1. Froebel's second gift consists of a wooden sphere, cube, and cylinder, two inches in diameter (as now made), with rods and standards for revolution.[18]

2. In the first gift the child received objects of the same shape and size but of different colors, thus learning to separate color from form. In the second gift he receives unlike objects, and learns to distinguish them from each other by their individual peculiarities. The first gift suggests unity, and leads to the detection of resemblances; the second suggests variety or manifoldness, and emphasizes contrasts. 3. The most important characteristic of the gift is contrast of form, leading to the distinction of different objects. The mediation of contrasts here suggests the connection of all objects, however widely separated.

4. The purpose of the gift is to stimulate observation and comparison by presentation of striking contrasts, and to afford new bases for the classification of objects. Spencer says that any systematic ministrations to the perceptions ought to be based upon the general truth that in the development of every faculty markedly contrasted impressions are the first to be distinguished; that hence sounds greatly differing in loudness and pitch, colors very remote from each other, and substances widely removed in hardness or texture should be the first supplied; and that in each case the progression must be by slow degrees to impressions more nearly allied.[19]

5. The geometrical forms illustrated in this gift are:—

6. The sphere and cube are sharply contrasting forms, and the cylinder illustrates the connecting link between the two, possessing characteristics of both.

"The cylinder is the first example Froebel gives of the intermediate transition—forms connecting opposites, which he explains as the very ground plan of Nature, and on which his fundamental law of contrasts and connection of contrasts, the law of all harmonious development and creative industry, is based."[20]

"That which follows is always conditioned upon that which goes before,"[21] says Froebel, and he makes this apparent to children through his educational processes; the gifts show this idea in concrete form.

In entering upon a consideration of the second gift one thing cannot fail to impress us, and that is the continuous development in each new set of objects placed before the child; together with an increase of difficulty or complexity which is never without a corresponding forethought, careful arrangement, and attention to logical sequence; thus the newly introduced objects can never seem unnatural to him.

We shall find that in every new gift or occupation there is always a suggestion of the last, enough to make it a pleasant reminder of knowledge gained and difficulties surmounted, and so the child sees not everything painfully strange, but something which at least recalls to his mind his former friend and familiar playfellow.[22]

In the first lesson with the second gift the child will quickly see the similarities between his former worsted ball and his new companion, the wooden sphere. Let him take these two balls together, and find out the similarities and dissimilarities, remembering that before he compares objects consciously, experiences should invariably be given him.

We should always draw attention to the universal properties of things first and then proceed to the specific. The qualities common to all objects are the universal ones: Form, Size, Color, Material, etc. The invariable rule should be: simple before complex, concrete before abstract, unity before variety, universal qualities before special ones.

If we are in doubt as to whether we shall first direct attention to the similarities or to the dissimilarities between the ball and sphere, we may recall the educational maxim, "The child's eye always at first seizes the analogous, the point of union, the whole connection of things, and only after that begins to discern differences and opposition."[23]

In comparing the ball and the sphere the child will observe, in the first place that they are both round and both roll equally well, but that one has color, one being without; one is soft, the other hard; one quiet, one noisy; one a little rough to the touch, the other velvet smooth. He should find for and by himself, aided by our suggestive questioning, the reasons for these evident differences.

It is absolutely necessary that each child should have one of the boxes containing the solids, or at least the three forms of the gift without the box, rods, and standards, and examine them thoroughly and often as he will be glad to do.

If the solids as ordinarily manufactured are too costly for a kindergartner of limited means, she can substitute large marbles, blocks, and linen thread spools; the material does not matter so long as each child has the objects to handle.

We need not be distressed if the lessons are a little noisy when the children are making the acquaintance of these wonderful new friends. To be sure they will pound the wooden forms heartily up and down on the table (if they are three-year old babies, they certainly would and should do so); but within bounds what does it matter? If it can be arranged so that other classes shall not be disturbed, and each child can have the same opportunity for experimenting as his neighbor, there will be no great harm done.

We are endeavoring to rouse all the latent energies of the child by the presentation of these objects to his observation, and he must have full liberty to make the various experiments which suggest themselves to him. His desire to hear the sound of the objects is so manifest that it would be folly to try and thwart it. It is far better to use the desire for educational purposes and divert it into the channel of systematized noise. Let us suppose that we are carpenters today and pound the wooden objects on the floor in exact time with a building song; let us play we are drummer boys and tap with our drumsticks for the soldiers to march; or shall we make believe that the sphere is a woodpecker and let it tap on the trees while we recite some simple little rhyme?[24]

"This craving of young children for information," says Bernard Perez, "is an emotional and intellectual absorbing power, as dominant as the appetite for nutrition, and equally needing to be watched over and regulated." It is not alone the noise of the sphere which delights the child,[25] though this is always pleasing,—it is the knowledge he is gaining, the new ideas that dawn upon him for the first time in recognizable form. It is, in fact, a knowledge of cause and effect. He has often dropped the woolen ball and pounded it on the table, and it produced no sound. He does the same with the sphere and recognizes the difference. He will begin to experiment with other objects, by and by to classify his knowledge, and finally, he will see and remember that like causes produce like effects, and in progressing thus far will have made a tremendous stride. The child will see all the more clearly, in comparing the woolen ball and wooden sphere, the difference between soft and hard, rough and smooth, light and heavy, if he is allowed to perform his own experiments.

We will now turn to the investigation of the cube and open a new world of information to the child, and here we seem to deviate a little from the famous educational maxim, "Proceed from the known to the unknown," and almost to make a leap into the dark. However, we very soon give the cylinder, and thus connect the opposites. Here he meets a dazzling quantity of new appearances; the square sides or faces, and the many edges and corners, all of which must be viewed in comparison with the sphere. We can give him an experience of the faces of the cube without conscious analysis, by letting the ball roll against them.

Of course we shall see the underlying idea of the gift to be the connection of opposites. Not too much can be said of this law, so all-important and significant in Froebel's system.[26] We should bear it constantly in mind, and bring it in connection with every new phase of our work. Froebel cannot be understood clearly unless this deep principle, which lies at the very root of his system, is appreciated and comprehended. At the same time it is, when formulated, an abstract and metaphysical statement, which one cannot grasp at once, but to which one must grow.

It may be said that comparatively few kindergartners know its value; nevertheless knowledge of this kind can never be useless or fruitless to the person who is forming the mind of the child, and who should be a perfect mistress of her science and her art.

These contrasts of the second gift, and all contrasts, arouse the mind to attention. We can have no judgment without comparison. We should have no idea of heat or darkness if we had not a conception of cold and light; the quality of sweetness would have no meaning if its opposite did not serve to stimulate comparison.

The sphere is sharply contrasted with the cube, so that there may be a ready perception of the striking qualities of both. The more abrupt the contrast the more readily noticed and described; for it takes a more developed eye to discern the difference between a sphere and a spheroid, for instance, than between a sphere and a cube.

The contrasts of the first gift were contrasts of color, mediations of them being shown also, and contrasts of direction and position or situation. Another point less readily seen in the first gift perhaps was Froebel's thought that the ball, in its perfect simplicity and unity, when first given to the young child, is regarded by him as another contrasted individuality, almost as capable of life in its varied movements as he is himself.

The sphere is the symbol of motion, the cube the embodiment of rest, and the fact should be illustrated in divers ways. We may, for instance, place the sphere near the rim of a plate, and by inclining the latter a little, the sphere will roll rapidly round its own axis and round the rim. A few simple little rhymes may be taught, which the children may say or sing together while the sphere is journeying rapidly round and round the plate, for, as Froebel says, the thought always grows clearer to the child when word and motion go hand in hand.

The cube can only be moved, on the contrary, when force is exerted, and then it merely slides, to stop when the force is removed. The children will soon see why the cube is so lazily inclined, and why the sphere is ever rolling, rolling about, scarcely to be kept still, for by various experiments we may show that the sphere stands only on a little part of its face, the cube on the whole.

The sphere is always the same in whatever way regarded, and to whatever tests subjected. It is always an emblem of unity, and cannot be robbed of its simplicity, its unity, its freedom from all that is puzzling.

The cube, on the contrary, being made to revolve on any one of its axes, constantly shows a different aspect, so that the child views it as a very extraordinary little block, full of fascinating surprises and whimsical apparitions.

It is put upon the string, and, when whirled rapidly, mysteriously loses its identity, and appears to the little one's laughing gaze as an entirely different object; and yet as the motion grows more sedate, the new form fades away and the cube reappears so quickly as to make him rub his eyes and wonder if he has been dreaming.

The square faces of the cube, in comparison with the one curved, unbroken surface of the sphere, must now be noted, and may be counted if we are using the gift as a means of instruction.

We must beware, however, of making this counting exercise into a lesson, or requiring that the number of faces shall be learned and recited. Every teacher of experience will corroborate Mr. W. N. Hailmann when he says: "If the kindergartner sets the cube before the child and counts the faces, edges, and corners, so that he may 'know all about it,' the child's interest, if born at all, will soon die."

If the faces are counted, as they are all so exactly alike, the children may sometimes be puzzled as to the number, by enumerating the same one more than once. This difficulty may be obviated by pasting a paper square of a different color on each face, and then submitting it to examination, giving each child an opportunity to count, since independent self-activity is to be more and more encouraged.

If the faces, edges, and corners be made the integral point of an interesting story or play, the child will have little difficulty in recalling their number and character, but we must remember that "lively interest and steady progress come only from following and feeding the child's purposes."

We now proceed to the cylinder, the reconciliation of the two opposites; an object which having qualities possessed by both occupies a middle ground in which each has something in common.

Froebel originally took the doll[27] as the intermediate form "uniting in itself the opposites of the sphere and cube," and thus showed that he understood child nature well, for no toy follows the ball with greater certainty than the doll.

The cylinder, however, was subsequently selected, as being more in line with the other geometrical forms shown in the sequence of gifts. It is as easily moved as the sphere, upon one side; as prone to rest as the cube, when placed upon the other; it has the curved surface of the sphere and the flat faces of the cube; it has no corners but two curved edges; more edges than the sphere, fewer than the cube; less unity than the sphere, more than the cube.

Its importance as a mediation, or connecting link, is further shown by suspending the cube on a string, by which it may be twisted rapidly and caused to revolve; in this motion a cylinder being readily seen. When the cylinder is spun in like manner a sphere suddenly appears, and so the wonderful and subtle bond of union is complete.[28]

Let the children call the cylinder a "roller" or "barrel" if they choose, and tell them the right name when it is needful. Each gift must be thoroughly understood before we pass to the next, or there will be no orderly development; but as the impressions have all been made through the senses of the child, we must not expect him to voice these impressions in logical phrases all at once, so beware of making the lesson irksome or wearisome to him through a formal questioning that does not properly belong to childhood.

When the keen appetite for knowledge disappears we may well despair. If several children in our class express dislike of a certain exercise or lesson, and seem to dread its appearance, we may be well assured that the fault lies in our method of putting it before them, and strive in all humility for a better understanding of them, of ourselves, and of the subject.

We must not, however, be too hard in our self-judgments and lose courage. We are not responsible for a child who is "born tired," and who seems to have no interest in anything, either in heaven above or in the earth beneath, until, by ingenuity and perseverance, we are able to open the eyes and ears which see and hear not.

It will be remembered that in discussing the first play or lesson with the second gift great freedom was advised; but let us note the difference between liberty and lawlessness, between spontaneity and the confusion of self-assertion which is sometimes mistaken for it.

No lesson or play amounts to anything unless conducted with order and harmony, unless at its close, no matter how merry and hearty the enjoyment, some quiet and lasting impression has been made on the mind. Many teachers miss the happy medium, and in trying with the best intentions to allow the individuality of the child proper development, only succeed in gaining excitement and disorder.

The second gift is, more than any other, too much used for mere object lessons, and these are invariably dangerous because there is apt to be too much impressing of the teacher's own ideas upon the mind, and too little actual handling, perceiving, observing, comparing, judging, concluding, on the child's part, and that is the only logical way in which he is able to form a clearly crystallized idea.

We can have no higher authority than Dr. Alexander Bain, who says that the object lesson more than anything else demands a careful handling; there being "great danger lest an admirable device should settle down into a plausible but vicious formality."

It is not uncommon to hear students in kindergarten training classes (and even some full-fledged kindergartners) express a distaste for the second gift, and it is, unfortunately, even more common to find the children dealing with it either sunk in deepest apathy, or mercifully oblivious of the matter in hand and chatting with their neighbors. The fact is that we have too commonly made the exercises dull, dreary affairs; we have doled out the forms to the children and asked a series of formal questions about them, giving no experiments, no concerted work, and no opportunity for action. The children have been intensely bored, therefore either stupid or wandering, and the kindergartner has attributed her want of success to the gift, and not to her method of dealing with it.

Let the light of imagination shine on the scene, and note the answering sparkle in the children's eyes. Who cares for the names of all the faces on a stupid block; but who doesn't care when it's a house and Johnnie can't find his mother, though he looks in the front door and the back door, the right-hand door, the left-hand door, the cellar-door, and finally the trap-door leading to the roof? Nobody knows, or wants to know, when questioned if the cylinder rolls better on its flat circular face, or on its rounding face; but when it's a log of wood in the forest, and must be taken home for winter fires, then it is worth while to experiment and see how it may be moved most easily.

The second gift, too, is delightful for groupwork in the sand table, where the objects may be treated symbolically, and likened to a hundred different things. With the second gift beads, which in the natural wood color are admirable supplements to the larger forms, the children are always charmed, assorting and stringing them according to fancy or dictation, and with the addition of sticks making them into rows of soldiers, trees in flowerpots, kitchen utensils, churns, stoves, lamps, and divers other household objects.

The kindergartner may give many a lesson in the simple principles of mechanics with the second gift and its rods and standards, allowing the children to experiment freely as well as to follow her suggestions. The pulley, the steelyard, the capstan, the pump, the mechanical churn, the wheelbarrow, etc., may all be made, adding the beads where necessary, and thus the child gain a real working knowledge of simple machinery.

The preceding gift need not entirely disappear, but be used occasionally for a pleasing review as a bond of friendly intercourse between older and younger pupils.[29] This will convey an indirect hint, perhaps, to the little ones that it is not well to neglect old friends for new ones, but that they should still love and value the playthings and playmates of former days.

These three objects, the sphere, cylinder, and cube, constitute a triad of forms united in architecture and sculpture producing the column, which is made up of the pedestal or base (the cube), the shaft (the cylinder), and the capital (the sphere).

In a book on Egyptian antiquities we find that, in the beginning of the culture of that country, the three Graces, or goddesses of beauty, were represented by three cubes leaning upon each other. The Egyptians did not, of course, know that it was the first regular form of solid bodies in nature or crystallization; but the significant fact again brings us to the thought expressed in the first lecture: "It would seem, indeed, as though Froebel, in selecting his gifts, looked far back into the past of humanity, and there sought the thread which from the beginning connects all times and leads to the farthest future."

And here we leave the second gift, that trinity of forms which, wrought in marble, marks the place dear and sacred to all kindergartners, the grave of Froebel,—a simple monument to one so great, yet so connected with our study and the child's experience that with all its simplicity it is strangely effective. A still more enduring monument he has in the millions of happy children who have found their way to knowledge through the door which he opened to them; indeed, if half the children he has benefited could build a tower of these tiny blocks to commemorate his life and death, its point would reach higher than St. Peter's dome and draw the thoughts of men to heaven.

This gift can hardly be studied but that an inner unity, born of these reconciled contrasts, suggests itself to the imagination.

The cube seems to stand as the symbol of the inorganic, the mineral kingdom, with its wonderful crystals; the cylinder as the type of vegetable life, suggesting the roots, stems, and branches, with their rounded sides, and forming a beautiful connection between the cube, that emblem of "things in the earth beneath," and the sphere which completes the trinity and speaks to us of a never-ending and perfect whole having "Unity for its centre, Diversity for its circumference."

The cube seems to suggest rest, immobility; the cylinder, in this connection, growth; and the sphere, perfection, completeness,—so delicately poised it is,—only kept in its proper place by the most exquisite adjustment. And so to us, sometimes, the things that are visible become luminous with suggestions of greater realities which are yet unseen; and in the least we discern a faint radiance of the greatest.

Things that are small mirror things that are mighty. The tiny sphere is an emblem of the "big round world" and the planetary systems. The cube recalls the wonderful crystals, and shows the form that men reflect in architecture and sculpture. As for the cylinder it is Nature's special form, and God has taught man through Nature to use it in a thousand ways, and indeed has himself fashioned man more or less in its shape.

Mr. Hailmann says: "The second gift presents types of the principal phases of human development; from the easy mobility of infancy and childhood,—the ball,—we pass through the half-steady stages of boyhood and girlhood, represented in the cylinder, to the firm character of manhood and womanhood for which the cube furnishes the formula."

Bishop Brooks, speaking from the words, "The length and the breadth of it are equal," in his sermon on Symmetry of Life, uses the cube as a symbol of perfect character: The personal push of a life forward, its outreach laterally or the going out in sympathy to others, the upward reach toward God,—these he considers the three life dimensions. But such building must be done without nervous haste; the foundation must hint solidly of the threefold purpose; length, breadth, and thickness must be kept in proportion, if the perfect cube of life is ever to be found.

Note on Second Gift.[30] "The second gift, even in the nursery, calls for modifications from the form in which it comes to us from Froebel. It is incomparable in its rich symbolism for illustrating Froebel's thought to mature minds, and answers quite a useful purpose in the nursery, where it may help mamma tell her stories. But in the kindergarten the child wants to build with blocks. Hence, the third, fourth, fifth, and sixth gifts are indicated; the second gift, as such, is, to say the least, an anachronism. Only in the form of the beads, or some similar expedient which gives many of these things for control, will it satisfy the kindergarten child. When he is expected to study the cube, as an object lesson, to count the squares and corners and tell where they are, it is wholly unpalatable to him and entirely foreign to his plans."

THOUGHTS ON THE DISCRIMINATIVE POWER.

"Mind starts from Discrimination. The consciousness of difference is the beginning of every intellectual exercise."

"Our intelligence is, therefore, absolutely limited by our power of discrimination; the other functions of intellect, the retentive power, for instance, are not called into play until we have first discriminated a number of things."

"The minuteness or delicacy of the feeling of difference is the measure of the variety and multitude of our primary impressions and therefore of our stored-up recollections."

"Bear in mind the fact that until a difference is felt between two things, intelligence has not yet made the first step."

"The higher arts of comparison to impress difference are best illustrated when both differences and agreements have to be noted, i. e., similarities and dissimilarities."

"Discrimination is the necessary prelude of every intellectual impression as the basis of our stored-up knowledge or memory."

Definition of the state of mind significantly named Indifference,—"the state where differing impressions fail to be recognized as distinct."

"The retentive power works up to the height of the discriminative power; it can do no more."

Alex. Bain.

"The most delightful and fruitful of all the intellectual energies is the perception of similarity and agreement, by which we rise from the individual to the general, trace sameness in diversity, and master instead of being mastered by the multiplicity of nature."

Friedrich Froebel.

"It is by comparisons that we ascertain the difference which exists between things, and it is by comparisons, also, that we ascertain the general features of things, and it is by comparisons that we reach general propositions. In fact, comparisons are at the bottom of all philosophy."

Louis Agassiz.

READINGS FOR THE STUDENT.