E. R. Murray

An honest attempt to show what credit is due to Froebel, for the remarkable anticipations of modern theories on which he based his pedagogy, seems to involve the opposite process of inquiring whether or not any of his practices can be shown to have an unsound basis.

The modern boys’ school, with a few, and a very few exceptions, does not even approach the school at Keilhau as a place of real education, as any one may see who reads the account given of it by Georg Ebers. On the other hand, the modern Kindergarten is probably in many ways an advance upon the original attempts. Many practices of which Froebel approved are now discarded, some no doubt because of progress in physiological discovery; we know now that a child is not fitted as regards nervous development and muscular control to deal with fine pricking or drawing in chequers.

But a better knowledge of physiology does not account for all the changes that have taken place. Important as they undoubtedly were in Froebel’s eyes, the modern Kindergartener is inclined to smile over her predecessors’ “worship of the ‘Gifts’”; and, though we are agreed as to the importance of games, the modern teacher chooses from a wide, perhaps too wide a range, and no longer reposes blind faith in certain circle-games with their supposed “symbolic” virtue.

To some, the word symbolic will at once suggest Froebel’s weakest point, others will resent any such idea, for symbolism appeals strongly to one and repels another. For Froebel himself, undoubtedly the whole world was symbolic, in so far as he regarded the universe as one expression of the Divine. To him, as to Browning:

“The earth has speech of God’s writ down, no matter if

In cursive script or hieroglyph.”

But this has not affected his educational practice to the extent generally supposed.

At the same time it does seem as if one, if not two, psychological errors lie at the root of certain practices which the modern Froebelian has discarded.

It would be most unfair to Froebel not to emphasize what is often overlooked, viz. that the “Gifts” were important in his eyes solely because he believed that in them he was presenting toys, or “play-material,” exactly suited to the succeeding stages of the child’s development, bodily and mental. “The new gift,” he says, “corresponds both to the child’s increasing constructive ability, and to his growing capacity to comprehend the external world.” And he writes:

“But such a course of training and occupations for children answering to the laws of development and the laws of life, demanded a thoroughly expressive medium in the shape of materials for these occupations and games for the child: therefore to meet this point I have arranged a series of play materials under the title of: ‘A complete series of gifts for play.’”—P., p. 250.

It should also be noted that Froebel did not commit the mistake of inventing new toys. What he attempted to do was what we are all attempting now, viz. to use what natural instinct has already selected, as a basis for conscious educational work. Balls and building blocks, coloured tablets and papers, sand and clay, are all spontaneously appropriated by normal children. Even these materials which seem to us unchildlike are not so in different surroundings. For instance, in the Black Forest, one may watch children playing with long slivers of wood exactly like Froebel’s laths, and these they take from the cut logs which are being hauled up for winter storage.

Again, it is only fair to point out that Froebel’s followers have appropriated material which he suggested as suited to children aged from three months to five or six years, and have used them with children from four or five to six or seven and even older.[45] Teachers have also found it convenient to disregard Froebel’s frequent warnings not to interfere, to let the child “bang and pound” when he wants to, to let him “play quietly and thoughtfully by himself as long as he will,” to give him “the greatest possible freedom of expression.” In some, at least, of the original text-books on Kindergarten practice, written by Froebel’s early disciples, this advice is totally disregarded, and we find prescribed the most formal of object lessons, dealing with the properties of the ball in set questions and answers; only at the end comes “If there is time, the children may be allowed to roll the ball.”

Still, when all due allowance is made, there remains the fact that Froebel attributed far too much importance to the series of toys he arranged, and in addition to this he must be held in large measure responsible for the extraordinary amount of mathematical perceptions of which young children have been considered capable, and beneath which many gleams of intelligence may have been extinguished.

The psychological error which seems to underlie both these mistakes in pedagogy seems to have been that of making too much of the outer factor in the process of perception. Froebel was quite right and quite modern in refusing to draw any hard and fast line between sense perception and thinking, in saying that the child moves “from perception of a thing, joined with thought about it, up to pure thought.” But he must have failed somehow, sufficiently to grasp the fact that all that is present to sense is not necessarily perceived, that perception depends not merely upon what is presented, but upon previous mind content. The word “apperception,” though apparently somewhat fallen into disfavour of late, has certainly been of service in emphasizing this point.

What seems strange is that in the very book, in which we find the theory disregarded in practice, we find Froebel stating the theory itself in the plainest of terms:

“The properties and nature of the outer world unfold themselves in exact proportion to the capacities of the child.”—P., p. 120.

“The child creates his own world for himself; it is at once the expression of his inward realization of the external world and its surroundings, and also the outward representation of his internal mental world, the world of his own subjectivity.”—L., p. 141.

“Above all, it is the old within the new, which clarifies, unfolds and transmutes itself, thus developing what is new.… We must not require of the child anything not conditioned by his previous achievements.”—P., p. 169.

No one, surely, can maintain that these words are carried into effect in e.g.:

“Could forms of knowledge (mathematical forms) be, for a child of one to three, play forms, and thus forms produced by spontaneous activity? Well, why not? Arrange the eight part-cubes together, and say, ‘One whole.’ But divide it immediately and say, ‘Two halves.’… Or, comparing and connecting and describing by song at the same time that the objects are manipulated:

‘Look here and see! One whole two halves.

One half two fourths, two halves four fourths.

One whole four fourths.

Four fourths eight eighths.

Eight eighths one whole.’”—P., p. 138.

There is certainly no “old within the child” of one to three, which can condition this achievement, nor is there any spontaneity. For the child a little older we have:

“The hints that are here given suffice to show that the knowledge forms are adapted to children of three and four years of age, and that they incite plays which are both spontaneous and nourishing to heart and intellect.… These few indications for the use of these forms must suffice; they already show sufficiently clearly that the observation and comprehension of them are perfectly suited to the active, intellectual and emotional sides of children three and four years of age, and to actual free play which strengthens intellect and feeling.”—P., p. 185.

Now the “hints” refer to making clear to the child, always in justice, be it remembered, in the concrete, “as perceptible facts only,” such points as “similarity of size with dissimilarity of shape and position, in such words as:

“Twice as long and half as wide,

Half as long and twice as wide,

The same size are we two.”

Certainly children differ very much, and some have a special aptitude for mathematical relations, but to most children under five these words would convey nothing. Half may have a meaning, though at that age and for some time after we hear of “a fair half” and “quarter” is generally used as a name for any fraction recognized as not a half, even if it should be greater. Such words as fourth and eighth can have no meaning for a child who shows no consciousness of difference when shown six, seven or eight objects. At the age of three, an average child recognizes three objects, but when a fourth is added, he proceeds to count one by one, he does not recognize three plus one.

Again, we must repeat that Froebel never intended any mathematical ideas to be forced upon unwilling children. He constantly tells the mother not to force, and he frequently speaks of the child’s “accidental productions which will become a point of departure for his self-development,” through the explanatory rhymes, to be sung by the mother in order to call the child’s attention to the results of his own action. It is true, too, that it is in connection with this kind of work, or play, that Froebel writes of “the knowledge-acquiring side of the game, which is the quickly tiring side.”

But the fact remains that either Froebel made a miscalculation as to what mathematical ideas are within the grasp of children of tender age, or else he attributed too much consequence to what is outside. It is indeed quite possible to present to a child of any age, by means of the cubes of his Fifth Gift, several particular instances of the Theorem of Pythagoras, as Froebel suggests. But though the construction is present to the sense of both child and adult, the career of the child of five or six, who perceives or apperceives the relationship of the squares so presented, may be watched with interest. He is likely to distinguish himself in mathematical research, should he live long enough. Froebel ought to have known, indeed he did know, for he taught it to others, that the child does not “quickly tire” of acquiring knowledge suited to his stage of development by methods equally suitable. From the houses and railway trains, of which at this stage they seem never to tire, children probably gain as much knowledge as Nature means them to absorb by such means. In Froebel’s own hands, with his real and sympathetic understanding of the need for freedom of action, probably no harm was done, but it is easy to see how the ordinary teacher would grasp at the possibility of producing mathematical prodigies through what was supposed to be play.

The same error seems to show itself in various ways, e.g., in some of the reasons Froebel gives for choosing his First Gift, though there is no fault to be found with the choice. He was right in saying that the child first takes in a whole, not a variety of elements, to be combined later. Because of this fact, the ordinary coral and bells, with all its complexity, is just as much a whole to the infant as the woollen ball. But Froebel does seem to have thought that he must make the “outer objects,” or toys from which the child is to gain his earliest ideas, as simple as these ideas, and this certainly implies a wrong view of perception. The same objection might be taken to Froebel’s directions as to how the Third Gift—an 8-inch cube, cut once in each direction—is to be presented; how in order “to furnish to the child clearly and definitely the impression of the whole, of the self-contained, from which fundamental perception everything must proceed,” the box is to be reversed, the lid slipped out and the box is to be lifted “that the play thing may appear as a cube closely united.” But in this case Froebel is “presenting” the first divided unit, “something which may be taken to pieces, arranged and re-arranged and finally re-constructed,” for it is “by this dismembering and re-constructing, and perception of real objects that true knowledge and especially self-knowledge comes to the child.”

A second psychological error, or at least an inconsistency, seems to lie at the root of certain practical directions Froebel gives with regard to the use of his toys. In spite of his iteration and re-iteration that the child’s mind is a unity, that though separation is “permitted for the thinking mind,” there is none in reality, yet in his anxiety for the due fostering of the whole, of the “doing, feeling and thinking” his harmonious development, in actual practice he has an attempted separation which has had bad results. A Kindergarten practice, now discontinued, was to make the children build, either on different occasions, or during different parts of one lesson, what Froebel called (a) Life-forms or Objects (Lebens oder Sachformen), i.e. houses, churches, etc.; (b) Beauty or Picture forms (SchÖnheits oder Bildformen), i.e. symmetrical designs; and (c) Knowledge or Instruction forms (Erkenntniss oder Lernformen), i.e. squares, triangles, etc. Though this classification is based on the familiar and important “knowing, willing and feeling,” yet it is plain that a child may experience quite as much emotion, probably more, in building a house as in making a star pattern, and that the active side is involved in every kind of construction. Froebel draws a parallel, legitimate to a certain extent, between intellect, feeling and will on the one hand, and truth, beauty and usefulness on the other. Here, however, we can quote him against himself; “Separation is only permitted for the thinking mind.” The useful ought to be beautiful, there is beauty in all truth, and the Æsthetic revelation of the world is the world in order. Beauty degenerates into mere ornament and artificiality, when separated from life and use. “Mathematics,” as Froebel wrote himself, “is neither foreign to life, nor deduced from life; it is the expression of life as such: its nature may be studied in life, and life may be studied with its help.… Mathematics should be studied more physically and dynamically as the outcome of nature and energy.”—E., p. 206-7.

The result of this suggested separation has in past times been disastrous. Failing to recognize that a young child is of necessity exercising his intellectual power in constructing his castle or bridge of blocks, and failing still more to realize that ornament is far from synonymous with beauty, teachers have wearied and stupefied children with mathematical forms for which they were not ready, and have forced upon them symmetrical designs when their souls hungered for “puffer trains.”[46]

It is easy to show that what Froebel wanted was only due attention to what we now call the affective and conative as well as to the intellectual. From the very first he insists on this, and justly, though his way of doing it may seem to us quaint. About the child’s imitation of the clock he writes:

“As soon as the child’s first capacity for speech is somewhat developed, we notice how he tries, in and by the movement, to listen to the tone and to imitate it with the tone of his own voice. Tic tac, we hear him say, imitating the movement of the pendulum; pim paum (ding dong?) he says when the sound is more noticed.… So we must observe that even when he first begins to speak the child expresses and retains the physical part of the movement by tic tac, but by pim paum he perceives the movement more, if one may say so, from the feeling in the mind, and if I may be allowed so to express myself, by the ‘here and there’ which comes later, the child catches hold (festhalten) of the movement more as a thing of comparison, of recognition, and in his dawning thought, more intellectually.… It is most important that the mother should observe the first and slightest traces of the articulation (Gliederung) of the child as an active, emotional and intellectual being, and watch it in his development from existence to experience and thought, so that in his development no side of his nature should be cultivated at the cost of the others, nor should any be repressed or neglected for the sake of the others. It seems important, and we believe that all who quietly observe the child have remarked, or will yet remark, that from the first the child expresses the swinging movement in a singing tone, in a tone which approaches song and so serves the emotional nature. Thus early is it shown that the real foundation, the starting-point for the education of humanity and so of the child, is the heart and the emotions (das GemÜth u. die GemÜthliche), but that training to action and thought (zur That u. zum Denken), the physical and the intellectual goes with it side by side constantly and inseparably. Thought forms itself in action, and action clears itself in thought, but both must have their roots in the emotions.”—P., p. 41.

Two further reasons may be given for Froebel’s belief in his selected series of toys: (a) his delight in the theory of development, and (b) his eagerness to bring the child as soon as possible to that consciousness of self which differentiates man from the lower animals.

Every sign of unity of plan within the universe gave Froebel real joy, and he traces development from the simple to the complex, from the undifferentiated to the differentiated, not only in plant and animal life, but also in the inorganic. Much of what he says on crystals may be fanciful, but much is beautiful and suggestive. “Chemical combination” is to him “the life of the inorganic world,” and he writes:

“We have in this a new confirmation of the law of development in crystals, the passing from special-sidedness to all-sidedness, from imperfection to perfection as the law of all development in nature. Man, then, appears as the most perfect earthly being, in whom all that is corporeal appears in highest equilibrium and in whom the primordial force is fully spiritualized, so that man feels, understands, and knows his own power. But while man externally and corporeally has attained equilibrium and symmetry of form, there heave and surge in him, viewed as a spiritual being, appetites, desires and passions.

“As in the world of crystals we noticed the heaving and surging of simple energy, and in the vegetable and animal worlds, the heaving and surging of living forces, so here the heaving and surging of spiritual forces. Therefore man with reference to spiritual development has returned to a first stage as crystals are in a first stage with reference to the development of life.… For this reason the boy should at an early period be taught to see Nature in all her diversity as a unit, as a great living whole, as a thought of God. The integrity of Nature, as a continually self-developing whole must be shown him at an early period.”—E., p. 198.

Although this particular passage was written in connection with Nature Study for older boys, yet it is from thoughts such as these that Froebel seems to have taken an idea that man-in-infancy ought to meet, if it may be so expressed, matter-in-infancy. Though everything in the surroundings was to help to bring about self-consciousness, “the air blowing about all living creatures, as well as the arousing spiritual language of words,” yet that definite thing-in-itself, which is to help the child to an early dim consciousness of self is to be “the counterpart of himself,” a simple undifferentiated whole “susceptible of a progressive development.”

And now we must come to the question of Froebel’s “Symbolism,” a thorny subject, because one into which the personal equation enters largely. Some writers, notably Miss Susan Blow, author of “Symbolic Education,” regard this symbolism as all-important, Froebel’s glory rather than his weakness. Others consider that it appeals to adults alone and that where it is supposed to affect children it tends towards artificiality and sentimentality. In so far as this is true, it must be regarded as a weak point.

It is, however, not an easy task to settle what ideas are covered by the term “Froebel’s symbolism.” The dictionary meaning for symbol is “a visible sign or representation of an idea; anything which suggests an idea, as by resemblance or convention; an emblem; a representation; a type; a figure; as the lion is the symbol of courage and the lamb of meekness or patience.”

It certainly passes my comprehension how anything can symbolize an idea not yet acquired, however much it may help in calling up ideas already more or less clearly gained. The crown may symbolize power to an adult, but not to the child, who when told that Stephen and Matilda fought for the crown, innocently inquired: “Couldn’t they have had another one made?” The Union Jack may symbolize British nationality or British freedom, or even British Jingoism to adults who already possess these ideas, but not to a little child. On the other hand, any kind of celebration appeals to children, as to more primitive people, and to be allowed to march round the playground on Empire Day carrying a flag arouses a joyous emotion, which will later be interwoven with patriotic ideas of various kinds. It is decidedly open to question whether as regards the child Froebel himself intended much more than this, whatever his followers may have done.

Professor Thorndyke gives us to understand that Froebel says a child plays with a ball because it symbolizes “infinite development and absolute limitation.” Now it is true that Froebel wrote in his “Aphorisms”—quoted in a footnote to Hailmann’s “Education of Man”—“The spherical is the symbol of diversity in unity and of unity in diversity.… It is infinite development and absolute limitation.” But the “Aphorisms” were not written for children, and Hailmann quotes the passage in speaking of Froebel’s philosophical doctrines as to the ultimate nature of force and matter!

To Froebel, Spirit is everywhere striving for utterance. The Universe—the Manifold—is the revelation of one great mind, and everything in Nature, “though soundless it be to the ear, a message can give emblematic (sinnbildlich) but clear.” Certainly, he would have the boy study Nature, “the writing and book of God,” but it is not to the boy that he says:

For Froebel as for Goethe, the Time Spirit “weaves for God the garment we see Him by.” He calls “the temporal an expression of the eternal, the material a manifestation of the spiritual.” He speaks of “the Power which reveals itself by uniting all things, in Nature in the Universe as weight, in human life as Love,” and it pleases him to put into the hand of the boy—in that picture of a family group by which he typifies Humanity—a ball hanging by a string, and this he calls an emblem or symbol (Sinnbild).

There is nothing in all this with which any one need quarrel. Froebel was assuredly an idealist, but in these days that is no longer a term of reproach. No one, to whom it does not appeal, need use the suggestion, but to those of us who believe that right guidance of a child’s delight in fairy tales is one way of developing his sense of reverence, there is nothing so very far fetched even in Froebel’s way of trying to bring to the child’s consciousness, the spirit striving for utterance not only in every beautiful form, but in everything beautiful as he does in “The Smell Song.”

Of fairy tales Froebel says:

So, when the child delights in the scent of the flower, Froebel says to the mother: “Let your child find in all things a mind, a struggle for being. Colour form and spicy smell all forthtell the One ruling hand which called all into existence.” But all she is told to pass on to the child is only the thought that an angel has put the scent there and is saying: “The little one does not see me, but without me there would be no fragrance.”

Although in one sense the educator of young children need have no dealings at all with “symbolism,” yet in another, a walking-stick does, for the boy who bestrides it, symbolize, a horse, as a piece of wood may symbolize for his little sister the infant whom she may nurse and caress, with what Froebel calls “the dim and transferred perception of inner life.” Here Froebel seems quite right, as when in speaking of a child’s visit to a toyshop he says, “a true child is content with very little of the outer, he is satisfied by a doll or cart, a whistle or a sheep, provided only that in or through it he can find his own world and represent it in actual deeds.”—M., p. 199.

It may be said, too, that there is symbolism in children’s drawings, the animal or object is symbolized by that which to the child is the most outstanding characteristic. One small boy drew a camel with a rider so small that some one protested he could not see over the hump, so the artist promptly drew a second rider in front. Being asked if he could draw an elephant, he assented cheerfully and added a trunk to his camel. By the addition of claws the elephant became a cat, but at that point he paused, remarking, “It’s not very like a cat, it’s more like a bird,” and a pair of wings completed the transformations. In like manner by help of a walking stick a child becomes his own father, and a pair of spectacles transforms him into his grandmother. But in all such cases the child is dealing with ideas he has already grasped.

To say that circle or ring games help a child to gain an idea of unity—Ring a Ring of Roses may give the first dim idea of corporate unity—is a very different thing from saying that a circle is to the child a symbol of unity. This is the kind of thing, however, that Froebel is supposed to have said, but after careful investigation one is surprised to find how little there is, and to what extent Froebel’s disciples and translators seem to have read in their own interpretations.

For instance, in searching for passages about symbolism, we find in the English translation of the paper on Movement Plays, a passage stating that the “Snail Game” forms a frequent conclusion to a “games” period, because it yields the form of the circle, “which is symbolic of wholeness.” On comparing this with the original, however, we find that this phrase is an addition of the translator’s. No doubt she considered it explanatory, but all that Froebel himself says is that the game is suitable “because it finally unites all the players in a lively and completely finished whole.” To practical teachers, who know the difficulty of getting a number of children to settle down after a game, this may bear a very different meaning.

It seems to me that Froebel’s translators have been altogether too fond of the word “symbolic.” The German words usually translated “symbol” and “symbolic” are “Sinnbild” and “Vorbild,” with their respective adjectives. After considering innumerable passages in which these words occur it seems plain that Froebel’s meaning would often have been better expressed by “typical,” or by “significant,” and sometimes by “metaphorical.”

For instance, it is quite legitimate to say of such perceptions as Froebel intended a child to gain from his second “Gift”—resistance, weight, hardness and softness, noise, etc.—that the ball and cube give, and are only intended to give, “normal, fundamental and typical perceptions” (nur die normalen, begrÜndenden und vorbildlichen Anschauungen), and Froebel goes on to say that the same perceptions must come from many other objects. There is nothing symbolic here, and there is no reason for using this word.

That in many passages significant would be a much more correct translation than symbolic is abundantly evident. Froebel was convinced, and most people will now agree with him, that there is real meaning or significance in those activities, which are common to children of all countries, and this meaning he endeavours to discover. Small blame to him if, though wonderfully correct on the whole, he sometimes hits upon a wrong meaning, in which case we are apt to fall back upon that convenient scapegoat, his symbolism.

In one of his letters he thanks his cousin for describing to him how she had watched a tiny child “who quietly let his eye travel from the ball hanging at the end of its cord, up to the hand which held it,” and he adds:

What Froebel deduced from the incident was that the child looks not only at the appearance of the swinging ball, but for the cause of the swinging phenomenon, the supporting, moving hand. So it is plain that for “full of symbolism” we should here read “full of significance.” Or, again, in his excellent sketch of early boyhood, with its desire to share the work of the father, its desire to explore, to collect, to construct, etc., Froebel concludes:

Here, again, significant would be a better English translation than symbolical.

Again, in accordance with his belief in instinct, Froebel declares that it is his “firm conviction that wherever we find anything that gives children ever freshly a joy belonging to real life there is at the bottom of it something important for a child’s life.” When he sees that children often enjoy going to church and joining in the singing at an age when the words can have no meaning, he says: “All the spontaneous activity of child-life is symbolical (Sinnbildlich).” But there is not a word of anything that is ordinarily called “symbolical” in what follows, so far as the child is concerned. The little one is supposed to have “reached a new life-stage,” viz. “the dim anticipation that he is not alone in life, but one amid mankind.” Consequently he is attracted by “assembly life.” The most ardent believer in symbolism can make little of the very practical answers the mother is told to give to the child’s questions. He is to be answered “out of the range of his own experience, feelings and ideas, his own intellectual development and necessities.” He is to be told that when he is old enough to go to church, he will not only like to hear the organ, but will find out “why flowers bloom and birdies sing and why we still remember Christmas Day.”

There is another child in the Mother Songs, who wants to visit the moon, and drags his mother towards the ladder that he may climb up. According to the translator Froebel says he wants to point out “the higher symbolical meaning.” But what he says is that one remark presses itself upon him, how “we ought to cultivate intelligently the child’s observation of and pleasure in the moon, and in the night sky, and not let this sink into the formlessness and emptiness of mere wonder.” For example, it is, he says, quite as easy to tell a child that the moon is a beautiful bright swimming ball, as to say it is a man; or that the stars are sparkling suns which look small because they are far away, as to call them “golden pins,” and he adds “Truth never injures, but error always does.”

There are certainly some instances in which Froebel found for the tendencies and actions of children, a meaning that does not commend itself to common sense, but as a rule he only “ventures to suggest” rather than insists, and his practical application is generally unobjectionable. We assent willingly, when Froebel tells us that rhythmic movement, passive as well as active, is the earliest beginning of all ordered activity. But we smile when, in accounting for the childish interest in clocks, after allowing for the mystery, he goes on:

As he truly and naÏvely remarks, “this opinion of mine hurts, as an opinion, neither the child nor any one else,” and the application may, even in this instance, be useful as he says it is, viz. that we should use this pleasure to instil the beginnings of punctuality or law and order. As an opinion it is not worthy of Froebel’s insight, and we can only say that instances of this kind are really negligible, though some have been unnecessarily emphasized by certain Froebelians to whom they appeal.

There are, it is true, a few instances which deserve the strictures which have been heaped up somewhat rashly. It is only put as a question, but Froebel does say of children’s pleasure in circle games, “May not their delight spring from the longing and efforts to get an all-round, or all-sided, grasp of an object?”

As to metaphor, Froebel delights in this; his bent of mind is to take pleasure in all analogies, and he suggests that the mother should make more use of the metaphors implied in ordinary language. For example, he speaks of “the transferred moral meaning of such words and phrases as ‘straight and straightforward,’ and of ‘walking in crooked paths.’” In using little finger plays to give a child control over his hands, the mother is told to think how important for later life is “the right handling of things, in the actual as well as in the figurative sense.” The wise mother is represented as cherishing the child’s love of light and brightness, saying, “Never shrink away from light”; and while she shows the picture she says, “Here is a boy who has broken the window and now he must go a long way to fetch the glazier unless he can content himself with a dark board that will keep out the dear bright light. You must not heedlessly stop Light’s entering your heart and mind, for if you do, you will have to buy it back by trouble and loss of time lest heart and mind become dark. Open your door and little window to the light.” Thus she makes the child “see inner things through the outer,” and uses his pleasure in light to make him hate deeds of darkness. But there is no harm in all this, the words are used as a clergyman uses the half-dozen words of his text, as a germ of thought which he cultivates, as a finger-post pointing the way in which our minds may travel. And Froebel, like the clergyman, sometimes travels far from the branching of the roads.

Froebel’s curious attempts at etymology ought perhaps to be mentioned as a weak point, though they really do not affect his theories, psychological or educational, one way or another. The ball, as the child’s first object through which he gains his first perceptions of solidity, weight, mass, etc., is described as on that account “an image of the universe” (der B—all ist der Bild des Alles). The thought is worth having, the pseudo-etymology does not much matter.

To sum up, then, there is mysticism in Froebel’s writings as addressed to the adult, and with this no one has any right to quarrel even if it should not appeal to him or her personally. But an undue preponderance has been given to this side of Froebel by those to whom it appeals, or so it seems to me. It does not appeal to me, nor can I perceive that it affects to any appreciable extent the educational theories based on the psychological grounds so carefully considered by Froebel. To writers like Miss Blow, the author of “Symbolic Education,” such a statement would no doubt seem outrageous. With intellectual people possessed of Miss Blow’s philosophic insight, children may be safe from artificiality and sentimentality. But the average teacher is incapable of philosophy, and when the uncultured mind is supplied with food it cannot digest, that mind is starved. The teacher who glibly uses phrases which she does not understand has reached a state of mind immeasurably below plain ignorance, for it is destructive of honest thought and common sense.[47] The main business of the Froebelian is to forward the cause to which Froebel devoted his life “to bring about a more general use of progressive development in the culture and education of children. We must throw overboard everything that hampers action and set before ourselves, as in his day Froebel tells us he attempted to do, the definite task of “founding anew the practical methods of actual teaching so as to bring them into satisfactory relation with the needs of our life of to-day.”