  “The older writings on Instinct are ineffectual wastes of words,” writes Professor James, “because their authors never came down to this simple and definite idea (that the nervous system is to a great extent a pre-organized bundle of reactions), but smothered everything in vague wonder at the clairvoyant and prophetic power of animals—so superior to anything in Man.” Froebel was certainly not in a position to know much of the nervous system, but what he wrote about instinct cannot be classed with these older writings. For even without modern knowledge, he waxes indignant over the opinions of those who created James’ “ineffectual wastes of words.” Far from allowing that instinct in the lower animals is superior to anything in man, Froebel maintains that the very weakness, indefiniteness of man’s instincts or impulses (Triebe) is a sign of his superiority. “Notwithstanding the early manifestation in the human infant of the impulse to employment (BeschÄftigungstriebe), much has been said from an entirely wrong point of view about man’s helplessness at birth, and his slow development to independence, which necessitates for so long a At the same time it should be pointed out that Froebel does not make the opposite mistake of supposing that man has no instincts. Since he approached psychology from the biological side, so far as it could be known to him, Froebel was bound to have faith in instinct, in race-habit, in tendencies which, because they have been of use to the race, are bedded in the nature of each individual. It is to Froebel’s later writings and especially to the little paper, on “The First Action of a Child,” that we must turn to see how wonderfully correct are his views on the whole question of instinct. It may be better to give first the position of modern writers on the subject by quoting from the last chapter of Professor Lloyd Morgan’s “Habit and Instinct,” a clear and concise passage showing that the contrary schools of thought represented on the one hand by the Darwin and Romanes and on the other by Professors James and Wundt, can after all be resolved into a matter of definition. “If, then, the question be asked, whether man has a large or a small endowment of instinct, the answer will depend upon the precise definition of ‘instinct.’ If we take congenital definiteness as characteristic of instinct, we shall agree with Darwin, that ‘the fewness and the comparative simplicity of the instincts of the higher animals are remarkable as In Mr. McDougall’s important contribution to the discussion of human instinct, he says that the view which is rapidly gaining ground is that the gradual evolution of intelligence “did not supplant and lead to the atrophy of the instincts, but controlled and modified their operation.” As Mr. McDougall goes on to state his belief “that the recognition of the full scope and function of the human instincts will appear to those that come after us as the most important advance made by psychology in our time,” it is important to the purpose of this book, to make clear to what extent Froebel’s views on the subject approach those of modern writers. Mr. McDougall makes a very clear distinction between specific tendencies to which he limits the word instinct, and non-specific or general tendencies. Naturally Froebel did not reach this standpoint, but he does seem to have thought out his terminology. He felt strongly as to the use of words of foreign origin, and generally uses “Trieb,” “Lebenstrieb,” “Drang” or “Lebensdrang,” where we might use instinct. But he does occasionally use “instinct,” notably in a passage quoted below “whose impulses, Professor James’ account of instinct begins with the statement that “Every instinct is an impulse,” a driving to action, but the use of the words “Trieb” and “Drang” makes such a pronouncement unnecessary to a German writer, and if this root idea is not implied by the noun, it generally, in Froebel’s writings, makes its appearance in the verb. Thus we frequently read of “a longing which drives the child to,” etc. (die Sehnsucht die das Kind treibt). The merest glance through Froebel’s writings is enough to show his belief in the existence of instinct in the human being. His references to it are constant. It is an impulse (Trieb) “which the child did not give himself, which came without his will, in later life even against his will,” but which “urges to action” (drÄngt ihn dazu). It is a force so strong, that it “holds captive mind and body.” The child is described as “driven by impulse” (des von Lebensdrang getriebenen Kindes). The boy again is “held captive by harmless, even praiseworthy, impulses” (sogar lobenswerten Triebe), or “gives himself up entirely to the impulses of his inner life” (dem Treibenden innern Leben). In his earlier work, “The Education of Man,” Froebel is first concerned with urging that the young human being, “a product of Nature,” has instincts quite as trustworthy as those of any other young “The undisturbed working of the Divine Unity is necessarily good, and this implies that the young human being, still as it were in the process of creation, would seek as a product of Nature, though still unconsciously, yet decidedly and surely that which is in itself best: and, moreover, in a form wholly adapted to his condition, disposition, powers and means. Thus the duckling hastens to the pond, while the young chicken scratches the ground, and the young swallow catches his food upon the wing and scarcely ever touches the ground. We grant space and time to young plants and animals because we know that in accordance with the laws that live in them they will develop properly and grow well. Arbitrary interference with their growth is avoided because it is known that this would disturb their development; but the young human being is looked upon as a piece of wax, a lump of clay, which man can mould into what he pleases.… Thus, O parents, could your children, on whom you force in tender years forms and aims against their nature, thus could your children too unfold in beauty and develop in harmony.”—E., p. 7. It is true that to Froebel evolution is “the working of Divine Unity.” But there seems to be no special reason why this should invalidate what Froebel has to say, any more than Sir Oliver Lodge should be disqualified as a scientist, because he has produced a book in which he writes: “Development means unfolding latent possibilities … growth and development are in accordance with the law of the universe This is exactly Froebel’s position; he writes that “Nature and man have their origin in one and the same eternal Being, and their development takes place in accordance with the same laws, only at different stages.”—E., p. 161. That Froebel not only recognized the presence of instinct in human beings, but that he also saw, as Professor Wundt puts it, that this is “determined in parts by intelligence and volition,” he states very plainly: “Natural instinct and good example will do much, but here, as in all human concerns, one must proceed by extension of knowledge, and by careful scrutiny, or both the one and the other may mislead or be misdirected. Experience cries aloud to us, to warn us of this danger. Assuredly man ought not to neglect his natural instincts, still less abandon them, but he must ennoble them through his intelligence, purify them through his reason.”—L., p. 222. “In the progress of development three stages differentiate themselves and fall apart; and these stages are seen both in individual men, and in the race as a whole. They are: (1) Unconsciousness, the merely instinctive stage; (2) Vague Feeling, the tendency upwards towards consciousness; and (3) Relatively clear Conscious Intelligence. Everything that is acquired by a great unity, say by a family, a community, a nation, must in its beginnings be acquired by the single members It is in “The First Action of a Child” that we find Froebel contrasting the instincts of the lower animals with those of man. Here curiously enough, Froebel, according to Professor Stout, is almost more correct than Professor Lloyd Morgan himself, whose statement “that animals do not perceive relations” Professor Stout regards as misleading. His correction is, “unless an artificial restriction is put on the meaning of the term relation, this statement would imply that animals cannot perceive the position of objects in space or their motion.… Hence we should say, not that the perception of relation is deficient in animals, but only that definite perception of relations is deficient which depends on comparison.” Now it is this very point of comparison which Froebel takes as the essential intellectual difference between the animal independent from birth thanks to fully developed instinct, and the child helpless and apparently inferior at first, yet destined for progress “self-active and free.” He writes: “The animal whose life impulses, powers and abilities, whose instincts as they are called (dessen Lebenstriebe, KrÄfte und Anlagen, dessen Instincte wie man es nennt) are at once so definite and strong, that in natural conditions it never fails, indeed cannot fail to overcome every hindrance within its life’s reach, the animal just on this account can never arrive at a knowledge of “It is quite different in the life of man, in the beginning of which practically nothing can be accomplished without help from without. Nothing especially can be accomplished through a preponderance of inner power such, for example, as the newly hatched duckling shows on the water. Thus everything external must, by Man, with his preponderance of helplessness, be overcome as an obstacle solely through inner advancing, and outer strengthening and increasing of power through free activity of the will.”—P., p. 25. With this passage from “The First Action of a Child” we can compare the following from Stout’s “Analytic Psychology”: “The peculiar feature in the life of animals which prevents progressive development is the existence of instincts which do for them what the human being must do for himself. Their inherited organization is such, that they perform the movements adapted to supply their needs on the mere occurrence of an appropriate external stimulus.… In man, a blind craving has to grope its way from darkness into light in order to become effective; in the animal the means of satisfaction are provided ready made by Nature at the outset.” After having stated that “Every instinct is an impulse,” Professor James goes on to say that instinct depends upon the biological fact that the nervous Notwithstanding the very obvious fact that Froebel could know but little of the nervous system and its re-actions, it is still quite evident that his observation had led him to a clear recognition of the earlier stage, when “hesitation and choice” are impossible. The child, he says, “acts in obedience to an instinct which holds captive mind and body,” he is “incredibly short-sighted in his obedience to instinct.” That he also recognized the beginning of hesitation and choice is shown in his defence of the child who “in spite of abandonment to momentary impulse,” may have “an intense inner desire for goodness,” which, “if it could be appreciated in time,” would make of him a good man (E., p. 125); and also in his plea for the early awakening and training “of judgment and of that reflection which avoids so many blunders and which, in a natural way (i.e. without training), does not come to man sufficiently early.”—E., p. 79. “Another source of boyish faults is in the precipitation, want of caution, indiscretion, in a word the thoughtlessness, the acting according to an impulse quite blameless, even praiseworthy, which holds captive all activity of mind and body, but whose consequences have not as yet entered into his experience, indeed it has not yet entered into his mind to define the consequences.”—E., p. 122. Froebel gives from real life a few well-chosen examples of what the boy so “incredibly short-sighted “Similarly in each child there is repeated the deed which marks the beginning of moral and human emancipation, of the dawn of reason—essentially the same deed that marked the dawn of reason in the race as a whole.”—E., p. 41. It must have been a somewhat unorthodox view in 1826, but some pages further on Froebel speaks even more boldly of “the fall or—since the result is the same—the ascent of the mind of man from simple emotional development into the development of externally analytic and critical reason.”—E., p. 193. Professor James goes on to state two other principles which make for non-uniformity of instinct. The first of these is that instincts are inhibited by habits, and the second that instincts are transitory. The physiological fact of “plasticity” in which “The helplessness of the new-born human being in regard to all outer things is the opposite of his future ability—since life is a whole—to help himself through the enhancing of his will-power.… Helplessness and personal will, therefore, become the two points between which the child’s life turns, and the fulcrum is free activity. Herein lies for the educator a key to phenomena of child-life which seem to contradict each other. For out of the impulse to activity (ThÄtigkeitstriebe) and to free self-employment, or rather out of the united three—helplessness, personal will, and self-employment—soon proceed custom and habit, often indolence and too facile yielding. “Consideration of custom, and of the spontaneous acquiring of habit in the child, especially in regard to what causes it, and to its effect upon the child, is just as important for the educator, as is the consideration and guidance of his instinct of activity. This very phenomenon that the child so early accustoms and inures himself to something, this early phenomenon of child life, the growing together and becoming one, as it were, This proof may not be quite so clear to others as it was to Froebel, but at least the passage shows the close connection in his mind between instinct—the impulse towards activity and employment—and habit, and that he had noted the interaction between the two. There are many references to the transitory nature of at least childish impulses. “What delight a child takes in noticing what is smooth, woolly, hairy, sparkling, round, etc.… But if you do not cherish this and do not set it going in the right way, it becomes a lost thing; it grows rusty, and loses its power as a magnet loses its power when it is not sufficiently used. Power that is not at once used, effort that does not at once meet the right object—perishes.”—M., p. 181. “Now, at last, we would fain give another direction to the energies, desires and instincts (KrÄfte, Neigungen und Triebe) of the child growing into boyhood; but it is too late. For the deep meaning of child-life passing into boyhood we not only failed to appreciate, but we misjudged it; we not only failed to nurse it, but we misdirected and crushed it.”—E., p. 75. “See parents, the first impulse to activity, the first constructive impulse (Bildungstrieb) comes from man according to the nature of the working of “The neglect of inner power causes the inner power itself to vanish.”—E., p. 133. “It is true there are few such children; but there would be more, were we not ignorantly blunting so many tendencies in our children, or starving them into inanition.”—E., p. 220. Writing of the origin of boyish faults Froebel says: “When we look for the sources of these shortcomings … we find a double reason, first, complete neglect of the development of certain sides of human life, secondly early misdirection, early unnatural stages in development, and distortion, through arbitrary interference with human powers, qualities and tendencies good in their source.… Therefore at the bottom of every shortcoming in man, lies a crushed, frustrated quality or tendency, suppressed, misunderstood or misguided.”—E., pp. 119-121. When we come to the enumeration of the various human instincts we find that Froebel can hardly be said to have omitted any that are important from an educational point of view, except perhaps the instinct of fear, and to this he would be loth to appeal. Before the publication of Mr. McDougall’s “Social Psychology,” there were but few attempts at any classification of instincts within at least the reach of English readers. In July, 1900, there appeared an article in “The Pedagogical Seminary” in which Mr. Eby proposed to reconstruct the Kindergarten on the basis of natural instinct. The writer had apparently no dawning idea that this was the original basis Mr. Eby’s tabulation was:
Another classification, well known at least to teachers, is that given by Mr. Kirkpatrick in his “Fundamentals of Child Study.” His list comprises:
Interesting, helpful and suggestive as these lists are, they both serve as examples of the difficulty, if not impossibility, of any hard-and-fast lines of classification. For example, regulative instincts, which Mr. Kirkpatrick divides into moral and religious, must be derived from social instincts; gregarious instincts cannot be satisfactorily separated from instincts of self-preservation, and surely all instincts must be adaptive. Froebel’s account of the instincts of a child in some ways resembles that of Mr. McDougall, and it is certainly in some points more enlightening than either of the others. Under the heading of Investigation, Froebel brings both the Number Instinct, and the Interest in Stories, to which Mr. Eby gives a position as fundamental as that of the Social Instinct. The constructive instinct It is because of the emphasis Froebel continually lays upon the developing self-consciousness that his views somewhat tend to resemble those of Mr. McDougall, though it would be absurd to attempt to draw any parallel. For Froebel, though he in no way minimizes the importance of Imitation, and although it is as the apostle of Play that he is most widely known, yet, like Mr. McDougall, he never speaks either of an Instinct of Play nor of Imitation, that is, he never uses for these his special word Trieb; nor has he any Instinct for Religion. Curiously enough, too, Froebel, with his constant insistence on the threefold aspect of mind, partly forestalls Mr. McDougall’s view that “instinctive action is the outcome of a distinctly mental process, one which is incapable of being described in purely mechanical terms, … and one which, like every other mental process, has and can only be fully described in terms of the three aspects of all mental process, the cognitive, the affective, and the conative aspects.” It is in connection with the very earliest activity that Froebel writes: “The first phenomenon of awakening child-life is activity. It is an inner activity, showing itself by consideration of and working with what is outer, by overcoming hindrances and subduing the outer. The nature of man as growing towards, and destined to reach self-consciousness, is shown “We are repeatedly impressed with the conviction that everything that is to be done for the specifically human development of the child must be connected with the fostering of this instinct to employ himself. For this instinct corresponds to man’s triune activity of doing, feeling and thinking. It corresponds to the essential nature of humanity, which is to have power and understanding, to become ever more and more self-conscious and self-determining.”—P., p. 24. In the last sentence of this passage, which refers to the merest infant, and which immediately precedes Froebel’s comparison of human instincts with those of the lower animals, are indicated the lines on which we may say Froebel classified though he never did so formally. He deals only with the “purely” or “specifically” human, as he never tires of reiterating, so that fundamental animal instincts, self-preserving and race-preserving, such as feeding and the sexual impulse, are little noticed, and only in connection with the necessity for self-control. But, as with Mr. McDougall much is made to depend on self-feeling, so with Froebel still more does everything centre round that self-consciousness which to him is of the very nature of man, and which is made possible by the undefined or undeveloped character of human instinct. The instincts and impulses noted by Froebel, all, be it clearly understood, in the service of the growing self-consciousness, and self-determination are: the instinct to independent activity (der Trieb zur Frei- und Selbst-thÄtigkeit), the instinct to investigation (Forschungstrieb), with which Froebel deals very thoroughly and by which he explains a great deal, the impulse of acquisition, the instinct of construction or formation (Bildungstrieb Gestaltungstrieb), the social instinct and the maternal instinct. Froebel himself never tabulates, yet his apparently careful use of the word Trieb, taken along with his convincing explanations of various tendencies (Richtungen, Neigungen, Streben) seems to show that in relation to instinct there were in his mind two pairs of ideas, so closely related as to be inseparable, viz.: (a) Investigation and Control of Surroundings, and (b) Consciousness of Self and Self-Determination. It is impossible to become conscious of one’s self except by becoming conscious of a world of objects. The two main lines on which instinctive action must run, if it is to be, as it must be, adaptive, are given in Froebel’s words, “to have power and understanding.” To adapt ourselves to our surroundings we must first know them, and secondly, have power over them. Even this separation into firstly and “The institution will be fundamental inasmuch as in training and instruction it will rest on the foundation from which proceed all genuine knowledge and all genuine practical attainments; it will rest on life itself and on creative effort, on the union and interdependence of doing and thinking, representation and knowledge, art and science. The institution will base its work on the pupil’s personal efforts in work and expression, making these, again, the foundation of all genuine knowledge and culture. Joined with thoughtfulness these efforts become a direct medium of culture; joined with reasoning, they become a direct means of instruction and thus make of work a true subject of instruction.”—E., p. 38. Knowledge of his surroundings is however not the only knowledge that the child gains through action; this is his only way of gaining knowledge of himself, of his power and of his weakness. It is through outward activity that, as Froebel says, he “comes to self-consciousness and learns to order, determine and master himself,” and it is in connection with the earliest Impulse to Activity that Froebel writes: “The present effort of mankind is an effort after freer self-development, freer self-formation, freer determining of one’s own destiny.… Therefore the more or less clear aim of the individual is Consciousness, the attaining of “The first spontaneous employments of the child are noticing his environment, and play, that is, independent outward action, living outside himself.… The deepest foundation of all the phenomena, of the earliest activity of the child is this; that he must exercise the dim anticipation of conscious life, and consequently must exercise power, test and thus compare power, exercise independence, test and thus compare the degree of independence.”—P., pp. 29-31. “All outer activity of the child has its distinctive and ultimate ground in his inmost nature and life. The deepest craving of this inner life, this inner activity, is to behold itself mirrored in some external object. In and through such reflection the child learns to know his own activity, its essence, direction and aim, and learns also to order and determine his activity in correspondence with the outer phenomena. Such mirroring of the inner life, such making of the inner life objective is essential, for through it the child comes to self-consciousness, and learns to order, determine and master himself. The child must perceive and grasp his own life in an objective manifestation before he can perceive and grasp it in himself.”—P., It may seem very presumptuous to venture to discuss here the classification of instincts adopted by Mr. McDougall, yet there are in it a few points which would not have appealed to Froebel, and it is conceivable that Mr. McDougall might make alterations in a future edition and attach even more importance to positive self-feeling as Froebel would undoubtedly have done. It is impossible to imagine Froebel having any dealings with an Instinct of Self-Abasement, though the Instinct of Self-Assertion is in full accordance with his ideas. And while it is hard to see the biological utility of an Instinct of Self-Abasement, it does seem as if the frustration of the Instinct of Self-Assertion might be made to cover all that is brought under its opposite. It is difficult, too, to imagine Froebel allowing an Instinct of Pugnacity, and Mr. McDougall allows that this presupposes the other instincts, and that it cannot strictly be brought under his own definition of instinct. He allows, too, that this instinct is “lacking in the constitution of the females of some species,” and it seems impossible not to notice the difference between little boys and girls in this respect. Surely it puts too much to the credit of mere pugnacity to say: “A man devoid of the pugnacious instinct would not only be incapable of anger, but would lack this great source of reserve energy, which is called into play in most of us by any difficulty in our path.” “At this age the healthy boy brought up simply and naturally never evades an obstacle, a difficulty; nay he seeks it and overcomes it. ‘Let it lie,’ the vigorous youngster exclaims to his father, who is about to roll a piece of wood out of the boy’s way—‘let it lie, I can get over it.’ With difficulty, indeed, the boy gets over it the first time; but he has accomplished the feat by his own strength. Strength and courage have grown in him. He returns, gets over the obstacle a second time, and soon he learns to clear it easily.… The most difficult thing seems easy, the most daring thing seems without danger to him, for his prompting comes from the innermost, from his heart and will.”—E., p. 102. “Many of the plays and occupations of boys at this age are predominantly mere practice and trials of strength, and many aim simply at display of strength.… The boy tries to see himself in his companions, to feel himself in them, to weigh and measure himself by them, to know and find himself with their help.”—E., pp. 112-114. In passing, it may be suggested that it hardly seems worth while to postulate an Instinct of Repulsion with the impulses or actions of rejecting evil-tasting substances from the mouth and of shrinking from objects which are slimy or slippery. Surely the rejection of There does not seem to be anything to which Mr. McDougall would take exception in what Froebel has to say about Play or about Imitation. As to play, Froebel must be regarded as a pioneer in the attempt to explain a subject all important to educators, and by his explanation certain kinds, and notably imitative play find an appropriate place under his instinct of investigation (Forschungstrieb). “The means of shadowing forth to the child his own nature and that of the cosmos are his play and playthings.”—P., p. 201. As the word Investigation certainly implies activity, it may be permissible to wonder why Mr. McDougall has not made use of the terms “The Instinct of Investigation and the Emotion of Curiosity,” the more so that he himself has clearly a strong inclination to use the word curiosity to express emotion. Imitation, as we have seen, “It is just as important to notice the habits of a child, especially with regard to cause and effect, as it is to notice and to foster its impulse to activity.… As now habit springs from free and spontaneous activity, so too does imitation, and it is no less important for the fostering of child-life to keep in view this origin of imitation, than it is to keep in view the phenomena of habit, custom and independent activity. For we see the whole inner life of the child manifest itself as a tri-unity in the threefold phenomenon of spontaneous activity, habit and imitation. These three phenomena are closely united in early childhood, and give us most important discoveries concerning child-life, as to foundation and result and surest guides for the early correct treatment of the child.”—P., p. 27. Mr. McDougall notes “at least three distinct classes” of imitative actions. The first class consists of expressive actions, secondary to the sympathetic induction of the emotions they express, as when a child responds to a smile with a smile, and here we remember how Froebel notes the child’s first smile to his mother as the earliest sign of what he calls “the feeling of community.” The third class is the deliberate and voluntary imitation of an admired person, which does not concern us here. The second class are “simple ideo-motor actions evoked by the visual presentation of a movement,” and as a parallel to this we have Froebel’s “working of the inner activity wakened by the sight of outer activity.” “The smallest child moves joyfully, springs gaily, hops up and down, or beats with his arms when he sees a moving object. This is certainly not merely delight in the movement of the object before him, but it is the working of inner activity A point to which exception may well be taken is that in the infant Froebel notes what he seems to regard as a fundamental tendency, the impulse or instinct of activity, or as he frequently puts it, the impulse to busy oneself, which, however, soon differentiates into two more specific tendencies, viz. the impulse to investigate and the constructive impulse. “What formerly the child did only for the sake of activity, the boy now does for the sake of the result or product of his activity. The child’s impulse to activity (ThÄtigkeitstrieb) has in the boy become a constructive, a formative impulse (Bildungs-Gestaltungstriebe), in which the whole outer life of the boy finds at this stage its outlet.”—E., p. 99. It may be worth mentioning that Groos would like to assume a “universal impulse to activity,” and though he “can only hold fast to the primal need for activity,” yet according to him Ribot approaches this assumption.—(“The Play of Man,” p. 3). Even in the infant, however, this instinct or impulse to activity is devoted to “penetrating what is outer,” and the Kindergarten, meant for children from three to six, is intended to foster the three instincts, activity, investigation and construction, as well as to cultivate the social instinct by placing a little child among his equals. Froebel describes it in his plan as: “An Institution for fostering of family life and for shaping the life of the nation and human life generally, through cultivating the human instincts of activity, of As regards the child, the word Trieb, which is exactly equal to impulse, seems to be applied only in one other direction, to what we would call the social instinct, and here again Froebel shows his recognition of the vagueness and indefiniteness of early consciousness. As he attributes to the infant the one impulse to activity which differentiates later into Investigation and Construction, so in the infant he recognizes a “feeling of community” (GesammtgefÜhl), but says that it differentiates later into something more definite. “The development of man constitutes an unbroken whole, steadily and continuously progressing, gradually ascending. The feeling of community (GemeingefÜhl) awakened in the infant, develops in the child into impulse, inclination (entwickelt sich in dem Kinde der Trieb, die Neigung).”—E., p. 95. Under the important Instinct of Investigation, or the Instinct for Self-Instruction, Froebel includes a great deal. Many different activities until recently somewhat carelessly talked of collectively as “play,” Froebel has separated and explained as the child’s way of investigating his surroundings. Even “the earliest activity and first action of the child,” Froebel says, shows “the instinct to self-teaching and self-instruction.” Imitative action or imitative play is always referred to as action which helps towards understanding “Your child will certainly understand all the better if you make him take a part—though it be only by imitation—in what grown-up people are doing in their anxiety to maintain life.…”—M., p. 141. “I have already said that this little game arose because people felt that a child’s love of activity, and his striving to get the use of his limbs, ought to be carried on in such a way as to lift him at once into the complexity of the life which surrounds him.… Pray do not disturb them in their ingenious charming play (saying grace over the dolls’ feast), but rather avoid noticing it if you cannot identify yourself with its charm.… For how is your child to cultivate in himself the feeling of what is holy, if you will not grant that it takes form for him in all its purity in his innocent games.”—M., p. 148. “What man tries to represent he begins to understand.”—E., p. 76. Representation, however, may be carried out in many ways, by the use of material, as well as by bodily action so that the constructive instinct also subserves that of investigation. “To grasp a thing through life and action is much more developing, cultivating and strengthening than merely to receive it through the verbal communication of ideas. Similarly, representation of a thing by material means, in life and action, united with thought and speech, is more developing than merely verbal representation of ideas.”—E., p. 279. “The child must perceive and grasp his own life in an objective manifestation before he can perceive and grasp it in himself. This law of development, prescribed by Nature and by the essential character of the child, must always be respected and obeyed by the true educator. Its recognition is the aim of my gifts and games apprehended relatively to the educator.”—P., p. 38. Here Froebel has plainly stated the main object of his specially selected play-material. The ordinary parent not being “the man advanced in insight,” who “makes clear to himself the purpose of playthings,” Froebel often saw children supplied with expensive but unsuitable toys, toys which would not bring the child any nearer his destination, “to have power and understanding, to become ever more and more self-conscious and self-determining.” “Here, then, we meet as a great imperfection in ordinary playthings, a disturbing element which slumbers like a viper under roses, viz. that it is too complex, too much finished. The child can begin no new thing with it, cannot produce enough variety by it; his power of creative imagination, his power of giving outward form to his own idea is thus actually deadened. When we provide children with too finished playthings, we deprive them of the incentive to perceive the particular in the general (P., p. 122).… What presents are most prized by the child? Those which afford him a means of unfolding his inner life most freely and of shaping it in various directions.”—P., p. 142. “The man, advanced in insight, should be as clear as possible in his own mind about all this before he introduces his child into the outer world. Even when he gives the child a plaything, he must “To realize his aims, man, and more particularly the child, requires material, if it be only a bit of wood or a pebble with which he makes something or which he makes into something. In order to lead the child to the handling of material, we gave him the soft ball, the wooden sphere and cube, etc., discussed in the chapters on the Kindergarten Gifts. Each of these gifts incites the child to free spontaneous activity, to independent movement.” As the child grows older his constructions advance, but still they connect themselves with investigating: “Here he makes a little garden under the hedge; there he represents the course of the river in his furrow and in his ditch; there he studies the effects of the fall or pressure of water upon his little water-wheel.”—E., p. 105. Investigating naturally leads to exploring, “external objects invite him who would bring them nearer to move toward them,” and so the child once he is able to stand begins to travel: “When the child makes his first attempts at walking he frequently tries to go to some particular object. This effort may have its source in the child’s desire to hold himself firm and upright by it, but we also observe that it gives him pleasure to be near the object, to touch it, to feel it, and perhaps also—a new phase of activity—to be able to move it. Hence we see The boy has lost none of this tendency to explore, but he goes further afield, and it is worth noting that because the boy has a distinct purpose in view his exploring is distinctly called work. “If activity brought joy to the child, work now gives delight to the boy. Hence the daring and venturesome feats of boyhood; the explorations of caves and ravines; the climbing of trees and mountains; the searching of heights and depths; the roaming through fields and forests.… To climb a new tree means to the boy the discovery of a new world.… Not less significant of development is the boy’s inclination (Neigung) to descend into caves and ravines, to ramble in the shady grove and dark forest.”—E., pp. 102-5. Even the baby shows trace of the collecting or acquiring instinct, but to Froebel this still falls under the head of investigation. The child who has just learned to walk is: “attracted by the bright round smooth pebble, by the quaint brilliant leaf, by the smooth piece of wood, and he tries to get hold of these with the help of the newly acquired use of his limbs. Look at the child that can scarcely keep himself erect and that can walk only with the greatest care—he sees a twig, a bit of straw; painfully he secures it.… See the child laboriously stooping and slowly going forward under the eaves. The force of the rain has washed out of the sand small, smooth, bright pebbles, and the ever-observing child gathers them.”—E., p. 72. The boy, still only from six to eight years old, keeps up the collecting habit with more method and with a wider range, and he demands assistance. “Not less full of significance, nor less developing, is the boy’s inclination to descend into caves and ravines, to ramble in the shady grove and in the dark forest. It is the effort (Streben) to seek and find the new, to see and discover the hidden, the desire to bring to light and to appropriate that which lies concealed in darkness and shadow. “From these rambles the boy returns with rich treasures of unknown stones and plants, of animals—worms, beetles, spiders and lizards, that dwell in darkness and concealment. ‘What is this? What is its name?’ etc., are the questions to be answered; and every new word enriches his world and throws light upon his surroundings. Beware of greeting him with the exclamation, ‘Fie, throw that down, that is horrid!’ or ‘Drop that, it will bite you!’ If the child obeys, he This quotation brings us to another mode of investigation, that of asking questions, which Froebel was not likely to miss. “The child, your child, ye fathers, follows you wherever you go. Do not harshly repel him. Show no impatience about his ever-recurring questions. Every harshly repelling word crushes a bud of his tree of life.… Question upon question comes from the lips of the boy thirsting for knowledge—How? Why? When? What for? and every satisfactory answer opens to him a new world.”—E., p. 86. Professor O’Shea has an interesting section on what he calls “The Sense of Location,” which he says is “at the bottom of one of the most interesting and important phenomena of adjustment—the questioning activity.” So it may be worth while to notice that Froebel, whom the Professor has dismissed with one slighting reference, has been beforehand with him here, and has dealt with this same early beginning in one of his earliest Mother Songs, viz. “It’s all Gone,” where he says to the mother: “How can the child understand that anything is “all gone,” yet he must see sense in it or he will not be satisfied. What he saw just now is there no longer, what was above is below, what was there has vanished.”—M., p. 18. Questioning implies language, but Froebel has no language instinct. He does, however, call speech immediate (unmittelbar), usually translated “innate,” and he does say that because others talk to him, the child’s capacity for speech will develop of necessity It is in connection with the child’s earliest investigations that Froebel brings in the learning to speak. In “The Education of Man,” he notes how the young child brings all his discoveries, “his treasures,” to the mother’s lap, and she is warned to give the right kind of help and at the right time. “It is the longing for interpretation that urges the child to appeal to us, it is the intense desire for this that urges him to bring his treasures to us and to lay them in our laps. The child loves all things that enter his small horizon and extend his little world. To him the least thing is a new discovery; but it must not come dead into the little world, nor lie dead therein lest it obscure the small horizon and crush the little world.”—E., p. 73. All the help the mother need give at first is to supply names, since as Froebel says, “the name, as it were, creates the thing for the child.” Later she must help him to compare and classify. “How little is needed from those around the child to aid him in this tendency (to seek for knowledge). It is only necessary to name, to put into words what the child does, sees and finds.”—E., p. 75. “It is as well while the child is making these first experiments (at walking about the room) to name the objects—e.g. There is the chair, the table, etc.… The object of giving these names is not primarily the development of the child’s power of speech, but to assist his comprehension of the object, its parts and its properties by defining his sense-impressions. By a rich store of such experiences the capacity for speech Expression, of course, of which speech is but one form, is to Froebel all-important. “Speech,” he says, is “required and conditioned by the attainment to consciousness,” and as self-consciousness is the characteristic of humanity, so speech is “the first manifestation of mankind.” In his “Autobiography” Froebel writes: “Mankind as a whole, as one great unity, had now become my quickening thought. I kept this conception continually before my mind. I sought after proofs of it in my little world within and in the great world without me; I desired by many a struggle to win it, and then to set it worthily forth. And thus I was led back to the first appearance of man upon our earth, and to the first manifestation of mankind, his speech.”—A., p. 84. In talking of the mother’s play with an infant he says that she accompanies every action with words, “even if obliged to confess that there can be no understanding of the spoken word,” as “the general sense of hearing is not yet developed, still less the special sense of hearing words.” Froebel says she is right: “for that which will one day develop and which must originate, begins and must begin when there is as yet only the conditions, the possibility thereof. Thus it is with the attainment of the human being to consciousness, and the speech required and conditioned by consciousness.”—P., p. 40. Words, says Froebel, first separate the child from the world outside him. “Up to this stage (the beginning of speech), the inner being of man is still an unmembered, undifferentiated unity. With language, the expression and representation of the internal begin; with language, organization, or a differentiation with reference to ends and means sets in.”—E., p. 50. Both in the earlier “Education of Man,” and in his later writings Froebel uses the strong expression that “the word creates the thing” for the child, and in one passage he adds that by language the idea is defined and retained. “This period is pre-eminently the period of the development of speech. Therefore in all the child did, it was indispensable that what he did should be clearly designated by words. Every object, every thing became such, as it were, only through the word; before it had been named although the child might have seemed to see it with the outer eyes, it had no existence for the child. The name, as it were, created the thing for the child; hence the name and the thing seemed to be one.”—E., p. 90. “Through her little rhymes the mother will make clear to the little one what he has done, and so his accidental productions will become a point of departure for his self-development. Word and form are opposite and yet related. Hence the word should accompany the form as its shadow. In a certain sense, giving a form a name really creates the form itself. Through the name, moreover, the form is retained in memory and defined in thought.”—P., p. 192. Of very early speech Froebel says that it shows: “the peculiarity and requirement of the human mind to render itself intelligible to clarify itself by communication with others.”—P., p. 56. Having investigated his surroundings, near or far, and collected what seems to him attractive, the child, whether older or younger, arranges his treasures in some way, and this arrangement implies some comparison. “Like things must be ranged together and things unlike must be separated,” says Froebel of the child “scarce able to walk,” who has collected “the small, smooth, pebbles washed out of the sand by the rain.” This “arranging objects of each kind singly in a row” is at first no doubt only a recognition of the like and unlike, but Froebel notes that it is also one way in which the child may arrive at “the capacity for counting” by which his sphere of knowledge is again extended. “The knowledge of the relations of quantity adds much to a child’s life.… At first he places together similar objects.… Who has not had frequent opportunity to observe how the child arranges the objects of each kind singly in a row. Let the mother supply the quickening word, saying Apple, apple, apple, etc. All apples. Pear, pear, pear, etc. All pears.… One pear, another apple, another apple.… Instead of the indefinite word “another” the mother subsequently uses the numerals, counting together with the child, thus: One apple, two apples, three apples, etc.”—E., p. 80. To many children, however, counting may come through efforts to draw. I have seen a child of four-and-a-half, in drawing a man, make a line for the arm, then lay down her pencil to count her own fingers and “The representation of objects by drawing, and the exact perception conditioned and required by the representation, soon leads the child quickly to recognize the constantly repeated association of certain numbers of different objects—e.g. two eyes and two arms, five fingers, etc. Thus the drawing of the object leads to the discovery of number.… By the development of the capacity for counting, the child’s sphere of knowledge, his world, is again extended.… He was unable to determine relative quantities, but now he knows that he has two large and three small pebbles, four white and five yellow flowers,” etc.—E., p. 80. Yet another mode of Investigation is that of Experimenting; every normal child is what Froebel calls “a self-teaching scientist.” “The material must be known not only by its name, but by its qualities and uses.… For this reason the child examines the object on all sides; for this reason he tears and breaks it; for this reason he puts it in his mouth and bites it. We reprove the child for his naughtiness and foolishness; and yet he is wiser than we who reprove him. An instinct which the child did not give himself, the instinct which rightly understood and rightly guided would lead him to know God in his works, drives him to this.”—E., p. 73. It may well be through his ceaseless experimenting that the little child begins to draw, gains what the late Mr. Ebenezer Cooke called “a language of line,” or as Froebel puts it, notices “linear phenomena, which “A child has found a pebble, a fragment of lime or chalk. In order to determine by experiment its properties, he has rubbed it on a board near by, and has discovered its property of imparting colour. See how he delights in the newly discovered property, how busily he makes use of it! … but soon he begins to find pleasure in the winding, straight, curved, and other forms that appear. These linear phenomena direct his attention to the linear properties of surrounding objects. Now the head becomes a circle, and now the circular line represents the head, the elliptical curve connected with it represents the body; arms and legs appear as straight or broken lines, and these again represent arms and legs; the fingers he sees as straight lines meeting in a common point, and lines so connected are, for the busy child, again hands and fingers; the eyes he sees as dots, and these again represent eyes; and thus a new world opens within and without. For what man tries to represent, that he begins to understand.”—E., p. 75. I have watched a child go through the process of discovering “linear phenomena,” just as Froebel describes it, no doubt from his own observation. A boy of three, having folded a piece of paper for the roof of a house, was colouring it, by rubbing on red chalk, when he called out, “Oh! I’m making lines.” The other children went on rubbing, but Phil made “lines” till the roof was finished. But Froebel does not leave unnoticed the fact that the very earliest “drawing” is an outgrowth of the muscular action to which his instinct of activity is “Would you know how to lead the child in this matter? Watch him, he will teach you what to do. See! he is tracing the table by passing his fingers along its edges and outlines as far as he can reach, he is sketching the object on itself. This is the first and the safest step by which he becomes aware of the outlines and forms of objects. In this way he sketches and so studies the chair, the bench, the window. But soon he advances. He draws lines across the four-cornered bit of board, across the leaf of the table, or the seat of the chair, in the dim anticipation that so he can retain the forms and relations of the surfaces. Now, already he draws the form diminished. “See! there the child has drawn table, chair and bench on a leaf of the table. Do you not see how he spontaneously trained himself for this? Objects which he could move, which were in sight, he laid on the board, and drew their form on the plane surface, following the boundaries of the objects with his hands. Soon scissors and boxes, and later leaves and twigs, even his own hand and the shadows of objects will thus be copied. “Much is developed in the child by this action, more than it is possible to express—a clear comprehension of form, the possibility of representing the form separate from the object, the possibility of retaining the form as such, and the strengthening and fitting of hand and arm for the free representation of form.”—E., p. 77. Here, perhaps, is the right place to introduce what Froebel had to say about the artistic tendencies of “Absolutely nothing can appear, nothing visible and sensible can come forth, that does not hold within itself the living spirit; that does not bear upon its surface the imprint of the living spirit of the being by whom it has been produced, and to whom it owes its existence. And this is true of the work of every human being—from the highest artist to the meanest labourer—as well as of the works of God, which are Nature, the creation, and all created things.”—E., p. 153. So, when Froebel comes to speak of art as a subject of the school curriculum he says: “Here, art will be considered only as the pure representation of the inner … differentiated according to the material it uses, whether motion, as such, audible in sound, or visible in lines, surfaces and colours, or massive”; and he adds: “We noticed that even at an earlier stage children have the desire to draw, but the desire also to express ideas by modelling and colouring is frequently found at this earlier stage of childhood, certainly at the very beginning of the stage of boyhood (from six years old). This proves that art and appreciation of art constitute a general capacity or talent of man, and should be cared for early, at latest in boyhood. “This does not imply that the boy is to devote himself chiefly to art, and is to become an artist; but that he should be enabled to understand and appreciate true works of art. At the same time, a true education will guard him from the error of claiming to be an artist unless there is in him the true artistic calling.”—E., p. 227. In connection with the mother’s instinctive rhythmic crooning and dandling of the infant, Froebel says: “Thus the genuine natural mother cautiously follows in all directions the slowly developing all-sided life of the child. Others suppose him to be empty.… Thus those means of cultivation that lead so simply and naturally to the development of rhythm are lost.… Nevertheless an early development of rhythmic movement would prove most wholesome.… Even very small children, in moments of quiet, and particularly when going to sleep, will hum little strains of songs they have heard; and this should be heeded and developed as the first germ of future growth in melody and song. Undoubtedly this would soon lead in children to a spontaneity such as is shown by children in the use of speech.”—E., p. 71. In the “Mother Songs,” too, Froebel writes: “Hence it is so very important to rouse at least the germs of all this (the perceiving of harmony in sound and form and colour) early in a human being. If they do not develop and take shape as independent formations in life, they at least teach how to understand and recognize those of other people. This is life-gain enough. It makes a person’s life richer—richer by the lives of others. And how could our earthly life be long enough to form our being with equal perfection on all sides. We can only do it by knowing and respectfully recognizing in the mirror of the lives of others what we should like to carry out ourselves. And this is as it should be, for it is by means of knowledge, regard for and respectful recognition of others, that the whole of humanity ought to represent the whole In what he says of the Interest in Stories, Froebel again seems to show deeper insight than either Mr. Eby or Professor Kirkpatrick. Mr. McDougall does not touch upon the subject. It is still the outcome of the child’s instinctive desire to understand himself and his surroundings. Froebel says very truly that he can only understand others in proportion as he understands himself, and can only learn to understand himself, his own life, by comparing it with that of others. The desire for stories is “a striving, a longing, a demand of the mind” (ein Streben, eine Sehnsucht, eine Forderung des GemÜthes). For the little one, the simplest story of the mother bird feeding her young ones is a help to the understanding of his own life, makes his own life objective; the mother’s “effective story will hold up a looking-glass to the child, especially if it be told at the right time.” For the boy the story does the same and also answers to his instinctive demand not only to understand the present, but the past: “It is the innermost desire and need of a vigorous, genuine boy to understand his own life, to get a knowledge of its nature, its origin and outcome. Only the study of the life of others can furnish such points of comparison with the life he himself has experienced. In these the boy, endowed with an active life of his own, can view the latter as in a mirror and learn to appreciate its value. This is the chief reason why boys are so fond of stories, legends and tales; the more so when these are told as having actually occurred at some time, or as lying within the reach of probability, for which, however, there are scarcely “The existence of the present teaches him the existence of the past. That, which was before he was, he would know; he would know the reason, the past cause of what now is. Who fails to remember the keen desire that filled his heart when he beheld old walls, and towers, ruins, monuments and columns on hill and the roadside—to hear others give accounts of these things, their times and causes … thus is developed the desire and craving for tales, legends, for all kinds of stories, and later for historical accounts.”—E., p. 115. Even the fairy story seems to have found its legitimate place under the same heading, the instinct for investigation. Froebel sees that it covers for the little child the ground occupied by myth in the primitive consciousness. It explains the otherwise inexplicable. “Even the present in which the boy lives still contains much that at this period of development he cannot interpret, and yet would like to interpret; much that seems to him dumb, and which he would fain have speak; … and thus there is developed in him the intense desire for fables and fairy tales which impart language and reason to speechless things—the one within, the other beyond the limits of human relations. Surely all must have noticed this if they have given more than superficial attention to the life of boys at this age. Similarly, they must have noticed that if the boy’s desire is not gratified by those around him, he will spontaneously hit upon the invention and presentation of fairy tales, and either work them out in his own mind or entertain his companions “The child, like the man, would like to learn the significance of what happens around him. This is the foundation of the Greek choruses, especially in tragedy. This, too, is the foundation of very many productions in the realms of legends and fairy tales, and is indeed the cause of many phenomena in actual history. This is the result of the deeply-rooted consciousness, the deeply slumbering premonition of being surrounded by that which is higher and more conscious than ourselves.”—P., p. 146. The outcome of the instinct of construction, which is also so closely connected with the instinct of investigation, is that “sense of power” which is self-consciousness. Without this there can be no self-determination, but, says Froebel, “the sense of power must precede its cultivation.” With this growing personality, too, Froebel connects what is called the instinct of Acquisition, which begins when the little child “painfully secures his bit of straw,” and the boy of six to eight shows “the tendency to appropriate what he finds in the darkness of cave and forest.” “The same tendency that urges the boy to seek knowledge on the mountain and in the valley, attracts and holds him to the plain. Here he makes a garden, there he represents the course of the river, and studies the effect of the presence of water … here he has dammed up the water to form a pool.… He is particularly fond of busying himself with clear running water and And here, just when he is emphasizing the fast developing consciousness of self, with its demand for its own space and its own material, Froebel brings out the strength of the social instinct in boyhood. It is here that he points out that this effort to construct has a uniting, not a separating, tendency. Continuous with the last quotation comes: “When the space to be filled is extensive, when the province to be ruled is large, when the whole to be represented is composed of many parts, then brotherly union of those who are of Froebel describes such joint work first in the Keilhau schoolroom—his own phrase is “education room”—where the younger boys are using building blocks, sand, sawdust, and moss, which they have brought in from the forest around and then among the older boys. “Down yonder by the brook, how busy are the older boys with their work! They have made canals with locks, bridges and seaports, dams and mills, each undisturbed by the others. But now the water is to be used to carry ships from one level to another, and now, at every stage, each boy asserts his own rights while recognizing the rights of others. How can they settle their difficulties? Only by making agreements, and so, like States, they bind themselves by strict treaties.”—E., p. 111. Of games of physical movement, running, wrestling, etc., Froebel writes: “It is the sense of power, the sense of its increase, both as an individual and as a member of a group, that fills the boy with joy, in these games.… The boy tries to see himself in his companions, to weigh and measure himself by them, to find and know himself by their help. Thus the games directly influence and educate the boy for life, they awake and cultivate many civic and moral virtues. Every town should have its common playground for the boys. Glorious Froebel had studied boys to some purpose, and he tells us not, however, to expect too much in the way of social virtues. Justice, self-control, honesty, courage and “severe criticism of pleasant indolence” may be expected, but mutual forbearance and consideration for those who are weaker or less familiar with the game, though not entirely lacking, are referred to as “the more delicate blossoms” of the playground. It is here that he says with wise moderation, “The feeling of power must precede its cultivation.” The social instinct does not suddenly spring into existence in boyhood. It has its roots in what Froebel calls the Feeling of Community which unites the child first with the mother, then with father, brothers and sisters. “We cannot deny that there is at present among children and boys little gentleness, mutual forbearance … indeed, there is much egotism, unfriendliness and roughness. This is clearly due not only to the absence of early cultivation of the feeling of community, but this sympathy between parents and children is too often disturbed, yes even annihilated.”—E., p. 119. The sympathy of the little child ought to be trained and is trained by the wise mother always through action. “Mother love seeks to awaken and to interpret the feeling of community, which is so important, between the child and the father, In the Finger Play called “The Nest,” Froebel tells the mother: “The way lies through our imaginative, tender and emotional observation of Nature and of man’s life, through the child’s taking their meaning into his own heart and expressing by representation what he thus takes in.… The child’s sympathy is roused by the young creatures’ necessities more than by anything, and chiefly by their nakedness and softness.”—M., p. 149. And the action which fosters the growth of sympathy is not to be merely representative; The Garden Song has this motto: “If your child’s to love and cherish Life that needs him day-by-day, Give him things to tend that perish If he ever stays away.”—M., p. 84. It is because “the desire for unity is the basis of all true human development” that the child is to be encouraged to help in the work he sees going on around him. “Family, family—let us say it openly and plainly—you are more than School and Church, and therefore more than all else that necessity may have called into being for the protection of right and property … without you, what are Altar and Church?… Therefore, Mother, in the little finger game, teach your child some notion of the nature of a whole, especially of a family-whole.”—M., “We have not yet touched nor even considered an important side of child-life, the side of association with father and mother in their domestic duties, in the duties of their calling.… (E., p. 84). Do not let the urgency of your business tempt you to say, ‘Go away, you only hinder me.’ … After a third rebuff of this kind scarcely any child will again propose to help and share the work.”—E., p. 99. It is an essential part of the Kindergarten to consider the child as a member of the human family. It is described in one place as: “An establishment for training quite young children, in their first stage of intellectual development, where their training and instruction shall be based upon their own free action or spontaneity, acting under proper rules … such rules as are in fact discovered by the actual observation of children when associated in companies. (L., p. 251).… Practice in combined games for many children, which will train the child, by his very nature eager for companionship, in the habit of association with comrades, that is, in good fellowship and all that this implies.”—L., p. 252. Among his Group Instincts Mr. Kirkpatrick mentions the Love of Approbation, and this receives special attention from Froebel at a surprisingly early stage. It is in the “Mother Songs,” in connection with his adaptation of an old German nursery rhyme about knights who come to visit “a good child,” that Froebel tells the mother that: “A new life stage has begun, and you, dear Mother, must use your best and most watchful care, when first the child listens to a stranger.” In the same connection he writes: “The child must be roused to good by inclination, love and respect, through the opinion of others around him, and all this must be strengthened and developed.… When, therefore, Mother, observation as to the judgment of others awakes in your child—when, separating himself and on the watch he brings himself before the judgment of others, then you really have a double task to perform.…”—M., p. 190. The Love of Approbation cannot be separated from what Mr. Kirkpatrick calls the Regulative, i.e. the Moral and Religious Instincts, for it is both social and regulative, and in the social instincts Froebel sees the foundation of the religious instincts or tendencies, to which we shall come presently. But he also notes a “sense of order,” as Mr. Sully does in his delightful “Studies of Childhood,” and this he traces back to very early beginnings, connecting it with the tendency towards rhythm. “That disorder and rough wilfulness may never enter the games, it is a good plan wherever it is possible to accompany each change in the play by rhyme and song; so that the latent sense of rhythm and song, and above all the sense of order in the human being and child, may be aroused and strengthened to an impulse for social cooperation.”—P., p. 267. One of the earliest Mother Plays, “Tic-tac,” deals with rhythmic movement, and in “The Education of Man” Froebel takes the beginning of “conscious control” still further back. His ideal mother fosters “In addition to the sense of community as such, the germ of so much glorious development, the mother’s love seeks also through movements to lead the child to feel his own inner life. By regular rhythmic movements—and this is of special importance—she brings this life within the child’s conscious control when she dandles him up and down on her hand or arm in rhythmic movements and to rhythmic sounds. Thus the genuine natural mother cautiously follows in all directions the slowly developing all-sided life in the child, strengthening and arousing to ever greater activity, and developing the all-sided life within. Others suppose the child to be empty and wish to inoculate him with life, and thus make him as empty as they think him to be.”—E., p. 69. It is surprising to find that Froebel, writing so early, has nothing at all resembling any special “moral faculty.” His references to “Conscience” are decidedly interesting, though given in quaint connection with games and rhymes for mere babes. He asks why the “Where’s Baby?” game gives such delight, and shows his psychological insight in the answer he finds, viz. that it is the feeling or recognition of self, of personality, which gives such joy. “Why, now, is my child so happy over the hiding game? It is the feeling of Personality which already so delights the child, it is the feeling of recognition of his own self.” The game which follows this repeats the hiding experience, but this time with the cry of “cuckoo,” from some one unseen, and this is likened to the conscience call, which is described as “consciousness of union in separation and of separateness, that is personality, in union.”—M., p. 98. “In ‘Where’s Baby Been?’ parting and union seem more separate, as though in order that each may become more and more clearly conscious of itself; in ‘Cuckoo,’ parting and union are, as it were, joined. It is parting in union and union in parting that makes ‘Cuckoo’ such a peculiar game and so delightful to a child. But consciousness of union in separation, and of separateness—that is personality—in union, is also the essence, the deep foundation of conscience.”—M., p. 197. Mr. Kirkpatrick’s second Regulative instinct or tendency is that of Religion, but Froebel again, like Mr. McDougall, finds that Religion has its roots in an instinct “not specifically religious,” “This feeling of Community first uniting the child with father, mother, brothers and sisters, and resting on a higher spiritual unity, to which It seems quite in accordance with this that Froebel should write that he likes better the German word Gott-einigkeit—union with God—than the foreign word religion; and also that he should speak of “developing the sense of kinship with man in every child, and the sense of kinship with God in every man.” So, in his “Mother Songs,” he tells the mother to give her child duties to perform, that so he may “feel his kinship” with her: “Every age, even the age of childhood, has something to cherish that is plain, and from doing so no exemption can be procured; it has therefore its duties. Happy is it for a child if he be led to deal with them adequately, and for the present unconsciously. Duties are not burdens.… Fulfilment of duty strengthens body and mind, and the consciousness of duty done gives independence; even a child feels this. See, Mother, how happy your child is in feeling he has done his small duties. He already feels his kinship with you thereby.”—M., p. 174. There is never a separation between Morality and Religion: “Religion without industry, without work, is liable to be lost in empty dreams, worthless visions, idle fancies. Similarly, work or industry There is only one other instinct mentioned by Froebel, and that is the parental, or, rather, the maternal instinct. He is eager that this should be recognized as an instinct, but he is equally eager that, like other human instincts, its action should be determined by intelligence. In describing the “Plan” for his Kindergarten, Froebel pleads for more careful observation of the child and his relationships, and says that “thereby”: “Deeper insight will be gained into the meaning and importance of the child’s actions and outward manifestations and also into the way of dealing with children which has been evolved naturally by the mother led by her pure maternal instinct.”—L., p. 248. As to the early beginnings of the instinct in the little girl we can find just a few references, sufficient to show that it did not pass unnoticed, and it seems here legitimate to say that “the girl anticipates her destiny,” as Froebel does in speaking of doll-play, though certainly this does not cover all such play: “The joy of the child in its doll has a far deeper human foundation than is generally supposed—a foundation by no means resting merely in the external resemblance … the girl anticipates her destiny—to foster Nature and life.”—P., p. 93. The boy’s destiny is “to penetrate and rule Nature,” so in the “Mother Songs” Froebel describes how the boy is “cowering that no sign of life in the chicken family may escape him, while the girl starts up, all her care of things stirred, in order to beckon or call the hen or cock not to forget their chickens.”—M., p. 143. In all his writings, Froebel refers to how much he has learned from mothers: “It was in watching your clever mother-doings that I learnt.” But, as he says of himself, it was “a necessary part of me to be irresistibly driven to search out the ultimate or primary cause of every fact of life,” and so he writes: “The natural mother does all this instinctively without instruction or direction; but this is not enough: it is needful that she should do it consciously, as a conscious being acting upon another which is growing into consciousness, and consciously tending toward the continuous development of the human being.”—E., p. 64. “Motherly and womanly instinct does much of its own accord; but it often makes mistakes.”—L., p. 63. “Women’s work in education must be based not upon natural instinct, so often perverted or misunderstood, but upon intelligent knowledge.… Some mothers level the taunt at me that I, a man, understanding nothing of a mother’s instinct, should dare to presume to instruct mothers in their dealings with their own children.… How could such a thought enter my head as to attempt anything against the course of Nature? My whole strength is exerted on the contrary, to the work of getting the natural instinct and its tendencies more rightly understood, and more acknowledged; so that women may follow its leadings as truly as possible aided by So, in what he says of this last instinct, Froebel is faithful to what he has said of all human instincts. “Man shall assuredly not neglect his natural instincts, still less abandon them, but he must ennoble them through his intelligence and purify them through his reason.” |
|
