of the creation of the world keep him from accepting

the newly discovered testimony of the rocks as to “the remains of

perished ages.” Ardent as his religious convictions were, they had a

philosophic width unusual indeed in his day. The Garden of Eden is to

him a parable, repeated “in the experience of every child from the time

of his appearance on earth to the time when he consciously (by the help

of names) beholds himself in beautiful Nature spread out before him.” In

each child he sees “repeated at a later period, the deed which marks the

beginning of moral and human emancipation, of the dawn of reason.”

He refers calmly to

“the fall, or, since the result is the same, the ascent of

the mind of man, from simple, uniform, emotional development,

into the development of externally analytic and critical

reason.”--_E., p. 194._

Not Stanley Hall himself insists more that the development of the

individual shall follow the development of the race, and this in 1826,

two years before Baer, and four years before Comte, to whom Herbert

Spencer attributed the doctrine. “Humanity,” he says, “lives only in its

continuous development.”

“Each successive generation and each successive individual

human being, inasmuch as he would understand the past and

present, must pass through all preceding phases of human

development and culture, and this should not be done in the way

of dead imitation or mere copying, but in the way of living

spontaneous self-activity.”--_E., p. 18._

There is certainly no ground for assuming that Froebel held any such

pre-Darwinian views as a special creation of each species, for there

is no point on which he insists more emphatically than that in Nature

development is continuously progressive.

“In God’s world, just because it is God’s world, by Him

created, one thing constant is expressed to which we give the

name of unbroken progression of development in all and through

all.”[58]--_M., p. 154._

“God neither ingrafts nor inoculates, He develops the most

trivial and imperfect things in continuously ascending

series and in accordance with eternal self-grounded and

self-developing laws.”--_E., p. 328._

Mr. Winch makes merry over Froebel’s sentence:

“As Man and Nature have one origin, they must be subject to the

same laws,”

and remarks that “this conception is almost completely given up.… Our

view now rather is one in which God and Nature are at strife, in which

the ethical interest overcomes Nature.…”

But Froebel is far ahead of this. The great law to him is the Law of

Development to which Man and Nature, which includes Man, are subject. The

ethical interest is not, as Mr. Winch intimates, something transcending

Nature, but is itself evolved. Morality, Froebel distinctly tells us, is

“rooted” in Instinct, and “human development means spiritual development.”

Professor O’Shea says of the doctrine of Unfoldment which he attributes

to Froebel that it “regards man on his spiritual side as an entity set

apart from everything in the universe.”[59]

Froebel, however, writes:

“Difficult, very difficult, would it be to define where the

purely physical ends and the purely intellectual begins. It

is precisely on account of this close welding or flowing into

one another of the Physical and Psychical, the bodily and

mental, the material and spiritual, the vital (des Vitalen)

and intellectual, instinct and morality; it is because of

this rooting of the higher in the lower that the training

and ennobling of the senses, such as smell and taste, are so

important.”--_M., p. 183._

“Training and ennobling,” these words bring us back to the educational

doctrines Froebel based upon what he knew of development, physical and

mental, from whatever source he may have gained his information.

“From the beginning of the Darwinian reconstruction of the moral

sciences,” says Mr. Graham Wallas, “it was absurd, while speaking

of ‘environment,’ to ignore the fact that the deliberate care and

contrivance of the parent must form a large part of the environment of

the child.” Undoubtedly.

But it was because Froebel exalted “the deliberate care and contrivance

of the parent” that he wrote “The Education of Man,” to tell his

generation how best to care and contrive. It was because he realized

that this deliberate care and contrivance must begin from the very first

that he wrote his Mother Songs. He tells the mother here that “if she is

wise, in all she does a noble meaning lies”; that she must “do nothing

aimlessly or she’ll create a child she cannot educate.” He tells her that

it is “by watching what makes the child’s eyes bright, that she will know

how best to give delight,” and that she must “seek to strengthen power

and mind in all things.”

In very truth the Kindergarten itself, with all its imperfections, is

nothing more nor less than an attempt to supply that very environment

which its founder is supposed to undervalue--an attempt to foster,

by providing suitable conditions, those innate tendencies or natural

activities, to which Froebel attached infinite importance.

This is why the discovery of the name Kindergarten gave Froebel the

pleasure expressed in his cry, “Eureka, I have it! Kindergarten shall be

its name.” The original designation contained the actual words “through

the culture of the instinct for activity, inquiry and creation, inherent

in man,” but this original title spreads over several lines of print.

“Garden” to Froebel expresses just what he wanted, “As in a garden under

God’s favour, and _by the care of a skilled, intelligent gardener_,

growing plants are cultivated in accordance with Nature’s laws, so here,

in our child-garden, shall the noblest of all growing things, _men_

(that is, children, the germs and shoots of humanity), be cultivated in

accordance with the laws of their own being, of God and of Nature.”--_L.,

p. 161._

This is why he urges on his pupil, Ida Seele, to retain the name in spite

of the prejudices it aroused. It is to her that he writes:

“Is there really such importance underlying the mere name of

a system?--some one might ask. Yes, there is: … It is true

that any one carefully watching your teaching would observe

a new spirit … you would strike him as personally capable,

nay, as extremely capable, but you would fail to strike him

as priestess of the idea, and of the struggle towards the

realization of the idea--education by development--the destined

means of raising the whole human race. For, after all, what do

we mean by ‘Kindergarten’?… No man can acquire fresh knowledge

beyond the measure which his own mental strength and stage

of development fits him to receive. But little children have

no development at all.… Infant schools are nothing but a

contradiction of child nature. Little children ought not to be

_schooled_ and taught, they merely need to be developed. It is

the pressing need of our age, and only the idea of a garden can

serve to show us symbolically the proper treatment of children.

This idea lies in the very name of a Kindergarten. … How much

better had you been able to call your work by its proper name,

and to make evident by that expression, the real nature of the

new spirit you have introduced.”--_L., p. 290._

There is no gulf between the Kindergarten, and “The Education of Man,”

with its appeal to educators to follow instead of interfering with

Nature’s methods, to foster instead of repressing the “instincts of

activity and of construction,” to foster play, which though “merely

natural life,” yet holds “the seed leaves of all later life.”

Froebel’s gardener is “skilled and intelligent,” and a skilled gardener

is supposed to have scientific knowledge of his plants, of the conditions

of soil, exposure, etc., best suited to them. Professor Adams says that

“to call a child a plant does not advance matters much, and it certainly

does not account for the use of the cubes, spheres and such like.” This,

however, it does most certainly if these cubes and spheres are the right

food material for the child’s mind, as Froebel at any rate believed.

All the employments of the Kindergarten, all the varied materials,

the sand and clay, the pencil and paint brush, the building blocks,

cardboard, sawdust, moss, nut-shells, etc., for constructive or

“representative” play are definitely mentioned and definitely commended

in “The Education of Man.” They are commended because they are the

employments and the material which children everywhere find for

themselves; because Froebel had sufficient knowledge of biology to know

that instinctive action must somehow benefit the individual and the race;

and also because he had psychological insight enough to see that by such

activities children gain not merely skill, but clear ideas and “firmness

of will.”

Professor Adams writes: “Not Philosophy, but common sense, experience

and loving observation, have led Froebel and his followers to adopt

certain apparatus and certain methods, which are excellent in themselves,

and which in capable hands produce admirable results. For this he

deserves all the honour that has been heaped upon him--but he has not

explained John.”

True enough, Froebel has not explained, at least, he has not entirely

explained that charming John, the Professor’s own creation and type

of all our children. Who has? Still, by his efforts as a pioneer in

genetic psychology--the result of his belief that “only by the study

of development in ourselves and others, can we learn to understand the

child”--and by the two sketches so full of insight into child-life and

into boy life, which he has given us in “The Education of Man,” surely

Froebel has done at least his share even in explaining John.

No doubt he learnt much from “loving observation.” Nor does he undervalue

it, but, in his case, the observation was induced by the Philosophy, as

well as by the love. For, as he tells us, “it is a necessary part of

me to be irresistibly driven to search out the ultimate cause of every

fact in life, to discover its roots.” He learned much from watching both

mothers and children, but he says:

“What natural mother wit and human common sense left to

themselves, have been doing by chance and piece-meal, ought now

to be brought forward by a thoughtful mind, its foundation,

connections and deeper meaning recognized, that it may be

improved upon by clever and kindly thought.”--_M., p. 147._

An education which “follows” needs shown by the child, which “follows”

the laws of development, physical and mental, as far as these can be

discovered from history, from introspection, and from observation

of children in general and of “each individual child,” that is the

“patiently following” education which Froebel puts before us as an ideal.

“For,” he says:

“By the full application of the latter method of education, the

prescribing and interfering, we should wholly lose the sure,

steady and progressive development of mankind, which is the

ultimate aim and object of all education.”--_E., p. 10._

NOTE.--The foregoing chapter was written some years ago, but in

1912 there appeared a fresh criticism of Froebel and his work

in many ways more adequate than certain others. It appeared

as an Introduction to a new translation of “The Education of

Man” and of some of Froebel’s lesser writings, by Dr. Fletcher

and Professor Welton. In this introduction, important points

are granted, for example, that Froebel had “grasped the vital

principle that all true development, and consequently all true

education, is a self-directed process--that purpose is the

key-note of human culture and advance. It was the emphasis

which he laid upon this which makes Froebel one of the princes

of education and gives him an enduring place in the history

of thought.” Or again, that Froebel’s teaching is “not the

negation of all human constraint,” but that he sees clearly

that “constraint is necessary to train the will to resist

impulse and follow purpose”; that with Froebel “Discipline must

direct instinctive impulse, not simply oppose and thwart it.”

Unfortunately, however, the writers of the book do not seem to

have grasped the idea of the Kindergarten as an Institution

which had this very end in view, and the second part of the

book which is called “The Kindergarten,” never mentions its

essential features. So we have the familiar statement that

between the Kindergarten and “The Education of Man” a gulf is

fixed, a statement which has been already discussed. And we are

also told that Froebel attracts us “by his very vagueness.”

But Keilhau and Helba and the real Kindergarten are none of

them vague. That Froebel attributed too much importance to his

Gifts and occupations most of us will readily allow, but that

the forms of expression set forth in the Helba plan are to be

regarded as merely additions to the Gifts is impossible seeing

that the plan for Helba is dated 1829. Besides, all such work

had already been very much in evidence at Keilhau (See _p. v_,

Preface), and the Gifts and Occupations were an attempt to

provide in a similar manner for children very much younger, and

as materials are only such as children find for themselves. We

claim that Froebel himself is the best interpreter of his own

invention, the Kindergarten, and we are content to abide by his

own definition of it: _An Institution for the cultivation of

the life of mankind through fostering the impulse to activity,

investigation and construction in the child; an institution

for the self-instruction, for self-education of mankind

through play, that is creative self-activity and spontaneous

self-instruction_.

APPENDIX I

ON THE MEANING OF THE WORD “ACTIVITY”

Professor Stout is particularly definite in his use of the word

“activity,” and as he agrees with Mr. Bradley, from whom he quotes “that

the current use of the word activity in the literature of philosophy is

a scandal,” it may be well to inquire here whether Froebel used the word

loosely or with some degree of definiteness.

Professor Stout considers the word “activity” specially appropriate to

cases “in which the return of a causal process upon itself is especially

prominent or important.” He quotes from Mr. Bradley again that “Activity

seems to be self-caused change. A transition that begins with, and comes

out of the thing itself is the process where we feel that it is active.”

“Thus,” Mr. Stout comments, “the life and growth of organisms are

specially appropriate examples of activity; for such processes are in a

large measure immanent or self-determining.”

The first point that suggests itself is that in the majority of cases,

Froebel may perhaps be said to have avoided the difficulty by his

constant reference not only to activity but to “self-activity,” a word

associated with the name of Froebel closely as his very shadow.

In the second place, we do find Froebel very markedly referring to the

self-determining activity of organisms, in a passage where he is trying

to show that all instruction should start from the child’s own desire

and power of will. He says that the mother--grounding her instruction

in her child’s desire to write to the absent father--acts like the

sun, “whose warmth awakens in every grain of seed, life, impulse,

power, self-activity, self-determination” (die Triebe, die Kraft, die

Selbstthätigkeit und Selbstbestimmung).[60]

It is Froebel’s peculiarity that he brings his philosophical conceptions

into the veriest details, and so even in speaking of how the mother may

make a ball represent a springing kitten, etc., and saying that to the

child the ball is “the uniting object,” yet, he says, considering the

plays as proceeding from the child (vom Kinde aus), “all activity, though

mediated (vermittelt) by the ball, proceeds definitely from the child,

and though going through the ball, refers back again to the child, who is

himself a unit.”

There is a particular passage which suggests that there existed a special

definite idea in Froebel’s mind in regard to the word “activity,” and it

is one which presents a difficulty to an ordinary and unphilosophical

mind, though a possible light is thrown upon it by Mr. Bradley’s

definition. In this passage activity (Thätigkeit) is very distinctly

given as something higher than impulse (Triebe).

The working of the primeval Cause, “the uniting,” is called, Froebel

says, “according to the different stages in development, Force, Impulse,

Life, Life-impulse, Activity” (Wirken, Trieb, Leben, Lebenstrieb,

Thätigkeit).

This placing of activity so high in the scale is at least no accident,

and conscious self-determination is constantly attributed to man as “the

most perfect earthly being,” and to man alone.

Mr. Stout proceeds to examine the conception of self-determining process,

with special reference to changes within the sphere of an individual

consciousness, taking as the most convenient point of departure, such

illustrative analogies as come from the physical world, and beginning

with the simplest form of self-determination, the law of inertia.[61]

“Conscious life,” he says, “is always in some degree self-sustaining,

this indeed is an indispensable part of the connotation of all such words

as activity, endeavour, conation, effort, striving, will, attention.

All such terms imply that the process to which they refer, tends by its

intrinsic nature in a certain direction, or toward a certain end.”

Now the word “endeavour” or “effort” (Streben) is a word Froebel

constantly uses in speaking of a child’s activity, and he does more than

merely “imply” that this process “tends in a certain direction, or toward

a certain end” when he affirms that “In every activity, in every deed of

man, and of the smallest child, an aim is expressed.”

Professor Stout goes on to say that in conscious states we can always

distinguish between determination from within and from without, and

“it is a point of vital significance that this distinction coincides

with that between mental activity and mental passivity.”[62] With

mental passivity Froebel has but few dealings, if indeed he has any.

There is one passage in which he uses the word passive (passiv); this,

however, merely states that the child, in accommodating himself to his

surroundings, may outwardly appear inactive or passive, but only in

order to have more scope for his inner activity (wo es äusserlich als

unthätig, leidend [passiv] erscheint … um so seiner innern Thätigkeit

mehr Spielraum zu verschaffen).

From what he does say there is little doubt but that Froebel would

willingly have subscribed to Professor Stout’s dictum, “that to be

mentally active is identical with being mentally alive or awake,[63]

though in degree the activity may shade off gradually from that

“involving a sense of strain, to that of almost passivity.” But just as

Professor Stout rejects the idea of purely passive consciousness, so,

too, does he reject “pure” mental activity. “It is impossible to find

any bit of mental process which is determined purely from within.”[64]…

“At the same time it is equally true that no change within is entirely

determined from without.”[65] Mr. Stout does not say that pure

activity--a purely self-determined process--cannot exist, for “we should,

by parity of reasoning, be bound to reject the second law of motion.”[66]

“But it rests,” he says, “with the advocates of pure activity, if there

are such, to adduce a case of it, and until such a case is brought

forward we must assume that there is none.… No portion of matter can be,

even for a moment, outside the sphere of influence of other portions.”

We have seen that Mr. O’Shea practically accuses Froebel of being an

“advocate of pure activity,”[67] nor is he the only one of Froebel’s

critics who does so. If, however, it be considered an accident that

Froebel should in one passage put “conscious self-determination” at the

highest point of life development, and in another passage give this place

to “activity” which Mr. Bradley and Mr. Stout tell us is to be regarded

as self-determined, is it also an accident that in the very same passage

Froebel should state that “everything in Nature develops and forms itself

under the total collective influence of all other things”?

If these correspondences are not accidental, then it must be allowed in

the first place that Froebel attached a fairly definite meaning to the

word “activity,” including self-determination in its connotation; and in

the second place that the grounds on which he is charged with being a

believer in “pure activity” are very insufficient. When Mr. Stout says

that even if it is allowable “as an illustrative hypothesis” to regard

the physical universe as an internally complete system,[68] it is clear

that “the stream of individual consciousness is no such self-contained

unit,” but “the merest fragment of universal reality, as its correlated

brain process is the merest fragment of the material world[69]”; is

this anything but a statement of that unity, on which Froebel insists

in season and out of season--which appears on almost every page of

his writings, so that the word has become the veriest “cant” of the

half-trained Kindergarten teacher[70].

The philosophic conception of unity, the belief that there is no

separation in either world, physical or psychical, or between either

world, was always present to Froebel’s mind. “In Nature,” he writes,

“every phenomenon has its sufficient foundation and its necessary

consequence.” But as every philosopher would say, so Froebel said,

“Separation is permitted for the observing, thinking and comparing

intellect, and the outwardly representing life, and is indeed required by

it, but must by no means on that account be permitted to appear in the

mind which is intended to grasp and constantly to retain in its original

inner union, that which is outwardly apparently separated by the thinking

intellect, the reason and the life.”[71] So Professor Münsterberg,

writing as a professed scientist, says, “Science is to me, not a mass

of disconnected information, … but the certainty that nothing can exist

outside the gigantic mechanism of causes and effects, but Science is not

and cannot be, and ought never to try to be, an expression of ultimate

reality.”[72]

It would never have dawned on Froebel, nor would it have appealed to

him, to separate his philosophy from his science, but there is no

more contradiction in Froebel’s “self-activity” which is influenced

from without, than there is in Professor Stout when he speaks of

self-determination as included in the connotation of “activity,” and adds

that until a case of “pure activity” is brought forward, we must assume

that there is none.

Of all his “means of play,” Froebel says:

“In order, therefore, on the one hand to introduce the child

to the handling of his play material, we gave him the ball, …

but each of these means of play summons the child in return

to self-activity, to free self-activity; to movement, to

free independent movement” (zur Selbsthätigkeit, zur freien

Selbsthätigkeit; zur Bewegung, zur freien, inabhängigen

Bewegung).[73]

APPENDIX II

COMPARISON OF PLAYS NOTED BY FROEBEL WITH THE ENUMERATION GIVEN BY GROOS

Much that is given in Groos’ more elaborate classification can also be

found in Froebel’s suggestions, particularly where younger children are

concerned. For plays coming under the heading of Playful Activity of the

Sensory Apparatus, Froebel has a parallel for every kind except that of

Temperature, and for this Groos has not himself found anything that can

fairly be called play.

For Sensations of Contact there is the Kicking Play, and Taste and Smell

are also represented in the Mother Play book. For Hearing play we have

the wooden ball, “a plaything for the child liable to produce noise by

its movement,” as well as the Tic-tac and Finger Piano plays, and for

receptive play, the mother is told to speak, rhythmically if possible,

or to sing with every play. For Sensations of Brightness we have “Mother

you want to foster this delight in all things that are sparkling clear

and bright” of the “Fish in the Brook,” as well as “The Lightbird,” which

Froebel has “found over and over again in all grades of the culture that

makes up social life in village and in town.”

Sensations of colour are well provided for. In “The Two Windows” we have:

“See the beautiful coloured circles and rays, just like rainbow and

dew-drops, see how beautifully the colours play through each other.”

Colour is a feature in Gift I, in beadwork, in the tablets, in paper

folding, cutting and plaiting, and besides these there are crayons and

paints, and frequent reference is made to the child’s pleasure in the

colour of flowers.

Froebel also makes much play depend on perception of form: “Attention to

the form and figure of the object can also be utilized for the child in

play,” or, again, “Early in life the child delights in round and varied

pebbles, he seeks and collects them, he takes pleasure in the straight

edged and right angled.” He has found “The Target” play very widely

spread, “plainly because it contains, as I see it, the first trace of an

endeavour to make a child notice position and form.”

For perception of movement, to which Froebel would have added perception

of change of position, there are many plays with the ball as well as

“Tic-tac,” “The Child and the Pigeons,” “The Lightbird,” “The Fish in the

Brook,” etc.

Groos’ next class is Play with the Motor Apparatus and under this comes

first Playful movement of the Bodily Organs. Here we have Froebel saying:

“The first toys and occupations of the child come from himself: he plays

with his own limbs.”--_L., p. 108._ “The child at this stage begins to

play with his limbs--his hands, his fingers, his lips, his tongue, his

feet, as well as with the expression of his eyes and face.”--_E., p. 48._

Under playful locomotion, Groos actually quotes Froebel’s description

of the child learning to walk, and we have also marching, running, and

racing games; “the large majority,” says Froebel, “I have created simply

by watching the children at play.… Thus I have prepared a limping-game

because I see my boys always limping and hopping.”

Next comes Playful Movement of Foreign Bodies, and under this heading

Groos gives “Hustling things about, pushing, pulling, shaking, seizing

and pushing away, dabbling in water, handling sand and clay, kite-flying,

and capture of insects.” Of these Froebel mentions pushing of carriages,

kite-flying, hobby-horse riding; he makes much of play with water, sand

and clay, and he speaks of the catching of insects, etc., desiring that

it should be wisely checked by directing the activity into other channels.

As to Destructive or Analytic Movement Play, Froebel notes that: “The

child wishes to know all the properties of the thing, for this reason he

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

this reason he puts it in his mouth and bites it.”--_E., p. 73._ “The

cruel treatment of insects and other animals originates in the little

boy’s desire to obtain an insight into the life of the animal.”--_E., p.

164._

Of Constructive or Synthetic Movement Play, so much has been said

already, that it is not necessary to dwell on it. Froebel, in fact, gives

a far more inclusive account of this than Groos himself, not omitting

his “simplest form,” viz. moulding new forms with sand, etc., nor the

collecting and arranging in rows which to Groos and to Froebel is a more

primitive form of construction. Of Exercise of Endurance, too, we have

spoken, in quoting passages where Froebel shows the boyish desire to

measure and to increase strength. Throwing and Catching Plays have their

place in the “Apprentice and Master Workman” game.

The important third class, the Playful Use of the Higher Mental Powers,

includes according to Groos a good deal that he has dealt with under

other heads, e.g. Memory Play includes (_a_) Recognition and (_b_)

Reflective Memory. Under the former comes that pleasure in recognition

of form which has already been dealt with, the pleasure given by

pictures, often, says Groos, greater than is given by the reality.

Froebel, too, says that if the father makes a sketch, “this man of lines,

this horse of lines, will give the child more joy than an actual man, an

actual horse will do.”--_E., p. 77._ Froebel, too, notes the pleasure it

will give a child to name flowers through recognition of a form: “Spurred

like a rider, circled like a snail, umbrellas, wheels, he’ll find the

names.”--_M., p. 181._ There is also the recognition of animal and other

noises, as in Froebel’s Yard Gate. Rote learning as a play Froebel hardly

mentions.

As to the two groups which Groos brings under the heading of Imagination,

viz. “Illusion either playful or serious,” and “the voluntary or

involuntary transformation of our mental content,” these receive full

recognition. Froebel notes how the stick becomes a horse or the knotted

handkerchief the baby, as well as the play of listening to and inventing

stories.

Under the head of Attention comes such games as Hide and Seek, because

of the alternate stress and relaxation, and Froebel noted before Darwin

did the pleasure of the baby in Bo-peep. Groos also brings curiosity

under this heading, and we have seen that Froebel deals fully with such

play as the outcome of the instinct of investigation, or the instinct for

self-teaching.

Froebel would certainly not draw the line where Groos does, when he says

“the true characteristics of play are in inverse ratio to the intensity

of the desire for knowledge,” and if this rule were strictly adhered to,

a good deal of what Groos does call play might have to come out.

The plays which fall under the head of Reason have two bearings, says

Groos, first causality, and second inherence. There are various

references to the “joy of being a cause” from the child “whose capacity

for speech is as yet undeveloped,” but who draws away the support and

as the cube falls “turns to his mother in joyous triumph,” up to the

pride of Keilhau boys, who “might not have accomplished their fortresses

without the sapper,” but “who believed that if cast on a desert island,

each could build a hut of his own.” Froebel also brings in intellectual

games such as draughts, and he notes how children will invent their own

words and their own alphabets in play. Of the making and solving of

riddles I think Froebel never speaks.

As to what Groos says of Experimentation with the feelings, the parallels

in Froebel are surprise plays such as Hide and Seek, adventure and

hunting games where there may be play with fear, and the legends and

stories.

Under the Impulse of the Second or Socionomic order, come the Fighting

Plays, Love Play, Imitative Play, and Social Play. Of Love Play, Froebel

has none, but the hunting and fighting were allowed abundant scope at

Keilhau. Of Imitative Play there is much that can be cited from the

playful imitation of simple movements and sounds in the Mother Songs and

the Kindergarten Games, to the “classic dramas” of the Keilhau boys.

Plastic and constructive play, too, goes from the simplest sand play,

through the Kindergarten handwork, not only up to the fortress making,

but also to the “boxes with locks and hinges, so neatly finished,

veneered, and polished that many a trained cabinet-maker’s apprentice

could have done no better,” which were made at Keilhau.

Of the Social Plays Groos says with feeling that, however advisable, it

is wellnigh impossible to make a distinct class. He starts, however, with

the “need of bodily association or the herding instinct.” He brings in

the child’s eager desire to be with his fellows, and the importance in

adult life of festivals, religious or otherwise. He mentions the child’s

voluntary submission to a leader, and speaks of play as instrumental in

teaching children submission to law. We have noticed Froebel speaking

of the “combined games, which will train the child, by his very nature

eager for companionship, in the habit of association with comrades, in

good fellowship and all that this implies.” He also wants the child to

take alternately some special part in the game and to be merely one of

the crowd: “Each child should have a chance to lead, for it is especially

developing to a child to recognize himself as independent as well as a

member of the whole.” Among the older boys, the Bergwachts for instance

were carefully organized under separate leaders and the captain of

the first band was director of the whole. Froebel, too, made much of

festivals at Keilhau, and this has always been a recognized feature of

the Kindergarten.

Enjoyment of the comic never, I think, makes its appearance at all.

Froebel had many gifts, but the saving sense of humour does not appear to

have been among them.

FOOTNOTES

[1] See Chapter IX.

[2] See Chapter X.

[3] “Froebel’s Educational Principles,” Elementary School Record, Vol. I,

No. 5, or “The Dewey School,” published by the Froebel Society.

[4] See Chapter VI, _p. 79_.

[5] The Philosophy and Psychology of the Kindergarten.--“Teachers’

College Record,” Nov., 1903.

[6] It is true that Froebel was pre-Darwinian, but see _p. 198_.

[7] All this is said in connection with the infant’s play with a woollen

ball, with quaint suggestions that the singing tone accompanying the

swinging like a ball affects the feelings, while the recognition of a

change of position is a thing of “dawning thought,” and that by tic-tac

the movement is expressed. See _p. 176_.

[8] Dies fesselt die Sinnen- und Geistesthätigkeit des Kindes und gibt

_ihm_ mehrseitige Nahrung.

[9] In der Mitte seiner wahrnehmenden (empfindenden) seiner wirkenden und

schaffenden, seiner vergleichenden (denkenden) Thätigkeit.

[10] Die Ausbildung der verschiedenen Richtungen der Geisteskraft des

Kindes.

[11] “Journal of Education.” Reprinted in “Child Life,” January, 1901.

[12] “Analytic Psychology,” Vol. I, _p. 152_ _et seq._

[13] “Analytic Psychology,” Vol. I, _p. 153_.

[14] It is true that Professor Stout complains of the loose way in which

the word “activity” has been used, and that he is careful to define his

own meaning, but Froebel too is careful. See Appendix I.

[15] See also _p. 82_.

[16] “Analytic Psychology,” Vol. II, _p. 82_.

[17] “The Conception of Immortality,” _p. 58_.

[18] Froebel is comparing the child with other young animals, and

somewhat scornfully refers to those who, “notwithstanding the early

manifestation of the instinct to employ himself,” regard the human infant

as inferior to the young of other animals.

[19] See chapter on Instinct.

[20] “In dem ersten Sinnenspiele, kommen also dem Kinde durch Wahrnehmen

u. Schauen, durch Kommen, Bleiben u. Schwinden, durch Wechsel, also auch

in gewisser Hinsicht durch frühes dunkles auffassen … somit von dunkler

Vergleichung, die ersten Eindrücke der Seele, gleichsam die ersten

Erkenntnisse zugleich durch Selbst-thätigkeit, wie durch die sein Leben

und dessen Forderungen in sich tragende Mutterliebe.”--_P., p. 66._

[21] It does not, however, follow that this outer object, or this manner

of presenting it, is so important as Froebel supposed; see Chapter IX.

[22] See _p. 66_.

[23] See Chapter II.

[24] “Principles of Psychology,” Vol. II, _p. 884_.

[25] Froebel is too often ignorantly accused of being “soft,” but it is a

mistake to think that he leaves fear out of count. What he insists on is,

that rightly used authority should produce self-control, not servility.

[26] See _p. 90_.

[27] Macmillan, 1906.

[28] _P. 53._

[29] “Social Psychology,” _p. 61_.

[30] Mr. McDougall allows (_p. 60_) that in the case of an unprovoked

blow, the impulse, the thwarting of which provokes anger, is the impulse

of self-assertion.

[31] For example, on _p. 46_, “Hence language provides special names

for such modes of affective experience, names such as anger, fear,

curiosity”; and on _p. 94_, in connection with the sympathetic induction

of emotion, we have, “Later still, fear, curiosity, and, I think, anger

are communicated readily from one child to another”; and there are other

examples.

[32] _P. 51._

[33] This is all that can be said, for the passage seems incomplete;

after “entwickelt … der Trieb die Neigung,” comes only “sie führen zur

Gemüths- und Herzensbildung; und aus ihr geht in dem Knaben Geistes- und

Willensthätigkeit hervor.”

[34] For a fuller account of these “Gifts,” see Chap. VIII., _p. 148_.

[35] In the well-known translation by F. and E. Lord:

“You wonder why a game at hide-and-seek

Brings a glad flush of joy to baby’s cheek?

The sense of his own personality

Is causing all this joy that you can see

When people call him, say, ‘Where’s Baby been?’

He feels that it is he, himself, they mean.”

[36] “Social Psychology,” _p. 89_.

[37] “The Play of Man,” _p. 400_.

[38] “The Play of Man,” _p. 382_.

[39] See _p. 194_.

[40] In another place Froebel does say that, “Only on condition that

the genuine spirit of play--i.e. the true spirit of life--lives in the

teacher, can he call it forth in the child.”

[41] See Appendix II.

[42] See _pp. 93, 94_.

[43] See _p. 43_.

[44] Froebel goes on to say: “I believe, that after progressing through

the vast orbit of almost two generations (he was nearly fifty-nine) I

have been carried round to the point of commencement, to the fountain

head of the education of mankind, but _with the significant addition of a

full consciousness of my task_.”

[45] The material can of course be used at any age provided it conveys

suitable ideas in a suitable manner. Some of it is even now found useful

in helping senior classes to realize problems in area and in volume.

[46] Many years ago, a young teacher came to me for help. She had been

told to give her class number lessons, for a whole term, from Gift III,

which consists of eight little cubes, and the children had long since

grasped 4 + 4, 6 + 2, 5 + 3, and 8 - 4, 8 - 2, etc. I suggested that she

should leave the number out and let the children play with the blocks.

“Oh! I mayn’t do that,” was the answer, “they have building with Gift IV.”

[47] A really pathetic story has been told me of an earnest teacher in

far Australia, whose educational opportunities had been very limited,

but whose desire for knowledge was most sincere. She had been listening

without comprehension to some glib user of phrases, and was bewailing her

ignorance to an enlightened teacher who knew there had been little of

real value, and who said with a laugh “Never mind, Miss ----, it is only

a case of ‘Mind and Matter glide swift into the vortex of immensity.’”

And the listener said, “Oh please, would you say that slowly, and I’ll

write it down.”

[48] These objections were embodied in a paper entitled “A Criticism

of Froebelian Pedagogy,” which Mr. Graham Wallas read at a Conference

of the Froebel Society in January 1901, and which was published in the

Conference Supplement for Child Life, July 1901.

[49] See _p. 200_.

[50] Few critics are likely to go so far as Mr. Winch, who gave as a

Froebelian conception “that the true destiny of man is to be obtained by

gratifying every youthful impulse.” But, Mr. Winch is perhaps not to be

taken seriously, for in the same paper he took _one sentence out of a

passage on the importance of continuity extending over four pages_, and

says of it, “This jerky discontinuity (!) has not the slightest support

in biological science, and never had.” (See Memorandum written for Mr.

Graham Wallas in “Problems of Education.”)

[51] Deshalb sollen Erziehung, Unterricht und Lehre ursprünglich und in

ihren ersten Grundzügen nothwendig leidend, nachgehend (nur behütend

schützend), nicht vorschreibend, bestimmend, eingreifend sein.

[52] Mr. Graham Wallas said: “The educational task for us is not to find

out how completely we can stand aside, but how far we can so influence

the environment of the child, as to cause those tendencies in it which we

think best, to become permanent.”

[53] Mr. Graham Wallas said: “From the beginning of the Darwinian

reconstruction of the moral sciences, it was absurd, while speaking

of ‘environment,’ to ignore the fact that the deliberate care and

contrivance of the parent must form a large part of the environment of

the child.” The passage quoted shows that Froebel was guilty of no such

absurdity.

[54] “Is Development from Within?” “Child Life,” October, 1904, and

January, 1905.

[55] See _p. 192_.

[56] “Second Review of Plays: A Fragment,” but part of this has been

omitted in the English translation.

[57] Those who desire a full and scholarly account of Froebel’s

philosophy are referred to that given by Professor Angus MacVannel,

Ph.D., “Teachers’ College Record,” Vol. IV, No. 5. The Macmillan Co., New

York.

[58] In Gottes Welt, eben weil es die Welt Gottes, durch Gott Gewordenes

ist, spricht sich ein Stetiges, das heisst ungetrennt Fortgehendes der

Entwickelung in Allem und durch Alles aus.

[59] See Appendix, _p. 216_.

[60] “Das Pedagogik des Kindergartens,” _p. 329_.

[61] According to this principle, the mere fact that a particle is moving

with a certain velocity in a certain direction, is in itself a reason why

it should continue to move with the same velocity in the same direction.…

Now, in so far as continuance of change in a certain direction is

traceable to the pre-existence of change in that direction, this whole

process may be regarded as being in a perfectly intelligible sense,

self-determining (“Analytic Psychology,” Vol. I, _p. 146_).

[62] “Analytic Psychology,” Vol. I, _p. 147_.

[63] “Analytic Psychology,” Vol. I, _p. 168_.

[64] “Analytic Psychology,” Vol. I, _p. 155_.

[65] “Analytic Psychology,” Vol. I, _p. 156_.

[66] “Analytic Psychology,” Vol. I, _p. 156_.

[67] _P. 191._

[68] And so to regard “each successive moment of the world-process as

issuing out of the preceding by purely immanent casuality.”

[69] “Analytic Psychology,” Vol. I, _p. 156_.

[70] “Unity and Froebel are synonymous terms,” is one “howler” from a

student’s examination paper.

[71] Ed. by Development, _p. 212_.

[72] “The Eternal Life,” _p. 14_.

[73] “Das Kindergartenwesen,” _p. 330_.

INDEX

Acquisition, Instinct of, 96, 109

Activity, Spontaneous, 132

Differentiation, 90

Earliest Activity, 1, 9, 34, 126

Consciousness and Self-Consciousness, Development of, 48, 81, 84, 85

Nature of First Voluntary Employments, 135

Expression, _see_ that title

Foundation of Education, 6, 84, 142, 210

Fundamental Tendency, 47, 85, 88, 90

Meaning of, in Froebel’s Writings, 213 _et seq._

Self-determination included in connotation, 217

Universal Impulse, 90, 126

Adams, Prof., quoted, 190, 210

Amusement, Distinction from Play, 134

Analysis of Mind

Observation and Introspection, 12

Order of Investigation of Laws of Mental Process, 3, 4

Sense and Understanding, Inseparability, 17, 20

Tri-une Character, 13

Animal Instincts, 72

Anticipations of Modern Psychology, 2 _et seq._--Summary, 10

Anthropological Aspect of Psychological Inquiry, 4, 8, 206

Approbation, Love of, 114, 115

Arrangement and Comparison, 101, 166

Artistic Tendencies of Children, 105

Associationists, Fallacy of, 38

“Atomistic View,” 38, 39

Attacks on Froebel, 2, 190-1

Baer referred to, 206

Baldwin, Prof., quoted, 50, 52

Ball-Play--Ideas to be gained, etc., 40, 150, 151, 155, 156, 159

Batch, Froebel’s connection with, 199

Biological Studies, Influence on Froebel’s Views, connection with

stress laid on Development, etc., 13, 40, 67, 138, 192, 199, 210

Blow, Miss Susan--Froebel’s Symbolism, 179, 189

Bradley, Mr., quoted, 213

Cause, Early Notice of, 160

Change--Use in fixing Impressions, 43, 152

Collecting or Acquiring Instinct, 96, 109

Colour, Sense of, 165, 166

Community, Feeling of, _refer to_ Social Instinct

Comte referred to, 206

Conation, _refer to_ Will

Connection or Unification, Law of, 204

Conscience, references to, 116, 117

Consciousness

Development by Action, 48

--Movement stopped by Something, 49, 52

Earliest Consciousness

Absolute Beginnings--Beyond the pale of Science, 41

Indefiniteness, 39, 49, 91--Undifferentiated, unorganized Unity,

91, 201

Process of Differentiation, 40, 42, 47

Reasoning and Constructive Imagination, 36, 38

Unity of, 26

_See also_ title Self-Consciousness

Construction, Instinct of, 90

“Sense of Power,” i.e., Self-Consciousness resulting, 109, 133

Subserving Instinct of Investigation, 92, 94

Continuous Development, _see_ Development

Cooke, Mr. Ebenezer, quoted, 102, 199, 202

Counting, Development of Capacity for, 101, 102

Criticisms of Froebel, 2, 190

“Culture Epochs” Theory, 129

Darwin, references to, 67, 201

Development--Froebel’s Theory of Continuous Development, 10, 128, 140,

178, 179, 206, 207, 209

Biological Studies, Connection with, 13

Development from within, 136, 192, 195, 196

“Harmonious Development,” 14-16

Individual development of, following that of the Race, 206

Law of--Unlimited to Limited, Whole to Part, Indefinite to Definite,

40, 130, 150, 151, 155, 201, 202

Possibilities and Conditions in place of Faculties, 18-20

Reconciliation of Opposites, Result of, 204

Self-directed Process, 212 _note_

Three Stages, 71

Development of Species, Modernness of Froebel’s View, 205

Dewey, Prof.

Experimental Work at Chicago, 129

Summary of Froebel’s Educational Principles, 6

Discipline

Adjusting Claims of Freedom and Authority, 197

Direction of Impulse, not Opposition, 212 _note_

Non-Interference Theory, 190, 191, 192 _note_, 193-5

Doll-Play, 167

Drawing

Counting Capacity, Means of developing, 101

Origin of Earliest Drawing, 103

Process of discovering “Linear Phenomena,” 103, 166

Duties as a means of realizing Kinship, 61, 114, 118

Ebers--Account of Life at Keilhau, 123, 147, 168

Eby, Mr., quoted, 7, 79

Emotion, _see_ Feeling

Employment, Instinct of, _refer to_ Activity

Environment, Alleged Neglect by Froebel, 190, 196

--Reply to Critics, 197, 199, 200-4, 208, 210

Evolution--Froebel’s Post-Darwinianism, 198, 205

Experimenting--Mode of Investigation, 102

Exploring Tendency, 94-5

Expression

Art as, 105

Feeling, Importance in Development of, 57-62

Need for, 50, 99, 133

Play, Definition of, 124, 125

Understanding, Means of, 92

Faculty Psychology, Criticism of, 13, 17 _et seq._

Fairy Tales, 108, 182

Family Bonds, 61, 113

Fear, Froebel’s attitude towards, 78 and _note_

Feeling, Development of, etc., 130

Action, Importance of, 57-62

Family Bonds and Service for the Family, 61, 113

Fundamental Importance, 63

Starting Point of Education, 117

Want of Good Feeling in Children, Cause, 63-4, 112

Fichte, Reference to, 204

Fletcher, Dr., quoted, 212 _note_

Following and Tolerating--Character of True Education, 160, 195

Games, _refer to_ Play

Genetic Psychology preceded by Analytic, 3

“Gifts” and “Gift Plays”

Description of the Series, 159-166

Excessive Importance attached to, 170

Hailmann’s, Mr., distinction between “Gifts” and “Occupations,” 164,

165

Psychological Aim or Meaning, 40, 149, 150, 164, 169, 178

Selection following Natural Instinct, 169, 170

Tri-Unity of Child-Nature, Relation of Gift Plays to, 14

Weakness of the Series, 166

Two Mistakes, and the Psychological Errors underlying them, 170-6

Groos, Karl, quoted, 90, 125, 126, 130, 132, 136, 137, 145, 147, 219

Grüner, reference to, 200

Habit

Instinct, Proof of existence of, 76

Outcome of Impulse of Activity, 88

Hailmann, Mr., quoted, 164, 193

Hall, Stanley, quoted, 206

“Harmonious Development,” 14-16

Hegel, Froebel’s knowledge of, 205

Helba Plan, 26, 84, 212 _note_

Herbartians--“Culture Epochs” Theory, 129

Horne, Prof., quoted, 17

Imitation

McDougall’s, Mr., Three Classes of Imitative Actions, 89

Outcome of Activity and Means of Expression, 47, 88, 126

Results gained, 50, 51, 91

Instincts

Classifications

Eby, 79, 80

Froebel, 83 _et seq._

Kirkpatrick, 79, 80, 81

McDougall, 79, 81

Direction and Training needed, 71, 121

Divergent Views a matter of Definition, 67-8

Froebel’s belief in Instinct, 67, 69, 70, 74, 125

Froebel’s Terminology, 68, 69

Habit and Instinct, Interaction between, 76

Indefinite in Man--Proof of Superiority and Capacity for Progressive

Development, 66, 72, 75

Specific and General Tendencies, Distinction between, 68

Specifically Human Instincts only dealt with by Froebel, 82

Transitory Nature, 75, 77, 78

Two Main Lines of Instinctive Action, 83

Interdependence of Life, 62

Intuition of Things--Dr. Ward’s Points, 154-5

Investigation, Instinct of, 88, 90-2, 94-7, 102, 107

James, Prof., quoted, 39, 57, 59, 65, 68, 69, 73-5

Jarvis, Miss--Translation of passage _re_ Self-Consciousness, 54

Joy in Activity, 136-7, 139, 143, 145

Keilhau, Life at, 111, 123, 143, 147, 168, 212 _note_, 223, 224

Kindergarten

Associated Games, Social Training, etc., 114, 146, 147

Defined, 90, 114, 142

Disregard of Froebel’s instructions by his disciples, 147, 170

End and Aim of, 90, 142, 208, 210

Gifts and Occupations, _refer to_ title Gifts

No gulf between Kindergarten and “The Education of Man,” 210,

212 _note_

King, Mr. Irving, quoted, 8, 26, 48, 49, 50-2, 54

Kirkpatrick, Mr., quoted, 79-80, 114, 115, 117, 134

Lamarck, reference to, 201

Language

Development of capacity for Speech, 97-101

Earliest Training, Use in--Names the beginning of Organization, 21,

29, 45, 46, 98, 100

Feeling, Development of, 58

Location, Sense of, 152, 153

Source of questioning Activity, 97

Lodge, Sir Oliver, quoted, 32

McDougall, Mr., quoted, 68, 76, 86, 89, 117

MacVannel, Dr. J. A., quoted, 10

Marenholz, Madame von, 205

Material of Instruction and Manner of Teaching--Conditioned by stage

of Development, 129

Maternal Instinct, 119, 120

Mathematical Perceptions--Over-estimate of Children’s Capacity, 170-4

Memory--Froebel’s Description, 19

Mental Activity, 3, 4, 13, 23-7

Earlier and later Forms, 30

Possibilities--Difference between Child and Animal, 49

Sense and Understanding, Close connection, 17, 20, 207

Mental Analysis, _see_ Analysis of Mind

Metaphor, Froebel’s delight in, 187-8

Moral Faculty, 116, 118, 207

Morgan, Prof. Lloyd, quoted, 33, 67, 72

Mother Wit--Need for Thought and Training, 120, 211

Movement, _see_ Activity

Münsterberg, Prof., quoted, 218

Music--Importance of early Training, 106

Mysticism, _see_ Symbolism

Naming, _refer to_ Language

Natural Instincts, _see_ Instincts

Non-Interference, Froebel’s Theory of, 190-5

Number, Discovery of, 101, 102

Observation of Children, 4-6, 8, 9, 29, 74, 87, 92, 94, 96, 103, 104,

109, 111, 133, 162, 165

Order, Sense of, and the Instinct of Rhythm, 115, 116

Organization and Language, 21, 29, 45-6, 100

Outer Factor in Perception, over-emphasized by Froebel, 171, 173, 174

O’Shea, Prof., quoted, 97, 191, 200, 207, 216

Parental Instinct, 119, 120

Personality, Consciousness of, _see_ Self-Consciousness

Philosophy, Froebel’s, 10

Physical and Psychical, Close connection between, 17, 20, 207

Play

Amusement, Distinction from, 134

Biological View, 138

Classifications (Froebel and Groos), 145, 219

Earliest Childhood, Play in, 124, 125, 128, 130, 147

Educative Value, Originality of Froebel’s View, 122

Groos’ Criteria, 130

Guidance needed, 143, 145 and _note_

Imitative Play, 88

Joy in Games, 133, 136, 139

Recreative Play, 122

Self-Consciousness, Development of, in Boyhood, 56

Social Virtues, Development by Games, 111, 144, 146

Surplus Energy Theory, 123, 144

Theories of Play--Recapitulation and Preparation, 138, 140, 141, 142

Work and Play

Distinction between--Froebel’s definition, 124, 128

Earliest Activity--No Differentiation, 130, 131

Early Boyhood, Differentiation in, 131, 132

Playgrounds, Importance of, 143

Play-Material

Definite prescription impossible, 167

First Playthings, 153

Importance in relation to Development, 148, 149

Mistake of giving expensive and complex toys, 164

Number and variety of games noted, 147

Object of Froebel’s play-material, 93

_See_ also title Gifts

Poems and Songs, Use in Development of Feeling, 58, 130

Preyer quoted, 52

Psychological Basis for Educational Theories, 2

Pugnacity, Instinct of, 86

Purpose of Education, 200

_Refer also to_ Self-Consciousness

Quantity, Relations of, 101

Questioning Activity, 97

Reflection, Development of, 75

Religious Instincts

Foundation in Social Instincts, 115, 117

Morality and Religion, 118

Work and Religion, 127

Religious Convictions of Froebel, 205-6

Repetition, Impressions fixed by, 43, 152

Representation (Darstellung), _see_ Expression

Rhythm--Importance of early development of Instinct, 106, 160, 187

Order, Sense of, Connection with, 115, 116

Ribot quoted, 90, 126

Romanes quoted, 68

Royce, Prof., quoted, 31

Seele, Ida, 209

Self-Abasement and Self-Assertion, Instincts of, 86

Self-Consciousness, Development of, 52, 53, 56, 84, 109, 116, 117, 153

Early Developments, 54, 55

Indefiniteness of Instinct rendering development possible, 82

Purpose of Education and “End of Man,” 30-5, 53, 178

Tales, Craving for, due to nascent idea of Self, 57, 107

Self-Determination, _refer to_ Will

Self-Employment, _refer to_ Activity

Self-Instruction, Instinct of, _refer to_ Investigation

Sense and Movement, Connection of, 48

Sense and Understanding, Close connection of, 17, 20, 207

Separation attempted in use of “Gifts”--Psychological error, 175-6

Service as Expression of Feeling, 59, 60

Social Instinct

Development from the “Feeling of Community,” 91, 110-12

Early Training essential, 63-4, 112

Games, Education in, 111-12, 144, 146

Religious Instincts, Foundation of, 115, 117

Speech, _refer to_ Language

Spencer, Herbert, quoted, 206

Sphere and Cube (Gift II)--Material for Comparison, 41, 159, 161

Spontaneous Activity, _see_ Activity

Stories, Interest in, 57, 107

Stout, Prof., quoted, 3, 4, 12, 22, 23, 24, 26, 36, 37, 38, 48, 73,

135, 213, 215, 216

Summary of Froebel’s Educational Principles, 6

“Surplus Energy” Theory, 123, 144

Symbolism--Froebel’s alleged excessive and far-fetched Symbolism, 169,

179-82

Exaggeration by disciples and translators, 183-6, 188

Instances--Practical application usually harmless, 186-7

Tales, Craving for, 57, 107

Thorndyke, Prof., quoted, 180

Time-Relations, 155

Toys, _refer to_ titles Gifts and Play-Material

Tri-une Nature of Man, 10, 32, 34, 89, 116, 126

Unfoldment, Doctrine of, _see_ Development

Unification or Connection, Law of, 204-5

Unity and Complexity, 155, 157, 158

Froebel’s yearning for Unity, 199, 217

Wallas, Mr. Graham--Criticisms of Froebel, 190, 196, 197, 198, 199, 201,

208

Ward, Dr., quoted, 17, 20, 36, 37, 38, 149, 151, 152, 154, 155, 157, 158

Welton, Prof., quoted, 212 _note_

Will

Definitions (Froebel and Stout), 22

Development

Action and Feeling, Development through, 35

Bound up with Intellectual Development, 26, 27

Parallel Accounts (Froebel and Stout), 27, 28

Self-Consciousness involving true volition, 30

Winch, Mr.--Criticism of Froebel, 192 _note_, 207

Women’s Work in Education--Intelligent knowledge needed in addition to

natural Instinct, 120, 211

Work

Condition of best work, 127, 128

Play, Relation to, _see_ title Play

Religion and Work, 118, 119

Wundt, Prof., quoted, 68

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