Ethical Teaching 
 
 of Froebel 
 
 
 6 — g 
 
 
 
 1 ' "5 
 1 3 ^^ 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 AT/f^y e/. LYSCHTNSKA 
 
 THERESE G. MONTEFIORE
 
 THE LIBRARY 
 
 OF 
 
 THE UNIVERSITY 
 
 OF CALIFORNIA 
 
 LOS ANGELES 
 
 Ex Lihris 
 
 SIR MICHAEL SADLER 
 
 ACQUIRED 1948 
 
 WITH THE HELP OF ALUMNI OF THE 
 
 SCHOOL OF EDUCATION
 
 -v, 
 
 
 ■ ■ 
 
 ■
 
 I
 
 I /

 
 THE 
 
 ETHICAL TEACHING 
 OF FROEBEL 
 
 AS GATHERED FROM HIS WORKS

 
 THE 
 
 ETHICAL TEACHING 
 OF FROEBEL 
 
 AS GATHERED FROM HIS WORKS 
 
 TWO ESSAYS 
 
 I. By MARY J. LYSCHINSKA 
 II. By THERESE G. MONTEFIORE 
 
 LONDON 
 KEGAN PAUL, TRENCH & CO. 
 
 i, PATERNOSTER SQUARE 
 1S90
 
 I Ul rights reserved.")
 
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 DEDICATED 
 
 BY GRACIOUS PERMISSION 
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 THE EMPRESS FREDERICK.
 
 PREFATORY NOTE. 
 
 IN the year 1887 the Froebel Society 
 offered a prize for the best essay upon 
 the subject of "Froebel's Ethical 
 Teaching, as gathered from his 
 works." The usual method of mottoes 
 was adopted. The judges (the Rev. 
 R. H. Quick, Professor Meiklejohn, 
 and Miss Snell) divided the prize 
 between two essays, which were 
 printed in the Journal of Education 
 during 1888, and by the kind permis- 
 sion of its editor are now republished 
 in this separate form. The first essay
 
 VI 11 PREFATORY NOTE. 
 
 is the work of Miss M. J. Lyschinska, 
 Superintendent of Method in Infant 
 Schools, under the London School 
 Board ; the second was written by 
 the late Mrs. Claude G. Montefiore. It 
 is hoped that the two together may 
 present a fairly complete account of 
 the subject with which they deal. 
 
 To the friends of its authoress the 
 second essay may also possess a 
 peculiar interest as the first and the 
 last literary fruits of a finely touched 
 spirit, whom death has taken from them 
 in the spring-time of her years. Yet 
 though her exposition of Froebel's 
 ethics shows here and there the traces 
 of a beginner in literary work, it was 
 no immature personality, of whom
 
 PREFATORY NOTE. IX 
 
 the memory, to those who knew 
 her well, remains behind. Of her 
 it might well be said, " TtXeitodnaa 
 Iv oXiyq iirXiipuxre \povovg fiaKpovq. 
 She, being perfected in a short time, 
 fulfilled a long time." 
 
 The proceeds from the sale of this book 
 will go to the Froebel Society.
 
 THE 
 
 ETHICAL TEACHING 
 
 OF FROEBEL, 
 
 AS GATHERED FROM HIS WORKS. 
 
 I. 
 
 By Mary J. Lyschinska.
 
 Introductory. 
 
 FRIEDRICH FROEBEL was primarily 
 a reformer in a field of action, not 
 in a domain of thought ; we must 
 not, therefore, look to his writings 
 for a scientifically built up system 
 of ethical theory in which the re- 
 lation of parts to whole is mapped 
 out with logical precision. To ex- 
 pect this is to mistake the nature 
 of his work. On the other hand, 
 all men of strong, consistent action 
 will be found to have a few convic- 
 tions of ethical significance. They 
 will hold a philosophy of life, of wide 
 or narrow range, as circumstances
 
 4 ETHICAL TEACHING. 
 
 permit ; but they will hold it firmly 
 as an energizing principle, as the 
 secret of their power. Considering 
 the striking deductions Froebel made 
 from his views concerning man's 
 nature and his relations to the 
 universe ; considering that as a 
 teacher and educator, the growth of 
 character was the object of his con- 
 stant observation and reflection ; is 
 it possible to say that Froebel taught 
 no ethical theory? Is it not rather 
 a matter of interest to show that the 
 practical measures he advocated have 
 deeper reasons than those of ex- 
 pediency ; that they lie in his views 
 concerning the constitution of man 
 and his relations to the world and 
 to his Maker? Nothing less than 
 this foundation could have enabled
 
 ETHICAL TEACHING. 5 
 
 a man to advocate measures and 
 carry them out when they were very 
 unfashionable ; nothing less could 
 have enabled a man to treat with 
 complete — perhaps not at all times 
 justifiable — indifference the prizes in 
 life which influence ordinary men. 
 
 We may, or we may not, agree with 
 Froebel's ethical views ; but only 
 when we have taken some pains to 
 master them, have we learnt to under- 
 stand the measure he himself put to 
 his own work. 
 
 Froebel's ethical teaching is of great 
 importance at the present time be- 
 cause there is a general concurrence 
 observable between the conclusions of 
 scientific thought, enlightened com- 
 mon sense, and Froebel's practice in 
 the field of education. On the one
 
 6 ETHICAL TEACHING. 
 
 hand, enlightened common sense re- 
 volts against the tyranny of a scho- 
 lastic age with its baneful legacy of 
 abstractions distasteful to youth and 
 ludicrously out of harmony with some 
 of the conditions of modern life. 
 Natural science has in its own lan- 
 guage preached a solemn sermon on 
 the same theme : Man is of the earth 
 earthy; at his peril let him disdain 
 the concrete environment to which 
 he owes the fashion of his being ; in 
 doing this he will be levelled in the 
 dust. Then we have Frederick 
 Froebel, a religious man, calmly 
 adopting in 1826 the conception of 
 evolution as a revelation of the deity, 
 and applying it — as Pestalozzi did 
 before him — to a body of facts very 
 different from those of physical
 
 ETHICAL TEACHING. 7 
 
 science. One cannot but be struck 
 with the firm hold these two men 
 had upon evolution as the key to 
 the facts of earliest infancy. The 
 microscopic gaze which Froebel 
 turned upon the dawnings of indi- 
 vidual mind is in harmony with his 
 own wider outlook upon the world 
 of living men, of history, and of 
 nature. These were to him but 
 parts of one vast whole ; to be 
 understood in any part they must 
 be seized in their reciprocal relations 
 and with inevitable reference to the 
 great goal of all things. A very 
 strongly marked characteristic of 
 Froebel's mental activity was a 
 craving to bring isolated things, 
 facts, into some general relation. 
 This seems to have been a strongly
 
 8 ETHICAL TEACHING. 
 
 marked feature of his moral, as of 
 his intellectual, nature. At a very 
 early age he derived a sense of peace 
 from the sudden revelation of a fit- 
 ness in things in nature,* while he 
 suffered intense moral anguish from 
 an unmotherly mother. In youth he 
 was intellectually rebellious against 
 much of the University teaching, 
 because facts were presented in such 
 a way that they had no meaning, no 
 more organic relation between them 
 than between the atoms of dust on 
 the king's highway. 
 
 This characteristic search for some 
 principle uniting phenomena has 
 sometimes led admirers of Froebel's 
 life and character to place him in the 
 category of philosophers, as if his 
 * Vol. i. pp. 39, 40.
 
 ETHICAL TEACHING. 9 
 
 creative power lay in the domain of 
 philosophic thought. A closer ac- 
 quaintance with German life and 
 intellectual habit will doubtless cor- 
 rect this insular view. It must be 
 remembered that in the land of phi- 
 losophic systems, the dialect of the 
 schools is the current coin of edu- 
 cated society to a much greater 
 extent than in England. Froebel, 
 no doubt, has insensibly taken the 
 hue and tinge of a prevailing school 
 of thought, perhaps to the detriment 
 of his true message. It may, how- 
 ever, be maintained that the temper 
 of mind which seeks unity in diver- 
 sity is not peculiar to the philo- 
 sopher ; it may be a craving of the 
 emotional and the moral nature. 
 The man who seeks to bind tog-ether
 
 io ETHICAL TEACHING. 
 
 the disjointed fragments of thought 
 or of life into a living whole, has the 
 poet-soul ; he has a vision of the 
 meaning of some small section of 
 this tangled web of life through which 
 we ordinary mortals are stumbling 
 blindfold. 
 
 This sensitiveness to the relations 
 of facts, moral and intellectual ; this 
 strong search to establish harmonies 
 of relation as a principle to be kept 
 in view in the field of education, was 
 impressed upon everything Froebel 
 ever did, or said. He symbolizes 
 this great truth in " Mutter- und 
 Koselieder " : — " TreiU mit deinem 
 Kinde Nichts beziehungslos, sonst tvird 
 es dadurck leicht erziehungslos." * Of 
 
 * "Mutter- und Koselieder," plate 17; and 
 p. 144.
 
 ETHICAL TEACHING. II 
 
 the vast bearings of this principle on 
 the art of education and instruction 
 it is not here the place to speak, but 
 one day it may appear to be the very 
 pith and marrow of "the new edu- 
 cation." The nature of man, his 
 relations to his kind, to the universe 
 and to God, these are the themes 
 touched upon by Froebel in his 
 longest educational essay, of which 
 his shorter essays are variations and 
 repetitions. In stating the sources 
 of information from which these out- 
 lines of ethical teaching are drawn, 
 Dr. Wichard Lange's edition of Froe- 
 bel's educational works published in 
 1862-3, an d Seidel's edition of 
 " Mutter- und Koselieder," published 
 in 1883, will be referred to.
 
 12 ETHICAL TEACHING. 
 
 I. Froebel 's first Postulate in Educa- 
 tion, a standard of Perfection, an 
 Ideal. 
 
 Had Froebel lived in the present 
 day, he would certainly not have 
 understood the position of the man 
 who on principle maintains a vaunted 
 neutrality of heart, and who intel- 
 lectually evades the highest questions 
 concerning man's being as the best 
 means of throwing light upon our 
 sublunary affairs. The opening para- 
 graphs of " The Education of Man " * 
 read like a solemn confession of faith. 
 Froebel does not hold an opinion 
 about the existence of God, but 
 rather the idea possesses him of an 
 
 * See also Vol. i. p. 265 ; vol. ii. p. 1.
 
 ETHICAL TEACHING. 13 
 
 underlying unity * of relation between 
 the self-conscious spirit of man, of 
 nature, and an all-sustaining, self- 
 conscious personal Being. He con- 
 ceives God as acting at every moment 
 in and through all things, yet as 
 beyond and distinct fromf all that 
 is created, visible and invisible. The 
 domain of law and order is co-ex- 
 tensive with the presence of God, and 
 there is in his mind no antithesis 
 between the existence of law and of 
 God's being. On the creative power 
 of God, Froebel seems to dwell with 
 reverential delight. It is evident 
 that Froebel considers the supreme 
 Being to be apprehensible by human 
 faculties, and the strongest evidences 
 
 * Vol. ii. pp. I, 3, 4, 108. 
 t Vol. ii. p. no.
 
 i 4 ETHICAL TEACHING. 
 
 of this, he finds in man himself. Of 
 the adult who puts his hand to the 
 work of education in any form, he 
 demands that he shall have made 
 at least some serious attempt to 
 formulate in thought and life his 
 convictions on this high theme and 
 its immediate issues. To him it was 
 the pivot upon which all education 
 turned,* without which he dared not 
 confront the trustfulness of childhood. 
 
 II. Of Man as the Object of Educa- 
 tion. 
 
 i. Froebel conceived man to be 
 the offspring of God ; hence man 
 partakes of the divine nature, and 
 God dwells in each man.f 
 
 * Vol. i. p. 265 ; vol. ii. p. 107. 
 t Vol. ii. pp. 2, 5, 6.
 
 ETHICAL TEACHING. 15 
 
 2. The divine nature in man is an 
 undeveloped possibility in him ; it 
 must be called forth ; it is made 
 manifest only under the conditions 
 of all development by a series of 
 steps analogous to the process of 
 growth in the mind and body gene- 
 rally.* 
 
 3. Froebel conceived this process 
 of development — from a state of 
 unconscious, instinctive life to a state 
 of self-conscious freedom of determi- 
 nation towards God — to be subject 
 to laws.f To discover these laws 
 was — according to him — the science 
 of education ; t the help which the 
 adult gives to a child, in obedience 
 
 * Vol. ii. pp. 2, 3. 
 
 t Vol. i. pp. 285, 289, 298 ; vol. ii. p. 2, 
 par. 2 and 3 ; p. 28, par. 24. 
 \ Vol. ii. p. 2.
 
 16 ETHICAL TEACHING. 
 
 to these laws, is at once the art of 
 education * and the highest wisdom f 
 attainable on earth. 
 
 4. Body and mind being indis- 
 solubly united during life, man may 
 not put asunder what God has joined 
 together. Hence the instinctive 
 movements of infancy must be 
 viewed as having a mental back- 
 ground, and through physical chan- 
 nels we can permanently affect men- 
 tal life + 
 
 5. Froebel rejects the dualistic 
 theory of man's nature which seeks 
 to explain the facts of sin, of re- 
 pentance, of struggle by the exist- 
 ence of good and evil principles 
 
 * Vol. ii. p. 2, par. 3. 
 t Vol. ii. p. 3, par. 4. 
 
 X The whole of "Mutter- und Koselieder," 
 Vol. ii. p. 29, par. 27 ; p. 35, par. 31 ; p. 385.
 
 ETHICAL TEACHING. 17 
 
 warring for possession of man's soul. 
 He sees in man the meeting-place of 
 tvvo realms, that of nature and that 
 of self-conscious spirit. The law of 
 nature is the law of egotism, the law 
 of man's spirit is the law of love. 
 Both these realms * are manifestations 
 of God ; they are not essentially an- 
 tagonistic. The conflict which arises 
 between the two in human life is due 
 to the ignorance, the weakness and 
 the freedom of man ; he produces 
 chaos where he ought to have es- 
 tablished and upheld harmony. To 
 establish this order, first in his own 
 person, secondly to promote the same 
 in human affairs according to his 
 measure of insight, is his task on 
 earth. In the nursery we lay the 
 
 * Vol. ii. p. 5, par. 8 ; pp. 13, 14, par. 17. 
 
 C
 
 IS ETHICAL TEACHING. 
 
 foundation of that balance between 
 the sensuous and the spiritual part 
 of man's nature. Froebel practically 
 lays much more stress in early edu- 
 cation upon the exercise of the nobler 
 motives in human nature,* whereby 
 the lower elements are regulated and 
 in due time transfigured. He never 
 for a moment, however, ignores the 
 deep-seated egotism of the young ; f 
 he looks upon it as an indispensable 
 force, — in itself neither good nor evil, 
 — a force which, in education, must 
 be provided for, reckoned with, legiti- 
 mately satisfied and blended with 
 other forces, and thus gradually 
 metamorphosed into a very different 
 product. Nor can Froebel be justly 
 
 * Vol. ii. p. 5, par. 8 ; p. 16, par. 20. 
 t Vol. ii. p. 16, par. 20.
 
 ETHICAL TEACHING. 19 
 
 reproached with anything approach- 
 ing to insensibility to the grievousness 
 of sin, when he takes away the idea 
 of an arbitrary penalty with regard 
 to offences. His general view on 
 this question may perhaps be best 
 gathered from the following pas- 
 sage : — * 
 
 . . . "spiritual forces when mani- 
 fested in man, exhibit a sequence, a 
 succession of steps. It follows, there- 
 fore, that when a man at one period 
 of his life has omitted to put forth his 
 strength in a work which he knows 
 to be in harmony with the divine 
 order of things, there comes a time, 
 sooner or later, when a void will be 
 perceived ; when the fruits of his 
 omitted action ought to have ap- 
 
 * Vol. ii. p. 24.
 
 20 ETHICAL TEACHING. 
 
 peared, and do not : they are the 
 missing links in the chain of conse- 
 quences. The measure of that void 
 is the measure of his past inaction, 
 and that man will never quite reach 
 the same level of attainment that he 
 might have touched, had he divinely 
 energized his lost moments. ... It 
 remains for him to put forth that 
 second resource of spiritual strength 
 — patient endurance of the conse- 
 quences : this in its turn becomes a 
 solvent of present difficulties ; he will 
 by his redoubled energy avoid the 
 recurrence of loss in the future." 
 
 Of Man's religious and moral Nature. 
 6. From Froebel's elevated view of 
 man's origin and of the latent possi- 
 bilities within him, it may be almost
 
 ETHICAL TEACHING. 21 
 
 inferred that he acknowledges the 
 supreme obligation laid upon him 
 by his own nature, to be in his 
 measure perfect, even as God is per- 
 fect* He finds this aim attained 
 once in history, in the person of 
 Jesus.f In Him he sees the revealer 
 of a new relation between God and 
 man.J 
 
 7. As Froebel sees in man's nature 
 the faculties which make the appre- 
 hension of the divine possible to 
 him,§ he thinks religious education 
 cannot begin too early; by post- 
 poning it until the rational man 
 appears, we cramp and dwarf the 
 religious faculties, and " when later, 
 
 * Vol. ii. p. 341. 
 
 t Vol. i. p. 265 ; vol. ii. p. 3. 
 
 X Vol. ii. pp. 102-105. 
 
 § Vol. ii. pp. 99, 198.
 
 22 ETHICAL TEACHING. 
 
 direct religious instruction begins, it 
 
 is barren and empty of all content." * 
 
 On the other hand, he considers the 
 
 creeds and catechisms of churches, — 
 
 moulds into which has run the highly 
 
 elaborated religious consciousness of 
 
 grown men, — to be injurious, when 
 
 foisted upon the delicate religious 
 
 consciousness of the young. All 
 
 texts, hymns, etc., committed to 
 
 memory must be the outcome of an 
 
 inner experience of the child, must 
 
 be in close harmony with his life. 
 
 All religious instruction presupposes 
 
 a life in religion, f and all religious 
 
 life has its rise in the nature and 
 
 strength of those spiritual ties which 
 
 bind parents and children as the 
 
 * Vol. ii. pp. 192, 193. 
 t Vol. ii. pp. 198, 199.
 
 ETHICAL TEACHING. 23 
 
 physical bonds are slackened day by 
 day. " God is to be our father, and 
 yet we are far from being fathers to 
 our own children. We presume to 
 have insight into divine things, and 
 yet we neglect as unworthy of notice 
 those human relations which are a 
 key to the divine." * Here we see 
 how the conception of an evolution 
 in religious life guided Froebel's 
 genius ; with what delicacy he traces 
 some outlines of a child's religion in 
 " Mutter- und Koselieder." f How 
 unlike is its expression, how identical 
 is it in essence with that of adult life ! 
 8. All moral life, according to 
 Froebel, ultimately rests upon the 
 free exercise of the will in favour of 
 
 * Vol. ii. p. 103. 
 
 t Vol. ii. plates 21, 22, 48.
 
 24 ETHICAL TEACHING. 
 
 the good, irrespective * of conse- 
 quences. Hence there is great dan- 
 ger of weakening the inner man by- 
 excessive ruling and prescribing.! 
 The grown-up person stands before 
 the child as before a partially re- 
 vealed entity upon whom he has no 
 right to force ill-considered com- 
 mands, not in harmony with the laws 
 of the child's nature, t To do this 
 wilfully is to commit sin. Parents 
 and teachers must frequently main- 
 tain a passive attitude § in education 
 and instruction, remembering that 
 above both parents and children 
 there is a higher will before whom 
 they are all as children and as 
 learners. 
 
 * Vol. ii. pp. 193, 194, 196. t Vol. ii. p. 6. 
 X Vol. ii. p. 6. § Vol. ii. pp. 5, 7, 8, 10.
 
 ETHICAL TEACHING. 25 
 
 Human Labour : its higher meaning 
 in the Life of Man. 
 
 9. Froebel was deeply imbued 
 with the conception of the creative 
 power of God. This ever-present 
 fact lent a dignity even to the meanest 
 human labour. 
 
 " God is an unceasingly creative 
 energy ; every thought of God is a 
 deed, a creation unto all eternity. . . . 
 God created man in His own image 
 . . . hence [in a sense] man is en- 
 dowed with creative power. . . . This 
 is the deeper meaning ... of all 
 work * . . . We have an altogether 
 wrong and degrading notion about 
 work and its meaning for the true life 
 of man. . . . We do not work to get a 
 * Vol. ii. pp. 22, 23.
 
 26 ETHICAL TEACHING. 
 
 living, but because it is the appointed 
 means whereby alone we can develop 
 the divine possibilities within us. . . . 
 Food, clothing, shelter are merely 
 accessories which come to us in the 
 nature of things, in order to enable 
 us to continue our work. . . . Chil- 
 dren are much nearer the inner truth 
 of things than we are, for when their 
 instincts are not perverted by the 
 superfine wisdom of their elders, 
 they give themselves up to a full, 
 vigorous activity. . . . Theirs is the 
 kingdom of heaven." * 
 
 Froebel considered that the first 
 beginnings of constructive, produc- 
 tive, creative activity are seen in a 
 little child's play. 
 
 " Play at this age is the highest, 
 
 * Vol. ii. p. 23.
 
 ETHICAL TEACHING. 27 
 
 most spiritual act of which his nature, 
 human nature, is capable. In it vvc 
 see the whole future life of the man 
 epitomized ; the secret recesses of 
 dawning mind are therein revealed 
 to us as in a mirror. Healthy, un- 
 forced play results in an intensified 
 pleasure in existence for the child ; 
 he is then at peace with himself and 
 all the world. In it lies the germ of 
 all human goodness ; it is the grow- 
 ing-point out of which all true ser- 
 vice in after-life springs. A little 
 child that sets about his play quietly, 
 plays continuously, and becomes ab- 
 sorbed in it. A little being that can 
 play until physical nature is ex- 
 hausted has to my mind the promise 
 of a generous, disinterested manhood 
 in him. Is there a lovelier sight at
 
 2S ETHICAL TEACHING. 
 
 this period of life than a child ab- 
 sorbed in his play, — who has fallen 
 asleep whilst playing ? Play is no 
 mere beneficent provision of nature 
 for killing time in the present, but a 
 phenomenon of the highest psycho- 
 logical interest, having important 
 purposes to fulfil. Cherish it, mo- 
 thers ; protect it from disturbance, 
 ye fathers. . . . Play at this age is as 
 the cotyledons to the future tree. 
 The whole plan or disposition of the 
 future being is revealed in its most 
 delicate lineaments in a child's play- 
 ful activity. . . . Whether the future 
 life shall be pure or sullied, peaceful 
 or rent with passion, industrious or 
 indolent ; whether it shall be a kind 
 of dull vegetative existence, or a life 
 full of high, conscious purpose ; a life
 
 ETHICAL TEACHING. 29 
 
 at peace, or at war with society ; all 
 these questions are raised, and in 
 part determined, by the nature of 
 and the conditions under which a 
 child plays. . . . Here we have in 
 embryonic knot, close together, all 
 the varied relations in which he after- 
 wards stands to family, to kith and 
 kin, to mankind and to his God. 
 Unravel this vital knot in conscious 
 obedience to the laws of its nature 
 and you have influenced all these 
 ramifications of the life of his man- 
 hood. In play these relations are 
 revealed in nascent simplicity and 
 in the unity of unconscious life ; at 
 this period the child knows not how 
 to distinguish the pretty flowers from 
 his pleasure in them ; the joy of 
 tumbling them into his mother's lap
 
 30 ETHICAL TEACHING. 
 
 from the dim feeling of joy in the 
 Giver of all beauty. Who can lay 
 the dissecting-knife on the pleasures 
 of these early years ? "* 
 
 In another place Froebel says of 
 play : — " Play is delicious for its own 
 sake, not from any result which may 
 arise from it ; it is absolutely uncon- 
 scious of purpose." f Froebel saw in 
 this phenomenon of play a double 
 meaning ; he saw the germ of work 
 in the fact, and he provided the right 
 kind of material upon which a little 
 child might exercise his creative pro- 
 ductive energy under direction. 
 Froebel, with his gospel of work, 
 stands out as the great " leveller-up " 
 of all men ; he effectually obliterates 
 the class distinctions of modern 
 
 * Vol. ii. pp. 33, 34. t Vol. ii. p. 30.
 
 ETHICAL TEACHING. 31 
 
 society between the educated and the 
 non-educated, between rich and poor, 
 between those who have and those 
 who have not, and that in the only 
 safe way. His finger is upon the 
 plague-spot of modern industrial life, 
 with its idolatry of unlimited compe- 
 tition. It is possible that industrial 
 England may have yet to learn the 
 full significance of the ethical teach- 
 ing of this great educational genius 
 with respect to labour. Its psycho- 
 logical, its moral aspects may yet 
 have to be studied in the nursery 
 and in the school, before some of the 
 social and industrial problems con- 
 fronting us to-day can be success- 
 fully solved. With Froebel, this 
 question of the right training of the 
 creative constructive activity from its
 
 32 ETHICAL TEACHING. 
 
 earliest beginnings was akin to re- 
 ligion — it was, in fact, only another 
 side of religious training. " Impor- 
 tant as the first religious training is," 
 he says, " early training to industry 
 is every whit as momentous. . . . 
 Religion without industry is in dan- 
 ger of becoming an idle dream ; toil 
 without religious aspiration condemns 
 man to be a beast of burden." * 
 
 Of Mans social Relations, his Train- 
 ing to social Duties. 
 
 Another apparent parallelism be- 
 tween scientific thought and Froebe- 
 lian education is the strong accentua- 
 tion of social ties. The more we see 
 the forms of civil life unfolded in all 
 
 * Vol. ii. p. 25.
 
 ETHICAL TEACHING. 33 
 
 their complexity, the more we realize 
 the fact that " no man liveth to him- 
 self alone." Under the teaching of 
 scientific method we are becoming 
 increasingly aware of the close inter- 
 action between the various sections 
 of human activity, as of a great living 
 organism, and we are in danger of 
 drawing from these conceptions of 
 social relations alone a whole theory 
 of morality, a complete standard of 
 right and wrong, overlooking and 
 overshadowing the equally great facts 
 of individual consciousness, of indi- 
 vidual responsibility, and spontane- 
 ous exercise of the matured will. 
 What are Froebel's own principles of 
 action with respect to these two great 
 sides of human obligation, and what 
 is his attitude towards them in edu- 
 
 D
 
 34 ETHICAL TEACHING. 
 
 cation ? Here again we have but to 
 turn to his volume of "The Educa- 
 tion of Man " and to " Mutter- und 
 Koselieder" for an answer. I will 
 summarize in a few sentences the 
 burden of his teaching spread over 
 many pages. 
 
 io. According to Froebel, each 
 man born into the world has an im- 
 press peculiar to himself,* constitut- 
 ing his individuality. This may be 
 modified and developed by educa- 
 tion, but never essentially changed. 
 To cherish this individual impress 
 within limits is to cherish the divine 
 thought in each man. The stages 
 of individual development are analo- 
 gous to those of society viewed gene- 
 rally, f only they are epitomized and 
 
 * Vol. ii. pp. 6, 13, 14, 100. t Vol. ii. p. 27.
 
 ETHICAL TEACHING. 35 
 
 more rapidly passed through in the 
 individual. A child is a perpetually- 
 changing, growing, yet potentially 
 complete human being. Stages of 
 life such as infancy, childhood, youth, 
 manhood, etc., must not be so severed 
 as to become unrelated ; on the other 
 hand, each of these periods has an 
 inflorescence, a culminating point of 
 relative completeness and beauty of 
 its own.* The more fully each stage 
 is lived through, the stronger will 
 each succeeding period of life be. 
 
 1 1. On the other hand, every indi- 
 vidual is born into a social group 
 having reciprocal relations of nar- 
 rower and wider range with all other 
 members of the social body.f He 
 
 * Vol. ii. pp. 20-22. 
 
 t Vol. i. pp. 274, 275 ; vol. ii. p. 12.
 
 36 ETHICAL TEACHING. 
 
 likewise stands in immediate relations 
 to the past, the present, and the 
 future of his race. Froebel con- 
 sidered this double-sided truth of the 
 training of the individuality in man 
 and the training to social responsi- 
 bilities as having an immediate bear- 
 ing upon character, from earliest 
 infancy. How he put into the hands 
 of mothers and of all women who 
 have the care of young children the 
 ends of these gossamer threads upon 
 which hang the issues of life, his 
 " Mutter- und Koselieder " * shows. 
 Nor are these two sides of human 
 obligation necessarily antagonistic, if 
 clearly, consciously raised to principles 
 of education, dominating the field of 
 practice. The method of science may 
 * Plates 12, 14, 17, 18, 32.
 
 ETHICAL TEACHING. 37 
 
 be rapidly disclosing- the complex 
 machinery of modern society, whether 
 social groups be viewed on the mi- 
 croscopic or on the macroscopic scale ; 
 the conditions of healthy social 
 growth, of social disease and decay, 
 will be laid bare by the keen instru- 
 ment of scientific analysis. Frederick 
 Froebel with his " new education " 
 would have welcomed such knowledge 
 as it becomes diffused amongst all 
 modern communities, for it will only 
 serve to lay bare the firm foundations 
 in human personalities upon which 
 his educational practice rests. The 
 strengthening of the growing will, the 
 heightening of individual capacity by 
 laying hold in education of the pro- 
 ductive power in man, the preserva- 
 tion of the ideal purposes of child-
 
 38 ETHICAL TEACHING. 
 
 hood throughout all classes of society, 
 these are recuperative forces which 
 no complete science of society can pos- 
 sibly ignore. 
 
 III. Of Nature as a Symbol and 
 Revelation of God to Matt. 
 
 It is remarkable that Froebel prac- 
 tically should have borne his testi- 
 mony to the analogies between the 
 natural and psychical order of facts 
 at a time when such comparisons 
 must have been considered as mere 
 ornaments of speech. That he de- 
 rived them from an habitual perusal 
 of some passages of the gospels there 
 is good reason to infer, and it is well 
 remembered by those who knew him 
 what a fascination the white lily had
 
 ETHICAL TEACHING. 39 
 
 for him, how late in life he assured 
 those around him that a tree had 
 been his great teacher. That his 
 studies in at least one branch of 
 natural science must have been of 
 no mean order is evidenced by the 
 fact that he held an honourable post 
 in the University of Berlin, and was 
 offered another in Sweden. But the 
 bent of his mind was not that of a 
 discoverer in the domain of physical 
 law ; these were only disciplinary 
 studies which were afterwards to bear 
 fruit in the totally different sphere of 
 the psychology of infancy and child- 
 hood. Frocbel uses the term " nature " 
 in the sense of the great visible and 
 invisible organism outside man's self- 
 conscious spirit, underlying the con- 
 sciousness of individuals, entering
 
 4 o ETHICAL TEACHING. 
 
 into, supporting and conditioning 
 that life without possibility of iden- 
 tification of the two as one. Nature 
 is therefore to him that vast sub- 
 stratum * on which the still greater 
 world of conscious mind is super- 
 posed. Nature and man's spirit are 
 alike from God. He sees an intimate 
 and ceaseless interchange of activi- 
 ties subsisting between nature and 
 man's spirit, and he takes this inter- 
 course to be an indispensable agency 
 whereby his education is advanced. f 
 Nature and the highest faculties of 
 the human mind can never contradict 
 each other, seeing that they are dis- 
 tinctly co- related.! But what is there 
 in the facts of animal and plant life, 
 
 * Vol. ii. p. 3, par. 5. 
 
 t Vol. ii. p. 54, par. 40. % Vol. ii. p. 108.
 
 ETHICAL TEACHING. 41 
 
 in the movement and balance of 
 those mighty forces determining our 
 day and night, our summer and 
 winter ; hedging in our little cycle 
 of years as by a framework ; what is 
 there in all this for the young? Is 
 it possible that the tiniest child can 
 be moulded in character, disciplined 
 in intellect by any one of these ex- 
 periences ? Nature is a revelation of 
 God's being to Froebel, and a reve- 
 lation of such vast extent, of such 
 immediate practical and ideal im- 
 portance, that to exclude the experi- 
 ence from a growing child is to 
 cripple him morally and intellectu- 
 ally for life. And long before scien- 
 tific demarcation has begun, there is 
 in the child, (when not stunted by 
 the artificial conditions of city life in
 
 4 2 ETHICAL TEACHING. 
 
 its degradation,) that intuitive life in 
 sympathy with the common sights and 
 sounds of nature, which is imprinted 
 upon his very being. A child's 
 pleasure in his cat on the hearthrug, 
 in the sighing wind, in the sparrow 
 on the housetop, or in the sunlight 
 caught and reflected by the mirror on 
 the wall, — this is an unerring instinct 
 which may be safely followed in 
 dealing with our children, while most 
 of our scientific text-books are lead- 
 ing us pedagogically astray. True, 
 a child does not enjoy a landscape, 
 he has no faculty to appreciate the 
 vast aggregate of harmonies of colour, 
 form, and sound in which an edu- 
 cated adult may revel. But the rudi- 
 ments of such refined enjoyment are 
 implanted in the young, and we
 
 ETHICAL TEACHING. 43 
 
 must learn to recognize them in their 
 faintest beginnings, and to stimulate 
 them where the environment is highly- 
 adverse to their growth. It is because 
 the human mind, normally consti- 
 tuted, finds its co-relatives in the se- 
 quences of natural phenomena, that 
 they are of such great importance as 
 a discipline. That there is no neces- 
 sary antagonism between a direct 
 knowledge of natural facts and a 
 knowledge of literature, we may 
 infer by observing what an influence 
 the familiarity with natural facts has 
 upon language, and how a national 
 habit of observing nature may tinge 
 the literature of a whole people. The 
 effects of direct contact with natural 
 facts upon speech and language gene- 
 rally, was long ago pointed out by
 
 44 ETHICAL TEACHING. 
 
 Edward Denison, when writing from 
 the East-end of London. In 1868, 
 he says : — 
 
 "My wits are getting blunted by 
 the monotony and ugliness of this 
 place. I can almost imagine — diffi- 
 cult as it is — the awful effect upon 
 a human mind of never seeing any- 
 thing but the meanest and vilest of 
 men and man's works, and of com- 
 plete exclusion from God's works, — 
 a position in which the villager never 
 is, and freedom from which ought to 
 give him a higher moral starting-point 
 than the Gibeonite of a large town. 
 I am not sure that it does, but we 
 would think it must, when we know 
 how deeply the thought and language 
 of the wildest savages are impressed 
 by the majesty of external nature?
 
 ETHICAL TEACHING. 45 
 
 In these days, when a great advance 
 has been made along many lines at 
 once, in the work of humanizing vast 
 city populations, it is perhaps right 
 to quote word for word a pioneer 
 whom death has silenced. He, in- 
 deed, saw that direct contact with, 
 and an observant eye for, natural 
 phenomena gave depth and richness 
 to human speech, because it power- 
 fully affected human thought and 
 feeling. Froebel viewed the pro- 
 cesses of growth in the natural world 
 as symbolical of the processes of 
 development in the mental and moral 
 spheres. His own studies in the 
 physical and mathematical sciences 
 had given him the key to his edu- 
 cational work. In this work, he only 
 followed the greatest Teacher of man-
 
 46 ETHICAL TEACHING. 
 
 kind, who, in parables, clearly drew 
 parallels between two great reve- 
 lations of the divine, between facts 
 of plant and animal life and spiritual 
 life. Is it not extraordinary then, 
 that we are to-day still hesitating 
 whether the flood of light which the 
 natural sciences have thrown upon 
 our century be not after all a teach- 
 ing of the devil? Let us cast this 
 unworthy fear behind us and begin 
 with Froebel at the bottom rung of 
 the ladder, with a trustful study of 
 the normal, healthy instincts of child- 
 hood.
 
 THE 
 
 ETHICAL TEACHING 
 
 OF FROEBEL, 
 
 AS GATHERED FROM HIS WORKS. 
 
 II. 
 
 By Therese G. Montefiore.
 
 The expositor of Froebel's ethical 
 teaching is confronted with an initial 
 difficulty in the peculiar fusion in 
 Froebel of ethics and religion. His 
 ethical teaching is scarcely ever 
 clearly separable from his religious 
 doctrine. In fact, the very idea of 
 such a separation would be foreign 
 to his thought. To his mind man 
 is presented as a revelation of the 
 divine, and man's end and calling as 
 the conscious manifestation and de- 
 velopment of the divine element 
 within him. He is so strongly im- 
 pressed with the unity of all things, 
 
 E
 
 So ETHICAL TEACHING. 
 
 and with our own ultimate unity in 
 God, that his teaching is throughout 
 coloured by this religious conviction. 
 "Man should be active, industrious, 
 and creative," he tells us ; not, as the 
 moralist might have said, because 
 such is his duty, or, again, because 
 such will be ultimately for his happi- 
 ness, but because " God is creative." 
 
 Other and minor difficulties rise be- 
 fore us in the fact that his writings do 
 not consist of philosophical treatises, 
 but of works on education, in which 
 remarks on physical, intellectual, 
 moral and religious subjects are 
 mingled together hap-hazard. More- 
 over, that not only in the " Mutter- 
 und Koselieder," but also in the 
 " Menschen-Erziehung," he is con- 
 cerned mainly, if not entirely, with
 
 ETHICAL TEACHING. 51 
 
 quite young children and children of 
 school age, constitutes a serious draw- 
 back. Finally, we are continually 
 being reminded that he was emphati- 
 cally a worker and not a writer, and 
 that he took but little pains to give 
 his writings either scientific accuracy 
 or literary form. That there are 
 great and noble thoughts on ethics 
 scattered through his works, no one 
 who has toiled through the diffuse 
 and difficult German will for a moment 
 deny, but they have to be sought for 
 as jewels in a cave. Notwithstand- 
 ing the beauty of isolated passages, 
 we cannot in any strict sense speak 
 of Froebel's system of ethics. He 
 has developed no such system, and 
 it is an almost hopeless task to try 
 and piece together, from the scattered
 
 52 ETHICAL TEACHING. 
 
 expressions of his ethical thought, 
 any organized whole. Still, this does 
 not necessarily make his work the 
 less valuable. There is no lack in the 
 world of systems of ethics, carefully 
 worked out by distinguished philo- 
 sophers. What Froebel gives us is less 
 common — the spontaneous thought 
 of an exquisitely pure and sym- 
 pathetic mind, unbiased by study of 
 ethical systems, and unfettered by the 
 necessity of elaborating a scientifi- 
 cally consistent whole. His religion 
 is the religion of the much-appealed- 
 to "common man," absolutely simple, 
 unspeculative, substantial, untouched 
 alike by deep philosophic reasoning 
 or by crude scepticism and denial 
 It has its roots deep down in the 
 absolute simplicity and straightfor-
 
 ETHICAL TEACHING. 53 
 
 wardness of the man, and in its child- 
 like directness is for us to-day, when 
 the religious education of children 
 becomes daily more and more per- 
 plexing and difficult, of singular value 
 and suggestiveness. 
 
 To attach a philosophic label to 
 Froebel's ethical teaching would be 
 misleading, because of philosophy in 
 any technical sense he was entirely 
 innocent. But, although he cannot, 
 for this sufficient reason, be classed 
 as a follower of any of the schools, 
 he was, however unconsciously, an 
 ethical idealist of the deepest dye. 
 That he was so is partly due to the 
 fact that he took words as he found 
 them, with their accepted meanings. 
 He never attempted to bring such 
 apparently different conceptions as
 
 54 ETHICAL TEACHING. 
 
 good and pleasant under a single 
 term. He never dreamt that the will 
 was not free, or that duty was but 
 the product of custom and social 
 convention. In saying this, we do 
 not mean to imply that in such a 
 limitation he was either right or 
 wrong. We are merely stating a 
 fact. But his unquestioning accept- 
 ance of the common signification of 
 the ordinary ethical vocabulary does 
 not explain and account for the whole 
 body of ethical doctrine which may 
 be gathered from his works. His 
 teaching is throughout illumined by 
 his own genius. Ordinary ethics — 
 the moral ideas of the ordinary man 
 — are certainly rather idealistic than 
 utilitarian. But Froebel's ethic is 
 idealism in its most perfect purity.
 
 ETHICAL TEACHING. 55 
 
 Goodness for its own sake, and as its 
 own reward — that is his ideal. And 
 intimately, nay inseparably, con- 
 nected as his ethics and religion 
 undoubtedly are, it is yet of the last 
 importance to note that his religion 
 never robs his ethics of their single- 
 ness and purity. Hetcronomy in 
 ethics, whatever its source, would be 
 as emphatically repudiated byFroebel 
 as by Kant. The purity of his ethical 
 motive is never stained by any pro- 
 mise of speedy pleasure upon earth 
 or of deferred payment in heaven. 
 
 Froebel's ethical doctrine is through- 
 out rather practical than speculative. 
 The great underlying principle which 
 meets us in one form or another 
 through all his teaching is the prin- 
 ciple of human activity. This he
 
 56 ETHICAL TEACHING. 
 
 regards as of the deepest ethical sig- 
 nificance, and, as we have seen, takes 
 care to base it on religious grounds. 
 Over and over again he seeks to im- 
 press us with its high value. To 
 quote his own words * : — 
 
 " The delusive idea that men merely 
 toil and work for the sake of pre- 
 serving their bodies, and procuring 
 for themselves bread, houses and 
 clothes, is degrading and not to be 
 encouraged. No ! the true origin of 
 man's activity and creativeness lies 
 in his unceasing impulse to embody 
 outside himself the divine and spiritual 
 element within him." 
 
 A page or two further on, he 
 adds : — 
 
 * "Menschen-Erziehung"(Ed. Seidel, Vienna, 
 1887), p. 23.
 
 ETHICAL TEACHING. 57 
 
 "Just as important as early train- 
 ing in religion, is early training in 
 activity and industry. . . . For re- 
 ligion without work is apt to degene- 
 rate into empty dreaming and pur- 
 poseless emotion, while, on the other 
 hand, work without religion tends to 
 degrade man into a machine. . . . 
 Work and religion are coeval — as 
 God, the Eternal, creates throughout 
 all eternity." 
 
 Each man's calling upon earth is 
 to work ; first, because God works — 
 and man must endeavour to be as 
 like God as he can ; but also, secondly, 
 because it is through work that each 
 man takes his part as a member of 
 the social whole. The child must be 
 led to observe all the multitudinous 
 activities that serve to provide him
 
 5S ETHICAL TEACHING. 
 
 with the bread he eats, the clothes he 
 wears and the house that shelters 
 him, and by this means will the im- 
 pulse be awakened in him to take his 
 own share in the world's work around 
 him. Froebel strongly insists that 
 children should be encouraged to 
 help their parents in their daily occu- 
 pations. The imitative desire, which 
 first urges them to such action, is to 
 be fostered and developed into ethical 
 impulse. On no account are they to 
 be refused or repelled when they 
 offer their help. They are to be en- 
 couraged in " free activity according 
 to inward impulse." All external 
 authority must work gently, and 
 almost imperceptibly. No outer force 
 should rudely thrust itself {kinein- 
 greifeii) into the inner working of the
 
 ETHICAL TEACHING. 59 
 
 child-mind, and so destroy its free 
 development. 
 
 Another great principle, at once 
 psychological and ethical, to which 
 Froebel attaches supreme importance, 
 is that of freedom. He recurs to it 
 repeatedly, and always with fresh 
 vigour. We shall, however, be better 
 able to understand his views upon it, 
 if we first briefly consider his attitude 
 on the much-vexed question of the 
 original goodness or depravity of man. 
 Upon no other subject is he more 
 in earnest. "All men arc in them- 
 selves good," he exclaims (" Mensch.- 
 Erzieh.," p. 74) ; " it is we who make 
 them bad, either by mistaken train- 
 ing or by absolute neglect." Man's 
 faults arise on the one hand, from 
 complete ignoring of certain sides of
 
 60 ETHICAL TEACHING. 
 
 his nature, and on the other, from the 
 wrong development or actual perver- 
 sion of originally good tendencies. 
 It is true man can be bad, but this 
 is a necessary condition of his being 
 good, just as that he can make him- 
 self a slave is a necessary condition 
 of his being truly free. Every ap- 
 pearance of wickedness is due to 
 originally good impulses either mis- 
 directed or crushed. Holding this 
 view so strongly, it is no wonder that 
 Froebel should insist with such con- 
 stant iteration on the necessity for 
 freedom in moral development. If 
 every impulse is naturally good, then 
 clearly all we have to do is to let it 
 develop itself as freely as possible, 
 only taking care to guard it from 
 thwarting or misdirection. This doc-
 
 ETHICAL TEACHING. 61 
 
 trine, which, it must be confessed, is 
 open to considerable doubt, is never- 
 theless the basis of much of Froebel's 
 ethical creed, and more especially of 
 his teaching in regard to freedom. 
 
 The other side of the question does 
 not seem to present itself to him with 
 any force. Discipline (Zudii) and 
 obedience {Gehorsamkeif) are words 
 that occur but seldom in his writings. 
 He probably held that, if children were 
 educated, as he would have them, not 
 each by himself alone, but all in rela- 
 tion with one another, as members of 
 a social whole, such discipline as is 
 necessary would come of itself by 
 force of the natural interaction of 
 social approbation and displeasure ; 
 and that a child who tends to act 
 wilfully or selfishly would be moulded
 
 62 ETHICAL TEACHING. 
 
 into unselfishness and self-control 
 partly by being himself shunned for 
 his faults, and partly by seeing the 
 opposite virtues in others loved and 
 admired by his fellows. There is, no 
 doubt, a great deal of truth in this 
 view. Still, it is open to question 
 whether a certain amount of direct 
 discipline, and the direct inculcation 
 of a habit of obedience are not also 
 both necessary and valuable. It is 
 true that, in discussing drill (Mensch.- 
 Erzieh., p. 177), he does allude to its 
 value as discipline {Zuchf), which, 
 however, he goes on to define as 
 follows : — 
 
 " Discipline means leading the child 
 back firmly and earnestly in all his 
 doings to that native human dignity 
 which has been outwardly put before
 
 ETHICAL TEACHING. 63 
 
 him, and which he has inwardly 
 realized, — and to that highest rever- 
 ence for man which follows upon it ; 
 in other words, causing that very- 
 reverence to shine forth expressively 
 in all his action." 
 
 We here certainly have indicated 
 to us how to encourage a due sense 
 of man's worth and dignity, but it is 
 not what we generally understand 
 by discipline. Ready submission to 
 another's will, instant obedience to 
 command, habitual self-control — 
 qualities usually understood as im- 
 plied in discipline — are wholly ignored 
 by Froebel. In his extreme desire 
 to secure freedom and free develop- 
 ment, he has, perhaps necessarily, 
 overlooked them. A character trained 
 strictly according to his directions
 
 64 ETHICAL TEACHING. 
 
 would hardly regard obedience as a 
 virtue. But Froebel might reply that 
 his ideal character would be in itself 
 so far perfect that it would do what 
 is right naturally and without need 
 of external authority ; having all its 
 powers of affection fully developed, it 
 would do for love all and more than 
 all that another would do for obedi- 
 ence. Yet, granting the cogency of this 
 defence, we cannot help feeling that 
 Froebel's teaching is here inadequate. 
 He strongly insists, and with justice, 
 that there should be no caprice or 
 wilfulness in the attitude of the parent 
 or teacher towards the child. But to 
 maintain that a child should not do 
 anything simply because he is ordered 
 by some one above him, but only 
 because it is right, is subversive of
 
 ETHICAL TEACHING. 65 
 
 all authority. In his eagerness for 
 freedom, Froebel is blind to this 
 danger. Necessity, he says, " must 
 call forth freedom and law, self-de- 
 termination ; otherwise education is 
 only injurious." To this end all pre- 
 scriptive commands must be clearly 
 recognized as simple consequences of 
 eternal law, to which he who com- 
 mands and he who is commanded 
 are alike subject : — " Between the two, 
 teacher and pupil, there must be 
 always a third — the good, the right — 
 to which both must bow — an inevi- 
 table eternal necessity, banishing all 
 suspicion of caprice." The teacher's 
 commands must come to the child, 
 not as expressions of his own will, 
 but as expressions of an absolute 
 right, of which the teacher himself 
 
 F
 
 65 ETHICAL TEACHING. 
 
 is simply an interpreter and to whose 
 guidance he has given himself up " in 
 utter self-abandonment and devotion." 
 We see here with what deep rever- 
 ence Froebel regards this abstract 
 right, and it is clear that his method 
 would tend greatly to impress the 
 child with a sense of its dignity. It 
 would create in him at once an awe 
 of, and a habit of submission to, an 
 invisible power, with which, as he' 
 grew older, he would learn to feel 
 himself in conscious and willing 
 unison. Upon all these points, how- 
 ever, Froebel gives us only here and 
 there hints and indications of his 
 meaning. It is in the " Menschen- 
 Erziehung " (p. 1 1) that he first speaks 
 of this great principle of right, and 
 he occasionally refers to it again in
 
 ETHICAL TEACHING. 67 
 
 a cursory way. But nowhere docs 
 he fully elaborate and explain a prin- 
 ciple upon which, notwithstanding, so 
 much of his ethical teaching depends. 
 In the "Mutter- und Koselieder," * 
 in reference to one of the later songs 
 — the " Cuckoo," — he speaks of 
 awakening the voice of conscience in 
 the child, and of this awakening as 
 "the presentiment of approaching 
 higher spiritual union — union with 
 the Highest." Whether, by this 
 " Highest," he means the right or 
 <rood, of which wc have just been 
 speaking, or whether, by " union 
 with the Highest," he means union 
 with God — a form of thought more 
 familiar to him — is not quite certain. 
 
 * "Mutter- und Koselieder" (Ed. Seidel, 
 Vienna, 1S87), p. 203.
 
 68 ETHICAL TEACHING. 
 
 Most likely he means the latter. 
 And, indeed, it is probable that, had 
 he been questioned upon this point, 
 he would have said that in the last 
 resort the two principles were one, 
 and that the eternal law of right was 
 identical with the will of God. 
 
 Before considering Froebel's treat- 
 ment of the special virtues, it will be 
 advisable to give our attention for a 
 moment to his views on the subject 
 of the will and its training. Directly 
 he does not tell us very much ; but 
 indirectly he gives us very clear in- 
 dications of his opinion. We must, 
 in the first place, bear in mind his 
 conviction that the germs of selfish- 
 ness and the evil will are quickened 
 in the child-mind by the fault of the 
 educator. He tells us that the be-
 
 ETHICAL TEACHING. 69 
 
 ginnings of obstinacy " are first 
 awakened in the little child when he 
 discovers that he is left to pain or 
 discomfort through the caprice, in- 
 attention or laziness of those who 
 ought to take care of him." * His 
 wilfulness arises in reaction against 
 our injustice. This is a valuable 
 psychological observation. There is 
 no doubt that a sense of injustice is 
 very often at the bottom of much of 
 the wilfulness and obstinacy that 
 seem to us inexplicable. The self- 
 will rises in opposition to another 
 will conceived as hostile and unjust. 
 And if in childhood we could be 
 thoroughly imbued with a sense of 
 the absolute justice of those around 
 us, it is highly probable that there 
 
 * " Menschen-Erziehung," p. 16.
 
 70 ETHICAL TEACHING. 
 
 would result a feeling of trust and 
 security so perfect that it would — if 
 not wholly prevent — at least to a 
 great extent diminish the growth of 
 obstinacy and selfishness. As regards 
 training of the will, Froebel would, it 
 appears, rely to some extent on phy- 
 sical discipline. In the "Menschen- 
 Erziehung" (p. 41) he speaks of 
 measured rhythmic movement as 
 developing a mental attitude favour- 
 able to temperance and law. Else- 
 where he speaks of the necessity of 
 training the body to be absolutely 
 subject to the will, so that the child 
 may feel his limbs to be a support 
 and protection to his soul, and not a 
 heavy load or burden which his soul 
 is obliged to carry about with it. 
 The will must be trained to be both
 
 ETHICAL TEACHING. 71 
 
 active and firm. For in giving the 
 child freedom, we must awaken his 
 activity of will ( W UlenstJiatigkeif), 
 and having awakened this, must then 
 gradually lead him on to firmness 
 and decision ( Willensfestigkeif). The 
 child's will must be trained in self- 
 reliance, so as not to depend help- 
 lessly upon the will of another. 
 According to the old system in which 
 obedience was the chief virtue taught 
 to children, the will was not trained, 
 in any rational sense, at all, but was 
 simply crushed. And yet, strangely 
 enough, it was expected that a will, 
 which had all its youthful life been 
 made to lean absolutely upon another, 
 should at the moment of emancipation 
 be instantly capable of standing alone. 
 It has already been pointed out that
 
 72 ETHICAL TEACHING. 
 
 on the question of obedience and re- 
 gard to authority, Froebel's teaching 
 is wanting. But it is not unlikely 
 that, in the natural reaction against 
 a mistaken system, he half wittingly 
 closed his eyes to its good points. 
 His own childhood's training, so far 
 as it ever existed, was so terribly 
 mismanaged, that he conceived as an 
 ideal the greatest possible absence of 
 interference and control. His defini- 
 tion of will, found in the "Menschen- 
 Erziehung " (p. 60), runs as follows : — 
 " Will is that form of spiritual activity 
 {Geistesthdtigkeii) which, in due cor- 
 respondence with the whole nature of 
 man, proceeds consciously from a 
 determined source, along a deter- 
 mined path, towards a determined 
 goal ; " and he then goes on to say
 
 ETHICAL TEA CHI AG. 73 
 
 that the whole duty of the educator 
 lies in seeing (1) that "the source" 
 is strong, healthy and pure ; (2) that 
 " the path " is simple and direct ; and 
 (3) that " the goal " is sure, clearly 
 conceived and worthy of highest 
 effort. Though somewhat hampered 
 here by a rather vague psychology, 
 he evidently means to point out that 
 what we should do in order to create 
 a good will is to look in the first 
 place to the disposition at large, and 
 in the second to the objects to which 
 it is applied. These must not merely 
 be good and worthy in themselves, 
 but also be clearly and adequately 
 recognized. True activity and firm- 
 ness of will must proceed from true 
 activity and firmness of disposition. 
 Where the latter is wanting the
 
 74 ETHICAL TEACHING. 
 
 former will with difficulty be attained. 
 Froebel would, therefore, have us 
 direct all our endeavours to the culti- 
 vation of a good heart and disposition 
 {Hers nnd GemiitJi). 
 
 We pass on to Froebel's treatment 
 of the special virtues. As in all his 
 ethical teaching, so here also he gives 
 us only incidental expressions of his 
 thought, and leaves us to work them 
 out for ourselves. While speaking 
 of the faults of boyhood (" Menschen- 
 Erziehung," p. 75) and vigorously 
 denouncing our own large share in 
 producing them, he lights upon the 
 nature of truth and falsehood. Ly- 
 ing he declares to be the one source 
 of all evil in the world. " If there 
 be anything that is really in itself 
 and essentially evil," he exclaims,
 
 ETHICAL TEACHING. 75 
 
 "then it is the lie." That there is 
 any such real evil, however, he will 
 not believe, and he here repeats the 
 theory so often enunciated in different 
 forms by different writers, that false- 
 hood or evil is a shadow only without 
 real existence.* From this evident 
 horror of lying his love of truth may 
 be inferred. But he hardly speaks 
 at all on the positive side, taking it 
 for granted that men properly edu- 
 cated will be truthful. In his sketch 
 of the " Fundamental Principles of 
 Education " (Lange, vol. i. p. 436) 
 he remarks incidentally that his 
 system of teaching will make men 
 look upon truth as their " chiefest 
 
 * Cp. also Froebel's " Gesammclte Padago- 
 gische Schriften," ed. Lange (Berlin, 1862), vol. 
 i. p. 270.
 
 76 ETHICAL TEACHING. 
 
 treasure." It is, Froebel tells us, 
 precisely because man is God — 
 created for truth, that he has the 
 power of lying. Otherwise he could 
 not be in the highest sense truthful. 
 The thought is the same as we have 
 met before in relation to goodness in 
 general, and beyond it he tells us 
 but little. On the question how to 
 train the mind to perfect truthfulness, 
 how to guard it from the promptings 
 of cowardice which induce the first 
 false step, he does not enter. Here, 
 again, he might plead that a tendency 
 to untruthfulness is one of the results 
 of a bad education, which under a 
 better and a wiser system would be 
 wholly wanting. It is a lack of con- 
 fidence that induces cowardice ; the 
 child should live in an atmosphere of
 
 ETHICAL TEACHING. 77 
 
 such absolute trust in its parents 
 ("Mutter- unci Koselieder," p. 98) 
 that no such failing could arise. The 
 thought here is undeniably beautiful ; 
 whether it would work when carried 
 into practice can only be decided by 
 those who have had much experience 
 of children in their various stages of 
 moral development. 
 
 On courage he touches several 
 times, regarding it as a natural de- 
 velopment of healthy childhood. But 
 he does not clearly distinguish be- 
 tween physical and moral courage. 
 We may, perhaps, say that, in general, 
 he has the former rather than the 
 latter in mind ; but he really blends 
 the two together, and it would be 
 impossible to make a hard and fast 
 distinction. The return of the winter,
 
 78 ETHICAL TEACHING. 
 
 he tells us,* brings with it heightened 
 courage and strength, awakening joy 
 in the boy's heart. In the same 
 spirit he speaks of the boy's love of 
 triumphing over difficulties; and even 
 of "creating them for himself for the 
 very sake of overcoming them." We 
 must always bear in mind that Froe- 
 bel's ideal is a life lived in the open 
 air, in intimate communion with 
 nature under all her aspects and in 
 all her moods. In such a life nature 
 herself would teach the boy courage, 
 endurance and patience, without the 
 necessity of any direct inculcation on 
 the part of his teacher. 
 
 To the virtue of justice he scarcely 
 alludes. He might say that a sense 
 of justice would grow up of itself in 
 
 * " Menschen-Erziehung," p. 198.
 
 ETHICAL TEACHING. 79 
 
 a child educated in constant com- 
 panionship with others, and seeing 
 always the same measure dealt out 
 to itself and to its fellows. Even- 
 handed justice would come to form, 
 in its consciousness, part of the 
 necessary relations of things. We 
 must, however, remember that we are 
 here taking for granted, not only that 
 the rulers in the Kindergarten and 
 the school are absolutely just, but 
 also that they are capable of im- 
 pressing the children with a sense of 
 their justice, and a perfect trust and 
 belief in it. This is an important 
 assumption, and where it is not 
 realized the way is opened to many 
 dangers, e.g., to that obstinacy and 
 self-will the seeds of which, as we 
 have been told, we quicken even in
 
 So ETHICAL TEACHING. 
 
 the infant mind by our own injustice. 
 Given an absolutely honest teacher, 
 the system is admirable, for there 
 cannot be the slightest doubt that a 
 sense of the perfect fairness of those 
 in authority will do more to awaken 
 a love of justice and a desire to act 
 justly among children, than any 
 amount of precept and theoretical 
 teaching. And since, as Froebel is so 
 fond of telling us, the perfect evolu- 
 tion of one stage leads on to the per- 
 fect evolution of the next, he who has 
 been in the habit of acting justly as 
 child, boy and youth, will most likely 
 become a lover of justice when a man. 
 With generosity, the crown of jus- 
 tice, he does not specifically deal. 
 It is, as a matter of fact, not a quality 
 that can be trained. It must come
 
 ETHICAL TEACHING. 81 
 
 spontaneously or not at all. His 
 nearest approach to it — though 
 here near is but far — is where he 
 speaks of the natural desire for sym- 
 pathy {Gemeingefuhl) inborn in every 
 child. He regards it as a kind of 
 eagerness or yearning to live, not as 
 an isolated unit, but as a living part 
 of a living whole. We see it, he 
 says, even in the infant, whose first 
 smile reveals a yet unconscious yearn- 
 ing towards unity and sympathy with 
 another living being whom it recog- 
 nizes as not itself. We might sur- 
 mise that in a later stage this Geme- 
 ingtfiild, having grown into unselfish- 
 ness, might further rise into generosity, 
 which, after all, is only a higher 
 development of the same fundamental 
 altruistic feeling. 
 
 G
 
 82 ETHICAL TEACHING. 
 
 On the old cardinal virtue of tem- 
 perance, or moderation, Froebel dwells 
 with great enthusiasm, and it is some- 
 what remarkable that alongside of, 
 and working together with, his strong 
 religious bent he has also a deep 
 reverence for what we may regard as 
 more especially the philosophic or 
 moral, as distinguished from the re- 
 ligious virtues. He gives proof of 
 this in the " Menschen-Erziehung " 
 (p. 26), where, after speaking of the 
 necessity of early training in in- 
 dustry and religion, he goes on to 
 say : — 
 
 " Human power must neither be 
 merely inwardly expressed as re- 
 ligion and a religious attitude of 
 mind, nor merely outwardly mani- 
 fested as industry and activity, but
 
 ETHICAL TEACHING. 83 
 
 also, thrown back upon itself and 
 self-reliant, it must develop, work 
 and grow perfect, as moderation, 
 temperance and self-control." 
 
 He has a few words to say in 
 regard to the performance of duties. 
 They come, he tells us,* as a joy to 
 the healthy child. " They are not 
 burdens, but in their fulfilment lead 
 finally to the light and to all its 
 generous gifts ; hence every healthy 
 child is glad and pleased to fulfil its 
 duties if only they are presented to 
 it clearly, simply, and definitely." 
 Again, — "A sense of duty done calls 
 forth a feeling of independence," 
 which should be carefully fostered 
 and developed. We see clearly that 
 he anticipates no difficulty or re- 
 
 * "Mutter- und Koselieder," p. 179,
 
 84 ETHICAL TEACHING. 
 
 luctance on the part of the child to 
 obey the behests of duty. He would 
 not have the word made a bugbear, 
 as it so often is, by being held up in 
 opposition to pleasure, as though 
 they were contradictory terms. He 
 would rather have the child approach 
 its duties as pleasures, unconscious 
 of any opposition between obligation 
 and desire. 
 
 Throughout Froebel's writings we 
 find no theory of punishment. The 
 view he so strongly held, that the 
 child is in himself good, and that his 
 faults are produced by the mistakes 
 or neglect of his teachers, would 
 necessarily make any theory of retri- 
 butive punishment impossible for him. 
 But he does not even speak of punish- 
 ment as preventive. He would have
 
 ETHICAL TE AC HI AG. 85 
 
 prevention of another kind. We 
 must, he tells us,* go to the root of 
 the matter. We must search for and 
 discover the originally good source 
 or side of the human character, in the 
 oppression or misdirection of which 
 the fault in question has had its 
 origin. We must, then, carefully 
 train and direct this till the evil 
 is cured.| Froebel is altogether so 
 much more impressed by the faults of 
 educators than of the educated, that 
 he does not trouble himself to evolve 
 any theory of punishment for the 
 latter. Many so-called faults arise, 
 he tells us, merely from thoughtless- 
 ness and carelessness. For instance, 
 
 * " Menschen-Erziehung," p. 76. 
 
 t Plato also regards wrong-doing as a disease ; 
 but then, he says, it is one which can partially be 
 cured by punishment.
 
 b6 ETHICAL TEACHING. 
 
 a child, in his zeal for scientific re- 
 search, keeps on throwing plates from 
 a height into a water-cask full of 
 water until he succeeds in breaking 
 one ; or a boy, without the least evil 
 intention, and with a great fondness 
 for pigeons, uses his neighbour's 
 pigeons as a mark till at last he kills 
 one, and leaves her brood of little 
 ones motherless. Without neces- 
 sarily regarding the child, in conse- 
 quence, as a Teufelchen, or imp of 
 mischief (as he puts it a little further 
 on), it would seem desirable to pre- 
 vent him from such scarcely innocent 
 exercise of a " praiseworthy impulse" 
 {Jobenswerther Tried). Froebel, how- 
 ever, does not seem at all alive to 
 any such necessity. In speaking of 
 crossness and fractiousness in little
 
 ETHICAL TEACHING. 87 
 
 children,* he lights upon a very 
 valuable psychological truth, viz., the 
 power of a sudden change of atten- 
 tion to banish ill-humour. The child, 
 he tells us, is overmastered by its 
 own perversity, and is for the moment 
 incapable of shaking it off. A power- 
 ful call upon its attention from out- 
 side will have the effect of dispelling 
 the cloud, by calling into activity 
 some other power of the mind, and 
 forcing consciousness into another 
 channel. 
 
 Turning now to consider Froebel's 
 favourite theory of moral develop- 
 ment,! we shall find that it is to some 
 extent coloured by his early studies 
 in physical science. He looks upon 
 
 * " Mutter- und Koseleider," p. 198. 
 t " Menschen-Erziehung," p. 10.
 
 88 ETHICAL TEACHING. 
 
 human character as an organism in 
 process of evolution ; he consequently 
 deems such training to be necessary 
 as shall carefully bring to perfection 
 each step or stage in the process, 
 and, while holding* clearly in view 
 all the stages to come, shall yet not 
 hurry on any one, or neglect to let 
 each attain its perfect maturity.! 
 Man's course of life, — from the child 
 on its mother's knee to the greybeard 
 nearing the grave, — is that of a con- 
 stantly progressive, self-developing 
 whole. In the " Menschen-Erzie- 
 hung," he goes carefully through 
 each stage of development. What 
 is good and even necessary for one 
 
 * See " Gesamm. -Werke," p. 271, ed. Lange. 
 Vol. i. 
 
 t See "Mutter- unci Koselieder," p. 158.
 
 ETHICAL TEACHING. 89 
 
 is harmful for another. The various 
 qualities and powers of mind and 
 disposition must be allowed to unfold 
 freely in their natural course, as the 
 unfolding buds of a plant in blossom. 
 It is no use wanting the flower before 
 the leaves have come out, and it is 
 no use grasping at the fruit before 
 the flower has had time to blossom, 
 fade and fall. Just as the tree wants 
 nourishment, care and shelter, so 
 the character needs food and train- 
 ing, — and if a hostile wind have made 
 it bent or crooked, it wants gentle 
 care and help to make it grow 
 straight again. This analogy of the 
 tree Froebel is very fond of, and he 
 uses it often in various forms. It is 
 in many ways valuable and sugges- 
 tive ; but some other conclusions to
 
 90 ETHICAL TEACHING. 
 
 which it might have led him had he 
 followed it up a little more closely, 
 e.g. that all young trees are not in 
 themselves good and strong, but that 
 some bear within them the seeds of 
 premature destruction and decay, do 
 not seem to have occurred to him. 
 Had they been pointed out to him, 
 he would probably have said that in 
 so far the analogy did not hold. He 
 was so thoroughly and unalterably 
 convinced of the original goodness of 
 man, that, — as we cannot help feeling 
 in reading his words of glowing en- 
 thusiasm, — no power on earth could 
 have shaken his belief. Doubtless, 
 in a large majority of instances, it 
 may safely be assumed. Of the facts 
 of heredity, which unhappily do to 
 some extent contradict it, we cannot
 
 ETHICAL TEACHING. 91 
 
 here speak. Only this much may be 
 said, that, if the pure, strong and 
 noble training which is Froebel's ideal, 
 could be given to mankind at large, 
 so that every human being came 
 under its influence, then, in the course 
 of a generation or two, it is possible 
 that heredity, instead of being, as it 
 now so often is, a terrible curse would, 
 become a source of highest blessing 
 only. 
 
 In conclusion, a few words must 
 be said of Froebel's position in regard 
 to happiness. To say that he set 
 a high value upon it is to utter a 
 mere platitude. Even those who 
 most depreciate his teaching, will 
 admit that he has done much to 
 increase the happiness of child-life. 
 His theory was that children should
 
 92 ETHICAL TEACHING. 
 
 live in an atmosphere of happiness 
 as in sunshine ; that they should un- 
 fold like young plants in the sunlight. 
 This is everywhere his constant wish. 
 But we must carefully note that while 
 he regarded happiness as the most 
 valuable of means, he never looked 
 upon it as an end. He says,* most 
 emphatically, the child must not be 
 taught that it is to be good because 
 it will then be happy. That is a 
 doctrine alike false and pernicious. 
 It is false, because the good are not 
 in fact always happy; it is pernicious, 
 because to teach a child to follow 
 goodness by reason only of her at- 
 tendant happiness, is to make him 
 forsake her the moment she seems 
 to bring misery in her train. Instead 
 
 * " Menschen-Erzichung," p. 170.
 
 ETHICAL TEACHING. 93 
 
 of being told that if he is good, things 
 will go well with him, he must be 
 shown, " that he who seeks the good, 
 — the pure expression of human life 
 — with willing effort and self-sacrifice, 
 must necessarily live in outward pain 
 and struggle. Each stage of develop- 
 ment, however perfect and beautiful 
 in itself, must pass away and be de- 
 stroyed before the next can appear." 
 Possibly he is here a little led away 
 by his analogy of the plant, which 
 must lose its flowers before it can 
 gain its fruit. For elsewhere he 
 always speaks of each stage of de- 
 velopment as growing naturally and 
 almost imperceptibly out of its fore- 
 runner. Whatever the cause, we 
 do find here a touch of asceticism 
 which is foreign to the strong, breezy
 
 94 ETHICAL TEACHING. 
 
 and thoroughly healthy tone of his 
 whole teaching. His great anxiety, 
 however, in these pages * is to pro- 
 test, with all the eloquence of a 
 genuine enthusiasm, against world- 
 liness and other-worldliness. He 
 inveighs strongly against making 
 happiness, either here or hereafter, 
 the price of goodness. 
 
 " For if (he exclaims) our course 
 of life be pure, and our actions good 
 and right, there is no need for a 
 reward in another world even though 
 in this one everything to which the 
 mere worldling (der sinnliche MenscJi) 
 attaches a value should be wanting. 
 ... It indicates a trivial knowledge 
 of the true nature, and a trivial re- 
 spect for the true worth and dignity 
 * " Menschen-Erziehung," pp. 170-173.
 
 ETHICAL TEACHING. 95 
 
 of man, if the stimulus of a reward 
 in another world must be held out in 
 order to rouse him to action worthy 
 of his nature and high calling. . . . 
 The feeling, the consciousness of 
 having lived and worked in unswerv- 
 ing faithfulness to his true nature and 
 dignity ought, without the need or 
 demand of any other external satis- 
 faction, to be at all times his highest 
 reward. . . . We weaken and de- 
 grade the human nature we should 
 strengthen and raise, when we dangle 
 before it a bait to good action, even 
 though this bait be hung out from 
 another world. In using an external 
 stimulus, however seemingly spiritual, 
 to call forth a better life, we leave 
 undeveloped that active and inde- 
 pendent inward force which is im-
 
 96 ETHICAL TEACHING. 
 
 planted within every man for the 
 manifestation of ideal humanity." 
 
 Here we might take leave of Froe- 
 bel. Ethics can teach us nothing 
 higher than this : without hope of fee 
 or reward, to live and act out always 
 the highest, purest, noblest, human 
 life ; to do the right because it is 
 right, and not because it will bring 
 us happiness, and to follow goodness 
 for its own sake even though it lead 
 us into misery and contempt. From 
 the moralist we can demand no 
 higher teaching. But Froebel him- 
 self does not stop here. In his 
 thought ethics and religion are never 
 separated for long ; the highest moral 
 and the highest religious life are 
 indissolubly blended together. For
 
 ETHICAL TEACHING. 97 
 
 pervading and illumining the whole 
 body of Froebel's teaching there is 
 the abiding consciousness that — " in 
 God we live, and move, and have 
 our being." 
 
 THE END. 
 
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