The Home, The IfflMRGMiEi 
 
 km 
 
 MARY 
 
 
LIBRARY 
 
 OF THE 
 
 UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA. 
 
 Received j^N 6 1893 • '^9 
 Accessions No. 14Q^q(^ . Class No. 
 
LECTURES 
 
 TEAINING SCHOOLS 
 
 feintifrgaiten CcacOcrs, 
 
Digitized by tine Internet Archive 
 
 in 2007 with funding from 
 
 IVIicrosoft Corporation 
 
 http://www.archive.org/details/educationinhomekOOpeabrich 
 
EDUCATION 
 THE HOME, THE KINDERGARTEN, 
 
 AND 
 
 THE PRIMARY SCHOOL. 
 
 BT 
 
 ELIZABETH P. PEABODY. 
 
 WITH AN INTRODUCTION 
 
 BY 
 
 E. ADELAIDE MANNING. 
 
 __^ . J with our children. ' ' — Froebel. 
 
 '^^ 0» THB 
 
 (USIVBRSIT' 
 
 ^rFOHl^^ LONDON: 
 
 5NSCHEIN, LOWEEY & CO., 
 PATEBNOSTER SQUABE. 
 
 1887. 
 
H-^j?^^ 
 
 Lb t i ^ 
 
INTRODUCTION. 
 
 Among those who in the last twenty years have helped to 
 spread a knowledge of the educational pnnciples of Froebel 
 beyond the limits of his native country, Miss Elizabeth Pea- 
 body's name deserves to be specially remembered. It is 
 mainly owing to her enthusiastic efforts that the value of the 
 Kindergarten was early recognised in the United States, and 
 that its first American promoters were encouraged to main- 
 tain, amid many difficulties, a standai'd of real efficiency for 
 the teachers of Froebel's system. Miss Peabody had long 
 occupied herself, theoretically and pi'actically, with educa- 
 tional subjects. Not satisfied by merely intellectual method s 
 of instruction, and impatien t o ^ the spp erfic iality which was 
 too often approved, s^e niaSe it lur cri-cat aim to train 
 character, and, by a simultaneous dcv* ]')[)tn<'nt of children's 
 mental c:! (>ir moral iiaiuic, (o prepa re them 
 
 for the i\ M . <'f life. It was not surprising that 
 
 when Mi- y, li )1 ling such views of education, came 
 
 in contact with the ideas and the work of Froebelj_she at 
 once experienced the delight always attache Jtothe discovery 
 that the problems exercising our own minds have been suc- 
 cessfully solved by some one who has started from principles 
 such as oui*s, and who has cultivated the same ideal. She 
 found that Froebel had carried into practice that very kind 
 of training of which she had realized the immense import- 
 ance, and that he had placed in a clear light truths which 
 she had already more dimly perceived. Eager to inform 
 herself about the new system. Miss Peabody travelled, in 
 1868, to Europe, on purpose to visit in Germany the Kinder- 
 gartens established by Froebel, who was no longer living, 
 and by his best pupils. On her return to America, she 
 
vi INTRODUCTION. 
 
 devoted herself for many years to the introduction and 
 improvement of Kindergartens and of training institutions, 
 and to enlightening, by her writings and addresses, mothers 
 and educators respecting the value and simplicity of Froebel's 
 methods. Miss Peabody has the satisfaction of witnessing 
 a good measure of success from her generous exertions, in 
 the increasing number of advocates of the Kindergarten in 
 America, in its adoption as a first department of many State 
 primary schools, and in the numerous private and charity 
 Kindergartens founded from North to South, and from New 
 York to San Francisco. Advanced now in years, this warm- 
 hearted lady is engaged in other lines of philanthropic work, 
 but she retains, and still manifests, her earnest interest in 
 the educational progress which she has laboured so actively 
 to secure. 
 
 Ever since Miss Peabody 's zeal was kindled for Froebers 
 ideal as to young children's education, her help and criticism 
 have been sought by the trainers of Kindergarten students in 
 America, and by all who, with serious purpose, have thus 
 worked for the movement. Hence she has often delivered 
 lectures at the opening of the session at Normal Colleges, 
 and on other occasions when she saw an opportunity of 
 exercising influence in favour of rational principles of educa- 
 tion. This book, which appeared only lately at Boston, 
 consists of a few of such lectures. It is now, with Miss 
 Peabody's consent, published in England, where many 
 parents and teachers will be glad to profit by the author's 
 wise and loving study of little children, and her sympathetic 
 insight into Froebel's methods for their development. During 
 the last few years various thoughtful writers on education 
 have drawn attention here to the subject of infant manage- 
 ment, and it is remarkable how widely the principles of 
 Froebel and Pestalozzi are now recognised and accepted. 
 But books are still greatly needed which, especially addressed 
 to those who have charge of children, urge in a convincing 
 
INTRODUCTION. Vll 
 
 manner how essential it is that the first few years should be 
 rightly guided, and indicate certain defined educational aims. 
 I think that Miss Peabody's lectures are likely to prove very 
 useful in this direction. Though her readers will perhaps 
 contest some of her psychological deductions, they cannot 
 fail to be impressed and benefited by the high tone of her 
 reasoning, by her evidently tender and reverent love of 
 children, and by her excellent suggestions in regard to their 
 harmonious development. 
 
 Amongst its other merits, this book tends to correct the 
 still too prevalent notion, that the Kindergarten is a peculiar 
 — an almost magical — institution, ' which provides a sure 
 remedy for children's imperfections, apart from their home 
 conditions. Doubtless, in the case of poor neglected little 
 ones, the contrast between their treatment at the Kinder- 
 garten and their ordinary experience, is necessarily striking 
 and decided, because the parents are careless and ignorant. 
 But Fix)ebers view of the Kindergarten was, that it should 
 be a supplementary help to the loving and judicious mother, 
 who, owing to her many household and other duties, might 
 be unable to give, through the whole day, to her younger 
 children the regular attention which their awakening facul- 
 ties need. It was to be a portion of the home pattern and 
 web of training, not a patch of a new texture. He saw that 
 a child requires to have about it, as Miss Peabody says, 
 ** love and thought in practical operation," and this not now 
 and then, but always. And as the mother may have at times 
 to transfer her children to the charge of others, he organised 
 the Kindergarten — a higher nursery, under refined and 
 motherly influences, for those that have passed out of baby- 
 hood. There, on the same principles as at home, they may 
 be gently tended for two or three hours of the day, and 
 developed in body, mind, and character. Froebers object 
 also was to provide companionship for these children, adapted 
 to their age and attainments, which could only be done by 
 
Vlii INTEODUCTION. 
 
 including some from outside the family circle. Bat again, 
 lie desired to give the opportunity to inexperienced mothers 
 of observing the patient and resourceful guidance carried 
 out by even young teachers, vrho had been trained to study 
 children, and had learnt how to occupy them suitably. Here 
 we see another link with the home. Now Miss Peabody 
 entered so much into Froebel's ideas that she helps to 
 remove the Kindergarten out of its supposed exceptional 
 sphere, and to show that the teachers represent temporarily 
 the mother, doing that which the mother also aims, or ought 
 to aim, at doing, for the children's good. 
 
 These Lectures are also useful in presenting a high ideal 
 of Kindergarten teaching. Miss Peabody sees that the work 
 of educating requires special qualifications in those who 
 undertake it, and that such as are not fitted for it, had better 
 take up a different career. At the same time placing, as 
 always, character above intellect, she considers that most 
 women, whose religious and moral nature is well cultivated, 
 and who take pains to develop their mental powers, may 
 hope for success in devoting themselves to the training of 
 young children. Her writings are calculated to inspire the 
 teacher with hearty zest for her labour, and yet with an 
 abiding feeling that even years of practice leave her far 
 behind her ever advancing standard. Miss Peabody en- 
 courages no exaggerated estimate of Froebel's thoughts and 
 methods. She freely recognises that he gained many truths 
 from fellow-students of children's nature and faculties ; but 
 she claims for him the originality which belongs to those who 
 with unselfish aims bestow close attention on a subject of 
 deep human interest. To teachers, therefore, as well as to 
 all who love children, she says — and with this quotation I 
 will close my few introductory remarks — " You will not be 
 wise if you do not look out of Froebel's window." 
 
 E. A. MANNING. 
 
[UiriVBIlSITT) 
 
 LECTUEE I. 
 
 THE KINDERGARTNER. 
 
 Whoever proposes to become a kiudergartner according 
 to the idea of Frabel, must at ouce dismiss from her mind 
 the notion that it requires less ability and culture to educate 
 children of three, than those of ten or fifteen 3*ears of age. 
 It demands more ; for, is it not plain that to superintend 
 and guide accurately \\\& formation of the human understand- 
 ing itself, requires a finer abilit}' and a profounder insight 
 than to listen to recitations from books ever so learned and 
 scientific? To form the human understanding is a work of 
 time, demanding a knowledge of the laws of thought, will, 
 and feeling, in their interaction upon the threshold of con- 
 sciousness, which can be acquired only by the study of chil- 
 dren themselves in their every act of life — a study to be 
 pursued in the spirit that reveals what Jesus Christ meanly 
 when he said : "He that receive th a little child in my name, 
 receiveth me, and Ilim that sent me;" ^'Woe unto him 
 who offends one of these little ones, for their spirits behold 
 the face of my Father who is in heaven/' 
 
 Not till children who have been themselves educated 
 according to Froebers principles, grow up, will there be 
 found any adult persons who can keep kindergartens without 
 devoting themselves to a special study of child-nature in the 
 spirit of devout humilit}'. For we are all suffering the igno- 
 rance and injury inevitable from having begun our own lives 
 in the confusions of accidental and disorderly impressions, 
 without having had the clue of reason put into our hands by 
 that human providence of education, which, to be time, must 
 
 B 
 
2 THE KINDERGARTNER. 
 
 reflect point by point the Divine Providence, that according 
 to the revelations of history is educating the whole race, and 
 which may find hints for its procedure in observing the 
 spontaneous play of children fresh from the hands of the 
 Creator. 
 
 The education of children by a genial training of their 
 spontaneous playful activities to the production of order and 
 beauty within the humble sphere of childish fancy and affec- 
 tion, was a fresh idea with Froebel ; but, like every universal 
 idea, it was not absolutely new in the world. Plato says, in 
 his great book on Laws : — 
 
 *'Play has the mightiest influence on the maintenance and 
 non-maintenance of laws ; and if children's plays are con- 
 ducted according to laws and rules, and they always pursue 
 their amusements in conformity with order, while finding 
 pleasure therein, it need not be feared that when they are 
 grown up they will break laws whose objects are more 
 serious." 
 
 And again, in his JRepublic, he says : — 
 
 " From their earliest years, the plays of children ought to 
 be subject to strict laws. For if their plays, and those who 
 mingle with them, are arbitrary and lawless, how can they 
 become virtuous men, law-abiding and obedient? On the 
 contrary, when children are early trained to submit to laws 
 in their plays, love for these laws enters into their souls 
 with the music accompanying them, and helps their develop- 
 ment." 
 
 You will observe Plato's association of music with the 
 laws that are to regulate pla}'. Music, with the Greeks, 
 had indeed a broader meaning than attaches to the word 
 with us, who confine it to that subtle expression of the sense 
 of law and harmony which is made in the element of sound, 
 and addressed to the imagination through the ear. All 
 knowledge and art inspired by the sacred Nine, they named 
 music. Singing was no more music than dancing, drawing, 
 
THE KINDERGAIITNER. 8 
 
 the harmonizing of colors, plastic art, poetry, and science, 
 which is nothing less than thinking according to the rhyth- 
 mic laws of nature. To learn to commune with the Muses, 
 daughters of Memory and Jove, who were led by the god 
 Apollo, symbolizing the moral harmony of the universe, 
 and expressing the mind of the Father of gods and men, by 
 oracle, was learning music or how to live divinely ; a process 
 which may commence before children leave the nursery, if 
 their plays are regulated according to artistic principles. 
 
 It is common to speak of the Greeks, as if they were of 
 exceptional organization. I think their organization was 
 only exceptional, because it was more carefully treated in 
 infancy than ours is apt to be. I do not believe that in 
 Greece, or anywhere in the world, there were ever more 
 beautiful little children than there are in America ; and the 
 beauty would not be so transient as it unquestionably is 
 with us, if truly cultivated persons took our children in hand 
 from babyhood for the care of their bodies and minds, in- 
 stead of leaving this work to the most ignorant class of the 
 communitj', such as the general run of the servants who 
 have the education of them during their earliest infancy. 
 Even many parents who take care of their own children 
 do not make it an object to study physiology or psycholog}^, 
 and seem to think that there is nothing in little children 
 which requires special study, except indeed at the very first, 
 when the child is put into the mother's arms more helpless 
 than the lowest form of animal life (for the very insect is 
 endowed by nature, as the child is not, with enough absolute 
 knowledge — we call it instinct — to fulfil its small circle of 
 relations without help of its parents) . It seems mysterious, 
 at first sight, that the child, whose duty and whose destiny 
 it is to have dominion over nature, should be endowed least 
 of all creatures with any absolute knowledge of it. But the 
 mystery is solved when we consider that the happiness which 
 is distinctively human, is only to be found in the discovery 
 
4 THE KIl!a)ERGARTNER. 
 
 and GDJoyment of ever-widening relations to our kind, with 
 the fulfilment of the duties belonging to them. It is the 
 absolute helplessness of the human infant which challenges 
 the maternal instinct to rush to his rescue, lest he should 
 die at once. And to continue to stud}' his manifestations 
 of pleasure and discontent with obedient respectfulness, is 
 the perfection of the maternal nursing. But when the child 
 has got on so far as to know the simplest uses of its own 
 body, and especially after it has learned enough words to 
 express its simplest wants and sensations, even parents 
 seem to think it can get on by itself, so that children from 
 about two to five years of age are left to self -education, as 
 it were ; this virtual abandonment being crossed by a capri- 
 cious and arbitrary handling of them — ^^mind and body — on 
 the part of those around them, which is even worse than the 
 neglect ; for when are children more unable, than between 
 three and five years old, to guide their own thoughts and 
 action? How would a garden of flowers fare, to be planted, 
 and then left to grow with so little scientific care taken by 
 the gardener, as is bestowed upon children between one and 
 five years old? 
 
 Froebel, in the very word kindergarten, proclaimed that 
 gospel for children which holds within it the promise of the 
 coming of the kingdom, in which God's will is to be done on 
 earth as it is in heaven — a consummation which we daily 
 pray for with our lips, but do not do the first thing to bring 
 about, b}^ educating our children in the way of order, which 
 is no less earth's than " heaven's first law,'' and makes 
 earth heaven so far as it is fulfilled. 
 
 A kindergarten means a guarded company of children, 
 who are to be treated as a gardener treats his plants ; that 
 is, in the first place, studied to see what they are, and what 
 conditions they require for the fullest and most beautiful 
 growth ; in the second place, put into or supplied with these 
 conditions, with as little handling of their individuality as 
 
THE KINDERGARTNER. 5 
 
 possible, but with an unceasing genial and provident care to 
 remove all obstructions, and favor all the circumstances of 
 growth. It is because they are living organisms that they 
 are to be cultivated — not drilled (which is a process only 
 appropriate to insensate stone). 
 
 I think there is perhaps no better way of making appar- 
 ent what this kindergartning is, which makes such an im- 
 portunate demand on your consideration, than to tell you 
 liow the idea germinated and grew in the mind of Froebel 
 himself ; for thus we shall see that it would be unreasonable 
 to expect that it could be improvised by every teacher ; but 
 that here, as elsewhere in human life, God has sent into the 
 vrorld a gifted person to guide his fellows, according to the 
 law enunciated by St. John in the 38th verse of the 4th 
 chapter of his Gospel. 
 
 AVe have the materials of this history on Frosbers own 
 authority, in an autobiographical letter that he wrote to the 
 Duke of Meiningen, whose interest in him was excited by 
 an incident so characteristic of Froebel, that I will relate it. 
 Having heard of a cruel and stupid opposition made to the 
 ardent educator by the unthinking oflicials of a region where 
 he was making a mart^T of himself, the duke made inquiries, 
 which resulted in his offering him the situation of head-tutor 
 to his only son. But Froebel astonished him with a refusal 
 of the place, sending the duke word that it would be impos- 
 sible to educate, in a perfect manner, a child so isolated by 
 conventional rank and circumstances that he must inevitably 
 conceive himself to be intrinsically superior to other children. 
 The duke was so much struck that a poor man, struggling 
 with every difficulty, should refuse one of the highest posts 
 in a royal household, with all its emoluments, from a purely 
 conscientious scruple of this kind, that his curiosity was 
 piqued. He sent for Froebel, and they had a conversation 
 upon the principles and spirit of a truly human education, 
 by which Froebel convinced him that a noble moral develop- 
 
6 THE KINDERGARTNER. 
 
 ment was indispensable to a truly intellectual one, so that 
 the duke was actually persuaded to send his son as an equal 
 with other boys to a neighboring school. One day, some 
 little time after, the boy came home roaring^ on account of a 
 beating he had received from one of his playmates. The 
 duke, in a transport of rage, asked the name of the offender, 
 and said that he should be immediately expelled from the 
 school. Then was Froebers advice justified. The young 
 prince dried his tears, refused to tell the boy*s name, and 
 declared that "the beating was all fair!" It is quite con- 
 sistent with these facts, that the duke should ask Frcebel 
 how his idea grew in his mind. Froebers answer is still ex- 
 tant. I have not been able to get the original text, but I 
 can give you the substance of it, as it was given to me. 
 
 Friedrich Froebel was the son of a laborious pastor of 
 seven villages in Thuringia. He lost his mother before 
 his remembrance, and fell into the care of hard-worked 
 domestic servants, with no light upon his infant life except 
 what came from the love and sympathy of two older brothers, 
 who cherished him when they were at home from boarding- 
 school. The parsonage was in the shadow of the church, 
 and into it no ray of sunshine ever came ; and the child was 
 l^ept drearily in the house. He tells of seeing workmen 
 building a part of the church that had become dilapidated, 
 and how he longed to imitate them ; and traces to this desire 
 of employing the time that hung so heavily on his hands, his 
 discovery of the building instinct, so universal in childhood, 
 and which he thought should always have simple materials 
 afforded it with which to express itself. At last his father 
 married again, and at first the stepmother petted the young 
 child of her husband, and awakened in him a hope of a satis- 
 fying love, which he reciprocated with all the energies of 
 his long-starved heart. But when the merely instinctive 
 woman had a child of her own, a certain jealousy arose in 
 her, and she repulsed poor little Friedrich, and ''no longer" 
 
THE KINDERGARTNER. 7 
 
 — as he pathetically remarks — "called him thou** (du) which 
 is an endearing expression in German, but he (er), whicli 
 has a rough associatiou. It is plain that the child was en* 
 dowed with an immense sensibility to, or more than ordinary 
 presentiment of the Divine Order of Nature, and with the 
 extreme tendency to reflection always involved in this gift. 
 As he was so poorly developed physically, he became in his 
 joyless early life perhaps morbidly nervous. Disappointed 
 in his timid efforts to please, all the sweet bells of his 
 nature were jangled, and he was miserable — he knew not 
 why. He says he always found himself doing the wrong 
 thing — the too much, or the too little — and was complained 
 of to his father, who treated him as a naughty boy. But 
 sometimes the pastor took him out of his stepmother*s 
 way, to accompany himself in his parochial visits, in 
 which Froebel says he seemed continually to be settling 
 family quarrels. This made on the child's mind an impres- 
 sion of things that was rather ludicrously expressed, when 
 he one day asked of his oldest brother, who happened to 
 come home from boarding-school, why it was that God had 
 not made people all men, or all women, so that there should 
 not be so much quarrelling in the world. In order to divert 
 him from such premature consideration of social questions, 
 the posed elder brother undertook to teach him botany ac- 
 cording to the sexual system, revealing to him the law of 
 contrasts conciliated with each other for the production of 
 harmony and beauty. The child was delighted with what 
 he was shown ; but still his exceptionally moral genius 
 importunately asked, why may not human differences be 
 thus harmonized, to produce happiness and goodness? The 
 presentiment of the great truth which was felt in his heart, 
 though not yet caught by his mind, was signalized by another 
 anecdote that he tells of himself. There was a rumor among 
 the peasants of North Germany (it was about the year 1792) 
 that the world was coming to an end ; but Froebel declares 
 
8 THE KINDERGARTNER. 
 
 that he could not inake himself feel alarmed. He says he 
 was sure it could not be true, because the will of God had 
 not yet been brought about in human life. This extraor- 
 dinary reflection of a child of ten years old was preceded, 
 probably, by a happy change that came over him in conse- 
 quence of the visit of his maternal uncle to his father's 
 house ; who, seeing that the child was not happy, invited 
 him to go home with him to live with his grandmother. His 
 uncle's house was bright and sunny, and he was received by 
 his grandmother with joy and tenderness. Immediately the 
 freedom of the fields was given him, provided only that he 
 should come home punctually to the meals. He soon be- 
 came so healthy and happy, that his uncle put him into a 
 day school in the neighborhood, to the child's great delight. 
 The school was opened, the first day he went into it, with 
 a little sermon of the master's upon the text: "Seek first 
 the kingdom of heaven and its righteousness, and all other 
 things shall be added unto you." It must have been a wise 
 and good discourse, for it left a life-long impression upon 
 the mind of the little Frccbel. There was a law then, for 
 human beings as well as for plants ; human beings might 
 consciously realize in happiness and virtue, the harmony and 
 beauty unconsciously manifested by the vegetable world. For 
 God was the Ever-present Friend and Lawgiver ! He tells 
 the duke how happy he felt himself in his new circumstances 
 and opportunities, and blessed with this inspiring faith. 
 After school, he went out to play with his schoolmates ; but, 
 alas ! poor starveling of nature as he was, he found he could 
 not play with his athletic companions, and had to sit on one 
 side and look on ; and then and there he distinctly came to 
 a conclusion, which is a first principle of the kindergarten, 
 that every child should have free exercise of his limbs in 
 play, in order to get entire command of all the physical 
 strength and agility they are capable of. 
 
 After a few years of this happy home and school life, 
 
THE KINDERGARTNE71. 9 
 
 "which he continually reflected upon in contrast with what he 
 had suffered for so many years, the good grandmother died, 
 and he was sent back to his stepmother. The question now 
 came up, whether he should study for the universit}', where 
 his brothers had gone ; but the stepmother, in the interest 
 of her younger child, opposed his father's spending the 
 money, and he went to a farmer to learn practical agricul- 
 ture. But he was physically so incompetent to the labor of 
 a farm life, that it did not pay ; and being sent home by the 
 farmer, he was finally apprenticed to a forester, where he 
 found genial occupation in wood-lore, and in studying geome- 
 try for the purpose of surveying. Here he became a thor- 
 ough and ardent mathematician. But his friend the forester 
 died, or was removed, which brought this occupation to a 
 premature close. At that moment, however, a maternal 
 relation died, and left him a little money, so that he went 
 to the University of Jena, where he devoted himself princi- 
 pally to the physical sciences ; and by and by we find him 
 curator of the Mineralogical Museum of Berlin. Here he 
 made a great impression on the mind of a young lady who 
 frequented the museum, by the "sermons** that he found 
 •* in stones,'* for he read them out to her, showing that in 
 inorganic nature, so called, could be traced not only laws of 
 decay, that threw into stronger light those laws of life that 
 he had learned to see in vegetation, but those of crystalliza- 
 tion. Everywhere he read God*s revelation of the processes 
 of life and death, which also make human development and 
 happiness, or its deterioration and misery. 
 
 The trumpet call of patriotism, to rescue Germany from 
 French despotism, made by the good Queen Louise of Prussia, 
 called him from these peaceful studies to partake in the great 
 national act of delivering his country ; and he obeyed it by 
 volunteering his service. Though his regiment was never 
 called into battle, he always rejoiced in the effects upon 
 himself of learning the military drill, as well as in the hfe- 
 
10 THE KINDERGARTNER. 
 
 long friendships he made in camp. After the war was over, 
 a legacy received at the death of his uncle Hoffman gave 
 him the means to enter an architects office, to which he had 
 a great attraction. He was boarding at Frankfort-on-the- 
 Main, where Middendorf and other of his late military 
 friends were boarding, who had just engaged themselves as 
 teachers in the city, waiting to perfect this arrangement. 
 It was a moment when there was a great uprising of educa- 
 tion in Germany, and that system was beginning to germi- 
 nate, which has turned out to make Prussia the effective 
 power in Europe that she has lately proved herself to be ; 
 and whose first principle is, that the primary is the most 
 important stage of education. In connection with this gen- 
 eral movement, there was about to be established a new 
 school in Frankfort ; and Griiner, its principal, who was one 
 of the boarders, talked over with Frcebel and the others the 
 new plan. Whatever Froebel said was so striking and vital, 
 that Griiner at last exclaimed : ' ' Plainly this is your vocation ! 
 Give up the architecture, and come in with us, and help to 
 build men." Strange to say, though Froebel had all his life 
 been meditating upon the secret of human education, this 
 was the first time it occurred to him to make it his own busi- 
 ness. The more he thought of Griiner's suggestion, the 
 more he liked it ; and the issue was, that he took one of the 
 younger classes in the new school. Immediately afterwards 
 he wrote to his brother that at last he had found his element 
 — he "felt like a bird in air, a fish in water." But the 
 teachers were hampered in their action by the proprietors of 
 the school ; and after a season Griiner said to Froebel, "You 
 should lead ; not be led. I release you from jour engage- 
 ment. Set up independently, and carry out your own ideas 
 unhindered." 
 
 When his purpose of leaving was known, one of the par- 
 ents who patronized the school, gave him his two sons to 
 educate, just as he should think best ; and because he now 
 
THE KINDERGARTNER. 11 
 
 heard of Pestalozzi, be took them to Yverdim, where he 
 remaiued as pupil with them, for a season. But he was not 
 quite satisfied with Pestalozzi's methods. lie saw there was 
 a process to be attended to, anterior to the observation of 
 objects ; namely, to employ and discipline the activity of 
 children yet too young to attend except to what they are 
 themselves doing. Education was to begin, as he saw, in 
 doing, and thence proceed to knowing. In returning from 
 Yverdun, his elder brother, and his younger brother's widow, 
 offered him their children to add to the two young Frank- 
 forters ; and the widow offered, besides, a small house that 
 she owned in Keilhau, if he would fit it up. He and Mid- 
 dcndorf and another friend united together and accepted this 
 offer ; and, with their own hands repaired the house, living 
 in the outbuildings meanwhile and subsisting on rations most 
 carefully economized. They then, for one thing, went to 
 work on the land, which they taught the children to cultivate, 
 and deduced their lessons out of the objects into which they 
 were putting their life and labor. To these six children 
 three cultivated men devoted themselves ; and Froebel also 
 wrote to the lady that used to study with him in the Minera- 
 logical INIuseum of Berlin, and she took her fortune, and left 
 her rank, to help the poor schoolmaster in his life work, as 
 the most devoted of wives. 
 
 Working on the land was not all that they did. They 
 began with it, because the children of the city had been 
 rather starved of the gratification of that instinct to work in 
 the earth, which very soon appears in all children — though, 
 as Froebel says, it will die out by being left uncultivated. 
 He found that his pupils bad been already injured by their 
 artificial cit}' life, and in many ways the}' had things to 
 unleara. It was not a perfectly easy thing to determine how 
 much liberty to give to individual tendencies that had been 
 exaggerated bv the reactions of disorder, or of an artificial 
 order. Fra'bel thought the educator should give full play 
 
12 THE KINDERGARTNER. 
 
 to all that is universal in human nature without pampering 
 human idiosyncrasy, to do which was the vicious point of 
 Rousseau's system that Froebel has happily avoided. It was 
 natural that he should first bring before his pupils the pro- 
 cesses of vegetable growth, because it was in observing them 
 that he had himself first found the laws of God. But he was 
 older than any child in the kindergarten when he learned 
 that lesson. Observation of anything outward is not the 
 first thing in human development, but exertion of powers 
 from within, which provokes the reaction of the outward and 
 makes it known. 
 
 I cannot follow out, in this introductory lecture, all his 
 studies of the nature of man in these children, and all his 
 experiments of cultivation. But I hope to do so in tliose 
 which follow. The school founded in Keilhau exists to this 
 day ; but Fro3bel ever found himself going back till at last 
 he came to the infant in the mother's arms. Then he went 
 into the huts of the peasantry to observe the mother's in- 
 stinctive ways, reason upon them, purify them of her indivi- 
 dual caprices and selfishness, and eliminate everything 
 inconsistent with the divine idea and method of procedure, 
 indicated by the instinct to the intelligence. He did not 
 confine himself to Keilhau, where Middendorf steadily lived, 
 though always keeping in relation with it ; but went at times 
 to other places, and once, for a year or two, left all, to go to 
 the University of Gottingen to study philology-. There he 
 made himself acquainted with Greek, Latin, and Sanskrit, 
 studying out those laws of mind exemplified in the formation 
 and decay of languages. For it was the secret of a perfect 
 development that he sought, and how to keep his pupils at 
 the height they " were competent to gain." After half a 
 century of the study of childhood in the living subject, and 
 elaboration of the means of discipline, he settled in his old 
 age into the conviction, that the most important period of 
 human education was before the child was seven years old. 
 
THE KLNDERGARTNER. 13 
 
 And his last years were spent in preparing teachers for kin- 
 dergartens at Rudolstadt and at Hamburg — which he did by 
 teaching before them as well as by lecturing to them. Now 
 it is what he discovered and elaborated, and has left, not in 
 logical formulas, though he has certainly stated principles in 
 words and embodied them in songs, but in processes of work 
 and play, that is to be taught in our training schools. It 
 took a Newton to discover gravitation and other principles 
 of nature, but men without genius can comprehend and apply 
 these principles, which they could not, like him, discover. 
 So it took a Froebers genius to discover the first principles 
 of education, and his sensibility to apply them without 
 mistake ; but intelligent and heartful youug women can learn 
 them and apply them, if — and only if — they will study 
 devoutly and faithfully what he has taught ; and in doing so 
 they will find themselves — not becoming artificial, but more 
 profoundly natural than ever ; for the true educational 
 process is but the mother's instinct and*method, clearly 
 understood in all its bearings, and acted out. To be a 
 kindergartuer is the perfect development of womanliness — a 
 working with God at the very fountain of artistic and intel- 
 lectual power and moral character. It is therefore the 
 highest finish that can be given to a woman's education, to 
 be educated for a kindergartuer ; and it is from the most 
 advanced classes of high and normal schools, public and 
 private, that the pupils of our training schools should come, 
 and from the most refined circles of private life — remember- 
 ing that these are not identical with wealthy and fashionable 
 ones, for in the latter we often find the vulgar and coarse. 
 The refinement of feeling and thought which is always 
 attended with gentle and courteous manners is a religious 
 quality, that not seldom glorifies humble homes whose inmates 
 escape the sometimes hardening effect of poverty by "seeing 
 Him who is invisible," while those " the imagination of 
 whose hearts are evil continually," and even the merely 
 
14 THE KINDERGARTNER. 
 
 frivolous, betray that they have "faculties that they have 
 never used " though they dwell in palaces. 
 
 Ever since the normal teaching of kindergai-tners was 
 begun in America, in 18G8, letters have been received from 
 teachers, already at work in the old routine of primary 
 instruction, asking for knowledge of the plays and occu- 
 pations invented by Froebel ; in order that, by means of 
 them, they may give such prestige to their infant schools 
 as the name of kindergarten ma}'. But this superficial, 
 inappreciative use of FroebeFs processes, is as fatal to his 
 reform as was judaizing to the primitive Christian Church. 
 Froebel's method is a radical change of direction. It changes 
 the educator's point of view. Instead of looking down upon 
 the child, the kindergartner must clear her mind of all fore- 
 gone arbitrary conclusions, and humbly look u|) to the 
 innocent soul, which in its turn sees nothing but the face 
 of the Father in heaven — (for thus Christ explains chil- 
 dren's being "of the kingdom of heaven"). This is difficult 
 for her to do, because — not seldom — a shadow has fallen 
 on the original innocence of the children confided to her 
 care, from those human beings in relation to them, who 
 have not done for them what every human being needs 
 by reason of the essential dependence of individuals upon 
 their race. 
 
 The child is doubtless an embryo angel; but no less 
 t/ certainly a possible devil. If the immortal will, -impas- 
 sioned by the heart, which never rests permanently satisfied 
 till the mind recognizes God, be puzzled, it may be turned 
 in a wrong direction by what it meets, and then the mani- 
 festation will be ugly and more or less hateful. Evil is the 
 inevitable effect of an ignorant, disorderl}^ action of the will ; 
 of its not adopting the laws of order, by which God creates 
 the universe, and of which the universe is the unconscious 
 exponent. But knowledge of the laws of order must come 
 to guide the will, from outside the child's conscious Individ- 
 
THE KiyDEliGARTNER. 15 
 
 uality^ through the human providence of education ^m which 
 the heaveuly Father veils His infinite power, in order that 
 the child uuiY be fiLC to make the choice of good, that shall 
 lift him from the state, of merely instinctive being,, into that 
 uoion of Love and Thought, which chai'acterizes a spirit 
 creative^ i.e., causing effects. 
 
 Perhaps you will say that if human influence must embody 
 Divine Providence, in order to educate, then children never 
 will be educated. Well ! Except in one instance I admit 
 that children never have been educated up to the ideal stan- 
 dard. But the one instance of the perfectly Divine Son of 
 the perfectly holy Mother ; and the partial successes of such 
 fitful good education as history and tradition report, forbid 
 us to despair of making human education a worthy image 
 of Divine Providence. To despair of this is want of the 
 proper action of human free will, — Faith. 
 
 The first qualification of the true kindergartner, then, is 
 Faith, which can be based onl}* on the abiding conviction 
 that God is with us 'Wo icill and to do,** if we will only have 
 the courage to take for granted that if we are idlling, He 
 will make of us divine guides to others. That He is calling 
 them to be so, whoever feels a strong love of children, 
 sj'mpathy with their life, and sensibility to their beauty, may 
 have a reasonable assurance ; and that such as shall faith- 
 fully qualify themselves for the work will not fail of the 
 divine help. But observe my proviso. Their love must not 
 be a passing emotion, grounded on the children's superficial 
 beauty. It must be a love that involves patience, that can 
 stand the manifestation of ugly temper, and perverse will, 
 and never lose sight of the embrj'o angel that wears for the 
 moment the devilish mask. In children, evil is actual, but 
 always superficial and temporary, if the educator does not 
 become party to it by losing her own temper and idea. Also 
 she must have resources by means of a cultivated under- 
 standing and imagination, to command the child's imagina- 
 tion and heart. 
 
16 THE KINDERGARTNER. 
 
 It may be said that everj'body cannot Lave, at will, imagi- 
 nation and culture. This is true ; but such persons should 
 not undertake to keep a kindergarten. Let them do some- 
 thing else ; keep shop, cultivate vegetables, work the sewing 
 machine ; even . keep those schools for older children, in 
 which books are the main teachers. There are multitudes 
 of things to be done ; the greatest variety of functions to be 
 performed in human life. But of all things to do, the culti- 
 vation of human beings at that period of life when they are 
 utterly at the mercy of those who teach them, is the most 
 sacred. Why rush into that, impelled by any motive below 
 the highest ? 
 
 On the other hand, I do not wish to produce any artificial 
 sentimentality on this subject. It is my belief that the 
 average w^oman is sufficiently gifted by nature to make a 
 good kindergartner, if she will give her nature fair play, by 
 cultivating religious and moral sentiment ; and will take 
 pains to develop her intellect by the stud}' of nature's laws 
 in at least one department of science — that of vegetable 
 physiology for instance, the materials of which are every- 
 where. One who could not be educated to become a kinder- 
 gartner, should never dare to become a mother ; for she 
 would not know even how to choose the assistance necessary 
 to her for the work that ought to be done for every child by 
 somebody. While I would discourage, and if possible effect- 
 ually frighten every one from professing kindergartning 
 who is morally disqualified by sordid aims, or by making it 
 a means to another end than itself, I welcome the young 
 and ardent to this beautiful womanly work, which, to do 
 well, requires of them to do the very best thing for their 
 own intellect and heart, and which, more certainly than any- 
 thing else, will give them the secret of Power and Beauty. 
 
 It was my privilege, a year or two since, to pass a week 
 in one of the schools of the feeble-minded ; and I there saw 
 six women, some of them quite young girls, devoted to the 
 
THE KIXDERGARTNER. 17 
 
 terrible work of waking up Will and Perception in those 
 poor prisoners of mal-organization, so many of them fright- 
 ful to look upon. They were doing their work under the 
 strongest sense of humanit}- and religion. It would have 
 been impossible to do it at all, as they were doing it, had 
 they had no other inspiration than the pay they were receiv- 
 ing. The main reward was in their having some success in 
 waking up the mind. In their countenances something an- 
 gelic was dawning ; and this was not my fancy merely, for 
 I heard the same remark made again and again, by persons 
 who went there as I did. I do not think one of these women 
 wished to leave the good work ; and if acting on a mind- 
 cherishing principle was so interesting, and productive of 
 such reactive effects, in such sad circumstances, how much 
 more may be expected from working upon children fairly 
 gifted! The charm of the sadder work was, that, like 
 kindergartning, it stimulated to profound study of the laws 
 of mental nature, in order to work reverently among them, 
 instead of arbitrarily, in defiance or irreverence of them. 
 To do this made these women feel that they were working 
 with God ; and this made them practical saints. But why 
 cannot we believe that God is present, and acting with us, 
 and wooing us to act with Himself, in the J030US paradise 
 of life, as well as in chambers of disease, and among the 
 wretched? Is He not the God of the living and joyful, as 
 well as of the dying and sad ? Why is the church-yard only 
 a grave-yard ? Why should it not always be a kindergarten ? 
 One of the pleasantest observations that I made of the 
 kindergartens of Germany — and I went to the very best 
 ones, those kept by the kindergartners whom Froebel had 
 trained — was the happy absorption of the teachers in the 
 children ; their sympathy with them ; the utter companion- 
 ship between them. I never saw a punishment ; I never 
 heard a Don't (or its German equivalent) ; but when any- 
 thing went wrong, there was always a pause, and sometimes 
 
18 THE KINDERGARTNER. 
 
 questions were asked ; and all seemed to wait till the inward 
 guide had been brought out into consciousness (whether the 
 thing in hand was social action or artistic work) . Perhaps 
 it might be harder work to govern American children. Their 
 vivacious temperament, their lively energies, need *' con- 
 scious law " as a curb, rather than as a spur. But all the 
 more is it necessary for the American kindergartner to vivify 
 the invisible guide; she should present order to the mind, 
 by her genial questioning and conversation over the work in 
 hand, rather than exert an arbitrary power which might 
 stimulate the reaction of obstinacj^ or the subterfuges of 
 cunning. To govern is not the whole thing. The question 
 is Jioio we govern; whether we so govern as to make a 
 cringing slave, a cunning hypocrite, or an intelligent, law- 
 abiding, self-respecting, willing servant of God. I have 
 seen a magnetic teacher produce a marvellous obedience, and 
 apparent order, by his imposing presence and keen satire. 
 He imagined that he governed by moral power ; but as soon 
 as he was out of the schoolroom, the children were the vic- 
 tims of their own impulses, to which seemed given a stronger 
 spring by the enforced repression. There is no order which 
 is more than skin deep, unless it be the free, glad obedience 
 of the child to a law, which he perceives to be creative be- 
 cause it enables him to do somethin^j real. Kothini? short of 
 the union of love and thought can produce spiritual power, 
 ^.e., oreativeness. It is only spiritual power that inaugurates 
 order — the Eternal Beauty may be inaugurated in childhood 
 and among childish toys. 
 
 There is reason, on their own account, why we want our 
 pupils, in this art of kindergartning, to be in their disposition 
 and circumstances above merel}' pecuniary motive for enter- 
 ing on the work ; and that is, because it will be long before 
 the work will pay much in money. I need not adduce any 
 other proof of this than our experience in Boston ; where, for 
 four years, the rarely gifted, thoroughly educated, religiously 
 
THE KINDERGARTNER. 19 
 
 devoted Alma Kriege poured out her young energies on 
 classes of less than a score of children ; bringing her a pit- 
 tance so small that she had to fill up the rest of her hours, 
 which ought to have been given to recreation and culture, 
 with other work, in order to pay for rent and necessary 
 bread. Our rich and cultivated people will not forego a lit- 
 tle more upholster}' than is necessar}', or a style of dress 
 that makes the laundry bill — to say nothing of the mantua- 
 maker's and milliner's — larger than the school bill, in order 
 to give the required remuneration to the kindergartner for 
 spending herself on their children in exhausting stud}^ and 
 labor. But the truth is, people do not really believe that 
 anything better can be done for children than to kill the time 
 between the mother's arms and the season when they are to 
 be taught to read ; and so this precious interval, when the 
 habits of thought and affection are forming, is given up to be 
 filled by chance, risking life-long difficulties for the child. 
 Now, what is to reform this state of things? Nothing but 
 the self-sacrificing work of kindergartners, who, for the sake 
 of enlightening these benighted parents, will do their work 
 faithfully, steadily refusing to undertake the care of those 
 whom their parents will not trust to Frcrbers system. The 
 refusal will not seldom force the truth on the parents — who, 
 when they know it, will be glad to know it. I do not say to 
 any particular person, it is your duty to wear yourself out 
 and half starve, for the sake of keeping a kindergarten. It 
 is onl}' you who are sufficiently free from other obligations, to 
 give yourselves the privilege and luxury of working with 
 God, on the paradisaical ground of childhood, who should 
 enter this field. If you can make it your object to study 
 how to avoid offending those who are beholding the face of 
 the Father in heaven, by not hindering, but bringing them 
 to Christ, which means helping them to grow as He did, in 
 grace as in stature, and in favor with God and man, till like 
 Him they become redeemers of their brethren from bondage, 
 
20 THE KINDERGARTNER. 
 
 and can help to make earth the kingdom of heaven ; then you 
 may hope, in your day and generation, to initiate kindergart- 
 ning, and make the way smooth for those that follow. 
 When the true thing is initiated, it will pay even in money ; 
 for parents will see that it is invaluable. 
 
 It is twenty- two years since Frcebel died. He had made a 
 band of kindergartners, and set them at work. They all be- 
 gan with small pecuniary reward. It was at first a starving 
 business. In Europe it is more difficult than it is here, to 
 induce women of culture and position to undertake any work 
 which is paid for with money. Froebers genius had over- 
 come this prejudice in a few instances. The ladies of one 
 wealthy family in Hamburg became his pupils, one of whom 
 introduced it into England, though under some great disad- 
 vantages. The Baroness Marenholtz-Biilow is the most im- 
 portant person inspired by Froebel ; and the circumstances of 
 her introduction to him are even picturesque. Being in fee- 
 ble health, she went into an obscure village for rest and 
 retirement; and one day asked the woman with whom she 
 boarded, if anything interesting was going on among the 
 villagers. The woman replied that there was ''one queer 
 thing, a natural fool who played about among the children, 
 who followed him, and were very much taken up with him." 
 The Baroness hardly heeded this singular assertion ; but 
 some time after, being abroad for exercise, she saw a white- 
 haired man under a tree, with a group of children around 
 him; and, thinking this might be the "natural fool," she 
 drew near, and was soon arrested by what she heard, and 
 joined the little throng herself. Subsequent interviews with 
 Froebel — for it was he — made a new era in her life, and she 
 corresponded with him closely till his death. She has since 
 been his chief apostle. After years of earnest work, with 
 tongue and pen, she succeeded in getting rid of the injunc- 
 tion against his schools, made by the Prussian Government, 
 which was jealous of what claimed to be an improvement on 
 
THE KINDERGARTNER. 21 
 
 their world-renowned Reform. Since this injunction was 
 taken off, she has worked, by means of a normal school 
 which she helped to found in Berlin, in which she lectured 
 gratuitously many years, fighting earnestly against just such 
 deteriorations of the system as have alread}' begun to appear 
 in this country. Some of the pseudo-kindergartens use the 
 plays and occupations there, as here, in the most superficial 
 way. When children work b}' patterns, or are shown — in- 
 stead of being told in words — how to do things, they merely 
 imitate, with as little accompaniment of intellectual action as 
 
 I monkey; and neither the mind nor the character will be 
 developed, but rather dissipated and weakened. Others, 
 especially in this country, use the plays in the intervals be- 
 tween lessons or reading, — which, being taught before the 
 mind has been regularly developed by success in doing things, 
 and before the meaning of words has been learned in an adc- 
 
 jiiate manner, are confused with a chaos of unrelated partic- 
 ulars, that it will take years of self-education, by and by, to 
 grow out of ; and, in short, only a few vigorous natures for- 
 tunately situated ever surmount the difiiculty. 
 
 But the work of the Baroness has not been in vain ; and 
 she writes in a late letter that a government decree has just 
 been made in Austria, ordering that all the children between 
 four and six years of age should be sent to kindergartens ; 
 and that; every normal school must give kindergarten train- 
 ing, and every teacher, whether of that or the following 
 stages of education, must be made acquainted with Froebers 
 principles and practices. This great step is the final result 
 of the agitation of the subject for the last few years in 
 Europe, which began in the first Philosophers* Congress at 
 Prague, in 18G7. The dying out of the teachers instructed 
 by Froebel himself was manifestly producing a deteriorating 
 effect in the quality of kindergartners ; and his most intelli- 
 gent and devoted disciples proposed to the Congress an 
 effort for the revival of his science and art in its pristine 
 purity and power. 
 
22 THE KINDERGARTNER. 
 
 It is most desirable that such falsification and deteriora- 
 tion do not get ahead in America. But there is impending 
 danger of it, and it can only be prevented by establishing 
 and keeping up adequate training-schools, and so informing 
 public opinion, that it shall not be tolerated in the community 
 to call by the sacred name of kindergarten anything short of 
 it. There will necessarily be infant schools of an inferior 
 quality for a long time, because it will take time to make 
 common an adequate education in the art of kindergartning ; 
 but let such be called play-schools. Pretenders in this pro- 
 fession should be frowned upon by all good people, as pre- 
 tenders in the clerical profession are. They do more harm 
 than bad clergymen can, because the subjects of their teach- 
 ing are more helpless and undefended, and can do nothing 
 for themselves. 
 
 The experience I have had in my apostolate in this cause, 
 has brought me to the conclusion that in America the best 
 way to proceed is, to induce the public authorities to have 
 kindergartning taught in the State and city normal schools, 
 and to open public kindergartens as fast as there are ade- 
 quate teachers for them. 
 
 Everything depends on the quality of the first kindergart- 
 ners we train — their spiritual, moral and intellectual quality 
 — which must be such as to operate in two ways : first, to 
 do for the children the right thing ; secondly, to educate the 
 community to require it done as a general thing. Many 
 characteristics of America give great encouragement. We 
 are not dragged back, as they are in F.urope, by old customs, 
 whose roots are intertwined with the heart-strings of in- 
 herited sentiment. Our patriotic hearts fasten themselves 
 on the great future that our fathers died to inaugurate. We 
 must justify their ideal of universal equality, by an equal 
 education, an equal opportunity for development of all our 
 people. " The spirit that makes all things new," as the 
 heart of childhood craves, and its hand is eager to enact, is 
 
THE KINDERGARTNER. 23 
 
 " every word that proceedcth out of the mouth of God," to 
 make alive the human heart. Therefore we leave behind us 
 — more and more — those conventions of the Old World that 
 have made even the great work of educating rank as infe- 
 rior to tliat which wields the sword of war. Some people 
 groan at seeing how the growing facilities of getting money, 
 which our institutions give to every man and woman of 
 energy, is effacing the old distinctions of rank. But if our 
 Culture may be made universal, by employing part of this 
 money in making public education adequate, what ground 
 will be left for distinction of rank? "What pretext for exclu- 
 sion will there be, when there are none rude and uncultivated 
 to be excluded? That any distinction of ranks came among 
 the children of God is incidental to free agency. Children 
 know nothing of them — till wc profane their golden age of 
 innocence by revealing them. (Appendix, Note A.) 
 
 >*^ OF THR^^ 
 
 [UFI7EE3IT7) 
 
LECTUEE IL 
 
 THE NURSERY. 
 
 It is my object to inspire, if I can, an enthusiasm for edu- 
 cating children strictly on FrcEbePs method, and no other; 
 and I wish to justify myself by giving reasons for this ; for 
 I know that, at first sight, Americans start back from putting 
 faith in any leader ; immediately exclaiming, that they must 
 be free to follow the light of their own minds. 
 
 This sounds large and liberal, certainly; and no one sees 
 t!ie dangerof yielding to any individual authorit}^ more than 
 1 do ; but it is certain that nothing may make us so narrow, 
 as a bigoted adherence to the rule of following the light of 
 our own mind condignly. The light of our own individual 
 mind may be darkness ; it must, in any case, be that of a far- 
 thing candle, compared with Eternal Reason, "the light that 
 lighteth every man that cometh into the world." The ques- 
 tion is, do we distinguish between that greater light and our 
 own idiosyncrasy, with a becoming and discriminating hu- 
 mility ? I once heard a lady, whose name was Gurley, say 
 to a witty gentleman, that she believed "in the total de- 
 pravity of human nature from the experience of her own 
 heart." Ah I but that is not quite fair, he replied, " for how 
 do you know what is human nature and what is Gurley- 
 ism ? " Here is tersely suggested the danger of the indi- 
 vidualistic philosophy, which has developed itself into a 
 new kind of bigotry in these later days, not less denuncia- 
 tory in its animus than any other ; and which shuts up its 
 votaries in a dungeon from the light of Universal expe- 
 rience. I acknowledge the legitimacy of the philosophy of 
 
26 THE NURSERY. 
 
 individualism, as a protest against the glittering generality 
 which theological philosophy had become, at the time when 
 it arose ; and as affirmation that God makes every man sepa- 
 rately an eye, and if he would see into the Infinite Over- 
 soul, he must look with it out of his own window. But this 
 is only the way to begin to search for truth. If he is not self- 
 intoxicated, every man soon learns that his window does not 
 command the whole horizon, that God not only has given a 
 ivindow to him, but to every other man ; that we are all free to 
 look out of each others' windows, some being higher up in the 
 tower of the common humanity than our own, commanding 
 wider views ; in fine that it is with all the sons of man that 
 "wisdom dwells," and they must inter-communicate with 
 mutual reverence if they would know her well. Froebel had 
 not been so wise, had he not, with reverent humility, sought 
 what God says immediately to mothers and babes. You will 
 not be wise if you do not look out of FroebePs window. 
 
 The story I told you, in my last lecture, of the growth of 
 FroebePs mind from his boyhood, suggested the fact that the 
 common motherly instinct, purified of individual passion and 
 caprice, and, understanding itself as the presence of the Liv- 
 ing God overshadowing her, is the social atmosphere neces- 
 sary to be breathed by every child who is to grow in wisdom 
 and stature, and in favor with God and man. 
 
 Froebel learned this primal fact or truth, first negatively, 
 as it were, by lacking it in his own childish experience ; and 
 he verified it positively afterwards, by studying the method 
 of unsophisticated mothers, at that earliest period of their 
 children's lives, when, in order to keep them alive merely, 
 the nurse must take the rule of her nursing from the needs 
 which her heart divines, aided by the nursling's own expres- 
 sion of want and content — its tears and smiles. 
 
 Let us then determine first, as he did, the nursery art, 
 which is preliminary to that of the Kindergarten. 
 
 By the primal miracle (i. e., wonder working) of nature, the 
 
THE NURSERY. 27 
 
 mother finds in her arms a fellow-being, who has an im- 
 measurable susceptibility of suffering, and an immeasurable 
 desire of enjoyment, and an equally immeasurable force in- 
 lent on compassing this desire, already in activity, but with 
 no knowledge at all of the material conditions in which he 
 is placed, to which he is subject, and by which he is limited 
 in the exercise of this immense nature. 
 
 As I have said before, every form of animal existence but 
 the human, is endowed with some absolute knowledge, en- 
 abling it to fulfil its limited sphere of relationship as uner- 
 ringly as the magnetized needle turns to the pole, and, even 
 with more or less of enjoyment ; yet with no forethought. 
 But the knowledge tiiat is to guide the blind will of the hu- 
 man being, even to escape death in the first hour of its bodily 
 life, exists substantially outside of its own individuality in 
 the mother, or whoever supplies the mother's place. 
 
 And throughout the existence of the human being, the 
 forethought that is to enable him to appreciate his ever 
 multiplying relations with his own kind, and which grows 
 wider and sweeter as he fulfils the duties they involve, is 
 essentially outside of himself as a mere individual ; being 
 found first in those who are in relation with him in the fam- 
 ily, afterwards in social, national, cosmopolitan relationship ; 
 till at last he realizes himself to be in sonship with God, in 
 whom all humanity, nations, families, individuals, "live and 
 move and have their being.'^ There is no absolute isolation 
 or independency possible for a spiritual being. This is a 
 truth involved in the very meaning of the word spirit, and 
 revealed to every family on earth, by the ever recurring fact 
 of the child bom into the arms of a love that emparadises 
 both parties, on which he lives more or less a pensioner 
 throughout his whole existence, so far as he lives humanly, 
 finding fullness of life at last in the clear vision and con- 
 scious communion of an Infinite Father, who has been re- 
 vealing Himself all along, in the love of parent and child, 
 
28 THE NURSERY. 
 
 brother and sister, husband and wife, friend, fellow-citizen and 
 fellow-man. Christ said, that little children see the Father 
 face to face, but surely not with the eyes of the body or of 
 the understanding! They see him with the heart. And 
 is it not true, that we never quite forget the child's vision 
 in turning our eyes on lower things ? for what but remem- 
 brance of our Heavenly Father's face is hope, " that springs 
 eternal in the human breast ?" What but this remembrance 
 are the ideals of beauty, that haunt the savage and the 
 sage ? the sense of law that gives us our moral dignity, 
 and in the saddest case, what but this are the pangs of 
 remorse, in which, as Emerson has sung in his wonderful 
 sphinx song, "lurks the joy that is sweetest? " 
 
 Froebel has authority with me, because, in this great faith, 
 making himself a little child, he received little children in 
 the name (that is, as germinating forms) of the Divine hu- 
 manity, with a simple sincerity, such as few seem to have 
 done since Jesus claimed little children as the pure elements 
 of the kingdom he came to establish on earth ; and exhorted 
 that, as they were such, they should be brought to him as 
 the motherly instinct prompted, and declared that they 
 were not to be forbidden (that is, hindered as all false edu- 
 cation hinders.) 
 
 As an American then, and more — as a human being, I ac- 
 knowledge no authority except the union of love and thought 
 in practical operation. But whenever 1 see this union in any 
 one, to a greater degree than I have it in m^'self, I bow before 
 that person, and feel (which is the subtlest kind of know- 
 ing) that I am larger wiser, freer, more effective for good, 
 by following and obeying him as a master for the time 
 being. 
 
 Therefore, after the study I have made of Froebel, and of 
 the method with little children that he was fifty years dis- 
 covering and elaborating into practical processes, whose ra^ 
 tionale and creative influence I perceive ; I feel, as it were, 
 
THE NURSERY. 29 
 
 Dimnehj authorized to present him to you as an authority 
 which you can reverently trust ; and so be delivered from the 
 uncertainties of your own narrow and crude notions, inex- 
 perienced and ignorant as you undoubtedly are, however 
 talented. 
 
 It is quite necessary for me to say, and for 3^ou to accept 
 this now, or our short time together will be wasted. There 
 13 a time for criticism undoubtedly, and nothing is true that 
 can not make itself good against " honest doubt." But as 
 Sterne has said, ''of all the cants that are canted in this cant- 
 ing world, though the cant of hypocrisy may be the worst, 
 the cant of criticism is the most provoking. I would go 
 fifty miles on foot to kiss the hand of that man, whose gen- 
 erous heart will give up the reins into his author's hands, 
 for the time being, and let him lead him where he will." I 
 am quoting from memory, and may forget the exact words ; 
 but the idea is, that the mood of self-surrendering reverence 
 is the mood for profitable study, for it is to "become a little 
 child," which Christ told his disciples was the condition of 
 any one's becoming the greatest in the kingdom of Divine 
 Truth. 
 
 Let us begin, then, with reverently considering the new 
 born child, as Froebel did ; for that is to be "the light of all 
 our seeing." 
 
 A child is a living soul, from the very first ; not a mere 
 animal force, but a person, open to God on one side by his 
 heart, which appreciates love, and on the other side to be 
 opened to nature, by the reaction upon his sensibility of 
 those beauteous forms of things that are the analysis of 
 God's creative wisdom ; and which, therefore, gives him a 
 growing understanding, whereby his mere active force shall 
 be elevated into a rational, productive will. For heart and 
 will are, at first, blind to outward things and therefore in- 
 eflBcient, until the understanding shall be developed accord- 
 ing to the order of nature. 
 
80 THE NURSERY. 
 
 But during this process of its development, adult wisdom 
 must supply the place of the child's wisdom, which is not, 
 as yet, grown; that is — an educator must point out the 
 way, genially, not peremptorily ; for in following the edu- 
 cator's indications, the child must still act in a measure 
 from himself. As he is irrefragably free, he will not alwa3^8 
 obey ; he will try other paths — perhaps the contrary one — 
 by way of testing whether he has life in himself. But unless 
 he shall go a right way, he will accomplish nothing satisfac- 
 tory and reproductive ; and it is FroebePs idea to give him 
 something to do, within the possible sphere of his affection 
 and fancy, which shall be an opportunity of his making an 
 experience of success, that shall stimulate him to desire, 
 and thereby make him receptive of the guidance of creative 
 law, which is the only true object for the obedience of a spir- 
 itual being. 
 
 To the new born child, his own body is the whole uni- 
 verse ; and the first impression he gets of it seems to come 
 from his need of nutriment. But it is the mother, not the 
 child, that responds to this want, by presenting food to the 
 organ of taste, and producing a pleasurable impression which 
 arouses the soul to intend itself into the organ, which is de- 
 veloped to receive impression more and more per fee tl}', by 
 the child's seeking for a repetition of the pleasure. For a 
 time, whatever uneasiness a child feels, he attempts to re- 
 move by the exercise of this organ, through which he has 
 gained his first pleasant impression of objective nature. 
 Therefore is it, that his lips and tongue become his first 
 means of examining the outward world into which he has 
 been projected by his Creator. 
 
 The ear seems to be the next organ of which the child be- 
 comes conscious, or through which he receives impressions 
 of personal pleasure and pain ; and here it is noticeable, 
 that rhythmical sound seems, from the very first, to give most 
 pleasure ; and is wonderfully effective to soothe the nerves, 
 
THE NURSERY. 31 
 
 and remove uneasiness. All mothers and nurses sing to 
 babies, as well as rock them, (which is rhythmical motion,) 
 and this pleasant impression on the ear diverts the child 
 from intending himself exclusively into the organ of tasting. 
 He now stretches himself into his ears, whose powers are 
 developed by gently exercising their function of hearing. 
 
 The child seems to taste and hear, before he begins to see 
 an3^thing more definite than the difference between light and 
 darkness. B^^ and by a salient point of light, it may be 
 the light of a candle, catches and fixes his eye, and gives a 
 distinct visual impression, which is evidently pleasurable, for 
 the child's eye follows the light, Bhowing that the soul in- 
 tends itself into the organ of sight. Soon after, gay colors 
 fix its gaze and evidently give pleasure. The eye for color 
 is developed gradually, like the ear for music, by exercise, 
 which being pleasurable becomes spontaneous. 
 
 The whole body is the organ of touch ; but as the hands 
 are made convenient for grasping, to which the infant has 
 an instinctive tendenc}', and the tips of the fingers are espe- 
 ciall}^ handy for touching, they become, by the intension of 
 the mind into them, the special organ for examining things 
 by touch, and getting impressions of qualities obvious to no 
 other sense. When, as it sometimes happens, by malforma- 
 tion or maltreatment of them, the eyes fail to perform their 
 functions, it is wonderful how much more the soul intends 
 itself into the special organs of touch, developing them to 
 such a degree, that a cultivated blind person seems almost 
 to see with the tips of the fingers. This fact proves what 
 I have been trying to impress on your minds, that the soul 
 which spontaneously desires and wills enj.oyment, takes pos- 
 session and becomes conscious of its organs of sensuous 
 perception, partly by an original impulse, given to it by the 
 Creator, and partly, (which I want you especially to ob- 
 serve,) by the genial, s^-mpathetic, intelligent, careful co- 
 working of the mother and nurse j who, by what we call 
 
32 THE NURSERY. 
 
 nursery play, gives a needed help to the child to accomplish 
 this feat in a healthy and pleasurable manner. And we shall 
 he better convinced of the virtue of this nursery play, if 
 we consider the case of the neglected children of the very 
 poor, so pathetically described by Charles Lamb. See es- 
 says on Popular Fallacies, No. 1 2. 
 
 Madame Marenholtz-Bulow has happily remarked, in her 
 preface to Jacob's Manual, Le jardin des Enfans^ that " to 
 develop and train the senses is not to pamper them.'' The 
 organs of tasting and smelling do not require so much 
 exercise by the duplicate action of the mother, as those of 
 seeing and hearing. The former have for their end to build 
 up the body ; the latter to lead the child's mind out of the 
 body, to that part of nature which connects him with other 
 persons. The functions of both are equally worthy ; but 
 those of the latter belong to the child as a social and intel- 
 lectual being. It is the mother's office to temper the exer- 
 cises of each sense, so that they may limit and balance each 
 other. And in order to limit those which are building up 
 the body, so that they shall not absorb the child, the action 
 of the others must be helped out. " Our bodies feel — 
 where'er they be — against or with our will ;" but to see and 
 hear all that children can, requires exertion of will and this 
 is coaxed out by the sympathetic action of others. Yet the 
 functions of tasting or smelling are not to be banned. The 
 Creator has made them delightful ; and if others do their 
 proper part, their exercise will never become harmful. To 
 enjoy tasting and smelling is no less innocent than to enjoy 
 seeing and hearing. There is no function of mind or body 
 but maybe performed Divinely. Milton shows insight into 
 this truth by making Raphael sit and eat at table with man 
 in Paradise ; and he says some wonderful things upon the 
 point, which will bear much study. And have we not in 
 sacred tradition a symbol, still more venerable, of the 
 truth, that the fire of spirit burns without consuming, and 
 
THE NURSERY. 33 
 
 may transform the body without leaving visible residue? 
 There are in Brown's philosophy (which does not penetrate 
 into all the mysteries of the rational soul and Immortal spirit) 
 some very instructive chapters on the social and moral re- 
 lations of the grosser senses, (as taste, smell and touch are 
 sometimes called.) It is the part of rational education to 
 understand all these things thoroughlj^, and adjust the spon- 
 taneous activities by subordinating them to the end of a 
 harmonious and beneficent social life. The Lord's Supper 
 may be made to illustrate this general human duty. 
 
 There is doubtless marked difference in the original en- 
 ergy of life, in different children. Young — but not too young, 
 happy, healthy, loving parents, have the most vigorous, 
 lively and harmoniously organized children ; but in all cases, 
 the impulse of life must be met and cherished by the tender, 
 attractive, inspiring force of motherly love ; which with ca- 
 ressing tone and invoking smile, peers into the infant's eyes, 
 and importunately calls forth the new person, who, as her 
 instinctive motherly faith and love assure her, is there; 
 and whom she 3'canis to make conscious of himself in self- 
 enjoyment. The time comes when the little body has be- 
 come so far subject to the new soul, that an answering 
 smile of recognition signalizes the arrival upon the shores of 
 mortal being of "that light which never was on sea or land," 
 another immortal intelligence 1 It is only the smile of the 
 intelligent human face, that can call forth this smile of the 
 child in the first instance ; but let this glad mutual recogni- 
 tion of souls take place once, and both parties will seek to 
 repeat the delight, again and again. Few persons, indeed, 
 get so chilled by the sufferings and disappointments, and 
 so hardened by the crimes of human life, but on the sight 
 of a little child, they are impelled to invoke this answering 
 smile by making themselves, for the moment, little children 
 again ; seeking and finding that communion with our kind 
 which is the Alpha and Omega of life. 
 
 D 
 
34 THE NURSERY. 
 
 Do not say that I am wandering, fancifully, from the 
 serious work which we are upon : I am only beginning at 
 the beginning. We can only understand the child, and what 
 we are to do for it in the Kindergarten, by understanding 
 the first stage of its being — the pre-intellectual one in the 
 nursery. The body is the first garden in which God plants 
 the human soul, "to dress and to keep it." The loving 
 mother is the first gardener of the human flower. Good 
 nursing is the first word of FroebePs gospel of child-culture. 
 
 The process of taking possession of the organs, that I have 
 just described, is never performed perfectly unless children 
 are nursed genially. If bitter and disagreeable things are 
 presented to the organ of the taste, they are rejected with 
 the whole force of a will, which is too blind in its ignorance 
 to find the thing it wants, but vindicates its irrefragable 
 freedom of choice by uttering cries of fright, pain and 
 anger, as it shrinks back, instead of throwing itself forward 
 into nature. If the cruel thing is repeated, the nerves are 
 paralyzed, or at least rendered morbid, especially when rude 
 untender handling outrages the sense of touch. When 
 rough and discordant sounds assail the ear, or too sharply 
 salient a light, the eye, these organs will be injured, and 
 may be rendered useless for life. The neglected and mal- 
 treated child is dull of sense, and lifeless, or morbidly 
 impulsive, possibly savagely cruel and cunning, in sheer 
 self-defence. The pure element and first condition of per- 
 fect growth, is the joy that responds to the electric touch 
 of love. 
 
 Underlying and outmeasuring all this delicate develop- 
 ment of the organs of the five senses, is the whole body's 
 instinct of motion, which is the primal action of will. The 
 perfectly healthy body of a little child, when it is awake, is 
 always in motion — more or less intentionally. When asleep, 
 tbere is the circulation of the blood, and pulsation of the 
 Bolids of the body, corresponding to the act of breathing. 
 
THE NURSERY. 35 
 
 which is involuntary ; and any interruption of these produces 
 disease — their suspension, death. But the motion which 
 makes the limbs agile, and the whole body elastic, and gradu- 
 ally to become an obedient servant, is voluntar}^, intentional, 
 and can be helped by that sympathetic action of others, 
 which we call playing with the child, FroebePs rich sug- 
 gestions on this play are contained in his mother's cosset- 
 ting songs; and I am glad to tell you that two English 
 ladies, a poet and a musician, have translated and set to music 
 this unique book; and that just now it has been published 
 by Wilkie, Wood & Co., in London. It suggests all kinds 
 of little gymnastics of the hands, fingers, feet, toes and legs, 
 for these are the child's first play things ; and also the first 
 symbols of intelligent communication, giving the core and 
 significance to all languages.^ 
 
 I think that a baby never begins to play, in the first in- 
 stance, but responds to the mother and nurse's play, and 
 learns thereby its various members and their powers and 
 uses ; and when at last it jumps, runs, walks by itself, which 
 it cannot begin to do without the help of others, it is pre- 
 pared to say /, with a clear sense of individuality. 
 
 In analyzing the process of a child's learning to walk, we 
 see most clearly the characteristic difference between the 
 human person and the animals below man in the scale of 
 relation. The little chicken runs about of itself, as soon 
 as it is out of the shell ; but the human child, even after all 
 its limbs are grown, and though he has been moving him- 
 self on all fours by means of the floor, and supporting him- 
 self by means of the furniture to which he clings, does not 
 walk. He will only stand alone, unsupported, when he sees 
 that there are guarding arms round about him, all ready to 
 catch him if he should fall. He seems to know instinc- 
 tively, that all the force of the earth' s gravitation is against 
 him. He does not know that he may balance it by his per- 
 sonal power. His body weighs upon his soul like a moun- 
 1 An American translation has been published by Lee & Shepard, Boston. 
 
36 THE NURSERY. 
 
 tain, precisely because he is intelligent of it as an object, 
 loves it as a means of pleasure, and dreads its power of giv- 
 ing pain to him. The little darling stands, perhaps between 
 the knees of his father, whose arms are round about him ; 
 the mother opens her loving arms to receive him, and calls 
 him to her embrace ; the way is short between, and three 
 steps will be sufficient, but where is the courageous faith to 
 say to this mountain of a body, "be removed to another 
 place ?'' It is not in himself; he cannot produce it any more 
 than he can take himself ujj by his own ears. It is in the 
 mother ; for it is she, not he, who has the knowledge of the 
 yet unexerted power which is flowing into the child from 
 the Creator. Only by the electric touch of her faith in him 
 does his faith in himself flash out in answer to her look and 
 voice of cheer, and he rushes to her arms. It is the doing 
 of the deed which gives to himself the knowledge of the 
 power that is in him. He repeats it again and again, seem- 
 ing to wish to be more and more certain of his being the 
 cause of so great effect. Thus cause and effect are discrim- 
 inated, and "to him that hath" a sense of individuality, 
 " shall be given," forevermore, a growing power over the 
 body, to which no measure can be stated. Even on the 
 vulgar plane of the professional tumbler, a man's power 
 over his body seems, sometimes, to be absolute and mirac- 
 ulous. But the annals of heroism and martyrdom are full 
 of facts that go to prove to all who consider them pro- 
 foundly, that the immaterial soul is sovereign, when, by re- 
 cognizing all its relations, it subjects the individual to the 
 universal, and becomes thereby entirely spiritual, (which is 
 man reciprocating with God ; becoming more and more con- 
 scious forever.*) 
 
 ■^=' Since this lecture was written and delivered in Boston, I have 
 received from Europe a French version of the Baroness Crombrucr- 
 <?he's translation of Froebel's Education of Man, and find that the 
 first chapters analyze the first and second stages of development so 
 much, in the way that I have done, that it gives me, on the one 
 
THE NURSERY. 37 
 
 From what has been said of the soul's taking possession 
 of the body and its several organs, by exercising the func- 
 tions of tasting, hearing, seeing, smelling, touching, grasp- 
 ing, moving the limbs, and at last taking up the whole body 
 into itself in the act of walking, we see that it is all done, 
 even the last, by virtue of the social nature. 
 
 Frcebel took his clue from this fact, a primal one, and 
 never let it go, and it is of the greatest importance that it 
 be understood clearly, that conscious individuality, which 
 gives the sense of free personality, the starting point, as it 
 were, of intelligent will, is perfectly consistent with and 
 even dependent on the simultaneous development of the 
 social principle in all its purity and power. 
 
 We see a sad negative proof of this, in asylums for in- 
 fants abandoned by their mothers, or given up ])y them 
 through stress of poverty. There is one of these in New 
 York city, into which are received poor little things in the 
 first weeks of their existence. Every thing is done for their 
 bodily comfort which the general human kindness can de- 
 hand, confidence in myself as a tru6 interpreter of Frcebel, and on 
 the other, new confidence in Frcebel as a scientific Observer and re- 
 corder of what 1 have been accused 6f founding on a merely senti- 
 mental knowledfije. But scientific knowledge, or that gained by 
 the exercise of the understandings and sentimental knowledge, or 
 what is gained by the intuitions of the heart, must necessarily cor- 
 respond if the understanding is sound and the heart has been kept 
 diligently to the issues of life. Mr. Emerson calls the intellect sen- 
 sibilitj', and there is a fine meaning in this. Is there not analogous 
 instruction in calling the heart apprehension ? What are love, jus- 
 tice, beauty, (tc, but apprehensions of the primal relations estab- 
 lished by God ? Can the understanding have sensibility to them, 
 unless apprehensiou of them exists from the beginning? 
 
 In the June, July and August numbers of the Kindergarten Mes- 
 senger ^ for 1874, will be found translations of the first chapters of 
 Frcebel's book, above msntioned. I beganinFebruary to print the 
 translation of the introduction, which will be finished in the May 
 number, and then will follow the first chapter, entitled *'The Nurs- 
 ling," and in the following numbers the subsequent chapters, on 
 the child's development during the Kindergarten era. This work 
 of Frocbel's was published at an earlier period of his career than 
 1840, when he began to devote himself almost entirely to the first 
 stage of education, which, as Jie grew older, he felt to be the most 
 im]X)rtant, because it enfolds the germs of all later developments. 
 
88 THE NURSERY. 
 
 vise. They have clean warm cradles and clothes, good milk, 
 in short everything but that caressing motherly play, which 
 goes from the personal heart to the personal heart. That 
 is one thing general charity cannot suppl}^ ; it is the personal 
 gift of God to the mother for her child, and none but she can 
 be the sufficient medium of it, and therefore, undoubtedly 
 *t is, that almost all new-born children in foundling hospi- 
 tals die ; or, if they survive, are found to be feeble-minded 
 or idiotic. They seem to sink into their animal natures, 
 and belie the legend man written on their brows, showing none 
 of that beautiful fearlessness and courageous affectionateness 
 that characterise the heartily welcomed, healthy, well-cared- 
 for human infant. On the contrary, they show a dreary apa- 
 thy, morbid fearfulness, or a belligerent self defence, antici- 
 pative of other forms of the cruel neglect which has been their 
 dreary experience. 
 
 Taking a hint from observations of this kind, together 
 with the bitter experiences of his own childhood, Froebel 
 supplied to the mother or nurse some playthings for the 
 baby, which might continue to improve the various organs 
 of its body, by making the exercise of their functions a so- 
 cial delight. 
 
 What is called the first gift, he proposes should be used in 
 the nursery first. It consists of six soft balls, not too large 
 to be grasped by a little hand, and the use of which in the 
 nursery, is suggested by a little first book for mothers, that 
 has been translated from Jacob's Lejardin des EnfansJ^ I 
 think it is important for the Kindergartner to know what 
 Frosbel thought could be done for the development of the 
 infant in the nursery, since if it has not been done there, she 
 must contrive to remedy the evil in the Kindergarten. You 
 will bear with me, therefore, if I go quite into the minutiae 
 
 '^- It is sold for ten cents byHammett, publisher, in Brattle street, 
 Boston. 
 
THE NURSERY. 89 
 
 of this matter. It will open your eyes to observe delicately, 
 as Fra3bel did. 
 
 lie proposed that the red ball should be first presented. 
 He had observed that a bright light concentrated, as in a 
 candle, first excited the organ of sight and stimulated its 
 action. Hence he inferred that a bright color would do the 
 same, a neutral tint would not be seen at all probably. The 
 red ball is not quite so salient and exciting as the light of 
 a candle, but on that account it can be gazed at longer, 
 without producing a painful re-action. The child will have 
 a pleasure in grasping it, and will probably carry it to his 
 lips ; but as it is woolen, it will not be especially agreeable 
 to the delicate organ of taste. It will all the more be 
 looked at therefore, and give the impression of red. Froe- 
 bel proposes that it shall be called the red ball, in order that 
 the impression of the word red on the car, shall blend in 
 memory with the impression of the color on the eye. As 
 long as the child seems amused with the red ball, he would 
 not have another color introduced, because he thought it 
 took time for the eye to get a clear and strong impression 
 of one color, and this should be done before it was tried with 
 a contrasted impression. But by and by the blue ball, as 
 the greatest contrast, ma}'- be given and named ; and all the 
 little plays suggested in the mother's book be repeated with 
 the blue ball ; and then the yellow ball should be given with 
 its name ; and then the three be given together, and the baby 
 be asked to choose the blue, or red, or yellow one. By at- 
 taching a string to them, and whirling them, or letting the 
 infant do so, it is surprising how long the child will amuse 
 itself with these balls, and what pleasure colors alone give, 
 especially when combined with motion. 
 
 The secondary colors may afterwards be added to the 
 treasury for the eye, with the same carefulness to secure 
 completeness and distinctness of impression ; and to associ- 
 ate the color with the word that names it ; for language, the 
 
40 THE NUKSERY. 
 
 special organ of social communion, should be addressed to 
 the child from the first, though its complete attainment and 
 use is the crown of all education. 
 
 Smiles and sounds, proceeding out of the mouth, are the 
 first languages, and begin to fix the little child's e^^es and 
 attention upon the mouth of the mother, from which issue 
 the tones that are sweetest to hear, and especially when in 
 musical cadence. But the child understands the words ad- 
 dressed to him long before he himself begins to articulate ; for 
 language is no function of the individual, but only of the 
 consciously social being, yearning to find himself in another. 
 
 There is a reciprocal communication between infants and 
 adults that precedes the difficult act of articulation. This 
 we call the natural language, and it is common to all na- 
 tions, being mutually intelligible, as is proved by deaf mutes 
 from remote countries who understand each other at once. 
 But this natural language has a very narrow scope. It 
 serves to communicate instinctive wants of body and heart, 
 but does not serve the fine purposes of intellectual commu- 
 nication, nor minister any considerable intellectual develop- 
 ment. These signs are very general, while every word in 
 its origin has represented a particular object in nature. In 
 analyzing any language, we find that the names given to the 
 body and its members, and to the actions and facts of life, 
 ^without which no human society can exist, are the nucleus 
 or central words that characterize it, and from which the 
 "whole national rhetoric is derived. Hence there is a value 
 for the mind in associating the words and action of even 
 such a little play as ''here we go up, up, up, and here we go 
 down, down, down, and here we go backwards and forwards, 
 and here we go round, round, round," with other rhymes 
 and plays of an analogous character that are found wher- 
 ever thevQ are mothers and children. 
 
 We have observed that the moment of first accomplish- 
 ing the feat of running alone, seemed to be that of the child's 
 
THE NURSERY. 41 
 
 beginning to realize himself to be a person, but that even, 
 in this act, he was dependent upon his mother ; that his 
 bodily independence was the gift of her faith in that within 
 him, which is essentially superior to the body and can com- 
 mand it as instrumentality. To make it instrumentality 
 is, more and more, a delight to the child, in which his 
 mother sympathises ; and by this sympathy aids him. All 
 his plays involve exercise of the power of commanding his 
 body. As soon as a child can move it from place to place, his 
 desire toexercise power onnatureoutsideof himself increases, 
 and he is prompted to measure strength with other children. 
 If children were mere individuals they would merely quarrel, 
 as Hobbes says ; but being social beings also, they tend to 
 unite forces and aid one another to compass desired ends. 
 By so doing, they rise to a greater sense of life, and broth- 
 erly love is evolved. But in the development of the social 
 life, the more developed and cultivated elder must come in, 
 to keep both parties steady to some object outside of them- 
 selves, which it takes their union to reach. Children can 
 be taught to play together, by engaging their powers of imi- 
 tation, and addressing their fancy. Every mother knows, 
 that in the first opening of children's social life, their bodily 
 energies are stimulated to such a degree, that it is quite as 
 much as she or one nurse can do, to tend two or three chil- 
 dren together ; and by the time they are three years old, the 
 family nursery becomes too narrow a sphere for them. It 
 is then that they are to be received into a Kindergarten, 
 whose very numbers will check the energy of activity a lit- 
 tle, by presenting a greater variety of objects to be contem- 
 plated ; and because social action must be orderly and 
 rhythmical, in order to be agreeable. This, a properly pre- 
 pared Kindergartner knows, and by her sympathetic influ- 
 ence and power over the childish imagination, she will 
 bring gradually all the laws of the child's being to the con- 
 
42 TPIE NURSERY. 
 
 scious understanding, beginning with this rhythmical one 
 at the center. 
 
 The movement plays which Froebel invented, express, in 
 dramatic form, some simple fact of nature or some childish 
 fancy, for which he gives, as accompaniment, a descriptive 
 song set to a simple melody. The children learn both to recite 
 and to sing the words of the song, and then the movements 
 of the play. To them the whole reason for the play seems 
 to be the delight it gives, the exhilaration of body, the 
 amusement of mind. But the Kindergartner knows that 
 it serves higher ends, and that it is at least always a lesson 
 in order, enabling them to begin to enact upon earth "Heav- 
 en's first law." 
 
 Do not say I am making too solemn a matter of these 
 movement plays, to the Kindergartner. Unless she remem- 
 bers that this very serious aim underlies every play which 
 she conducts, she will not do justice to the children. Law 
 or order is one and the same thing with beauty ; and play 
 is hindrance if it is not beautiful. When she insists upon the 
 children governing themselves, so far as to keep their 
 proper places in relation to each other ; to forbear exerting 
 undue force, and to seek to give the necessary aid to others 
 by exerting suflScient force, the beautiful result justifies 
 her will to the minds of the childfen, and commands their 
 ready obedience. She must call forth by addressing^b the 
 sense of personal responsibility in each child ; and this, if 
 done tenderly and with faith, it is by no means difiTicult to 
 do. The reward to the children is instant in the success of 
 the play, and therefore not thought of as reward of merit. 
 It is a form of obedience that really elevates the little one 
 higher in the scale of being as an individual, without danger 
 of the re-action of pride and self-conceit ; for self is swal- 
 lowed up in social J03'. 
 
 When I was in Germany, I went, as I believe I told you, 
 to those Kindergartens, which were taught by FroebeFs own 
 
THE NUllSERY. 43 
 
 pupils, and I found that in these the movement plays were 
 the most prominent feature of the practice. More than one 
 was played in the course of the three or four hours, and es- 
 pecially when the session was as much as four hours. It 
 was done in a very exact though not constrained manner, 
 and much stress seemed to be laid upon every part. The 
 singing was not done by three or four, but all the children 
 were encouraged to sing. Often the little timider ones 
 were called on to repeat the rhyme alone, without singing 
 it, and then to sing it alone with the teacher. Thus the 
 stronger and abler were exercised (as they must be so much 
 in real life) in waiting, sympathetically, for the weaker. A 
 great deal of care was also exercised in regard to the form 
 and character of the play itself. Those of FroebePs own 
 suggestion and invention were the preferred ones. They 
 consisted in imitating, in rather a free and fanciful manner, 
 the actions of the gentler animals, hares and rabbits, fishes, 
 bees and birds. There were plays in which children imper- 
 sonated animals, evidently for the purpose of awakening 
 their sympathies and eliciting their kindness towards them. 
 Many of the labors of human beings, common mechanics, 
 such as cooperage, the work of the farmer, that of the 
 miller, trundling the wheelbarrow, sawing wood, &c., were 
 put into form hy simple rhymes. The children sometimes 
 personated machinery, sometimes great natural movements. 
 In one instance I saw the solar system performed by a com- 
 pany of children that had been in the Kindergarten four 
 years, but none of them were over seven years old. Mere 
 movement is in itself so delightful and salutary for children 
 that a very little action of the imitative or fanciful power is 
 necessary, just to take the rudeness out of bodily exercise 
 without destroying its exhilaration. 
 
 My Kindergarten Guide, the revised edition of which is 
 published by E. Steiger, of New York, contains some of 
 the principal plays, set to Froebers own music. I would 
 
44 THE NURSERY. 
 
 gladly have printed all that Madame Ronge published in 
 her Guide, which is out of print, but for the expense. 
 
 But it is by no means merely a moral discipline that is 
 aimed at in the Kindergarten, as you will see when the 
 bearings upon their habits of thought, of all that the chil- 
 dren do, are pointed out to you, in the various occupations, 
 which are sedentary sports, though the moral discipline is 
 the paramount idea, and never must be lost sight of one 
 moment by the Kindergartner. We mean by moral disci- 
 pline, exercising the children to act to the end of making 
 others happy, rather than of merely enjoying themselves. 
 If the individual enjoyment is not a social enjoyment, it vi 
 disorderly and vitiating. But the individual is lifted into 
 the higher order for which he is created, by merely enjoy- 
 ing, whenever his enjoyment is social. I am of course 
 speaking of that season of life under seven j^ears of age, 
 when the mind is yet undeveloped to the comprehension of 
 humanity as a whole; when the good, the true and the 
 beautiful are nothing as abstractions, and can only be real- 
 ized to their experience and brought within the sphere of 
 their senses, by being embodied in persons whom they love, 
 reverence or trust. The words good^ beautiful^ kind^ true^ 
 get their meaning for children by their intercourse with 
 such persons. Specific knowledge of God cannot be opened 
 up in them by any words, unless these words have first got 
 their meaning by being associated with human beings who 
 bear traces that they can appreciate of His inefiable perfec- 
 tions. To liken God's love to the mother's love, brings 
 home a conception of it to children, for her^s they realize every 
 day. 
 
 The connecting link between the nursery and Kinder- 
 garten is the First Gift of Frcebel's series, being used in both. 
 The nursery use will have taught the names of the six 
 colors, red, orange, yellow, green, blue and purple, and made 
 it a favorite play thing. It is all the better if the child has 
 
THE NURSERY. 45 
 
 had no other pla3'thiDgs prepared for him. He has doubt- 
 less used the chairs, footstools, and whatever else he could 
 lay his hands on, to embody his childish fancies ; and it is 
 to be hoped he has been allowed to play out of doors with 
 the earth, and has made mud pies to his heart's content — 
 not tormented with any sense of the — at his age — artificial 
 duty of keeping his clothes clean. That duty is to be re- 
 served for the Kindergarten age, and will come duly, by 
 proper development of the mental powers. 
 
 In the Kindergarten, the ball-plays are to become more skill- 
 ful, and the teacher must see that the child learns to throw 
 the ball so that it may bound back into his own hands ; so 
 that it may bound into the hands of another who is in such 
 position as to catch its reflex motion. The children must 
 learn to toss it up and catch it again themselves. When 
 standing in two rows they can throw it back and forwards 
 to each other. When standing in a circle, the balls may be 
 made to circulate with rapidity, passing from hand to hand, 
 the children singing the accompanying song. 
 
 "Who'll buy my eggs ?" is a good play to exercise them 
 in counting. And all these movement plays with the ball 
 •ire admirable for exercising the body, giving it agility, 
 grace of movement, precision of eye and touch. These 
 things will accrue all the more surely if it is kept play, and 
 no constraining sense of duty is called on. As most of 
 these plays are not solitary, they become the occasion for 
 children's learning to adjust themselves to each other, and 
 the teacher must watch that hilarity do not become violence 
 or rudeness to each other, but furtherance of one another's 
 fun ; and occasionally, in enforcing this harmony, a child must 
 be removed from the play, and made to stand in a corner 
 alone, or even outside the room, till the desire of rejoining 
 his companions shall quicken him to be sufficiently conside- 
 rate of them to make pleasant play possible. All children 
 in playing together learn justice and social graces, more or 
 
46 THE NURSERY. 
 
 less, because they find that without fair play their sport is 
 spoilt ; but this play must be supervised by the Kinder- 
 gartner, in order that there may not be injustice, selfishness 
 and quarreling. A Kindergartner, who is not a martinet, 
 and who is herself a good play-fellow, will magnetize the 
 children, and inspire such general good will that unpleasant- 
 ness will be foreclosed in a great measure ; but a company 
 of children are generally of such variety of temperament 
 and different degrees of bodily strength, have so often come 
 from such inadequate nursery life, that the regulating 
 Kindergartner has a good deal to do to prevent discords and 
 secure their kindness to each other, and the reasonable little 
 self-sacrifices of common courtesy. But she will find a word 
 is often enough ; the question. Is that right ? Would you 
 like to have any one else do so ? It is sometimes necessary 
 to bring all the play to a full stop, in order to bring the 
 common conscience to pronounce upon the fairness of what 
 some one is doing. I would suggest that the question be 
 asked not of the class, but of the individual culprit, whether 
 what is being done wrong, is right or wrong ? The child, 
 with the eyes of the class upon him, will generally be eager 
 to confess and reform, because the moral sense is quite as 
 strong as self-love, and especially when re-inforced by the 
 presence of others. It is not worth while to make too much 
 of little faults, and the first indication of turning to the right 
 must be accepted ; the child is grateful for being believed in 
 and trusted, and the wrong doing is a superficial thing ; the 
 moral sentiment is the substantial being of the child. 
 
 Of all the materials used in Kindergarten, the colored balls 
 are most purely playthings ; and there are none of the plays 
 so liable to be riotous as the ball plays. There is the great- 
 est difficulty in keeping children from being too noisy, and 
 it is not wise to make too much of a point of it. The ball 
 seems a thing of life. It is very difficult for them to get 
 good command of it. It excites them to run after it ; and 
 
THE NURSERY. 47 
 
 shouts and laughter are irrepressible. But there are rea- 
 sonable limits. The Kindergartner, in conversation be- 
 fore hand, should make them see that they may get too 
 noisy, and tire each other, and she -will easily induce them 
 to agree to stop short when she shall ring the bell, and be 
 -willing to stand still while she counts twenty-five, or watches 
 the second hand of ber watch go around a quarter, a half, or 
 a whole minute, as may be agreed upon. This can be made 
 a part of the play, and to pause and be perfectly still in this 
 wa}^, will give them some conception of the length of a min- 
 ute, and teach self-command, as well as make a pleasant 
 variety. 
 
 The ball plays should always be accompanied and alter- 
 nated, in the Kindergarten, with conversations upon the 
 ball, naming the colors, telling which are primar}^, which 
 secondary, and illustrating the difference by giving them 
 pieces of glass of pure carmine, blue and yellow, and letting 
 them put two upon each other, and hold them towards the 
 window, and so realize the combinations of the secondary 
 colors. Ask them, afterwards, to tell what colors make 
 orange, or purple, or green ; and what color connects the 
 orange and green ; or the purple and orange, or the green 
 and purple. 
 
 One of the other exercises, on the day of using the Pirst 
 Gift may be sewing with the colored threads on the cards ; 
 and the colors may be arranged so as to illustrate the connec- 
 tions, &c., just learned. The use of the First Gift need 
 only be once a week. It will then be a fresh pleasure every 
 time during the whole of the Kindergarten course, even if 
 it should last three years. After the children have become 
 perfectly familiar with the primary and secondary colors, 
 their combinations and connections, the lessons on colors 
 may be varied, by telling them that tints of che primary 
 colors and of the secondary colors, are made by adding 
 white to them ; and shades of them, (which will, of course, 
 
48 THE NURSERY. 
 
 be darker,) by adding black to them. This may be illustra- 
 ted by flowers, as may various combinations of colors. A 
 very little child, whom it was hard to train even to the hila- 
 rious and gay plaj^s, and whose attention could not easily 
 be fixed, surprised a teacher one day by his aptitude in de- 
 tecting what color had been mixed with red to make a very 
 glorious pink in a phlox. This child liked to sew, but was very 
 impatient of putting his needle into any special holes. It 
 proved to be the pleasure of handling the colored yarns, 
 and he was always eager to change them and form new com- 
 binations. It may not be irrelevant to say here, in regard 
 to ball playing, from which I have digressed to colors, that 
 the ball is the last plaything of men as well as the first with 
 children. 
 
 The object teaching upon the ball is strictly inexhausti- 
 ble. Children learn practically, by means of it, the laws of 
 motion. Beware of any strictly scientific teaching of these 
 laws in terms. You may make children familiar with the 
 phenomena of the laws of incidence and reflection, by simply 
 telling them that if they strike the ball straight against the 
 wall opposite, it will bound straight back to them, and then 
 ask them whether it returns to them when they strike it in 
 a slanting direction. By and by this knowledge can be 
 used to give meaning to a scientific expression. It is a first 
 principle that the object, motion, or action, should precede 
 the word that names them. This is Frcebel's uniform 
 method, and the reason is, that when the scientific study 
 does come, it shall be substantial mental life, and not mere 
 superficial talk. It is the laws of things that are the laws 
 of thought ; and thought must precede all attempt at logic, 
 or logic will be deceptive, not reasonable. Most erroneous 
 speculation has its roots in mistakes about words, which it is 
 fatal to divorce from what they express of nature, or to use 
 without taking in their full meaning. 
 
 In the easy mood of mind that attends the lively play of 
 
THE NURSERY. 49 
 
 childhood, impressions are made clearly ; and it should be 
 the care of the educator to have all the child's notions asso- 
 ciated with significant words, as can only be done by his be- 
 coming their companion in the play, and talking about it, 
 as children always incline to do. It is half the pleasure of 
 their play, to represent it in words, as they are playing. In 
 the nursery, the mothers play with the child, and all her 
 dealings with it, are expressed in words that are important 
 lessons in language ; and together with language, we give 
 a lesson in manners, by first trotting a child gently, and then 
 jouncingly, to the words, " This is the way the gentle folks 
 go, this is the way the gentle folks go ; and this is the way 
 the country folks go, this is the way the country folks go — 
 bouncing and jouncing and jumping so." To describe what 
 they are doing in little rhymes when playing ball, makes it 
 a mental as well as physical play of faculty, and Froebel 
 published a hundred little rhymes, and the music for as 
 many ball plaj's. 
 
 It is not an unimportant lesson for children to learn, that 
 the same things seem different in different circumstances. 
 The fact that white light is composed of different colored 
 rays can be illustrated by giving the children prisms to 
 hold up in the sunshine ; and by calling their attention to 
 the splendid colors of the sky at sunset and sunrise, when 
 the clouds act as prisms, and to the rainbow. Children of 
 the Kindergarten age, will be so much engaged with the 
 beautiful phenomenon, they will not be likely to ask ques- 
 tions as to how the light is separated by the prism and 
 clouds ; they will rest in the fact. But if, by chance, ana- 
 lytic reflection has supervened, and they do, then a large 
 ball on which all the six colors are arranged in lines meridian- 
 wise, to which a string is attached at one pole, or both poles, 
 can be given them, and they be told to whirl it very swiftly. 
 This will present the phenomenon of the merging of the col- 
 ors to the eye by motion, so that the ball looks whitish 
 
50 THE NURSERY. 
 
 from which you can proceed to speak of light as being com- 
 posed of multitudinous little balls, of the colors of the rain- 
 bow, in motion, and so looking white. 
 
 If some uncommon little investigator should persist to 
 ask why things seem to be other than they are, he must be 
 plainly told, that the reason is in something about his eyes, 
 which he cannot understand now, but will learn by and b}^, 
 when he goes to school and learns optics. 
 
 Children are only to be entertained in the Kindergarten, 
 ^^ with the facts of nature that develop the organs of percep- 
 '^' tidn, but a skillful teacher who reads TyndalPs charming 
 bboks and the photographic journals, may bring into the 
 iater years of the Kindergarten period many pretty phe- 
 nomena of light and colors, which shall increase the stock 
 of facts, on which the scientific mind, when it shall be de- 
 veloped, may work, or which the future painter may make 
 use of in his art. 
 
 When Allston painted his great picture of Uriel, whose 
 background was the sun, he thought out carefully the means 
 of producing the dazzling effect, and drew lines of all the 
 rainbow colors in their order, side by side, after having put 
 on his canvass a ground of the three primary colors mixed. 
 When the picture was first exhibited at 8omerset House, 
 the effect was dazzling, and it was bought at once by Lord 
 Egremont, in a transport of delight ; and for twice the sum 
 the artist put upon it, that is, six hundred guineas. I do 
 not know whether time may not have dimmed its brilliancy, 
 since paint is of the earth, earthy; but to paint the sun 
 at high noon, and have it a success, even for a short time, 
 is a great feat ; and art, in this instance, took counsel of 
 science deliberately, according to the artist's confession. 
 But perfect sensuous impressions of color and its combina- 
 nations, were the basis of both the science and the art. 
 
 This lecture is getting too long, and I will close by saying, 
 that the First Gift has, for its most important oflice, to de- 
 
THE NURSERY. 61 
 
 velope the organ of sight, which grows by seeing. Colors 
 arouse intentional seeing by the delightful impression they 
 make. I believe that color-blindness, (which our army ex- 
 aminations have proved to be as common as want of ear for 
 music^) may be cured by intentional exercise of the organ 
 of sight in a systematic way ; just as ear for music ma3'' be 
 developed in those who are not born with it. / Lowell Mason 
 proved, by years of experiment in the public schools, that 
 the musical ear may be formed, in all cases, by beginning 
 gently with little children, giving graduated exercises, so 
 agreeable to them as to arouse their will to try to hear, in 
 order to reproduce. 
 
 That you may receive a sufficiently strong impression of 
 the fact, that the organs of perception actually grow by ex- 
 ercise with intention, I will relate to you a fact that came 
 under my own observation- 
 
 A young friend of mine became a pupil of Mr. Agassiz, 
 who gave him, among his first exercises, two fish scales to 
 look at through a very powerful microscope, asking him to 
 find out and tell all their diflEerences. At first they appeared 
 exactly alike, but on peering through the microscope, all 
 the time that he dared to use his eyes, for a month, he found 
 them full of differences; and he afterwards said, that "it 
 was the best month^s work he ever did, to form the scientific 
 eye which could detect differences ever after, at a glance,^^ 
 and proved to him an invaluable talent, and gave him ex- 
 ceptional authority with scientists. 
 
LECTUEE III. 
 
 DISCIPLINE. 
 
 Since the kindergartiier is to receive the child from the 
 nursery^ and half of the work in the kindergarten is what 
 ought to have been done in the nursery, I will give another 
 lecture upon what Froebel thought the nursery ought to do for 
 religious nurture ; since, if it has not been done in the nurs- 
 ery, it must be done in the kindergarten. 
 
 AVc have seen that the soul takes possession of the organs 
 of sense gradually, by tasting, hearing, seeing, smelling, and 
 touching that which is agreeable ; and that the continuous 
 exercise of the organs develops them up to a certain though 
 indefinite limit to finer susceptibility of impression. We 
 have seen that by exercising the limbs, the soul takes pos- 
 session of them in particular and in general. Thus the nurs- 
 ery plays, improvised instinctively by all mothers, Froebel 
 has enlarged, describing in his Mother's Book various dupli- 
 cate movements of the limbs, especially of the hands, that, 
 with the accompanying songs, have for their end, besides 
 physical health, to make the mind discriminate various parts 
 of the body and know their several forms and functions. 
 This is the beginning of human education. 
 
 *' Patty-cake" teaches a child that he has hands and fin- 
 gers; "This little pig goes to market, this one stays at 
 home," that he has toes. It is the child's own body that 
 first furnishes the objects of his attention to be associated 
 with words. From the beginning it is the instinct of the 
 maternal nurse to talk to the child, which attracts him to 
 observe the organs of speech ; and this prompts the sympa- 
 
64 DISCIPLINE. 
 
 thetic use of his own organs. Speech is a function distinctively 
 human, which, beginning in the nursery, is carried on care- 
 fully in the kindergarten, creating the sphere of the intellec- 
 tual life ; for words support the operation of thinking. 
 
 From all that I said of the modus operandi of the child's 
 taking possession of his body in the nursery period, you see 
 that childish action is involved in the mother's action. It is 
 her wisdom, such as it may be, which must be the guide of 
 the child's will, as it is brought gradually out of the blindness 
 of ignorance ; and it is she, not the child, who is responsible 
 for the perfection of this part of the child's life. 
 
 And is not this, on the whole, the common sense of man- 
 kind? Does any sane person hold a baby, up to three years 
 old, and often, indeed, much later, responsible for the state 
 of its temper, or for the rightfulness of its action ? 
 
 Nevertheless, the child is a moral person all this time, and 
 it is of the last importance to his subsequent moral life 
 whether or not his temper has been kept sweet, and his ac- 
 tion according to law, or discordant. Discordant action 
 must have a bad reactionary effect upon the temper, and 
 interrupt or retard the growth of the several organs of sense 
 and of motion. Hence the mother or nurse must not neglect 
 to use her power wisely as well as gently to prevent these 
 evils, by duplicate movements that are rhythmic, and calcu- 
 lated to bring about some end that the child's mind may 
 easily grasp. 
 
 It is instinctive with every one, as soon as he begins to 
 play with a child, whether it be reasonable or not, to talk to 
 it about its being good or bad, although a little child cannot be 
 good or bad, but only orderly or disorderly ; and there is no 
 little danger to his moral and spiritual future in anticipating 
 by our w^ords the w^orkings of his conscience before it has 
 the conditions for its development. One of these conditions 
 is such a sense of individuality as enables the child to say 
 ''I," with which it presently combines such perception of 
 
DISCIPLINE. 55 
 
 relationship to otliers as will say, ^* I ought," — a phrase that 
 occurs in all languages, and means something very different 
 from ''I will." It is of the greatest importance to keep this 
 distinction in mind, for an imposed or artificial conscience 
 almost certainly forecloses the natural or inspired conscience, 
 — a truth largely illustrated by the history both of families 
 and of nations, from which we learn that periods of corrup- 
 tion and wild license invariably follow periods of extreme 
 restraint and asceticism. And all conscientious action and 
 moral judgment in children also presupposes thinking^ which 
 is a process that does not begin until after much repetition of 
 impressions, being a reflective act, which associates impres- 
 sions with specific things and actions (as the etymology of 
 the word suggests) . Mere reception of impressions is pas- 
 sive ; but to comparer im p ress i o n s of dtflrerenceror similarity i/ 
 (which individualizes things) is active. Therefore thinking 
 and putting thoughts into words includes comparison and 
 inference, and vQfxWy produces the human understanding, which 
 we do not bring into the world with us, as we do our heart 
 and will. Before there is a possibility of conscience or any 
 moral judgment properly so called, the child's affections (or 
 feeling of relation with other persons) must be cultivated by 
 the mother's genial care, directing mental activity towards 
 fellow-beings, instead of leaving the heart to turn back and 
 stagnate upon self. The more impressible a child is, the 
 more important is the mother's or kindergartner's providen- 
 tial care of his affections during this irresponsible, pre-intel- 
 lectual period of his life. 
 
 I think the most frightfully selfish beings I have ever 
 known were endowed with great natural sensibility, which 
 was left to concentrate upon self, because the claims made 
 by the sensibility of others were not early enough presented 
 to the imagination of their hearts. By the growth of per- 
 sonal affections, the individual intensifies the feeling of indi- 
 viduality, which first comes to him by his having taken such 
 
GG DISCIPLINE. 
 
 possession of his body as enabled him to run alone ; and this 
 growth, whether intentionally directed towards that combina- 
 tion of his soul and body, which he begins to call himself or 
 "I," or directed toward others, to whom he clings at first as 
 part of himself (their embrace of him beiug necessary to his 
 comfort) , is cherished by the duplicate action of the mother. 
 She moulds his heart in her heart, as she has moulded his 
 bodily activity by her care and cheering sympathy, when 
 helping out the power of his limbs in walking and manipula- 
 tion. She half creates the child's generous and devout affec- 
 tions, if she is herself faithful to their proper objects, starting 
 him on the way of a brotherly humanity and a filial adoration 
 of the common Father, long before the understanding has 
 completely discerned the objects of these human and divine 
 affections, which must be blended in order to continue vital 
 and pure. But the moral and religious is the most delicate 
 region of the child's life, the hohj of holies, into which "fools 
 incontinently rush, though angels fear to tread." She can 
 only be the mother of the soul as well as of the body of her 
 child, on condition of being herself rich in love of others and 
 in piety to God. 
 
 Froebel suggests this in the introductory poems of Die 
 Mutter Spiele und Kose Lieder, The first five of these are 
 the mother's communings with herself upon the emotions that 
 arise in her heart, as she nurses her baby in her arms, and 
 realizes that to her and her husband has been sent a living 
 witness of the "very present God," who is the author of 
 their being, and has united them by a love that makes that 
 being a blessing to themselves, which they are bound to ex- 
 tend beyond themselves. The rhymed introduction of the 
 several little child-songs that follow are suggestions to her of 
 the meaning of her instincts, and of the bearing on the 
 development of the child's heart and mind of the little gym- 
 nastics described. And just as she could not be the educator 
 of her child into his individual body if she were a paralytic 
 
DISCIPLINE. 67 
 
 herself, so, if she be not affectionate and generous herself, 
 she cannot educate bim into the social body of which he is a 
 living member ; nor unless she loves God herself, can she 
 inspire him to recognize the Parental Spirit of whom we are 
 (as heathen poet and Christian apostle alike aver) the veri- 
 table children. "We are the offspring of God,'' said St. 
 Paul, quoting from the Greek poet Aratus in the Sermon on 
 Mars' Hill, which is a model of all reformatory instruction, 
 whether religious or secular. I think all true instruction, 
 proceeding from the known to the unknown, is both secular 
 and religious, on the principle that to those who have the 
 seed, can be given the increase. 
 
 In the first of these mother-songs of Froebel, the mother 
 finds that the baby she holds in her arms, though another 
 than herself, is in a certain sense one with herself ; thus is 
 unveiled (revealed) to her the Divine Fountain of Being, the 
 Person of Persons, from whom she and her little one have 
 severally come ; and her feelings of wonder and gratitude 
 awaken the sense of responsibility to make her child grow 
 conscious as she is of the common Father, — and thankful 
 as she is for life in such close relation with herself, — who 
 is the first form in which God reveals Himself to the child ; 
 for when he first looks away from his body so far as to per- 
 ceive that his mother is another than himself, she fills the 
 whole sphere of his perception ! 
 
 Rousseau affirms that every child, if left to its own natural 
 growth, would think its mother was its creator. And Wil- 
 liam Godwin in his Enquirer (or some volume of his 
 writings) has quite an eloquent paper, setting forth that the 
 natural religion of a child is to worship its earthly parents. 
 I have made some observations and had a personal experi- 
 ence which makes me doubt this, though I do not doubt that 
 the characteristics of parents nearly always determine the 
 character of the child's religion. But the question of who is 
 his own creator does not naturally come up to a child, even 
 
68 DISCIPLINE. 
 
 when he begins to ask who made the things about him. 
 His own consciousness is of " being increate," and when 
 brought to know that his body grows old and must die, the 
 fear that this causes is because he imaginatively associates 
 his undying self, which is a "presence not to be put by" with 
 the perishing body. What the soul, by virtue of its inherent 
 immortality, fears and hates, is loneliness, absolute isolation ! 
 And when we think of the body, which we identify with our- 
 selves from the moment that we have taken it up and wall^ed 
 by its instrumentality, as put awa}^ alone in the ground, the 
 undying person that the soul is, shudders, and can only be 
 comforted by learning to conceive itself wholly detached from 
 the decay, and housed within the bosom of Him who is the 
 Alpha and Omega of our life ; of Him whom we have learnt 
 to know with the spirit and understanding also, by the pro- 
 cess of living in human relations. For we know ourselves 
 as individuals first by means of the bod^', and we know 
 ourselves as a component part of the social whole of human- 
 ity by means of genial intercourse with our kindred, it being 
 revealed to us that we are substantially social, as well as 
 distinctly individual, by our instinctive horror of separation 
 from them. Later in life only, there are pleasures of soli- 
 tude for those few who by imaginative act make nature 
 populous with personifications, and consequently the refract- 
 ing atmosphere of the Divine Personality. The baby that 
 finds itself alone cries for and is comforted by the embrace 
 which restores the sense of union with its mother. Seldom 
 is a baby in such a wretched state of feeling that a tender 
 embrace and kiss will not completely comfort it. 
 
 What a proof it is that God is Love^ that the very embrace 
 that symbolizes to the baby's heart the sense of human com- 
 panionship, gives its mind that impression of objective 
 nature which is the first momentum of the human under- 
 standing ! The gentle pressure of one sensitive body upon 
 another produces counter-pressure, a resistance that is posi- 
 
DISCIPLINE. 59 
 
 lively pleasurable, whereby the impenetrability of matter 
 becomes a delightful instead of a frightful revelation to the 
 mind of the Immutable Reality of the loving Creator, as the 
 complement of our own changeful individuality ! It is 
 the first syllable of that word (or speech of God) made 
 intelligible by the various qualities and forms of matter, the 
 Truth which He is forever addressing to man. How gracious 
 it is, that He should so inextricably mingle the first impres- 
 sion of matter with that perception of the otherness of 
 person that makes Love possible ! Thus love and the sense 
 of individuality are correlative creations and twin births. 
 Later, the sense of individuality becomes a positive self-love 
 (which in its healthy degree is innocent) , and the perception 
 of otherness of person^ with whom it is delightful to be in 
 free union, becomes the basis of the self-forgetting gener- 
 osity of mankind. These opposite principles are at first 
 mere and perhaps equal sources of satisfaction, having no 
 moral character whatever. Afterwards, they become respec- 
 tively hard selfishness or a weak and base servility, or they 
 may rise into a majestic self-respect, and that sublimest 
 love which is to make the human race, as a whole, the image 
 of God^ not only king over material nature, but one with the 
 perfect Son of Man, also Son of God, who, with a humility and 
 dignity equally venerable, is able to say, "I and my Father 
 are One ! " 
 
 But you will say that I am getting quite beyond the 
 nursery. 
 
 In the earlier years, the growth of the religious life is 
 merely germinal. And as it is involved within the mothers 
 at the beginning, it must be cherished sympathetically by her 
 removing all occasion for self-care and self-defence, and 
 thus prevent the sense of individuality from degenerating 
 through fear into inordinate self-will and self-love. The 
 child should be treated with unvarying tenderness and con- 
 sideration, without having his sensesgggijiergdinto morbid 
 
 >>^ OP THR ^s^ 
 
 [UHI7BRSIT" 
 
60 DISCIPLINE. 
 
 excess by over-indulgence, but above all things, never wound- 
 ing nor frightening his heart, nor repressing the simple and 
 healthy expression of his feelings and thoughts. For en- 
 forced repression tends to produce ugly temper, baseness, or 
 subtlety, according to the child's temperament, which is 
 also in imperfect social harmon}^, if not absolutely quarrel- 
 some. It must be her work, therefore, not only to complete 
 the child's organic education, but to take him, as it were, 
 into her own affectionate spirit by using the methods which 
 Froebel has suggested to the mother for the discipline of her 
 infants. (I use this word discipline in its true sense of 
 teaching ; not in the sense of punishment. That the word 
 discipline should ever have come to mean punishment is a 
 severe commentary on the ideas and modes of education 
 that have hitherto prevailed in Christendom.) 
 
 The kindergartner, as well as the mother, must be 
 thoroughly grounded in the faith that God has done His 
 part in the original endowment of children ; and that He is 
 truly present with her, helping her to remedy the effects of 
 the mother's shortcomings. She will certainly succeed in her 
 work if she studies His laws with an earnest purpose to 
 carry them out, first in the government of herself, and then 
 in leading the children to self-government. "Wordsworth in 
 his Ode to Duty, sings : — 
 
 " There are who ask not if Thine eye 
 Be on them, who, in love and truth, 
 Where no misgiving is, rely 
 Upon the genial sense of youth. 
 Glad hearts ! without reproach or blot, 
 Who do Thy work, and know it not! 
 And blest are they who in the main 
 This happy faith still entertain, 
 Live in the spirit of this creed, 
 Yet find another strength according to their need. 
 May joy be theirs while life shall last, 
 And Thou, if they should totter, teach them to stand fast.'* 
 
DISCIPLINE. 61 
 
 Little children certainly, of all persons, are oftenest found 
 in this condition when 
 
 ** Love is an unerring light, 
 And joy its own security." 
 
 And that " other strength," which must come by reflection 
 on and study of the unfolding nature of the child in the felt 
 presence of the Inspirer of Duty, will certainly be needed by 
 the kindergartner who will receive children not always from 
 the hands of natural and faithful mothers, but of uncultured 
 servant-maids. (It is but justice to the latter to say that 
 there are occasionally found among the Irish nurses those 
 who could teach many mothers. The Irish nature is not 
 altogether bad material for the production of good motherly 
 nurses ; but it must not be left wild; it needs a great deal 
 of discipline ; and I hope the time may come when schools 
 for the education of children's nurses, such as Froebel 
 established in Hamburg, which still exist, ma^' be founded 
 in all our cities. Though I think the education of mothers is 
 still more important and the first thing to aim at, as it would 
 render nursery maids comparatively unnecessary. It is so short 
 a period of a mother's life when she has young children, and 
 the book of nature which these few years open to her is so 
 rich^ that, for her own being's sake as well as for the 
 children's, it seems to me a terrible loss for her to delegate 
 her maternal cares to others during the nursery period. On 
 the other hand, when the age for the kindergarten comes, 
 the mother needs to be relieved of the increasing care ; and 
 children, in their turn, need other influences than can be had 
 in a family, especiall}' in families where parents have work 
 to do outside of their homes. It is, indeed, '' a consumma- 
 tion devoutly to be wished," that the time may come when 
 labor may be so organized that no mothers may be obliged to 
 leave their children's souls uncared for in order to get the 
 wherewithal to sustain their bodies 
 
62 DISCIPLINE. 
 
 The deepest reason why a child should be taken care of in 
 its earliest infancy by its mother rather than by a person 
 comparatively uninterested in its personality, is this, that 
 only a mother can respect a child's personality sufficiently. 
 All others regard the child for its manifested qualities ; but 
 with the mother, it is the child itself that she loves, quite 
 irrespective of any qualities that he manifests. Phenome- 
 nally, a little child is a complex of self-assertion and 
 generosity (or a desire for union with its kind) ; a desire or 
 a feeling of finiteness in strange contrast with that instinct 
 to "have dominion'* which gives vitality to self-assertion. 
 We call this primal desire for union his heart, and this 
 primal self-assertion his will. The will expresses itself in 
 efforts to change its environments, putting what is at rest in 
 motion, knocking down, tearing up, because it does not yet 
 know how to put in order, or to change things artistically. 
 The child acts without external motive, — doing things 
 merely because it can. Even after a child is old enough to 
 think and talk, and has done some act for which you see no 
 reason or motive, when you ask him why he did it, he not 
 unfrequently will say, '''•because,'' I remember when I was 
 a child of six or seven, that I would give this answer with a 
 perfect sense of satisfaction that it was an answer; and 
 when it would sometimes be said, " because is no reason," 
 or " because is an old woman's reason," I recollect my 
 feeling of surprise. I seemed to myself to have given the 
 most substantial reason. The word meant to me a great 
 deal. And I now think I was truly philosophical in this, for 
 I affirmed the primal truth, that a self -determining person in 
 spontaneous action, if only of some instinct, is a first cause^ 
 — an absolute cause — to the extent of consciousness. It was 
 an intuition. 
 
 Now to retain the sense of this causal personality is at the 
 
 ^ See Hazard's Man a Creative First Cause. A book published since 
 this lecture was first given. 
 
DISCIPLINE. 63 
 
 root of all stability of character, all nobleness of manifesta- 
 tion. But self-assertion in an ignorant child is more apt 
 than otherwise to be disorderly, discordant, and perhaps 
 destructive ; it therefore provokes resistance in the unthink- 
 ing, but challenges the thoughtful to give guidance. It is of 
 life-and-death importance to the child whether this force 
 shall meet mere hard resistance, which shall utterly crush it 
 or increase it by reaction, or whether it shall meet with a 
 genial sympathetic guidance to which it will voluntarily and 
 gladly surrender itself. A mother loves this little ignorant 
 force of self-will and wants it to have free course. She can- 
 not help desiring to have her child have its own way. She 
 does not want it to be opposed by others. She will, as far 
 as possible, further or humor it, as we say. And when she 
 finds it necessary to control it, she will try to do it by 
 awakening the child's affectionateness, and so captivating its 
 fancy as to make it feel it is doing as it likes, though it be 
 something different from what it was impelled to do at first ; 
 in short, she inspires him to will the better thing, and so 
 educates the blind instinct of self-assertion into a harmoniz- 
 ing and beneficent power, and preserves the child's dignity 
 and nobleness instead of crushing its personality. We hear 
 of " breaking the child's will." A child's will should never be 
 broken, but opened up into harmony with God's will through 
 a lower harmony with the will of its loving and loved 
 mother or kindergartner. But a mother will be more sure 
 than any one else to bring about this result, because she 
 acts from an impulse of the heart deeper than all thought, 
 while the kindergartner by thought must cultivate in herself 
 the impulse. 
 
 There are those who deprecate motherly indulgence as if 
 it were the greatest evil. Doubtless it will become a great 
 evil if it be not properly subordinated to the wisdom which 
 appreciates the divinity of order, or if it is alternated with 
 capricious severities; in short, if the indulgence proceeds 
 
64 DISCIPLINE. 
 
 from indolence or self-love instead of love of the child. 
 The indulgence that really comes from the last is a recogni- 
 tion (unconscious, it may be) of the divine possibilities of 
 the child, — a spark of the divine creativeness ! Of the two 
 evils, extreme indulgence is not so deadly a mistake as ex- 
 treme severity. Indulged children return from afar. The 
 prodigal of the Gospel story may have been over-indulged, 
 perhaps, in being allowed to take his portion of goods, and 
 go off by himself, out of the reach of his father's counsel 
 and authority, and left to his own uneducated self-will. But 
 the sinner, when he came to Jiimself (observe that expres- 
 sion) , recognized the self-forgetting, fatherly love in that very 
 indulgence ; and it was the immeasurableness of that love 
 that revived his self-respect and hope, and saved him ; for 
 the hope was not disappointed. Love giveth, *' upbraiding 
 not." 
 
 The one fatal thing is to wound the child's heart. It is 
 better to give up the point of controlling its will to righteous- 
 ness for the moment, than to do that ; and a parent is the 
 least likely of all persons to wound his child's heart. 
 
 When nothing can be done without wounding, the parent 
 who trusts his own heart will leave the rebel to the conse- 
 quences which God holds in his gracious hands for the final 
 salvation of every one of his children. 
 
 Besides, to choose to give up one's own will is the only 
 complete and salutary giving up, enabling the soul to mount 
 up spiritually like the eagle and renew its strength. There 
 are families in which the act of disobedience is absolutely 
 unknown, in earlier or in later life ; where there is no 
 necessity for uttered commands, because expressed wishes 
 are enough. The most perfect, if not the only real, 
 obedience I have ever seen, has been that of strong men to 
 an unexacting, tender mother. 
 
 This is a subject on which I feel very strongly, for it 
 seems to me that the greatest social disorders that exist in 
 
DISCIPLINE. 65 
 
 the nations among which the ' ' order that reigns in Warsaw " ^ 
 is foremost, is the consequence of unreasoning obedience to 
 wills 710^ infinitely wise and good. The worth and duty of 
 obedience is precisely in ratio with the validity of the com- 
 mand ; and a command is valid only so far as it is inspired by 
 a disinterested and proper respect for the being who is com- 
 manded. Children should only obey their parents, in the 
 Lord; and parents should never " provoke their children to 
 wrath." 
 
 I may be told that the important element of self-assertion 
 (which gives strength to character) may be weakened by 
 being always disarmed, and killed by the mother's sympa- 
 thy ; and that to provoke it into conscious strength, direct 
 antagonism is necessary. But the best antagonism is that 
 quiet, inevitable one, that comes from the inexorableness of 
 material nature which the child must needs feel, the more 
 disorderly he is, but which he sees is insensate and imper- 
 sonal ; whose antagonism, therefore, does not grieve his 
 heart, and disappoint his hope as human oppression does, 
 making him sad or bitter, but stimulates his mind to conquer 
 and subdue it, or develops a dignified patience. The 
 appointed domain for kingly man is not the brotherhood, 
 but material nature ; and gradually he is to learn that 
 nature's inexorable laws are the expression of a Supreme 
 Personality as benignant as it is august, who takes up His 
 human child into Himself, not without his concurring will ; 
 for mankind mounts on the nature which he gradually sub- 
 dues into a stepping-stone, by knowledge, and the use of it. 
 The mother must remember that though the first, she is not 
 the only instrumentality by which the Divine Providence 
 works. The time comes when she is compelled to deliver 
 her cherished darling up to other influences ; when the child 
 bui*sts out of the nursery, not only self-asserting and 
 
 1 " Order reigns in Warsaw " was the form of words in which the 
 Bubjugation of the Poles to Russians in 1849 was announced in France. 
 
66 DISCIPLINE. 
 
 affectionate, but putting forth energies, and seeking satisfac- 
 tion of sensibilities that cannot be met within that narrow 
 precinct. 
 
 The kindergarten must, then, succeed by complementing 
 the nursery; and the child begin to take his place in the 
 company of his equals, to learn his place in their companion- 
 ship, and still later to learn wider social relations and their 
 involved duties. No nursery, therefore, not even a perfect 
 one, can supersede the necessity of a kindergarten, where 
 children shall come into cognizance of the moral laws which 
 are to restrain and guide their self-assertion, and quicken 
 and enlarge their social affections, leading them to self- 
 denials for the sake of opportunities for themselves of useful 
 and creative art, beneficence, and heroism. 
 
 The time for transition from the nursery to the kinder- 
 garten is definitely indicated by two facts. Firstl}', Divine 
 Providence has so arranged general family events that every 
 mother must give up having the child live, as it were, entirely 
 within her life, because she has other children to nurse, or 
 other social duties to do. And, secondly, every child's 
 growth in bodily strength and conscious individuality makes 
 him too strong a force of will for so narrow a scope of rela- 
 tion as is afforded by one family. While hitherto, to be out- 
 side of the single family influence was an evil, it would now 
 be an evil to confine the child entirely to it, narrowing his 
 heart and mind, and deforming his character. He needs to 
 be brought into relation with equals who have other personal 
 characteristics, other relations with nature and the human 
 race than his own family. The instinct of the growing child, at 
 this period, to get out of doors to play with other children, is 
 unmistakable. To check it vexes or depresses him. In get- 
 ting possession, first of his body, and then of his personal 
 and social consciousness, he has become an object to himself, 
 and feels himself a power among other powers affecting each 
 other. But he is still more or less consciously a prisoner (if 
 
DISCIPLINE. 67 
 
 not a slave) of nature, by reason of his ignorance of the 
 laws of the universe, — that body outside of his own body, — 
 which he is destined, in alliance with others, to take posses- 
 sion of, by action upon and icithin it, giving him knowledge 
 of it, and enabling hiiu to make it into instrumentality for 
 the expression and embodiment of great ideas and a noble 
 wUl. 
 
 All government worthy of the name begins in self-govern- 
 ment, a free subordination of the individual in order to form 
 the social whole. Subordination is something higher than 
 subjection. We subject mere animals ; intelligent moral 
 agents must be subordinated. It is still the mother's part 
 rather to inspire ; the kindergartner's part is to subordinate, 
 not to check childish, spontaneous talk, though, of course, it 
 must be regulated so far as not to let the children interrupt 
 each other impolitehj^ and to keep it to some main subject. 
 Some kindergartners begin the session by asking each in turn 
 what is interesting to him. Mrs. Kraus-Boelte generally 
 receives each one as he or she comes in. They go to her for 
 the morning kiss, and have something to say, in which she 
 expresses due sympath}', and later recurs to and connects 
 with what others say, and thus produces general conversation. 
 Mrs. Van Kirk is very happy in her introductory conversa- 
 tions. 
 
 In playing with the gifts, the teacher dictates certain move- 
 ments and arrangements, for the purpose of the children's 
 getting into the habit of listening and quickly catching the 
 directions given ; and the children should be encouraged to 
 follow her words in what they do, rather than to imitate 
 each other. In their spontaneous work they often make 
 a new symmetrical form, which is really beautiful ; and then 
 it is well to call on the child to direct his companions how to 
 make it ; for children delight in the dignity of directing, and 
 learn to be very precise in the use of all the words expressing 
 relation of all kinds, — prepositions, adjectives, and adverbs, 
 
68 DISCIPLINE. 
 
 — precisely as well as nouns and verbs. Language does not 
 merely transfer the outward inward, but soon begins to 
 transfer the inward outward. Love, and other sentiments of 
 the soul, good and bad, are named, as well as sensible objects. 
 Even the instinctive search after proximate causes leads chil- 
 dren to infer the substantiality of wind and the other invisi- 
 ble forms of matter ; and the spiritual senses inherent in the 
 " Me," which is the most essential of all substances, verifies 
 the ideal world to children, as truly as the bodily senses ver- 
 ify the material world, and even more so; for children live in 
 God before they exist out of God. The Italian philosopher 
 Gioberti says that the soul is a spintual activity; that is, it 
 sees God as the first act of its life. God says, *'^e thou,*' and 
 the soul — before it is put into the sleep of nature (the deep 
 sleep that came upon Adam) — looks back and says, ''TJioii 
 art,*' We have the memory of this primeval vision, and act 
 in our sense of holiness (wholeness?), right, justice, pure 
 love from the uncalculating delight of loving, the ideals of 
 beauty, and the sense of accountability to God and man, 
 which forever haunt us, sometimes giving us pain, as remorse, 
 whose sting is in the comparison of our outward manifested 
 self with our inward sense of "being increate" (as Milton 
 expresses it). It is this supernatural pre-intellectual soul 
 which distinguishes man from the animal creation, and is 
 symbolized by his form, which looks upward to the symbol 
 of infinity made by the sky, with which the human being 
 instinctively communes, and towards which the child wants 
 to fl}', — and delights in and loves the birds, beyond all other 
 forms of animal life, because they can fly. Gioberti goes on, 
 in his psychology, to say that when the soul, which has 
 recognized its Divine Source as the first act of its life, is put 
 to sleep in nature, it is gradually waked up by the individual 
 forms of nature, which are so many syllables of the Divine 
 Word that are echoed in human words, which describe mat- 
 ter and its evolutions ; then the understanding begins, and 
 
DISCIPLINE. 69 
 
 (which is the point I want you to observe especially at this 
 moment) the words of even a very young child soon bring to 
 its understanding spiritual realities. And it is the office of 
 education to see that the relations of things, — the laws of 
 order among things, — the adjustment of external cause and 
 effect, be accurately icorded; and especially that the spiritual 
 consciousness gets a happy symbolization ; that is, that the 
 best words are used to do justice to the Ideas of God and the 
 sentiments of the heart of man. 
 
 A materialistic educator (or no less a mere dogmatist in 
 religion, who docs not see that the logical formulas and 
 abstract terms of scientific theology cannot possibly waJce up 
 the primeval vision) may do an all but infinite mischief to 
 the character and heart, by the words he uses in talking to 
 children ; and the theologian a greater mischief than the 
 materialist, because the forms and evolutions of matter are, 
 as I have said, syllables of the Word that was in the begin- 
 ning with God and, in a certain sense, God, while the 
 abstractions of the human mind are the refuse of finite spirit, 
 infinitely superficial, mere limitations of thought which 
 become stumbling-blocks to the mind when not used as step- 
 ping-stones to new outlooks, or rather, inlooks. Never 
 should children be talked to in the language of theological 
 science, but wholly in imaginative S3'mbolization, and the 
 symbols should be chosen with great care, and we should be 
 on our guard against rousing the faculty of abstraction 
 which is a sleeping danger in the nature, whose premature 
 development is injurious in strict proportion to ignorance 
 and sensitiveness. The symbols of the spiritual should be 
 human because human consciousness involves substance 
 outside the physical, and, therefore, did the Word which had 
 not been comprehended in its creation of '' everything which 
 it had made," though "without it nothing was made," take 
 flesh and dwell among us, in order that we might apprehend 
 the glory of God and perfection of man with our whole 
 
70 DISCIPLINE. 
 
 nature. That it would do so, was the insight of the Hebrew 
 genius, whenever by worthy soul-action the law-giver, king, 
 and whoever entered into " the liberty of prophesying" was 
 raised to the height of his nature. Now a child is "on its 
 being's height," " mighty prophet," " seer blest," 
 
 " On whom those truths do rest 
 That we are toiling all our lives to find," 
 
 and therefore a child can supply a substantial meaning to 
 any name for God adequate to awaken the living echo of 
 the soul that 
 
 " Cometh from afar 
 Trailing clouds of glory from God," 
 
 whose voice sent it forth, as Gioberti says, "to suffer and 
 to be for a season on earth." 
 
 I hope you follow me in my thought, for I think I am 
 looking into the child, which is the thing that ought to be 
 done if one undertakes to teach it. That the child really 
 knows God before God is even named to him is not a specu- 
 lative theor^^ with me but a fact of my experience. It is 
 one of my earliest remembrances, that I was sitting in the 
 lap of a young lady, whose name and countenance I have 
 forgotten, who was caressing me, and calling me sweet, 
 beautiful, darling, etc., when all at once she seized me into a 
 closer embrace and exclaimed, rather than asked, Who made 
 you? 
 
 I remember my pleased surprise at the question, that I feel 
 very sure had never been addressed to my consciousness 
 before. At once a Face arose to my imagination, — only a 
 Face and head, — close to me, and looking upon me with the 
 most benignant smile, in which the kindness rather predomi- 
 nated over the intelligence ; but it looked at me as if mean- 
 ing, " Yes, I made you, as you know very well." I was so 
 thoroughly satisfied, that I replied to the question decisively, 
 " A man." 
 
DISCIPLINE. 71 
 
 The lady said to another who sat near us, "Only think! 
 this great girl does not know who made her ! ** 
 
 I remember I was no less sure of my knowledge, notwith- 
 standing she said this. Though it was the first time I had 
 thought God and given the name " man" to the thought, it 
 seemed not new to me. I had felt God before. 
 
 I teas a rather large girl, more than four years old, as I 
 know from the fact that we were living in a certain house, to 
 which we went on my fourth birthday. M}^ next recollec- 
 tion is of going into a room of this house, where my mother 
 was sitting, working at an embroidery frame that hung 
 against the wall. I went up to her and said, "Mamma, 
 Eliza asked me who made me, and I told her a man, and 
 she said he didn't ! " I stated this reply as a grievance and 
 outrage. 
 
 Since I came to the age of reflection, I have always re- 
 gretted the conversation that followed. It was not judi- 
 cious, and seems to me a little out of character for my 
 mother, who was of strong religious sentiment and quick 
 imagination, and all other conversation on religious subjects 
 that I remember of hers was very good. She was rather 
 thrown off her guard by my unexpected theology and lost 
 her presence of mind. I was her oldest child, and she had 
 waited to see some enquiry raised before speaking on the 
 subject. I had seemed more stupid than I was, for I belong 
 by nature rather to the reflective than perceptive class, and 
 so had very little language. At this distance of time I can- 
 not, of course, remember the details of the conversation, but 
 I came out of it with another image of God in my mind, 
 conveying not half so much of the truth as did that kind 
 Face, close up to mine, and seeming to be so wholly occu- 
 pied with His creature. The new image was of an old man, 
 sitting away up on the clouds, dressed in a black silk gown 
 and cocked hat, the costume of our old Puritan minister. 
 He was looking down upon the earth, and spying round 
 
72 DISCIPLINE. 
 
 among the children to see who was doing wrong, in order to 
 punish offenders by touching them with a long rod he held 
 in his hand, thus exposing them to everybody's censure. 
 Of course my mother said no such thing to me, but what she 
 did say, by subtle associations with the words she used, 
 gave me this image, which I need not sa}' rather checked 
 than promoted my spiritual advancement. 
 
 This experience has been of value to me as a teacher 
 since, for it has effectually saved me from being didactic 
 and dogmatic in my religious teaching of children. The 
 Socratic method is the true way of bringing into the definite 
 conscious thought God's revelation of Himself to the soul. 
 That image of authority and power to punish did not, I think, 
 help, but rather puzzled my moral sense of which I was already 
 conscious. For I remember that I used to muse very much 
 in my childhood upon the mental phenomenon of feeling 
 myself to be two persons. I was clearly conscious of an 
 inward conversation on all occasions of a question of right 
 and wrong, when a higher and lower law distinctly uttered 
 themselves. The lower self often prevailed by the argu- 
 ment that the thing to be done was transient^ I would do it 
 onl}^ this once^ and never again ; and often I thus sinned 
 against the very present God, which I think I might not 
 have done so presumptuously, had I associated the thought 
 of this strange other me with that kind face of Love Divine. 
 When later in life I did learn that the remonstrating voice 
 was unquestionably God, because He is the Love that I saw 
 in my childish vision, the war between self-love and con- 
 science ceased. But this was not till a great body of death 
 had be^n accumulated, which I have never shuffled off 
 except in moments of hope. 
 
 But to take up the thread of my discourse again. I would 
 very earnestly say that the Socratic or conversational 
 method is the only way of bringing into a child's definite 
 consciousness God's revelation of Himself to souls. But 
 
DISCIPLINE. 73 
 
 this requires a mutual understanding of words, and if we are 
 careful, we may produce this in the kindergarten. 
 
 Froebel intimates that a general impression of there being 
 an invisible Friend and Protector may be given by the 
 baby's seeing the mother in the attitude of devotion, and he 
 would have recognition of God called forth b}^ her naming 
 the unseen Father at moments when the child's heart is 
 overflowing with joy and love, or seeking to know where 
 some beautiful thing comes from. The child feels already 
 at such times the presence of the Inlinite Cause, the Infinite 
 Source of joy and goodness, and the name of Heavenly 
 Father given to this presence will not be an empty vocable. 
 Using with the name of Father the word " our," with which 
 the Lord's Prayer begins, suggests that He is the Father of 
 all alike, and all human beings will thus be united together 
 with Him in the child's imagination.^ 
 
 This idea of one personal but comprehensive Being, the 
 centre of the social organization, is a quickening of the 
 immortal personality, which has a date in time no less 
 certainly than the quickening of the body, and is our sense 
 of identity.^ 
 
 * See Frederic Denison Maurice's book on the Lord's Prayer, pul)- 
 lished by Hurd & Houghton. 
 2 See Appendix, note A. 
 
LECTUEE TV. 
 
 THE KINDERGARTEN. 
 
 In my last lecture I spoke of the ideal nursery ; for only 
 there, hitherto, has the divine method of education ever been 
 completely carried out, the unquestionable teacher there be- 
 ing the cJiild^ "trailing clouds of glory from God who is our 
 home " ; its sweet content and inspiring smile indicating 
 when its nurse is treating it aright ; while all that is wrong, 
 whether proceeding from mere ignorance or selfish wilfulness 
 on the part of the adult, is indicated by its cries of fright 
 and anger, which it behooves her to heed. 
 
 How is it that, with the spectacle forever before our eyes 
 of the mother and infant, mutually emparadised in child's 
 play (that mutually educating communion of trust and love, 
 by which the child is put into gradual possession of his body, 
 and joyous consciousness of his individuality), — how is it, I 
 say, that we find education has lost its ideal ^ and as soon as 
 the child leaves the nursery for the schoolroom, an antago- 
 nism has begun, "with its blessedness at strife," and which 
 leaves us all such scarred and bewildered creatures as we 
 find ourselves to be, as soon as we come to reflect? 
 
 But I must remember that what we have to speak of 
 especially is the kindergarten, which follows hard upon the 
 nurser}'. 
 
 When the child's growing activities begin to require a larger 
 social sphere than the nursery, — i.e., at about three years 
 old, — it was Froebers plan to gather the children of several 
 families into what he called a "Child Garden," and to extend 
 the nursery law of cherishing (which is the dealing with 
 
76 THE KINDERGARTEN. 
 
 living organisms that children are) , by exercising them for 
 several hours of every day in rehearsing in plays, in the first 
 place, all the sweet charities of life. This employs their 
 physical forces, and makes them experimentally know that 
 human happiness and goodness are social and generous. 
 
 For the so-called " movement plays " are social exercises, 
 gently calling out moral sentiments, as well as intellectual 
 powers. They can only be beautiful and enjoyable when 
 they give mutual pleasure ; and this involves that mutual 
 reference and kind consideration of each other which leave 
 no room for selfish feeling or action. Moral education is the 
 alpha and omega of a kindergarten, but it cannot be given 
 by precept. To do the will of God, — t.e., to obey the moral 
 law, — ''doing to others as we would have others do to us," 
 even in play, is the only wa}'' for children to know vitally the 
 doctrine of moral life. 
 
 Froebel has suggested a variety of these movement plays, 
 all of them conceived with the greatest care as to their intel- 
 lectual as well as moral effect. They always have a fanciful 
 aim, within the scope of the child's knowledge and affection, 
 and to play them begins to develop the understanding also. 
 
 A gentle intellectual exercise, involved in learning by rote, 
 reciting, and singing the songs that direct the plays, takes 
 the rudeness out and puts intelligence into that exhilaration 
 of the animal spirits which health}' children crave, and pre- 
 vents it from exhausting the body or disordering the mind ; 
 the joyous association of the children with each other aiding 
 this effect. In the sedentary plays, which are called *' occu- 
 pations," and in which the child is genially drawn into pro- 
 ducing s^'mmetrical effects to the eye, by making things (albeit 
 only little toys) which begin their artistic life, Froebel has 
 had equal regard to the moral as to the intellectual influences. 
 When the child has gone beyond the age in which he is satis- 
 fied with making transient forms and gathering the materials 
 back into boxes, and desires to make something that will last, 
 
THE KINDERGArvTEN. 77 
 
 a legitimate sense of property arises. He feels that what he 
 has made is his own^ for the thought and work which he 
 knows that he has put into it are his own. Frabel, therefore, 
 would have him, before he begins to make anything, pause 
 and appropriate it intentionally to some object of his love, 
 reverence, or pity. This will check the otherwise rampant 
 propensity to hoard, and prevent the passions of avarice, 
 vanity, and jealousy from making their appearance. In our 
 common school life, the pride of showing off their powers, 
 and excelling others, is regularly cultivated in children by 
 competition, as a stimulus to industry. But this is as unnec- 
 essary as it is deleterious. For disinterested desire to confer 
 pleasure, and express gratitude and love of others, is found 
 by experience to be a surer stimulus to industry than the 
 baser passions, and has the additional value of cultivating 
 positive sweetness and active benevolence. It is desirable, 
 and really produces the greatest practical humility, for chil- 
 dren to regard themselves as embryo powers of beneficence, 
 learning to do the Heavenly Father's business from the be- 
 ginning, like the child Jesus. Then may they grow " in favor 
 with God and men," as they grow "in stature," and all their 
 knowledge will prove a divine wisdom unto the salvation of 
 others and themselves. To go into a truly ordered and well 
 governed child -garden, and see all the little children busy 
 making things for the Christmas tree, or for birthday and 
 new year's gifts, for all the friends they know or fancy, we 
 shall see sufficient proofs that love is the truest quickener of 
 industry, and love-inspired industry the true sweetener of the 
 disposition and temper. 
 
 Moreover, such industry is the special desideratum to tem- 
 per the spirit of the present age, which is so keen and ener- 
 getic that it hurries our young men into pursuits in their 
 amusements which take on the character of gambling ; and 
 hence gambling in business, gambling in politics, where even 
 human beings, instead of being regarded as brothers to he 
 
78 THE KINDERGARTEN. . 
 
 hept^ are used as dice, to be recklessly thrown in our game. 
 The only preventive or cure for this passion for gambling is 
 industry, and the only industry that is attractive is artistic; 
 and why should not all industry become artistic, now that 
 the great cosmic forces are suborned, by our advancing 
 civilization, as the legitimate slaves of men, to do all the hard 
 work for men ? I have already set forth this view of the 
 subject in the Plea for FroebeVs Kindergarten as the Pri- 
 mary Art-School^ which I appended to Cardinal Wiseman's 
 lecture on the relation of the arts of design with the arts of 
 production (which I published in 1869, under the title of 
 The Artist and the Artisan Identified, — the Proper Object of 
 American Education) . 
 
 Before I leave these general remarks for more specific ex- 
 planation of Frcebel's method of intellectual development, I 
 would make one more observation. It is in the social and 
 moral character of the kindergarten that Froebel has shown 
 himself so much superior to Eousseau, whose method was to 
 cultivate individualities exclusively', the teacher pretending 
 to know no more than the child, but taking his idiosyncrasy 
 for his only guide in discovery and invention. In the first 
 place, Rousseau's method has been found an impracticable 
 one, for it requires a separate teacher for every child ; and in 
 the only instance, perhaps, in which it was ever carried 
 out with perfect fidelity, that of Maria Edgeworth's eldest 
 brother (we have in her memoirs of her father all the facts) , 
 the ultimate effect was to make a monstrosity. He was utterly 
 strange, so odd and unsocial, nobody but his father, who 
 educated him, could have any practicable relation with him. 
 He might be said to be conscientious!}^ unsocial, and there- 
 fore immoral ; and, though not ungifted, he was an utter 
 failure in human life. "We see similar effects produced meas- 
 urably, in all cases where the main object is to cultivate the 
 individual rather than the universal characteristics of human- 
 ity. Froebel was tender, and gave freedom to individualities. 
 
THE KINDERGARTEN. 79 
 
 but he took great care not to xoamper them. They are the 
 results of the free-will, irrefragable, and will take care of 
 themselves suflSciently, if not cruelly snubbed, but tenderly 
 respected. 
 
 What is to be intentionally cultivated in earliest infancy, 
 are the general affections and faculties, which relate us to 
 our kind, insuring common sense and common conscience 
 with a reasonable self-respect. Therefore, what is done in 
 the kindergarten is necessary for all children, their idiosyn- 
 crasies being left free to play on the surface and give variety 
 and piquancy to life, freedom and dignity to the individual. 
 
 All minds seem to be divided into two classes. In one 
 class, the primal tendency is to observe single objects ; and 
 these are the so-called smart children, interesting the specta- 
 tor by their vivacity- and precocity. In the other class, 
 children seem to be dull in sense, unobserving, but dreamy, 
 as if they had an over-mastering presentiment of that con- 
 nection of things which binds them into wholes. It has 
 been remarked that this latter class turns out the great men, — 
 the poets, the philosophers, the inventors, high artists, great 
 statesmen, and law-givers, — while the precocious children 
 disappoint expectation ; probabl}^ because they have accu- 
 mulated such a chaos of single impressions of disconnected 
 things, that it quite overwhelms the classifying and gene- 
 ralizing powers of the intellect. FroebeFs method equally 
 meets the respective wants of both these classes of minds, 
 supplying by specific culture the other side of their practical 
 endowment. By its discipline of production, it gives the 
 lively and restless ones the wand of the Fairy-Order, in 
 discovering to them the connections of things, and the con- 
 ditions as well as laws of organization ; while for those of 
 the dreamy, poetic, philosophic temperament, it sharpens 
 the senses to individual things, supplying the definite and 
 sensuous impressions, and suggesting the corresponding 
 words that enable them to give an account of their own 
 
80 THE KINDERGARTEN. 
 
 thinking, and illustrate to others the struggling ideal ; which, 
 like conscience and the love of order and rhythm, is perhaps 
 the yet persistent vision of that Heavenly Father's face, which 
 Jesus Christ has told us we are created beholding. 
 
 Jesus evidently is quoting a familiar proverb, when he 
 says " for their angels behold the face of my Father who is 
 in heaven." Does it not refer to the Persian mythology 
 current in Judea after the captivity ? However neglected and 
 eclipsed, that primeval vision can never be quite lost. It 
 persists in the love of order and beauty ; in the desire to be 
 loved infinitely; in hope " that springs eternal in the human 
 breast " ; in the ideals of imagination, that haunt both the 
 savage and the sage, and, at worst, in remorse^ \h which, 
 as Emerson says, '' there is a certain sweetness" whether it 
 be gentle as in what the Quakers call "the reproof of 
 truth," or felt as the reproachful strivings within us of our 
 neglected infinite nature. 
 
 This brings me to speak of FroebeFs superiority to Pesta- 
 lozzi. The kindergarten is not mainly object-teacJiing, 
 though of course a constant object- teaching is involved; all 
 the materials of their work and all the surroundings of the 
 children become objects of examination in their individual- 
 ities of form, size, number, etc., and in their possible con- 
 nections with each other and with the child. If Froebel 
 proposes to give the fruits of the tree of life, before he gives 
 those of the tree of knowledge, it is only that the latter may 
 prove, 7iot a curse, but a blessing. The world's history and 
 the present state of civilization in the foremost nations of 
 the world shows us that knowledge may be a power without 
 being a good (a snakish subtlety not Divine Wisdom). 
 It begins to be realized in Europe as well as in America, 
 that Froebers idea of education, in making character the 
 first thing, and knowledge the hand-maiden of goodness, is 
 the desideratum of the age, and promise of the millennium. 
 
 I should like to read you some letters of eminent men in 
 
THE KINDERGARTEN. gl 
 
 France, addressed to Froebers most earnest disciple and 
 apostle, the Baroness Marenholtz Biilow, which I have trans- 
 lated from the appendix of her Work in Relation to Educa^ 
 Hon (see Appendix, Note B). 
 
 In an address to the school committee of Boston in 1868 
 I gave the call addressed in 1867 by the Philosophers' 
 Congress in Prague to the convention of teachers in Berlin, 
 and the call of the latter to the second convention of this con- 
 gress at Frankfort-on-the-Main in loG9. The burden of all 
 these papers is the paramount necessity of religious and moral 
 education, begun in earliest infancy, in order that the modern 
 intellectual activity may not land us in licentious vices and 
 heartless atheism, our nearest dangers. They all accept 
 Froebers method of education b}^ work and experience 
 (beginning with the work and experience of the child of 
 three years old) as the first condition of the regeneration of 
 the human race. 
 
 It is the office of the kindergartner to awaken the intelbct, 
 which the child does not bring into the world, like its heart 
 and will, full-grown. The infant suffers and enjoys as 
 keenly, and wills as energetically, at first as ever in its life, 
 but apparently begins and lives for some time, unconscious 
 of a world without as a not me. It is purely subjective, i.e., 
 feeling its material environment to be a part of itself. As 
 Emerson says : — 
 
 " The babe, by its mother, 
 
 Lies bathed in joy ; 
 Glide its hours uncounted ; 
 
 The sun is its toy ! 
 Shines the peace of all being, 
 
 Without cloud, in its eyes ; 
 And the sum of the world 
 
 In soft miniature lies ! " 
 
 Only by intentional help of those around the child can it 
 grow into individual consciousness of its relations with 
 
82 THE KINDERGARTEN. 
 
 nature in that order which produces the sound intellect. 
 For the intellect is a growth in time, that carries on the 
 nursery exercises of the limbs and affections by the move- 
 ment plays, and adds those sedentary plays with the series 
 of gifts, which are symbols of all nature in miniature, that 
 objective revelation of God to which the receptive mind 
 answers by thoughts. Thinking is that reaction of the 
 individual mind upon nature which, when it is put into 
 words, produces progressively an image of God, which is the 
 human mind. 
 
 The kindergartner's conversation with the children upon 
 their playthings is therefore her most important and deli- 
 cate work, and one which she cannot do instinctively, but 
 only if she scientifically understands the child on the one 
 hand, and nature in some department on the other. It is 
 impossible in this lecture, perhaps, to demonstrate my mean- 
 ing. By following out Frcebers own method of playing 
 with the gifts, as suggested in Mrs. Kraus-Boelte's guide or 
 in The Florence Handbook^ the whole process of the forma- 
 tion of tlie Imman understanding by the order of objective 
 nature will become patent, and enable the kindergartner to 
 avoid any great mistakes in her guidance of the children's 
 minds, which guidance should always be tentative, and 
 respectful,, to say the least, of their freedom to will. Then 
 we shall have not mechanical work, but orderly, creative 
 work from the children, whose spontaneity is not to be 
 choked ; but when it seems to be going in a wrong direction, 
 interrogatively guided. Like Ariel, she must do her spirit- 
 ing gently, lest she violate the legitimate individuality, and 
 we have Caliban instead of the germ of Prospero. 
 
 I here pause to display two kinds of work actually done 
 by children under seven years of age at Frau Marquadfs 
 kindergarten in Dresden. They enable me to show that 
 those sedentary plays, with which Frcebel would have 
 children amused, must needs develop and educate the per- 
 
THE KINDERGARTEN. 83 
 
 ceptive faculty and understanding in a substantial manner ; 
 for these things were done without patterns, and therefore 
 from thought^ — the thought being sometimes suggested by 
 the dictation of the child-gardener, requiring of the child only 
 one single act of reflection. But much of this work was 
 invented by the children themselves, their wildest fancies 
 being controlled to produce symmetry, by following the one 
 rhythmical law of always making an opposite to everything 
 they do. After showing and explaining the modus operandi 
 of the work exhibited, I went on to say : — 
 
 I believe nobody disputes, after they see what kinder- 
 garten is, that it is the gospel of salvation for children. 
 The exercises put them into complete possession, not only 
 of their limbs, especially the characteristic limb of man, the 
 hand, just when they are the most flexible, and therefore most 
 easily trained ; and of their organs of sense (by which they 
 gradually make the universe their instrumentality) , but also 
 of accurate speech^ enabling them to express their impres- 
 sions of individual things, as well as of what they do with 
 things and in the order of its doing. Thus they are pre- 
 pared for entering upon more abstract subjects, by means of 
 books and schools of instruction. A child well " gardened" 
 and exercised in the intelligent use of his mother tongue 
 enters upon the process of learning to read, for instance, 
 with all the more advantage from being accustomed to hear 
 and use language with precision and fluency ; and is ready 
 to learn to cipher all the more quickl^^, because of the 
 concrete arithmetic and geometry he has mastered experi- 
 mentally with the playthings and in the occupations, all his 
 habits of delicate observation and nice calculation formed b}' 
 the embroidery and other fanciful work giving the basis for 
 intelligent classifications. Even the few years of experience 
 of some genuine kindergartens in this country has already ^0^ 
 proved this. I can give an instance in detail of the almost 
 miraculous rapidity with which a class of seven-year-old 
 
84 THE KINDERGARTEN. 
 
 children learned to read in the* primer called After Kin- 
 dergarten — What? (Note C, in Appendix.) All the 
 time given to "child-gardening" is therefore more thaii 
 saved at the next stage, when instruction begins. Other 
 advantages accruing are incalculable, for the children them- 
 selves have become intelligent and conscientious co-operators 
 with their elders, instead of passive receivers or antagonists. 
 When Miss Youmans* First Lessons in Botany (a book 
 made to teach botany in nature on Prof. Ilenslow's method) 
 was introduced into the New York primary schools, with 
 great expectations of a brilliant success, it was found that 
 the children did not take hold as expected of this science of 
 observation. "I see now," said Miss Youmans to me, '' the 
 iudispensableness of kindergartens to develop the faculties ; 
 more than half the children are intellectually demoralized hy 
 neglect or injudicious teaching before they are seven years 
 old." Everything, however, depends upon the single- 
 minded self-devotion and affectionate character of the 
 kindergartner, and it is obvious that her education must be 
 as special as that of a teacher of instrumental and vocal 
 music ; for as little as music can be tauglit by the ear, or 
 drawing by the eye, without studying the underlying princi- 
 ples of harmony and symmetry, can kindergartning be 
 taught empu'ically. Its foundation is in both a scientific and 
 sympathetic study and understanding of the child's percep- 
 tive powers and the material world. Not merely what is to 
 be taught, as is the case with a university professor, but 
 the free-willing and deep-feeling beings that are to be 
 taught must be studied generally and individually above all 
 things else. Hence, there must be special schools for teach- 
 ing child-gardening, or a special department made in the 
 already existing normal schools. 
 
 The burden of thinking out the steps of procedure in the 
 schoolroom is too great a one to be laid on the teacher who 
 has to exercise the general care. It must all be at th^ 
 
THE KIXDEEGARTEN. 85 
 
 tongue's tip and fingers' cuds bcforelifind. It took Froebel r. 
 lifetime, with all liis genius and wisdom, to discover all the 
 steps of this order of exercises, in correspondence wath the 
 true evolution of the faculties ; but "one man dies, and other 
 men enter into the fruits of his labors." Besides, it is as 
 cruel to stud}' the philosophy of education at the expense of 
 the living children's minds, as it would be to study anatomy 
 and medicine at the expense of their living bodies. All kin- 
 dergartners should observe and practise for awhile under 
 the direction and criticism of those who are ah*eady experts 
 and adepts ; and the latter should be careful that their assist- 
 ants try no rash experiments, but at first reverently observe 
 successful work. It is the highest interest of all teachers to 
 learn this method, because it develops themselves. It not 
 only makes the best mothers, but the most perfectly accom- 
 plished women. It is entering into the secret of creation 
 and redemption, which is the flower and fruit of human 
 culture.^ 
 
 When people ask me if kindergartning is not a method 
 especially adapted to German children, I reply that it seems 
 to me to encounter as great obstacles in that nationality as 
 in any other. It is not a national method, but the human 
 method ; and I would remark in this place that it strikes me 
 as especially desirable for Irish children. The natural pre- 
 dominance in them of fancy needs the check of accurate 
 perception, associated with accurate expression; accurate 
 perception, first, of the individuality of objects, their form, 
 size, color, direction, their mutual resemblances and con- 
 trasts, and the no less accurate perception of their relations 
 to each other and to the child. These things can only be made 
 objects of perception by children's being accustomed to make 
 things, which employ the activities that otherwise will play 
 
 1 For details of manipulating the gifts and occupations, see The 
 Florence Handbook ^ published by Milton Bradley; or Mrs. Kraus- 
 Boelte's Manual in Eight Parts, which is being published by Steiger. 
 
86 THE KINDEFiGARTEN. 
 
 at random and divert their attention from the matter m 
 hand. In my observations of Irish servants, I am struck 
 with their never seeming to see what is before their eyes, or 
 to hear what is said to them, on account of the predominance 
 of their creative faculties. Accurate perception of the things 
 children play with, and successful manipulation of them to 
 produce effects, would also help them to moral integrity ; for 
 order moralizes just in proportion as disorder demoralizes. 
 Successful action cures idle dissipation, while unsuccessful 
 efforts discourage and paralj'ze industry. Froebel wishes the 
 child to be started at something he can certainly accomplish, 
 though perhaps not without direction in words. When the 
 child sees an effect produced by himself, he will repeat it 
 until he can produce the effect without direction, and, if 
 asked, will be delighted to show another child how he has 
 done it. It is a necessary step to put his action into words, 
 and raises it from mere mechanical into intellectual work ; 
 from Chinese imitation into European and American inven- 
 tion. By and by, when he has learned a little steadiness of 
 attention by doing successfully what pleases his fancy, he 
 will make some motion of his own, and proceed according to 
 the law of symmetry (whose virtue he has learned) to dis- 
 cover and make new forms of beauty and use ; but he sliould 
 still be carefully overlooked, and saved, by timely sugges- 
 tions, from making mistakes. These suggestions he will 
 crave and not resist, if they are not x)erem2')tory ^ but are put 
 in the form of a question, which seems to respect his power 
 to choose, which is his personality^ the image of God within 
 him. In proceeding in this way, both teacher and child are 
 led more and more to realize that there is a mysterious third 
 Being present, who is neither the teacher nor the child, but 
 in whom they meet, through whom they communicate, and 
 who gives the law they both must respect ; that there is, in 
 short, One ' ' in whom they live and move and have their be- 
 ing " ; that is the God who ' ' worketh in them to will and to 
 
THE KINDERGARTEN^. 87 
 
 do" ; that He enables them to create beauty, not at random, 
 but with a certain freedom which is not lawlessness. He is 
 the Creator of the Beauty they do not make, and of the Good 
 they love, and gives the Laws which they obej', and in obey- 
 ing become powers of good and inventors of beauty ; for the 
 laws of order are truly God's thought revealed to their 
 thought. To be active powers of good and beauty is to be 
 religious, and also to be free from superstition ; to love God 
 instead of being afraid of Him ; to make their lives a reason- 
 able serv'ice, and thus become free from priestcraft and spir- 
 itual tyranny. Incflicienc}', still more than ignorance, is the 
 mother of fetich worship, and reduces man to slavery ; and 
 to be surrounded by natural and artistic beauty docs not cul- 
 tivate the mind, unless it is already an active power. Rev- 
 erie is not thinking. But the mind can only become active 
 by the electric touch of a sympathetic mind which is already 
 in motion. It is the destiny of men to become one In that 
 same sense that the Divine Father and Son are one. God 
 has made human communion a moral necessity, and does 
 nothing for man, except by the instrumentality of man. "By 
 man came death, by man also cometh the resurrection from 
 the dead." In short, education, that "mysterious commun- 
 ion of wisdom and innocence," is presupposed in reasonable 
 religion. I once heard an eloquent man, who was speaking 
 of education, say, "The Archangel is born upon earth ; we 
 may know him by the many difficulties that he has found and 
 sunnounted, and his consequent power to educate ; for edu- 
 cation is the highest function of humanity in earth and heaven, 
 cementing the links of the chain of love which binds us all to 
 one another and to God." We are always either educating 
 or hindering the development of our fellow-creatures ; we are 
 always being uplifted or being dragged down by our fellow- 
 creatures. Education is always mutual. The child teaches 
 his parents (as Goethe has said) what his parents omitted to 
 teach him. Every child is a new thought of God, whose 
 
88 THE KINDERGARTEN. 
 
 individuality is significant and interesting to others, though 
 it is his own limitation ; and to appreciate a child's individu- 
 ality is the advantage the teacher gets in exchange for the 
 general laws which he leads the child to appreciate. It is 
 this variety of individuals that makes the work of education 
 fascinating, and takes from it all wearisome monotony. 
 Those persons who feel that education is wearisome work 
 have not learned the secret of it. I have never seen a good 
 kindergartner who was not as fond of the work as a painter 
 of his painting, a sculptor of his modelling. Teachers who 
 are not conscious of learning from their pupils, may be pretty 
 sure they teach them very little. 
 
 It is because kindergartning is this true education, which 
 is mutual delight to the adult and the child, that I have faith 
 it will prevail, and its prevalence is my hope for humanity. 
 By the infinite mercy of God, no human being is hopeless of 
 redemption into God's perfect image at last ; but humanity 
 will not be redeemed as a whole, — will not become the image 
 of God, or live the life of God, — until little children are suf- 
 fered to go unto Christ while they are yet of the kingdom of 
 heaven, and are blessed from the first and continuall}', by 
 those who shall take them in their arms to bless them. Those 
 are only perfect kindergartners who are '* hidden in Christ," 
 receiving every child in his name, and humbly learning of 
 them the secrets of greatness in the kingdom of heaven, 
 which is to be established on earth. Kindergartning is not 
 a craft, it is a religion ; not an avocation, but a vocation 
 from on Hio:h. 
 
LECTUEE T. 
 
 LANGUAGE. 
 
 Teaching, which in the common sense of the word is the 
 suggestion of thoughts by words, is not the kindergartner*s 
 special work, but the a priori process of drawing out into the 
 individual consciousness of a child those latent powers whose 
 free activity gives him conscious relations, first, with his 
 kind ; secondly, with material nature, including his own body ; 
 and, thirdly, with God. He is unconsciously in this threefold 
 relation already-, but to become conscious of these relations 
 severally, in his own growth builds up the human understand- 
 ing, which is not born with him like his sensibility and force 
 of will. The human understanding, a creation in time of the 
 free will, creates language as the element of a life not 
 shared with animals ; an intellectual life using the symbolism 
 of nature as a means of intercommunication, and which is 
 correspondent and bearing a relation to its creator, man, 
 similar to the relation of the material universe to God, being in 
 both instances an image, as in a min*or, of what is necessary 
 and immutable in the self-consciousness, though without entity 
 itself. Hence, as the material universe expresses the wisdom 
 of God, human languages express the imperfect wisdom of 
 man. Language is the element in which the intellectual 
 nature makes a sphere wherein to live and move and have 
 its being. TVhat breath is to the material body, making man 
 alive in nature, language is to the social body, making it 
 alive in history. 
 
 A word is both spiritual and material, being an articulate 
 form of the voice which, as Goethe has happily said, is the 
 
90 LANGUAGE. 
 
 nearest spiritual of our bodily powers, taking significance 
 from the articulating organs, which are symbolical, like 
 everything else in material nature, which, as I said 
 before, is but an image, as reflected in a mirror, without 
 absolute entity, but bearing witness of an entity progres- 
 sively apprehended by the finite spirits of men, who are the 
 children of the Infinite Spirit inheriting creative power 
 forevermore. 
 
 The ^articulate sound of the voice is the scream of pain 
 or the shout of joy, mutually intelligible to all human hearts ; 
 and this aerial basis of language continues to be more or less 
 intelligible to all souls, when modulated as iu poetry into 
 melody and rhythm by emotion and character. The first 
 human language was, perhaps, music of the deepest char- 
 acter, of which pliase there is historic trace in the spoken 
 Chinese, which has been perishing for ages on the lips of a 
 nation whose origin is lost in the depths of antiquity. This 
 spoken language is monosyllabic, and even the initial con- 
 sonant often only a semivowel, while the whole word takes 
 its significance from the tone of the vowel ; thus In in a low 
 tone would have one meaning, lu in the tone of a musical 
 third another meaning, and so on as the tone ascends through 
 the octave. The inception of such a language implies an 
 original equipoise of a brain not yet despoiled of its first 
 vigor through moral delinquency which is incident to the 
 freedom to will of a finite spirit, and consequently the 
 Chinese language was inevitably lost. It would be interest- 
 ing to enquire if those rare individuals among the Chinese 
 who are expert in the spoken Chinese, are not of finest 
 musical temperament. 
 
 Not till after thinking had begun could articulation by the 
 organs of speech begin. Thinking is the free individual act 
 which associates the mind's activity and the sensibility of the 
 heart with material things, and must precede the use of words. 
 
 A time comes to every intelligent child when it wonders 
 
LANGUAGE. 91 
 
 how words should express thoughts. Victorious analysis has 
 never yet penetrated the whole mystery of language to the 
 complete satisfaction of men, though I think philologists and 
 metaphysicians are on the way to it, and have ref^ched some 
 fundamental facts. For instance, that insignificant sounds 
 and articulations could not make significant words, and that 
 vocal sounds (vowels) get their meaning from feeling, while 
 articulations get theirs from the symbolism of the organs of 
 speech. 
 
 The organs of speech are, first, the throat, — as the guttural 
 organ is called in English because through it we take our 
 food and send forth our voice, — is out of sight, covered up, 
 hidden, the central point where the voice starts ; secondly, the 
 lips, which are obvious, movable, parallel ; thirdl}', our teeth, 
 against which the voice strikes, are hard, stiff, and dead in 
 comparison with the flexible lips, and the tongue which con- 
 nects all together, the voice rolling over it and hardly articu- 
 lated. Hence the hard c and g, and the rough aspirate h are 
 factors in all words signifying the beginning of self-originat- 
 ing motion (observe go and kick, or cause to go), the causal, 
 the central, covered, hidden ; while the labials, p, b, f, v, are 
 factors in all words expressing obviously moving phenomena ; 
 and the dentals, d, t, s, z, found in words expressive of stiff, 
 hard, dead phenomena (the word death is all but identical 
 with the word teeth) ; separation and number being expressed 
 by s and z, which are made by throwing the vocal breath out 
 between the separated teeth. The liquids r and I, r being 
 also a factor of words expressing indefinite beginning, (as 
 original anroral, arise, etc.) are made by the voice moving 
 over the tongue more or less energetically, to express move- 
 ments whose diflference of energy is exemplified in the words 
 fry and fly, groiv and glow, M closes the lips without prevent- 
 ing the continuous sound of the voice from being heard ; and 
 n, negating limitation by throwing the breath (or voice) out 
 at the nose, symbolize respectively the positive and negative 
 aspects of Infinity. 
 
92 LANGUAGE. 
 
 Of course I am giving only a hint in order to define what 
 I mean when I say significant words are not made out of 
 insignificant sounds, and that articulated sounds get their 
 meaning from the symbolism of the organs of speech. 
 
 The historical origin of language is lost in the depths of 
 antiquity, when the human race was yet in that equipoise of 
 mind, heart, and self-activity, which in the process of evolution 
 is only progressively recovered by the free agent, it being the 
 office of education to restore it. 
 
 The infant (that is, the non-speaking child) in vision of 
 the Eternal, only gradually becomes aware of the succession 
 of time. For, as Mr. Emerson sings in his Sphinx song, — 
 
 "The babe by its mother 
 Lies bathed in joy, 
 Glide its hours uncounted/' 
 
 And Wordsworth says of " the little child, — '* 
 
 " On whom those truths do rest, 
 That we are toiling all our hves to find ; " 
 
 and 
 
 "By the vision splendid 
 Tlie youth is still attended ; " 
 
 " Shades of the prison-house begin to close 
 Upon the growing boy, 
 
 Yet he beholds the light and whence it flows ; 
 He sees it in his joy : 
 At length the man perceives it die away. 
 And fade into the light of common day." 
 
 But this fall from the Ideal is not what Calvin istic theology 
 declares it to be, reprobation either intellectual or spiritual I 
 
 " Oh, joy that in our embers 
 Is something that doth live, 
 That nature yet remembers 
 What was so fugitive." 
 
LANGUAGE. 93 
 
 True education shall lead out the iraprisoned spirit, grow- 
 ingly conscious of individualit}', by means of the symbolism 
 of the prison-house itself which is that correlation of neces- 
 sary forces we call the material universe. 
 
 The material universe, as I have already said, is the sym- 
 bolization of everything in God except his creativeuess 
 which is the spiritual essence that he shares with Humanity, 
 his only -begotten Son. It is the body of God, and human 
 language is the body of individualized Humanity, whose im- 
 perfections correspond with its various partial developments 
 and short-comings. And it is ever growing towards perfec- 
 tion in the form of poetry, bearing witness to the creative- 
 ness (or genius) of man forevermore. As breath is to the 
 material body, keeping men alive in nature, so language is to 
 the social body, keeping individuals alive in history and 
 literature ; and as the material universe is symbolical of God's 
 wisdom, so the echoes of the universe tossed from the lips 
 of men are symbolic images of the wisdom of man. Lan- 
 guage, in short, being of both natures, spiritual and material, 
 makes an elemental sphere for the intellectual life, beyond 
 the material ; in short, makes a metaphysical world, in which 
 the finite and infinite spirits commune with other finite spirits 
 and with the Infinite One ; for by words every minutest shade >^^ 
 of individual consciousness may be communicated from one ] 
 finite mind to another, making not only an immortal com- i 
 munion of men possible, but a communion of God and 
 Humanity also that shall have no end. Heaven and earth 
 pass away, but the Word of the Lord endureth forever. 
 
 But I must not be tempted into philosox)hizing farther upon 
 language at present, precisely because it takes us into the^ 
 deepest mysteries of speculative thought, and our business 
 with it now is practical, and concerns the nursery and kin- 
 dergarten processes of culture. 
 
 Looking at it superficially, speech is an imitative art, and 
 so far as our experience goes, is always taught by elders to 
 
94 LANGUAGE. 
 
 the young generation empiricall}'. This teaching of the 
 mother-tongue in the nursery is an immensely important 
 thing, because it carries on the development of the under- 
 standing towards the fulness of Reason (which is seeing 
 particular things in their proportionate relation to the 
 whole) . 
 
 In the whole course of a chikVs education, nothing is done 
 which so much involves the totality of his activity as his 
 learning to talk. For to talk presupposes observation, dis- 
 crimination, memory, fancy, understanding. The first three 
 (observation, discrimination, and memory) are nearly passive 
 reactions from sensuous impressions. But fancy and under- 
 standing are creative acts of the human spirit, almost def}'- 
 ing analysis. In fancy, the mind acts quite reckless and 
 even defiant of nature's laws and order. In understanding, 
 it observes and uses them subjectively. That children de- 
 light in using words to name things in the order of nature, 
 and to express qualities and relations in connection, making 
 an echo-picture within of what they see without, is not so 
 wonderful as the exaltation of delight produced by a story 
 which is, as it were, triumphant over nature's laws, and 
 reckless of its order ; and the shocks of laughter with which 
 they catch at a grotesque and impossible combination of 
 images made in their fancy by means of words. The pre- 
 dominance of fanciful talk to children which seems to be 
 instinctive with all peoples, everywhere, is an indication 
 that fancy is as legitimate an activity as understanding, to 
 say the least. It seems to me to be an evidence of our be- 
 ing begotten directl^^ by the creative spirit, sons of a divine 
 Father, who is the complex of Infinite Love, Infinite Wisdom, 
 and Infinite Power, of which our human feeling, power of 
 thinking, and executive ability are the shadow, or rather a 
 living image. 
 
 Both fancy and understanding are developed in time by 
 words. We all know how children are waked up and de- 
 
LANGUAGE. 95 
 
 lighted by Mother Goose absurdities, and still more by fairy 
 stories that seem to set at naught the facts and override the 
 laws of nature. It is a stubborn fact, of which materialistic 
 positivists afford us no explanation, and which I commend 
 to the consideration of Mr. Mansell, and whoever else talks 
 of the limitations of religious thought. And I think it will 
 be found that children who are talked to by Mother Goose 
 and fairy-story tellers learn to talk more quickly than others, 
 and have more vivacity of mind generall}^, with a power of 
 entering into the minds of others commensurate with their 
 sensibility, and justifying the human sympathies which are 
 often a burden to the unimaginative, who are nevertheless 
 kind. A great deal of the misunderstanding of others which 
 causes unnecessar}' pain and social bitterness, checking gen- 
 erous furtherance of one another's good purposes, arises from 
 want of saliency of imagination, preventing us from being 
 able to put ourselves in another's place. And of course it is 
 not without the highest reason that the Father of our Spirits 
 has given fancy the advantage of the first start in our mental 
 process. That fancy precedes understanding in our psycho- 
 logical history cannot be denied by any nice observer. I 
 have known some parents who would not use Mother Goose 
 or fairy stories with their children, but substituted therefoi* 
 amusing experiments in physics, — the metamorphosis of 
 insects and the classification of plants according to their dif- 
 ferences. Their children became scientific when they grew 
 up, were fine mathematicians, and were interested in mechani- 
 cal inventions and natural history ; but took comparatively 
 little interest in political and moral problems, though not at 
 all wanting in the social and patriotic affections, which also 
 characterized their parents, who were themselves brought up 
 on the imaginative system not well modified by studies of 
 nature's phenomena, which was probably the reason of their 
 strong reaction from the imaginative method. 
 
 But I have known as intimately some other parents who 
 
96 LANGUAGE. 
 
 made predominant, perhaps extreme use of Mother Goose and 
 fairy literature. Their children much earlier and more com- 
 pletely got command of all the resources of language, had a 
 tendency to art, especially literary art, in their own activity, 
 and were earlier interested in human history, and all varieties 
 of human experience reflected in the literature of nations ; but 
 perhaps were slower in attaining practical ability for life's 
 labors. Each direction of education has its advantages and 
 disadvantages in the religious relation, and I think it is the 
 better way to mingle them, especially at the early period of 
 the kindergarten, where the objective point is to cultivate 
 the understanding, which needs that we should appreciate the 
 facts and order of external nature as the exponent of God's 
 wisdom. This will chasten and give substantialit}' to the 
 creative action of the human fancy, which is never to be 
 snubbed, but gently entreated to be reasonable, or we shall 
 have Caliban instead of Ariel or Prospero, as I have said 
 before. 
 
 I cannot find out whether Frcebel has anywhere expressed 
 himself distinctly on this point. There are certainly no 
 grotesque images and no fairy stories in the mother's prattle 
 with her children over pictures, and in the out-door walks 
 which are suggested in the Mutter spiele iind KOse-Lieder; 
 but children are led to recognize the poetical symbolism of 
 nature, and its invisible and impalpable substances and 
 forces ; the invisible forces of air, heat, and light are used to 
 lead them out from the world of matter towards the more 
 substantial spiritual world where the soul meets and com- 
 munes with God, the omnipresent Spirit to be apprehended 
 onl}^ by the spirit within us, whose organs are ideas. ^ 
 
 In the kindergarten, as in the nursery, children learn lan- 
 guage by using it empirically. To utilize their love of talk- 
 ing as they play is what is first to be done by the kinder- 
 
 1 Idea is a word I always use in the sense of insight, as Plato uses it^ 
 rather than in the sense of notion, as Locke uses it. 
 
LANGUAGE. 97 
 
 gartner. The things seen and done give a clear definition 
 and precise significance to the words used, which become the 
 steppiDg-stones of the mind, by which it mounts up from the 
 sensuous ground of the understanding into the heaven of 
 invention and imaginative art, plastic and heroic ; and thence 
 to communion with God. But before children are put to 
 reading, before proceeding from things through thoughts, and 
 from spiritual experiences through ideas to their vocal signs, 
 and from vocal signs to their written or printed representa- 
 tions, it is wise to consider the signs themselves. I do not 
 mean to go deeply into etymologies or anything that is 
 abstract. It is not doing so, for instance, to ask children 
 what is the difference between the words see and look, (Can 
 you see without looking? Can you look without seeing?) 
 It gives precision to the understanding to discriminate what 
 are often called synonymes, but which seldom mean precisely 
 the same thing, unless, in our potpourri of a language they 
 are mere translations, as for instance morsel and bit, respective 
 derivatives from the Latin morsum and the English bitten. 
 The little English-speaking child should not be troubled with 
 the derivation of morsel, but is pleased to be called to notice 
 that of bit. We must be guided here by Froebers rule of 
 proceeding from the known to the unknown, and not 
 endeavor to plunge children into the unknown without a 
 clue. 
 
 That children understand and use figurative language 
 readily, shows that without going out of their childish world 
 we can define s^'mbolic expression to some degree, and this 
 is a means of regulating fanc3\ But I must take another 
 opportunity to speak of the method of doing this.i I can 
 now only affirm that unless children could signify by words 
 not merely their impressions of material things and their 
 correlations, but their feelings and thoughts, it would be 
 impossible for the religious education to be begun in the 
 
 1 See note A in Appendix, and the Record of a School. 
 
 H 
 
98 LANGUAGE. 
 
 nursery, or to be carried on in the kindergarten, as Froebel 
 proposes it shall be. 
 
 It is only by naming to the child his own intuition of 
 creative being or cause, or rather by leading the child to 
 name it, that the understanding is started upon the religious 
 thinking which is necessary to keep pure from superstition 
 his religious feeling, while his blind sense of God is chang- 
 ing from an undefined intuition of the heart into a definite 
 thought of the mind, which change Froebel would have take 
 place very early. But this is the most delicate region of 
 consciousness to enter, and we must take great care that we 
 do not profane instead of consecrating the process by what 
 we do and say. Words that are adequate and living names 
 lor the spiritual intuition of a very present God, generate 
 spiritual thoughts in natural relation with them. And this 
 reminds me of a circumstance in the mental history of Laura 
 Bridgeman, illustrative of what I mean. 
 
 This poor child was deprived, when two years old, of her 
 sight and hearing, and partially of taste and smell, by the 
 scarlet fever, which left her but one avenue of knowledge 
 of material things, — the sense of touch. But through that 
 the practical benevolence of Dr. Howe won a way to her 
 imprisoned spirit, and opened communication of thought 
 with her by means of words ; and she even learned to read in 
 the raised t^pe for the blind. The whole story is immensely 
 interesting and important to any teacher. She had been 
 taught enough of the properties of matter to be able to work 
 on and with things, and moral science could be taught her 
 through her own and others' activity ; but how was she to be 
 taught about God and spiritual things ? Dr. Howe reserved 
 to himself to speak to her of God, forbidding all others to do 
 so, and watched for his opportunity. 
 
 My sister Sophia went over to the asylum to model Laura's 
 bust, and one day asked her teacher (who was with her 
 always) to translate into spoken words the conversation that 
 
LANGUAGE. 99 
 
 she saw was passing between them by means of the hand 
 language. Very soon occurred the following : — 
 
 Laura. I want to go to walk. 
 
 Teacher, You cannot go to-day, because it rains. 
 
 Laura, Who makes it rain? 
 
 Instead of making a direct reply, the teacher went on to 
 explain how moisture exhaled from the earth by the action 
 of the sun, and was collected in masses which were called 
 clouds, and when the clouds were so full as to be heavier 
 than the air, it fell to the earth in drops of rain. 
 
 Laura said, reverently, '' God is very full." 
 
 The teacher was startled, and said, "Who told you about 
 God?" 
 
 Laura, No one told me. The Doctor is going to tell me 
 about him when I know more words. But I think about 
 God all times. 
 
 The teacher said to my sister, "This is very important," 
 and went to tell the Doctor, who was a good deal moved, but 
 found himself at somewhat of a loss. That evening he came to 
 a little gathering at our house to talk about it. He said that 
 nearly a year before, if not longer, Laura had come upon the 
 word God in her reading, and immediately stopped and 
 asked the meaning of the word. According to his directions, 
 she was then sent to him, and he was so anxious not to do any 
 harm, especially not to frighten her with the idea of Infinite 
 Power (which is the main element of our conception of God, 
 even eighteen hundred years after Christ's manifestation of 
 Infinite Love) , that he was embarrassed, and said to her that 
 she did not yet know other words enough to explain the word 
 God^ but when she had learned more words, he would tell her, 
 and meanwhile he wished she would not ask any one else. 
 But now he was pondering what was the best way to proceed. 
 I suggested that perhaps Laura could teach him more than 
 he could teach her about God, and asked what was the 
 sentence in which she had found the word. But this he had 
 
100 LANGUAGE. 
 
 Dever known. It was then suggested that probably the word 
 had explained itself, for no sentence could possiblj' contain 
 the word, not even in an exclamation, that would not suggest 
 to such a perfectly clear thinking mind as Laura had always 
 shown, the fact of supreme love or wisdom. The company 
 present proved this by trying to make sentences. I do not 
 know what he finally concluded to do or sa}' to Laura. I 
 think certainly that the ti*ue way would have been to 
 have drawn her out, and according to what she said or 
 seemed to need, to have shaped whatever teaching he had to 
 give, taking great care not to negate an}^ of her positive 
 assertions ; for we could not doubt that God was manifesting 
 himself to the imagination of her heart, if not yet in the 
 forms of the human understanding. 
 
 If I had known how to use the hand language, I would 
 have solicited the privilege of going to learn what this her- 
 mit soul could have told me before it was darkened by our 
 traditional theology, which did not originate in children, — 
 
 "On whom those truths do rest 
 That we are toiling all our lives to find/* 
 
 but in the minds of old sinners who had lost the original 
 purity of soul that ''sees God." " I think about God all 
 times ! " How interesting it would be to know exactly what 
 she thought ! That it was nothing terrific or painful was 
 evident from her habitual mood, which was even joyous. So 
 careful had the Doctor been to educate every bodily and 
 mental activity, that she had none of that discouragement, 
 inelasticity, and indolence of mind, which comes of want of 
 success in childish effort. A genial, educating assistance 
 was always around her, but careful not to weaken her by do- 
 ing anything for her that she could learn to do for herself. 
 Obstacles, therefore, only stimulated her efforts, and so de- 
 lightful was her sense of overcoming them, that, for instance, 
 she would laugh exultingly when sewing if her thread be- 
 
LANGUAGE. 101 
 
 came knotted, or if in anything she was doing there was 
 some little ditiiculty to be surmounted. Ilcr faith in herself 
 seemed never to have been broken ; but she rested on the 
 fulcrum of Infinite God, in whom she " lives and moves and 
 has her being.'* 
 
 The only thing we ought to do in the religious nurture of 
 childhood is to lyreserve this faith which comes from the 
 child's seeing God even more clearly and certainly than it 
 can see outward things. See to it that you use language so 
 as more clearly to define and not to blot out the divine vision, 
 as old Dr. Barnard's cocked hat and black silk gown and seat 
 in the clouds eclipsed the sweet face with which my Creator 
 seemed to own me as his child, as I told you in my last 
 lecture. 
 
 Another mistake that was made in my religious education 
 was during a visit that I made to a great-aunt when I was 
 five years old, and was taught to say the Lord's prayer by 
 the servant who put me to bed. I got the idea that some 
 unknown q\\\ might happen to me in my sleep if I did not do 
 this, and was also told that God would be displeased with 
 me if I thought about anything else when I was saying it. 
 But I was involuntarily consdous of having my mind full of 
 images, while the words of the prayer were empty vocables. 
 In order to prevent the intruding thoughts, I would try to 
 rush through the words quickly, going back to the beginning 
 over and over again. But this artificial duty was not asso- 
 ciated with the instruction of my mother, who was in general 
 very happy in what she said to me about God, dwelling on 
 his goodness, referring to it everything delightful, making 
 Sunday a day of quiet but constant enjoyment, letting us 
 paint, and cut paper, with other little amusements, devoting 
 herself to making us happy, while the rest of the week she 
 was busy ; for She kept a large school, and Sunday was, as 
 she often said, her only and blessed day of rest. Long 
 after, at a time of religious controversy and so-called re- 
 
102 LANGUAGE. 
 
 vival, I was immensely aided by hearing my mother say to a 
 young aunt of mine who affirmed that St. Paul, in saying 
 that we must pray without ceasing was fanatically unreason- 
 able : "Yes, if praying meant saying over prayers ; but spir- 
 itual prayers mean a devotional attitude of mind towards 
 God which we can have whatever we are doing." 
 
 This sentence seemed to pour light into a shady place. 
 
 "Don't you say prayers^ mamma?" I said to her when 
 aunt was gone. 
 
 " Not when I am alone," she said; "for God sees my 
 thoughts and feelings, and knows that I love him, and 
 always want his help." 
 
 My mother had nothing of the martinet about her. She 
 took it for gi-anted that upon the whole we wanted to do 
 what was right. She was not apt to give the worst, but the 
 best interpretation to doubtful phenomena. She believed 
 that to treat a child with generous confidence invoked gener- 
 osity and truthfulness, and what was better than all the rest, 
 she did not talk down to her children, but rather drew them 
 up to her own mental and moral level ; and interlarded 
 stories from Spenser's Faerie Queen and the Scriptures with 
 stories of the kind and noble deeds of real people around us. 
 (See Appendix.) 
 
 Her religion was moral inspiration to herself and consola- 
 tion for all calamity, and always very naturally expressed. 
 She more than corrected her first mistake and inadequate 
 talk with me about my Creator, by telling me the story of 
 the Pilgrim Fathers, when I was yet so very young that my 
 fancy clothed her words with grotesque images, but on the 
 whole did better justice to the spirit of the emigration and 
 the ultimate results it has worked out for the world than 
 the exact facts that transpired in history. What I gained 
 from my self -created mythology was that my ancestors knew 
 themselves to be God's children, whom neither tyrannizing 
 king nor priest had any right to prevent from going to him 
 
LANGUAGE. 103 
 
 in prayer first hand, and that in order to do his will as then- 
 consciences understood it, they left home and country and all 
 the comforts of civilization, and trusted themselves in a frail 
 vessel to be driven over a stormy ocean by the winds, at 
 imminent peril from the waves below, which would have 
 swallowed them up, had not God, who loved them, approved 
 what they were doing, guided the ship (by a power stronger 
 than the wind, for it was his love) through the narrow open- 
 ing of Plymouth Harbor to the rock where I still seem to see 
 Ihem streaming along, a procession of fair women in white 
 robes as sisters (for so I had interpreted the word ancestors, who 
 strangely enough were all named Ann) . I still seem to see 
 these holy women kneel down in the snow under the trees of 
 the forest, and thank God for their safety from the perils of 
 the sea ; and then go to work in the sense of his very pres- 
 ent help, and gather sticks to make a fire, and build shelters 
 from the weather with the branches of the trees. Among 
 these rude buildings my mother took pains to tell me that 
 they built a schoolhouse where all the children were to be 
 taught to read the Bible. 
 
 There is nothing for which I thank my mother and m}^ God 
 more than for this grand impression of all-inspiring love to 
 God, and of all-conquering duty to posterity, thus made on 
 my childish imagination, and its association with the idea of 
 personal freedom and independent action. It never could 
 have been made except by one who herself had faith in God, 
 and believed that he had made all men free to come to him, 
 and also that the mother was his first appointed mouthpiece. 
 The fanciful images which were the effect of the shortcomings 
 of my ignorance did not hide the vital truths which I was as 
 open to accept then as now ; namely, that God is m}' Father, 
 the Father of all souls, from whom no one has a right to shut 
 off another. 
 
 That first schoolhouse, which I fancied that I saw the 
 *' Ann Sisters" building, taught me as no mere words ever 
 
104 LANGUAGE. 
 
 could have done, that it was the most acceptable service to 
 God to educate all his children to know him and his works. 
 That first idea of human duty I have never outgrown, but 
 still believe universal education is the true culture of the 
 American people, the reasonable service they owe to him 
 who called them out of the Old World to be a nation of indi- 
 viduals. There was nothing fatal, therefore, in that first false 
 notion of God (which I received for a time) , though it was 
 for a time more of an evil to me than it would have been to 
 a child less subjective, or of more lively perception of things 
 without. Liveliness of perception brings so many things 
 before the mind, and so stimulates its volatility, that it 
 undoubtedly prevents the stereotyping of many a single 
 impression and fancy that does injustice to spiritual truths ; 
 and false impressions, unless strongly associated with terror 
 or some other morbid sensibility, do not take hold of a child 
 so strongly as the images that are consistent with the eternal 
 laws of mental evolution, such, for instance, as that human 
 face divine with which I had instantaneously clothed 
 my intuition of God, and which, notwithstanding its tem- 
 porary eclipse, has haunted me all my life. 
 
 It is very encouraging to the educator to know that the 
 innocent soul of childhood has so much more affinity with 
 truth than with falsehood, because the best and most careful 
 educator cannot sequestrate children entirely from false 
 impressions. But what finds no echo in the spirit passes off, 
 unless the mind is shocked into passivit}' by fear or pain. 
 When the soul is active, it has a certain superiority- to passive 
 impressions, and makes use of them as materials for imagi- 
 native production. It is, therefore, desirable to keep children 
 employed in gentle activity which has successful results, and 
 happy in the midst of attractive natural surroundings, by 
 which God is working with us in the same purpose of 
 educating the child, allowing us to be his partners, as it were, 
 in this work, because it educates us. It is not uncommon to 
 
LANGUAGE. 105 
 
 hear persons say that they would like to begin life all over 
 again with the knowledge they have gained from their life- 
 experience. This we can all do if we will in imagination 
 really live icith our children^ as Froebcl says, whose motto 
 explains what Christ meant when he bids us to be converted 
 and become little children. 
 
LECTURE YI. 
 
 A PSYCHOLOGICAL OBSERVATION. 
 Part First. 
 
 I SAID in my last lecture that had I possessed the power 
 to talk in Laura Bridgeman's hand, I should have begged 
 Dr. Howe to let me have some conversation with her after 
 she said that she '' thought about God all times" ; not that 
 I felt that I could teach her, but that I might learn what 
 God had taught her concerning Himself. It was a wonder- 
 ful chance for a most important psychological observation of 
 the innocent mind of childhood, and would have afforded, 
 doubtless, a luminous illustration of the truth that the 
 human soul is also a divine personality justifying the method 
 initiated by Froebel of conversing with the children in the 
 Socratic manner. 
 
 But already in my lifetime I had had an opportunity for 
 psychological observation, made under circumstances per- 
 haps still more favorable for getting evidence of the impor- 
 tance of a very early recognition of the Heavenly Father's 
 name in the formation in a healthy manner of the human 
 understanding and the development of the reason, verifying 
 the declaration which Froebel has made the corner-stone of 
 his system ; namely, that though a child is the extreme 
 opposite of God, contrasting as effect to cause, as absolute 
 want to infinite supply, all these terms arc connected — con- 
 ciliated — into unity, by Love and Thought, which must recog- 
 nize each other, and whose loss of equal companionship is a 
 
 " Grief, past all balsam and relief," 
 as Mr. Emerson has sung. 
 
108 A PSYCHOLOGICAL OBSERVATION. 
 
 I have somewhere, very careful memoranda, made at 
 the time, which I have unfortunately mislaid, but I will 
 present from present recollection as well as I can the 
 whole psychological observation, though I am aware that 
 I shall leave out many little things said and done which 
 were perhaps not unimportant links in the chain. 
 
 Before I begin, I will observe that I tell it to the class to 
 show the difference between talking to and conversing with 
 children, and to illustrate several truths. 
 
 First, There is an innate Idea, not as a thought but as a 
 feeling, given to every child, of an all-embracing Love 
 (named by Jesus, Father) , one in substance with the deepest 
 consciousness of self ; 
 
 Second, That this Idea becomes a child's personal, and 
 individual perception only when he has a realizable name 
 for it ; 
 
 Third, That such a name is not an empty vocable, a mere 
 movement of air, but a sign, to which the intuition of his 
 heart gives vital meaning ; 
 
 Fourth, That an adequate name for God is the axis of 
 the intellect, and the revolution of thought around it gives 
 perfect globular form and solidity to the mind, balancing 
 the centripetal force of individual self-assertion with the 
 centripetal force of a Divine Love, comprehending all Being. 
 Before God was named to and by this child of whom I am 
 about to speak, you will see that he was a dreary little chaos 
 "without form and void." After he had learned to utter 
 intelligently the name of a Heavenly Father he was what I 
 am going to tell you. 
 
 But first I must tell you how I had this opportunity and 
 privilege of being the first person to name God to this child 
 when he was four and a half years old. He was the son of 
 a most conscientious mother whose early orphan life had 
 been saddened with religious teiTors. Her earliest recollec- 
 tion, as she told me, having been the death-bed, and immedi- 
 
A PSYCHOLOGICAL OBSERVATION 109 
 
 ately after, the burial of her mother, whom she saw, when she 
 was too young to comprehend death, shut up in a coffin and 
 put into the ground ; and she remembered how her agonizing 
 cries at what seemed the frightful cruelty, were peremptorily 
 hushed, with the declaration of the person taking care of 
 her, that God who made the heavens and the earth willed it 
 to be so and would punish her if she did not acquiesce. 
 Little did the thoughtless and heartless person who thus 
 dealt with the distressed little heart think, how disastrously 
 she was emasculating the word God of good by associating 
 it with such an image of ruthless power divorced from 
 tenderness, as she unheedingly did. It was not till long 
 years after that her imagination was cleared of the frightful 
 falsehood ; and when she came to have a child of her own, 
 her governing thought was to keep him ignorant of the fact 
 of death, and the name of God, until he should be old 
 enough to understand them, as she said. She was a 
 person of deep feeling, upright and benevolent, but her 
 imagination, probably by reason of this life-long depression, 
 was of feeble wing, and she was taciturn. In consequence, 
 her child, though most tenderly cared for as to his body, 
 was starved in mind and spirit. His face continued to be 
 an infant's countenance, and he was strangely without that 
 childish jojousness called animal spirits, and grew more and 
 more peevish as he grew older ; for he was sequestered 
 to the society of his silent mother, who would not even 
 be read to in his presence, lest, as she said, some chance 
 word which he could not understand should excite some 
 fear. 
 
 Suddenly a hemorrhage of the lungs brought this mother 
 to death's door. She had been, for a few years before her 
 marriage, m}' pupil in my own house, and she used to say 
 she owed to me all the happy views she had of God and 
 Heaven, as well as of human life and death, and I was sent 
 for in this extremity as a mother to a child. 
 
110 A PSYCHOLOGICAL OBSERVATION. 
 
 Since her marriage she had lived in a city distant from me, 
 and I had seen her but little. Her child was so very timid I 
 had made no acquaintance with him in transient interviews, 
 and of me he had no impression but of one little story that 
 I had told him six months before when I met him at the 
 house of her husband's parents. This story I had half in- 
 vented to explain a picture in the '• Story without an end," 
 that I was showing to him. (See Appendix.) 
 
 When I came to the mother's bedside, she told me it was 
 best for her to die, because she was utterly baffled in all her 
 efforts to bring up her child. She went on to describe her 
 timid methods ; she said she feared he was non compos^ for 
 he made no progress. Among many phenomena, she men- 
 tioned that when she gave him playthings, he immediately 
 broke them to pieces, and when she tried to prevent this, by 
 endeavoring to make him understand their uses and construc- 
 tion, he would look drearily into her face and say, rather 
 than ask, " What for ? '* He seemed deficient in will, without 
 impulse, for, though flowers seemed rather to please him, if she 
 took him into the garden and told him he might gather them, 
 he would stand still, and helplessly cry ; and she had to com- 
 mand him to do everything, even to play, before he would 
 attempt it. He acted like an automaton. Moreover, he had 
 no sensibility, and expressed no affection. 
 
 Just at this point of her dismal story her chamber door 
 was opened by the nurse, with this great boy in her arms. 
 He had his mother's beautiful large brow and deep ej'es, but 
 with no speculation in them, and his whole figure was lifeless 
 and so languid that the arms that had been about the nurse's 
 neck, slowly lost their curve when she put him down on his 
 feet. But his look rested on me, who, with an inviting smile 
 and gesture, held out my hand. Immediately the large eyes 
 filled with intelligent light, and with a cry of joy he sprang 
 towards me, climbed up into my lap, clasped his arms round 
 my neck, nestled upon my bosom, and looking up with a 
 
A PSYCHOLOGICAL OBSERVATION. Ill 
 
 j'jyful expression of confideuce said, '^ Story — little boy — 
 drop of water!" It was, as I have said, about half a year 
 before, that I liad lured him to me as he held off in timidity, 
 by offering to show him the picture where the child, in the 
 " Story without an end" is represented beside the brook, 
 looking at a drop of water hanging from a leaf, ''telling 
 the little boy a story," as I said, to which he had answered 
 " Stor}' ! " and I had gone on and invented a free paraphrase 
 of the story given in the book, adapted to his infantile 
 capacity, and when I had finished, he said, " Story again ! '* 
 and I repeated it again and again, so imperative was his 
 '' story again ! " and now he again said " Story," with a con- 
 fiding pressure, as he leaned on me then, gazing at the 
 picture on the book in my lap, giving me the conviction that 
 he understood me. It was really, as I found subsequently, 
 the only rational words that had ever been addressed to the 
 child's imagination. 
 
 '' This does not look like want of sensibility, or mens non 
 compos " 1 said to the mother. " I never saw anything like it 
 before," she said, all tears. The ensuing silence was imme- 
 diately broken by the child's imperative repetition of the 
 word "story!" I was too much affected by the mother's 
 emotion to remember or invent any story, but it was an early, 
 warm spring day and the windows were open. The house 
 stood on a bluff of the Merrimac, within sight of the Rapids ; 
 and the sound of the rushing waters came in upon our silence. 
 I said, cheerfully, "Do you hear the water running?" to 
 which he responded with a joyful "yes! what does it run 
 for?" "Oh, because it is glad," I replied, and again he 
 responded with a joyful and satisfied "^es," and after a 
 moment asked, " Where is it running to? " "Oh, into the 
 ocean, where all the rest of the waters are ! " and again an 
 emphatic "yes" expressed his satisfaction. Perhaps he 
 remembered that in the story I had told him of a drop 
 of water ii had ended with the drop falling off the leaf, and 
 
112 A PSYCHOLOGICAL OBSERVATION. 
 
 running away with its brothers and sisters, and falling into 
 the ocean, out of which the sun had originally taken it. At 
 any rate, he not only repeated his 3'es with the emphasis of 
 satisfaction, but seemed to be thoughtful. I said, '' Do you 
 ever look out of the window and see the sun shine on the 
 water, and all the little sparkles of light in the water?'* 
 "•Yes," said he, joyfully, "what makes the sun shine on 
 the water?" "Oh," said I, "it is because the sun loves the 
 water." "Yes," said he, and began to embrace me in the 
 most energetic manner. 
 
 It was too much for the poor mother, who absolutely wept 
 aloud, whether with joy or soitow she could not tell, as she 
 afterwards said. 
 
 The sound of her weeping attracted his attention, and he 
 sat up in my lap and turned his large eyes upon her as she 
 lay in bed, and then upon me, with a look of concern and 
 appeal. " See," said I, " poor mother. She is sick and 
 sorr}'. She wants me to tell her a story, and won't you get 
 down and go into the nursery and let me tell dear mother a 
 story to make her feel better ? Then I will come to you and 
 tell you one." 
 
 With a cheerful " yes " he immediatel}' got down and went 
 into the nursery-, but stopped at the door to say : — 
 
 " When you have told mother a story, won't you come right 
 in and tell me one ? " 
 
 I said to the mother, " You see, my dear friend, that the 
 child has mind enough, heart enough, and a moral nature. 
 He can understand and feel sympathy; feels the symbolism 
 of nature ; and can obey a self-denying motive. No fatal 
 harm has been done after all by your delay, but he needs 
 now to know he has a Heavenly Father, fully to manifest all 
 the powers of a human being. You must allow me to give 
 him that name for the Love he feels within and without." 
 
 " Not quite yet," said she, " not until you come to stay, 
 because he would ask me questions that I should not knov 
 
A PSYCHOLOGICAL OBSERVATION. 113 
 
 now to answer. Childreu ask such terrible questions. I am 
 afraid as soon as you name the Invisible God, he will be 
 frightened. Don't you know M. D. was afraid to stay in a 
 room alone because of the omnipresence of God, which seemed 
 to be an unimaginable horror to her ? " 
 
 '' I do not wonder," I replied. " Omnipresence of God ! 
 What was there in a child's experience to interpret this Latin 
 abstraction? I think it would have been quite another thing, 
 considering who her earthly father was, had she been told 
 that our Heavenl}* Father was all about her though she could 
 not see Him with her eyes, but could feel Him giving her love 
 and joy. I cannot but wonder that anybody around her 
 should have talked to her in such abstractions." 
 
 ''I am so unready in expression," she persisted, "and 
 can so poorly express my thoughts and feelings, I am sure I 
 should only do mischief if I should try to answer his ques- 
 tions, and I am sure he will go on asking them, for his mind 
 seemed to wake up at once as soon as you began to talk to 
 him. How different was that ' yes ' from the dreary ' what 
 for?* with which he always received the very best explana- 
 tions that I could make of the things he pla3'ed with. That 
 ' what for? ' was not an enquir}' of intelligence, but an ex- 
 pression of utter want of perception, with no interest to hear 
 a reply. It is best for him that I should die ; then I shall ask 
 his father to give him to you to bring up. Nobody ought to 
 have children but people of genius ! " 
 
 '' No, no," said I ; '' it does not require genius to talk with 
 childreu, but only simplicity of heart trusted in. I interested 
 him and gained a response, not because of genius, for I have 
 none, but because I believe in him, and in myself, whose 
 happiness is in loving, and that Goo has created us to love 
 and commune with one another and Him. You have said 
 yourself that he seemed to love flowers, though he was 
 afraid to gather them, and that he loved to hear the street 
 musicians. Beauty and music touch his sensibility. By 
 
114 A PSYCHOLOGICAL OBSERVATION. 
 
 saying that the waters run because they are glad, and the 
 sun shines on and makes things beautiful because be loves 
 them, I put his own conscious life into the music of waters 
 and the light of the sun. He recognized the meaning of 
 gladness and love because he himself felt glad and loving, 
 which made a pre-existent possibility of recognizing the love 
 and joy of the Creator that shine in those natural objects, 
 because they are God's own words of love addressed to His 
 own image, who is capable of love and joy and knowledge 
 of Him. If we talk to children in instinctive faith, they 
 understand us. You have not done so because of 3'our earl}' 
 misfortune that saddened your heart and took awa}' your 
 instinctive courage. Faith is the proper act of the heart 
 (courage, you know, is a synonym of heartiness) ; the heart 
 goes before the understanding in the process of life. With- 
 out heart one can do no justice to children in talking with 
 them ; with it, we awaken their minds and nurture their souls, 
 and all our mistakes will be of small account beside the posi- 
 tive advantage of setting their minds in joyful motion ' amidst 
 this mighty sum of things forever speaking.' " 
 
 "When you come to stay," was her rejoinder, '*you can 
 say to him what you please, for then you will be here to take 
 care of his mind and answer his questions." 
 
 This was all I could gain at that moment, and I left her, to 
 go to the child, who had several times opened the door and 
 looked at me wistfully, with a silent appeal which was all the 
 more proof of his quickened intelligence that he did not tease. 
 His own desire to have a story had interpreted to him his 
 mother's need. 
 
 I have very little power of inventing a story, and to his 
 demand for one I responded by taking from the bookshelves 
 Miss Edge worth's first story of Frank, and began to read to 
 him of Frank's making a noise on the table and the conver- 
 sation between him and his mother that ensued. But this 
 did not suit my little one's mood, which was a little exalted 
 
A PSYCHOLOGICAL OBSERVATION. 115 
 
 by his delight at seeing me, and having had his imagination 
 touched by the beautiful language of nature that I had made 
 intelligible to him. He pulled the book away, and asked 
 me to tell him a story '^out of your own self," as he said. 
 
 Thus urged, I began : '' Once there was a little worm about 
 as long as the nail of my thumb, and no larger round than a 
 big darning-needle. This little worm lived in a little house 
 that he had made for himself in the ground, just big enough 
 to hold him, when he rolled himself up like a little ball with 
 his head sticking out. There were no windows nor doors in 
 his house, but one on top, which was his door to go in at, 
 and his window to look out of. When he had made this 
 house he was tired and crawled into it and curled himself up 
 and went to sleep, and slept all night. In the morning the 
 sun I'ose and spread his beams all over the world, and one of 
 the bright sunbeams shone into the window of the little 
 worm's house and touched his eyes and waked him, and he 
 popped up his head and looked out and saw it was very 
 pleasant in the garden, and he thought he would go out 
 He squirmed himself up out of his hole, and because he 
 had no feet he crept along the garden path. The warm 
 beams of the sun put their arms all round his cold, lit- 
 tle body and made it warm as could be, and the sunbeam 
 went into his little mites of eyes, and filled him all full of 
 light, and the songs of the birds went into his little mites of 
 ears and filled him all up with music, and the sweet smell of 
 hundreds of flowers went up that little mite of a nose and 
 filled him up with their perfumes. And so that little worm 
 went creeping along as glad as he could be that he was alive. 
 
 '' Now in the house that stood in that garden lived a little 
 boy about four years old ; and when the morning came, the 
 sunbeams had gone into the window of his nursery and 
 waked him, and he was washed and dressed and had his 
 breakfast of bread and milk, and then his mama took him 
 to the door that led down the steps of the piazza into the 
 
IIG A PSYCHOLOGICAL OBSERVATION. 
 
 garden, and told him he might go down the path and have 
 a good run to make himself warm. So down he ran. But 
 now if that little boy should put his strong foot on that dear 
 little worm, it would break him all to pieces — '' 
 
 "Oh, he shall not, he must not!" cried the child in a 
 spasm of distress. "Aunt Lizzie, don't let him break the 
 dear little worm to pieces 1 " 
 
 "No indeed," said I, "that little boy would not not do 
 such a cruel thing for the world ! He saw the little worm creep- 
 ing along, so glad to be alive, and he ran on the other side of 
 the path ; and the little worm nibbled a little blade of gi*ass, 
 and drank a little dew for his breakfast, and then he felt 
 tired, and went creeping back, full of good food, to the little 
 hole that was his home, and curled himself up like a little 
 ball and went to sleep." 
 
 " Now tell me that story all over again ! " said the child. 
 
 I did so more than once at his entreaty, and always when 
 1 came to the possible catastrophe of crushing the worm, the 
 same terror seemed to seize him, and he would cry out : — 
 
 "Oh, he must not, he shall not!" and I always tranquil- 
 lized him again, and gratified his sense of justice by my 
 assurance of the little boy's consideration of the little 
 worm's right to his life and happiness. 
 
 Of course, I told his mother of the effect of this story, and 
 the evidence it gave of the child's sound moral nature and 
 innate sense of justice. And I begged her to let me lose no 
 time in referring to the presence of the Heavenly Father, 
 that the intuition of his heart might become the possession 
 of his mind. I said I did not believe that he would ask any 
 question. He would suppose that I alone knew, for, as I 
 observed to her, he had never for the whole six months re- 
 ferred to the little boy with the drop of water, and yet had 
 vividly remembered the whole story, as his greeting me had 
 shown, and I had the proof of it, for I had just told it to 
 him again at his request. I told her if I proved to be mis- 
 
A PSYCHOLOGICAL OBSERVATION. 117 
 
 taken, and he should ask her any question she could not 
 answer to her own satisfaction, she could say she would write 
 to me and ask me, and I felt sure he would wait. But I told 
 her I believed what I was thinking of saying to him would 
 keep his thoughts busy while I was gone (for I was going 
 only for a week to prepare for a stay with her for an indefi- 
 nite time). At last I gained her consent, and the child was 
 put into my bed, that I might have the conversation the first 
 thing in the morning. 
 
 ^^Tien I awoke, I found him awake, close by me, and his 
 great eyes seemed to devour me. 
 
 '' How long you did sleep ! " said he ; "I have been seeing 
 you sleep." 
 
 Said I, '' What do you see with?" 
 
 " My eyes," he replied, and to the questions. What do you 
 hear, smell, taste, touch with? he made the appropriate 
 answers. 
 
 "But what do you love with ? ** I asked. 
 
 He jumped up uix)n his knees and crossed his arms on his 
 breast, paused a moment wonderingly, and then exclaimed, 
 "With my arms !" and throwing hio arms round my neck, 
 hugged me. I was taken a little aback, but in a moment 
 said : — 
 
 " Have you a great deal of love?" 
 
 " Oh, a great deal, a great deal ! " he exclaimed. 
 
 " Where is it? where do you keep it?" said I. 
 
 He started up again on his knees, again crossed his anns 
 upon his breast, and said, " Where do I?" 
 
 Placing my hand on his heart, I said, "Is it not in there?" 
 
 His whole expression was afllrmative, he looked delighted, 
 but did not speak. 
 
 ' ' Are you good ? " said I. 
 
 " Sometimes," he said. 
 
 "What are you when you are 
 
 ^^rpf?^^^ 
 
118 A PSYCHOLOGICAL OBSERVATION. 
 
 He had evidently been told it was naughty to cry. 
 
 I said, " Why are you not good all the time? " 
 
 " Why ain*t I?" said he, after a moment's pause. 
 
 *' Oh," said I, '' I think you have not goodness enough to 
 be good with all the time." 
 
 He looked assent, delighted and earnest. I answered bis 
 unuttered feeling with the question, — 
 
 " Should you like to have goodness enough to be good 
 with all the time ? " 
 
 ''How can I?" 
 
 "Oh," said I, " you have a good friend who has a whole 
 sky full of goodness. He gave you all the goodness and 
 love you have in there (I touched his breast) , and will give 
 you more and more if you want him to, always and always, 
 enough to be good with all the time." 
 
 He looked perfectly blest, did not speak, but laid himself 
 down close by me, took my arm and put it over him, and 
 said, as he nestled up to me, — 
 
 " Talk to me some more." 
 
 I went on : '' Your gooci friend gives you all your joy to 
 be glad with, and all youj:'love and goodness. The}' always 
 go together. And now listen to me : the next time you are 
 going to cry (I used his own practical expression instead of 
 saying the next time you are naughty) , stop and think. I 
 have a good friend who has a whole sky full of goodness 
 and he will give me goodness enough to be good with all the 
 time, and I guess you will not cry." He responded only with 
 huggings and kissings and exclamations of " I love 3'ou a 
 whole sky full," and as I did not want to overdo or say any- 
 thing to mar the impression I had made, I took advantage 
 of a noise I heard, to change the subject, and said : — 
 
 "What is that noise?" 
 
 He jumped out of bed, went to the window, and said : — 
 
 " It is the carpenters making a house," and after a pause, 
 asked, " Who made all the other houses? " 
 
A PSYCHOLOGICAL OBSERVATION. 119 
 
 " Carpenters," said I ; '^ don't ^-ou see they make houses 
 out of boards?" 
 
 " Who made the boards?" 
 
 "The boards are made out of trees. People cut down 
 the trees, and then they saw them up into great logs, and 
 then they split up the logs and smooth them out into pieces 
 we call boards." 
 
 " Who made the trees? " said he. 
 
 I understood very well where the tyrannizing unity of his 
 personality was leading his understanding, but did not wish, 
 just then, to risk giving outward form or connection to his 
 thought of the Divine Cause, so I said : — 
 
 "The trees grow out of the ground; don't you see old 
 trees and 3*oung trees and little baby trees growing out of 
 the ground?" 
 
 For this information he did not give me that hearty " yes'' 
 with which he had received my communication of spiritual 
 facts, but came back to bed again. I persisted, however, 
 in talking playful nonsense for half an hour, until his nurse 
 came to take him up to dress him. As soon as she appeared 
 at the door, he started up on his knees again, crossed his 
 arms over his breast, and in a loud, joyful voice cried out : — 
 
 " Mrs. Doyle ! I have a good friend up in the sky who has 
 a whole sky full of goodness, and he will give me as much 
 goodness as I want to be good with all the time,'' emphasiz- 
 ing the last three words. 
 
 The nurse, a good-hearted Roman Catholic, who, like 
 all the servants, had been forbidden to talk to the child about 
 God or any kindred subject, looked at me startled, yet 
 gratified, and said : — 
 
 " What will his mother say? " 
 
 I replied, " His mother will be very glad ; she only wanted 
 to wait till she thought he could understand. But I have 
 told him enough for the present ; don't talk to him about it ; 
 but if he says anything to you, come and tell me." 
 
120 A PSYCHOLOGICAL OBSERVATION. 
 
 ''Yes/' said she, "and I thank God you have come to 
 teach the poor child something." 
 
 I then said to her aside, " His mother is very anxious 
 lest he be frightened ; for she was frightened about God and 
 death when she was a little child, and has suffered from it all 
 her life long. She has been a double orphan ever since she 
 can remember." 
 
 I said this to her for several reasons : one was my ex- 
 treme desire to see what the one simple truth would do for 
 the child, and this was the reason I gave good fnend for 
 God's name. Of course, the mother craved to know exactly 
 what had passed on this important occasion, and was im- 
 mensely relieved and gratified at what I told her, and wanted 
 it all to be written down ; and thus it happened that I made 
 memoranda of this and subsequent conversations, and even 
 of those held in her presence, for they continued to be no less 
 interesting than they began. 
 
 Observe these points in the child's speech to the nurse : 
 he interpolated the words up in the sky. I had given no 
 place to the good friend, though I had said he had a whole 
 sky full of goodness and love ; and the sky being the glori- 
 ous symbol of unboundcdness, elevation, purity, and power 
 to the human imagination, in all nations and times, as is 
 proved by the earliest idolaters who worshipped the heavens, 
 and the host of stars, and verifying the more spiritual con- 
 ceptions of the Hebrew Psalmist, and of Job, who did not 
 confound (nor did this child) the sign with tho Living God 
 who created it to signify His Being. Another thing: 
 Observe it was not even as the giver of love and joy, but as 
 the giver of goodness that the Person of Persons had seized 
 the imagination of the child so powerfully. It was wonder- 
 ful to see that very day, the effect upon his understanding 
 of this conversation. The night before, when I told him the 
 story of the little worm, I found his vocabulary so small that 
 I could give my imagination a very narrow scope. But in 
 
A PSYCHOLOGICAL OBSERVATION. 121 
 
 the course of the thiy (iu which, for the first time in his life) 
 he talked iucessantly, askiug iuiiumerable questions about 
 his good friend, he seemed to have no ditiiculty in talking. 
 I am very sorry I have not my written memoranda, because 
 1 sliould like to tell you everything in order ; but I re- 
 member he wanted to know how his good friend " looked." 
 I replied by asking him, ''How does love look?" He 
 laughed, and said, '' Love does not look, but feels." 
 '' Well," said I, "so your good friend docs not look, but 
 feels. Don't you feel him now, putting love and good- 
 ness into you?" He laughed assent, and said, ''Where 
 is he?" 
 
 '* Wherever love and goodness are," said I ; "in you, in 
 me, and in mother, in everybody who loves " I was en- 
 couraged to believe he would comprehend this language, 
 unimaginable and inconceivable as such truth is to the mere 
 understanding, for I had in my remembrance a conversation 
 I once overheard between two children, one five and the 
 other not tliree years old, at which I had not ceased to won- 
 der since I heard it. I was sitting drawing with their 
 mother in a recess of a room that hid us from the children's 
 sight, when our attention was diverted by hearing the younger 
 one say : — 
 
 " Can God see me now, when I am all wrapped up in this 
 shawl?" 
 
 The elder one replied very earnestly, "O yes! God can 
 see everybody, everywhere." 
 
 " But I don't see how He can see me when I am all wrapped 
 up in this shawl. It is dark," pei-sisted the little three-year- 
 old. There was a pause, when Eliza, in a very anxious voice, 
 said : — 
 
 "Amelia, can you see mama in your eye?" (She meant 
 imagination.) 
 
 Amelia replied after a moment, " Yes, I can see mama in 
 my eye, just how she looks." 
 
122 A PSYCHOLOGICAL OBSERVATION. 
 
 " Well," said Eliza, " I suppose that is the way God sees 
 everything, because He knows everything." 
 
 I cannot conceive a more perfect proof that the soul of a 
 child is a "sparkle of God," and its mind the intuition 
 of the eternal reason — its image, than was given by 
 this original illustration of the truth of truths made by a 
 child of five years old. The mother made an exclamation of 
 wonder, and said : — 
 
 " I am sure I never could have given so profound an answer 
 as that," and I continue to think it the most wonderful thing 
 I ever heard of so young a child's saying, and had I not 
 heard it m3'self, I doubt if I could have believed it was said. 
 But it has given me courage to think that children might have 
 very early a definite conception of the invisible God without 
 materializing it. 
 
 The omnipresence and invisibility of God were mysteries 
 that attracted my little pupil's mind and taxed it, but did 
 not distress nor perplex it. Of the reality of God's being, 
 the intimacy of his own relations with Ilim, he never seemed 
 to have a doubt ; his delight in the thought of Ilim was 
 boundless. At the end of the first day he said a thing which 
 struck his parents with astonishment. The evening of the 
 day on which I arrived, his father had made tea for me in the 
 parlor, and as the child did not want to leave me a moment, 
 he was set up at the table in his high-chair opposite me, to eat 
 his bread and milk with us. While the father talked of one 
 thing and another, the child's eye and mine occasionally met, 
 and he would immediately make some gesture of lovingness 
 and an inarticulate sound, ce ee ee ! At last his father checked 
 him with the words '' Don't make those silly noises, Foster ! " 
 I interposed, and playfully said : — 
 
 '' Now please don't come between me and Foster. I under- 
 stand his silly noises and just what he means to say to me. 
 How can you expect he will talk any sense when you have 
 never given him any help to think ? " The father laughed at 
 
A rSYCnOLOGICAL OBSERVATION. 123 
 
 my *' transcendentalism," as he called it. But the second 
 night, when we were all again in the same relative position, 
 the demeanor of the child was wholly changed ; he sat silently 
 eating as if wrapped in thought. By and by he said in a 
 very decided tone, " Some things live, and some things only 
 keep." 
 
 With a look of astonishment his father exclaimed, " What 
 an extraordinary generalization!" "The consequence," 
 said I, " of being talked to as if he were a rational being one 
 day ! " 
 
 The next day I went to Boston for a day or two, to make 
 arrangements for returning to stay an indefinite time, which 
 was such a disappointment to the poor little thing that he 
 screamed in the most passionate manner, so that his mother 
 could no longer doubt his sensibility or will. lie was so 
 angry with the stage-coachman who took me away, that his 
 father had great difficulty in persuading him that he was not 
 a bad man, but, on the contrary, a kind one, whom Aunt 
 Lizzie had asked to come to take her to the railroad. At 
 last he somewhat reluctantly agreed that he might be a good 
 man. 
 
 " But I shall never like him," he said, and left his father, 
 to go and caress his mother, who was weeping, as he divined, 
 with the same regret as his own, and he was apparently com- 
 forted by her saying, that she, too, was sorry Aunt Lizzie had 
 to go away for a little while, but she had promised to come 
 back in a day or two and stay all summer. 
 
 It turned out as I had surmised, that he had asked no 
 questions while I was gone, and had said very little except to 
 wonder that I stayed so long, though I was gone only two da3-s. 
 
 When I came back I had immediate evidence that he had 
 been thinking while I was gone, and to some purpose. You 
 remember that on that first morning of our conversation, he 
 had asked me who made the trees, and I had said, " The trees 
 grow out of the ground," which did not seem to give him the 
 
124 A PSYCHOLOGICAL OBSERVATION. 
 
 satisfaction that my reference of his emotions, sensibilities, 
 and thoughts, to an invisible personality had given him. 
 Now, as soon as the embraces of welcome and expressions 
 of joy had subsided a little, he burst into the subject which 
 had so possessed his mind, and with a sort of triumphant air, 
 as if he was sure of a satisfactory response, he asked : — 
 
 " What did our good friend want the trees to grow out of 
 the ground for?" 
 
 I said, " Do you think the trees are pretty? Do you like 
 to look at them?" 
 
 " Yes, I think they are beautiful." 
 
 " Well," said I, " I guess that was one reason ; you know 
 he loves us all, and so he likes to please us. Do you like to 
 please those you love ? " 
 
 "Yes ! " and a passionate embrace and kiss was the expres- 
 sive reply. 
 
 I then went on to call his attention to the fruits that grow 
 on some of the trees, and which serve us with delicious food, 
 and the uses of wood to build houses with, etc. This con- 
 versation naturally introduced other kindred subjects of in- 
 quiry as to why our good friend had arranged things so and 
 so. The tyrannizing instinct of his own mind, of which he 
 had become conscious through the exercise of it, that my 
 naming of the Spirit Father had so happily started, had made 
 objective to him the Unity of all life, and he was sure that 
 the good friend was at the bottom of everything outward as 
 well as inward, even trifles ; for I one day heard him say, as 
 he was lying on the floor at play, " Heavenly Father, I wish 
 you would not let my leg feel so cold." This was later on, 
 in the winter time, however. 
 
 I cannot sufficiently regret that I have lost my original 
 memoranda. They were transcribed from notes that his 
 mother made, who was watching every word said, with the 
 most intense interest. She always had pencil and paper at 
 her side, because the danger of hemorrhage caused her to 
 
A PSYCHOLOGICAL OBSERVATION. 125 
 
 avoid speaking. She wrote clown with care the very words, 
 us if they were, as indeed the}' were, a divine Revekition. 
 AVhatever he accepted or expressed with joy, she felt was 
 true, knowing as well as she did the past emptiness of his 
 understanding, and the dreariness of his feeling as an indi- 
 vidual. But I can perhaps remember enough to show you 
 the method I took, which was truly the very method of con- 
 versation that Frojbel proposes we should have with children, 
 prompted by the Wisdom of love, which so profoundly re- 
 spects its object that it gives it opportunity to be itself by not 
 obtruding. The reason that we do not get the lesson that 
 childhood can give us is that we tlirust our finite minds 
 between the child and the Divine, instead of limiting our- 
 selves to putting the child into the point of view to see for 
 itself what of course though essentially one, is perhaps of dif- 
 ferent aspect to each. I made it a point to be very quiet, 
 and to exhibit no surprise at his questions or mistakes, but 
 to lead him by my questions to the answers, and the correc- 
 tions of mistakes which must needs arise from one-sidedness. 
 The entire respect with which I listened to what he said gave 
 him complete possession of and confidence in his own mind. 
 One laugh at any incongruity he uttered (as Dr. Seguin 
 would tell you) would have shut him up perhaps forever. 
 How often children's thinking is thus nipped in the bud ! 
 
 The circumstances in this instance were favorable to real 
 conversation. In addition to my love of psychological ob- 
 servation in general, and m}' love and interest in this child 
 in particular, was that which I felt in the mother, whose own 
 childhood had been so shadowed by her human environment 
 that it had not taught her what only childhood can teach with 
 its uneclipsed vision of the Father's face, of which Christ 
 speaks and warns the adult not to offend (or, as the revised 
 version translates it, cause to stumble) . On her account, as 
 well as on my own and the child's, I was careful not to put 
 my thoughts into his head, but merely lead him to the stand- 
 
12G A PSYCHOLOGICAL OBSERVATION. 
 
 point from which he could see the truth for himself. It is 
 because these conditions made for once an opportunity for a 
 genuine conversation between intuitive childhood and such 
 maturity of experience as I had attained, realizing Froebers 
 ideal of the conversation of the kindergarten, that I am 
 desirous to give it to you as a hint of how you should pro- 
 ceed — though, of course, you would probably never have so 
 exceptional an opportunity ; because the children that come to 
 you will generally have minds already misty with half -defined 
 ideas of God, received from the vague, half -defined minds of 
 the imperfectly educated adults, conveyed to the children 
 either in that careless or dogmatic manner in which they are 
 usually talked to, not with. 
 
 Another advantage I had with this child was, that besides 
 the arrested development arising from his mother's timid plan 
 with him, he inherited from both parents, and perhaps from 
 remoter ancestr}-, an individuality of mind that was not at all 
 imaginative ; which did not, however, exclude him from 
 spiritual truth, for that is not the work of imagination, but is 
 discerned by the spiritual sense, being as objective as what 
 is discerned by the five senses (a transcendental objective, 
 not a material one). The respectful interest with which I 
 treated him gave him a happ}^ confidence in his own thought, 
 which was my opportunity for observing the natural order of 
 mental development. In short, the conversation we had was 
 a genuine one as between equals, unless, indeed, he was the 
 superior in giving to me the divine laws of the spiritual order. 
 He often surprised me by his next question, and was so dis- 
 armed of all fear by my consideration and tenderness, that he 
 revealed that which is always the individual's secret, and I 
 gained as much as he did by the conversations, and certainly 
 I gained certainty in what was previously only conjecture on 
 my part. I was sometimes obliged to say I did not know, 
 and remember his asking me with surprise, " Don't you know 
 everything?" *' Oh, no ! " said I. " Only our good friend 
 
A PSYCHOLOGICAL OBSERVATION. 127 
 
 knows everythiug and gives us our thoughts all the time. 
 Doesn't he give new thoughts to you every day?" 
 
 "Yes, he gives me a great many new thoughts all the 
 time," he replied with animation. On another occasion, 
 when I had become perfectly exhausted in answering his 
 questions, I said to him : — 
 
 ''I am very tired, but I will answer that question, pro- 
 vided you will not ask me another before dinner." 
 
 As he walked away he said, ''Oh, I wish I had asked 
 another question instead of that ! " 
 
 " Well," said I, " what? Perhaps I will answer that one." 
 
 Turning back, he said eagerly, "Will our good friend 
 answer all my questions when I go into the sky ? " 
 
 I said, "Yes, every one; for he knows everything, and 
 can never be tired." 
 
 The expression of complete satisfaction with which he 
 went away from me was most expressive. 
 
 You will observe his expression of "when I go into the sky," 
 and consider it together with the words that he interpolated 
 saying, " I have a good friend up in the sky," in repeat- 
 ing to Mrs. Doyle that first morning when I had told him 
 that his good friend who gave him thoughts, and joy, and 
 goodness, and love, had a sky full of goodness. The sky is 
 the natural symbol of the unbounded and infinite and the 
 essentially spiritual, and the conception of God into which 
 I had led him, and which I named his good friend, pervaded 
 all space. 
 
 The subsequent questions of how God looked, and upon 
 His whereabouts, and the conversation on this, by identifying 
 Ilim with the Love that he felt within himself, had revealed 
 to him Immortality before he had defined mortality. 
 
 The God he felt within him in his conscious Love and 
 without him in all manifestations of beauty and power, gave 
 him assurance that he would be sometime wherever God was. 
 I have lost the connection and place in the narrative of 
 
128 A PSYCHOLOGICAL OBSERVATION. 
 
 another conversation I had with him on the omnipresence of 
 God. He often had said his thoughts were in his head, and 
 his feelings were in his bosom. One day he was sitting in 
 my lap close to a table, with his feet bare, and I put my 
 hand under the table and pinched his toe. He said : — 
 
 " What are 3'ou pinching my toe for ? " 
 
 I said, " How do you know I pinched your toe? you can- 
 not see what I am doing under the table." 
 
 " I think you pinched my toe, because I felt it." 
 
 '' I thought all your thoughts were in your head, and all 
 your feelings in your bosom, not in your toes.'* 
 
 '' My feelings are all over my bod}'," said he ; " and when 
 you pinched my toe, the feeling ran right into my head and 
 turned into a thought." 
 
 " So you see," said I, " that 30U live all over your body 
 and in any part of it, just as your Heavenly Father lives all 
 over the world and in everything at once." 
 
 " Yes," said he, " I did not know how that was before." 
 
 The date of this conversation was some weeks, perhaps 
 months, from the beginning of our intercourse, as I know 
 from the use of the word Heavenly Father^ which came after 
 a time to take the place of good friend^ and it was preceded 
 by some other conversations. He was always overflowing 
 with expressions of love to me. When I gave him anything, 
 he would embrace me, and I would ask, ''Which do you love 
 best, me or the thing given?" (an apple perhaps, or whatever 
 it might be). He would always say, " You, you." Once he 
 said, " I love 3'ou more than all the apples in the world." 
 Once when he was kissing my hand, I said, " Which do you 
 love best, me or my hand?" 
 
 " I love both," he said. 
 
 I persisted, and said, " Supposing my hand was cut off, 
 would you love me as well?" 
 
 " I should love you a great deal more,'* said he, energeti- 
 cally ; " for it would hurt you so to have your poor hand cut 
 off. Would it not hurt you dreadfully ? " 
 
A PSYCHOLOGICAL OBSERVATION. 129 
 
 " I suppose it would, but by and by it would get well 
 and what I want to know is, whether 3'ou would love mc 
 as well without my hand as with it?" 
 
 He still declared he should love me more. I then said, 
 *' So you see my hand is not me. It is only one of the 
 things the Heavenly Father gave me to make things with, 
 and He gave me my feet to walk with, and eyes to see with ; 
 but my eyes and ears and tongue are not me ; and if I 
 should lose them all, still I would be all of myself, and you 
 could love me?" 
 
 ''Yes," said he; "but I don't want j'ou to lose any of 
 those things, for I love them all together." 
 
 My object in these conversations was to see if he would 
 separate in thought the finite material body from the con- 
 scious soul or himself^ as I preferred to say, for to speak of 
 one's self as a soul makes what is essentially subjective as 
 objective as we desire to make the body, the use of which 
 is to reveal to others the feelings and thoughts of the indi- 
 vidual that otherwise the finite apprehension could not seize. 
 I was endeavoring to prepare him to minister to his mother, 
 when I could persuade her to let him know the fact of death, 
 by appreciating and defining that crisis of life as a step 
 onward into the deep consciousness of immortality, which I 
 believed would lift her out of the abyss into which her own 
 consciousness seemed to fall at the utterance of the word, 
 in spite of all the intellectual views of immortality which she 
 had for many years cultivated, but which somehow did not 
 meet her exigency, when she felt herself on the brink of the 
 separation of body and mind. No intellectual process can 
 give what the faith of childhood has in its own immortality 
 of which those who had the care of her infancy had robbed 
 her. 
 
 It was delightful to see how she enjoyed the child who had 
 long been a burden to her. She wanted him in her presence 
 all the time with his playthings, and to hear all our conversa- 
 
 E 
 
130 A PSYCHOLOGICAL OBSERVATION. 
 
 tion, and that I should tell her what we said iu the little time 
 that he could not be with her. She declared that she never 
 had known what the enjoyment of life was till she had it in 
 her s^'mpathy with him. All the pleasures of intellect, and 
 also of personal affections of the happiest kind, were pale 
 beside the joy of this child — in his communion with God, who 
 was in all his thoughts, and had taken him from his dreari- 
 ness and growing peevishness, into that joy of childhood 
 which Ruskin speaks of as so entirely out of proportion to 
 the occasions of its expression, and which still had no painful 
 excitement in it, but was simply a spontaneous outflow, not 
 only quickening his thoughts but informing his affections 
 with generosity and gratitude. The self that lost all sense 
 of boundary, in its joy in the unbounded, spread out to em- 
 brace all about it. He said one thing to me which will, I 
 think, explain to you what I mean. Of course, I was the 
 first person on whom the flood of his heart poured itself out, 
 though he did not stop with me, but also expressed his love to 
 all with whom he came into near or remote relation. When 
 saying to me how much he loved me, what a skyful of love 
 he had for me, I said, " Yes, darling, I know you love me as 
 much as you can," he replied scornfully, " I love you a great 
 deal more than I can ! " Was not that a wonderful expres- 
 sion of the immortal essence of his love, — of Love Divine? 
 Without its being suggested to him to thank others for 
 kindnesses, he did so without a single exception. He would 
 be taken to drive in the carriage with his mother, and stand- 
 ing at the window, would shout with delight at the things he 
 saw on the way, and when he got home would often run 
 back to the gate to say, " Thank you, horsey ! " and all his 
 habits of timidity were forgotten when the street musicians 
 came by, and he was allowed to take out pennies to them. 
 Callers at the house, from whom he used to shrink when they 
 would have spoken to him, were in wonder at his hospitable 
 welcome and fearless but intelligent interpositions in the 
 
A PSYCHOLOGICAL OBSERVATION. 131 
 
 conversation, which the}' thought indicated precocity instead 
 of backwardness. The length, breadth, and depth of all the 
 words Christ let fall in the last part of his life, of which I 
 had had some insight before, became doubly intelligible to 
 me. I saw into the beaut}* and meaning of mankind's being 
 created in successive generations, and I was thus prepared 
 to enter into and appreciate FroebePs ideas and methods, 
 with which I did not become acquainted till a quarter of a 
 century later. 
 
 I want you to observe that in what I did there was simply 
 the spontaneous wisdom of love — love, not fondness, not 
 desire of reciprocation, but self -forgetting and reverent of 
 its object. Only this gives the creative method, or is the 
 essence of creativeness, whether human or divine. 
 
 You remember, in the memoir of Froebel with which I began 
 this course of lectures, it was said that he posed his elder 
 brother with his questionings of God*s wisdom in the ar- 
 rangement of the social sphere. Unable to answer him, the 
 instinct of his love led him to divert the child's attention into 
 a department of nature where apparent discords were seen to 
 be harmonized for the production of beauty and use, that 
 the poor little perplexed and bewildered child might enjoy 
 himself legitimately. He gave him the clue to the laby- 
 rinth and the strength to conquer the Minotaur. He had no 
 idea of educating, but only of comforting. Thus, uncon- 
 scious of any theory of education, he solved the problem 
 practically, first for the child Frosbel himself, later for man- 
 kind to whom the man Froebel has revealed it with such 
 ample illustrations as to make an era in human history that, 
 as we hope, shall retrieve the past. Childhood understood, 
 leading in the promised millennium of peace on earth and 
 good will among men, will make mankind forget the Babel 
 confusion of its first experimenting, and enter into the 
 mutual understanding of the Pentecostal miracle. 
 
LECTUEE VII. 
 
 A PSYCHOLOGICAL OBSERVATION. 
 Part Second. 
 
 In our little F.'s case, as it became perfectly plain to his 
 mother that he conceived clearly of God's embracing un- 
 bounded space as well as time in His Infinite Essence, she 
 became desirous of knowing how he would receive the fact 
 of death, so painfully and prematurely forced upon her own 
 soul, — whether his mind would leap the gulf in which hers 
 seemed to sink at the utterance of the word. 
 
 But the difllculty for him seemed to be to conceive of 
 death at all. I tried to approach the subject in such a man- 
 ner that he should have the initiative, as it were, in any con- 
 versation upon it. There was a poor old man who occasion- 
 all}' passed the house in the clothes of a pauper, supporting 
 his steps with a stick. One day when he did so, F. asked 
 me, "What makes men old?" and before I had time to 
 answer, added, '' Mary [the name of a former servant] used 
 to say viany days, when I asked her. Do many days make 
 men old?'* 
 
 '^ Yes," said I, " just as many days make your clothes and 
 shoes old. That old man has walked on his poor old legs so 
 long that they are quite worn out, and he has looked so long 
 with his eyes that they are dim, and listened so long with 
 his ears that they have grown dull, and his back has grown 
 weak, and his whole body is so worn out that it will not do 
 what his thoughts tell it to do, as your little fresh legs and 
 eyes and ears and as your whole body does." 
 
134 A PSYCHOLOGICAL OBSERVATION. 
 
 He received this intimation quietly, but raised no question 
 as to the ultimate result ; and as often as the old man walked 
 by, he would ask the same question and receive the same 
 answer. 
 
 At last I took down from the book-closet Mrs. Trimmer's 
 story of the robins and read it to him, and he became very 
 much interested in the little nest and its inhabitants. 
 After a while, the children in the story had birds of 
 their own in a cage, which they took care of assiduously, 
 but at length on one occasion went away and left them for 
 many days uncared for, so that they died ; I read right 
 on through the page on which it was told that on going 
 to the cage when they came home, they found the birds lying 
 on their backs with their beaks wide open, stark dead! I 
 paused in my reading, and he repeated, '' stark dead ! what 
 do those words mean ? What was the matter with the birds ?" 
 I laid the book down, and said, " You know that some 
 things live, and some things only keep." " Yes," said he. 
 I continued, ''You know that living beings feel pain or 
 pleasure, one or the other, all the time, and that things that 
 only keep do not feel at all." 
 
 "Yes," said he. 
 
 " "Well, things that live and feel — living beings — always 
 eat and drink ; they continue to live by eating and drinking, 
 and God tells them to eat by making it pleasant for them to 
 taste things. Now these little birds lived by eating and 
 drinking, and if they had been free, they would have found 
 food and drink somewhere in the world ; but those children 
 had shut them up in a cage ; and when they were so thought- 
 less as to go away and forget the birds that they had under- 
 taken to take care of, the little birds grew hungr}', and you 
 know it is not pleasant to feel even a little hungry, but they 
 grew hungrier and hungrier till their poor little bodies were 
 as full of pain as they could be. Now our Heavenly Father 
 could not possibly have them suffer so much pain, and so He 
 
A rSYCHOLOGICAL OBSERVATION. 135 
 
 told them to come to Him, and their life went right out of 
 their bodies, and then their bodies were just like everything 
 else that only keeps ; they could feel no more pain." 
 
 "What a dear, dear, dear Heavenly Father it is!" said 
 the child ; '' what nice ways He has about everything ! " 
 
 " Yes," said I, "He has the ways of love." 
 
 He asked no questions at this time, nor made any gener- 
 alization. I took up the book, and read on about the chil- 
 dren's burying the bodies of the birds, etc. 
 
 Thus the death of the body was first presented to his 
 imagination as only a relief from pain of the life that in- 
 habited it. He was immensely interested, and the subject 
 became the most common topic of conversation. 
 
 There were some books in the house which had pictures of 
 hunts, and one was of a stag-hunt, the stag at bay, the dogs 
 seizing him, the huntsmen firing. These books had been 
 carefully kept from him. I now took them down, and 
 showed them to him, interested him in the timid stag running 
 for its life, and its ingenious devices to elude the dogs by 
 swimming across streams, and at last when the dogs had 
 seized it, or the huntsman fired the cruel shot which tore the 
 breast or side of the poor beast, the final release, God's 
 call of the life to Himself ! At which the child would utter 
 exclamations of delight : that final escape was the best of all. 
 
 This story was so interesting, it absorbed his attention, 
 and he did not generalize. But it took its place among the 
 good deeds of God's love, that when life became too painful 
 in the body it was taken away to enjoy itself with God. 
 
 His mother, in whose presence were all the conversations, 
 was intensely interested ; but still as he did not think of 
 human death, she hardly felt that he had conceived the 
 idea. 
 
 I told him about the metamorphoses of insects, and their 
 depositing their life in eggs as soon as they were born. 
 When the old man came by, as he did nearly every day, we 
 
13G A PSYCHOLOGICAL OBSERVATION. 
 
 commented on the wearing out of his body, but he did not 
 think of death as a relief for him. 
 
 At last one day it happened that stretching out of the 
 window for some purpose, he nearly lost his balance, and it 
 was only by my timely seizing him that he escaped falling 
 out. I said, " F., what if you had fallen out on those 
 rocks and been broken all to pieces ! " He shrieked with 
 horror, " I don't want to ! I don't want to ! " " But what 
 if you had ! " said I, calmly. " You came very near it. What 
 should you have done?" "What could I?" he screamed. 
 " What could I do, all broken to pieces ! " " Why, don't you 
 think," said I, smiling, ''that your Heavenly Father would 
 have taken you right into His own bosom? " 
 
 A heavenly smile spread over his face and a look of perfect 
 satisfaction and acquiescence, and he said after a moment's 
 pause, "I forgot my Heavenly Father. Oh, what a dear, 
 dear, dear Heavenly Father He is ! " Then, after another 
 moment, he said in a distressed voice, " But must I be broken 
 all to pieces when I go to the Heavenly Father?" 
 
 " Oh, dear, no ! " said I ; " but when we are broken all to 
 pieces, or starved, or are very sick, He takes us ; but generally 
 people grow to be old like the old man, and all their bodies 
 get worn out, and they get very tired and kind of go to sleep, 
 and the Heavenly Father takes them, so they do not wake up 
 again in their old bodies, which are buried as the children 
 buried the bodies of the robins." 
 
 He expressed himself very happy, and asked a great many 
 questions, and it seemed as if he had already known of the 
 fact of death. At all events, he now accepted it as the 
 common destiny, without any painful feeling, and it seemed 
 to give new realization to his mother's feeling that her own 
 was indeed nothing but a morbid feeling, and that normal 
 nature did not shrink from death. The subsequent questions 
 were innumerable. I read to him Krummacher's parable of 
 the caterpillar and butterfly in the garden of Thirza, after 
 
A PSYCHOLOGICAL OBSERVATION. 137 
 
 the death of Abel, as it was paraphrased by Mr. Alcott when 
 he read it in his school, iu which I was assisting him at the 
 very time that I was called away to the child's mother. And 
 it was the study I had made of childhood iu his school which 
 had enabled me to pursue with so much confidence the 
 method I took with the child, though it was in my own child- 
 hood I conceived the plan ; and I remember speaking of it to 
 Dr. Channiug in 1824, and how much interested he was in 
 the idea, though he told me that in his own case he was in- 
 debted to the symbolism of nature, especially the ocean 
 seen from the beach at Newport, for clearing his mind of the 
 effects of the teaching and preaching which he had heard. 
 These grand objects, and later the beauty of some mani- 
 festations he had seen of love giving courage and power to 
 the weak, kindled his ideal, and gave form and substance to 
 his consciousness of God. 
 
 For a time there was nothing but delight expressed in the 
 fact of death, the relief from all suffering, the enlargement 
 of life and joy and new knowledge of God and His ways. 
 At last a little incident showed him the shadow which attends 
 death in this world. 
 
 We often went to call on the family of the physician who 
 attended his mother. One day when we went, the Doctor, 
 who was very fond of F., took him into his lap while I was 
 playing with the baby in his mother*s arms. They always 
 called it '"baby." I said to Mrs. D., "Has not baby any 
 name?" The mother replied, "His name is Edward." 
 F. looked up at the Doctor with a bright, jo3'ous expression, 
 and said, "Where is your other Edward?" The Doctor's 
 face changed instantaneously ; he clasped the child close to 
 him, and said, " Oh, he has gone to his Heavenly Father," 
 with a burst of grief. F. stretched himself back, looked 
 into the agitated face, and said with a look of the greatest 
 concern, " Are you sorry that he has gone to the Heavenly 
 Father?" "Oh, very, very sorry," said the poor father. 
 
138 A rSYCIiOLOGICAL OBSERVATION. 
 
 "Should not you be sorry if he should take away your dear 
 mother?" and putting the child down, he immediately left 
 the room. Mrs. D. said, " The Doctor has never got over 
 the death of that child, and we never name him in his 
 presence." 
 
 I immediately left the house, and we walked some distance 
 in silence, and as I found F. did not incline to speak, I said, 
 '-' F., did the Doctor look glad when you spoke to him about 
 his other Edward ? " He pressed himself close up to me, and 
 said eagerly, '' No, no ! he looked very sorry. What made 
 him sorry ? Did he not like to have his other Edward with 
 the Heavenly Father?" '' Oh, yes ! he liked that, but then 
 he wanted to have him in his own arms. You see he cannot 
 see him now, and he wants to kiss him." " Yes," said F., 
 *' he hugged me ! " I continued : *' You see, the Doctor is 
 very strong and well, and I suppose he will live in his body 
 a good many years, and he has Mrs. D. and Julia and the 
 rest, but he wants that other Edward, too, every day of his 
 life." F. replied sympathiziugly, '' He was large, and white, 
 and bright, and when I go into the sky, I shall look all over 
 to see where he is." I said, after a little while, " Shall you 
 say anything more to the Doctor about his other liklward ? " 
 " No, indeed ! " said he. "I never shall say another word 
 about him. Do you think I want to make the poor Doctor 
 sorry?" I told his mother, when I got home, of the whole 
 affair, and we agreed that it was well he should see the sad 
 side of death for the survivors. 
 
 It was soon a question with F. how we were to live without 
 the body, and he asked me. I told him I did not know 
 exactly how it was to be, but I supposed God would let new 
 eyes, ears, and whatever limbs we should need, grow out of 
 us, made of the finest stuff like air, which we could not see 
 because it was so delicate, or even feel, as we did the air 
 when it moved, but which souls could use just as they 
 pleased. He said, " I have seen some pictures of souls that 
 
A PSYCHOLOGICAL OBSERVATION. 139 
 
 had gone out of their bodies, and I did not know before 
 what they were." Surprised, I asked him how they looked. 
 He said, '' They were nothing but heads with wings." 
 
 The delightful thing was to see the effect of all this earnest 
 prattle upon the mother ; and one day, after I had returned 
 from a visit to a friend in the town, she told me she had had 
 a conversation with F. on her own approaching death that 
 was very satisfactory. 
 
 She said she had his bread and milk put on a little table 
 opposite her easy-chair, and when he was happily engaged, 
 she said, "F., I think our Heavenly Father will soon take 
 me to Himself." He looked up with an expression of great 
 feeling, and said tenderly: "Do you? Then you will get 
 rid of that poor, sick body, and your cough ; " and he added 
 presentl}', "Perhaps he will give you icings!" She said 
 nothing could be likened to the impression of peace and 
 sweetness which these simple words made upon her. Soon 
 after, he said, "But what will be done with your poor old 
 body?" (She said he spoke as if it was of not much impor- 
 tance.) She replied, " Your father and Aunt Lizzy will 
 take it to Cambridge in a carriage, and put it into the ground ; 
 and the grass will gi'ow over the place, and sometimes you 
 can come to the place ; and I guess I shall look out of heaven 
 and see you." But in a few minutes he began to cry, and 
 said, " I want to go with j-ou into the sky." She said, " Oh, 
 you have a nice little body, which gives you a great deal of 
 pleasure, and you must stay here with poor, dear father! 
 What would he do when he has no wife any longer, without 
 his little boy to make him happy, and take care of him when 
 he grows old? " After a little more of such remonstrance he 
 said, " Well, I will stay with him ! " It was curious that in 
 talking with me he never referred to this subject of his 
 mother's approaching death, which evidently had touched 
 him tenderly, and I did not introduce the subject. 
 
 It was also a curious circumstance, that after this matter 
 
140 A PSYCHOLOGICAL OBSERVATION. 
 
 of death was, as it were, settled satisfactorily, and the mind 
 of his mother freed from all trouble on the point, the love of 
 this life^ to which she had hitherto been more than indifferent, 
 sprang up in her with great energy, and she proposed to 
 break up the house, and go to Florida for cure ! Her husband 
 and I could not share the hope, but we could not but sym- 
 pathize in the new joy in life, that she seemed to have re- 
 ceived from her now happy child, with whom she had learnt 
 to live in the spirit. Things were so arranged that she made 
 her husband's father's house, about thirty miles distant, the 
 first goal of her journey. She reached with great fatigue this 
 first stage, and stopped to rest, and never mentioned Florida 
 afterwards. She breathed on another year, during which 
 time I only saw her in weekly visits, having returned to Mr. 
 Alcott's school in Boston. Her disease was not very painful, 
 but so lingering that every trace of her former beauty was 
 lost in the ghastly emaciation. 
 
 There were in the house two little cousins, younger than 
 F., taken care of exclusively by a very sweet mother, and 
 this gave him the most desirable social intercourse and play 
 that took the place of our discourses at the right moment, 
 and called into action very sweet traits of character. JMy 
 weekly visit of a day or two was a great affair to the chil- 
 dren. I told them stories, innumerable variations of Tlie 
 Stonj without an End, and of Pilgrims Progress, modified 
 to their infant minds. I always repeated the stories in pre- 
 cisely the same words (which is a great point in telling sto- 
 ries to children, and impresses them on the memory), and 
 they became very familiar with the ends of my paragraphs, 
 and would take them from my lips, and repeat them as a 
 chorus. Thus when I had got Pilgrim laid away in the upper 
 chamber of the House Beautiful, whose white draperies I 
 minutely described, they would all interrupt me, and sing 
 out, "And the name of that chamber was Peace." So of 
 the last words of other paragraphs that I purposely made 
 epigrammatic. 
 
A PSYCHOLOGICAL OBSERVATION. 141 
 
 The substantial character of the child's piety and sense 
 of immortality, which I have described as bubbling up at the 
 name Heavenly Father, spoken at the right time, and in the 
 right way, was exhibited unmistakably in his after life, and 
 began to express itself at once in his association with his 
 little cousins, which proved a very timely thing for him, 
 bringing out his moral character by means of what he con- 
 stantly did to make them happy, and keep them good, but 
 he never said anything to them about the Heavenly Father. 
 That subject seemed reserved for me. 
 
 It was amusing to see how fatherly he was to the little 
 one, and he continued this fatherly manner all his after life 
 to all the children with whom he came in contact, and even 
 during his childhood it was singularly unmixed with any tyr- 
 anny or managing spirit. He would play as they wanted to 
 with them. He seemed to be di'awn to children because he 
 could so easily understand their innocence, and make them 
 happy by his companionship, and because he enjoyed them. 
 
 All his subsequent life he exhibited an exquisite sensibil- 
 ity to beauty, which he continued to accept as the Creator's 
 smile of consent; the very good pronounced on everything 
 which He had made. In the last part of his mother's life, 
 she became so frightfully emaciated, that it was evidently 
 painful for him to look at her ; but he said nothing about it ; 
 and it was sweet to see the delicacy with which he tried to 
 conceal this pain from her^ when he was admitted into the 
 room to see her, which, at length, came to be only in the 
 middle of the day, when she was seated in an easy-chair, 
 with a broad white footstool at her feet. He would come 
 into the room, looking on the floor, and seat himself on the 
 footstool, Tvith his back partly turned to her, and, drawing 
 down her hands, cover them with kisses : he refused, as it 
 were, to recognize her, under that ghastly mask, which, 
 however, did not shut off from his remembrance, her former 
 loveliness ; for, as soon as she was really dead, and he be- 
 
142 A PSYCHOLOGICAL OBSERVATION. 
 
 gan to think of her in heaven^ she became his standard of 
 beauty. During the little more than a year that he contin- 
 ued under my care, " not so beautiful as my mother," or " as 
 beautiful as my mother " were words very frequently in his 
 mouth. As she approached her death, she was so careful 
 lest he should have any of the shock which her own mother's 
 death gave to her, that she readily consented that he should 
 go for the last few days with the other children to stay with 
 a kind neighbor. He was therefore not present at her death ; 
 neither was I. It was an event gi*eatly longed for by her- 
 self, at last, and its approach, which she knew before any 
 one else discerned any special change, seemed to gladden 
 her. Her last breath was peaceful; her last words, "Give 
 my love to F." 
 
 I told him of the event the morning after the funeral, 
 from which I returned with his father, in the dusk of the 
 evening, calling for the child to go home and sleep with me, 
 which he always was delighted to do. He was put to bed in 
 the room where his mother had died, and 1 went in with him, 
 to explain her absence, if he should notice it. But he was 
 tired, and so occupied with my presence, he did not^ — not 
 even when he woke in the morning. At last, I said to him, 
 "Do you see what room we are in?" He rose up and 
 looked around, and said, " Why, it is m}' mother's chamber I 
 Where is my mother?" I paused a moment to see if he 
 would divine the truth, and then said, "The dear Heavenly 
 Father has taken her at last ! " He fell back on the pillow, 
 with a single exclamation of not painful wonder, and a coun- 
 tenance sublime with the mingled expression of awe, love, 
 and joyful satisfaction. The fact of her absent body 
 seemed to be a more palpable proof of the truth of her 
 deathless soul, than even her form and word, which had rep- 
 resented it to his senses. He was "silent, as we grow when 
 feeling most," as if he realized that he was in the presence 
 of the *' substance of things hoped for, the evidence of 
 
A PSYCHOLOGICAL OBSERVATION. 143 
 
 things unseen." You may be sure I respected this sacred 
 silence, which seemed to me to last several minutes, but pos- 
 sibly it was only owe. At last he said gently, ''Was the 
 window open?" I replied, ''I don't know; I only know 
 our Heavenly Father, who is everywhere, you know, took her 
 to himself. He does not mind about windows, you know." 
 '' Xo, indeed! I know that very well," he said, with a little 
 laugh (as if he wondered at his momentary lapse of thought) . 
 Soon he asked, '' Did He give her a new body right away?" 
 ''I do not know anything more about that than you do," I 
 replied ; " I only know He will do better things for her than 
 we can think of." " Do you think," said he, " that she looks 
 beautiful as she used to? " but, before I could reply, he sud- 
 denly added, ''I want U) go to my mother. I want to see 
 her noiv^'* and began to cry. 
 
 I kissed him, and began gently to recall the conversation 
 that she had had with him the day she told him she expected 
 soon to leave him ; and, after awhile, he said spontaneously, 
 as he had done when he talked with her he ''would stay with 
 his father to comfort him for the loss of her." His father told 
 me afterwards, that when he saw /am, he went over the same 
 ground again, beginning with saying that he wanted to go 
 to her ; but when his father represented to him how solitary 
 he should be with no wife or son to show their love to him, 
 F. closed the conversation with the words, *' Well, I will stay 
 with you till I grow up " (as if it was quite within his option 
 to do so or not) . 
 
 Very soon after this I took him away with me to Salem, 
 where he remained in our family for a year or more, I think. 
 My father's family were living at the corner of an old burial 
 ground, two sides of the house being bordered by it. The 
 day we arrived we went directly to my sister Sophia's room, 
 which looked out upon this burial ground. He was imme- 
 diately attracted to the window by the trees, and exclaimed 
 joyfully, "Oh, Aunt Lizzy, what a beautiful green garden 
 
144 A PSYCHOLOGICAL OBSERVATION. 
 
 this is ! What are those things ? " (referring to the tomb 
 stones.) I replied : '^ That green garden is where people lay 
 away, underground, the poor old worn-out dead bodies of 
 their friends, who are with our Father in Heaven, and those 
 things are called tombstones ; they are put there with the 
 ' names carved on them of the persons whose bodies are buried 
 in those spots." He at once seemed greatly interested and 
 pleased, and became still more so after he had seen some 
 burials ; his emotions of joy at the thought of the enfranchised 
 spirits entering on their heavenly life, being tempered with 
 tender sympathy for the bereaved friends in their mourning- 
 robes, whom he sometimes saw weeping at the earthl}' part- 
 ing. He was always very anxious to know how the buried 
 ones had died, from what particular sickness or danger they 
 had escaped ; and one day when my sister Mary came back 
 from a walk, he joyfully told her that he had found out an- 
 other way in which souls went to heaven. She, of course, 
 asked him, ''What way?" and he said, "Why, sometimes 
 ships that go to sea are driven by -the wind against some 
 rocks and broken to pieces, and all the men's bodies are 
 drowned, and they go to heaven through the water." An- 
 other time, he ran to her in great excitement, and said : "Oh, 
 Aunt Mary ! I saw a little baby's body buried in the green 
 garden ; some carriages came, and there was a hole dug 
 already, and people got out of the carriages, and one man 
 had a little box in his arms in which the baby's body was ; 
 and they put some ropes around it, and let it down ; and then 
 they filled up the hole with the dirt, and I saw the little baby 
 fly up, fly up, fly up ! " and he accompanied the words with a 
 circular gesture of his arm. Whether the subjective conception 
 was so vivid, that it reproduced itself to his imagination in 
 an objective form, as the Sistine Madonna is said to have 
 done to Raphael ; or it was what is called " a spiritual mani- 
 festation " ; it was evidently a reality to him, and no com- 
 ment was made, except that my sister said, " I never saio a 
 sold fly tip,^^ 
 
A PSYCHOLOGICAL OBSERVATION. 145 
 
 I should say here that this child was not imaginative, and 
 we never saw in him the smallest untruthfulness in speech 
 or act, nor tendency to exaggeration. In this he resembled 
 both his parents. Afterwards, he became something of a 
 scientist, and studied medicine for his profession. He was 
 a good classical scholar in college, and before his early death, 
 had completed in manuscript the history of one of the 
 mechanical arts. I think he was not of a visionary tem- 
 perament. (See Appendix E.) 
 
 His life with us in Salem was perfectly delightful. He 
 had no faults, though a certain pertinacity (which was an 
 expression of inherited firmness of character) sometimes 
 required a little disciplinary conversation, nothing more. I 
 never knew of his being subjected to any punishment, or 
 requiring any, in all his childhood. He had not the usual 
 impetuosity of children ; perhaps the effect of his early de- 
 pression of spirits. 
 
 My sister Mary had a day-school in the house, made up of 
 children between six and twelve years of age ; he was 
 allowed to have his playthings in the school-room, and loved 
 to listen to her oral instruction of the children in natural 
 history and science, especially in the stories that she told or 
 read to them about human beings, in whom he was always 
 more interested than in auimals. I taught him how to read 
 by the word method in Tlie Story ivithout an End^ a slower 
 and more laborious way both for him and me than the mixed 
 method detailed in my Kindergarten Guide ^ of which I have 
 lately published a primer under the title of After Kindergar- 
 ten^ tchat? 
 
 But had I then known of Froebers method of employing 
 childish play, organized by the adult with single aim to intel- 
 lectual development, I should not have taught him to read so 
 early, but something more profitable ; I then shared what 
 Professor Agassiz called '' tJie American insanity of teaching 
 children to read before they have learned the things signified 
 
146 A PSYCHOLOGICAL OBSERVATION. 
 
 by words," which he, like Froebel, believed would produce 
 habits of iniiid positively iujurious, dropping a veil between 
 the observer and nature, preventing all freshness of thought, 
 and destroying the mind's elasticity and originality. But 1 
 had not (at that time) presumed to question the time-honored 
 tradition, that the beginning of education was learning to read. 
 When, later, my studies with a great philologist gave me a 
 little light upon the subject, and showed me that English had 
 the misfortune to be written by an inadequate alphabet, 
 whose result was to confuse the phonography entirely, by 
 obscuring the original principle of having but one letter for 
 one sound, and a letter for every different sound, I realized 
 the positive disadvantage of children's being forced through 
 a process which baffles all their natural instincts of classifica- 
 tion ; and it was then I invented a method of separating 
 English words into classes, the phonographic ones to be first 
 made familiar, and the exceptions classified. Yet I could not 
 be insensible to the unnaturalness of beginning with spending 
 so much of the time of very young children upon this work 
 of the imperfect mind ofman^ as languages are, rather than 
 on the works of Infinite AVisdom. I was therefore well pre- 
 pared to accept Froebel's method of first sharpening the 
 senses by examination of things that charm children, and of 
 developing the understanding by first making things according 
 to the laws which constitute the mind, and then naming them 
 in all perceptible relations. First let us form a mind which 
 can apprehend nature as the standard of truth, before we 
 undertake to mform it with what embodies the confusions 
 and errors of men ; as, for instance, in a considerable degree 
 the written English language does. For language stands in 
 the same relation to man as nature does in relation to God. 
 The eternal word of Truth makes things before it is made 
 flesh. The confusion of tongues was the inevitable conse- 
 quence of the fall of man out of that communion with God in 
 which children are born, and our written language is an image 
 
A PSYCHOLOGICAL OBSERVATION. 147 
 
 cf this confusion, especially the English, whose so-called 
 orthography is the most anomalous of all languages ; and the 
 acquisition, therefore, ought to be postponed, at least until 
 the understanding is fairly developed by some recognition of 
 so much of the AVord of God as is alive in the things we see 
 and can handle. The time comes when the children can 
 understand that exceptions prove the rule, and then those 
 irregularities and anomalies of English writing may be made 
 even entertaining lessons to children ; because if its laws and 
 rules are apprehended first, there is something amusing to 
 them in contradictions of law that so many words seem to be. 
 It is the pleasure in the grotesque ; children enjoy the funny ^ 
 as they call it, but it is a different enjoyment from that of 
 the beautiful, and the latter is the highest element for human 
 activity. A predominance of the funny even demoralizes 
 intellectuall}' as well as morally, but it has its own subordi- 
 nate place in healthy child life. 
 
 My little friend had a slate and pencil, and immediately 
 inclined to draw from real objects, but we did not know how 
 to give him any other help than to guess at what were the 
 things he was trying to represent. If we could not guess, I 
 remember he would blush, and go away, saying he would 
 ^' fix it a little.'' I had the instinct that he could only be 
 effectually encouraged by success, and I would endeavor to 
 divine what he meant, by looking to see what were the sur- 
 rounding objects when I saw him drawing, and would point 
 out to him with congratulation any part in which he had at 
 all succeeded, letting the rest go. But without adequate and 
 legitimate guidance he necessarily became discouraged with 
 his failures. What children do not succeed in, becomes dis- 
 tasteful to them, and they turn their attention from what has 
 disappointed them, and thus their natural tastes die, or are 
 starved out. As they have no knowledge of materials, nor 
 judgment in using them, they undertake tJie impossible, and 
 being baffled, lose courage to undertake the possible. So 
 
148 A PSYCHOLOGICAL OBSERVATION. 
 
 young artists accumulate difficulties by their unwise choice of 
 subjects, not realizing the limitations of their own powers. 
 It is the part of the educated kindergartuer to supply this 
 want of judgment and analysis until the pupil catches the 
 secret of gradualism and the law of opposites. Froebel's 
 plan of giving the squared slate and paper to ensure straight- 
 ness of line in children's drawing is like the leading strings 
 by which the mother helps the child to develop his limbs for 
 walking, which cannot be done without his own personal 
 effort. So Froebers plan of having the kindergartuer sug- 
 gest a symmetrical drawing of lines in opposites, vivifles the 
 sense of symmetry into a thought, whence springs a plan of 
 making still another symmetry. For by suggesting opposites, 
 and then the connecting of them, the child delightedly sees 
 orderly forms that grow under his hands, and feels that he is 
 acting from his own individual personality (which he is^ 
 though the thought was suggested by the words of another) . 
 What he does gives him confidence in his own mind, whose 
 fanciful movement suggests other symmetries ; for though 
 fancy is a spontaneous play of the free will among impres- 
 sions passivelj^ received, it is amenable to the laws whose 
 exponents are presented to it by nature's works and human 
 suggestion. 
 
 F. liked to watch my sister Sophia at her drawing and 
 painting, but its very perfection discouraged eflbrts on his 
 own part. It is bad not to do really at once what we con- 
 ceive of ideally. It was only in the moral and religious 
 sphere that we really lived with him, and he was properly 
 educated by us. We always answered all his questions 
 about what we were doing, and how, and why (I wish now I 
 had asked him more questions) . 
 
 My sister Sophia had a rare talent for talking with chil- 
 dren, whose purity and innocence she comprehended by a 
 sympathetic intuition, and to whose imagination her Chris- 
 tian faith gave ample scope, for it was hampered by no 
 
A rSYCIIOLOGICAL OBSERVATION. 149 
 
 human creeds. We hael a circle of acquaintances who 
 were only too much inclined to pet him, and who, knowing 
 something of the history of his mind, liked to talk with him. 
 His mother had been very much beloved by tliis circle, and I 
 used to tell him that for her sake, they cared for and at- 
 tended to liim^ which interested him immensely, and perhaps 
 prevented his considering himself as a person of too much 
 importance comparatively. lie would talk of going to sec 
 his *' mother's friends." If new persons spoke to him 
 kindly, he would ask me immediatcl}' if they knew and loved 
 his mother ; at all events, the element of personal egotism 
 did not appear, and the affection he at first poured out on 
 me, now freely flowed out in every direction. I remember 
 his saying to me, one day, with an accent of great self- 
 gratulation, " I think I have a great man}' friends," and in 
 a moment after added, " m}' mother was so beautiful ! " (as 
 if that were the reason of it) . A young husband and wife 
 became inmates of our house, and brought a beautiful in- 
 fant. This was a perennial fountain of delight to F. The 
 singular beauty of the little one was a constant subject of 
 observation. One day he was looking at her, as she lay on 
 her mother's lap, and presently he burst out, " Oh, Ellen, 
 3"our little bright eyes are shining themselves into a sif?i/'' 
 He was equally delighted with the musical sound of her 
 crowing. His ear for sounds was fastidiously delicate. 
 One day my mother was in the garden, looking at some wild 
 flowers which had been brought to her for transplanting. 
 As she looked at them she said to F., " Run into the house, 
 and get my — '* He interrupted her eagerly with, "Don't 
 say that w^y word! I know what you mean," and he ran 
 into the house, and brought back Bigelow's Plants around 
 Boston (Bigeloiv was the ugly word). But let me hasten 
 from these details, to redeem my promise of telling you how 
 prayer became a thought of his mind, and his spontaneous 
 practice. 
 
loO A PSYCHOLOGICAL OBSERVATION. 
 
 It v^as very early a question of great interest to bis 
 mother, and also to me, whether prayer would become spon- 
 taneous with him ; that is, whether he would think of speak- 
 ing to God in human words. His intense realization of God's 
 presence seemed to be a cause of his not doing so, and I 
 feared to put God at a distance by suggesting what, in or- 
 dinary cases, is a means of bringing Him near. If prayer 
 be defined as a communion of the finite and Infinite, as per- 
 sonal as that of children with earthly parents, his whole con- 
 scious life was a prayer ; for truly God was in all his 
 thoughts from the day he first accepted Him so joyfully as 
 the Substance and Giver of goodness and love, which in- 
 volved to the natural logic of his innocent mind the corol- 
 lary that He was the Giver of everything outward, as well 
 as inward, which gave him any happiness. I did not dare 
 to meddle with the natural evolution of thought in so happy 
 an instance, but watched to learn the true method of life of 
 the little child, as Christ suggested to his disciples to do. 
 One day when his grandmother, who was at the house on a 
 visit, dropped her needle, she called to F., " Come, and look 
 with your little sharp eyes for my needle." He did so, with 
 his usual alacrit}' in service, and soon found it. Then he 
 ran to me, and said, " When I go into the sky, I shall thank 
 my good Friend for giving me such sharp eyes." I said, 
 '' What do you wait so long for? " He gave me a glance of 
 recognition, as it were, and laughed (as if he had been con- 
 victed of saying something silly) ; but he said no more then. 
 From that moment, however, he often came to me to say, 
 "When I go into the sky, I shall thank my Heavenly 
 Father for giving me " this or that ; and I would always 
 answer him as before, "Why do you wait?** which would 
 always bring out the same complete expression of satisfac- 
 tion on his face, showing that he loved to renew the 
 occasion for my uniform reply, "Why do you wait till 
 then?" 
 
A FSYCHOLOGICAL OBSERVATION. 151 
 
 On one of these occasions be turned from me, and said 
 very tenderly, " I thank you, God,'' One day, after he went 
 to Salem, he had been suffering from a bad earache, and my 
 sister had relieved it by putting a little tuft of cotton dipped 
 in arnica into his ear. Then she asked him to go to the 
 window and look out into '' the green garden," and she took 
 up a pencil to draw. Very soon he began, "God, I thank 
 you for making this green garden to put away the dead bodies 
 in. God, I thank you for making these beautiful trees grow 
 out of the ground. God, I thank you for making all the 
 pretty wild flowers grow." He paused between each com- 
 plete sentence, and my sister, having a pencil in her hand, 
 wrote down his words till she had covered a sheet of letter 
 paper with his thanksgivings ; for he went on naming every- 
 thing he could think of ; and it was quite wonderful to hear 
 the minuteness of his gi^ateful appreciation of life. 
 
 Oue sentence was : " I thank you, God, for making medi- 
 cine to put into my ear when it aches." He also thanked 
 God for his father, and his father^s letters to him, for his 
 mother in heaven, for many friends whom he loved, naming 
 them. I hope that sometime I shall find my sister's paper, 
 which I have mislaid with the other memoranda of this inter- 
 esting psychological observation. The pauses between the 
 thanksgivings became longer and longer, and at last, after 
 one for which he seemed to have searched his inmost mind, 
 in despair of finding anything else, he closed with, "My 
 dear God, I love you very much." 
 
 You will observe that in all this spontaneous act of devo- 
 tion, there was no petition. In the fulness of his happy life, 
 and, as I think, in the faith that God was giving him every- 
 thing needful, and more, he never thought of asking for 
 anything. 
 
 Temptation to wrong-doing had not yet revealed the need 
 that the progressing spirit always feels of more goodness and 
 love, which I had taken care to represent that God gave 
 
152 A PSYCHOLOGICAL OBSERVATION. 
 
 whenever the soul acknowledged to itself its need and aspired 
 for more of this, its vital substance. For it is my opinion that 
 prayer should always be for spiritual good only, in order that 
 our religion should be pure from self-seeking, and generously 
 self -forgetting in its aspirations for perfection. 
 
 A little while after this incident, my sister was reading to 
 him, and came to a sentence in which were the words " morn- 
 ing and evening prayer." He immediately stopped her and 
 asked her, '' What does that mean, that word ^ra?/er ? " She 
 said, ''Many grown up people, when they wake in the morning, 
 and find that God has taken care of them in the night when 
 they coukl not take care of themselves, and given them a new 
 day after their good sleep, feel very thankful, and love to tell 
 God so, just as you did the other day when you thanked God 
 for so many things ; and besides, remembering that there are 
 a good many things they ought to do, and that He gives the 
 love and goodness, they like to ask Him beforehand to give 
 them what they shall need to be good icith when the time comes 
 to want it ; and at night, after they have got througli the day, 
 they like to thank Him for all the joys of the day, and they 
 ask Him to take care of them through the night that is 
 coming, when they shall be asleep and cannot take care of 
 themselves ; and this loving talk with God is called the morn- 
 ing and evening prayer." 1 think she added that when she 
 was little she used to say, when she was going to bed : — 
 
 " Now I lay me down to sleep ; 
 I pray the Lord my soul to keep; 
 If I should die before I wake, 
 I pray the Lord my soul to take ; " 
 
 and that was her evening prayer. " I think it is a very good 
 wa}'," said he, " and I mean to do so this very night when I 
 go to bed." And it was true that when he went to bed, he 
 remembered and made a similar thanksgiving to his former 
 one in kind, and closed with this little verse. And again in 
 
A rSYCIIOLOGICAL OBSERVATION. 153 
 
 the morning be began the first thing to thank God for the 
 new day, etc. Nor did he forget afterwards, night and 
 morning, to give thanks and utter prayers spontaneously, 
 and seemed to enjoy it. 
 
 One morning be waked me with his loud singing, and as 
 soon as I opened my eyes, said to me, '' Aunt Lizzy, I am 
 singing my morning prayer." I said, " There was a wonder- 
 ful little shepherd boy once, whoso name was David, who 
 loved God as you do, and who always sang his prayers." 
 Immediately he wanted to know all about him, and I told 
 him the story of David in his childhood and up to the time 
 he was sent for to sing to King Saul ; and 1 ended with say- 
 ing that I would read to hira some of David's psalms (as 
 these sung prayers were called) ; and this I did, and the 
 eloquence of the sweet singer of Israel seemed to vivify his 
 idea of the Heavenlj' Father, and of His connection with the 
 soul within us all and the world without. Especially I tried 
 on him the efifect of the Psalm beginning, " The heavens are 
 telling of the glory of God," whose rhythm had charmed my 
 own childhood, even before I fully comprehended it ; and he 
 liked to hear it, too. Before this, I had read considerably 
 from the Bible to him, for he had one day said that he won- 
 dered how the world began to be in the first place, and I had 
 said : " Yes, everybody wonders about that. But there is a 
 book (pointing to the Bible) where one of the first men told 
 about how it seemed to him, and I will read it to 3'ou.'' So 
 I opened the book and began the first chapter of Genesis, 
 without introductory comment. "When I came to the words 
 '' And there was light " he sprang up and shouted, " Directly 
 when He said ' Let there be light,' there was light directly !" 
 
 I wished Longinus could have heard the confirmation of 
 his great criticism. Immediately he ran into my father's 
 study, which was across the entry, and burst out, '' Dr. 
 Peabody, when it was all dark and there was nothing made, 
 God said, ^ Let there he light, and there was light' directly! 
 
154 A rSYCHOLOGICAL OBSEKVATIOX. 
 
 directly ! " This was not enough ; he ran to find my mother 
 and sister, and again repeated the simpl}' sublime words. 
 
 Then he came back to me to hear the rest, and I finished 
 the chapter which he wanted me to read to him again and 
 again, day after day. I read afterwards the parable of 
 Jotham, which he liked to hear very much. I cannot help 
 thinking how much more I might have made of that very par- 
 able for his moral culture had I then known of Froebel's gospel 
 of work. I can hardly bear to think how stupid I was ; the 
 effect of not having had the kindergarten education myself. 
 
 But he was too soon taken away from my observation, not 
 without my acquiescence, however ; for it was to go to his 
 father, who, I thought, needed his companionship. And as 
 it was at a distance that he lived, and, as afterwards my 
 own life was full of vicissitude for many 3'ears, I lost the 
 run of him entirel}'. There was a mutual misunderstanding 
 between his father and me, for several years, from his think- 
 ing I wanted to be free from the care of him, and I thinking 
 he did not desire my personal influence on him, and we were 
 both mistaken, as we found out afterwards. When he went 
 to Harvard College, he came to see me, and the interview 
 was very interesting. He had a sweet, though it had become 
 a dim, remembrance of a happy time with us, succeeded, as 
 he told me, by a lack-love experience of years of a dark, 
 gloomy time at a boarding-school, to which he was sent when 
 he was eight years old, because, as he said, his grandmother 
 thought he ought not to be living with his solitary father 
 at a hotel. But the boarding-school proved more than a 
 heart solitude, as the boys were rough and cruel to him in 
 their unguided play. While he was with me, on the occa- 
 sion of this call, it happened that my sister Sophia'.s children 
 came into the room where we were. They had a very vivid 
 idea of him from their mother, she having often spoken of 
 him to them, and telling them of his joy in learning he had 
 a Heavenly Father, when he had never thought or been told 
 
A PSYCHOLOGICAL OBSERVATION. 155 
 
 of it. When I said to them, ''This is F.," one of them 
 said, '* Is this F. ? I thought he was a little boy/' looking at 
 him wonderingly, surprised to see a growu-up man. I told 
 him they were well acquainted with his childhood. It 
 touched him very mnch, and the conversation that ensued 
 touching on several things I have told, brought back the 
 old time more distinctively, and he said he should often 
 come to recall it by my help, and to learn more of his 
 mother, whose beautiful face haunted his dreams. But just 
 afterwards I left Boston for some years, and did not see him 
 again until after his return from Vienna, where he went 
 after leaving college, and remained till he had completed his 
 medical studies. I promised then to show him his mother's 
 letters to me, written in her girlhood, and to tell him how 
 much the early experience of his own childliood had minis- 
 tered to her a heavenly consolation. But again inexorable 
 circumstances interfered. He became a practising physician 
 in Worcester, and I went to Concord to live, and we pro- 
 crastinated a promised visit until at last Death mocked our 
 slow affections. I saw him last wrapped in the flag of his 
 country, for when the war broke out in 18G1, nothing would 
 do but he must go to it ; and he went as one of the surgeons 
 of the loth Regiment, which was terribly cut up. For a 
 year and a half he did an incredible amount of work, for he 
 would always have his hospital on the field of battle, and the 
 15th was in a great many battles, and left but few survivors, 
 most of whom are maimed or halt. He took care of those 
 wounded ones who could not be taken from the battle-field, 
 wrote letters for them, and never took a furlough, as every 
 other oflScer and surgeon did. In the last letter that he 
 wrote to his father, he said that this year and a half was in 
 one sense the happiest time of his life ; for it was the only 
 time when he seemed to be of any use. He was killed at 
 last, walking up through the main street of Fredericksburg, 
 Virginia, in the van of the regiment, as was his wont, and 
 
Ie56 A PSYCHOLOGICAL OBSERVATION. 
 
 his death was instantaneous. His patriotism and his brav- 
 ery were the fruits of his piety. Every year his father and 
 I met to decorate his grave until his father's death in 1883-4. 
 He is buried at Mt. Auburn bj^ his mother's side, whose body 
 was removed from the tomb in the old burial ground of 
 Cambridge. I have a photograph of him taken at the same 
 age as his mother when she died, — thirty-one years. It 
 was the year before he went to the war, a drooping head, 
 pensive as if marked for early death. But when I saw him 
 dead, his brow was lifted, his whole countenance had become 
 grand and heroic, and it was plain that he had found his 
 ideal vocation. His funeral was celebrated in the city of 
 Worcester with military honors, the wounded soldiers of his 
 regiment following the hearse in carriages, and the sidewalks 
 of the city thronged with the multitude of spectators. A 
 discourse upon the text, "No man can do more than lay 
 down his life for his friends," was pronounced over him at 
 the church, and the beautiful hymn sung, " Nearer my God 
 to Thee," which seemed to me the most appropriate conceiv- 
 able, though he had never been far from Him, after he knew 
 a name for Him. 
 
 After the funeral his father's relatives and friends gath- 
 ered together, and we talked of him. I told my recollec- 
 tions of his childhood, and all of them expressed the feeling 
 that the life he had led was in perfect harmony with such 
 an early acquaintance made with the Heavenly Father. 
 
LECTURE VIIL 
 
 ^ELIGIOUS^U^TURE. 
 
 Fkcebel speaks of the child as a triuity, meaning a unity 
 in threefold relation (with God, with man, and with nature), 
 and says that education, to be perfect, or even healthy, 
 must help him to be conscious of all these relations at once^ 
 in order to ensure the equipoise of heart and intellect with 
 his spuitual power (or freedom to will) , in which inheres his 
 just self-respect and natural religion. 
 
 Nature (that is, the material universe, as I have said 
 before) is God's expression of mathematical and all corre- 
 lative laws, the apprehension of which builds up the intellect 
 of the individual who, through his sense perceptions, on 
 which he reflects and generalizes, gains knoivledge of his 
 surroundings, beginning with that part of nature which is 
 within his own skin. 
 
 It was the grand intuition of Oken which has been 
 splendidly illustrated by Dr. J. Garth Wilkinson in his 
 Human Body in its Connections with 3/an, that the human 
 body is the metropolis of material nature, in which may be 
 found in vital order all the elements of the material universe 
 ^Yhich are, outside of the human body, in a more or less 
 chaotic state. This development of the individual intellect 
 needs more or less aid from the human environment, simul- 
 taneously with that nurture of the heart which means man's 
 conscious relation to man. But though morality, which is 
 the performance of man's duty to man, is not religion, which 
 is man's consciousness of relation to God, it leads to it in- 
 versely, because it shows the heart its need of a Father of us 
 
158 RELIGIOUS NURTURE. 
 
 all, in order to be happy. All three processes, the intellectual, 
 the moral, and the religious, must go on together, to make 
 a perfect education, for in proportion as integral education 
 is wanting in those about the child, his intellect will be 
 starved, confused, or darkened with error ; and immorality 
 and irreligion will more or less transpire in the individual. 
 
 Froebel perfectly realized the deficiency of this integral 
 education to be the cause of all the evil that is the present 
 experience of mankind, in spite of Church and State and the 
 optimism which in form of hope " springs eternal in the 
 human breast " (for the pessimist is the exception, not the 
 rule among men, the great mass of whom are pursuing some 
 ideal aim, even though it be a low one, their moral sentiment 
 having been perverted and their religion having become a 
 superstitious idolatry either of material forms or of logical 
 formulas) . 
 
 The system of education which Froebel discovered, or 
 invented, in consequence of realizing this, is what we are 
 endeavoring to learn and apply, that we may bring out of 
 the moral chaos around us the lost equipoise of the threefold 
 nature in our children, by ourselves plunging into infant 
 life in imagination and realizing its innocent heart and un- 
 f alien spiritual state, watching it in its own attempts to 
 understand and use its material surroundings and its human 
 environment, to the end of guiding it by our own experience 
 and matured knowledge, from the errors and misfortunes it 
 inevitably falls into if left to its own ignorant experimenting 
 unrevised. 
 
 The playthings and means of occupation Froebel invented 
 are to develop the intellect, and are a perfect miniature of 
 nature, and to use them in playing with the child is an art 
 and a science that the kindergartner must add to her moral 
 affections and religion, which are also her indispensable 
 qualifications. 
 
 I wish to say this very emphatically, all the more because 
 
RELIGIOUS NURTURE. 159 
 
 this part of your education (the art and science that develop 
 the intellect) is not my part of your training course, but the 
 moral and religious nurture ; and therefore I must leave the 
 exhaustive analysis of the gifts in their relation to the un- 
 folding intellect as well as of the " schools of work" (as the 
 series of embroideries, foldings, drawings, weavings, pea- 
 work, etc., are called, and which require your study the 
 whole yeai') to your accomplished trainers to do justice to. 
 
 But before I turn to my specific department, I would say 
 that this intellectual part of the training, which it was the 
 special genius of Froebel to discover, is of equal importance ; 
 for it is the duty of man to worship God with the mind, as 
 well as with the heart and might, though that is a part of the 
 izreat commandment, which seems to have been systemati- 
 cally overlooked by many of the churches, if not virtually 
 denied. 
 
 To worship God tdth the mind means to develop the intel- 
 lect ; as to worship Him with the heart keeps pure the moral 
 sentiments and quickens moral action ; and to worship Him 
 with the might lifts the will, quickened by the heart and en- 
 lightened by the mind into oneness with the Holy Spirit, 
 more and more forever. And here let me recall to you what 
 I said of Froebers authority in my second lecture, and be- 
 ware of deviating from the path he has pointed out (he 
 was nearly fifty years in inventing his technique) ; and 
 be very careful about adding to his Gifts or Schools of Work, 
 though I would not have you mechanical followers. There 
 will be legitimate outgrowths of his method. He himself, in 
 one of his Pedagogies, published after his death by "Wichard 
 Lange, has suggested a '' school of drawing " upon the curve, 
 which Miss Marwedel has developed, leading the child natu- 
 rally through vegetable formation ; and Mr. Edward A. 
 Spring, the sculptor, has also suggested and partly carried 
 some children through animal forms, from the worm to the 
 " human face divine" ; and we hope both these " schools" 
 
160 RELIGIOUS NURTURE. 
 
 may be published and used. In the musical line, also, in 
 which Froebel was personally rather deficient, Mr. Daniel 
 Bachellor, now of Philadelphia, has suggested a series of 
 exercises b}^ means of the correspondence of tones and colors, 
 that makes the children as creative in the discovery of 
 melodies, as they are of the harmonies of color in their 
 weaving and painting. 
 
 There is unquestionably danger that the kindergartner 
 may degenerate into mechanical imitation and rote-work in 
 this part of her guidance of the children, nevertheless in some 
 of the charity kindergartens I have seen there was danger 
 of doing injustice to the technique ; 
 
 On this last day of communion with you on the Froebel 
 education, I would like to speak with some comprehensive- 
 ness and particularity on the subject of religious nurture. 
 Mark me, I say religious nurture, not religious teaching. 
 The religion that integrates human education is not to be 
 taught. It is the primeval consciousness of filial relation to 
 God, who alone can reveal Himself ; for human language has 
 no adequate expression of God, founded as it is on the mate- 
 rial universe, which is the finite opposite of Creative Being. 
 Every individual child is a momentum of God's creativeness 
 which the human Providence of education must take as its 
 datum. Only childhood symbolizes God as "the sum of all 
 being," realizing itself in joy incommensurable. Iluskin has 
 happily said the joy of childhood is out of all proportion to 
 the occasions that call forth its expression, and in order to 
 make God the central conscious truth of the child's intellect, 
 we must give the name father or mother to God, which is 
 intelligible to the heart, and which will identify its filial aspi- 
 ration with the parental bounty, as another, yet the same. 
 
 But what I want you to observe is, that language being 
 
RELIGIOUS NURTURE. 161 
 
 limited in meauiug by its origin iu material nature, you 
 should talk about God as little as possible, after having 
 given Him the name that will excite the child's worshipful 
 aspiration, and limit yourselves carefull}' to regulating moral 
 manifestations, loading children to act kindly, generously, 
 truthfully', in your own assured faith that God is present to 
 inspire the truth, generosity, and loving icill that is practi- 
 cally prayed for with good resolution. (Good resolutions are 
 the special prayers of faith, as children should be taught ex- 
 pressly.) 
 
 Kindergartners cannot carry out this course quite irre- 
 spective of the theory of human nature declared in their 
 creeds. But the heart is generally larger than the creed, as 
 was once strikingly evidenced to me by Louisa Frankenberg, 
 a dear, devout old German kindergartner, who had learned 
 the art of kindergartning from Fra»bel himself, in the very 
 beginning of his own experimenting ; but she was such a 
 bigot to the Lutheran Church that she could not theoretically 
 admit as a Christian any one who did not swear by its dogma 
 of total depravity. Yet I remember hearing her exclaim, '^ Oh, 
 Froebel's method is so beautiful ! because the affectionate 
 plays and innocent occupations take the children entirely 
 away from the depi*avity of their hearts." She said this with 
 a gush of love and faith that showed how much the unbounded 
 human heart is beyond being totally eclipsed bj' shadows cast 
 by the limited human intellect. It is neither feeling or think- 
 ing, but righteous doing, that gives us victory.^ 
 
 The child in the first era of his life has no individual con- 
 sciousness of separation from God, and for a certain time it 
 is obvious to all observers that this august unconsciousness 
 even prevents the immediate development of an intellectual 
 conception of him. The child in its infancy (infant, you re- 
 member, means not speaking) does not see nature as object, 
 
 ^See George Macdonald's Vicar's Daughter, 
 
162 RELIGIOUS NURTURE. 
 
 but feels it also to be himself, and hence he has no language, 
 for language is the expression of his intellect. Hence the 
 infant's sublime unconsciousness of danger and absolute fear- 
 lessness, and its impulse to spring upward out of its mother's 
 arms, the laws of gravity notwithstanding ! It stands, as 
 Wordsworth has sung, — 
 
 " Glorious in the might of heaven-bom freedom on its being's height," 
 
 and only gradually do 
 
 " Shades of the prison-house begin to close aroimd the growing boy." 
 
 For, as the same poet has it in that ode which is as much 
 inspired as anything in the sacred oracles of the Hebrew or 
 the Christian ; — 
 
 " Earth fills her lap with pleasures of her own; 
 Yearnings she hath in lier own natural kind, 
 And even with something of a mother's mind, 
 
 And no unworthy aim, 
 The homely nurse doth all slie can 
 To make her foster-child, her innate man, 
 
 Forget the glories he hath known 
 
 And that Imperial Palace whence he came. 
 
 Mf * * * * 
 
 Hence, in a season of calm weather. 
 Though inland far we be. 
 Our souls have sight of that immortal sea 
 
 Which brought us hither ; 
 
 Can in a moment travel thither," 
 And see the children sport upon the shore, 
 And hear the mighty waters rolling evermore." 
 
 The " not unworthy aim" of the " humble nurse" is to give 
 the child the sense of " having life in himself " as an individ- 
 ual free agent, so that he may come into intellectual con- 
 sciousness of the laws of God by going counter to them, 
 which reveals to him that he is separating from God in his 
 activity. This separation is sin^ which is a short word for 
 
RELIGIOUS NURTURE. 163 
 
 separation, and the first step iu the development of individu- 
 ality, and therefore pardonable, because it is finite. 
 
 Now the true religious nurture is to keep the child in the 
 mood of inetlable joy in which he was created, while he is 
 evolving his sense of individuality and free agency by experi- 
 menting freely, but more or less painfully, so that he shall 
 not lose sight of the central Sun, to which everything he is 
 slowly learning through his senses and his reflection is related ; 
 and this must be begun by giving a name to the central Sun 
 that shall express the character of his inmost consciousness 
 of joy and love, which is his vision of God, and needs to be 
 recognized as God in the understanding. 
 
 In the Old Testament we see that it is the name of the 
 Lord which is set forth as the only means of escaping that 
 idolatr}^ which is destructive of progressive spiritual religion. 
 The name of the Lord, or Ruler, with the Hebrews was 
 Jehovah, a word made up of the three tenses of the sub- 
 stantive verb to 6<?, "was, is, and shall be,'* and which 
 Philo, the Alexandrian Jewish philosopher, translates The 
 Eternal. It was understood by the worshippers to be the 
 ineffable Creative Reality, so that when they came to the 
 word in their sacred ritual they did not speak it, but rever- 
 ently bowed their heads in a moment's silence, or para- 
 phrased it, The Lord God. 
 
 But Jesus, the bright, consummate flower of the Hebrew 
 race, used the name Father {my and our Father) , which you 
 may observe was original with him. That word expressed 
 the whole of his theology. He made no disquisitions on 
 God's being, but simply recognized the vital relation of 
 mankind to its Creator by this word, which any child who 
 has come to see that he and his mother are two can 
 understand and will love. 
 
 Froebel has proved by his nursery method that the child 
 shall get this idea and name of God from his mother ; and 
 at all events when children come to the kindergarten ther 
 
164 RELIGIOUS NURTURE. 
 
 will generally already have heard some name for God, 
 adequate or inadequate. Now all you have to do — but 
 that is a great deal, indeed the greatest thing — is not to 
 cloud the child's intuitive knowledge of God by your inade- 
 quate words as was done in the case of M. D., who was 
 afraid of the omnipresence of God, as I mentioned in my 
 narrative of F. H., and in the case of his unfortunate 
 mother at her mother's funeral. In the case of little F. 
 the mistake was not to have given any name before his 
 sense perceptions had made " a prison house for the grow- 
 ing boy." But you have seen how the shades were dis- 
 pelled by my taking it for granted with him that a Heavenly 
 Father existed, which he joyfully accepted at once, for I 
 knew that 
 
 " In the embers was something that did live. 
 And Nature yet remembers 
 What was so fugitive." 
 
 The naming of God in the kindergarten should be in 
 music, which is the natural language of spirituality (or 
 aspiration), lifting the soul above the cold level of the 
 intellect that cognizes the correlations of the natural uni- 
 verse. Froebel finds support of his faith in the efficacy 
 of song, that puts devout expression into the works of 
 nature, in the historical fact that the civilizing literature 
 of all nations begins in religious hymns. The different 
 characteristics and the different destinies of nations are seen 
 in germ in the national songs, which are in large degree and 
 sometimes exclusively addressed to the Powers above. The 
 Li-king of the Chinese, the Rig Yeda of the old Aryans, 
 the Puranas of the Hindus, the Garthas of the Iranians, 
 the recently discovered early poetry of the Egyptians, and 
 even the magical formulas of the Babylonians, all express 
 with more or less exaltation of spirit the primeval intuition 
 of Supreme Being, and use the particulars of material nature 
 
RELIGIOUS NURTURE. 165 
 
 as words of God pointing to that unit}' of all life that is the 
 music of the spheres. Is it not heard in the voice of the 
 healthy infant, which is the most exquisite music on earth, 
 and later seen in the pictures made by the imagination 
 before language that is coined by the human understanding 
 has introduced prosaic, that is, analytic definitions, and 
 drawn the human individual away from feeding its heart 
 on the fruits of the Tree of Life (which are music and 
 poetry) to the finiits of the tree of knowledge, which are 
 evil as well as good. The kindergarten exercises should 
 begin and end with spiritual songs and hymns ; indeed, 
 they should come in any time at the call of the children, 
 who, it will be found, will oftener call for hymns of praise 
 than for an}' other songs. 
 
 The hymns of the kindergarten repertory should be en- 
 th-ely free from all that is didactic and denominationally 
 doctrinal. Their object is not to teach any science, whether 
 intellectual, moral, or theological ; but to express childish 
 joy in existence, or quicken the original childish faith, which 
 in all ages and nations has expressed itself in music and the 
 dance. Nor should the singing of hymns in kindergarten 
 be ever perfunctory or a thing of course. A good kinder- 
 gartner begins the day with bringing all the children into 
 company for preliminary conversation, and asking each in 
 turn what is in his mind ; or the class as a whole may be 
 asked some general question, perhaps about the weather, 
 which always has something beneficial that can be brought 
 to the attention; then they could be asked, "Could you 
 have made this weather? Who made it? and would you 
 not like to thank the Heavenly Father for it?" Some- 
 thing similar to this should precede all the hymns to 
 rouse their sense of free activity, and prevent routine, 
 and then they will sing with the heart and understanding 
 also. I remember going one day into a kindergarten with 
 Mr. Alcott when such a preliminary conversation was 
 
166 RELIGIOUS NURTURE. 
 
 going on, which was followed by this song of the 
 weather, the children making the illustrative gesticulations 
 with their arms. They began with the weather of the 
 day, and continued with several varieties, for it is not often 
 the whole song is sung at one time. The intense delight of 
 the children when themselves personifying the weather, 
 poured itself out in the chorus, which they had first learned 
 to sing with a will, — 
 
 " Wonderful, Lord, are all thy works, 
 Wheresoever falling. 
 All, their various voices raise ; 
 Speaking forth their Maker's praise 
 Wheresoever falling." 
 
 (See Appendix, Note F.) 
 
 Mr. Alcott, with his eyes full of tears, turned to me, and 
 said, '' This must have an immense influence upon charac- 
 ter." In religious conversation children have the advantage 
 of us in their as yet uneclipsed original vision of God, and 
 we have an advantage of them in knowledge of outside things 
 and the adaptation of means to ends. By this knowledge 
 of ours we can generally guide them to accomplish their 
 purposes when they are such as will really give them pleas- 
 ure and do no harm to any one else. They get our knowl- 
 edge by confidingly doing as we direct, and a confidence in 
 the method which brings about the results they have instinc- 
 tively foreseen. "We save their minds from getting lost or ' 
 bewildered in the chaos of particulars by winning their 
 attention to the orderly connections of things, and leading 
 them to realize how they connect little things in order to 
 make larger things, and how opposites are connected in the 
 world around about them. To recognize their own little 
 plans and open their eyes to God's methods and plans ; and 
 because they cause new effects, they realize that all effects 
 have causes, and in the last analysis realize one personal 
 cause. They must believe in themselves as a preliminary 
 
RELIGIOUS NUllTURE. 167 
 
 to believing in God. Let them with things create order ; and 
 jou will have inliuence with them in proportion to their feel- 
 ing that you respect their free will, and divine in a genial 
 way what they want ; and this you can do if you inform your- 
 self of what is universal in human desire, keeping your eyes 
 open to what modifications their individualit}^ suggests ; and 
 it is your cognizance of these individualities which makes 
 your part of the enjoyment. If there are no two leaves 
 alike, much more arc there no two human individuals pre- 
 cisely alike, and human intercourse is made refreshing by 
 these various individualities playing over the surface of the 
 universal race-consciousness. If you respect the individu- 
 ality of a child, and let it have fair play, you gain its 
 confidence. Nothing is so delightful as to feel oneself under- 
 stood. It is much more delightful than to be admired. But 
 to give a child's individuality fair play in a company of 
 children, you must open children's eyes to one another's 
 individualities, and you will find that if 3^ou suggest their 
 respecting each other's rights in the plays, there is something 
 within them that will justify you. The consciousness of 
 individuality is the correlated opposite to the conscience 
 of universality. Justice is an intuition. The opposite 
 poles of a human being are self-assertion or personal con- 
 sciousness on the one side, and generosity or race conscious- 
 ness on the other. 
 
 We have seen that the maternal instinct, which the kinder- 
 gartner is to make her own by cultivating it, cherishes the 
 indispensable innocent self-assertion (which is oul}- changed 
 into selfishness by lack of that social cherishing which keeps 
 generosity wide awake to balance self-assertion) . We must 
 sympathize with the play instincts of the child, so that it may 
 get knowledge of its body in its parts and its powers of 
 locomotion, manipulation and speech, giving self-respect to 
 the consciousness of power, while the simultaneous knowl- 
 edge of limitation is prevented from becoming fear by 
 
168 RELIGIOUS NURTURE. 
 
 experience of the motherly providence, which is the first 
 comprehensible form of that love which in due time calls 
 forth ideal worship of the Infinite God, if God has been 
 adequately named in natural sympathetic conversation with 
 an earnest self-persuasion but without sanctimonious affecta- 
 tion. Unless you have unaffected spontaneity of faith your- 
 selves, you should not dare to talk about God to the child. 
 
 The religious nurture which Frocbel proposes therefore 
 consists simpl}' in so living with children as to preserve their 
 primeval joy by tenderly and reverently respecting it, as that 
 human instinct prompts which is in the highest power in the 
 mother. Sympathetic tenderness is the first of all means for 
 moral culture. The child's faith in God must be cherished 
 into self-reliance. There is a self-distrust that is really a 
 distrust of God, and no harm we can do a child is so great 
 as to lead it to doub.t its own spontaneity. The common 
 religious teacher — even a conscientious mother — sometimes 
 does this, and so far from nurturing the child's conscious 
 union with God, starts a morbid self-consciousness, the 
 opposite of religious peace. In order not to make this mis- 
 take, let the mother and kindergartner read and ponder 
 FroebeFs Mother Love and Cossetting Songs.^ 
 
 If you ask me what aid the moral culture derives from 
 the religious nurture, I reply, the name Heavenly Father, 
 given to the inmost consciousness, keeps the heart happy and 
 the will self-respecting, by preventing those indefinite fears, 
 incident to a sense of helplessness, which engenders selfish- 
 ness. Hope and Faith are correlatives, and conscious or 
 necessary means of goodness (which is enacted thereby) , not 
 
 ^ This unique book was the text-book Froebel used in his training- 
 school. Its profound meaning, and how it points to the divine philos- 
 ophy of the instinctive play, that is the first phenomenon of human life 
 with mother and child, some of you have heard Miss Blow and Miss 
 Fisher luminously explain in a course of lectures much longer than 
 mine, and which I hope they may be persuaded to publish in book form. 
 
RELIGIOUS NURTURE. 169 
 
 agonies of will in the absence of this support. In the major- 
 ity of cases moral discouragement is the secret of children's 
 naughtiness; and, as Dr. Channing used to say, ''there is 
 nothing fatal to child or man but discouragement," which 
 often exists close beside manifestations of pride and self-will. 
 
 AVhen I kept school, in my earlier life, I became the confi- 
 dante of many cases of wrong-doing and conscious wrong 
 feeling. Sometimes the confidentialness was altogether 
 spontaneous on the part of the children, and in other cases I 
 took the initiative, drawing out the confidence, by interven- 
 ing on occasion to console and help, especially when I saw 
 that the sensibilit}' had been wounded, or there was moral 
 puzzle. And my experience and observation in this line jus- 
 tified the faith in which I began to keep school; viz., that 
 children are all but perfectly good, in all cases, and are never 
 so grateful for anything else, when they find themselves 
 naughty, as for spiritual and moral help, given as God gives, 
 " upbraiding not." 
 
 AVhen they are not grateful for moral help, it is the fault 
 or mistake of the grown-up counsellor. Even in the worst 
 cases I always took it for granted that nevertheless they loved 
 goodness better than the naughty self which for the hour had 
 got the victory over the better self. Spiritual being, whether 
 finite or infinite, is only to be discerned by aspiring faith. 
 Yet I do not think it right or wise to suggest to little children 
 that their wrong-doings, which are more weaknesses than 
 presumptions, are sins against God, Children can compre- 
 hend their relations to each other, and the violation of each 
 other's rights to happiness, and can be easily led to sympa- 
 thize with the pain or inconvenience of those they make suf- 
 fer, which touches their sense of justice and generosity ; they 
 can appreciate wrong and its consequences to their equals 
 and to themselves in the present life. But God is too great 
 to be injured by them ; and to bring God to their imagina- 
 tion as personally angry with them, overwhelms thought, and 
 
170 RELIGIOUS NURTURE. 
 
 annihilates all sense of responsibility, with all self-respect. 
 Children can comprehend perfectly that wrong-doing, in par- 
 ticular cases, is an injury- to themselves, as well as a harm 
 to their neighbor ; also that they forfeit, for the time being, 
 their privilege of being, as it were, in partnership with God 
 in making others happy, as well as being companions with 
 Him in making things grow ; and an occasional hint of this, 
 when they are very happy and successful, is well. But to 
 suggest that they are forfeiting this privilege of divine com- 
 panionship and partnership, is quite painful enough, be this 
 forfeiture ever so partial. Old sinners are to be disciplined, 
 perhaps, by that love of God which speaks in the thunder, 
 the earthquake, and fire, breaking through the crust of selfish 
 habit to awaken attention to the still, small voice of con- 
 science, in which alone the Lord is in person. But the 
 naught}' child, at his worst, needs only to think of God as 
 sorry for him, and '' waiting to be gracious," like the father 
 of the prodigal son. 
 
 I can illustrate this by anecdotes of a child to whose 
 moral life I was obliged to call in the aid of the religious 
 sentiment, and even of the specific Christian revelation 
 of pardon for all past wrong repented. It was the case 
 of a very sensitive child of nine years of age, whose mother 
 was gifted with the finest imagination and moral instincts, 
 but was married to a cold, Dombey-like husband, whom she 
 unfortunately thought superior to herself, whom she idealized, 
 and endeavored to make her children satisfactory to his worldly 
 ideal. The result in their characters was more or less dis- 
 astrous to each, ending with the suicide of one. This child's 
 conscience of the duty of satisfying both parents I soon found 
 to be abnormal ; and her sense of her father's contempt for her 
 intellect, and her mother's painstaking that she should satisfy 
 him, so worked on her sensibility that it suspended her rea- 
 soning powers ; and no matter what it was she failed in, 
 whether in missing an answer to a question in arithmetic, or 
 
RELIGIOUS NURTURE. 171 
 
 in failure of good temper when tormented, she fell into de- 
 spair. I endeavored to show her that a mistake in any school 
 exercise was no crime, but only made an occasion for her 
 learning more thoroughly the thing in hand, and to show her 
 that, unless she had fortitude to bear failures, and courage 
 and hope to overcome them, I could not help her out of them ; 
 and I never rebuked any naughty manifestation of a moral 
 character of any one in her presence, but she would burst 
 into tears, and tell me how much naughtier she was. One 
 Monday morning I asked my children, as I was wont to do, 
 if there was anything interesting that they had heard at 
 church or Sunday-school the day before, when, almost with 
 a shriek, she cried out, "Oh, don't ask me that." I said 
 gently, ''Come with me into my chamber," which she did, 
 crying all the while. ''Mr. Greenwood preached about the 
 prayers, and he said we should not look about the church, or 
 think of anything else, while the service was being read ; and 
 I alwa^'s do, and I can't help it, because I am so bad." I 
 took her into my arms, and said, "It is a sure proof that you 
 are not bad, that you are so distressed at the thought of do- 
 ing wrong. Bad i)eople do not care, and so they grow worse 
 and worse ; but your conscience seems to forget the Heavenly 
 'Father, who did not give it to you to discourage you, but to 
 help you to see what way you must not go, and to remind you 
 that He is close by to help your good resolution, which is the 
 prayer of your will." 
 
 " But I read in a hymn that God sets down everything we 
 do wrong in a book ; and at the judgment day He will read it 
 all out to the assembled universe. I told a lie once." 
 
 "Did you? " said I, tenderly. "Tell me all about how you 
 came to." "I cannot," said she, "because then I should 
 have to tell something bad about somebody else, which I must 
 not." "How long ago was it?" '*Itwas when we were 
 living at ." I saw by this that it was several years be- 
 fore. 
 
172 RELIGIOUS NURTURE. 
 
 She had a little brother, of whom she was very fond. I 
 took hold of a locket that she wore about her neck, that con- 
 tained the hair of the lady for whom she was named, and the 
 memory of whose great virtues had been impressed on her 
 imagination, and said: — 
 
 "What if Edward should take this locket and break it, 
 and take out the hair and throw it in the fire ? " With a great 
 deal of energy she said : — 
 
 " He never would do such a naughty thing." 
 
 " lie might do it without being naughty ; he would not know 
 
 that 3^ou never could get any more of Miss 's hair ; and 
 
 he would do it from innocent curiosity — and what if he should 
 do it, what would you do ? " 
 
 "Why, I should tell him he was a very naughty boy, med- 
 dling with other people's things, and that he had done some- 
 thing that he could never make up, for there was no more 
 of that hair." 
 
 " Well," said I, " and I suppose you would say that, very 
 likely crying, and if he seeing that he had given you such 
 pain, should begin to cry, and should cry all the rest of the 
 day, and cry himself to sleep, and when he waked in the 
 morning should begin to cry again, and should cry all day 
 for weeks — what would you do ? " 
 
 "Why, I should tell him I was sorry to lose my locket, 
 but I could bear it, and he must forget about it, for he did 
 not know what a mischief he was doing, and I should take 
 him out to walk, and amuse him, and do everything to make 
 him forget it." 
 
 " Why should you do all this?" 
 
 " Because I love him," she said. 
 
 " Do you believe you love him better than God loves j'ou?" 
 
 With a look of surprise, she said, " Does God love us the 
 same way we love ? " 
 
 " There is but one kind of love," I said, "and I really 
 think He would like to have you forget that lie you told ?o 
 
RELIGIOUS NURTURE. 173 
 
 long ago, ^vithout thinking how wrong it was, because you 
 were thinking of something else, just as Edward was only 
 thinking he wanted to see what was under the glass of the 
 locket/' 
 
 She looked at me wistfully. 
 
 '' Did you ever read about Jesus Christ in the New Testa- 
 ment?" said I. 
 
 ''Yes, and I hate to." 
 
 ''Why?" 
 
 " Because you know everybody says we must be like Him, 
 and He never did anything wrong, and I cannot be like Him, 
 for I do wrong of all kinds — beside that lie, and you know 
 how cross I am." 
 
 " O," said I, "I do not wonder you feel discouraged if 
 you think that you must be as good as Jesus Christ right 
 away, to begin with ; but Jesus Christ came into the world 
 to say a word that is the most important word in the New 
 Testament, and if He had not said it. He would have done 
 us more harm tlian good with His perfect example, discour- 
 aging us entirely." 
 
 " What was that word?" she asked, with the most eager 
 interest. 
 
 " Pardon," said I, " for all past wrong-doing that you are 
 sorry for." 
 
 "Oh, Miss Peabody, I never thought of the meaning of 
 that word before." 
 
 " Yes, darling," said I, " and that is the reason of all your 
 trouble. Now think of it always ; and thank God that He 
 sent Jesus to say it. That lie of yours God has pardoned 
 long ago, just as you would have pardoned little Edward. 
 We all do wrong things when we are children, and learn by 
 doing them not to do them again. Now from to-day begin 
 all your life over again. When you miss in your lessons, in- 
 stead of crying, just let it go, and ask me to help you try 
 again. So in making other mistakes, and when you feel 
 
17 J: KELIGIOUS NURTURE. 
 
 cross, which comes in your case because you are so easily dis- 
 couraged, — for that makes you have dyspepsia, — just forget 
 it as soon as possible and go and do something pleasant, and 
 think that God loves you, and only lets you do wrong to show 
 you that you need to be getting wisdom all the time, and 
 3*ou will grow stronger continually, and the older you grow, 
 the better you will understand.'' 
 
 I never knew a moral crisis in any child's life so marked 
 as this was. She had a very hard path in life to walk and 
 suffered much, but she never again lost the hope b}' which 
 we live, and at length, full of years, joined '' the Choir In- 
 visible," from which commanding standpoint she doubtless 
 sees the end from the beginning, and how God's redeeming 
 Providence completes His creation of a free agent. What I 
 insist upon is, that a child should never be left to doubt, but 
 should always be helped to feel sure that God is loving him 
 better than he loves himself ; is sorry far more than angry 
 with him when he has done wrong, and therefore it is that He 
 will not let him succeed in doing wrong, but has so arranged 
 things that the wrong always gets checked ; that God is 
 especially good jorecisely because He " makes the ways of the 
 transgressor hard." Never let the Infinite Power appear to 
 the naught}^ child's imagination as punishing, but only as 
 encouraging, inspiring, helping ! It is recorded as charac- 
 teristic of the highest manifestation of God and Educator of 
 man, who appeared to His most spiritual disciple as the 
 "Eternal Word made flesh," that He did not "quench the 
 smoking flax or bruise the broken reed," but distilled upon 
 humanity — especially in its flowering stage — the gentle 
 dews of blessing, — taking little children in His arms to bless 
 them. 
 
 You may ask. But what if a child proves in some instances 
 incorrigible to the method of love ? What shall we do then ? 
 I think it will be sufficient to ask any Christian, What did 
 Jesus do when the Jews proved insensible and incorrigible 
 
KELIGIOUS NURTURE. 175 
 
 to his long-suffering, brotherly love, making it the occasion 
 of their own capital crime ? Did he abandon the method of 
 love when they nailed him to the cross, or even doubt it? 
 Let us dwell on this a little. Was it not the special trial of 
 Jesus Christ's human hfe, the last temptation through which 
 he was constrained by his apparent failure of accomplish- 
 ing the work of redeeming Israel, by leading them of their 
 own selves to judge and do what is right to cry out. My 
 God ! my God ! why hast thou forsaken me? For instead of 
 their coming to him to get the waters of life he offered, they 
 had made it the very act of their religion to murder him 
 as a blasphemer. I ask. Did he, even then, exchange his 
 method o^ forbearing love for cursing? Did he not, even then, 
 hold fast to the principle of brotherliness by commending 
 his spirit (which was his work) into the hands of the Father, 
 with the words : '' Forgive them, for they Jcnoio not what they 
 do'* ; showing that he felt that this ignorance was infinitely 
 more pitiable than his own apparently forgotten bodily 
 agonies? And, in this great humane act of forbearance, and 
 divine act of faith did he not reveal in its fulness the loving 
 character of God, whom he had always called Father^ and 
 with whom he proved himself one by this very token, which 
 converted the Jewish thief and the Roman centurion on the 
 spot; and which, step by step, is slowly but surely (by 
 inspiring his disciples with the same spirit and method of 
 dealing with their fellow-beings) converting the world ? The 
 moment of despair of an immediate spiritual good we are 
 trying to do, is often the moment of our doing a higher and 
 greater good. 
 
 As Jesus resigned his own finite will, as the son of David, 
 which was fixed on bringing the Jewish nation to fulfil its 
 national mission of " blessing all the families of the earth," 
 which he understood to be the motive inspiration of Abra- 
 ham's emigration from Babylonian civilization into the 
 wilderness ; and as he accepted the will of his Father, which 
 
173 RELIGIOUS NURTURE. 
 
 seemed to be that the privilege to do this patriotic dut}* was 
 not granted to him as he had gi'own up thinking, the will was 
 lifted, and he found himself doing more — becoming the 
 Saviour, not of the nation of the Jews merely, but of all men, 
 and so sat down on the right hand of God. For he proved 
 himself to the heart of all humanity, God's Son, loving, 
 not for the sake of men's reciprocation and appreciation of 
 himself, but for the sake of the salvation of humanity. Tliere- 
 fore Christ's method is the one for every man and woman on 
 all planes of activity, however humble. I have heard more 
 than one mother say, that when they had tried every method 
 they knew of to influence their child to give up some wrong 
 object on which the irrefragable free will was bent, and 
 all tender and violent measures had failed, the irrepressible 
 tears of their despairing love had most unexpectedly melted 
 the hardness of self-will at once, and effected the cure. Love, 
 when it is understood, is irresistible. Our sacred oracles teach 
 us that the origin of evil is in a doubt of God's love. In 
 Eden it was a suspicion that He had some selfish ends in 
 forbidding even one thing in a world of free gifts. 
 
 The conquest of evil, on the other hand, they represent, 
 was in Jesus Christ's trusting God's love, in a lost world, 
 amidst the physical agonies of his cross, and the moral an- 
 guish of a disappointment of the grandest aim that ever one 
 born of woman had set to himself for his life-work. In faith- 
 fully trying to do the lesser good just at hand, he developed 
 the power to save all men from their sins; not merely his own 
 people. 
 
 To the training class of kindergartners I would say, your 
 special work is rather to prevent, than to conquer sin, in the 
 objects of your care ; therefore you should, in your own 
 imagination, associate yourself with Ood creating, first lead- 
 ing children to realize that all He has made is very good and 
 must be kept so, which is giving the religious nurture. 
 
 That great word of Frcebel, man is a creative being, has 
 
RELIGIOUS NURTURE. 177 
 
 said in the world of cducatiou, whether religious, moral, or 
 intellectual, " Let there be light," aud is uever to be forgot- 
 ten in its uttermost meaning. 
 
 In this truth you will find an infinite resource of hope aud 
 successful energy. You ma}' think that you apprehend and 
 accept the scope of this pregnant word, because you do not 
 reject it as a proix)sition ; but partial knowledge is often 
 deluding, and not doubting is far from efficient conviction^ 
 which a comprehensive and penetrating understanding of a 
 principle gives. Let me illustrate this illusion of thinking 
 we comprehend when wc do not, by some of Frocbel's gifts. 
 
 Think of the four last gifts of Fra^bcl in their wholeness 
 of form, 05 cubes. When these cubes are uncovered and 
 you recognize them as eight, or twenty-seven, or thirty-six 
 wooden, solid, six-sided, eight-cornered, twelve-edged units, 
 and see the relations of their properties in nature, it may 
 seem to you as if you exhaustively knew the cube ; but you do 
 not if you have omitted to notice one property inherent in it, 
 more important because pregnant with more consequences 
 than any other property, — I mean its divisibility by means 
 of which its possible transformations arc innumerable, every 
 transformation presenting the symmetry of the original in a 
 new variety of beaut}', so that if you will give to a child one 
 of these divisible cubes and suggest to him the clue of the 
 law of connecting contrasts, which is the law of all produc- 
 tion, he will never tire (except physically) of making the 
 new combinations, and seeking through each and all, that 
 sense of a ivJiole which was the first impression. It is by 
 reason of its divisibility, that the cube can be transformed 
 infinitely. Now you may conceive the nature of man as a 
 whole, and observe a great many of his attributes, and yet 
 not see the greatest, — his creativeness^ whose consequences 
 are infinite. 
 
 Educational science has, in fact, generally omitted to do 
 this in the past, and treated a child accorcl infy to the attributes 
 
 ^^ Of THB ^^ 
 
 [UNI7BllSITr] 
 
17S RELIGIOUS NURTURE. 
 
 it recognized ; but, because before Froebers day man had 
 not been recognized by the reflective mind as a creative 
 being, it had not been realized that he can be transformed, 
 or transform himself as well as his surroundings, infinitely, 
 ever producing something new, and hence that there may be, 
 in the lapse of ages, as much variety in human production 
 as there is in God's workings in the Universe. 
 
 It is, in short, because education has not hitherto con- 
 ceived of man as creative, that there has been so much dead 
 uniformity and lifeless repetition on the plane of humanity ; 
 and that a general characteristic of educational systems 
 hitherto has been a mechanical running of the human being 
 into certain fixed moulds, not only irrespective of individual 
 tendencies, but antagonistic to the universal creative impulse, 
 which is the profoundest characteristic of man, and which, 
 not being understood, has, in a great measure, proved onl}^ a 
 source of disorder, and given a bad name with people of 
 genius to educational art (although it is the highest of all 
 the high arts), its material, if you will forgive the verbal 
 ambiguity, being living spirit. 
 
 Richard Wagner has said that " were it not for education, 
 all men would be geniuses, for they are endowed at birtli 
 with the passionate pursuit of the new, needing only 
 liberty and opportunity for self -direction." 
 
 Liberty and opportunity! There could not be a better 
 description of Froebcl's principle and method of education. 
 
 To give libei'ty and opportunity to the creative principle 
 of the child is just the work you have to do ; but observe, 
 this is not to leave him to the caprices of an uneducated will. 
 There is neither liberty nor opportunity in that ! 
 
 '' Eternal vigilance is the price of liberty," moral as well 
 as political ; and before the child is old enough to appreciate 
 this, and be vigilant for liimself, the educator must do so for 
 him, genially, but firmly intervening to secure to his mind 
 that pause before action on the moral, the artistic, and intel- 
 
RELIGIOUS NURTURE 179 
 
 lectual plane, that the Friends recognize to be necessary 
 before acting on the spiritual plane. 
 
 The ways of caprice are multitudinous, — the way of life 
 is one for each individual, and is pointed out to the pausing 
 attentive mind by the Father, who speaks to us, within, for- 
 ever ; but whose voice can only be heard when listened to 
 b}' intention; even on the intellectual plane, we do not let 
 the will go storming on, without the guidance of law, which 
 is the voice of the very present Creator heard in the silence 
 of reflection on perceived facts and truths. 
 
 There is a right and a wrong way of doing everything, — 
 always. The right way will always produce a thing of use 
 or of beauty, whose reaction on the mind of the producer 
 cultivates his mind, or grows the human understanding; 
 but this right way is only to be discovered in that pause be- 
 tween impulse and action which is the characteristic discrim- 
 ination of man from all other animals, and must be secured 
 for the child by the care of his educators — even when he is 
 only playing, or the play will tire instead of exhilarate. 
 
 Hence it is not enough, though it is indispensable, to 
 guide children's activity while it is still irrcflective to spon- 
 taneously make forms of beauty and use with its playthings 
 and materials of occupation ; but after they have made 
 something, you are to make them stop and look back (not 
 every time, but often) , and go over in thought, and put into 
 words, what they have done, and lead them to observe all 
 the properties and relations of the thing that are obvious 
 to the childish sense ; and when you have thus secured an 
 impression of the means by which order is attained, you 
 have given an experimental knowledge of there being a spir- 
 itual order ; that is, a world of individual la^vs and a law- 
 giver independent of human will and meant to lift it into the 
 divine. Those of you who are Friends will agree with me that 
 human beings can manifest no spiritual beauty or moral 
 power, except so far as they listen to the Shepherd of souls 
 
180 RELIGIOUS NURTURE. 
 
 in the holy pause of the hours of worship, a voice always sug- 
 gesting loving activity. And cannot you see, that no artistic 
 production, no intellectual vv'ork, is possible without listening, 
 in the pause of reflection for the word of the law of beauty 
 or use, that the Creator of the intellect gives? and which 
 makes art and science the worship of God with the mind? 
 
 The most important, the crowning work of the kinder- 
 gartner, is to secure to the child this moment of reflection 
 in the midst of his play and work on all planes of life ; and 
 you do so by sympathetically playing with him and gently 
 guiding his unthinking, impulsive activity, and asking him 
 what he has done and is going to do^ and not letting him do 
 anything till he seeks to do the symmetrical or, at least, the 
 useful thing. It is not every movement that will produce the 
 satisfactory result. It is thus that the child learns that there 
 is a greater mind than his own, or even than his teacher's 
 mind, present with him guiding the intellect, for artistic 
 principles flow into the mind from an Eternal source, no 
 less than do moral and spiritual principles. In short, the 
 true method of the intellect is the perpetual gift of a very 
 present God, as much as the true method of the heart and 
 soul. 
 
 Man, then, in the last analysis, is a creative being ; and 
 the FroQbel education has for its final object, to give him the 
 dominion over everything in the earth; put all the cosmic 
 forces into his hands, — as well as to bring him into the 
 communion of love with his fellows ; thus lifting his whole 
 nature to the height of sitting down with our Elder brother 
 on the throne, with the Universal Father. 
 
 You should keep this great idea before you, and it will 
 enable you to use the technique that you have been learning, 
 with a certain freedom as well as fidelity, guiding these play- 
 ful exercises in such an order as you may find agreeable and 
 salutary for them ; and to check caprice, 3'ou must insist 
 that, in these appointed times, they do the appointed things. 
 
PwELIGIOUS NURTURE. 181 
 
 OR DO NOTHING, foF thcY will generally conclude to do the 
 thing in hand, rather than do nothing while all their com- 
 panions are doing their work ; and when they are doing noth- 
 ing, they will have time for reflection, and to hear the inward 
 voice of law, with the opportunity voluntarily to accept it. 
 Thus does God give to all his children " to have life in 
 themselves," and to bring out their whole likeness to Him- 
 self, which proves that they are not his bond slaves, — like 
 the lower animals, — but sons. If there are not in the uni- 
 verse two leaves tliat are alike, still less are there two souls 
 that are alike. But leaves and souls, after all, are alike in 
 more than they are different. You can provide action for all 
 the instincts that children have in common, and create a com- 
 mon consciousness to a certain extent, which is the common 
 sense; but what is peculiar to each, and makes the inde- 
 pendent individual, is his own secret, and you can only help 
 THAT to flower and fruitage by giving him the conditions of 
 free, independent action, opening the inward eye and sharpen- 
 ing the inward ear for communication with Ilim who alone 
 can adequately guide the will to tlie satisfaction of all the 
 sensibilities of the heart, and the powers of intellect, and all 
 the creative energies : but the religious and moral principles I 
 shall endeavor to dejine are general, not peculiar to, but in- 
 clusive of, the kindergarten plan of education. To have these 
 principles clear and disengaged from the accidental associa- 
 tions of the various denominations of the church, all of which 
 (and also with many of those outside of any visible church) 
 unite in that faith in God, and that disinterested love of hu- 
 manity, which was historically enacted on earth by Jesus 
 Christ, and into which every child born on the earth should 
 be brought before he is old enough to appreciate those intel- 
 lectual distinctions which make different creeds; because, then 
 the kindergartner will be able to meet children on the high 
 plane of life where their anrjels (does not that mean then- 
 spiritual instincts or ideals?) behold the face of the Father, 
 
182 RELIGIOUS NURTURE. 
 
 and only then will the kindergartner practically enter into 
 Froebel's method of living with the children^ and communing 
 with their innocence. 
 
 I see a great deal of this practical application in the kin- 
 dergartens kept by the well-trained kindergartuers ; and es- 
 pecially when they are mothers^ who unquestionably make the 
 best kindergartuers (other things being equal) , because it is 
 easier for mothers to divine the consciousness of their chil- 
 dren. In the opening hour of the kindergarten, when the 
 kindergartner interchanges the songs and hymns which the 
 children choose, or at least agree to, with real free conversa- 
 tion, in which each child has a chance to tell what is upper- 
 most in his little mind, the very most important work of 
 the kindergartner is done. It has been my privilege to listen 
 to much of this in the kindergartens kept severally by the 
 mothers, who make the children feel that they are interested 
 in whatever they say, however apparently ti'ivial is the sub- 
 ject, and who answer genially, connecting it with something 
 else, and so organizing the reflective powers of the children, 
 that everything they think is seen to be a part of the process 
 of moral, religious, and even intellectual growth. 
 
 The possibility of doing this will prove to any one who has 
 any heart and imagination that it is no mere poetic phrase, 
 but a profound spiritual truth, that" Heaven lies about us in 
 our infancy," that children do "come from God who is their 
 home, trailing clouds of glory,*' and for a time 
 
 " are still attended 
 By the vision splendid/* 
 
 although too often 
 
 " The man beholds it die away, 
 
 And fade into the light of common day." 
 
 Of course all the opening conversation need not be on the 
 moral and religious planes, but some of it should lead into 
 
RELIGIOUS NURTURE. 1 S3 
 
 explanations of nature and of the common life of this work- 
 da}^ world, improving dexterity and common sense ; but one 
 can hardly talk with children about anything, in a genuine 
 way, that does not bring out of them some religious or moral 
 expression. I think it is in connection with these conversa- 
 tions to which the children furnish by their spontaneous con- 
 fidences the vital points, round which the thoughts of the 
 whole little company shall revolve, that the teacher can con- 
 nect her own storj'-telling. 
 
 For such genuine conversation the necessary prerequisite 
 on the part of the teacher is a real faith in children's being 
 the breath of God in their Essence. 
 
 Then she will not have any wilUioork of her own, but listen 
 to bear what the child is attending to, be it nothing but a bit 
 of string, which, of course, must have a certain length that 
 can be measured, and with which other things ma}' be meas- 
 ured, and which is made of material that has passed perhaps 
 through the hands of many manufacturers, and which in its 
 elements at least was a growth of nature, all whose works 
 bear witness to the being of God ; for God*s throne may 
 be reached from the ground of childish play as certainly and 
 readily as from many a pulpit and cathedral, if not more so. 
 
 A child whose affection for his companions and for the per- 
 sonages of a story told by the kindergartner, and who sees 
 the connection of some little playful or other experience that 
 he tells as his story for the morning, is engaged in a service 
 of God^ more vitally bearing on his growth in grace than any 
 mere repetition of prayers. A play bringing out little kind- 
 nesses, sweet courtesies, gentle self-adjustments to his com- 
 panions, the asking and giving of forgiveness for little dis- 
 courtesies orgrave wrong-doings, brings the child nearer God 
 than any spoken words of worship can, the joy attending 
 such innocent sweetness being the proof of the vital union of 
 his soul with a very present God. 
 
 So the work of the good Samaritan, though he was doubt- 
 
184 RELIGIOUS NURTURE. 
 
 less thinking only of the individual be was comforting, and 
 not at all of God, was recognized by Christ as a reed act of 
 icorship; for it was the fulfilment of the second commandment 
 like unto the first. 
 
 The time will come, I confidently believe, when all relig- 
 ionists of whatever denomination will recognize that the 
 favorite doctrines and formalities which distinguish them 
 from each other are a mere superficial crust of that true spir- 
 itual life which is to be lived when the grown-up shall all 
 become as little children, who feel that, 
 
 " In their work and in their play, 
 God is with them all the day." 
 
 In speaking of the ceremonies of the Temple worship, 
 which Moses made symbolical of all the virtues of life, moral 
 and religious, but which in PauFs day had fallen into such a 
 mere ritual that this great Apostle said that the Holy Ghost 
 was not bodily exercise^ but a hopeful, faithful charity of 
 thought, feeli}ig, and deed; and this is what children can be 
 guided into from the beginning, provided the kindergartncr 
 knows how to converse and play with them instead of talking 
 to them and coercing them ever so kindly into acting out her 
 will. The play of childhood is the most genuine and intense 
 life that is lived, body, heart, and will conspiring entirely ; 
 and it is by respecting the child's ivill and heart that you 
 really help instead of hindering this unification of his three- 
 fold nature, which corresponds to the Trinity of the Supreme 
 Being and prevents that from becoming a bewildering trithe- 
 ism in his conception. 
 
 A child cannot be just unless he is loving, nor attain the 
 freedom of moral dignity unless he asserts himself ; and there 
 is no way to nurture this self-respect except to express re- 
 spect to him, by being as courteous to him as you are to any 
 adult, always asking him to explain himself and his own 
 
RELIGIOUS NURTURE. 135 
 
 motives, when he seems to be in the wrong, before you con- 
 demn him. 
 
 I think I have gained some of the deepest insights I have 
 ever had into Divine Truths by discovering what was the 
 motive thought of some child, who did what seemed inexpli- 
 cable, till he told me, or I had divined, his secret reason. 
 
 It is not mothers alone who can charm out of children their 
 secret, as those know who have seen some maiden kinder- 
 gartners talk xdth their pupils in the opening exercises ; but 
 those who are not mothers will always do well to observe 
 carefully those who are. On the other hand, mothers have 
 to guard themselves against exaggerating their own children's 
 natures comparatively, I have known some of the best 
 mothers in the world do that^ so as to be practically of bad 
 influence over children not their own. 
 
 Mothers who would be and can be the best kindergartners 
 should therefore none the less study Froebers science care- 
 fully and humbly. 
 
 jUl children are alike in having the threefold nature. I 
 wish I had time to tell of a hundred kindergarten experiences 
 that have come under my observation, in which the respect- 
 ful, genial kindergartner has assisted in some moral devel- 
 opment, whose occasion was very trivial to the superficial 
 observer. 
 
 Herein lies the importance of prefacing the school with the 
 kindergarten, that in it all the virtues and Christian graces 
 can be unconsciously practised on the plane of play, which 
 is the moral gymnasium of mankind. 
 
 " This is the meaning of Solomon's wise saying, " Train 
 up a child in the way he should go, and when he is old he 
 will not depart from it." But the nature, which is the image 
 of the Divine Nature, cannot be mechanically^ but must be 
 morally and spiritually, trained; that is, addressed and 
 treated as free agency. 
 
 The salutation of the Brahmin to his youthful son, no less 
 
186 RELIGIOUS NURTURE. 
 
 than to his equal in age, is "to the divinity which is in you 
 I do homage." This is one of the gleams of light from the 
 lost Paradise in which man was created, and to which we 
 hope the kindergarten is to more than restore the race, when 
 it shall have become the universally applied principle of cul- 
 ture for human beings. (See Appendix, Note F.) 
 
GLIMPSES OF PSYCHOLOGY. 
 
GLIMPSES OF PSYCHOLOGY. 
 
 SPIRITUALITY. 
 
 We speak of the necessity of studying childhood ; we call 
 children living books of nature, and say that we cannot suc- 
 ceed in educating them (which is putting them into a har- 
 monious activity of all their powers), without knowledge, 
 such as a musical performer has of his instrument, of these 
 " harps of a thousand strings." 
 
 This fundamental knowledge of children is not chiefly a 
 discrimination of their individualities ; though observation of 
 these will be made by a consummate kindergartner ; it is a 
 knowledge of what is universal in children, essential to the 
 constitution of human beings. 
 
 Froebel never wrote out, in systematic form, the psychol- 
 ogy which underlies and gives the rational ground to all the 
 details of his method. But there are pregnant sentences in 
 all his writings, and in his sayings handed down by tradition, 
 which give such insights, that it can be divined with some 
 completeness. 
 
 We propose to give such glimpses as occur to us from time 
 to time — not always in our own words, but as often as we 
 can in Froebel's, and also in the words of other thinkers, 
 whose guesses at this kind of truth light up their writings on 
 many subjects. 
 
 We must, in the first place, attend to one important fact ; 
 there is, in the experience of childhood, somewhat pre-exist- 
 ent to all impressions made by the universe, and consequently 
 to all operations of the understanding — perceiving, com- 
 
190 GLIMPSES OF PSYCHOLOGY. 
 
 paring, judging — for these are intentional acts of the pre- 
 existent soul breathed into his body and bidden to ''have 
 dominion." — Genesis 1. 
 
 What is this pre-existent soul, this mysterious depth of 
 personality ? 
 
 Washington Allston, in his posthumous lectures on Art, 
 has finely said: "Man does not live by science; he feels, 
 acts, and judges right in a thousand things, without the con- 
 sciousness of any rule by which he so feels, acts, and judges. 
 Happily for him, he has a surer guide than human science in 
 that unlcnown ]}ower within liim^ without which he had been 
 without any knowledge." Again, he speaks of " those intui- 
 tive powers, which are above and beyond both the under- 
 standing and the senses ; which, nevertheless, are so far 
 from precluding knowledge, as, on the contrary, to require 
 — as their effective condition — the widest intimacy with 
 things external, without which their ver^* existence must re- 
 main unknown." 
 
 He does not, however, merely assert this pre-existeuce of 
 the soul to the understanding, but speaks of the evidence of 
 it that we all can appreciate. ''Suppose,'* he says, "we 
 analyze a certain combination of sounds and colors, so as to 
 ascertain the exact relative qualities of the one, and the col- 
 location of the other, and then compare them, what possible 
 resemblance can the understanding perceive between these 
 sounds and colors? And yet a something within us re- 
 sponds to both — a similar emotion. And so it is with a 
 thousand things, nay, with myriads of objects, that have no 
 other affinity l:)ut with that mysterious harmony, which began 
 with our being, which slept with our infancy, and which their 
 presence only seems to have awakened. If we cannot go 
 back to our own childhood, we may see its illustration in 
 those about us who are now in that unsophisticated state. 
 Look at them in the fields, among the birds and flowers ; 
 their happy faces speak the harmony within them ; the divine 
 
GLIMPSES OF PSYCHOLOGY. 191 
 
 instrumcut which these objects have touched, gives them a 
 joy, which perhaps only childhood, in its first fresh conscious- 
 uess, can know, yet what do children understand of the theory 
 of colors, or musical quantities ? " 
 
 That this mysterious power, this feeling soul, is the human 
 characteristic, is suggested in another paragraph of these 
 lectures. ''What, for instance, can we suppose to be the 
 effect of the purple haze of a summer sunset on the cows or 
 sheei), or even on the more delicate inhabitants of the air ? 
 From what we know of their habits, we cannot suppose more 
 than the mere physical enjoyment of its genial temperature ? 
 But how is it with the man, whom we shall suppose an object 
 in the same scene, stretched on the same bank with the rumi- 
 nating cattle, and basking in the same light that flickers from 
 the skimming birds? Does he feel nothing more than the 
 genial warmth?" — Vol. I. p. 84. 
 
 This feeling of beauty, this power which appreciates har- 
 mony, this creative unity, in fine, this aesthetic soul, distinct 
 from and above the understanding (which certain philoso- 
 phers seem to think is all of man, over and above his body), 
 is not all of the soul, — but the moral and even merely social 
 sentiment has the same pre-existence. Allston bears witness 
 to this also. He says : ' ' With respect to Truth and Goodness, 
 whose pre-existent ideas, being living constituents of an im- 
 mortal spirit, need but the slightest breath of some outward 
 condition of the true and good — a simple problem or a kind 
 act — to awaken them, as it were, from their unconscious 
 sleep. . . . We may venture to assert that no philosopher, 
 however ingenious, could communicate to a child the abstract 
 idea of Eight, had the child nothing beyond or above the un- 
 derstanding. He might, indeed, be taught, like inferior 
 animals, — a dog, for instance, — that if he took certain 
 forbidden things, he would be punished, and thus do right 
 through fear. Still he would desire the forbidden thing be- 
 longing to another, nor could he conceive why he should not 
 
192 GLIMPSES OF PSYCHOLOGY. 
 
 appropriate to himself — and thus allay his appetite — what 
 was another's, could he do so undetected ; nor attain to any 
 higher notion of Right than that of the strongest. But the 
 child has something higher than the mere power of appre- 
 hending consequences (external ?) . The simplest exposition, 
 whether of right or wrong, is instantly responded to by some- 
 thing within him, which, thus awakened, becomes to him a 
 living voice, and the good and the true must thenceforth 
 answer its call. We do not say that these ideas of Beaut}*, 
 Truth, and Goodness will, strictly speaking, always act. 
 Though indestructible, they may be banished for a time by 
 the perverted Will, and mockeries of the brain, like the fume- 
 born phantoms from the witches' cauldron in Macbeth, may 
 take their places and assume their functions. We have ex- 
 amples of this in every age, and perhaps in none more start- 
 ling than the present. But we mean only that they cannot 
 be (absolutely ?) forgotten ; nay, they are but too often re- 
 called with unwelcome distinctness. . . . 
 
 " From the dim present, then, we would appeal to that 
 fresher time, ere the young spirit had shrunk from the over- 
 bearing pride of the (vitiated?) understanding, and confi- 
 dently ask, if the emotions we then felt from the Beautiful, 
 the True, and the Good, did not seem, in some way, to refer 
 to a common origin? And we would also ask, if it was fre- 
 quent that the influence from one was singly felt? if it did 
 not rather bring with it, however remotely, a sense of some- 
 thing — though widely differing, — yet still akin to it? when 
 we have basked in the beauty of a summer sunset, was there 
 nothing in the sky, that spoke to the soul of Truth and Good- 
 ness? And when the opening intellect first received the 
 truth of the great law of gravitation, and felt itself mount- 
 ing through the profound of space, to travel with the planets 
 in their unerring rounds, — did never then the kindred ideas 
 of Goodness and Beauty chime in, as it were, with the fabled 
 music (not fabled to the soul) , which led you on as one en- 
 
GLIMPSES OF rSYCHOLOGY. 193 
 
 trauced? Aud agaiu, when, in the passive quiet of your 
 moral nature, so predisposed, in youth, to all thiugs genial, 
 you have looked around on this marvellous, ever-teeming 
 earth, ever teeming alike for mind and body, and have felt 
 upon 3'ou the How, as from ten thousand streams of innocent 
 enjoyment, did you not then almost hear them shout in con- 
 fluence, and almost see them gushing upwards, as if they 
 would prove their iniity in one harmonious fountain?*' 
 
 It is of the last consequence that the kindergartner should 
 take into her mind that this Aesthetic soul exists in children 
 as a primary fact ; for, unless she believes in it, she will not 
 respect it, and take advantage of it in what she does for them. 
 It is to be respected and brought out into the understanding 
 of children, by means of the beautiful things which she leads 
 them to do and make, and with which she surrounds them ; 
 for, as Allston says, this consciousness '* requires as its effec- 
 tive condition, the widest intimacy with things external." 
 When children are continually in squalid surroundings, these 
 seem at length to strike in and paralyze the spontaneous ac- 
 tion of the aesthetic being, who is pre-existent to conscious- 
 ness of the power which compares and judges and makes up 
 a theory of colors. And, as lias been shown, this feeling of 
 beauty, this power of appreciating harmony and unity, this 
 aesthetic nature, distinct from and above the understanding, 
 which some people idly think to be all of man beside his 
 body, is not all of the soul, for the moral sentiment has the 
 same pre-existence. 
 
 We have brought together these paragraphs taken from 
 Allston's lectures on Art, for the consideration of practical 
 kindergartners, all the more confidently, l)ecause they were 
 not written as theory of education, but were parts of a prac- 
 tical inquiry after the standard of judgment for pictorial and 
 plastic artists and the spectator of their works. He sought 
 to deliver them from the benumbing effect of inadequate 
 science, — for science must always be inadequate, as Newton 
 
 
 
194 GLIMPSES OF PSYCHOLOGY. 
 
 so forcibly expressed, when lie defined it "gathering a few 
 pebbles on the shores of the infinite ocean of truth." The 
 object of the lecturer was what the kindergartner's first ob- 
 ject should be, — to awaken the self-respect of the eternal 
 soul within us all, making the life of our individuality — our 
 personality — ^vhich, in its mysterious depth and indepen- 
 dent pre-existence to the finite understanding, is the imag^ 
 of the Divine Personalit}', whose spoken word is the material 
 universe, but clothed in flesh becomes man. It is no part 
 of the kindergartner's duty to give — she can only awaken 
 — the feelings of harmony, beauty, unity, and conscience. 
 She is to present the right order of proceeding, in all that 
 the child shall do, thereby assisting him to form his own 
 understanding so that his bodily organization may be prop- 
 erly developed ; to let in upon his soul nature in its beau- 
 teous forms and order, and his fellow-creatures, in their legit- 
 imate claims upon him. Then he shall come forth from the 
 sleep of unconscious infancy, into a progressive conscious- 
 ness of all his relations, with the blessings and duties that 
 belong to them. This forming of the understanding, this 
 marrying of finite thought to infinite love, is Froebers Edu- 
 cation ; and cannot be accomplished, unless the kiuder- 
 gartner clearly sees what God has done for the child abso- 
 lutely, and what for an ineffable purpose, — most gracious 
 to the human race, — He has left to be done by human provi- 
 dence, whether of the mother or kindergartner, or some 
 other fellow- creature. 
 
 It makes a heaven-wide difference whether the soul of a 
 child is regarded as a piece of blank paper to be written upon, 
 or as a living power, to be quickened by sympathy, to be 
 educated by truth. 
 
GLIMPSES OF PSYCHOLOGY. 195 
 
 UNDERSTANDING. 
 
 TVe have spoken of the evidences of the aesthetic being 
 found in the mysterious depths of human personality, pre- 
 existent to the individual understanding (which is a growth 
 in time) ; and that, without there were this aesthetic being, 
 underlying all individual consciousness, there would be no 
 standard of human virtue or art. 
 
 This aesthetic person has also (previous to the develop- 
 ment of the understanding, which makes the synthesis of 
 himself and nature) an impulsive force, instinct with the 
 desire to change his conditions. Man does not appear in the 
 world merely as sensibility to enjoyment and suffering ; but 
 as veritable force, as well, whose action must produce an 
 effect either orderly or disorderly. 
 
 The material universe is composed of forces, limiting in a 
 measure personal force. All material forces are uniform and 
 necessary and correlative in their action, which is impressed 
 upon them from- without themselves. Man alone is self- 
 active, and may clash with the other forces to liis own pain, 
 and he will often do so, until by knowledge of them he can 
 harmonize with them, and make them his own instrumen- 
 tality to satisfy his aesthetic nature. We call this self-activ- 
 ity of man, which is in such vital union with his sensibility, 
 the human will, and it makes the personal life of every one 
 to learn this self -activity of his, in its differences from and 
 relations to all other forces, as he can only do perfectly by 
 keeping in intellectual and sympathetic social relation with 
 other aesthetic persons. In every individual case, he finds 
 himself in these relations with fellow-beings w^ho have more 
 or less of the knowledge he has not ; and some of them have 
 all the responsibility of his actions until he has begun to 
 know himself in discrimination from the material universe 
 and its fixed relations and laws, which serve as a fulcrum 
 for his own effective action among them. The one central 
 
196 GLIMPSES OF PSYCHOLOGY. 
 
 unity whose aesthetic being and will are inclusive of himself 
 and fellow-beings as subject, on the one hand, and of t)ae 
 material universe as object, on the other, is God. 
 
 The absoluteness of man as a force, is no less certain be- 
 cause he is finite and not omnipotent. God is the omnipotent 
 maker of the material universe, but man is not absolutely 
 made ; he is a cause, that is, created to malce^ if we may 
 credit the ancient prophet, whose hymn of creation is the 
 most wonderful expression of human genius, unless it be 
 surpassed by the proem of St. John's Gospel, which is a 
 correspondent poem, with God for its theme instead of man 
 and nature. 
 
 It was not till the embryo man had become, in one instance 
 at least, the fully developed man, that this hymn of the Crea- 
 tor was possible. God's word (revelation of himself) was 
 in the world, embodied in the things made from the begin- 
 ning ; but until it was embodied in a man, free to will, it was 
 truth in the form of law only (regulative)^ not yet in the 
 completer form of love (creative) . In short, before St. John 
 could sing that divine song, he must have seen God in a man, 
 full of grace and truth, dwelling among men as a fellow- 
 man, and overflowing with a power at once sympathetic and 
 causal. 
 
 God created man, male and female (that is, giving and 
 receiving equally) , to be keepers of each other, and to edu- 
 cate each other. They may tempt and fail each other by 
 presumption as Eve, and want of self-respect as Adam, are 
 represented to have done, at the beginning ; or may save 
 and redeem one another, as the cherished son of Mary histori- 
 cally did in a measure, and is doing forevermore, by inspir- 
 ing all who know him, to educate and redeem each other. 
 
 In coming into relation with infant man, to educate him, it 
 is indispensable to appreciate his freedom of willing, which 
 is a primeval fact, as much as his susceptibility of suffering 
 and enjoyment. The educator ought to embod}' God in a 
 
GLIMPSES OF PSYCHOLOGY. 197 
 
 measure, and treat the will of the child that is to be edu- 
 cated, on the same grand s^'stem of respecting individual 
 freedom, as must needs flow from Infinite love. Let him 
 clothe law in love, and instead of rousing fear of opposition, 
 awaken the hope of becoming a beauty-creating and man- 
 blessing power. 
 
 This is the rationale of Froebel's method of government. 
 He assumes that the child is — not to be made by education 
 a sensibility, but — an infinite sensibility already, and to be 
 vivified into individual consciousness thereof, by the knowl- 
 edge of nature to which you are to give him the clue ; — not 
 to be made by 3-our government of him, a power of creating 
 eflTects, but already an immeasurable power of creating effects 
 (that is, causal) — which you are to make him feel re- 
 sponsible for, by helping him to get experimental knowledge 
 of the laws that obtain in God's creation. 
 
 For it is knowledge of laws that is the first thing attain- 
 able — not knowledge of objects. A child's senses are the 
 avenues of the knowledge of objects ; his self-activity is the 
 avenue of the knowledge of laws. He must have experi- 
 mental knowledge of laws before he can begin to have 
 knowledge of objects, because his impulsive activity is the 
 means of developing his organs of sense, b}' which he be- 
 comes capable of receiving impressions from objects of 
 nature ; and his own effective action produces the objects 
 outside of his organs which first command his interested 
 attention, and rouse his powers of analysis, or by which his 
 powers of analysis are roused through your educating inter- 
 vention. 
 
 It is the maternal nursing of body and mind which edu- 
 cates the free force within to produce transient effects, and 
 finally objects, agreeable to the sensibility. Even before 
 the will is educated to causality, it exerts itself, because ex- 
 ertion is agreeable to human sensibility ; but when left unedu- 
 cated, the will brings about effects that prove disagreeable 
 
198 GLIMPSES OF PSYCHOLOGY. 
 
 ultimatel3', if not immediately, to the esthetic being, para- 
 lyzing it more or less, if the organization be feeble ; and per- 
 verting it when it is strong ; in either case, whether crushing 
 or exasperating it, producing selfishness, the germ of all 
 evil. 
 
 Thus evil begins in the social sphere, in the disorderly 
 action or in the neglect of those who have in charge the 
 aesthetic free force of the child, compelling it to revolve on 
 its own axis in a vain endeavor to obtain the satisfaction of 
 its a3sthetic nature, which it ought to obtain through the 
 generous cherishing action of others' love, carrying it round 
 the central sun in human companionship. The soul instinct- 
 ively expects love, and to do so, and to act out love inten- 
 tionally, IS its salvation, its eternal life. There is no signa- 
 ture of immortality so sure as the immeasurable craving for 
 love on the one hand, and the immeasurable impulse to love 
 on the other hand, which characterizes man ; for the satis- 
 faction of the craving is no greater joy tlian the satisfaction 
 of loving. 
 
 It is because death seems the cessation of relation with our 
 kind, that it is the king of terrors. When the disease or 
 decay of the body curtails relations and makes us solitary, 
 or incapable of enjoying relations, death is not dreaded, but 
 craved as relief. To whomever it seems the beginning of 
 wider relations, it is hailed as the revealing angel of God. 
 Isolation is the horror of horrors. It was one of the primal 
 intuitions that "it is not good for man to be alone." The 
 nurse should remember this, and not leave the baby to feel 
 lonely. Every mother and real nurse knows that when the 
 baby begins to be uneasy and gives a cry of dissatisfaction, 
 — to come near with a smile, to make one's presence felt by 
 a caressing tone, or to take the infant in their arms, will 
 comfort it, bringing back the joyful sense of life — a word 
 which signifies active relation; — and, in its highest sense, 
 spiritual relation. Life, love, and liberty arc identical words 
 
GLIMPSES OF rSYCHOLOGY. 109 
 
 in their radical elements. There is no love without libertj', 
 nor fulness of life without love. 
 
 The liberty of man, or his freedom to will, though it gives 
 him the power to dash himself against antagonizing law, is 
 the proof of infinite love to man in the Creator, — a love 
 which must needs out measure all the evil he can do himself 
 or others ; for evil provokes others' love for our victims, and 
 is self-limited, by reason of the pain it brings, sooner or 
 later, on him who does it, and the desire for infinite love 
 which it defines and stimulates. 
 
 Man and nature are the contrasts which God connects and 
 harmonizes. He presents nature to the mind as immutable 
 law, but before the understanding is formed to apprehend 
 law. He cmparadises the child in the love of the mother. 
 In short, the human race embodies love to the soul, before 
 the universe (which embodies law) is yet apprehended. The 
 heart that apprehends love, is older than the mind which 
 apprehends law ; and it is because it is so, that man feels 
 free. When man becomes mere law to man, instead of 
 love, he feels he is enslaved. 
 
 These are the most practical truths for the kindergartner. 
 If these propositions are truths (and their evidence is the 
 explanation they give of the mysteries of sin and redemption, 
 both of which ai'e unquestionable facts of human history, 
 according to the testimony of all nations), then let her see to 
 it, that in her relation with the children of her charge, she 
 never so presents the law, as to obscure the love, which it is 
 the primal duty of men to embody and manifest to each 
 other. 
 
 But, on the other hand, do not keep back the law ; for 
 the law, too, is one expression of the Creator's being. What 
 is law? It is the order of the beauteous forms of things, 
 which, when appreciated as God's order, becomes a stepping 
 stone to his throne. For God proposes to share his throne 
 with us, if we may trust another primeval intuition of the 
 
200 GLIMPSES OF PSYCHOLOGY. 
 
 human mind, viz., that God commands man, male and 
 female, that is, men in equal social relation, to " have 
 dominion " over all creation, below man. 
 
 The human being not only craves liberty and love in- 
 stinctively, but law also; he "feels the weight of chance 
 desires," and "longs for a repose that ever is the same.'* 
 This is the rationale of FroebeFs method in the occupations ; 
 he suggests the child's action, sometimes by interrogation 
 merely, instead of directing it peremptorily. He asks the 
 child, when he has done one thing, what is the opposite? 
 which itself suggests the combination of opposites, that im- 
 mediately produces a symmetrical effect. The child enjoys 
 the symmetry all the more, if he feels as if he personally 
 produced it. This is the secret of his love of repetition. 
 He wants to see if by the same means he can again produce 
 the same effect. He does the thing again and again, till he 
 feels that he does it all of himself. He does not want you 
 to help him even with your words (and you never should 
 help him except with words) . If a child acts from a sugges- 
 tion, he feels free, — but if he produces the same effect, or a 
 similar effect, without your suggestion, he has a still more 
 self-respecting sense of power ; and his will becomes more 
 consciously free the more he chooses to put on the harness 
 of order. 
 
 The kindergartner will sometimes have a child put under 
 her care whose will has been exasperated by arbitrary and 
 capricious treatment, or who has been made to act against 
 his inclination till he lias reacted, out of pure contrariness^ 
 as we say. This contrariness proves that he has been out- 
 raged ; perhaps in some instances the effect has been pro- 
 duced b}^ not feeding his mind with knowledge of law. The 
 very violence of the evil may show that he is an excep- 
 tionall}' fine child, with an enormous sense of power that he 
 does not know what to do with because the proper educa- 
 tional influence has failed him. In other cases obstinacy 
 
GLIMPSES OF PSYCHOLOGY. 201 
 
 may bo a reactiou against the vicious will of another, who, 
 instead of offering him the bread of law, has presented to 
 him the stone of his own stumbling. It is indispensable to 
 give the child law, as well as love ; but when you are doubt- 
 ful whether you can genially suggest the law, — at all events 
 express the love ; and never substitute for the law your own 
 will. The law which produces a good or beautiful effect, is 
 God's will ; your will is not creative of the child's will like 
 God's ; its best effect is to stimulate the antagonism of the 
 child's, when the latter is feeble, which it sometimes is by 
 reason of physical mal-organization, or by having been 
 crushed by overbearing management, or vitiated by selfish 
 caprice. 
 
 I may be told that if Fra3bers education is wholly of a 
 ;4enial, coaxing character, it fails of being an image of the 
 Divine Providence, which is an alternation of attractions and 
 antagonisms, speaking now in the music of nature, and now 
 in thunders and lightnings, not only cherishing the heart 
 witli love, but stimulating the will with law ; and be warned 
 not to enervate the character, by producing an aesthetic 
 luxury- of sentiment, by which the personal being shall stag- 
 nate in the worst kind of selfishness — the passive kind. 
 This objection might be pertinent, if the kindergarten were 
 to be protracted beyond the era to which Froebel limits it. 
 Certainly the time comes, when the finite will should be 
 antagonized, if need be, by the law of universal humanity. 
 The purest, most loving, most disinterested will known to 
 human history, recognized that there might be a wise7^ will, 
 not to be doubted as still more loving ; and said, " Not my 
 will, but Thine be done," — "Into Thy hands I commend 
 my spirit" (my free causal power). But let the kiuder- 
 gartner remember she is not infinitely wise and good, and 
 beware of enacting the sovereign judge. There is no doubt 
 that an exclusively cherishing tenderness should be the law 
 of the nursery, with no antagonism whatever, because at 
 
202 GLIMPSES OF PSYCHOLOGY. 
 
 that age it is a wise self-assertion which we wish to develop. 
 We therefore act for the infant, having secured his acting 
 with us by our genial encouragement. But this is no argu- 
 ment for continuing to act for him, when he can act with 
 consciousness of an individual hfe. We must not prolong 
 babyhood into the kindergarten ; or, at least, we must begin 
 to engraft personal consciousness upon it, b}' playing little 
 antagonisms merely. And so, it is no argument against the 
 play of kindergarten that it does mature men. Let the 
 children play with complete earnestness, but, as Plato says, 
 " according to laws," and they will all the more likely seek 
 laws when they come into wider relations. 
 
 The development of the consciousness of man is serial. 
 In the nursery we coax the child to exercise the various 
 muscles b}' playfully duplicating their action ; we make him 
 make believe walk, impressing his senses, as it were, with the 
 whole operation as an object. The child first experiences 
 the pleasure of movement, then desires to move for the sake 
 of renewing this pleasure ; then enjoys your helping him to 
 do what he has not yet the bodily strength and skill to ac- 
 complish ; and finally wills to take up his body and make his 
 first independent step. This is the first crisis in the history 
 of his individuality, and every mother knows it is the cheer 
 of her magnetizing faith that enables him to pass through it. 
 He then repeats the action intentionally, simply because he 
 can; enjoying the exertion he makes all the more if, by your 
 care, he has not begun to walk too soon and experienced the 
 pain of numerous falls, from want of guardian arms and 
 supporting hands. Such pains disturb and haunt his fancy, 
 and dishearten him. Courage and serene joy give strength 
 and enterprise to activity. 
 
 The nursery and kindergarten education are the prelimi- 
 nary processes which foreshadow all the processes of the 
 Divine Providence. Therefore, even in the nurser}' we play 
 antagonizing processes. We heighten the child's enjoyment 
 
GLIMPSES OF PSYCHOLOGY. 203 
 
 by mciking him conscious of isolation a moment, to restore, 
 as it were, with a shout, the delightful sense of relation ; for 
 the bab^' likes to have a handkerchief thrown over his head 
 unexpectedly, and suddenly withdrawn again and again. So 
 we sometimes pretend to let him fall, and just when he is 
 about to cry with alarm, catch him again and kiss him. 
 
 Froebel in his nursery plays has several of this nature ; and 
 as children gix)w older they play antagonisms spontaneously, 
 which are beneficial just so far as they elicit the conscious- 
 ness of individual power ; but are harmful if, proceeding too 
 far, they show its limitations painfully, and make the child 
 feel himself a victim. 
 
 In the kindergarten season various sensibilities are mani- 
 fest that have not shown themselves in the nursery, and 
 which arc premonitions of the destined dominion over mate- 
 rial nature, which at first so much dominates the child, and 
 would destroy his body if you did not intervene with your 
 loving care. These are to be mothered in the kindersjart- 
 ner's heart till they become conscious desires, informing 
 and directing his will, which is encouraged and strengthened 
 — if it is never superseded by your will — until he shall 
 begin to realize his personal responsibility. Then, as he 
 took his body into his own keeping when he began to run 
 alone, so now he will take his character into his own hands 
 to educate, and he will do it all the more certainly and ener- 
 getically, if he feels you to be an all-helping, all-cherishing, 
 all-inspiring friend, which you must needs be if you are open 
 to feel and wise to know God's love to you, in making you 
 His vicegerent to give glimpses, at least, of the immeasurable 
 love of God, in giving the inexorable laws of nature, for the 
 fulcrum of the power that He pours into His children in the 
 form of will ; and which obeys Him just in proportion as it 
 keeps its freedom to alter and alter and alter, till there is no 
 longer any evil to be conscious of, and men shall have got 
 the dominion over nature, which consists in using it for all 
 
204 GLIMPSES OF PSYCHOLOGY. 
 
 generous purposes, in a universal mutual understanding with 
 one another. To be in the progressive attainment of this 
 high destin}', is the growing happiness of man ; a happiness 
 which must ever have in it that element of victory^ which 
 distinguishes the eternal life of Christ from the nirwana of 
 Buddha. 
 
 MORAL SENTIMENT. 
 
 We have been asked by one of the students of Froebel's 
 art and science, what books we should recommend to help 
 her to a fuller knowledge of the subjects on which wc gave a 
 few hints in our first and second paper of Glimpses, 
 
 In reply, we would first say, that it is a needed prepara- 
 tion for any study of books on intellectual and moral phi- 
 losophy, to look back on our own moral history and mental 
 experience, and ask ourselves what was the process of our 
 moral growth, and the circumstances of the formation of our 
 opinions ; that is, what action of our relatives, guardians, 
 and companions, had the best — and what the worst — prac- 
 tical effects upon our characters ; what aided and what hin- 
 dered us? Every fault in our characters has its history, 
 having generally originated in the action of others upon us ; 
 sometimes their intentional action, which may have been 
 merely mistaken, or may have been wilfully selfish and ma- 
 lignant ; and sometimes an influence unconsciously exerted. 
 On the otlier hand, much of our life that has blest ourselves 
 and others, can be referred to spontaneous manifestations of 
 others, having no special reference to ourselves ; generous 
 sentiments uttered in felicitous words, generous acts re- 
 corded in history, or done in the privacy of domestic life ; 
 great truths bodied forth in imaginative poetry, over which 
 our young hearts mused t'll the fire burned. 
 
GLIMPSES OF PSYCHOLOGY. 205 
 
 This empirical knowledge of the great nature which we 
 share, is a IWiug nucleus that will give vital meaning to any 
 true words with which scientific treatises on the mind are 
 written ; and a power to judge whether the writer is talking 
 about facts of life, or mere abstractions, out of which have 
 died all spiritual substance, leaving only "a heap of empty 
 boxes." In no department of study are we more liable to 
 take words for things than in this. Abstraction is the source 
 of all the false philosophy and theology which has distracted 
 the world. Generalizations are of no aid — but a delusion 
 and a snare — unless the mental and moral phenomena, from 
 which they are derived, have been the writer's experiences, 
 personal or sympathetic. Such experiences are as substan- 
 tial as material things, to say the least ; and even the}' do 
 not do justice to the whole truth, which is — if we may so 
 express it — the vital experience of God. Hence is the 
 Living "Word to which human abstractions can never do 
 justice ; being, indeed, but the refuse of thought, " a weight 
 to be laid aside " and forgotten, like a work done, as we 
 stretch forward to the prize of truth, which is our *' high 
 calling." 
 
 In Book II. chapter vii. of Campbell's PJiilosophy of BlieU 
 oric, there is a section headed, " Why is it that nonsense so 
 often escapes being detected, both by the writer and reader ? " 
 It explains with great perspicuity the uses and abuses of 
 our faculty of abstraction, which is not a spiritual, but merely 
 an intellectual faculty. I would commend this essay (and 
 indeed, for several reasons, the whole book) to a student of 
 intellectual philosophy. A great deal may be learned upon 
 this subject, also, from an Essay on Language, printed a 
 second time with some other papers, by Phillips & Sampson, 
 Boston, in 1857, and probably still to be found in old book- 
 stores, if it be not reprinted by its author, R. L. Hazard. 
 
 On the subject of my second paper of Glimpses the 
 same author has written two books, one published by D. 
 
20G GLIMPSES OF PSYCHOLOGY. 
 
 Appleton, in New York, in 18G4, The Freedom of the 
 Mind in Willing ; or, Every Being that wills, a Creative First 
 Cause; and in 1869, Lee & Shepard, Boston, publislied, as 
 supplement, Two Letters on Causation and Freedom in Will- 
 ing, addressed to John Stuart Mill, with an Appendix on the 
 Existence of Matter, and our Notions of Infinite Space} 
 
 INDrV^IDUAL FREEDOM TO WILL. 
 
 If the spontaneous will of man, and its heart with its latent 
 love, hope, and sense of beauty and justice, are without date, 
 
 ** An eye among the bHnd, 
 That deaf and silent reads the eternal deep, 
 Haunted forever by the eternal mind," 
 
 yet there is no doubt that the human understanding, as well 
 as the body, begins in time, and gradually identifies the in- 
 dividual for communication with other individuals of its 
 kind. The beginning of the human understanding is in the 
 impressions of an environing universe, against which the 
 sensibility reacts, and by this activity develops the organs 
 of sense, which are the connection of those two great con- 
 
 1 In the first of these last two books, Mr. Hazard has made an ex- 
 amination of Edwards on the Will , and tlie only satisfactory reply to 
 his argument for Necessity ever made. Very early in lif^, the task of 
 answering Edwards was given him, by the late William E. Channing, 
 D.D , who read his first edition of Language^ and was so much 
 struck with the metaphysical genius displayed in it, that he sought out 
 the anonymous author on purpose to make this suggestion. He found 
 him a clerk in his father's great manufactory, to whose business he 
 afterwards succeeded, and he was engaged in it until he was an old 
 man. All his books are a proof that business may be as good a dis- 
 ciplinarian of the higher intellect as scholastic education, to say the 
 least. 
 
GLIMPSES OF PSYCHOLOGY. 207 
 
 trasts, the soul and the outward universe. For perceptions 
 of sense are the instrumentality by which the will vivifies 
 the heart, so disposing the particulars of the surrounding 
 universe as to give the definite form of thoughts to conscious- 
 ness. The human being has no absolute knowledge like the 
 lower animals, who are passive instrumentality of God to 
 certain finite ends below the plane of spirituality. Created 
 for the infinite ends of intelligence, and free communion with 
 one another and God, men need to become conscious of the 
 whole process of their own being, and do so by a gradual 
 conversation with God, who is forever saying, by the uni- 
 verse, which is his speech, I am. And here education begins 
 its offices, by helping man to reply Tiiou art, which he does 
 by his legitimate art. But no one man can utter the thou art 
 of humanity adequately. It takes all humanity forever and 
 ever to do so ; and it does not do so but just so far as the 
 men who compose it are in mutual understanding and com- 
 munion with each other. Therefore each child must be 
 taken by the hand by those already conscious, and led to 
 realize his own consciousness by learning that of his fellows. 
 
 In the action and reaction of the individual with his special 
 environment, he comes to distinguish himself from that which 
 gives him pleasure and pain, and he will be attracted to the 
 former, and repelled from the latter ; and thus come to dis- 
 criminate outward things from each other. The observation 
 and discrimination of the particulars of nature is thinking. 
 Sensuous impressions are the raw material of thoughts, but 
 discrimination and classification of things according to their 
 similarities, is the operation of thought. 
 
 Education has an ofl[ice in both the accumulation of sensu- 
 ous impressions and the operation of thinking. The mother 
 and nurse of each child must so order the objects about 
 him, that his organs shall be properly impressed, and not 
 overtaxed, because only so can they grow to be a good in- 
 strumentality for receiving even more delicate impressions. 
 
208 GLIMPSES OF PSYCHOLOGY. 
 
 A tender sympathy for the uuconscious little one, who is 
 gradually coming to identify himself, and love, — such as 
 only a mother can have in the greatest perfection, — are the 
 special qualifications of the educator at this stage. Such a 
 knowledge of nature's laws and order, as may enable the 
 educator to lead the child's activity according to law and 
 order, can alone help the child to reproduce, on his finite 
 plane, an image of God's creative action. The educator 
 who should succeed the nurse is the kindergartner, who, 
 without lacking the sympathetic affection of the nurse, must 
 add a knowledge of nature both material and spiritual, so 
 that she may bring these opposites into their right connection 
 with each other. 
 
 She will therefore lead the child to produce something that 
 shall serve as a ground for the operation of thinking. In- 
 stead of letting the blind will spend its energy in wild and 
 aimless motion, she will present a desirable aim to attain, 
 which will produce an effect that shall satisfy the heart, and 
 produce an object that shall engage the attention, and stimu- 
 late to a reproduction of it, until it is thoroughly known, not 
 only in its natural properties, but in the law of its being, 
 which was the child's own method of producing the thing. 
 
 The genesis of the understanding, then, is, first, sensuous 
 impression, which, reproducing itself intentionally, becomes, 
 secondly, perception ; and, thirdly, an adapting of means to 
 ends, and thereby rising into judgment and knowledge. To 
 get understanding precedes getting knowledge, which is the 
 special work of the understanding when it is developed. 
 
 There is another faculty of the individual, besides under- 
 standing, and which is to be discriminated from it — fancy. 
 Vivid and clear sensuous impressions are the foundation of 
 fancy, as well as of understanding. But the will, acting 
 among these impressions in a wild and sovereign way, is 
 fancy ; while the will arranging impressions according to the 
 order of nature, is understanding. Froebel has provided for 
 
GLIMPSES OF PSYCHOLOGY. 209 
 
 the development of the uudcrstandiug the occupations, as he 
 calls the regular production of forms, transient and perma- 
 nent Nothing can be produced which satisfies the {Esthetic 
 sense, except by following the laws of creation. To analyze 
 these productions will give experimental understanding of 
 those laws. In superintending the occupations, the kinder- 
 gartner must, therefore, see that the child does things in the 
 right order, and gives an account of what he does in the right 
 words ; for words, the first works of human art, have a great 
 deal to do with the development of the understanding, lifting 
 man into a sphere above that of the mere animal. After a 
 thing is made, or an effect produced and named, it must be 
 made a subject for analysis ; and it can easily be made so, 
 because children's attention is easily conciliated to what they 
 themselves have done or produced. Putting their own action 
 into a thing, makes it interesting to them ; and they can 
 make an exhaustive analysis of it, beuause, in addition to its 
 appearances, they know the law of its being, which was their 
 own method, and the cause of its being, which was their own 
 motive. From analyzing their own works, children can, in 
 due time, be led to analyze works of nature. And here the 
 kindergartner has ^reat room for the exercise of judgment, 
 in the selection of suitable objects. 
 
 Froebel advised that objects for lessons should be taken 
 from the vegetable creation; and that children should be 
 interested in planting seeds and watching growth, becoming 
 acquainted with its general conditions, observing which are 
 within the scope of their own powers to provide, and which 
 are beyond human power ; thus leading the understanding 
 through nature, outward and inward, to God. 
 
 If we see that the work done is artistic, and that the ob- 
 jects of nature analyzed are beautiful, this culture of the 
 understanding may refine and elevate the taste, and beautify 
 the fancy. 
 
 For the fancy is to be carefully cherished by the kinder- 
 
210 GLIMPSES OF PSYCHOLOGY. 
 
 gartner. It is not amenable to direct influence perhaps, but 
 not beyond an indirect influence. The soundness of the 
 understanding is conducive to a beautiful play of fancy, 
 which is a peculiarly human faculty ; for we have not a par- 
 ticle of evidence that any animal below man has this kind of 
 thinking, which delights in transcending the facts of nature 
 in its creations, and sometimes sets the laws of nature at 
 defiance. But we must defer to another paper the many 
 things we have to say in regard to the imagination and its 
 culture. 
 
 CONSCIENCE. 
 
 We have given a few hints by way of answering the ques- 
 tions on psychology, which must come np, to be considered 
 by a kindergartner who' is intent on understanding the " harp 
 of a thousand strings," from which it is her duty to bring 
 out the music. 
 
 We have found that the human being comes into the world 
 with an aesthetic na;ture, which is to be vivified by the pres- 
 entation of the beauties of nature and art, in such a wa}' 
 as to insure reaction of the will in creations of fancy ; for 
 only so can sensibility to beauty be prevented from degen- 
 erating into sensuality. If the fancy remains wholly- subjec- 
 tive, it loses its childish health and leads astray. It should 
 have objective embodiment in song, dance, and artistic ma- 
 nipulation of some sort. Now, artistic manipulation of any 
 kind necessitates the examination of natural elements and 
 the discovery of the laws of production, which are, of course, 
 identical with the organic laws of nature that bear witness 
 to an intelligent Creator. 
 
 To excite the human understanding to appreciate names, 
 and classify things for use and giving pleasure, it is neces- 
 sary to present things to children gradually, first singl}', and 
 
GLIMPSES OF PSYCHOLOGY. 211 
 
 then in simple rhythmical combinations, so that they may 
 have time to find themselves personally, and not be over- 
 whelmed with a multitude of impressions. A real lover of 
 children will quickly find out that they like to take time 
 '^ playing with things," as they call it; and that there is a 
 special pleasure in discovering differences in things ; that a 
 new distinct perception of any relation of things delights the 
 child, as the discovery of a principle delights the adult mind. 
 The fanciful plays of the kindergarten, whether sedentary or 
 moving, cultivate the imagination, the understanding, and 
 the physical powers in harmony, and more than this, they 
 cultivate the heart and conscience, because the moving plays 
 have for their indispensable condition numbers of their equals, 
 and everything they make is intended for others. The pres- 
 entation of persons, as having the same needs and desires 
 of enjoyment as themselves, proves sufficient to call into 
 consciousness the heart and conscience, just as immediately 
 and inevitably as the presentation of nature and art calls 
 into activity the understanding and imagination. 
 
 Because nature and human kind are so vast that, as a whole 
 they daunt the young mind, even to the point of checking its 
 growth, it is necessary that some one, who has had time to 
 analyze it in some degree, should call attention to points ; 
 and it is the consummate art of education to know what 
 points to touch, so that the mind shall make out the oc- 
 tave ; for, unless it does so, it will not act to purpose. As 
 exercise of the limbs is necessary to physical development, 
 and the act of perceiving, understanding, and fancying, with 
 actual manipulation of nature, is necessary to intellectual 
 development ; so is kindness and justice acted out, to the 
 development of the social and moral nature or conscience. 
 
 But there is something else in man than relations to exter- 
 nal nature and fellow-man. This self-determining being, 
 who moves, perceives, understands, fancies, loves, and feels 
 moral responsibility to the race in which he finds himself a 
 
212 GLIMPSES OF PSYCHOLOGY. 
 
 living member, is only consciously happy when he is mag- 
 nanimous, which he can only be, if he feels himself a free 
 power in the bosom of infinite love ; in short, a son of th^e 
 Father of all men ! " We are the offspring of God '' is the 
 inspiration alike of heathen poet and Christian apostle. 
 
 As the psychological condition of the human love which 
 is man's social happiness, is that sense of individual want 
 and imperfection which stimulates the will to seek the mother 
 and brother ; so the psychological condition of the piety 
 which makes man's beatitude, is the sense of social imper- 
 fection, in respect both to moral purit}' and happiness, stim- 
 ulating the will to seek a Father of all spirits. The more we 
 love, the more we feel the need of God. But is God nothing 
 but " an infinite sigh at the bottom of the heart," as Feuer- 
 bach, the holiest of infidels, sadly says? or, as in thinking, 
 we discover the entity we name I ; so in loving, do we not 
 discover God, or rather does not God reveal Himself to us, 
 as Essential Substance ? Wordsworth declares that 
 
 " Serene will be our days and bright. 
 And happy will our nature be, 
 When love is an unerring light, 
 
 And joy its own security ; 
 And blest are they, who in the main, 
 This faith even now do entertain. 
 Live in the spirit of this creed, 
 Yet find another strength according to their need." 
 
 " That other strength " is to be found, as he had already 
 sung in that same great song, in Duty — ' ' daughter of the 
 voice of God," 
 
 " Victory and Law 
 When empty terrors overawe ; 
 From vain temptations doth set free. 
 And calms the weary strife of frail humanity ! " 
 
 Conscience, then, is the soul's witness, first of the relation 
 of the individual to the human race ; and ultimately, of the 
 
GLIMPSES OF PSYCHOLOGY. 213 
 
 reliition of the human race to God ; and it must be inspired 
 with knowledge of the sonship of the human race to the 
 Universal Father, or human life is bottomless despair. But 
 with that knowledge which God must give (since man can- 
 not reach it with his own understanding) he shall be able, 
 even on the cross, to love the most ignorant brother infi- 
 nitely ; and infinitely to trust that the Father of all will justify 
 his spirit in acting accordingly. 
 
APPENDIX. 
 
 Note A, to Lecture I. 
 
 In 1872 the first training school for kindergartners was 
 founded in England bj the Manchester Kindergarten Assoc. 
 
 To the prospectus is subjoined the following statement : — 
 
 The aim of the kindergarten system of training, intended 
 for young children up to the age of seven, when school- 
 teaching proper should begin, is to prepare for all subsequent 
 education. A short examination of the system will show 
 that it is in idea far superior to any other method of early 
 training, while experience proves that its pupils acquit them- 
 selves well even under plans most dissimilar. The theory of 
 the kindergarten is that every exertion of the faculties, 
 whether of body or mind, will be healthful and pleasurable, 
 so long as such exertion takes place without compulsion, 
 without appeal to selfish motives, with no more than neces- 
 sary restraint. The experience of parents and teachers may 
 be appealed to as proving that children enjoy their employ- 
 ments most, and learn best, when associated in numbei^. 
 
 The kindergarten, therefore, gathers children together in 
 numbers, which vary with class and other circumstances, 
 and proceeds to exercise, on a plan most carefully reasoned 
 out, all limbs and muscles of the body by marching, gym- 
 nastics, and regulated games ; to practise all the senses, and 
 tastes that depend directly upon the senses, by drawing, 
 singing, modelling in clay, and many most beautiful " occu- 
 pations," which in addition arouse invention — one of the 
 highest human faculties. The intellectual powers, being in 
 a rudimentary condition, are less directly called into action ; 
 
APPENDIX. 215 
 
 but the faculties of number and form, along with skill of 
 hand, are so developed that the learning of " the three R's '* 
 becomes incredibly easj. Above all, good feeling is exer- 
 cised and evil feeling checked, by happy social life, in which 
 the tender plants of the kindergarten see that each one's 
 happiness depends upon all, and that of all on each. 
 
 Sedulous attention is paid to the effect of each employment 
 upon children of different temperaments. Sanitary condi- 
 tions are most carefully observed, and unflagging interest is 
 secured by frequent changes of occupation. 
 
 Wherever the kindergarten has been fairly tried, its results 
 have been lively enjoyment by the little pupils of their 
 " school " hours, and readiness to receive not as drudgery, 
 but with delight, all opportunities of acquiring knowledge. 
 This readiness, it is believed, would less often change into 
 a hatred of lessons, if the subsequent school-teaching did 
 not too commonly despise those indications of natural taste 
 and fitness which FroDbel, in his system, has carefully inter- 
 preted and obeyed. The kindergartens for the poor, already 
 established at Queen Street, Salford, and in the Workpeo- 
 ple's Hall, Pendleton, — where visitors are at all times most 
 heartily welcomed, — will convince any one that this system 
 is able to give a truly humanizing and religious training to 
 children of the least favored class, gathered in large num- 
 bers even out of very neglected homes. By inspecting 
 these schools also, intelligent persons will form an idea of 
 the ingenuity and beauty of the processes by which this 
 natural and simple training is effected. Thus too will be 
 understood, that the kindergarten system, which in relation 
 to its pupils is the simplest and easiest possible because it 
 travels along, not athwart, their natural tastes, is, as respects 
 its professors, very far removed indeed from every- day 
 facility and rule of thumb. It demands in those who aspire 
 to teach, a sincere love of children and an earnest devotion 
 to duties which bring much pleasure when well performed. 
 
216 APPENDIX. 
 
 and it demands besides that they be willing to give up 
 sufficient time and labor to become thoroughly instructed in 
 the principles, and sufficiently practised in the use, of a 
 machinery which, while beautifully simple in idea, is com- 
 plicated in detail. A great and increasing demand for 
 teachers thoroughly trained in this system exists, as well 
 for families as for kindergarten schools proper, and for 
 infant schools commonly so called. To supply this demand 
 is the purpose of the training school. 
 
 Note B, to Page 81. 
 Letter from Michelet to the Baroness Mareiiholfz von Biiloiv, 
 
 March 27, 1859. 
 By a stroke of genius Frcobel has found what the wise 
 men of all times have sought in vain, — the solution of the 
 problem of human education. And again : Your first 
 explanation made it clear to me that Frcebel has laid the 
 necessary basis for a new education for the present and 
 future. Froebel looks at human beings in a new light, and 
 finds the means to develop them according to natural laws, 
 as heretofore has never been done. I am your most faithful 
 advocate, and speak constantly with friends and acquaint- 
 ances about this gi'eat work that you have undertaken. 
 Several journalists and wnters will mention it in their papers. 
 Dispose of all my power to aid you. The ambassador of 
 Hayti, Monsieur Ardoin, minister of instruction, is ready 
 to return to Port au Prince, and wishes to make your 
 acquaintance. He will come to see you to-morrow. For 
 the inhabitants of that island, in process of reorganization, 
 Froebel's method may do a great deal. I have asked several 
 persons to aid in this work. Niffner and Dolfus are writing, 
 at present, a great work on education, and will be happy to 
 give a place to your cause. I send you a letter for Isodore 
 Cohen ; you must see him. You, personally, can do more 
 
APPENDIX. 217 
 
 than all speeches, recommendations, and writings together. 
 1 shall come to you shortly to hear more about Froebel. I 
 would like to have a comparison drawn between him and 
 Pestalozzi. Your written communications interest me highly. 
 Let me have some German works about Frcebel. I read 
 German and know how to guess at incomprehensible things. 
 I would like to know about the continuation of his method 
 for more advanced years, especially for girls, and await 
 impatiently the appearance of your manual. The more I 
 investigate the heads of children of different ages, the more 
 important Froebel's method appears to me, as it begins in 
 early childhood, when the most important changes in the 
 brain take place. All my sympathies are with your work. 
 
 Letter from the Abbe Miraud^ author of voluminous works, 
 one of them being " La Democratie et la Catholicisme.'* 
 
 July, 1858. 
 We have to fulfil a great mission in common. I shall 
 be most happy to procure for Froebers theory, which 1 
 accept fully ^ a hearing. To appreciate this theory in all its 
 grandeur, richness, and utility, the shade of pantheism it 
 seems to contain is no hindrance to me ; it seems insepara- 
 ble from the German mind. I accept the obligation to work 
 for the ideas of Froebel according to my ability, of course 
 within the limits of orthodox Catholicism, to which I am 
 devoted from faith and reason. You must certainly go with 
 me to Rome, that we may work together there. If you 
 resolve to do so, I will meet you at Orleans. You would 
 find in Rome a good opportunity for propaganda. My 
 friends there would aid us, but without your presence noth- 
 ing can be done. Italy needs a regeneration by education. 
 Let us work where the most rapid diffusion is certain. 
 
218 APPENDIX. 
 
 Mons, A. Guyard^ a Parisian author writes : 
 
 June 14, 1857. 
 The more I hear you about Froebers method, the more 
 my interest increases, and the deeper my conviction becomes 
 that by this means a basis is laid for a new education for 
 the salvation of humanity. Accept my warmest and most 
 sincere wishes for the propagation of Froebers method. He 
 is great, perhaps the greatest philosopher of our time, and 
 has found in you what all philosophers need, that is, a woman 
 who understands him, who clothes him with flesh and blood, 
 and makes him alive. I think, I believe, indeed, that an 
 idea in order to bear fruit, must have a father and a mother. 
 Hitherto, all ideas have had only fathers. As FroebeFs 
 ideas are so likely to find mothers, they will have an immense 
 success. When the ideas of the future have become alive 
 in devoted women, the face of the world will be changed. 
 
 Lamarche of Paris ^ philanthropist and writer on social and 
 religious subjects^ after listening to the lectures upon Froe^ 
 hel given by Madam Marenholtz in Paris, wrote on : • — 
 
 Paris, March 4, 1856. 
 Your last lecture has unmistakably shown that Froebel's 
 method, in a religious point of view, surpasses everything 
 that has hitherto been done in education. And this is the 
 main point from which a method of education is to be judged 
 for its aim is to awaken love to God and man — the founda- 
 tion upon which Christianity rests. Education has hitherto 
 done little to awaken this love of man in the 3'oung soul, 
 from which all piety flows. This is the reason we find so 
 much skepticism and indifference in human society, and 
 which is the source of most of the existing miser}', and of 
 the want of order and lawfulness. These sad results are 
 the condemnations of those methods of education that sup- 
 press the human faculties, or force them into wrong channels, 
 
APPENDIX. 219 
 
 or arbitrarily superimpose something instead of aiding free 
 development. It is the sad mistake of our moralists who, 
 without faith iu a Heavenly Father, do not understand 
 human nature, and replace revealed religion with human 
 tenets. . . . Fra3bel has found the missing truth, in first 
 awakening the child's senses and capacities by the simplest 
 means, and making him feel in nature the loving Creator, 
 before he taxes his intellect with i*eligious dogmas, which 
 are beyond the intellect of childhood, and only confuse it. 
 To lead it through the love of God, the Heavenly Father of 
 us all, to the love of the neighbor, by acting and doing, is 
 the natural and simple way which Froebel has pointed out, 
 and we shall owe it to him, if before our children arc four 
 or five years old, before they can read books, they learn the 
 great law of humanity. Love to God and the neighbor. 
 
 Again : Frocbel's discovery, or invention, furnishes the 
 means to follow the natural order of all development for 
 human beings, by which alone they will come to the knowl- 
 edge of, and at last to union with, their Heavenly Father. 
 This is the way which Christianity prescribed eighteen hun- 
 dred years ago, but into which education has not understood 
 how to lead us, because it has put statutes instead of actual 
 experience, and has not let the study of nature, as the work 
 of God, precede statutes. Froebel leads education again into 
 the path intended by God, which, in the course of universal 
 development, will lead to the happiness of the individual, as 
 well as of the whole of society. In the human being itself 
 are the rich mines, the development of which our false modes 
 of education have hitherto made impossible. May mothers 
 have faith in God, the Heavenly Father of their children, 
 and that he has given them the capacity for good, which 
 will crush the head of the serpent, and bring the kingdom of 
 God upon earth. 
 
220- APPENDIX. 
 
 Note C, to Page 84. 
 
 In the second part of my Guide to Kindergarten and 
 Moral Training of Infancy^ published by E. Steiger, 25 Park 
 Place, Xew York, is an account of how I actually first began 
 to teach to read on this method, that may be of practical aid 
 to one teaching After Kindergarten — icliat ? The first 
 kindergartner who tried the method, in the course of the 
 first half -hour led her children to write on their slates (in 
 imitation of what she wrote on the blackboard, letter by 
 letter, giving the power, not the name, of each as she wrote) 
 words enough to involve the whole alphabet ; namel}', cars,, 
 go^ bells, sing, dizzy, old, hen, fixes, vest, jelly, jars, puss, 
 Tcitty. The words were in a column, and after they were 
 written, the children recognized each word, pronouncing it 
 right when she pointed to it on the blackboard. But she was 
 surprised the next day to find they remembered every one, 
 and they had so clear an idea of the con-espondence of the 
 letters and sounds, that, long before they had finished writing 
 at her dictation the words of the first vocabulary, they read 
 at sight any word of it, no matter how many syllables it had. 
 In fact, at the end of the first week she wrote and asked me 
 for the groups of exceptions, and, beginning with the smallest 
 group, which is most exceptional, in a few weeks they could 
 all read. 
 
 But I would not advise this rapid acquisition of the whole 
 language in so short a time. It is better to pause on the 
 meaning of the words, — not asking them to define them by 
 other words, but asking them to make sentences in which 
 they put the word, which will show whether or not they un- 
 derstand its meaning. A great deal more than mere pro- 
 nunciation may be taught children while learning to read. 
 
APPENDIX. 221 
 
 Note D, to Page 102. 
 
 History of Printing, an unfinished manuscript of which he 
 found in the Antiquarian Library of Worcester. 
 
 Note E, to Page 110. 
 
 The stor}', as I paraphrased it, was this. The drop of 
 water speaks, " Once I lived with hundreds, and hundreds, 
 :nid hundreds of brothers and sisters, in the great ocean, 
 ['here we all took hold of hands, and played with each 
 other ; and the winds played with us, and took us up on their 
 backs, making us into little waves and great waves. But 
 sometimes, when the winds were not there, we would spread 
 ourselves out smooth like a looking-glass, and look up into 
 the sky ; and the moon and the stars would look down upon 
 us, and the ocean would look just like the sky. 
 
 ''And we wanted to go up into the sky; and so, when 
 the sun sent down his sunbeams, and the moon sent down 
 her moonbeams, and the stars sent down their starbeams, 
 some of us would jump up on their backs, and ride up into 
 the sky. But soon they would be tired of us, and shake us 
 off; and down we fell, and then we would catch hold of 
 hands, and make ourselves into clouds ; and when the clouds 
 got to be so heavy that the air could not hold them up, we 
 would let go of hands, and fall down in drops of rain. But 
 sometimes the clouds would stay up, and sail round ; and 
 one day the cloud that I was in, bumped up against a moun- 
 tain, and we all fell out, down into the little holes of the 
 mountain, and I soon found I was alone in the dark ; but I 
 saw a light a little ways off, and so I ran along and came to 
 the light, which was outside the mountain. And as I stood 
 there, I saw a great many of my sisters and brothers stand- 
 ing at just such holes as I was looking out of ; and when we 
 saw each other, we burst out laughing, and ran to each other, 
 and took hold of hands, and made a little brook that ran 
 
222 APPENDIX. 
 
 down the sides of the mountain into a meadow full of 
 flowers ; and we ran about the meadow, watering the roots 
 of all the flowers to make them grow, for we wanted to do 
 as much good as we could ; and then we thought we would 
 run on, and see if we could not find our old home in the 
 ocean, where we left hundreds of brothers and sisters ; but 
 as I got rather tired, I thought I would stop and rest awhile 
 on this flower-leaf. But now I am rested. So good by ; I 
 will jump off, and run home as fast as I can with the rest." 
 
 This story I had to tell over and over again at the time, 
 which I did in the same words ; and now, when I again 
 repeated it in the same words, he liked to hear it over and 
 over again, looking at the picture in the book while I told it. 
 
 Note F, to Page 167. 
 
 I here insert the version of the Lord's Pra3'er and the Song 
 of the Weather^ which have been found so effective in the 
 religious nurture, and which, if used in the simple, unsancti- 
 monious manner I have so earnestly suggested, will preclude 
 the necessity of talking to the children in prose. These songs 
 explain themselves to the child's heart and imagination. 
 
 Our Fatuek, who in Heaven art, 
 
 Thy name we dearly love ; 
 We'd do thy will with all our heart, 
 
 As done in heaven above. 
 Give us this day our daily bread, 
 
 Forgive the wrong we do, 
 And we'll not mind when treated ill, 
 
 That we may be like you. 
 Help us avoid temptation's snare ; 
 
 Deliver us from evil ways ; 
 For thine's the kingdom and the power. 
 
 All glory and all praise. 
 
APPENDIX. 223 
 
 SONG OF THE WEATHER. 
 
 Tnis is the way the snow comes down, 
 
 Softly, softly falling. 
 God, he giveth his snow like wool, 
 Fair, and white, and beautiful. 
 This is the way the snow comes down. 
 
 Softly, softly falling. 
 
 Chorus. 
 Wonderful, Lord, are all thy works, 
 
 Wheresoever falling; 
 All their various voices raise, 
 Speaking forth their Maker's praise. 
 Wonderful, Lord, are all thy works, 
 Wheresoever falling. 
 
 Tliis is the way the rain comes down, 
 
 Swiftly, swiftly falling; 
 So he sendeth his welcome rain. 
 On the field, and hill, and plain, 
 Tl)ia is the way the rain comes down. 
 Swiftly, swiftly falling. 
 
 {Repeat the chorus.) 
 
 This is the way the frost comes down. 
 
 Widely, widely falling ; 
 So it spreadeth all through the night, 
 Shining, cold, and pure, and bright, 
 This is the way the frost comes down, 
 
 Widely, widely falling. 
 
 (Chorus.) 
 
 This is the way the hail conies down, 
 
 Loudly, loudly falling ; 
 So it flicth beneath the cloud, 
 Swift, and strong, and wild, and loud. 
 This is the way the hail comes down. 
 
 Loudly, loudly falling. 
 
 (^Chorus.) 
 
221 APPENDIX. 
 
 Tliis is the way the cloud comes down. 
 
 Darkly, darkly falling ; 
 So it covers the shining blue, 
 Till no ray can glisten through, 
 This is the way the cloud comes down. 
 Darkly, darkly falling. 
 
 (Chorus.) 
 
 This is the way sunshine comes down, 
 
 Sweetly, sweetly falling ; 
 So it chaseth the cloud away, 
 So it waketh the lovely day. 
 This is the way sunshine comes down. 
 
 Sweetly, sweetly falling. 
 
 ( Chorus.) 
 
 This is the way rainbow comes round. 
 
 Brightly, brightly falling; 
 So it smileth across the sky. 
 Making fair the heavens on high, 
 This is the way rainbow comes down, 
 
 Brightly, brightly falling. 
 
 Chorus. 
 Wonderful, Lord, are all thy works, 
 
 Wheresoever falling; 
 All their various voices raise, 
 Spv^aking forth their Maker's praise. 
 Woni?erful, Lord, are all thy works, 
 
 Wh*resoever falling. 
 
 (The appropriate gestuve is spreading the arms, and, when 
 it is the rain or the hail, the children enjoy making the patter 
 on the table, — gently for the rair?. and louder for the hail.) 
 
 ;<. 
 
 Butler & Tanner, 
 
THE COMMITTEE OF THE 
 
 3ganehc6ter gindcrgarten J^dociation 
 
 Beg to Announce that the 
 
 Tt[AINlNG CLASSES FOI[ TEACHERS 
 
 Meet in the Afternoon at 
 
 CljonuD libbtu, g^Ic^niutini ^arli.Panx^ ester, 
 
 For Theoretical instruction in the following subjects : — 
 
 Drawing J. CLEGG, Esq. 
 
 Music .-..-- MISS WICHERN. 
 
 Theory and Application of the Kindergarten 
 
 System MISS SNELL. 
 
 Physiology and Laws of Health - - MISS CLEGHORN. 
 Science of Education - W. H. HERFORD, Esq., B.A. 
 Natural History and Physiography - F. J. WEBB, Esq. 
 Elements of Geometry - - - - MISS SNELL. 
 
 Botany MISS HERFORD. 
 
 Prartlcnl InAtrucllou is alTorded at Ihc IMoilel Kludcrgartca 
 lu llic Foreuooii. 
 
 <• FEES V FOR V THE •:♦ ABOVE. -5* 
 The Whole Course (per Term of Ten Weeks) - 5 Guineas. 
 Separate Classes (per term of Ten Hours) - 2J Guineas. 
 
 Students are expected to take the whole Course of Two Years ; 
 
 when withdrawal before the end of the course is necessary a Term's notice 
 
 is 7'equired, 
 
 A LIMITED NUMBER OF STUDENTS CAN BE RECEIVED AS BOARDERS BY THE HEAD MISTRESS. 
 
 CHARGE FOR BOARD AND LODGING - 44 GUINEAS PER ANNUM. 
 WEEKLY BOARDERS ZZ »» '» 
 
 Satisfactory References Required. 
 
F^0EBEIi ^eCIEW, 
 
 17, BUCKINGHAM STREET, STRAND. 
 JUrr^itrrnt: 
 
 Miss SHIRREFF. 
 
 Oscar Browning, Esq., M.A. 
 Rev. Canon Daniel, M.A. 
 J. G. Fitch, Esq., H.M. In- 
 spector of Training Colleges. 
 Prof, G. Carey Foster, B.A. 
 Dr. J. H. Gladstone, F.R.S. 
 
 Lady Goldsmid. 
 Mrs. W. Grey. 
 Friiulein Heerwart. 
 Prof. Meiklejohn, M.A. 
 Rev. R. H. Quick, M.A. 
 A. Sonnenschein, Esq. 
 
 Miss M. E. Bailey. 
 Miss Baker. 
 Miss Belcher. 
 Rev. A. Bourne. 
 Hon. Mrs. Buxton. 
 E. Cooke, Esq. 
 Miss S. Crombie. 
 Mrs. Fielden. 
 Miss Franks. 
 Mrs. Green. 
 Mrs. Law. 
 Miss E. Lord. 
 
 iTouttrtl : 
 
 Miss Lyschinska. 
 
 Miss E. A. Manning. 
 
 Mme. MiCHAELis. 
 
 H. K. Moore, Escj., B.Mus., 
 
 B.A. 
 J. S. Phillpoits, Esq. 
 Miss Kate Phillips. 
 Mrs. Romanes. 
 Rev. T. W. Sharpe. H.M.LS. 
 Miss Sim. 
 
 F. Storr, Esq., B.A. 
 Miss Kate Thornbury. 
 Miss Ward. 
 
 A. R. Price, Esq. 
 
 ?gon» ^rr rrtary : 
 
 C. G. Montefiore, Esq. 
 ]\Iiss Bayley. 
 
The Froebel Society 
 
 Wan formed in 1874 for the purpose of promoting co-operation 
 -among those engaged in Kindergarten work, of spreading the 
 knowledge and practice of the system, and of maintaining a 
 high standard of efficiency among Kindergarten Teachers. 
 
 AN EXAMINATION OF STUDENTS 
 
 Will be held in London in the month of July, for the Higher 
 and (this year only) for the Elementary Certificate. In December 
 next there will be an Examination for the Elementary Certificate 
 -only. 
 
 Under certain conditions the Council are prepared to hold 
 the Examinations at local centres. 
 
 ^ Ilcgrstrn for iVmtrcrgiirteii C^ivtbers 
 
 Has been opened at the Office of the Society. A small fee is 
 charged to those who api)ly. 
 
 Arrangements have been made by the Council for the 
 INSPECTION AND REGISTRATION OF KINDER- 
 -GARTENS upon certain conditions. 
 
 The Calendar of the Froehel Society, price 1/-, 
 
 <Dontains the Syllabus for the Examinations, and the Examination 
 Papers of 1886. 
 
 Further information can be obtained from the Secretary, at 
 the Office of the Society, 
 
 17, Buckingham Street, Strand. 
 
 The Office is open daily from 11 a.m. to 4 p.m., except 
 on Thursdays. 
 
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 FEB 2^98 
 
 JUL 1 6 1999 
 
 U. C. BCRKfcLtV 
 
 MAY 2 7 Z001 
 
 FEB 2 3 200B 
 
 12,000(11/95) 
 

 GENERAL LIBRARY - U.C. BERKELEY 
 
 BDDDQ17SEb 
 
 75 
 
 /^..... 
 
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