be beyond everything else vital to man's culture and development, to the
sure attainment of his destiny and fulfilment of his vocation, to
distinguish these tendencies accurately and sharply not only in their
separate ascending grades, but also throughout the whole career of life.
Moreover, I made a resolution that for some time I would devote myself
to the study of the higher methods of teaching, so as to fit myself as a
teacher in one of the higher centres of education, as, for example, one
of the universities, if that might be. But it was not long before I
found a double deficiency, which quickly discouraged me in this design.
For, firstly, I wanted a fund of specially learned and classical
culture; and next, I was generally deficient in the preparatory studies
necessary for the higher branches of natural science. The amount of
interest in their work shown by university students was, at the same
time, not at all serious enough to attract me to such a career.
I soon perceived a double truth: first, that a man must be early led
towards the knowledge of nature and insight into her methods--that is,
he must be from the first specially trained with this object in view;
and next, I saw that a man, thus led through all the due stages of a
life-development should in order to be quite sure to accomplish in all
steadiness, clearness, and certainty his aim, his vocation, and his
destiny, be guarded from the very beginning against a crowd of
misconceptions and blunders. Therefore I determined to devote myself
rather to the general subject of the education of man.
Though the splendid lectures I heard on mineralogy, crystallography,
geology, etc., led me to see the uniformity of Nature in her working,
yet a higher and greater unity lay in my own mind. To give an example,
it was always most unsatisfactory to me to see form developed from a
number of various ground-forms. The object which now lay before my
efforts and my thought was to bring out the higher unity underlying
external form in such a self-evident shape that it should serve as a
type or principle whence all other forms might be derived. But as I held
the laws of form to be fixed, not only for crystals, but also just as
firmly for language, it was more particularly a deep philosophical view
of language which eventually absorbed my thoughts. Again, ideas about
language which I had conceived long ago in Switzerland crowded before my
mind. It seemed to me that the vowels _a_, _o_, _u_, _e_, _i_, _ä_,
_au_, _ei_, resembled, so to speak, force, spirit, the (inner) subject,
whilst the consonants symbolised matter, body, the (outer) object. But
just as in life and in nature all opposites are only relatively opposed,
and within every circle, every sphere, both opposites are found to be
contained, so also in language one perceives within the sphere of
speech-tones the two opposites of subject and object. For example, the
sound _i_ depicts the absolute subject, the centre, and the sound _a_
the absolute material object; the sound _e_ serves for life as such, for
existence in general; and _o_ for individual life, for an existence
narrowed to itself alone.
Language, not alone as the material for the expression of thought, but
also as a type or epitome of all forms and manifestations of life,
appeared to me to underlie the universal laws of expression. In order to
learn these laws thoroughly, as exemplified in the teaching of the
classical languages, I now returned again to the study of these latter,
under the guidance of a clever teacher; and I began to strike out the
special path which seemed to me absolutely necessary to be followed in
their acquisition.
From this time onwards I gave all my thoughts to methods of education,
whereto I was also further incited by some keen critical lectures on the
history of ancient philosophy. These again afforded me a clear
conviction of the soundness of my views of Nature and of the laws of
human development.
Through my work at the dynamical, chemical, and mathematical aspects of
Nature I came once more upon the consideration of the laws of number,
particularly as manifested through figures; and this led me to a
perfectly fresh general view of the subject--namely, that number should
be regarded as horizontally related.[84] That way of considering the
subject leads one to very simple fundamental conceptions of arithmetic,
which, when applied in practice, prove to be as accurate as they are
clear. The connection of these (dynamical and arithmetical) phenomena
was demonstrably apparent to me; since arithmetic may be considered,
firstly, as the outward expression of the manifestation of force,
secondly (in its relationship to man), as an example of the laws of
human thought.
On all sides, through nature as well as through history, through life as
well as through science (and as regards the latter through pure science
as well as through the applied branches), I was thus encountered and
appealed to by the unity, the simplicity, and the unalterably necessary
course, of human development and human education. I became impelled by
an irresistible impulse towards the setting forth of that unity and
simplicity, with all the force, both of my pen and of my life, in the
shape of an educational system. I felt that education as well as science
would gain by what I may call a more human, related, affiliated,
connected treatment and consideration of the subjects of education.
I was led to this conviction on another ground, as follows:--Although my
friends Langethal, Middendorff, and Bauer served with me all through the
war in the same corps, and even in the same battalion, we were a great
deal apart towards the close of the campaign, especially at the time we
were quartered in the Netherlands, so that I, at all events, at the
disbanding of the corps, knew not whither the others had gone. It was,
therefore, an unexpected pleasure when, after a while, I found them all
at Berlin again. My friends pursued their theological studies with
earnestness, and I my natural science; therefore, at first we came
little into contact with one another.
So passed several months, when suddenly life threw us closer together
again. This came about through the call to arms in 1815. We all enlisted
again together as volunteers. On account of our previous service, and by
royal favour, we were at once promoted to officer's rank, and each one
was appointed to a regiment. However, there was such a throng of
volunteers that it was not necessary for any State officials to be
called upon to leave their posts, or for students to interrupt their
studies, and we therefore received counter-orders commanding us to stay
at home. Middendorff, who felt sure of his speedy departure for the
army, preferred not to take lodgings for the short time of his stay in
Berlin, and as there was room enough in mine for us both, he came and
stayed with me. Yet we still seemed to draw very little closer together
at first, because of the diversity of our pursuits; but soon a bond of
union wove itself again, which was all the stronger on that very
account. Langethal and Middendorff had endeavoured to secure a
sufficiency for their support at the university by taking private
tutorships in families, making such arrangements as that their
university studies should not be interfered with. In the beginning of
their work all seemed simple and easy, but they soon came upon
difficulties both as regards the teaching and the training of the
children entrusted to them. As our former conversations had so often
turned upon these very subjects they now came to me to consult me,
especially about mathematical teaching and arithmetic, and we set apart
two hours a week, in which I gave them instruction on these matters.
From this moment our mutual interchange of thought again became animated
and continuous.
* * * * *
Here the autobiography breaks off abruptly. Herr Wichard Lange had some
trouble in deciphering it from Froebel's almost unreadable rough draft,
and here and there he had even to guess at a word or so. Froebel had
intended to present this letter to the Duke of Meiningen at the close of
1827, when the negotiations began to be held about a proposed National
Educational Institution at Helba, to be maintained by the duke, after
the similar proposal made to the Prince of Rudolstadt for Quittelsdorf
earlier in the year had broken down. It is not known whether the present
draft was ever finished, properly corrected, and polished into permanent
form, nor whether it was ever delivered to the duke. It is highly
probable that we have here all that Froebel accomplished towards it. It
may be added that soon after Froebel's repeated plans and drafts for the
Helba Institution had culminated in the final extensive well-known plan
of the spring of 1829, the whole scheme fell through, from the jealousy
of the prince's advisers, who feared Froebel's influence too much to
allow him ever to get a footing amongst them.
Another fragment of autobiography, going on to a further period of his
life, occurs in a long letter to the philosopher Krause,[85] dated
Keilhau, 24th March, 1828, in reply to an article written by Krause five
years before (1823) in Oken's journal, the well-known _Isis_[86] in
which article Krause had found fault with Froebel's two explanatory
essays on Keilhau, written in 1822, separately published, and appearing
also in the _Isis_, because Keilhau was there put forward as "an
educational institution for all Germany" (Allgemeine Deutsche
Erziehungs-Anstalt), whereas Krause desired it should rather style
itself "a German institution for universal culture" (Deutsche Anstalt
für Allgemeine menschliche Bildung). The rapid growth of Keilhau gave
Froebel at the time no leisure for controversy. In 1827 began the cruel
persecutions which eventually compelled him to leave Keilhau. Now
whenever Froebel was under the pressure of outward difficulty, he always
sought for help from within, and from his inward contemplation derived
new courage and new strength to face his troubles. Out of such musings
in the present time of adversity the long-awaited reply to Krause at
length emerged. The disputative part, interesting in itself, does not
here concern us. We pass at once to the brief sketch of his life
contained in later parts of the letter, omitting what is not
autobiographical. The earlier of these passages relate more succinctly
the events of the same period already more fully described in the letter
to the Duke of Meiningen; but we think it better to print the passages
in full, in spite of their being to a great extent a repetition of what
has gone before. Certain differences, however, will be found not
unworthy of notice.
The Krause letter succeeded the other and more important letter (to the
Duke of Meiningen) by some few months. Its immediate outcome was a warm
friendship between Krause and Froebel; the latter, with Middendorff as
his companion, journeying to Göttingen to make the philosopher's
personal acquaintance, in the autumn of 1828. Long discussions on
education took place at this interesting meeting, as we know from
Leonhardi, Krause's pupil. Krause made Froebel acquainted with the works
of Comenius, amongst other things, and introduced him to the whole
learned society of Göttingen, where he made a great, if a somewhat
peculiar, impression.
PART OF FROEBEL'S LETTER TO KRAUSE, DATED KEILHAU, 24TH MARCH, 1828.
... You have enjoyed, without doubt, unusual good fortune in having
pursued the strict path of culture. You have sailed by Charybdis without
being swallowed up by Scylla.[87] But my lot has been just the reverse.
As I have already told you in the beginning of this letter, I was very
early impressed with the contradictions of life in word and deed--in
fact, almost as soon as I was conscious of anything, living as a lonely
child in a very narrowed and narrowing circle. A spirit of
contemplation, of simplicity, and of childlike faith; a stern, sometimes
cruel, self-repression; a carefully-fostered inward yearning after
knowledge by causes and effects, together with an open-air life amidst
Nature, especially amidst the world of plants, gradually freed my soul
from the oppression of these contradictions. Thus, in my tenth and
eleventh years, I came to dream of life as a connected whole without
contradictions. Everywhere to find life, harmony, freedom from
contradictions, and so to recognise with a keener and clearer perception
the life-unity after which I dimly groped, was the silent longing of my
heart, the mainspring of my existence. But the way thither through the
usual school course, all made up of separate patches, considering things
merely in their outward aspect, and connected by mere arbitrary
juxtaposition, was too lifeless to attract me; I could not remember
things merely put together without inner connection, and so it came
about that after two of my elder brothers had devoted themselves to
study, and because my third brother showed great capacity for study
also, my own education was narrowed; but so much the more closely did a
loving, guiding providence bind my heart in communion with Nature.[88]
In silent, trustful association with Nature and my mathematics, I lived
for several years after my confirmation. In the latter part of the time
my duties led me towards the study of natural laws, and thus towards the
perception of the unity so often longed for in soul and spirit, and now
at last gradually becoming clear from amidst the outwardly clashing
phenomena of Nature.[89]
At last I could no longer resist the craving for knowledge which I felt
within me. I thrust on one side all the ordinary school-learning which I
utterly failed to appropriate in its customary disconnected state (it
was meant only to be learned by rote, and this I never could recognise
as the exclusive condition of a really comprehensive culture of the
human mind), and I went up in the middle of my eighteenth year to the
University of Jena. As I had been for two years past living completely
with Nature and my mathematics, and dependent upon myself alone for any
culture I might have arrived at, I came to the university much like a
simple plant of nature myself. I was at this time peculiarly moved by a
little knowledge I had picked up about the solar system, including
particularly a general conception of Kepler's laws, whereby the laws of
the spheres appealed to me on the one hand as an all-embracing,
world-encircling whole, and on the other as an unlimited
individualisation into separate natural objects. My own culture had been
hitherto left to myself, and so also now I had to select my own studies
and to choose my courses of lectures for myself. It was to be expected
that the lectures of the professors would produce a singular effect
upon me, and so they did.
I chose as my courses natural history, physics, and mathematics, but I
was little satisfied. I seldom gained what I expected. Everywhere I
sought for a sound method deriving itself from the fundamental principle
lying at the root of the subject in hand, and afterwards summing up all
details into that unity again; everywhere I sought for recognition of
the quickening interconnection of parts, and for the exposition of the
inner all-pervading reign of law. Only a few lectures made some poor
approach to such methods, but I found nothing of the sort in those which
were most important to me, physics and mathematics. Especially repugnant
to me was the piece-meal patchwork offered to us in geometry, always
separating and dividing, never uniting and consolidating.
I was, however, perfectly fascinated with the mathematical rules of
"combination, permutation, and variation," but unhappily I could not
give much time to their study, which I have regretted ever since.
Otherwise, what I learned from the lectures was too slight for what I
wanted, being, unluckily, altogether foreign to my nature, and more
often a mere getting of rules by heart rather than an unfolding of
principles. The theoretical and philosophical courses on various
subjects did not attract me either, something about them always kept me
at a distance; and from what I heard of them amongst my fellow-students,
I could gather that here, too, all was presented in an arbitrary
fashion, unnaturally divided, cut up, so to speak, into lifeless
morsels; so that it was useless for my inner life to seek for
satisfaction in those regions of study. But as I said above, there were
some of the lectures which fostered my interest in the inner connection
of all vital phenomena, and even helped me to trace it with some
certainty in some few restricted circles.
But my financial position did not permit me to remain long at the
university; and as my studies were those which fitted the student for
practical professional life, though they were regarded from a higher
point of view by myself in the privacy of my own thoughts, I had to
return to ordinary every-day work, and use them as a means to earn my
living. Yet, though I lived the outward business life to all appearance,
it remained ever foreign to my nature; I carried my own world within
me, and it was that for which I cared and which I cherished. My
observation of life (and especially that of my own life, which I pursued
with the object of self-culture), joined with the love of Nature and
with mathematics to work creatively upon me; and they united to fill my
little mental world with many varied life-forms, and taught me at the
same time to regard my own existence as one member of the great
universal life. My plan of culture was very simple: it was to seek out
the innermost unity connecting the most diverse and widely-separated
phenomena, whether subjective or objective, and whether theoretical or
practical, to learn to see the spiritual side of their activity, to
apprehend their mutual relations as facts and forms of Nature, or to
express them mathematically; and, on the other hand, to contemplate the
natural and mathematical laws as founded in the innermost depths of my
own life as well as in the highest unity of the great whole, that is
indeed to regard them in their unconditioned, uncaused necessity, as
"absolute things-in-themselves." Thus did I continue without ceasing to
systematise, symbolise, idealise, realise and recognise identities and
analogies amongst all facts and phenomena, all problems, expressions,
and formulas which deeply interested me; and in this way life, with all
its varied phenomena and activities, became to me more and more free
from contradictions, more harmonious, simple, and clear, and more
recognisable as a part of the life universal.
After I had lived for some years the isolated life I have described,
though I was engaged the whole time in ordinary professional pursuits,
all at once there broke upon my soul, in harmony with the seasons of
nature, a springtime such as I had not before experienced; and an
unexpected life and life-aim budded and blossomed in my breast. All my
inner life and life-aims had become narrowed to the circle of
self-culture and self-education. The outer life, my profession, I
carried on as a mere means of subsistence, quite apart from my real
inner self, and my sphere of operation was limited. I was driven
perforce from pillar to post till at last I had arrived where the Main
unites herself with the Rhine.[90] Here there budded and opened to my
soul one lovely bright spring morning, when I was surrounded by Nature
at her loveliest and freshest, this thought, as it were by
inspiration:--That there must exist somewhere some beautifully simple
and certain way of freeing human life from contradiction, or, as I then
spake out my thought in words, some means of restoring to man, himself,
at peace internally; and that to seek out this way should be the
vocation of my life. And yet my life, to all appearance, my studies and
my desires, belonged to my purely external vocation,[91] and to its
external citizenlike relations; and by no means to mankind at large,
either regarded in itself or in its educational needs. Therefore this
idea of mine was in such violent contrast with my actual life that it
utterly surprised me. In fact, and perhaps greatly because of this
contrast, the idea would undoubtedly have been quite forgotten, had not
other circumstances occurred to revive it. On myself and on my life at
the time it seemed to have not the slightest effect, and it soon passed
from my memory. But later on in this same journey,[92] as I climbed down
from the Wartburg, and turned round to look at the castle, there rushed
upon me once more this thought of a higher educational vocation as my
proper life-work; and again, being so far removed from my actual
external life, it only flashed upon me with a momentary effulgence an
instant, and then sank. This, unconsciously to me, and therefore quite
disregarded by me, was the real position of my inner life when I arrived
at the goal of my journey, Frankfurt, from whence my life was so soon to
develop so largely. My energies at the moment were devoted towards
attaining some definite professional position for myself.[93] But in
proportion as I began to examine my profession more closely in its
practical aspect, so did it begin to prove insufficient of itself to
satisfy me as the occupation of my life. Then there came to me the
definite purpose of living and working at my profession rather to use it
as a means to win some high benefit for mankind.[94]
The restlessness of youth, nay, that chance, rather, which has always
lovingly guided me, threw me unexpectedly into relations with a man
whose knowledge of mankind, and whose penetrating glance into my inner
being turned me at our very first interview from the profession of an
architect to that of a teacher and an educator, two spheres of work
which had, never previously occurred to me, still less had appeared to
me as the future objects of my life.[95] But the very first time I found
myself before thirty or forty boys from nine to eleven years old, for
that was the class allotted to me to teach, I felt thoroughly at home.
In fact, I perceived that I had at last found my long-missed life
element; and as I wrote to my brother at the time, I was as well pleased
as the fish in the water, I was inexpressibly happy. Yet here from the
very first moment (and what a number of sacrifices had to be made, what
a wealth of activity was poured out!) I had to give information, advice,
and decisions on matters which hitherto I had not thought it necessary
seriously to consider, and so also here, in my new position, I soon came
to feel myself isolated, to stand alone.
I sought counsel where I had so often found it. I looked within myself
and to Nature for help. Here my plan of culture, hitherto followed only
for my own needs, came opportunely to my assistance. When I was
consulted by others, I looked to Nature for the answer, and let Nature,
life, spirit, and law speak for themselves through me; then the answer
was not merely satisfactory. No! its simple, unhesitating confidence and
youthful freshness gladdened and quickened the inquirer.
This was all well enough when universal human interests were concerned,
but how about matters of instruction? I could, in fact, fairly confess
that in many respects I had no title to call myself a cultured man, for
hitherto all my culture had been fragmentary or imaginative.
Once again I found myself in conflict with my environment; for I could
not possibly torture my scholars with what I myself had refused to be
tortured with--namely, the learning by heart of disconnected rules. I
was therefore compelled to strike out fresh paths for myself, which
indeed my post rendered a delightful task; because I not only had full
liberty accorded me in this matter, but was even urged onwards in that
direction by my duty, since the institution was a model school for the
higher development of teaching. My past self-culture, self-teaching, and
self-development, and my study of Nature and of life now stood me in
good stead.