CHILD ANoCMlLD-NATURE 
 
 aia 
 
 L
 
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 u
 
 THE 
 
 CHILD AND CHILD-NATURE 
 
 THE BARONESS MARENHOLTZ-BULOW 
 
 AUTHOR OF "HAND-WOKK AND HBAI>-\YOKK,' ETC. 
 
 LONDON 
 ttWAN 8ONNENSCHEIN & CO., LTD. 
 
 PATERNOSTER SQUARE 
 1896
 
 First Edition, March, 1879 ; Second, August, 1881 ; 
 Third, June, 1884 ; Fourth, November, 1886 ; Fifth, 
 January, 1890 ; Sixth, August, 1891 ; Seventh, 
 January, 1893 ; Eighth, January, 1894 ; Ninth, 
 February, 1895.
 
 LIBRARY 
 
 AUTHORESS' PREFACE TO THE FIRST EDITION. 
 
 PART of the following Essays have already appeared in the 
 journal entitled " Erziehung der Gegenwart " (Berlin, Enslin, 
 1861, 1862), prepared by me, and edited by Karl Schmidt, 
 Councillor of Education, which work being now out of print, 
 a republication of the Essays may be acceptable. The remain- 
 ing part has been added quite lately. 
 
 D B. 
 
 BERLIN, May, 1868.
 
 AUTHORESS' PREFACE TO THE SECOND EDITION. 
 
 THE present edition appears unaltered, and will, we hope, 
 meet with the same reception as did the first, especially in 
 the circle of Kindergarten teachers. 
 
 Although, since the first appearance of this work, the spread 
 of Kindergartens may have made important progress, the same 
 cannot be said of the understanding of Frobel's principles 
 
 These, on the contraiy, have become more and more per- 
 verted by the continually increasing number of incompetent 
 persons who have attempted to carry them out, and need 
 on this account renewed interpretation. It is to this end 
 that the second edition of this work will be devoted. 
 
 D. B. 
 
 DEKSDEN, May, 1878.
 
 TRANSLATOR'S PREFACE. 
 
 THE book, of which the following pages are a translation, has for 
 its object to promote a more thorough and universal under- 
 standing of the theories and philosophy on which Frobel's 
 educational system is basof?. 
 
 In their outward embodiment of Kindergarten schools, ap- 
 proaching more or less incompletely to the original conception 
 of the founder of the system, these theories have been gaining 
 for some time past increasing acceptance in England. But 
 while Kindergartens are multiplying, and Kindergarten teachers 
 are being trained in greater and greater numbers, and parents 
 and children are rejoicing in the discovery that lessons and tears 
 have no necessary connection with each other, there is still great 
 and prevailing ignorance as to what is the real meaning of this 
 educational revolution, or indeed as to whether there be any 
 meaning in it at all, beyond the idea that it is better to make 
 children's lessons pleasant rather than unpleasant, and that it is 
 a good thing to teach them to use their hands. 
 
 It is a generally accepted fact that boys and girls must be 
 educated, that is to say, must be taught to do certain things 
 and know certain others in order that when they are grown up 
 they may get on in the world and be like other people or if 
 possible superior to them. This process of education must of 
 course begin at some time or other, and natural and artificial 
 causes combined have resulted in the universal acknowledgment 
 that it should begin as early in life as possible. Children, 
 however, have always shown a perverse preference for play 
 rather than lessons. Dolls, boxes of bricks, nursery-rhymes, 
 &c., have invariably had a greater power of fascination for
 
 iv Translator's Preface. 
 
 their young minds than A B C 's and spelling-books, or the 
 most elegantly traced pot-hooks and copy-book maxims. Most 
 of us can remember a time when our deepest feelings were 
 expressed in the lines : 
 
 " Multiplication is vexation, 
 Division is as bad ; 
 The Rule of Three doth puzzle me, 
 And Practice drives me mad." 
 
 And so lesson-time has been wont to be for children a time 
 of tears and punishment and longing to have done, and, as a 
 rule, not till the season for learning has passed do we see much 
 desire for it. 
 
 But Frobel has changed all this. He has not said that educa- 
 tion should not begin so soon on the contrary, according to him 
 it ought to begin from the cradle but he has said that children 
 must not be made unhappy over their lessons, and he has given 
 to the world a system by which he guarantees that both these ends 
 shall be accomplished. And though some mothers are not quite 
 sure whether their children learn what is most necessary at 
 Kindergartens, and "get on fast enough," and some think there 
 is too much system for little children, some again that there is 
 too much, play, still the children are happy, and that is the 
 chief thing. 
 
 Frobel, however, means a great deal more than this, as will 
 be seen by a study of the Baroness von Bulow's full and detailed 
 exposition of his theories and philosophy. How far these are 
 already understood in England I am not able fully to estimate, 
 for I have had no personal experience of or connection with 
 Kindergartens, and have not been in the way of hearing much 
 about them ; nor, until I was asked if I would undertake the 
 translation of this book, had I given the matter any serious 
 attention. I certainly had very little idea myself of the way in 
 which Frobel had arrived at his system, or of what were the 
 fundamental principles underlying it, and my attitude towards 
 H was of a very uncertain nature. Whilst engaged on this 
 translation, however, I have occasionally talked about the book 
 to people in different ways connected with or interested in
 
 Translator s Preface. 
 
 Kindergartens, and have generally found that the essential 
 ideas expounded in it were quite new to them new i.e. in 
 their application to the education of children. 
 
 Whether a more profound and universal comprehension of 
 Frobel's educational theories will at once have the effect of 
 making Kindergartens more popular is, I think, doubtful. 
 Those parents and teachers who have had misgivings as to 
 the preponderance of play in this mode of education will, 
 perhaps, be relieved to find how serious a view Frobel took 
 of the meaning and use of children's play ; but those who 
 have already rather inclined to find fault with the excess of 
 systematizing, as likely to suppress all originality in children, 
 and turn them into machines incapable of acting when the 
 guiding hand has been removed, will possibly learn with 
 dismay that there is even more system than thej' thought; and 
 those for whom Kindergartens have as yet had no attraction, 
 and who have been content to go on teaching and getting their 
 children taught in old established ways, acknowledging that 
 education is of course a very important, indeed the most 
 important matter, and that a certain amount of method in it is 
 undoubtedly desirable ; but that even here one may go too far, 
 and that after all those children often turn out best who are 
 not too much looked after, &c., &c., these, doubtless, will, many 
 of them, regard this book as a tissue of far-fetched absurdi- 
 ties. They may often have been perplexed by the difficulty, 
 or rather the impossibility, of knowing how far their children 
 really understood and were benefiting by what was being 
 taught them, and have wondered to what extent it is desirable 
 (to some extent it is unavoidable) to store the memory with 
 facts and ideas beyond the power of the mind to deal with 
 and assimilate; they may often have wished that they could 
 look into their children's minds and see clearly the processes 
 going on there, but they will not necessarily believe Frobel 
 when he undertakes to lay bare these processes, and asserts that 
 in the analogy which can be traced between the development 
 of the individual human being and that of the race lies the 
 clue to the insight they desire. That as mankind in its infancy 
 had no apprehension of abstract spiritual ideas, and only took
 
 vi Translator s Preface. 
 
 in knowledge in a concrete form through the bodily senses 
 without any conscious co-operation of the mind, so is it with 
 human beings in their infancy, and that consequently children 
 must not be troubled with abstract ideas and symbolic methods, 
 such as reading, writing, arithmetic, &c., until by means of 
 their outward senses, properly trained and guided, they have 
 obtained more or less distinct impressions of the truths which 
 these symbols represent and treat of. Then with regard to 
 what is most important for children to learn, since they cannot 
 iearn everything, what is the best plan to pursue, since we can- 
 not dispense altogether with plans and systems, parents and 
 teachers may often have felt sorely perplexed ; but Frobel's 
 solution of the difficulty is not likely to be at once universally 
 welcomed : on the contrary, it will probably seem to many 
 people a very far-fetched one, to say the least. Such phrases 
 as " the continuity and inter-connection of all things in 
 the universe," "the unity of development in all life, organic 
 and inorganic," " the development of humanity into an har- 
 monious whole at unity with Grod," " the training of human 
 beings in this life for a higher state of existence hereafter," are 
 all very well in scientific books and sermons, many people will 
 be ready to exclaim, " but they are rather out of place with 
 regard to the lessons of little children. Of course we believe 
 that this life is a preparation for another, and children must be 
 taught to be good and re.'igious ; but we know little or nothing 
 as to what this other life will be, and meanwhile here we are 
 in this world, and we must get on in it as best we can and fit 
 our children for getting on in it." 
 
 To such Frobel would have answered, "The universe of 
 which our earth and its inhabitants are a part is a complete, con- 
 tinuous whole, and all things in it the work of the same Creator. 
 There are no breaks in this universe, but everywhere continuity 
 and connection. Everywhere we see lower life feeding or de- 
 veloping into higher life. Man is no exception to this univer- 
 sal law. Every child that is born into the world forms part of 
 the scheme of the universe and is subject to its laws. His life 
 in childhood and youth is the germ out of which the life of 
 his manhood and old age will develop, and his life in a higher
 
 Translator s Preface. vii 
 
 State of existence will be the outcome of his whole life here. 
 The end depends on the beginning. If you wish, therefore, to 
 make a right beginning you must keep the end in view from 
 the very first ; otherwise, when you have already proceeded a 
 considerable way, you may find that you have been moving all 
 the time in a wrong direction, and that you have to retrace your 
 steps and make a fresh start with time and strength wasted 
 and diminished. What your children ought to learn, how they 
 should be educated, is no arbitrary matter dependent on arti- 
 ficial passing fashion ; it depends on the fundamental princi- 
 ples of the universe, of which human nature (and therefore 
 child-nature too) is a part on the eternal laws of Grod, which 
 are revealed to us in the life of nature and of man. There can be 
 liOtrue basis of education, no right training and teaching of little 
 children, if these laws and principles be not taken into account, 
 any more than the tiniest plant could attain perfection if the 
 gardener tried to rear it without regard to its dependence on the 
 sun, saying, 'What can such an immense globe so many millions 
 of miles away have to do with this insignificant little primrose?' 
 You, who complain of my passion for system, have you ever 
 really considered what it is that you are objecting to ? Develop- 
 ment, growth according to a systematic plan, is not an invention 
 of mine ; it is the Divine order of the universe, and do what you 
 v/ill you cannot escape from it. Do you think, moreover, you 
 Would gain anything if you could ? Do you imagine that you 
 would be freer, more original and individual, if this order or 
 system by which you are surrounded were suddenly changed 
 iuto chaos ? You say that you are afraid systematized training 
 will 'crush originality,' 'stamp out individuality,' by which 
 t'irms I su| pose you mean that in which one human being 
 differs from another in character and capacities. Do you find 
 ihat the plants, animals, &c., which grow up under the same 
 systematic influences of Nature become all exactly alike ? In 
 so far as my method of education is, as I meant it to be, in 
 anrmony with the system of Nature, far from stamping out 
 individuality, it will only serve to increase it, by affording oppor- 
 tunity for development to all the different powers of different 
 Hainan beings from their earliest infancy. My object has been
 
 viii Translator's Preface. 
 
 to devise a plan by which children shall be surrounded from 
 their cradles by those conditions and influences which, after long 
 and careful study of the laws of human nature and its develop- 
 ment, I have found to be essential for the unfolding of all the 
 natural powers which children bring with them into the world. 
 Many mothers will reply indignantly that they can understand 
 their children's natures and requirements without long and care- 
 ful study, and that they are the most natural and fit people to 
 train them. They may be the most natural, but they certainly 
 have not always shown themselves the most fit. No one can 
 take a higher or more serious view than I do of the 
 mother's part in the education of children, but mothers, like 
 everything else in the world, are more or less imperfect, and 
 the best of them will be the first to own that they cannot 
 altogether dispense with help and guidance." 
 
 Frobel does not claim for himself, nor is it claimed for him, 
 that these ideas are new discoveries of his ; but he has been the 
 first to make them the basis of a system of education. How- 
 ever much opinion may differ as to the details of this system, 
 however absurd even, and impracticable, much of it may appear 
 at first, no one, I think, who professes (as most of us do) to agree 
 with Frobel's theories of man's part in the universe and his final 
 destiny, can consistently refuse to acknowledge that the central 
 principle of Kindergartens is a right one. And if the central 
 principle be right, and rightly understood, the details will grad- 
 ually shape themselves more and more perfectly around it, and 
 all that is really absurd and unnecessary will in time fall away. 
 
 Frobel's leading ideas in their intellectual and spiritual 
 aspects cannot, I think, be better summed up than in the follow- 
 ing words of a well-known modern preacher:* "We spoil all 
 this divine teaching of God and Nature by forcing the child out 
 of his unconsciousness into self-consciousness, by demanding 
 of him reflection, by checking the joy of his receptiveness by 
 too much teaching, too much forcing. Let him .remain for a 
 time ignorant of himself, and abide in his Heavenly Father's 
 hands ; let him live naturally, and drink in his wisdom and his 
 
 * See Stopford Brooke's Sermon, " Child Life," in the volume entitled 
 "Christ in Modern Life," p. 287.
 
 Translator's Preface ix 
 
 religion from the influences which God makes play around him. 
 Above all do not demand of him, as many do, convictions of sin, 
 nor make him false and hysterical by calling out from his imita- 
 tive nature deep spiritual experiences which he cannot truly 
 feel. Let him begin with natural religion ; leave him his early 
 joy untainted ; see that he knows Grod as love, and beauty, and 
 sympathy. It is horrible to anticipate for him the days, soon 
 enough to come, when sorrow and sin will make of life a battle, 
 where victory can only be bought by pain." 
 
 But there is a third aspect of the Kindergarten system, which, 
 though I dwell on it last, is the one to which Frobel gives the 
 greatest prominence : it is the physical development of children. 
 True to his central idea of the continuity of the universe and 
 of all its different parts, he cannot separate the human body 
 from the mind and soul of which it is the outward expression. 
 The three are closely bound up together, and must be treated 
 accordingly. But in the beginning of life the intellectual and 
 spiritual natures exist only in the germ, and the physical nature 
 with its instincts and necessities plays the prominent part. If, 
 then, education is to act as a guide to natural development, and 
 not as a "hindrance, it must take this fact into account, and 
 during the first years of life devote itself chiefly to calling out 
 and cultivating the limbs and senses which are intended as 
 organs of the mind and spirit, so that when the latter begin to 
 act they may have fit instruments to work with. 
 
 This is the principle underlying all the " play " which enters 
 into the Kindergarten system, and which is so planned that, 
 while it develops all the different parts of the body in a 
 healthy and pleasurable manner, it serves also by various 
 means, such as rhythmical movement, dramatic representa- 
 tion, accompanying song and narrative, to awaken the higher 
 senses and faculties. The body, while receiving from the first 
 its due share of attention, is also from the first kept in sub- 
 jection to the spirit. 
 
 As by the translation of this book I consider that I have 
 associated myself with the Kindergarten movement, I wish to 
 say in conclusion how thoroughly I have become convinced of 
 the essential merits of the system, and how much I hope (hat th* 
 
 b
 
 Translator s Preface. 
 
 introduction of this little work into England may contribute to 
 the spread of Kindergarten schools and teaching among us. 
 
 For the English version of some of the songs which occur v- 
 the latter part of the book, I am indebted to Miss Anieli 
 Gurney, who kindly placed at my disposal an unpublished 
 translation of Frbbel's "Mutter und Koselieder." Her initials 
 are affixed to those songs and mottoes of which I have adopted 
 her translations. 
 
 With most of his games and songs Frobel connects a motto 
 which explains their spirit and intention ; the following lines of 
 Mr. Browning's seem to me to form a perfect motto to the whole 
 system : 
 
 Let us not always say, 
 
 " Spite of this flesh to-day 
 
 I strove, made head, gained ground upon the whole ! 
 
 As the bird wings and sings, 
 
 Let us cry, ' ' All good things 
 
 Are ours, nor soul helps flesh more, now, than flesh helps soui.' r 
 
 Therefore I summon age 
 
 To grant 's youth's heritage, 
 
 Life's struggle having so far reached its term : 
 
 Thence shall I pass, approved 
 
 A man, for aye removed 
 
 From the developed brute ; a god though in the germ.
 
 NEW METHOD OF EDUCATION. 
 
 CHAPTER I. 
 
 INTRODUCTORY. 
 
 THE process of transformation through which human society is 
 passing at the present day necessitates unquestionably a recon- 
 struction "of our educational system. 
 
 The life of individuals, like that of the whole of humanity, 
 is not a chance following one upon another of " yesterday, to- 
 day, and to-morrow," a blind game at dice, which apportions to 
 each generation its lot without care or forethought ; it is, on 
 the contrary, a connected whole, and just as much govern od 
 and developed according to eternal laws as is the microscopic 
 world contained in a drop of water, or the countless solar 
 systems of the cosmic universe, or the distant nebulas which 
 the telescope renders visible to us. 
 
 Human society is an organism, the separate parts of which 
 cannot be worked upon in an isolated manner. Whatever affects 
 one member of this society affects all the other members, and 
 consequently the organism as a whole. Great political revolu- 
 tions, state changes, the discovery of fresh truths, of deeper 
 knowledge, not only alter the face of a particular limited area 
 of society, but bring about changes, or, we would rather say, 
 improvements, progress, greater or less, in all departments of 
 
 B
 
 A New Method of Education. 
 
 human life. And, if there is one department of which this may 
 be said more emphatically than of any other, it is that of Edu- 
 cation. 
 
 Education is concerned with the preparation for life in a 
 human society of which the conditions are in a perpetual state 
 of change and modification Her office is to prepare each 
 individual for future activity in this society, and she is to a 
 certain extent answerable for the blessing or the curse which 
 respectively follows on a rational or an irrational training for life. 
 Hence it is not enough that she should have mastered the cir- 
 cumstances and conditions of life by which her pupils are sur- 
 rounded in the present ; she must also be able to look forward 
 with prophetic grasp to the altered conditions in which their 
 manhood or womanhood will be spent. And therefore educa- 
 tional systems must never be" satisfied to keep to old-fashioned 
 grooves which do not accord with the new conditions of the 
 times, but must be always ready to adapt themselves to the 
 ever-changing aspect of things. 
 
 The immense changes in the conditions of life and labour 
 which the revolutionary process of our age has already brought 
 .about, and will still more bring about in the future, can escape 
 the notice of none who are capable of observing human affairs, 
 from whatever point of view they may contemplate them. The 
 opening out of political and civil rights to all classes, with the 
 more universal desire for a share in the working of state 
 machinery consequent thereon, necessitates undeniably an 
 extension of the training necessary to fit men for such work. 
 And a like demand is made on all departments of life art, 
 science, and religion not excepted. Everywhere there is a 
 widening of boundaries, an increase of the conditions which 
 call for co-operation ; everywhere we see not only that greater 
 and more difficult tasks are allotted to individuals, but that the 
 number of such tasks has multiplied, and that they require 
 ever greater and wider combinations of labourers for their 
 fulfilment. 
 
 The above remarks apply, of course, with more or less fitness 
 to all times, for the development of mankind of individual 
 nations as of individual men is a process which has gone on
 
 Introductory. 3 
 
 uninterruptedly through all ages ; but at the same time, the 
 history of this development proves indisputably the periodical 
 recurrence of epochs in which the changes, which for centuries 
 beforehand had been gradually and silently, preparing, have at 
 last ripened into fruit, when the new has burst forth from the 
 husk of the old in visible form, and with distinctly urged 
 claims. 
 
 Such an epoch is ours. 
 
 The conception, scarce fifty years old, of universal educa- 
 tion for the people has, for instance, become something quite 
 different from what it originally was. The demand for a higher 
 grade of culture in all classes of society makes itself every day 
 more distinctly heard. And public education, in the shape of 
 schools, has certainly in the main, and on the whole, striven to 
 respond to this demand. But has all been accomplished that 
 should be ? Without in the least wishing to underrate the 
 manifold improvements which have taken place in the number 
 and condition of schools, we feel nevertheless justified in asking 
 whether these are even yet adequate to satisfy the demands 
 of the present day with regard to universal human culture ? 
 Whether such knowledge of, and insight into, the true, the 
 good, the noble, the beautiful, the ideal, as schools of the 
 present highest standard of excellence are able to afford, be 
 enough to satisfy the need for purer morality, to impart power 
 to carry out that which the soul acknowledges as best. 
 
 Appearances and facts, both, alas ! compel us to answer this 
 question in the negative ! Look at our over-filled prisons ; 
 our countless hospitals and reformatories ; the ever-increasing 
 number of divorces, or still worse, the profanation of marriage 
 itself, which has come to be so generally looked upon as a cari- 
 cature ; the growing frequency of suicide ; the gigantic strides 
 of pauperism, spite of the emancipation of labour and trade 
 from all restrictions and obstacles ; spite of the strong impetus 
 given to the most important branches of industry ; consider the 
 rapid spread of the irreligious spirit, with its contempt for all 
 the loftier emotions of the human soul ; the triumphs of dead 
 rationalism and materialism, of mere ignoble pleasure-seeking , 
 see what a following is everywhere gained by soulless superfi- 
 
 B 2
 
 A New Method of Education. 
 
 ciality, wordy charlatanry, and unblushing deception and say 
 whether all this bears witness to, whether these all are the 
 fruits of, a sound and true system of education, a system 
 corresponding to the degree of civilization attained in the 
 present day. 
 
 And, so far I have touched only on the outward aspect of 
 existing circumstances ; I have said nothing of the misery 
 which meets the eye when it penetrates to the hidden regions 
 of society. Self-seeking in its coarsest as well as its most 
 refined forms, vulgarity of every description, greed, avarice, the 
 most miserable frivolity, lies, and trickery of every conceivable 
 kind. Such are the vices found to be working in secret, while 
 outwardly they appear in the garb of their opposite virtues. 
 Outward appearance is the god we worship, and outward 
 appearance has to such an extent gained the mastery in the 
 world, that belief in pure disinterested desire after good has 
 almost vanished, genuine self-sacrifice is mistrusted, mocked at, 
 or calumniated, and the man who yearns after a better state of 
 things is condemned to the martyrdom of battling with sordid 
 petty souls. 
 
 The objection, that " so it is, and so it always will be, as 
 long as there are human beings and human passions," is one 
 which nobody can or dares make who thoughtfully surveys the 
 course of human development ; for such a survey must incon- 
 testably show the great difference between the condition of 
 civilized nations and that of wild barbaric hordes must show 
 how high modern civilization stands above the rude naturalism 
 of our forefathers. The really great spirits of all ages, and of 
 all nations, agree in the assertion that the human race is destined 
 to attain to an ever higher degree of perfection, and con- 
 sequently of happiness and well-being. 
 
 But the accomplishment of this destiny depends on the har- 
 monious cultivation of all the natural powers and talents, and 
 requires that, at every fresh stage of development in the acquire- 
 ment of knowledge, there should be a corresponding stage of 
 development in the capacity for moral action. This balance, 
 between the knowledge of what is good and the power to put 
 that knowledge into action, is more disturbed in the present
 
 Introductory. 5 
 
 day than it ever was before, and to restore it as far as possible 
 is the chief, if not the sole, duty of education. 
 
 But schools alone are not adequate to the fulfilment of this 
 duty ; and for this reason, that they concern themselves almost 
 solely with the training of the understanding their chief busi- 
 ness is to impart knowledge ; and knowledge and understanding 
 alone are not sufficient to put a stop to vice, crime, and im- 
 morality, or even to keep them within bounds. However much 
 these evils may be the result of ignorance of anything better, 
 the chief blame must be laid to the imperfect cultivation of the 
 heart and conscience and moral will ; and this work is best 
 carried on outside the school, in the home and the family, and 
 by means of various other influences. 
 
 The history of all ages teaches us that a one-sided, purely 
 intellectual development, far from preserving men from moral 
 wrong-doing, rather tends to lead them into it, by supplying 
 them with increased power. The assertion that crime has 
 decreased during the last century may have some foundation in 
 fact, but to deduce therefrom an increase of morality would be 
 false and illusory. If the number of gross flagrant misdeeds 
 has lessened, the sum of iniquity wrought out in secret has 
 certainly not diminished, and abhorrence of all that is low , 
 shame at infamy and disgrace, are undoubtedly weaker feelings 
 than formerly. Mankind of to-day wears the blossom of intel- 
 ligence on its crown, while its roots are rotting in the mire of 
 materialism. The enlightened mind strives upwards to the 
 heights of culture, while the feet are entangled and chained 
 down by the fetters of vice and degradation. In the midst of 
 the gross-minded only outwardly civilized many, we see the 
 few struggling in vain after a better state of things, after the 
 realization of conditions under which, in a higher and a nobler 
 sense, they may find happiness, or, at any rate, satisfaction. And 
 this gulf between knowing and doing, between striving and 
 attaining, between the ideal and the real, becomes wider every 
 day, because there is a daily increase in the sum of knowledge, 
 while the power of action is too often frittered away in fruitless 
 efforts. Let no one complain that I have painted too black a 
 picture. Whenever reform is in question, it is an imperative
 
 A New Method of Education. 
 
 duty to show up unsparingly the dark side of things, to lay 
 bare the whole evil and its consequences. This does not hinder 
 the recognition of the corresponding bright side, of the good 
 which exists side by side with the evil. The Spirit of God 
 works in all ages, and His sun shines over all. 
 
 It is the faulty method of education in vogue in these, 
 whether mentally or physically, most unhealthy times, that 
 strikes us at the outset as the chief cause of the evils enume- 
 rated. The present generation is, perhaps, the least happy that 
 the world has seen for many centuries. Precocity of under- 
 standing, pride of intellectual criticism, reason gaining 
 strength at the expense of feeling, morbid craving for pre- 
 mature enjoyment, weariness of life, &c., are certainly not 
 tokens of a fresh, joyous, hopeful youth, capable of bring- 
 ing about a better, worthier, loftier condition of morality. 
 
 To produce a higher order of things, we want a higher order 
 of human beings, and these again can only be produced by a 
 system of education corresponding to the degree of civilization 
 at present reached. If we want plants that shall produce 
 better fruit, we have to expend more care and culture on the 
 seeds. 
 
 Schools have undoubtedly a large share in the fulfilment of 
 this task, but still only a share ; for education or preparation 
 for life comprehends more and wider elements than can be 
 dealt with in the narrow limits of school systems. Just as 
 human life absorbs into itself for its own use all branches of 
 knowledge, so should the training of the school seek to comprise 
 within its scope every branch of life, and thus preserve for its 
 pupils a constant harmony between life and knowledge, theory 
 and practice, thinking and doing. Schools should no longer be 
 merely places of book-learning', no longer be satisfied to teach 
 the sciences without any regard to their application to life. 
 Their aim should be, as far as possible, to effect a fusion between 
 knowledge, and practice. Before all things they should furnish 
 their scholars with opportunities for the exercise of their moral 
 powers ; and the first requisite to this end is scope for free action 
 for it is only the free choice of good which stamps our actions 
 as moral in the higher sense of the word. A really moral
 
 Introductory. 7 
 
 education cannot be effected by simply placing before the pupil 
 examples of elevation of mind, or heroic deeds, such as history 
 affords : a field for action, and for the exercise of the will, is 
 also needed. No less also is the need of opportunities for the 
 formation of good habits, which are the foundation of all 
 virtue. A soldier may have learnt eveiy handbook of military 
 science by heart, but he will not be able to carry out a 
 stratagem without practice. 
 
 Education must supply something more than mere word- 
 teaching. 
 
 Labour and pray ! the Bible beautifully says to us ; that is, 
 feed thy spirit by communion with the highest, and shine forth 
 before the world in deeds. Word-teaching is undoubtedly quicker 
 and easier both for master and pupils, but for this very reason 
 t is most pernicious to the latter, for they accustom themselves 
 to receiving ideas without effort, thought, or inquiry. A 
 sound, natural process of education is something quite dif- 
 ferent. The mind in its infancy is only able to take in a small 
 amount of imparted knowledge at a time, and can only assimi- 
 late it slowly and gradually. At first it only takes to itself 
 facts presented to it in a tangible form that is to say, the 
 concrete, which is all, that in its first period of development, it 
 can really grasp. But, even in the contemplation of the con- 
 crete, it depends upon the will, or the peculiar disposition of 
 the pupil, whether he will carry away a clear and lasting idea 
 of what he has seen, or only quickly-fading impressions. 
 
 It is also a necessity of the inf;.at mind to give out again in 
 concrete form the ideas and images which it has taken into 
 itself, and thus to fix in clear objective shape the dim undefined 
 images floating in its little brain. This strongly manifested 
 need of child-nature is injuriously checked and counteracted 
 by premature verbal instruction, and overmuch imparting of 
 information, and the mental powers are thereby weakened. 
 
 The next point of importance, in providing for the greatest 
 happiness and well-being of humanity, is to find out early in 
 the life of each individual the special call that nature has made 
 to him through special organization and talents, and to main- 
 tain his outward existence in harmony with this inward predis-
 
 8 A New Method of Education. 
 
 position. The harmony in the world of nature arises from the 
 fact that everything is exactly in accordance with the laws of 
 its particular being, and exactly in the place where nature 
 intended it to be, and that nothing wishes to be something 
 else, or somewhere else. A like harmony will only reign in the 
 world of man when that takes place consciously, which happens 
 unconsciously in nature. And the only way to such an end is 
 to recognize the inner calling early in the childhood of indi- 
 viduals, and to determine the line of education accordingly, 
 so that they may be made completely capable of fulfilling their 
 vocations. 
 
 Man is destined to find contentment. But he can find it in 
 no other way than by working out his life, and perfecting his 
 inner self through the fulfilment of duty, and in the labour of 
 his vocation. If the road to this end were entered on at the 
 beginning of life, if education led in this direction and built 
 up the .requisite capacity, thousands might be saved from the 
 paths of error who are only led astray by the natural desire for 
 inward and outward happiness. The only possible way of 
 counteracting the passions, which are for ever enticing into 
 crooked paths, is by giving the higher promptings of human 
 nature the opportunity of assisting themselves, and so develop- 
 ing them that they may be strong enough to take the lead in 
 all circumstances. The happiness which comes to us through 
 the attainment of high moral force, and the fulfilment of our 
 vocation and duty whereby the ideal elements of personal life 
 are called into play will be a sure guarantee against the 
 search after lower and less noble kinds of happiness. Harmony 
 between our inward and outward nature will have been realized 
 as far as possible, and we shall have strength to overcome the 
 unavoidable discords of the outer world. 
 
 Every thoughtful human being requires a central point round 
 which his actions, efforts, and wishes may revolve ; he requires 
 it for his inner as well as his outer life. The want of such a 
 centre produces discord in his nature, and makes him unhappy. 
 The higher this central point is fixed, the easier will it be to 
 determine the relations between the personal existence of the 
 individual and the common life of mankind ; and it is these
 
 Introductory. 
 
 very relations between the individual and mankind which arc 
 in question, when a higher morality, a more real and worthy 
 satisfaction, are talked of. For man is not only an individual, 
 he is also a member of an endless chain of human beings, he is 
 inseparably bound up with the whole body of humanity of 
 that part of it which is contemporary with him, that which 
 went before, and that which will follow after. 
 
 At the present day there exists only the semblance of such 
 an expansion of the individual into the universal life and sem- 
 blance can never afford genuine happiness truth and reality 
 can alone do this. Unreality is the sure vantage-ground of 
 dissatisfaction ; and if this stronghold is to be vanquished, if 
 an increase of real happiness is to be made possible, education 
 must furnish the necessary forces and that from the outset of 
 life. And there is no other way than by satisfying the demands 
 of the senses in the ideal sense. 
 
 To promote this end there must be placed before the child, 
 first the agreeable, in the shape of physical sensations ; then 
 the beautiful, which must come to it as impressions on the senses 
 from outside; and thirdly, the good, viz., the satisfaction of its 
 inner conscience. There will also be further need of the for- 
 mation of good habits and of personal activity, which will 
 begin with childish play to end in moral well-doing. 
 
 And all this must be accomplished by means of the t~v\ ^ 
 factors of education the family and the school. 
 
 Neither of these is as yet equal to its task. The training in 
 the family is left very much to chance, is dependent on the 
 greater or less natural capacity of the parents, the best of whom 
 have no sure guide of action, while the greater number proceed 
 without any thought whatever. The school, on the other hand, 
 affords little opportunity for anything besides intellectual cul- 
 ture, and it is only through this means indirectly instead of, as 
 should be, directly that it can work on the moral powers. 
 There is no field in the school for free action, for the creation 
 of the beautiful, and for the full exercise of the active powers ; 
 and without these means neither moral forces nor any other 
 endowments can be strengthened and perfected. 
 
 In order that these necessary conditions may be realized,
 
 io A New Method of Education. 
 
 there is need of a deeper knowledge of child-nature as it exists 
 in its original state, with its dispositions as yet unbiassed, and 
 also of new methods whereby these dispositions of which the 
 form and direction exist in the infant stage only in embryo 
 may be from the beginning directed towards the good, the true, 
 and the beautiful. And however impossible it may be to 
 accomplish all this absolutely and perfectly, it must, neverthe- 
 less, be the aim which education strives after, the ideal which 
 it sets before itself under all circumstances. 
 
 To whatever extent earlier educationalists may have expressed 
 similar thoughts, and striven to work them out, existing cir- 
 cumstances prove that the services rendered by them alone were 
 not sufficient. A fresh genius was needed to add new material 
 to the old. 
 
 And such a genius we behold in Friedrich Frobel, the first 
 and the only teacher who has discovered a practical method of 
 maintaining due harmony from the very beginning of a child's 
 life, and with exact regard to the special materials to be dealt 
 with in each case between the receiving and the giving out of 
 knowledge, between learning and practising, between knowing 
 and doing. By his work the first step has been made in the 
 solution of the highest educational problem, and a process of 
 education in true correspondence with the laws of nature has 
 been rendered possible. According to Frobel's principles, body 
 and spirit both receive due attention ; neither is suppressed or 
 neglected for the sake of the other, but the body through the 
 discipline of the senses and impulses is raised to the level of 
 the spirit. And, even if the highest union between the two 
 does not yet seem within the range of possibility, there has 
 been at any rate a material lessening of the discord in 
 human nature the discord which made of the body and the 
 spirit two inimical forces, fighting against instead of beside 
 each other. 
 
 This is the point which has been so much misapprehended in 
 the study of Fiobel's system. And yet Frobel does not deny 
 the existence in the newborn infant of an original disposition 
 towards evil. But, like all rational persons, he considers it the 
 first duty of education to give to human dispositions a bias in
 
 Introductory. 1 1 
 
 the direction of good, in order that the original discord may be- 
 brought continually nearer to harmony. 
 
 Who is there that would presume to decide how far the- 
 attainment of such an end is possible through education how 
 far it is possible at all ? But, if this were not the end aimed 
 at, there would be no basis for, no reason in, education. Let it 
 not, however, be supposed that we wish to do away with, or- 
 even to impugn, the belief in the final solution of this problem^ 
 for we are not concerned with perfection in its absolute sense- 
 when we treat of education on this earth only. 
 
 But a new sort of beginning must be made if the desired end 
 is to be reached through gradual development. 
 
 And this new beginning must begin with the life of the- 
 child, and, consequently, in the home, and by means of the 
 most important educational factor the mother. 
 
 The mother must no longer be content to meet her child's 
 impulses with the maternal impulse for impulse is blind, and 
 the following of it cannot result in happiness for reasonable 
 beings. But, in the present stage of the development of the 
 understanding, she needs these childish impulses, and the end 
 for which" they are destined, in order that she may be able to- 
 afford them the right kind of satisfaction. 
 
 It is to the perfection of this science, the true science for 
 mothers, that Frobel has opened up the way. Through it the- 
 family will be rendered capable of fulfilling its educational task 
 more completely, and will thus take equal rank with the school,, 
 inasmuch as in the circle of the family the soil will be prepared 
 for the intellectual training of the school, and the development 
 of the moral powers, to which the school is not adequate, will 
 be carried out.
 
 12 A New Method of Education. 
 
 CHAPTER II. 
 
 CHILD-NATURE. 
 
 THE child is born into the world ! He enters it struggling ; 
 ; a scream is his first utterance. His destiny is labour ; he has 
 to make himself master of the world by his own exertions in 
 whatever sphere of society his cradle may lie. 
 
 A thick veil hangs over the young being which, like a closely 
 enveloped bud, does not betray the exact image of the flower it 
 will one day expand into. 
 
 Can even the mother divine what fate is in store for her new- 
 born child ? She knows not whether there lies in her lap a 
 future benefactor of mankind, or a miserable criminal. Is it 
 in her power to bring about the one destiny to avert the 
 other ? Who can doubt that she may do something towards 
 both these ends ? Imagine, for instance, an infant with the 
 natural endowments of a Goethe, a Beethoven, a Raphael, or a 
 Franklin, and let its cradle be placed in some haunt of misery 
 and vice. A childhood without loving care, without guidance, 
 passed in the midst of immoral surroundings ; a youth lived 
 among drunkards, thieves, and liars how much of the original 
 material will have been developed ? as good as none ! and the 
 gifts of nature will probably become a perilous weapon in the 
 hands of a scoTindrel. , 
 
 Or suppose the same gifted child to be born in a palace, and 
 brought up by weak, light-minded parents in extravagance and 
 luxury, and under the pernicious system of intellectual forcing, 
 but at the same time, in all practical senses, in utter idleness 
 is it likely that in such a case, the natural endowments will 
 ripen to perfection ? Hardly ! If a few sickly sprays shoot 
 out and blossom, it is as much as can be hoped for.
 
 Child-Nature. 13 
 
 Now let us reverse the supposition, and imagine a child of 
 quite ordinary faculties reared neither in want and vice, nor in 
 luxury and superfluity, whose parents and whole surroundings 
 fulfil all the conditions which a human being can require for 
 its development will a distinguished man or woman be the 
 result in such a case a great artist, or a splendid character, 
 whose place will be lastingly marked out in human society ? 
 Certainly not ! Great geniuses, great characters, bring their 
 greatness with them into the world. Rose-trees cannot be 
 grown from thistle-seeds. 
 
 Or let us imagine the most highly gifted of human beings 
 brought up under all the best conceivable educational influ- 
 ences, whether according to Frobel's principles or others would 
 such an one appear before us as a completely perfect man ? 
 Certainly not ! If we presumed to answer this question in th& 
 affirmative, we must be prepared to maintain as a general fact 
 that human conditions are sufficient, in any direction whatever, 
 to produce perfection. And this we cannot do. For we see all 
 around us defects of birth, as well as defects of education and 
 surroundings, and we cannot attempt to determine how much of 
 the imperfection of human beings is to be attributed to natural 
 qualification, and how much to outward influences to the edu- 
 cation which is bestowed, as well as to that which goes on of 
 itself. 
 
 Each of these influences has its part in the development of 
 the man or woman out of the child. But the more human 
 knowledge embraces in its scope the knowledge of human 
 nature, the more educational systems are adopted to this know- 
 ledge, the nearer will they be brought to perfection. 
 
 Human nature has not as yet attained to its full standard of 
 development, nor does any one yet know to what height it is 
 capable of rising even on earth. Once only did mankind behold 
 its perfect pattern in the man Christ Jesus. But we know that 
 man is of divine origin, and that his destiny is to become the 
 image of God. Eternally progressing development can alone 
 solve the problem of his existence. 
 
 Frobel aptly describes human nature when he says : " Man is 
 at orce the child of nature, the child of humanity, and the
 
 14 A New Method of Education. 
 
 child of God ; " in this threefold sense alone can he be rightly 
 understood. Frobel himself has done little to develop this and 
 many other of his profound thoughts on human nature, and there 
 is, therefore, need of constant exposition to make them more 
 thoroughly understood. By the comprehension of this three- 
 fold character in human nature, Frobel to a certain extent 
 neutralizes the discord between body and spirit, for he places 
 man as a reconciler between God and Nature. 
 
 With its first breath the child comes undoubtedly into 
 relation with these three powers : Nature, Humanity, and 
 Ood. 
 
 (1.) As a child of nature, man is connected with all the 
 elements of creation, even down to the inorganic ones, which 
 oan be detected as iron in the blood, as chalk in the bones, and 
 so forth. As a product of nature, he is not only subject to her 
 laws, he lives in her, and only exists through her, he com.es out 
 from her and goes back to her ! He is surrounded by her atmo- 
 sphere, and his earthly life is an outcome of it. Soil and climate, 
 food and clothing, with the modes of life arising therefrom, 
 give their special stamp to races and peoples, of which the 
 individual man is a member. There is not a single product of 
 nature that does not pass into man, or at any rate stand in 
 relation to him. Everywhere there goes on a perpetual inter- 
 change of material between man and nature, nature and man ; 
 and when a human being has finished his course on earth, he 
 bequeaths to the earth his body which will rise from it again 
 as plants, flowers, or fruits. 
 
 And through nature, too, men are closely bound up in one 
 another, each generation in itself, and all generations together, 
 for, from the first down to the last, the great world chemist has 
 smelted and fused them with one another, and with the king- 
 doms of nature. 
 
 In all these kingdoms there is but one and the same law which 
 governs alike the heavenly bodies and the smallest stone, the 
 lowest animal, and the noblest human being, for all have the 
 same origin and the same Creator, God. And it is because the 
 Spirit of God lives in nature and in the human soul that man 
 is able to understand nature. Only where there is mutual
 
 Child- Nature. 15 
 
 analogy, is mutual understanding possible. And this under- 
 standing, this finding out, of analogies must be arrived at, if 
 man is to acquire a deeper knowledge of his own being. We 
 have not yet got beyond the ABC of the great symbolisms of 
 nature : but science now-a-days takes possession with giant 
 strides of one realm of nature after another. Let us only 
 place the rising generation, from its cradle up, under the mighty 
 influences of divine nature, so that her intuitive language may 
 penetrate to our children's souls, and awaken an echo in them, 
 and mankind will soon be better able to solve the riddles which 
 contain the key of life, the hieroglyphs of this mystic symbolism 
 will soon be legible to all. 
 
 (2.) But as a child of humanity, the young citizen of the 
 world comes out from the circle of necessity to which all the 
 domains of nature belong, and enters the realm of freedom, of 
 self-knowledge, and self-mastery. 
 
 The stamp of natural organisms is simple, and easily recog- 
 nized ; the species is a sure index to the individual. 
 
 In the human organism, individuality grows into personality, 
 which once established can never more be lost, but expands and 
 develops continually in the chain of conscious existence, whose 
 highest member leads up to the Godhead. But here, too, the 
 species, the tribe, the nation, the generation, all combine to give 
 the stamp to the individual. 
 
 Who is there that would be able to unravel the many- 
 threaded, thousand-fold entangled web of derivation? To 
 determine how much is inherited from the race, the nation, the 
 family, and how much is peculiar to the individual himself. 
 Do not numberless traits of character live on from forefathers 
 to descendants ? No one can entirely separate himself from the 
 chain of which ho is a link. None can repudiate the heritage 
 of his fathers ; whether it descend to him in the features of his 
 face, in his gestures, or in special qualities of the soul, either 
 good or bad. 
 
 The old saying, " the sins of the fathers are visited on the 
 children to the fourth generation," is true for all times. But 
 virtues perpetuate themselves in like manner, and it is within 
 the free choice of every separate personality to diminish the
 
 16 A New Method of Education. 
 
 sum of wickedness and to increase that of virtue. The moral 
 progress of mankind depends on this, that each individual and 
 each generation make such use of the pound handed over to it 
 by its predecessor, that it shall bring back thousand-fold 
 interest. 
 
 Backslidings of individual human beings, as of individual 
 nations, are unavoidable in the great school of experience in 
 which Providence has placed mankind. But progress in the 
 main, and on the whole, is going forward. To deny this, is as 
 much as to deny the Providence which has implanted this in- 
 cessant yearning after something better (even under earthly 
 conditions) in the human breast, and has based on this yearn- 
 ing the whole moral and mental development of man. Without 
 the assumption of the possibility of perfection, for the individual 
 as Avell as for the race, human education would be without end 
 or aim. 
 
 To what extent man is the offspring of humanity is seen in 
 a thousand different ways. A child may have been transplanted 
 to a foreign land and into the midst of foreign surroundings 
 immediately after its birth, and it will nevertheless learn its 
 mother tongue with greater facility than any other. There are 
 examples to show that children who had lost their parents in 
 strange countries, at the tenderest age, and had never heard a 
 syllable of their mother tongue, learnt it with incredible 
 rapidity at the first opportunity. So, too, it is affirmed that it 
 is not only owing to the imitative facility that children learn 
 their parents' trades so easily. The practice of the parents, 
 through which special organs are developed, stands the children 
 in good stead. And who has not caught himself in habits which 
 are hereditary in his family ? 
 
 Humanity is a whole, and is destined to develop and establish 
 itself more and more as an organism through the conscious 
 hanging together of its members, through the realization 
 (striven after by all religions) of the brotherhood of men. 
 Hence the individual can only be understood when considered 
 as part of the race, while it is only through individuals that the 
 raco can receive the full impress of all its manifold features. 
 The paradox, " the more individual, so much the more-
 
 Child-Nature. 17 
 
 universal ; and the more universal, so much the more individual," 
 is only an apparent contradiction. The more distinctly and 
 completely the personal character of the individual pronounces 
 itself, the nearer will it approach the universal character of 
 mankind. Harmony in music is all the more perfect when 
 each separate instrument gives out its particular note clearly 
 and sharply. 
 
 Profound obscurity still covers the Why of the great mystery 
 of unity in variety, and of the linking together of generations 
 in the past, the present, and the future. But with the advance 
 of all other sciences that of humanity is advancing also. The 
 time will come when man shall have arrived at that, which by 
 the wise of all ages has been recognized as the keystone of 
 wisdom, viz., " to know oneself." 
 
 All knowledge must ascend from the easier to the more diffi- 
 cult ; and so the road to the knowledge of man must lead first 
 through that of the organisms of nature, which is subordinate 
 to man. Man must first behold himself in the looking-glass of 
 nature, before he can rightly use that glass which the history of 
 mankind holds up to him. 
 
 Only in* the mirror of his own race, in the history of 
 humanity, can individual man see what his true nature is 
 though hitherto it may be only in a fragmentary manner. 
 However much epochs and nations may differ from one another, 
 and however infinite in its variety may be the conformation of 
 separate individuals each one sees, nevertheless, the universal 
 features of his broad human nature beaming at him from the 
 portraits of history. What is it that makes the dramas of 
 Shakspeare immortal, but the grandly universal traits of 
 human nature which stand out with the strongest individuality 
 in all his characters ? These universal features remain the 
 same, and are comprehensible, in all ages and under all forms. 
 
 Mankind from its birth, like individual man,' has passed 
 through, and is still passing through, the different stages of 
 childhood, youth, manhood, and old age. And conversely we 
 see in the development of the individual the universal features 
 of the progress of mankind. 
 
 Frobel has studied these features with deeper insight, and
 
 1 8 A New Method of Education. 
 
 has found a method of drawing them out in the various stages 
 of childish development, through sensation, will, and action. 
 
 In the instinctive utterances of infant nature, in so far as 
 its freedom is not curtailed by the training universally in vogue, 
 are seen traces of the groove in which mankind has gone 
 forward in its march from the beginnings of civilization to the 
 nevghts reached at the present day. The instinct of animals 
 has been strong enough from the very beginning to procure 
 them the necessaries of their existence. The various races of 
 animals have not changed their functions within our epochs. 
 The bee builds its cell, the swallow her nest, the fox his hole, 
 exactly as they did formerly. Man alone has been compelled 
 to open out a way for himself, to mount upwards by his own 
 labour and exertions, by the mighty power of his inventive 
 spirit, and through thousands of errors and byways, from the 
 first rude conditions of a wild life of nature to the heights of 
 civilization. The history of human culture shows what man 
 is, and what he is capable of, what has been reached, and what 
 is still wanting. 
 
 But whatsoever the mind of man may have produced, from 
 the most primitive work-tools carved out of stones and roots, 
 to the wonderful machinery of modern times ; from the first 
 rude outlines, copied from the shadows of objects, to the 
 wonders of sculpture and painting ; from the imitated tones of 
 birds and insects and all the different sounds of nature, to the 
 symphonies of Beethoven; from the rude knowledge of the 
 relations of space and size to the measurement of the heavens ; 
 in all that the human mind has accomplished in the way of 
 knowledge, it is nature that has given the direction-line and 
 the law. For man could only create after the patterns of the 
 Creator himself, and it is only in a later stage of development 
 that the genius of mankind has been capable of giving a divine 
 stamp to these first rude constructions, and of elevating them 
 into works of art. These early patterns were to man at the 
 same time symbols of truth ; visible signs of the invisible 
 until he became capable of immediate apprehension through 
 the Word. By gentle, gradual steps, through the rudest and 
 the simplest modes of sensual perception to the manifestation
 
 Child-Nature. 19 
 
 of divine beauty in Art, and of divine truth in the Word, has 
 God, the great educator, led his human children. 
 
 In the play of children of all times we see the nature of 
 mankind expressed. Its past and future life passes through 
 the soul of the child as a dim recollection and a dim foreboding, 
 and groping and fumbling it seeks to find the leading-string, 
 both outward and inward, which shall guide it through all 
 labyrinths to the fulfilment of its tasks. 
 
 As birds build their nests, so children in their play build 
 houses, or dig holes. As chickens scratch up the earth, so, too, 
 do little children's hands, until in their little gardens they have 
 learnt in play how to till the soil, and sow and reap. Any 
 chance-found material will serve them for plastic modelling, be 
 it only moist sand. There is no art which is not attempted by 
 children, whether it be pictures in chalk or pencil, or drawn in 
 the sand; or that the first stammering tones of the newborn 
 infant move rhythmically; or the crc-.ving of the cock, the 
 mooing of the cow, the bark of the dog, and any other animal 
 voices, be imitated by children, until true musical sounds issue 
 from their little throats ; these are the first beginnings which 
 lead up to art. And with the rudiments of industry and art, 
 the first germs of science show themselves also in the desire to 
 know. With its oft-repeated : why, how, wherefore ? the 
 young mind strives to get to the bottom of things, to the funda- 
 mental truth, to their source in God. 
 
 It is a fundamental necessity that the development of the 
 individual should go through the same phases as that of the 
 race, for both have the same end before them. Happiness or 
 according to Frobel " Joy, Peace, Freedom," are sought by 
 the individual, are sought by mankind. To both these can 
 only come through the fulfilment of their destination, which is 
 the full development of the entire human nature. A rightly 
 directed education is the chief means of reaching this end, but a 
 means which is only possible through a right understanding of 
 man and nature. Through this understanding alone can the 
 secret of human existence be discovered. 
 
 (3.) Every human being is in his spiritual origin a particular. 
 thought of God. 
 
 c 2
 
 2O A Neiv Method of Education. 
 
 The child of God exists only as a feeble spark in the human 
 being at his first entrance into the world ; to fan this spark into 
 a flame is the object of his earthly existence. At the beginning 
 of existence the child of nature rules in man as instinctive life, 
 as an impulse which awakens the will at first only as an un- 
 govcrned force of nature. Self-preservation is almost exclu- 
 sively the unconscious object of all childish utterances. And 
 we have no right to blame children for this so-called egoism ; 
 had not an all-wise providence implanted this impulse so 
 strongly in the human breast, how could weak, helpless beings 
 preserve their existence in the midst of the countless perils of 
 life ? It is, however, the business of education to moderate 
 this instinct of self-preservation, and by the exercise of the 
 capacity for loving, to lead the child out of the narrow range of 
 personal life into that of the child of humanity, i.e., the social 
 being who constitutes a member of human society. In this 
 sphere feeling and reason bear rule, and by these the will is 
 guided, and pointed to a higher aim than mere personal well- 
 being. 
 
 Self-reliance, independence, freedom, are the highest stamps 
 of the child of humanity as an individual. How far would the 
 development of the world have advanced were it not for the 
 inborn, unextinguishable craving which is driving and spurring 
 men on to create for themselves an independent existence, a 
 respected position in society ? Almost all progress is the result 
 of it. Each one wishes to assert himself, to be himself the 
 centre of a little world of his own activity; and this desire 
 drives him to a thousand exertions, to countless inventions, to 
 continuous alteration of his position, and consequently of his 
 whole circumstances. 
 
 So long, however, as man considers only himself or even 
 the wider self of his family so long the child of God still 
 slumbers in him. Then only is the latter awake and living, 
 when the love which has hitherto embraced only himself, and 
 the narrow circle of those living with him, drives him forth 
 into the larger community of the nation and the race; when 
 this love becomes strong enough to move him, regardless of his 
 own personality, yea, more, at the sacrifice of earthly person-
 
 Child-Nature. 2 1 
 
 ality, to devote himself to the good of the whole. He that 
 enters the service of mankind has entered the service of God. 
 The saying : " He that loveth not his brethren, how can he love 
 God ? " is the kernel of all religion. Through the love of those 
 outside us we arrive at the love of God, in that higher com- 
 munity which exists outside the visible world. 
 
 By every ideal upsoaring we overstep the limits of this 
 earthly visible life, and penetrate into a higher world where 
 the mortal becomes immortal. If everywhere throughout the 
 universe there is continuous unbroken connection, it can only 
 be an apparent gap which is caused by earthly death. The 
 image of God, to which man is called to raise himself, cannot 
 be perfected in the narrow limits of earthly existence ; in his 
 divine nature man is a citizen of the great All, which prevails 
 by gradual advances, thereby conquering time and space. 
 
 Who is there that either would or could deny that man bears 
 in himself the marks that he is destined to communion with 
 God, and, finally, to union with Him ? Has there ever been a 
 human being worthy of the name, who has passed through the 
 whole course of his earthly life without experiencing a craving 
 after something higher ? It may have been but one single 
 moment of strong emotion, whether of joy or of sorrow, but 
 that moment has been enough to point to something beyond the 
 confines of this existence. Is there any work of man, even 
 the highest, any deed, even the greatest, which does not pre- 
 suppose something higher than itself, more perfect ? Nowhere 
 in human existence is full satisfaction to be found, everywhei-e 
 forebodings, yearnings, hopings, drive us outside of ourselves 
 on to the Ideal of Humanity as it was once presented to us in 
 Him who gave His life for His brethren on to the fountain of 
 all fulness and perfection to God Himself ! 
 
 Such is the child of God who enters into a higher liberty, 
 because he has become capable of a higher love. Only through 
 love is true liberty possible ; for it is only love that can conquer 
 whatever is opposed to liberty ; and only in liberty is love 
 possible, for only he who possesses himself in perfect liberty is 
 free to give himself up in love. 
 
 All great benefactors of mankind, all its true heroes, martyrs,
 
 22 A New Method of Education. 
 
 and saints, all really great artists and great discoverers of truth 
 and science as also all childlike souls who have lived out their 
 lives in simplicity and piety were children of God. In them 
 the divine spark had kindled into a holy fire of inspiration, 
 purifying and enlightening the soul, and enabling the divine 
 mind to shine through the human. In them the soul had burst 
 the narrow bounds of personality and expanded itself on man- 
 kind, in anticipation of that time when all human beings, in 
 full possession of their perfected individuality, will together 
 realize the great being of humanity; i.e., when all the endless 
 variety of human life shall be swallowed up in unity, and the 
 countless different notes of a great harmony of brotherly love 
 be struck in concord. Then the child of God will have 
 triumphed in humanity, then good will have conquered evil, 
 then the Apotheosis of this earthly globe and its inhabitants 
 will be consummated ! 
 
 We may lower or raise the standard of perfection attainable 
 on earth as much as we will it matters little. Once let us 
 accept the law of progress as an eternal law, and it must lead 
 us on to ever higher ends. There are only two alternatives : 
 either this earth is a treadmill, on which men go round and 
 round without ever getting further ; or else mankind is destined 
 to attain even on earth to a God-decreed height of perfection, 
 which will be carried on further and further in the great hier- 
 archy of the universe. 
 
 If all without exception believed in this high destiny, if each 
 one of us was convinced that he was called to work according 
 to God's will towards the fulfilment of this aim, how much 
 more quickly would it be reached ? How much more easily 
 would want and sorrow be endured if we kept steadily in view 
 the great end, to bring us nearer which every experience of 
 humanity must be gone through, every pain suffered and its- 
 cause mastered ? But each patient sufferer and faithful worker 
 will once have his share in the glory of fulfilment. This is the 
 true belief, belief in the glorification of God in humanity ; this 
 is the belief which all religions must presuppose, this is the 
 kernel of Christianity ; and one great reason why religion has 
 so little hold on the world now-a-days is, that it mostly leaves
 
 Child-Nature. 23 
 
 this belief out of account. So long as it is considered mere 
 fanaticism, or Utopian expectation, to believe in this Apotheosis 
 of humanity, so long will it remain unrealized. To science is 
 committed the great task of demonstrating, how all that exists, 
 not only in our planet but in all the heavenly bodies, is bound 
 together in one continuous chain. When this has been accom- 
 plished, the higher relations of things beyond the earth will be 
 understood of themselves, and the belief in their perfect 
 spiritual development will itself have become science. 
 
 But this triumph of the child of God will not be brought 
 about by the suppression and annihilation of the child of nature, 
 and the child of humanity. The full harmony of human nature 
 can only be produced when its due weight is given to each side, 
 and the higher nature draws the others up to equal perfection 
 with its own. 
 
 Education will only then fulfil its task when it deals with 
 human nature in its threefold aspect, and gives to each equal 
 consideration. Hitherto, this has not been possible, both 
 because child-nature was little understood before the present 
 time, and because the means were wanting to respond from the 
 very beginning to the necessities of the infant mind. It was 
 Frobel who first found the key to the nature of children, who 
 learnt to understand their dumb natural language, who dis- 
 covered a way of supplying them with their first mental nourish- 
 ment, and of treating the child of humanity, from its first 
 entrance into the world, as a being destined to become reason- 
 able. 
 
 But where shall we find mothers fit to receive the educational 
 legacy of genius bequeathed to our age, and to apply it in the 
 right way ? We have but to look around in all classes of society 
 to see ho\v few are the women really fit to become mothers and 
 bringers-up of children. And even the best amongst them are 
 deficient in the necessary knowledge and means. Frobel has 
 laid the basis of a true science for mothers, and we hope that 
 the innumerable perversities of our educational systems may be 
 struck at their roots, and misery of every description thus 
 warded off. 
 
 With the elevation of child-nature, the elevation of woman
 
 24 A New Method of Education. 
 
 and her veritable emancipation are closely bound up. The 
 science of the mother initiates her inevitably into a higher 
 branch of knowledge, whereby not mere dry intellectual power, 
 but true sensibility and high spiritual clearsightedness are 
 developed in her. With the knowledge that a divine spark 
 slumbers in the little being on her lap, there must kindle in her 
 a holy zeal and desire to fan this spark into a flame, and to 
 educate for humanity a worthy citizen. With this vocation of 
 educator of mankind is bound up everything needful to place 
 woman in possession of the full rights of a worthy humanity.
 
 CHAPTER III. 
 
 THE FIRST UTTERANCES OF THE CHILD. 
 
 "Sich selbst und ihre Welt zu schaffen, welche Gott erschaffen, ist die Aufgabe 
 Aer Menschheit, wie des Einzelnen." 
 
 "To fashion himself, to fashion the world, which God created, is the task of 
 humanity, as well as of the individual." 
 
 NOT Frobel alone, others too before him, and at the same time, 
 have given expression to the thought that, as the universal 
 development of the human individual can only be carried on in 
 relation to his race, so the first sure standard for his manage- 
 ment and education must be obtained through observation of 
 the development of collective humanity. Frobel grounded his 
 Kindergarte"n system to a great extent on this principle, without, 
 however, carrying its application to the individual ; a few ex- 
 planations, therefore, by which this analogy may be more closely 
 established, and F rebel's system of development exhibited in 
 its right light, will not be out of place here. 
 
 The first question that proposes itself is : " What are the 
 principal utterances of the infant ? " those, that is, which are 
 more or less common to all children alike, and in which we can 
 point to the beginnings of human efforts after culture. 
 
 When a child is born into the world, its first utterances are 
 in the form of movements outward movements of his arms 
 and legs, and inner movements in the shape of screams. All 
 development must go on through movement. Before a human 
 being can in any degree begin to take possession of himself and 
 of the outward world, his physical powers and organs must be 
 to some extent unfolded ; and thence it is that in the early years 
 of life physical development takes the lead. The child of but 
 a few months old, lying in its cradle, plays with its limbs, pulls
 
 26 A New Method of Education. 
 
 about its feet and fingers, strikes out its arms and legs, and 
 thus makes its first acquaintance with its outward form, which 
 in this way only can be impressed on its mind. As soon as the 
 child can walk, its greatest need again is movement. To run 
 hither and thither, to traverse the same ground in a dozen dif- 
 ferent cross and roundabout ways ; to touch, handle, and examine 
 everything with the ever restless hands, all this is common to 
 every healthy child ; and the greater its strength the greater its 
 need for bodily exertion, which vents itself in running, jumping, 
 climbing, wrestling, throwing, and lifting; and in the case of 
 boys especially, urges on to a variety of games which develop 
 strength and skill. No such object, however, is present to the 
 child's consciousness, who is simply driven by his impulses, the 
 satisfaction of which causes him amusement and joy. What- 
 ever affords pleasure to children in general, and in all times, 
 conduces always to their development in some way or other. 
 
 To forward physical development is thus the principal end of 
 the child's activity. And do we not see a like process going on 
 amongst savage uncultivated races ; corporal exercises, and 
 exertions, the object of which is generally to supply their 
 needs, form the chief scope of their actions ? The commence- 
 ment of history with the heroic age exhibits in like manner 
 bodily strength and skill as the highest aim of action, only 
 here we have in addition the goal of heroic deeds, which were 
 not merely concerned with material, egoistic needs, but also, 
 and chiefly, with beloved human beings, and before all with the 
 home and family. The putting forth of strength, the over- 
 coming of obstacles or enemies, are always the highest pleasure 
 of youth and early manhood. And even in midd'^ age we still 
 see the toiirnament, the duel, and the chase replacing to some 
 measure as sport, the business of warfare. Nothing shows 
 more clearly that the development of the physical powers con- 
 stituted the highest happiness of mankind in its infancy, than 
 the idea of a future life contained in Northern mythology, viz., 
 that the dead would divide their existence in "Walhalla between 
 fighting and banqueting, and that the wounds received in battle 
 would heal up at once, and the slain shortly after ba drinking 
 cheerily at the feast.
 
 The First Utterances of the Child. 27 
 
 The members and organs of the body must have been de- 
 veloped up to a certain pitch, before they can serve as fit 
 instruments for the mind. We see plainly that the wise direc- 
 tion of Providence has so ordered things, that every human 
 being is attracted towards the kind of action necessary for his 
 special development. The child is driven by an inward im- 
 pulse, so to use his members and senses in his play, that 
 these are developed and formed, just as the grown man in a 
 primitive state is compelled to supply his own bodily wants in 
 order that his bodily powers may be cultivated and made fit for 
 a higher kind of activity. But every human being must take 
 care that he does not remain at the mercy of these impulses, or 
 he will degenerate, be led on to that which we call evil, and lose 
 sight of the direction which would have conducted him to the 
 destined end of his development. A right education consists 
 in so strengthening and encouraging all the natxiral dispositions 
 of a child that they may conduce to the end which nature has 
 set before them. Our modern age, which makes so much less 
 demand for expenditure of corporal strength, furnishes so much 
 less opportunity for battling with outward material obstacles,, 
 imitates the Greeks, though by no means universally enough,. 
 in using gymnastics as a means of physical education for its 
 youth, but there is no similar provision, or as good as none,, 
 for the first years of childhood, except where Frobel's Kinder- 
 garter system is in vogue. Hence the first stage in the process 
 of infant development is called " Exercises of the Limbs." 
 
 After the first development of rude strength, that of skill in. 
 handling stands out as the chief requisite at the commencement 
 of human culture. Next to the need for movement, there is 
 none so great in the early years of childhood as that of using 
 the hands. The sense of touch is next to that of taste (which 
 is itself a kind of touching with the tongue), the dominant one 
 in the first stage of sensual growth. 
 
 At the beginning of life there is very little distinction 
 between the different senses ; they are all more or less 
 fused together. The feeble capacity for work which any 
 single sense possesses, necessitates the co-operation of all,. 
 when one is called upon to act. It is well known that children
 
 28 A New Method of Education. 
 
 must always touch everything ; and not children only ; all rough, 
 uncultivated grown people are not satisfied with seeing an 
 object, they must also bring their sense of touch in various 
 ways to their assistance, in order to understand exactly the 
 nature of the object. 
 
 In order that this most necessary member may be prepared 
 for future work, nature encourages the child to use its hands 
 incessantly in its play. Nothing is more contrary to nature 
 than to forbid a young child the use of its hands, as is so often 
 done in infant institutions. In order that they may keep their 
 attention steadily fixed on the subject of instruction, generally 
 premature and quite out of proportion to the children's stage of 
 development, they are condemned to keep their hands folded, or 
 crossed behind their backs. Through this indication of nature, 
 Frobel has discovered the right method of riveting a child's 
 attention, viz., connecting all the instruction imparted to it with 
 the use of the hands. The hand is the natural sceptre which 
 raises man to the position of sovereign of the earth. With his 
 liand man has fashioned for himself all his weapons of self- 
 defence, whereas animals are provided with them by nature ; 
 with his hand he has made all the implements needful for 
 mastering the forces and materials of nature, and for procuring 
 ihe necessaries and ornaments of his life. Without the cultiva- 
 tion of the hand, industry and art would be impossibilities. 
 But the marvellous organism of this member would not alone 
 have been sufficient to produce the wonders of industrial art ; 
 for this the guiding co-operation of the mind was necessary. 
 The activity of human beings differs in this from that of 
 animals, that it is work in the full sense of the word, that the 
 fingers are moved by the mind, and are obliged to carry out its 
 plans and ideas. Therefore work is not a curse, but the highest 
 blessing of mankind, and that which confers on it its nobility. 
 
 The play of children is for them, at the same time, work, for 
 it serves to develop their members, senses, and organs. After 
 the first unregulated feeling and grasping of their little hands, 
 their favourite occupation is to dabble in some soft mess earth, 
 sand, or what not and to try their skill at shaping and pro- 
 ducing. Modelling is one of the first necessities of child-nature.
 
 The First Utterances of the Child. 29- 
 
 But even this instinct, if left to itself, will lead to no end r 
 education must supply the material and guidance necessary 
 for its development, must convert the aimless touching and 
 fumbling into systematic construction, and direct the mere 
 instinct into a channel of useful activity, all of which is done 
 in the Kindergarten. 
 
 The first and easiest kind of construction, after the forms in 
 clay and sand, is building. After the child has grubbed itself 
 holes in sandhills, it goes a step further and builds houses, or 
 whatever else its fancy may be able to invent in the way of 
 architecture and connected with this building are all manner 
 of efforts towards the creation of a diminutive industry. The 
 never-lessening fascination for all children of the adventures of 
 Robinson Crusoe is chiefly due to the depiction of the strivings 
 after culture of a solitary individual, in which children see 
 their own strivings reflected as in a mirror. 
 
 One of the first ways in which human skill showed itself was 
 undoubtedly in the erection of dwelling-places that would afford 
 sufficient protection when natural holes in rocks or under the 
 earth, or mud-huts in woods, were no longer enough. But when, 
 through the improvement of the tools employed, their work 
 progresses from its first rough outlines, and as the combinations 
 of which the mind is capable multiply, and form perfects 
 itself, there awakes in the child (as formerly in our ancestors) 
 a feeling for the beautiful. This feeling is no doubt in part 
 awakened even earlier by the influence which the forms and 
 colours of natural objects exercise even on the least-formed 
 character. Everything glittering, bright, or gaudy, excites plea- 
 sure in the child as in the savage ; and in order to produce itself 
 pleasure of this sort the child, in its own handiwork, feels more 
 and more after the laws of rhythm and harmony, which, long 
 before it can apprehend, it dimly and unconsciously forebodes. 
 Observation of nature furnishes the patterns which the 
 awakened creative spirit will idealize, and Art is born in the 
 human soul, whether its expression be through form, colour, or 
 sound. 
 
 But it is not only shaping and modelling that childish hands 
 practise instinctively drawing and painting are also attempted
 
 30 A New Method of Education. 
 
 by them. As Frobel says, the child first perceives the linear 
 the outlines of objects. Whoever observes the actions of children 
 will sen how they almost invariably feel all round objects with 
 their fingers take in, so to say, by touch, the contours of tables, 
 chairs, and other articles of furniture, sketch the outline of their 
 own hands and fingers in pencil, and so forth. The unpractised 
 eye of a child will at first take in only the principal lines of 
 objects, and of these first the straight ones, before it can master 
 curves, surfaces, and filling in. 
 
 "We notice the same characteristics in the people who first 
 practised the science of architecture. Their drawings consist of 
 outlines linear representations in straight strokes, without 
 curves or perspective, as in the first attempts of children. 
 
 The awakening of the sense of sound can perhaps be traced 
 back to the earliest moments of a child's life, for even before it 
 can speak it stammers out rhythmic tones. It is this instinctive 
 need of rhythm in children which calls forth from mothers and 
 nurses their cradle-songs, and causes the rhythmic rocking and 
 lulling of infants in their cradles and in the arms. 
 
 Attention to the differences of sound is one of the first awaken- 
 ings of children, and early instruction in song avowedly one of 
 the most effectual means of education. Savages, like children, 
 have the keenest desire fcr song and dance i.e., for rhythmic 
 sound and movement. Rhythm is one of the great fundamental 
 principles of all that is expressed in the motion of the spheres, 
 the flight of birds, the course of the deer, in the excitement of 
 the dance, and the whole wide harmony of creation and of 
 human genius. The civilization of mankind, as of individual 
 man, without the cultivation of the beautiful, is unthinkable 
 and music is before all other arts the awakening of the 
 heart. 
 
 Before, however, the child has arrived at the production of 
 his first little works of art, we may have noticed him grubbing 
 in the earth, or transfixed in admiration of some animal or 
 flower : nature has already worked upon him in various ways. 
 It is not only to the fresh living air that children of the ten- 
 derest years stretch out their hands so joyfully, when the mother 
 or the nurse produces hat and cloak to take them out of doors.
 
 The First Utterances of the Child. 31 
 
 The forms and immediate impressions of surrounding nature 
 already afford the infant being pleasure and delight. 
 
 When free use of the limbs has been gained, all children who 
 are not prevented from so doing will be seen grubbing in the 
 garden soil, throwing up mounds, and little by little making 
 themselves small gardens of their own. At first the little spade, 
 which accompanies the child out of doors, is only used for heap- 
 ing up sand and stones, as an exercise of strength without aim. 
 As soon, however, as any power of observation has begun to 
 supplement the merely instinctive movements, there is awakened 
 an impulse to till the ground and to make use of the productive 
 force of nature ; thus the child in its play, and thus man in the 
 earliest stages of civilization, seeks to obtain better and more 
 plentiful nourishment. Even though the instinct which moves 
 the child to enclose its little garden with sticks be an undefined 
 one, it is nevertheless that out of which the science of agri- 
 culture has arisen the instinct; or need of possession. 
 
 Without possession, without ownership, the individuality of 
 man would never have been fully stamped. Ownership widens 
 personality~by giving it power to work, means to carry out its 
 will, and at the same time to satisfy the feeling of fellow-love 
 by sharing its goods with others. 
 
 Were it not for the impulse which led him to agriculture, 
 man would never have forsaken his nomadic life, would never 
 have founded towns and communities, would never have carried 
 development as far as the nation, and never have experienced the 
 love of country. 
 
 It may seem to many ridiculous to pretend to see in the first 
 little territorial possession of the child the starting-point of 
 the love of one's country, and yet it is an undeniable truth that 
 all and everything which is of importance in human life, be it 
 little or great, has had its beginning in unnoticed utterances 
 which have been the germs of future developments. The 
 largest tree may have sprung from the least perceptible seed, 
 and the greatest human action slumbers in the first sensations 
 of the infant soul. Is not the love of one's own hearth the seed 
 of the love of one's country ? 
 
 But if bodily wants have been the first spui-s to all human
 
 32 A New Method of Education. 
 
 culture, it is also unmistakably noticeable through the course 
 of history, that by the side of every material need there is also 
 a spiritual claim which makes itself felt. The tending and 
 nurturing of that which serves firstly to satisfy selfish require- 
 ments, must at the same time awaken love. For whatever man 
 carefully tends, the object or the being to whom he devotes his 
 care, for whom he works, he also learns to love. That child 
 would be a degenerate one that did not bestow its loving care 
 on some objects or beings, were it at first only its playthings. 
 With what tenderness do girls love their dolls, boys their toy- 
 horses ! but from these inanimate things which are only alive 
 in childish fancy their affections are soon transferred to the 
 animals of the house, and the flowers of the garden. To the 
 child who has never called a piece of ground its own, has never 
 tilled it in the sweat of its brow, has never expended its fostering 
 love on plants and animals, there will always be a gap in the 
 development of the soul, and it will be difficult for that child 
 to attain the capacity for human nurture in a comprehensive 
 sense. All tending and fostering require self-mastery and self- 
 denial, and these are only learnt by gradual exercise, beginning 
 with the little and mounting up to the great. Out of the soil 
 which he tilled with labour and care, there accrued to man his 
 first rights over the planet inhabited by him, and the first page 
 of his later law-book contains the following principle : " Duties 
 and rights should correspond to one another." 
 
 Not till the child has to a certain extent mastered the use of 
 its limbs and senses, and its spontaneity and faculties of observa- 
 tion have been awakened, enabling it to make all manner of 
 little experiments, not till then does the desire for knowledge 
 (generally called curiosity) assert itself. True, this desire lies 
 already at the bottom of the first groping and feeling of the 
 hands, but it only then awakens with anything like distinctness, 
 when the child begins to search into the causes of things and 
 appearances with its thousand times repeated, " Why, whence, 
 and wherefore." It must first have taken in from the outward 
 world a series of impressions, images, and ideas, before thoughts 
 will germinate in its mind. In order to know, the child makes 
 experiments : it knocks different objects together, or throws
 
 The First Utterances of the Child. 33 
 
 them on the ground, to test the solidity of their material ; it finds 
 out their taste with its tongue ; tears or breaks them up to see 
 what they are like inside, and by hundreds of like experiments 
 searches out the nature and use of things. 
 
 To observation and investigation follows the comparison of 
 one thing with another, and by comparison a perception of size, 
 form, colour, number, &c., is arrived at. What child is there 
 that does not measure the length and breadth of different articles, 
 that does not ask : " which of them is the largest ? " What 
 child does not delight in counting the objects with which it is 
 occupied ? in asking their names and uses ? Unfortunately the 
 answers given to a child's eager inquiries are too often only 
 empty words little calculated to satisfy them. It is not words 
 alone, but above all demonstrations, which can furnish answers 
 adapted to a child's understanding ; instruction in observation 
 must begin with its earliest games, and n. ' only at school. 
 How brightly a child's eyes will sparkle at every fresh discovery, 
 be it only a shining stone or a new wild-flower that it has found ; 
 its joy over every fresh addition to its store of knowledge, to 
 its treasure-house of ideas, is often, though it may express 
 itself differently, no less than that of the wise man of antiquity, 
 who, with the words, " I have discovered it," fell senseless to 
 the ground. Just as children, when the desire for knowledge 
 first wakens in them, begin by occupying themselves with the 
 relations of space, with size and number, so did the learning of 
 mankind begin with the elements of mathematics. The sole 
 book which they could interrogate at the beginning of their 
 development, was nature ; the observation and imitation of 
 nature led from invention to invention, each of which increased 
 the sum of knowledge, and widened the mental horizon. With 
 a knowledge of nature however superficial it may have been, 
 and based merely on appearances did the learning of mankind 
 begin, and the learning of children must begin in like manner. 
 It was inevitable that the first deductions from this experi- 
 mental knowledge should lead to mathematical conclusions, 
 should consist in the measurement of compared objects. Not till 
 things had been classified according to their size and number, 
 could they present themselves clearly to the understanding.
 
 34 A New Method of Education. 
 
 As the child carries on its first geographical observations by 
 the exploration of the garden and the nearest environs of its 
 dwelling-place, so the geographical knowledge of infant 
 mankind began with the investigation of the neighbouring 
 tracts of land : their soil, their products, their climates, &c. 
 With the history of the family, the patriarchs, began the his- 
 tory of the world. What do children love more to hear than 
 the stories of family adventures, what their parents and grand- 
 parents did, all that happened in their childhood, how they 
 lived " when they were little ? " It is one of the first thoughts 
 that occurs to a child, whether others were like what he him- 
 self is, whether they, too, were once little. It was possibly this 
 thought which once moved a child to ask the question, " if God 
 had once been a little boy ? " Children only understand what 
 they can refer back to themselves, for they can only start from 
 themselves. 
 
 But all these degrees of development, which we have pointed 
 out, could only be reached by mankind (and the same applies 
 to the child) in connection with his fellow-men, through the 
 bond of society. The instinct of fellowship distinguishes even 
 the higher races of animals from the lower, and is the deepest 
 and most universal instinct of human nature, the source and 
 the means of all his culture and civilization. Only by means 
 jf association can man conquer time and space, subdue to his 
 own uses the forces of nature, and make himself more and 
 more the all-powerful ruler of the earth, which he shall, in 
 time, permeate and dominate even as God permeates and domi- 
 nates the universe. 
 
 The social impulse shows itself as early as the first months 
 of a child's existence. No child likes to be alone ; it screams 
 in its cradle if it thinks no human being is near it, and is 
 quieted by the least word of kindly speech. But it is not 
 merely the society of human beings in general that it wants 
 it needs especially that of its like, of children who are at the 
 same stage of development, that is to say, of children of its 
 own age. A child that has spent its childhood with grown-up 
 people only will never possess the freshness and youthful joyous- 
 ness which are awakened by life in a community ; and prcma-
 
 The First Utterances of the Child. 
 
 ture seriousness, if not melancholy, will stamp its young 
 features. What happy smiles, what beaming eyes, does one not 
 see in even the youngest children, when they catch sight of 
 other children as young as themselves. The play of children 
 with each other forms the first basis of all, and more espe- 
 cially of their, moral cultivation. Without the love of his 
 kind, without all the manifold relations of man to man, all 
 morality, all culture, would inevitably collapse ; in the instinct 
 of fellowship lies the origin of state, of church, and of all that 
 makes human life what it is. 
 
 But it is not only the morality of man which rests so closely 
 on association, it is his religion also. 
 
 According to Frobel the first religious instincts of children 
 show themselves in their eagerness to join all gatherings of 
 grown-up people ; this Frobel attributes to an undefined feeling 
 that there is a common striving, a common idea uniting all the 
 different individuals and causing them to assemble together. 
 Thus, in the streets, or anywhere else, children will be seen 
 flocking to any spot where several people are gathered together ; 
 nothing delights children more than to be allowed to join in 
 gatherings of grown-up people, however much constraint be 
 enforced upon them. The pleasure of the first visit to church 
 has more to do with the delight in a concourse of many people 
 than with the understanding of what is going on, or the partici- 
 pation in the spirit of the devotions, which the child is quite 
 incapable of entering into. No doubt this is only the first uncon- 
 scious aspiration penetrating the child's soul, and with it is 
 bound up at the same time the love of mankind, which always 
 precedes the love of God. It is only the love of its mother, of 
 its parents, of those nearest to it, which can lead the young 
 soul to God ; out of this feeling is born the first spark of 
 religious aspiration. As every sensation, and all other knowledge 
 rest immediately on instinct, so, too, does religious knowledge. 
 F rebel's statement that by repeatedly observing how children, 
 scarcely a year old, when being amused with a ball fastened to 
 a string, will quickly take their eyes off the revolving ball and 
 follow the string till they come to the hand which is turning 
 it, he became convinced that even a child's instinct will drive 
 
 D *2
 
 36 A New Method of Education. 
 
 it from the contemplation of the appearance of things to the 
 investigation of their cause, may be little instructive to those 
 who do not concede to childish utterances a psychological basis. 
 And yet no thinker will deny that all the conscious utterances 
 of humanity have risen out of unconscious ones. But in this 
 concession there is, to a certain extent, an acknowledgment of 
 Frobel's idea, that every conception of the mature mind has its 
 root- point in an instinctive idea of the child's mind, which, being 
 awakened by outward phenomena, shows itself first as a blind 
 impulse ; and that, therefore, all instruction must start with 
 the concrete and mount up to abstract thought. Frobel says : 
 " From objects to pictures from pictures to symbols from 
 symbols, to ideas, leads the ladder of knowledge." And Pesta- 
 lozzi expresses the same idea in the words : " There is nothing 
 in the mind which has not passed into it through the senses." 
 
 The first intimation of a higher being came to mankind in 
 the beginnings of its development as it still does to the child 
 through the impressions of the visible world of nature. Man 
 felt his own weakness in the presence of the giant forces of 
 Nature, contemplated while still in the fermentation stage of its 
 development, and bowed tremblingly before its unknown ruler. 
 He saw that he himself and his existence were dependent on 
 the bounty and beneficence of this Nature, which, like a loving 
 mother showered all manner of blessings on him, and so he loved 
 her in return, and worshipped her through symbols chosen from 
 her own treasure-house, till at last, as he became to a certain 
 extent acquainted with himself and his own being, he humanized 
 the soul of nature after an ideal standard, and worshipped and 
 feared it in the shape of his false gods. 
 
 Who made all the trees and flowers, birds and sheep ? who 
 made my father and mother ? asks the child, seeking after the 
 causes of things, because he is himself the beginning of a 
 thinking, reasonable being. The roaring of the thunder makes 
 him tremble like the savages he imagines it to be the voice of 
 a higher power ; the reviving breath of spring fills him with an 
 undefined sensation of wonder, and awakes in him forebodings 
 of the invisible Benefactor whose visible image he loves in his 
 parents. A child, with his lap full of sweet-smelling flowers
 
 TJie First Utterances of the C/iila. 
 
 which lie is going to weave into a garland, sits on the grass 
 under a blossoming apple-tree in which the birds are warbling 
 their spring song; the warm rays of the sun penetrate his 
 being, a cooling wind plays gently round his face and showers 
 over him the white blossoms of the tree; a flood of newly 
 experienced bliss uplifts his soul, and his lips gently Avhisper : 
 " It is the good God who is passing by " the first revelation of 
 the deity has entered his soul. 
 
 All religion begins with natural religion, but the God in 
 nature must also be recognized in man, though this will not be 
 till the God in nature has been apprehended. The development 
 of nature and the development of mankind are. mutually sym- 
 bolic one of the other, and correspond in their different stages 
 to the various stages of belief in God, through which mankind 
 and the individual pass. That is to say, the spiritual develop- 
 ment of the human soul proceeds according to the same system 
 of laws as the development of the organisms of nature for 
 both have a common creator. And not only do they follow the 
 same laws of development, but the sequence of stages is the 
 same in Both cases ; everything ascends from the less to the 
 greater. The budding-season of spring represents childhood ; 
 the blossom- time of summer, youth ; the fruits of harvest, the 
 maturity of manhood ; and the decay of winter, that of old age. 
 Everywhere in the world of nature we find analogies to the life 
 of the human soul. All natural phenomena correspond to ideas, 
 incorporate thoughts, and thus receive a higher meaning ; or 
 are the signs of spiritual truths to which they give expression. 
 Thus they may be called Symbols. 
 
 The profound understanding shown by Frobel of the path 
 which education must follow, in order, in this aspect also, to 
 keep in relation to human nature, will be more closely examined 
 later on in this work. 
 
 The utterances of all children are the same, and their origin 
 is the same, for they are based on inborn natural impulses. 
 But Nature does nothing in vain, nothing without an object ; 
 all instincts which have not been deflected from their natural 
 direction have but this one end : to further the development of 
 the organization of nat r o~ ^f the human individual.
 
 38 A New Method of Education. 
 
 The child plays, is constrained to play, in order to develop 
 itself. Its play is activity intended to awaken, strengthen, and 
 form its powers and talents, so that it may be able to fulfil it? 
 destiny as a grown being. 
 
 In like manner the combined activity of mankind the 
 results of which appear in the progressive stages of civiliza- 
 tion in the past and the present can have no other end but the 
 realization of perfected humanity through the development of 
 all that concerns mankind, or, in other words, the fulfilment of 
 the divine idea of humanity. But humanity is made up of in- 
 dividual men, and thus it follows of necessity, that the life's 
 aim of the latter must be the same as that of the community 
 of which they are members. 
 
 No one thinks of denying that the individual plant, or the 
 ndividnal animal, develops itself according to the laws of its 
 tribe. And it is only because we understand how the develop- 
 ment of the tribe and family of a plant or an animal proceeds 
 that we know how to manage the individual specimens. 
 According to the various modifications of this natural method 
 of treatment, is the special, individual character of animals 
 stamped on them ; and this shows itself most distinctly in 
 house-dogs. Amongst the same tribe of dogs, for instance, one 
 may be much more obedient, faithful and dependent, or more 
 vicious and faithless, than others. 
 
 The utterances of every different being bear, likewise, the 
 stamp of the tribe to which it belongs, and man is no exception 
 to the rule. It follows, therefore, that the instinctive, involun- 
 tary expressions and actions, which are common to all the in- 
 dividuals of a race, must serve the natural ^end of their develop- 
 ment. 
 
 The child is as little conscious of this end as is the savage in 
 a state of nature, or the uncultivated grown being, but both 
 are driven and led by inward impulses and outward attractions 
 to procure the satisfaction of their needs, first in order to pre- 
 serve themselves in existence, and then to attain the highest 
 possible state of well-being. The exertions and practices 
 necessary to this end are at the same time the means of their 
 culture.
 
 The First Utterances of the Child. 39 
 
 The history of the development of mankind teaches us how 
 the bodily necessities, food, clothing, shelter from inclement 
 weather, danger, &c., and later on the spiritual needs, social 
 intercourse, desire after the true and the beautiful, spurred men 
 on to the discovery of all that constitutes our present posses- 
 sions in industry, art, and science. 
 
 Just as mankind through its stage of unconsciousness was 
 prepared for a succeeding higher stage of development and 
 culture, till it should attain to self-consciousness and knowledge 
 of its destiny, so does the playful activity of the child prepare 
 it for its later conscious existence. But this end will only be 
 accomplished when education holds out to the instinctive feeling 
 and groping of childhood the necessary guidance, and the fit 
 material to work on. To do this is the object of F rebel's Kin- 
 dergarten, which follows out in miniature the chief features of 
 the history of human culture, places in the way of children 
 similar experiences, and thus prepares them for, and makes them 
 capable of, understanding the life of the present day, which is 
 an outcome of the past. 
 
 It need hardly be said, that by the following of the history 
 of culture we do not mean the depiction of the different epochs 
 of culture, or of the nationalities which represent them (as is 
 often erroneously thought), but such a course of instructional 
 activity as shall reproduce in miniature in the work of the 
 child the progressive development/ of the race, as manifested in 
 the work of mankind.
 
 4O A New Method of Education. 
 
 CHAPTER IV. 
 
 THE REQUISITES OF EDUCATION IN GENERAL AND FROBEL's THEORY 
 OF EDUCATION. 
 
 "Ziel der Natur ist Entwickelung. Ziel der gei-tigen Welt : Bildung. Das 
 Problem dieser Welt ist ein Bildungsproblem, dessen Lb'sung nach bestimmten 
 gb'ttlichen .Gresetzen vor sich geht.'' 
 
 "The purpose of nature is development. The purpose of the spiritual world 
 is culture. The problem of this world is an educational one, i he solution of 
 which is proceeding according to fixed divine laws." 
 
 EDUCATION is emancipation the setting free of the bound-up 
 forces of the body and the soul. The inner conditions necessary 
 to this setting free or development all healthily-born children 
 bring with them into the world, the outer ones must be supplied 
 to them and that through education, 
 
 If in the spring the hard coverings of plants are to burst 
 open so that the buds of leaves and blossoms may be set free 
 and sprout, air and sunlight, rain and dew must be supplied to 
 them. The inner force will be sufficient to break open the 
 shells if the outward conditions are not wanting. In nature 
 every necessity or want meets with corresponding satisfaction, 
 and this without conscious will or exertion according to un- 
 changing laws and principles. The course of the sap in plants, 
 which ascends and descends regularly from the root to the 
 blossom, and by a continual process of expansion and contraction 
 forms the leaf -buds, corresponds to the course of the blood in 
 animal and human organisms, starting from the heart and re- 
 turning to the heart, and in the action of the ventricles of the 
 heart exhibiting in like manner expansion and contraction. 
 
 Everything in the kingdom of nature, however different the 
 stages of progress may be, comes under one universal law
 
 The Requisites of Education in General. 41 
 
 and development means the same as progress according to laiv, 
 systematic going on from the unformed to the formed, from 
 chaos to cosmos. 
 
 And as does the physical so also must the spiritual develop- 
 ment proceed in systematic fashion, or education would be 
 impossible. For what we call education is influencing the 
 development of the child, guiding and regulating it as well in 
 its spiritual as in its physical aspect. But how common a thing 
 it is to hear people maintain that during the instinctive, un- 
 conscious period of a child's life, it should be left to follow 
 its impulses entirely, and no attempt made to deal with it sys- 
 tematically. But, as the soul undoubtedly begins to unfold and 
 form itself in the period of unconsciousness in the same sys- 
 tematic manner as in later periods, any such assertion must be 
 erroneous and based on false premises. Spiritual development 
 must proceed in as regular and systematic a course as organic 
 development, seeing that the physical organs are intended to 
 correspond as implicitly to the soul, which they serve, as cause 
 corresponds to effect. Psychology has determined the order of 
 the development of the soul, as has physiology that of the cir- 
 culation of the blood, but the former science has chiefly con- 
 cerned itself with the already more or less formed soul of the 
 adult, which, through self-will and voluntary deflection from the 
 path of order, is always to a certain extent the slave of arbitra- 
 riness, and the growth of the soul in the period of childhood 
 has been little studied or observed. 
 
 Frobel used constantly to say when lecturing : " If you want 
 to understand clearly the regular working of nature you must 
 observe the common wild plants, many of which are designated 
 as weeds : it is seen more clearly in these than in the com- 
 plexity of cultivated plants." And for this purpose he used to 
 grow different species of wild plants in pots. 
 
 The same holds true of the human plant. The young child's 
 soul, while yet in its primitive and instinctive stage, without 
 forethought and without artificiality, exhibits to the really 
 seeing and understanding observer the systematic regularity, tho 
 logic of nature's dealings in her development process, spite of 
 the variety of individual endowment.
 
 42 A New Method of Education. 
 
 In the foregoing essay \ve attempted to demonstrate -\vhafc 
 may be called the universal in the " utterances" of child-nature, 
 that which sets the stamp of the race on each individual. 
 Through these utterances, in so far as they repeat themselves in 
 each individual and may consequently be reduced to a law, we 
 arrive at the keynote to the knowledge of the natural order of 
 child development. 
 
 Frobel says : " There is continuous connection in the 
 spiritual life as a whole, as there is universal harmony in 
 nature." And certainly it cannot be otherwise : the eternal law 
 of order, which reigns throughout the universe, must also deter- 
 mine the development of the human soul. But the educator 
 who would supply the human bud in right manner with light 
 and warmth, rain and dew, and so induce it to emancipate 
 itself from its fettered condition, and through the unfolding of 
 all its slumbering forces to blossom into worthy life, must not 
 only understand the law but must also possess the means of 
 acting in accordance with the law : i.e., his method of education 
 must follow the same systematic plan as nature does, and the 
 outward practical means must correspond to the method. 
 
 No one will dispute the assertion that instruction is only 
 worthy of the name when it is methodical. Instruction of 
 such kind is a branch of education : but branch and stem 
 spring from the same root. However much may have been 
 done, from the days of antiquity up to the present day, to 
 improve educational and instructional systems, and to adapt 
 them more closely to the natural process of development, and 
 thus attain the result aimed at knowledge in the best and 
 quickest manner, the laws of development of the infant mind 
 are, nevertheless, still veiled in obscurity. No infallible chart 
 has yet been found, which, as the magnet to the mariner, will 
 show the educator invariably the right direction to steer in, 
 spite of all ebbs and flows, spite of all the thousand different 
 courses that each vessel, each character, according to its indi- 
 vidual destination, has to strike into. But so long as some 
 such fixed method of education remains undiscovered, so long 
 will even the best education be more or less an arbitrary 
 work.
 
 The Requisites of Education in General. 43^ 
 
 It was also Pestalozzi's chief endeavour to discover and 
 apply that which he called " the principle of the organic," and 
 to him, and his educational forerunners, are we indebted for 
 our first knowledge of the course of child development, and 
 for the means by which education and instruction have been 
 more systematically organized. Without their preliminary 
 efforts Frobel might not, perhaps, have discovered the method 
 whereby he built upon the foundation laid by them, and 
 brought their, and more especially Pestalozzi's, practical 
 endeavours to completion. In like manner will Frobel's- 
 successors be called on to develop further what he has laid the- 
 foundation of. 
 
 In one of his letters to me, Frobel says : " As motion in 
 the universe depends on the law of gravitation, so do move- 
 ments in the life of humanity depend on the law of unity of 
 life." And further ; " As the laws of the fruit are develop- 
 ments of the laws of the flower, and the laws of the flower 
 developments of the laws of the bud, and the laws of bud, 
 flower, and fruit, are at the same time one with the laws of the 
 whole tree or plant ; so are the laws of the development of 
 spiritual life higher outcomes, or developments, of the laws of 
 the solar and planetary system of the universe. Were this not, 
 the case man could not understand the latter, for he can only 
 understand that which is homogeneous to him. And, according- 
 to this, the laws of the development of life, in the region of 
 the spiritual, must be apprehended, demonstrated, and built 
 upon, in the same manner as the laws of the formation of the- 
 world. It will be the work of the Kindergarten to point out 
 the application of these laws, as one stage of progressive human 
 cultivation." 
 
 Frobel's aim and efforts, may, I think be summed up thus r 
 be was striving to hit on a regular course or method of educa- 
 tion, corresponding to the method of instruction long ago esta- 
 blished by pedagogic science. 
 
 As instruction aims before all things at imparting knowledge,, 
 so education has for its chief object moral culture, the forma- 
 tion of the character; and for this end it is above all necessary 
 that there should be freed cm of individual movement, room.
 
 New Method of Education. 
 
 for tlie development of personality. It may be asked : " How 
 can there be one law for all and everything ? But does not the 
 infinite variety of creation rest on the eternal basis of the unity 
 of the Creator ? Are not all the heavenly bodies alike subject to 
 the law of gravitation, and are they thereby hindered from the 
 development of the greatest individuality ? It is an undoubted 
 fact that each heavenly body differs from another both in its 
 organisms and its productions. We see trees and plants of the 
 most different kinds, thriving in the same forest, under the 
 same conditions of soil, climate, &c., each individual growth 
 assimilating to itself those outward influences only which befit 
 its special nature. So the personality of the child will only 
 absorb into itself out of that which is presented to it, whatever 
 corresponds to its special wants and endowments. 
 
 And as it is only in consequence of the order of all move- 
 ment in space that the free movement of the heavenly bodies 
 is possible, and that disturbing collisions are avoided, so in the 
 child's nursery, as in the state, it is through systematic govern- 
 ment alone that freedom is attained freedom of the indivi- 
 dual through the freedom of all. 
 
 That education should be carried on in accordance with 
 nature is granted by nearly all educationalists, at any rate by 
 those of modern times, as one of its first requisites. And what 
 is according to nature is according to law. 
 
 Now it is both according to law and to nature, that the 
 progressive development of the individual as well as of man- 
 kind should require at each new stage, new conditions, and 
 new modes of assistance. The bell-glass which protects the 
 germinating plant will not cover the fullgrown tree, and the man 
 cannot wear the clothes which fitted him in his childhood. The 
 conditions of life change and become higher in every new 
 epoch and generation, and it must necessarily follow that 
 education should make higher and more comprehensi T e demands 
 on us, than on the generations before us. 
 
 Amongst our Germanic forefathers, who lived in their 
 forests clothed in bear skins, the standard of their children's 
 education was : for the boys, that they should learn the use of 
 the spear and the bow, and to mount a horse in the battle or
 
 The Requisites of Education in General. 45 
 
 the chase, that they should know the rights and duties of their 
 tribe, and the customs of the service of the gods : for the girls, 
 that with womanly chastity they should combine skill in cook- 
 ing, spinning, and housekeeping. But this standard no longer 
 satisfied the succeeding age of chivalry. And the culture of 
 knights and their womankind does not satisfy the demands of 
 our day, because the general conditions of life have become 
 different. 
 
 And with these changes of conditions the nature of man, 
 physical and spiritual, changes also. Not of course in its essen- 
 tial features : not in the shape and conformation of his body \ 
 nor altogether in his impulses, passions, and inclinations, or in 
 his processes of thinking, feeling, and willing. Man has at all 
 times one head, two hands, and two feet ; at all times he 
 suffers and enjoys, according to the impressions produced on 
 him ; thinks and endeavours, in human fashion. But are not 
 the barbarian and the cultivated human being just as much 
 distinguishable from one another by their outward appearance 
 and demeanour as by their inclinations and endeavours, their 
 thinking and willing ? The physical development of the work- 
 ing-classes is so univei sally influenced by their mode of life 
 that in them the bones and muscles preponderate ; whereas in 
 those who lead a more intellectual life the nervous system 
 dominates. The organization of the head of a thinker differs 
 in an important manner both from that of a savage and from 
 that of a manual labourer. This difference is transmitted to 
 posterity ; it is not only physically that children bear the 
 stamp of their parents, they also inherit from them mental 
 dispositions. The child of the Hottentot will be born with 
 different dispositions from that of the cultivated European, and 
 the child of the nineteenth century from one of the barbaric 
 age, because the progress of the race must also express itself 
 in the individual. 
 
 In plants and animals we see the influence of cultivation very 
 plainly. The wild yellow root, or carrot, must for instance go 
 through twenty generations of culture before it becomes eatable ; 
 and after only five generations of neglect it will again revert to its 
 wild condition. The horse breeder knows that the offspring of a
 
 46 A New Method of Education. 
 
 noble race is itself noble, and therefore requires higher care 
 than that of a lower race. Manifold experience teaches how 
 difficult it often is to educate the child of uncouth parents and 
 ancestors though not necessarily of savage ones for a life of 
 refined cultivation. 
 
 It lies still before the explorers in the science of humanity to 
 discover and demonstrate more exactly the powerful influences 
 of mental culture on the bodily and mental organism, but it 
 cannot be doubted that the higher the culture of a nation has 
 risen, so much the higher endowments will its children bring 
 with them into the world. 
 
 Can there then be any doubt of the necessity for continual 
 reconstruction of educational systems, as of all other things, 
 and will any persist in maintaining that, what of old was good 
 enough and sufficient for the education of mankind is also 
 sufficient now-a-days ? To each age, however, belongs a special 
 virtue, and it is precisely this which is commonly overlooked by 
 the reformers of the directly succeeding age. However much 
 we may be justified in claiming for our own age great advance 
 in all school and instructional arrangements, there is also no 
 doubt that the preceding generation excelled us in many 
 respects with regard to education. Cultivation of character, 
 moral earnestness and religion the foundation of all education 
 were prevalent in far higher measure. The care and atten- 
 tion which the ancient Greeks bestowed in training the body 
 for strength, skill and beauty, are also equally wanting in our 
 day. Furthermore it cannot be denied that the ruling tendency 
 of education at the present day has resulted in a one-sided 
 development of the understanding, and in the stupefying system 
 of overcramming for which our rising generation is remarkable. 
 
 Can any one, moreover, be so blind as not to see the black 
 shadows looming in the pathway of the present generation, so 
 deaf as not to hear the warning-cry of manifold misery resound- 
 ing on all sides. The blame of this melancholy state of things 
 must undoubtedly be partly attributed to faulty education. 
 The characteristic features of our age are : Knowledge with- 
 out practice ; practice without the stamp of individuality : 
 thought precociously developed before fancy and feeling, like to
 
 The Requisites of Education in General. 47 
 
 bud and blossom, have matured the fruit ; insight without 
 power of action ; the capacity for ruling matter degraded to the 
 service of the material nature; no reverence for the all- 
 permeating spirit of God, no belief in its eternal working 
 human intellect regarded as the highest court of appeal. The 
 childlike simplicity which surrenders itself to a higher and an 
 invisible power is now almost unknown, for its source in the 
 original unsullied nature of childhood becomes early corrupted, 
 and education directs the mind only to outward things : learn- 
 ing has come to be little more than acceptance of what is 
 'mparted, leaving no room for any original material to come to 
 the surface, and stifling the innate faculties. On all sides there 
 is a crying out for new rights, without any regard for the idea 
 of duty. Well does a modern poet lament : 
 
 * " In Trauern blick' ich bin auf das Qeschlecht von beute, 
 
 Wie es die kunstlich-friihe Rrife biisst ; 
 Friih scbon des Zweifels, der Erkenntniss Beute, 
 In eine Zukunft schaut, die dunkel oder wiist." 
 
 And because this is the case we see everywhere restlessness, 
 discontent," a piteous seeking for unattained happiness a deep 
 vein of sadness runs through modern society, in whose very 
 strains of joy tones of sorrow mingle, and which, in the midst 
 of wanton pleasure-seeking, longs with wailings and yearnings 
 after the forfeited higher good Avhich alone can satisfy the ideal 
 cravings of the soul. The world waits as for a magic spell, for 
 a new generation, fashioned for a new world, capable of the 
 deeds which that new world demands, open to new truths 
 who shall usher it in ? 
 
 Every penetrating reform, in whatsoever field it may be at- 
 tempted, requires a new truth, a new idea of genius for its 
 foundation. But such an idea will seldom seem new in its en- 
 tirety ; the pages of history will almost certainly prove that the 
 same idea has already been expressed, though in a different 
 setting, by former thinkers, and that, constantly recurring, it 
 
 * "In sadness I gaze on mankind of to-day, 
 
 Who of premature culture the penalty taste ; 
 To doubt and to learning a too-tarly prey, 
 
 They look forth on a future of darkness or "asr.e."
 
 48 A New Method of Education. 
 
 has gained a standing in different epochs. And whenever this 
 is the case there must be something important in question 
 which has not hitherto attained to full development. Often it 
 is only a lucky hit that is needed to convert into reality an idea 
 that has long been in preparation. 
 
 Whether it has happened to Frobel by a like lucky hit to 
 give a new basis to education, experience and the application 
 and carrying out of his method must show. A written expo- 
 sition can do no more than represent the matter in its general 
 outlines, and thus awaken the desire to understand it better, and 
 to test its merits by application. 
 
 The most difficult of all difficult tasks is without doubt to 
 give a universally enlightening definition to a new truth- 
 great or small for new truths always lie outside the general 
 mental horizon. Even Frobel himself, therefore, has had little 
 success in describing his educational theory in its fall compass, 
 and he is, perhaps, even more justified than Hegel and other 
 thinkers in complaining that he has not been understood. Far 
 be it from us to pretend here to expound this idea in its whole 
 breadth and depth we would only attempt by means of the 
 following short statements to open up the way to an under- 
 standing of it. 
 
 The process of spiritual development goes on also according tc 
 fixed laws. 
 
 These laws correspond to the general laws which reign through' 
 out the universe, l>ut are at the same time higher, because suited 
 to a higher stage of development. 
 
 This system of laws must be able to be traced bade to a 
 fundamental law, however much the latter may vary in its 
 formulae. 
 
 Frobel calls it: "The law of opposites and their reconcilia- 
 tion" or " the law of balance." 
 
 There is nothing, animate or inanimate, to which this law 
 does not apply, for everything consists of related opposites r 
 a proposition always implies the counter proposition the ex- 
 istence of Grod presupposes that of the world, that of the 
 world presupposes that of God ; man, as a being both conscion s 
 and unconscious, links together nature or unconscious ex-
 
 The Requisites of Education in General. 49 
 
 istence, with God absolute conscious existence. The inward 
 and outward aspects of things are opposites, which the thing 
 itself connects together. This universal law manifests itself 
 in nature in the interchange of matter. Every organism pos- 
 sesses the property of giving out on the one hand of its own 
 substance, and taking in on the other what has emanated 
 from other organisms. And these opposites of giving out and 
 taking in are connected by assimilation and appropriation 
 a process which varies in each different organism. It is by 
 interchange of this sort that the physical world is kept in 
 continual balance, and connection of all its parts. 
 
 In the intellectual world this law manifests itself in a 
 similar, or at least an analogous, manner. Mental develop- 
 ment is also exchange a mental interchange of matter. The 
 soul takes in from outside, through the senses, a stock of im- 
 pressions and images, which by an inward process it converts 
 into thoughts and conceptions, and gives out again to the world 
 as words and actions. Without intercourse and exchange of 
 ideas with other minds, man would never learn to think. 
 The process of thinking is impossible without comparison, 
 and in order to compare there must be variety at hand ; but 
 the most distinct difference constitutes only relative opposites 
 (absolute opposites do not exist), which are blended together 
 by means of concomitant similarities. Therefore, thought is 
 also the connection of opposites. 
 
 This long recognized law which, whether in the centrifugal 
 and centripetal forces which rule throughout the cosmic universe, 
 or in the inspiration or expiration of the lungs, or the ex- 
 pansion and contraction of the sap of plants, &c., has established 
 itself as the law of all life, growth, and being this law Frobel 
 applies to education. For, he argues, if this law guides the 
 process of spiritual development in early childhood, that is in 
 the period of non-deliberate action, educators must regard it 
 as the law of nature for the human mind if they are to proceed 
 according to nature (Natur gemtiss*), and they must apply 
 
 * The word Nalur-gemdss (according to nature) must never be understood to 
 refer to nature in its distorted, corrupted condition, in which sense the word 
 natural is often used. Note by the Author. 
 
 E
 
 50 A New Method of Education. 
 
 this law in their method, and above all lead children to 
 apply it themselves in whatever they do. And this from the 
 beginning of the child's development, in the stage of uncon- 
 scious existence, which is the germ of all others. In this way 
 the human mind will be trained to render to itself an ever 
 clearer and clearer account of the laws of its thinking 
 and acting, while an opposite method of education would 
 more or less hinder the mind from attaining the power of 
 clear thought. . 
 
 For instance, a child directly it is born begins to take in 
 through its senses impressions from outside. It perceives heat 
 and cold, light and darkness; it arrives gradually at dis- 
 tinguishing between hard and soft, solid and fluid, near and 
 distant, &c. These are all so many kinds of opposites. As 
 long as this perceptive faculty is but feebly developed, it will 
 not easily distinguish slight degrees of difference, as, for 
 instance, a hard material from one only a little less hard, a near 
 object from one a very little farther, and so forth. The more 
 marked the contrast in the qualities of different objects (for it 
 is not the things themselves that form opposites, but their 
 qualities) the more easily will they be distinguished from one 
 another. Now to be able to distinguish is the first step 
 towards understanding. Is it not, therefore, self-evident that 
 this process will be facilitated if the objects with which the 
 child is to occupy itself are presented to it in the form of 
 opposites ? If, for instance, it is to learn to distinguish between 
 the size of things, let two objects, relatively great and little, 
 be given to it, or for distinction of colour two contrasting 
 colours, and so forth. 
 
 In Frobel's " second gift," for instance, the sphere (a single 
 surface without the distinction of edges and corners) and the 
 cube (many surfaces, edges, and corners) form opposites which 
 the cylinder (containing both a round surface like the sphere, 
 and flat surfaces and edges like the cube) combines in its 
 form, thus connecting two opposites. 
 
 Through these shapes, and by means of the sense of sight, 
 the child receives impressions, nothing more. But out of these 
 impressions, feeling and willing arise, and later on understand-
 
 The Requisites of Education in General. 51 
 
 ing and thinking, and it is because all later development depends 
 on them that early impressions are so important. 
 
 As God * the Creator has everywhere in creation placed 
 opposites side by side in order to work out harmony, so must 
 man proceed in like fashion in all his works, if he is to produce 
 harmony. All art is based on the principle of contrasts. The 
 musician in the trichord connects together two discordant 
 tones ; the artist in his pictures has to connect light and shade, 
 dark tints and bright ones, by means of middle tints, &c. 
 
 The child too, in the Kindergarten, plaits and twists in like 
 manner ; lays one little stick horizontally, another perpen- 
 dicularly, and a third half horizontally, half perpendicularly, in 
 order by means of the slanting line to connect together the two 
 others. 
 
 And, whilst the child is applying this simple law in a 
 thousand different ways in its occupation, it is being led on 
 to creativeness, which means, as far as mankind is concerned, 
 out of given materials to form new combinations. Without 
 law or rale, i.e., method, this is not possible. The mode of 
 procedure in all work, whether industrial or artistic, must be 
 at bottom systematic. 
 
 If the child in all its little productions, even those of its 
 play, has persistently applied this principle of its own mental 
 development, although at the time conscious of nothing more 
 than that by this simple means it could produce the most 
 manifold shapes, figures, &c., far more will have been done 
 for its general development, than if it had been at once 
 prepared for all the various branches of school instruction. 
 Arrangement, distribution, classification, without which no in- 
 struction can be carried on, and clear thought is impossible, will 
 have become habits of his life, and will bring to him clearness of 
 feeling, will and thought, the only certain foundations of culture. 
 
 As a result of the foregoing we find the first general educa- 
 tional requisites to be : 
 
 Assistance of spontaneous development which shall accord 
 with the laws of nature ; 
 
 Consideration for the outward conditions of life of each epoch, 
 and for each personality ; 
 
 E 2
 
 52 A New Method of Education. 
 
 Understanding and application of the universal laws of 
 spiritual development. 
 
 With regard to the special service rendered by Frobel, let me 
 here repeat what I have already mentioned before, that Frobel 
 has discovered the method and practical means of disciplining, 
 or of developing, body, soul and mind, will, feeling and under- 
 standing according to the systematic laws of nature. 
 
 In the practical application of the positive and individual 
 portion of it, the simplicity and naturalness of Frobel's method 
 stand out markedly, and at once do away with any idea of its 
 being pedantic or artificial, and in opposition to the natural 
 free development of the child. 
 
 No one will deny that the smallest practical discovery which 
 shall turn our educational system in a direction corresponding 
 to the demands of human nature, and of modern times, is of 
 immense importance, and must contribute towards facilitating 
 and expediting the great reformatory process of our age. 
 Though education cannot do all that is needed in this respect, 
 it can do a great deal.
 
 CHAPTER V. 
 
 EARLY CHILDHOOD. 
 
 MOTTO. Die Erneuerung der Gesellschaft bangt von deren sittlicher Umbil- 
 dung ab, und diese zumeist von Verbessemng des Erziehungswesen. Die Er- 
 folge der Erziehung aber beruhen auf deren Anfang in der ersten Kindheit, und 
 diese ruht in den Bauden der Frauen. Br. M. 
 
 "The renovation of society depends on its moral reform, and this again 
 chiefly on improvement in the nature of education. But the results of educa- 
 tion depend on its first commencements, and the&e are in the hands of women." 
 
 *' POOR humanity !" exclaims Madame de Stael at the sight of 
 all the manifold miseries of mankind. With much moi*e truth 
 might one exclaim : " Poor childhood ! " for in childhood, and 
 its perverted management, lies the source of the greater part 
 of this misery. Adult mankind has weapons wherewith to 
 repel the assaults of temptation and trouble ; helpless child- 
 hood is exposed without power of resistance to the evils of 
 mismanagement and neglect, and the consequence is that 
 human beings find themselves beginning the battle of life 
 already maimed by thousands of wounds. If only the human 
 soul were better guarded and fostered in its infancy, how 
 many fewer despairing men and women should we see ! 
 
 How much has there not been said and written before and 
 after Pestalozzi's " Book for Mothers " on the importance of 
 first impressions, and yet what boundless neglect do we see of 
 this first period of the growth of the human soul ! If a tender 
 young leaf be pricked in spring-time with the finest needle it will 
 show a scar of continually increasing size till it withers in the 
 autumn ; how many such needle-pricks does not the young 
 child- soul receive and in them the beginnings of many scars, 
 bad habits, faults and vices ? Is there a single human being 
 who has not to bear the weight--often a very heavy one of
 
 54 -^ New Method of Education. 
 
 the consequences of some neglect in childhood ? For each one 
 of us the roots of our being are planted in our childhood, and as 
 are the roots so will be the tree. The good and the bad alike, 
 if they could see down into the lowest depths of their existence, 
 would be able to trace back their good deeds and their evil 
 ones, in their latest ramifications, to the seeds sown in infancy. 
 It is true that the origin, both of physical and moral diseases, 
 lies to a great extent in the innate dispositions which are the 
 heritage of parents and ancestors, but it depends upon early 
 care and training whether these dispositions be developed or 
 suppressed. Every single evil tendency can be overcome to a 
 certain degree. 
 
 Nearly all mothers, and especially young ones, think that 
 their children, so softly cradled in the lap of love, are in no 
 way to be pitied, that they are protected from all moral hurt, 
 as from every breath of cold air. And yet how much harm 
 is done both to their bodies and souls by this very mother- 
 love if it be not accompanied by right understanding. 
 
 How often do we see a young mother, in any class of 
 society, enter on her educational office fully prepared for it, 
 even let us say so far as the management of health is concerned ? 
 And even if she herself be thoroughly fitted for her work, can 
 she prevent nurses, and nurserymaids, or whoever else may 
 assist her in it, from committing a hundred errors ? Why is it 
 that more than half of mankind die during the first ten years 
 of life, and of these again the greater number in the first three 
 years ? How few children of all ages are really blooming and 
 healthy-looking, especially in large towns. The little pale faces 
 are a heavy reproach to parents and nurses, and little do these 
 thoughtless mothers consider what a terrible responsibility 
 they have undertaken in view of the well-being of humanity. 
 
 Here, for instance, is a child who can scarcely hold up its 
 great heavy head. When the mother was at her balls, the 
 nurse used to give it decoctions of milk and poppy-heads, so 
 that whilst it was sleeping soundly she might keep a rendezvous. 
 The water in the little one's head dooms it to an early death, or 
 still worse to idiotcy for life ! There again is one whose tot- 
 tering, uncertain gait tells of bandy legs. Born with a scrofu-
 
 Early Childhood. 55 
 
 Ions tendency, it was set too early on the weak limbs which, 
 were not able to support it. In the thick waist and pale face 
 of another child are seen the results of over- feeding, the work, 
 perhaps, of a good-natured nursery-maid who was in the habit 
 of sharing her coffee, coarse bread, potatoes &c. with her young 
 charge. Inflammation of the chest brought on during the first 
 months of its life by a draught when it was being washed, have 
 developed in another child the seeds of consumption. Who 
 could enumerate all the seemingly trifling causes which, followed 
 up by later injurious influences, destroy the health of millions ? 
 And in depriving a child of health we deprive it also of the 
 power to work and to be of any use in the world. A sickly 
 child is al way s, and indeed must be, a coddled and a spoilt one, 
 and grows up into a man of ill-health, unable properly to main- 
 tain his family, or a suffering housewife and mother who can- 
 not fulfil her duties. 
 
 But the first pernicious moral influences work almost more 
 terribly. 
 
 The apparent passiveness of the young being easily deceives 
 its elders as to its really too ready susceptibility to outward 
 impressions. The helpless infant is supposed to be insensible to 
 disorder, insobriety, vulgarity or ugliness of surroundings, 
 while all the time the impressions are being received which 
 will determine the points of view from which the grown man 
 or woman will look out later on the world. 
 
 Each one of us is the offspring of his age and his nation. 
 This means to say : each one bears the stamp of those charac- 
 teristics of his age and nation amongst which he is born : 
 and each one reflects the influences of his immediate and more 
 distant surroundings. In this respect too each one is the off- 
 spring of his family, of his mother, his nurse, his nursery, his 
 playfellows &c., for it is in these that his century and his nation 
 are first represented to him. The special stamp of individuality 
 which his body and soul will bear in later life will be trace- 
 able to these first impressions which influenced the inborn 
 dispositions like rain or sunshine. The boy who has been 
 reared in the turmoil of camp-life will bear a different stamp 
 of character from one who has grown up in peaceful quiet
 
 56 A New Method of Education. 
 
 amongst the flowers of a garden. The Spartans and Athenians 
 grew up in the self-same country, under the same sky but 
 how differently did culture and morals colour their nationa 1 
 characters. Culture and morals are the result of education 
 of that which is bestowed as well as of that which goes on of 
 itself. 
 
 There are certainly few errors which have had such a per- 
 nicious and hampering effect on the development of good in 
 humanity as the one which treats children in their earliest 
 childhood merely as physical beings, and regards the soul at this 
 period as wholly insusceptible and without requirements. The 
 soul which makes its existence unmistakably known later, must 
 have grown out of a former, if only a dormant state, in which 
 state it must have acquired the strength to manifest itself at 
 last openly. The soul then exists as such already in infancy. 
 But in what manner does it arrive at its later development ? It 
 can only be through impressions received from outside, through 
 the influence of the surroundings. Body and soul at the be- 
 ginning of life may be said to be one, and bodily desires and 
 needs are seemingly all that express themselves. But the 
 foundation of these bodily desires is a spiritual one. The 
 organs must first be strengthened before the soul can make use 
 of them, but simultaneously with their development the soul 
 itself grows, and according to the form which these organs, 
 whether limbs or senses, take will be in great measure the 
 spiritual stamp. Every physical impression is at the same 
 time a spiritual one, and all the more lasting in proportion to 
 the youth and want of power of resistance of the being in 
 question. The reason why children so easily contract the mien, 
 gestures, and habits of their surroundings is that they have no 
 power of resistance everything outside them is stronger than 
 themselves, and they have to borrow from all outward in- 
 fluences for their own growth. Hence they are good, cheerful 
 and contented, or bad, morose, and discontented just according 
 to their surroundings. 
 
 It is a great mistake, for instance, to imagine that the vulgar, 
 unrefined manners of servants have no effect on children in 
 their first two or three years, or even in their first months. It
 
 Early Childhood. 57 
 
 is evident that a child grows like its nurse from the fact that 
 in a greater or less degree it catches her expressions. The 
 foundations of the strongest passions, failings, and vices may be 
 laid when the human being is in its earliest stage, a mere infant 
 in arms. To have been in infancy witness of improper be- 
 haviour may have been the beginning of lust. Anger and lying 
 most children learn from the servants of the house if not 
 from their parents ! Picking leads to stealing. Many a 
 promising lad has been led on to deceit and theft from no other 
 cause than that his mother was wanting in order and manage- 
 ment, and unable to teach him either by example or guidance ; 
 or, because she was too weak to resist the wishes of her child ; 
 he did not learn to bear contradiction in childhood, and in after 
 years he could not accustom himself to it. 
 
 Many a conscientious mother will doubtless smile to herself 
 and think : I am not guilty of these sins. I wash and dress 
 my child myself, or am present while it is being done ; I have 
 good nurses to look after it ; I feed it myself ; I play and talk 
 with it to develop its little mind ; I do not let it associate with 
 vulgar people, and so forth. And nevertheless it was the child of 
 a very conscientious and cultivated mother a little girl of six 
 years old who was assaulted by a soldier, in a public park, in 
 the coarsest and most improper manner, because it hindered his 
 tete-a-tetc with the nurse. And every glance into the world re- 
 veals suchlike hideous pictures. They shew that even the best 
 of mothers cannot be too careful, can never be over rich in pre- 
 cautions, and that they all need preparation for their calling. 
 
 No less sure in its vengeance is the early neglect of the 
 intellect. What a multitude of "confused heads" does one 
 see in our days, persons incapable of mastering the wealth of 
 ideas of the present day. One great cause of this is not 
 unfrequently found in the meaningless playthings heaped 
 .together without the slightest order, with which the year-old 
 child is set to amuse itself. For inward clearness proceeds 
 from outward order. As soon could the eyes of a grown 
 person " take in at a glance all the innumerable objects of an 
 industrial exhibition, as the young uncultivated eye of an 
 infant distinguish from one another the shapeless, generally
 
 58 A New Method of Education. 
 
 broken objects, through which it has to acquire its first know- 
 ledge. Yes, knowledge ! For can the child understand any- 
 thing else before it has, to a certain extent, learnt to know 
 form, colour, material, size, number, &c. that is to say the 
 qualities of things ? But this faculty of distinguishing begins 
 partly in the earliest years, as the child itself plainly manifests ; 
 it would not otherwise crow with delight when its hat and 
 cloak are produced to take it out of doors, or cry when the 
 sight of bath and towel indicate to it preparations for washing. 
 
 No one would dream of expecting a child of six or seven 
 years old, because it had been supplied with the necessary 
 materials paper, ink, books, &c., to learn to read and write by 
 itself without instruction, and how should an infant, up to its 
 third year, learn without assistance to distinguish all the many 
 different things which surround it, and their qualities, in the 
 clear manner which is necessary to develop in it clear percep- 
 tion ? without the proper materials and without help, it will 
 also learn badly what it has to know in order to be prepared 
 for later school instruction. 
 
 It is through the senses that the young being takes in the 
 first nourishment for the faintly glimmering spark of the soul. 
 
 As physical nourishment, and especially that given in early 
 years, is by no means a matter of indifference as regards the 
 growth of the body, so it cannot be considered immaterial 
 what kind of spiritual food is afforded at this early period. 
 The development of the soul does not depend merely on the 
 fact of the limbs, senses, and organs, being formed it depends 
 also on how they are formed. 
 
 As eagerly as the babe at the breast sucks in its mother's 
 milk, so do the senses (eyes and ears above all) suck in the 
 nourishment of the soul. Frobel calls this spiritual sucking in 
 " ein Augen," because the eye is specially active in the process. 
 In this first period of existence, when the child is a sucking-. 
 babe, receptiveness is the dominant faculty. Just as the bees 
 gather from thousands of flowers the stores with which they 
 prepare their honey, so from the outer world the child's soul 
 collects a store of images which must stamp themselves upon 
 it, and grow into ideas, before the first signs of spontaneous
 
 Early Childhood. 59. 
 
 mental activity can show themselves outwardly. Up to this- 
 point the forces of the soul work only inwardly and invisibly, 
 like the seed of a plant before it has begun to sprout. And as 
 seeds will wither, and come to nothing, if they be not watered 
 and tended, so will mental faculties if proper care be denied them. 
 
 And in what else can this first fostering of the infant soul 
 consist than in surrounding it with influences and images of 
 beauty, truth, and morality ? These are the three objects of 
 human, and therefore also of infant, development. 
 
 The first requisite then is to discover the right method by 
 which children should take in knowledge, before the period in 
 which the understanding begins to work. Because it has hither- 
 to been supposed that the feelers of the infant soul take in all 
 the nourishment necessary to it, just as the instinct of the young- 
 animal leads it to its proper food, no external care has been con- 
 sidered necessary. But no more than a young animal could 
 satisfy its hunger in a sandy desert, can the instinct of the- 
 child's soul still its cravings where the surroundings offer 
 nothing that it can make use of. But it may be asked, do not 
 nature and tie outward world present everywhere forms, colours, 
 sounds, and materials, which may serve as pictures for the child's 
 inner world ? No doubt they do, but in a scattered form, not. 
 collected together and arranged in such manner that they can 
 be taken in by the eye that has as yet seen nothing, the ear- 
 that has heard nothing not in the simple and elementary 
 form required by the unpractised eye. Can a child's eye in its 
 earliest years take in the beauty of a landscape with its thousand 
 different features and gradations, even when it is represented on 
 a small scale in a picture ? Or can a child's ear convey a 
 Beethoven sympathy, even as a general impression only, to the- 
 soul ? Impossible ! For the organs have not yet the necessary 
 strength for sustaining such complicated images, nor the soul 
 the capacity for grasping them. Influences and attractions of 
 undue magnitude and power weaken the young organs, and 
 leave the soul wholly indifferent, because untouched. 
 
 As nature has prepared for the child its fit bodily food in its 
 mother's milk, so must the mind of the mother prepare the- 
 food for her child's soul by placing all the widely scattered
 
 60 A New Method of Education. 
 
 natural objects in such manner before its senses that the feelers, 
 which these put out, may be able to find and take hold of the 
 right materials. And further, by removing from, its surround- 
 ings whatever may influence perniciously the germinating soul. 
 
 The mother has to paint the great pictures of nature and 
 reality in miniature, to separate single objects, to select and 
 dress up, so as to produce symbols of beauty, truth, and morality 
 adapted to infant comprehension. 
 
 But to determine these symbols for the earliest stage of 
 development is an art, and a difficult art ; it involves a know- 
 ledge of human nature, of physiology and psychology : how 
 shall mothers, all mothers, attain to it ? 
 
 The maternal instinct, maternal love, is, indeed, a magic 
 power enabling the simplest women often to work wonders ; 
 rand without this wonder of love humanity would hardly have 
 developed itself in its infancy. But at the same time every 
 mother is not capable of finding out for herself what her child's 
 soul requires, in order that none of its faculties may be ar- 
 rested, but all brought to their full development. 
 
 It is always individuals who find out what all need. For all 
 its necessities mankind has had its discoverers, its inventors, 
 its geniuses, who have satisfied each want in turn, and who, as 
 missionaries of God, have reformed and beautified human ex- 
 istence and quenched the thirst of the human soul after truth. 
 
 Frobel has fulfilled the mission of satisfying the need and 
 higher demands of childhood, arising out of the new stage of 
 liuman development, and of furnishing mothers with the symbols 
 by means of which, as by the leading-string of truth, they may 
 lead young souls through the first labyrinth of life. His mind 
 it was that selected and arranged materials, forms, colours and 
 sounds with elementary simplicity, and in such a manner that 
 they might penetrate the child's soul without disturbing the 
 stillness of its budding life, without awakening it suddenly or 
 artificially, and at the same time without letting the glimmering 
 spark of the soul be stifled in the ashes of materialism. 
 Frobel found out the certain rule by which the mother may be 
 safely and freely guided in her search for the right method of 
 tending the human plant entrusted to her.
 
 Early Childhood. 6 1 
 
 But what is this right method ? Is everything to be pre- 
 pared for the germinating infant mind, everything weighed 
 out, all exertion spared it, and is it simply to rest in its passivity,. 
 as on its mother's breast ? Yes, at the beginning of its ex- 
 istence the world of its surroundings must be adapted, ar- 
 ranged and modelled according to its needs, as its cradle and 
 clothing are prepared for its body, because the sucking baba 
 must first suck, i.e., take in, and can as yet procure nothing 
 for itself. But let only a few months go by, and it will be- 
 gin to stretch out its hands eagerly as if to lay claim to its- 
 share of the world. Frobel says : that the first grasping of 
 childish hands is a sign of mental awakening. With the 
 hands man begins to take possession of the material good 
 things of the world, till the mind in its fashion begins also 
 to grasp. It is only by appropriation that a human being 
 can place himself in relation or connect himself with 
 the outward world, but appropriation must be followed by 
 action, as duties come with rights. The spontaneous action 
 of the child, which is the beginning of future labours, begins 
 already in the earliest months. It shows itself in the first 
 grasping with the hands ; but instead of encouraging and as- 
 sisting this practice, whereby a sense of space and distance 
 is developed, people too often hinder it by handing to the- 
 child or taking away from it the object which it grasped 
 at with its little hands for the purpose of studying it by 
 touch. 
 
 Constant stimulus to spontaneous action is the first principle 
 of Frobel's educational method. He says : " The beginning of 
 a child's activity is the conversion of the outward into 
 the inward ; " i.e., taking in outward things as impressions 
 " In order afterwards to make the inward again outward ; "- 
 or in other words, to work up into ideas and thoughts, the 
 impressions taken in, and give them out again in words and 
 actions. In his " Sunday papers " he says : " Taking in and 
 living out is a fundamental necessity of child-nature, as 
 indeed of humanity in general. The earthly destination of 
 mankind is, by careful assimilation of the outer world, by 
 the forming of his nature, by the expression of his inner
 
 62 A New Method of Education. 
 
 life outside himself, and by careful comparison of this inner 
 life with outward life, to attain to the knowledge of their 
 oneness, to the knowledge of what life consists in, and to a 
 faithful living up to its demands." 
 
 But suppose the right kind of surrounding to have been 
 prepared for a child, so that it is able to take in images of 
 beauty, truth, and morality, how is it to " live out " that which 
 it has taken in ? How is it to become spontaneously active ? 
 In what form is it to express its individual nature ? It must 
 live out the self, the inner being, which nature has bestowed on 
 it, in that manner, in that form, which its childish instinct pre- 
 scribes to it, viz., in play. 
 
 Play is free activity, engendered by happiness and well-being. 
 To develop itself is happiness and well-being to a child, so long 
 as the process is in accordance with nature ; in order that it 
 may develop itself the child plays in happy unconsciousness 
 for it knows nothing of the object of its activity. " Play is 
 ihe first poetry of the child," says J. Paul, but play means also 
 its first deeds, which are the expression of human nature, of 
 human life. It is the preparatory exercise for this life. The 
 ohild begins its existence, after the first months of mere taking 
 in, by handling, producing and transforming : for to transform 
 the world is the business of humanity. 
 
 When a child of but a few months old applies its whole 
 strength to thumping on the table with some object or other, or 
 to flinging it over and over again on the ground, or from its 
 mother's arms opens and shuts the door, &c., it is exercising its 
 young forces, and it derives pleasure from so doing it may be 
 said to be playing though as yet without conscious end and 
 without manifestation of its individual nature. When at a 
 somewhat later age, while playing with its doll it imitates all 
 that happens to itself, the way in which it is washed, or dressed, 
 <fec., or whatever it sees going on in the kitchen, in the workshop, 
 in the garden, in the street, the instinct of imitation is develop- 
 ing its ideas, and stimulating it to ever new dramatic represen- 
 tations from the life of grown people, and the young mind is 
 now exercising its forces. But this activity is still so to say 
 universal, in so far as the child only gives back universal
 
 Early Childhood. 63 
 
 impressions made on it, without its individual stamps standing 
 out distinctly though at the same time difference of disposition 
 may already distinguish the boy from the girl, the sanguine 
 temperament from the phlegmatic, and various features show 
 individuality of character. It is only specially-gifted children 
 and artistic or scientific geniuses of the future whose individual 
 endowments are often strongly pronounced at the earliest age, 
 even though all musical composers do not, like the little Mozart, 
 compose sonatas at six years old. 
 
 Doing and handling alone are not enough to cause the indi- 
 viduality of a child, the kernel of its personality, the Divine 
 thought in it to blossom forth for this, actual production and 
 creation are necessary. It is in the works of its hands that 
 the signs must be sought which will point to the special 
 vocation it is destined for. 
 
 The degree of practical skill of which little child-hands are 
 capable, is shown by many an industry in which child labour 
 is miVused, for it is employed like a machine, always in one 
 direction only. But the child's mind can only produce in the 
 joyousness'of play, with the stimulus of a desired end to be 
 attained, of an awakened sense of the beautiful to be satisfied, 
 or contentment of one kind or another, to be reached as the 
 result of its endeavours. With such an aim the healthy child 
 will spare itself no trouble, no exertion indeed, without any 
 definite aim it delights in exhausting itself with activity ; its 
 nature impels it to do so, for it is created for labour. But it 
 must also become artist, i.e., it must originate within the limits 
 of its own small powers, if the flower of its individuality is to 
 unfold. For this purpose the ordinary, imitative, aimless play 
 is not sufficient ; its efforts require the guiding and determining 
 of suitable materials. 
 
 How eagerly do children long and beg for the participation of 
 their elders in their play for their guidance and direction j 
 with what zeal do they collect all available materials to enable 
 them to carry out their little ideas. But grown-up people, 
 when they do join in the amusements of children, understand 
 but imperfectly how to be wise leaders, and the materials at 
 hand are seldom suitable. Chance-found material is generalJy
 
 64 A New Method of Education. 
 
 too rough to be worked upon ; and finished objects leave nothing 
 over to be done. It has often been remarked that childish 
 fancy prefers an unfinished article to a finished one, a bit of 
 wood to a doll, because it can do something more to it ; and it 
 is sufficiently evident that the continually increasing wealth and 
 perfection of toys only serve to produce dulness in children, or 
 destructiveness as the only form of activity left to them, or, at 
 any rate, satiety, weariness, and a fatal love of distraction which 
 causes a constant craving for change, while, amid all this super- 
 fluity of diversion, the inactivity of the powers makes any real 
 satisfaction an impossibility. 
 
 Frobel, when a little boy, tried once very hard with the 
 material that he had collected stones, boards, and splints to 
 build a model of the Gothic church of his village, but, after long 
 fruitless struggles, he threw up his work in childish rage. This 
 incident, however, gave birth to the later thought that children 
 have need of prepared materials and guidance, even for the 
 exercises they carry on in play, in order that the real meaning 
 and object of play may be fulfilled. His own childish games in 
 his father's garden were the foundation of his " means of employ- 
 ment during the first childhood," which are applied in his 
 Kindergarten. 
 
 The purpose of the playthings, which he has devised, is to 
 facilitate from the very first months the perception of outward 
 objects ; by the simplicity, the method, and above all, the fitness 
 of the things set before the child, to enable it the more easily to 
 take in form, size, number, colour, sound, &c., and by their 
 definiteness, serial order, and connection, to produc > clear and 
 distinct impressions which shall correspond to the first budding 
 powers of comprehension. They serve, also, to assist the 
 development of the senses and organs in the easiest manner, 
 viz., through the own action of the child, so that it may be 
 rendered capable of living out its inner self in accordance with 
 its individual endowments, and of recognizing itself in its 
 works, as works of art reflect the soul of the artist. 
 
 Through Frobel the childish instinct of play has been con- 
 verted into conscious action. He perceived the end which 
 nature intended to reach by its means ; saw the analogy
 
 Early Childhood. 65 
 
 between the process of development in early childhood and the 
 evolutionary development of humanity, and was able, by a 
 penetrating glance at the relations of these two processes to one 
 another, to discover the true method for the satisfaction of the 
 impulse of culture which is innate in man, and through which 
 he has been led to the development of himself and his world. 
 
 It has been well said : " Grenius brings with it its own path, 
 the gifted nature reaches its goal." Providence, it is true, 
 allows those chosen by it for great tasks to select for them- 
 selves the means of their fulfilment ; but who can say how much 
 labour, how many fruitless struggles, how many tears of despair 
 might have been saved them F Or how much greater their 
 services, how much wider their hearts might have been'r Many, 
 no doubt, would say that it is just these tears, and struggles, 
 and agonies of despair, which develop genius or character ; 
 and certainly a man has always to thank his own endeavours 
 which developed his faculties, for his greatness. But the point 
 in question is to direct these exertions to the right end and 
 enable them to reach it, and, above all, to recognize endowments 
 betimes. "If a person gifted with a fine voice does not sing, he 
 or she cannot become a singer ; and if Thorwaldsen and Hum- 
 boldt, like Casper Hauser, had been confined for fifteen years in 
 a dark cellar where they could see and hear and do nothing, 
 their genius Avould never have unfolded itself. But who could 
 count the fast-bound gifts and powers which fall like unripe 
 fruit from the tree of humanity, because no school was at hand 
 for their development, because the soul was not loosed from its 
 darkness ? The number of geniuses will not be less because 
 their crowns of thorns are exchanged for crowns of roses, but, on 
 the contrary, will multiply beyond all power of calculation when 
 the faculties have room given them for joyous work and effort, and 
 when, through wise guidance, the vocation of the individual is 
 made plain to him when still a child, and the shortest way 
 to its fulfilment pointed out. 
 
 All Sysiphus labour should be spared, especially in childhood, 
 which should be, before all things, a time of happiness ; and the 
 way to make it so is by encouraging natural activity, by setting 
 free the imprisoned forces, and by enabling children to live ir
 
 66 A New Method of Education. 
 
 accordance with their needs, to collect experiences, and to learn 
 for themselves without school discipline. The creative spirit 
 must be allowed to work in them, that thus the rising genera- 
 tion may be saved from the demon of excitement-seeking, which 
 is ruining morality in our days. Action, in the form of play, 
 must supply the elements of all knowledge and practice, so 
 that unity and connection may pervade the whole culture. 
 The child should come to school ready equipped with all the 
 fundamental conditions necessary for true learning ; and 
 these are : to be able to see with one's own eyes ; to hear with 
 one's own ears ; to possess the power of observing and attending ; 
 to have a thirst for knowledge ; to be able rightly to perceive and 
 distinguish the different surrounding objects, and to be able, 
 through construction in childish fashion, to give outward ex- 
 pression to the inward self. 
 
 Morality and virtue must be learnt through doing and 
 practising : words alone will never teach them. It is only by 
 action that the will is strengthened and the capacity for great 
 and good deeds ripened. And, for this purpose, children will 
 seldom find so fit a field as the Kindergarten presents to them. 
 
 No age ever called for such a throng of action as does ours ! 
 The industrial works of our day are gigantic as the pyramids of 
 Egypt ; but, instead of centuries, like the latter, they require 
 only days for their completion, and the outward world is being 
 reconstructed with astounding rapidity. 
 
 But all the slower, alas, does the moral reconstruction go 
 forward ! What force shall be mighty enough to rival, in this 
 field, the wonders of industry ? Is there a higher force than 
 love, which, in its divine nature, created the world ? And 
 what love is more powerful than that of the mother ? The 
 Divine spark of love in the human breast never burns with a 
 purer and a holier fire than on the sacrificial altar of the mother's 
 heart, which the ashes of a ruined world would not suffice to 
 quench. Shall not this force, then, be mighty enough to con- 
 tribute to the purifying and sanctifying of human society in 
 an age when a new phoenix is striving to rise from the ashes of 
 centuries ? 
 
 It is not enough, that saving ideas should be carried about
 
 Early Childhood. 67 
 
 in the world ; there must also be the necessary devotion, the 
 good- will, the endurance, the power of self-sacrifice, to carry 
 them out. The male genius of humanity begets the ideas of 
 which each century has need ; the female genius has to work 
 them out. 
 
 The genius of mankind is two-sexed, but a long period has 
 gone by during which the world has received its stamp from 
 the male half only, and the result is that many fields are bar- 
 ren, large ti-acts parched and arid. The dews of emotion and 
 love can alone refructify them. A cry is going up on all sides 
 calling to the slumbering second genius of humanity to awake, 
 and appealing to the " love force " of woman for redeeming 
 works. The cry of the children calls to the hearts of mothers 
 that here is the material out of which they may build up a new 
 generation which shall impart the spirit of moral greatness and 
 dignity to the beautified outward world, so that the body may 
 not remain without a soul. A new key has been found to un- 
 lock the nature of the child, a new alphabet is ready wherewith 
 to decipher its secrets will not the mothers of our day snatch 
 gladly at this key, and eagerly study this new book for mothers ? 
 And will not the young women too, who are not yet mothers, 
 joyfully undertake the sacred office of educators of childhood to 
 which Frobel calls them ? 
 
 p 2
 
 68 A New Method of Education. 
 
 CHAPTER VI. 
 
 WE have attempted so far to draw out more fully and to 
 make universally comprehensible the following general ideas of 
 Frobel's. 
 
 1. The destiny of a child is, to be the child of nature, the 
 child of humanity, and the child of Grod. 
 
 Or : the human being as a product of the earth belongs to 
 the material physical world, and is of necessity subject to the 
 laws of this world ; as a personality he comes out of the range of 
 these laws and stands as man on the higher ground of self- 
 knowledge and freedom ; and lastly, through right development 
 and a life in harmony with it, he attains to the still higher 
 spiritual community of universal humanity in which the divine 
 spark of the human soul begins to shine, and he enters into re- 
 lation with the world outside the limits of earth, and with the 
 source of all things. 
 
 2. In the utterances of the child, which are the mirror of 
 its nature, we recognize on a small scale the development of 
 humanity in its infancy. 
 
 Or in other words, the individual will always reflect the 
 characteristics of the race, as may be proved by the analogy be- 
 tween the historical epochs in the world's progress, and the 
 universal stages in the life of childhood. 
 
 3. The education of children requires : consideration of human 
 nature in general, which changes with the progressive develop- 
 ment of the race ; consideration of the age in which they 
 are living ; of the personality of each individual character ; 
 and lastly of the law of development, which as regards the
 
 Frobefs Method, and what is New in It. 69 
 
 spiritual nature is "a higher outcome of the general law of 
 development of the universe." 
 
 4. The first period of childhood as being the most important 
 with regard to human development in general is not yet suffi- 
 ciently considered and cared for ; the first needs of the soul are 
 almost entirely disregarded ; Frobel offers the means by which 
 the female sex may be more adequately prepared for its vo- 
 cation as the first educators of childhood. 
 
 These fundamental ideas must be accepted before Frobel's 
 method and means of education can be understood and appre- 
 ciated in their full significance. In their general acceptation 
 these ideas have undoubtedly been more or less expressed in 
 different ages and at different times, and every thoughtful 
 educationalist has more or less recognized them. But in the 
 relation which Frobel gives them, and the application dis- 
 covered for them by him, they are new. 
 
 An idea is never realized by one human mind, or even by one 
 generation ; it is part of the scheme of the great Ruler who 
 sends these ideas to the earth, these sparks from the eternal 
 altar of truth, that they should go on ripening for centuries 
 before they are allowed to bear fruit. Every new truth, which 
 has become a reality, has had behind it a host of zealous spirits, 
 who have been compelled to fight for it and force open a way, 
 may be at the peril of their lives, before it could make its 
 entry into the region of reality. And often it happens that 
 the man or woman in whose mind the light of a new truth 
 first kindled remains for ever unknown. 
 
 Before a new idea assumes an established form it must have 
 been thought out again and again by the various successors of 
 its first pioneer, each one of whom will have something to con- 
 tribute to what has been already conceded not merely an 
 amendment here or there, but a new thought which will alter, or 
 give a fresh basis to the entire scheme. And this is essentially 
 the work of genius the fire in which every spark of truth is 
 kindled. If a new thought is to be fused into any scheme that 
 has been already ripening for some time, the whole ground 
 which has been gone over and gained from the birth of the 
 scheme down to its present stage must be contemplated anew
 
 7O A New Method of Education. 
 
 from an independent stand-point. Every man of science who 
 contributes something new to his special branch must be well 
 up in all that has been done before his time ; he must reckon 
 up again the whole sum of results already gained if he has re- 
 ceived a fresh amount to be added to it. And what but the 
 intuitive power of genius would be equal to such a task ? 
 
 In the field of education the same truth holds good : Frobel's 
 idea of " human education conducted according to an infallible 
 method " had been groped after, worked at, nourished and fos- 
 tered for centuries by minds kindred to his own, until at last 
 it was able to be formulated and expressed with some sort of 
 clearness. 
 
 The pith of the educational theory in question may be sum- 
 med up in few words, as follows : there must be a method- 
 ical and systematic plan, according to which every healthily 
 born human being (relatively speaking !) can be in such man- 
 ner surrounded and guided that his inborn faculties and powers 
 may be sure of complete development. 
 
 Only a plan of this sort is worthy the name of an educational 
 method. 
 
 Before the theory in question, together with what Frobel 
 has done towards carrying it out, can be clearly expounded, it 
 is necessary to come to an understanding as to what is meant 
 by method, and to distinguish rightly between an educational 
 and instructional method. 
 
 There are many people who while allowing that instruction 
 should be imparted methodically to children at quite an early 
 age, nevertheless think it foolish and unpractical to dream of 
 educating a child according to a method from the beginning of 
 its existence. 
 
 They think that free spontaneous development, the growth of 
 individuality, would be hindered thereby. 
 
 The idea of method in its general signification may be defined 
 as follows : a systematic plan, that is to say a plan which could 
 not be any other than what it is, and such as after repeated ex- 
 periences it has become established, for reaching any given end 
 in the easiest and best possible way. Or else : the following of 
 definite rales to attain an object in view.
 
 Frobel's Method, and what is New in It. 71 
 
 Whatever form the definition may take the pith of it will 
 always be the same.* 
 
 In all and everything that has to be accomplished there must 
 be one way which leads more directly than any other to the 
 wished-for goal. When once this most direct way to any given 
 end has been established, each one has but to follow it : that is 
 to say, to apply certain fixed rules which have resulted from 
 experience; and it is in this application of fixed rules that 
 method consists. This is true of all work without exception 
 the least as well as the greatest. 
 
 No art, not even that of cooking, can be carried on without 
 such a system of rules. Suppose a cook, for instance, were to 
 put together the ingredients of her dough in an arbitrary manner, 
 without regard to weight, and to bake them without first mixing 
 and stirring them, the bread would not turn out well. And 
 what applies to industrial processes applies equally to artistic 
 and mental work. Poetry cannot dispense with metre and the 
 laws of versification ; musical compositions must be based on the 
 laws of harmony. 
 
 Even when people write poetry without any knowledge of 
 metrical rules, they nevertheless unconsciously apply these rules; 
 their compositions could not be called poetry if a definite plan of 
 syllables did not produce rhythm. In the same way, people 
 gifted with musical talent do not need to have learnt the laws of 
 harmony, in order to apply them in musical improvising. But 
 
 * It is impossible to demonstrate what is new in Frobel's system except in 
 connection with what is already known, for what is special in any idea can only 
 be seen in relation to what is general in it. We must first, therefore, clearly 
 establish the general side of this educational theory, that in which Frobel's 
 ideas, too, are rooted, in order that we may be at one with our readers concern- 
 ing the premises. 
 
 The public has, hitherto, chiefly concerned itself with the outward aspect of 
 the Kindergarten system, both as regards theory and practice, has illustrated 
 the substance of the method, while the kernel, the reas-on of it, has chiefly 
 remained in the back-ground and has not been universally accessible. So long as 
 this is the case the interest of the thinking public, and especially of thobe who 
 are strangers to the science of education, will be little awakened in the system 
 and the danger of its bting reduced to a mechanical process will continually 
 increase. Not till the principles on which the systtm is grounded are fully 
 understood will this danger be removed and the system universally taken up.
 
 72 A New Method of Education. 
 
 without that unconscious application, only discordance would 
 be the result, and never a complete tune. 
 
 This unconscious and intuitive application of every kind of 
 laws proves that the foundation of all systems lies in human 
 nature itself is an innate faculty. If this were not the case no 
 amount of experience would enable man to comprehend the laws 
 outside himself, either in nature or in human work. 
 
 The imparting of knowledge, according to some such a plan of 
 laws, is called methodical instruction. Nothing can be called 
 real instruction which does not proceed according to a method, 
 and no one will have a word to say against instruction being 
 methodical. Every one knows that a language cannot be 
 thoroughly learnt without a grammar, which sets before the 
 pupil the rules or laws of the language. 
 
 Instruction, or teaching, as such, has to do with the powers of 
 apprehension, the understanding of the pupil, and, in addition 
 to the imparting of positive knowledge, aims at exercising and 
 developing the power of thought. The laws of instructional 
 methods must therefore correspond to the laws of human 
 thought, or the subject taught could never be grasped by the 
 pupil. 
 
 The next question, therefore, is, in what do these laws of 
 human thought consist ? 
 
 Let us be permitted to give here a few rapid indications which 
 are necessary to the clear exposition of our subject. A psycho- 
 logical treatment of it would be out of place. These indications, 
 moreover, will not be given in accordance with the numerous 
 definitions of philosophical authorities, but only in the sense in 
 which inward and outward observation brings them to the 
 notice of every sound human intellect, and in which they lie at 
 the bottom of Frpbel's views. 
 
 "What, then, is the process of the human mind in reflection ? 
 The systematic process, as it is the same for all minds. 
 
 Every thought must relate to something that we know, 
 and first of all to visible objects ; we must have an object 
 of thought. This object of thought must not only be taken 
 in by the senses as a whole, so that a general idea of it is 
 gained, as of a foreign plant that has been seen superficially
 
 Frobel's Met/tod, and what is New in It. 73 
 
 in a picture, without the details of leaves, blossoms, 
 stamens, &c. It must be observed and studied in all its parts 
 and details. If we want to acquire a thorough knowledge of a 
 foreign plant we must compare all its properties with those of 
 plants known to us. When the properties or qualities of 
 different objects are all exactly the same we cannot compare 
 them ; if there is to be comparison, there must be a certain 
 amount of difference but difference, side-by-side with similarity. 
 The qualities which are similar will be the universal ones, which 
 everything possesses, as form, size, colour, material, &c., for 
 there is nothing that does not possess these qualities. The 
 different, or contrasting qualities, will consist in variations of 
 the universal ones of form, size, &c., as, for instance, round and 
 square, great and little, hard and soft, &c. Such differences in 
 properties that have a general resemblance are called opposites. 
 
 All such opposites, however, are at the same time connected 
 and bound together. The greatest size that we can imagine to 
 ourselves is connected with the smallest by all the different 
 sizes that lie between ; the darkest colour with the lightest by 
 all the intermediate shades ; from an angular shape one can 
 gradually go over to a round one through a series of modifica- 
 tions of form ; and from hard to soft through all the different 
 gradations. Not that one and the same object can ever be both 
 hard or soft, dark or light, great or little, but the collective 
 qualities of all existing objects go over from their superlative 
 on the one side to their superlative on the other, hardest to 
 softest, darkest to lightest, and so on. 
 
 The gradations of great and little, hard and soft, fcc., which 
 lie between the opposites, are the connecting links, or, as Frobel 
 puts it, " the means of reconciliation of opposites" (and Frobel's 
 system cannot be rightly understood unless this principle, which 
 forms the basis of it, be acknowledged). This " reconciliation " 
 is effected through affinity of qualities. Black and white are 
 not alike," but opposite ; the darkest red, however, is in affinity 
 with black, as the lightest red is with white, and all the different 
 gradations of red connect together the opposites, black and 
 white. 
 
 Now any one who has compared an unknown plant with
 
 74 A New Method of Education. 
 
 known ones, in all the details of its different parts leaf, flower, 
 fruit, &c., is in a position to pass judgment on it, and to 
 draw a conclusion as to whether it belongs to this or that known 
 genus of plants, and what is its species. Thus the natural 
 process of thought is as follows : perception, observation, com- 
 parison, judgment and conclusion. 
 
 Without this series of preliminary steps no thought can be 
 worked out, and the ruling principle is the law of the recon- 
 ciliation of opposites, or the finding out the like and unlike 
 qualities of things. 
 
 It matters not how far the thinker be conscious or un- 
 conscious of the process going on in his mind. The child is 
 entirely unconscious of it, and therefore takes longer to reach 
 from one stage to another. At first it receives only general im- 
 pressions ; then perception comes in ; gradually ideas begin to 
 shape themselves in its mind, and it then learns to compare 
 and distinguish ; but judging and concluding do not begin till 
 the third or fourth year, and then only vaguely and dimly. 
 Nevertheless, the same systematic process is at work as in the 
 conscious thought of the adult. 
 
 Any system of instruction which is to be effectual must 
 therefore take into account this law of thought (or logic) ; it 
 must apply the fundamental principle of connecting the known 
 with the unknown by means of comparison. This principle is, 
 however, everlastingly sinned against, and people talk to children 
 about things and communicate to them opinions and thoughts 
 concerning them, of which children have no conception and 
 can form none. And this is done even after Pestalozzi by his 
 "method of observation and its practical application" has placed 
 instruction on a true basis. 
 
 Of the manner in which Probel has built up on this foun- 
 dation we shall speak later. We have here to deal first with 
 education, to show how far it differs from instruction, and, 
 whether a systematic or methodical process is applicable to it. 
 as Frobel considers it to be. 
 
 When Pestalozzi was endeavouring to construct his " Funda- 
 mental Method of Instruction" (" Urform des Lehrens ") ac- 
 cording to some definite principle, he recognized the truth that
 
 Frobel's Method, and what is New in It. 75; 
 
 the problem of education cannot be fully solved by any merely 
 instructional system however much in accordance with the laws 
 of nature. He saw that the moral forces of the human soul, 
 feeling and will, require to be dealt with in a manner analogous 
 to the cultivation of the intellectual faculties, that any merely 
 instructional method is inadequate to the task, and that a. 
 training-school of another sort is needed for the moral side of 
 cultivation one in which the power of moral action may be 
 acquired. While searching for some such " psychological 
 basis" to his method he exclaimed, " I am still as the voice of 
 one crying in the wilderness." 
 
 As a means to this end he requires an A B C of the science- 
 and a system of moral exercises, and he says : " The culture of 
 the moral faculties rests on the same organic laws which are- 
 the foundation of our intellectual culture. 
 
 Fichte (in his "Discourses") insists on an "A B C of per- 
 ception," which is to precede Pestalozzi's ; 'AB C of observation," 
 and speaks as follows : " The new method of education must be 
 able to shape and determine its pupil's course of life according 
 to fixed and infallible rules." 
 
 " There must be a definite system of rules by which always,, 
 without exception, a firm will may be produced." 
 
 The development of children into men and women must be- 
 brought under the laws of a well-considered system, which 
 shall never fail to accomplish its end, viz., the cultivation in. 
 them of a firm and invariably right will. 
 
 This moral activity, which has to be developed in the pupil,, 
 is without doubt based on laws, which laws the agent finds 
 out for himself by direct personal experience, and the same- 
 holds good of the voluntary developmenb carried on later, 
 which cannot be fruitful of good results unless based on the- 
 fundamental laws of nature. 
 
 Thus Pestalozzi and Fichte like all thinkers on the question, 
 of education searched for the laws of human nature, in 
 order to apply these laws in the cultivation of human nature. 
 
 Frobel strove to refer back all these manifold laws to one- 
 fundamental law which he called the " reconciliation of oppo- 
 sites" (of relative opposites).
 
 76 A New Method of Education. 
 
 In order to arrive at a clear and comprehensive conception, 
 where there is plurality and variety, we seek a point of unity, 
 in which all the different parts or laws may centre, and to which 
 they may be referred. For the undeveloped mind of the 
 child this is an absolute necessity. The method, which is to be 
 the rule of his activity, must be as simple and as single as 
 possible. This necessity will be made plain when we proceed 
 later on to the application of Frobel's theory in practice. 
 
 Frobel's observations of the human soul are in accord with 
 the general results of modern psychology, in spite of small de- 
 viations which cannot be considered important. Science has 
 not by a long way arrived at final conclusions on this subject, 
 and must, therefore, give its due weight to every reasonable 
 assumption ; it would be most unprofitable to drag Frobel's 
 system into the judgement hall of scientific schools, in order to 
 decide how far it agreed with these schools or not. Its impor- 
 tance lies for the moment chiefly in its practical side. In order 
 to preserve this part of it from becoming mechanical, and to 
 maintain its vitality, its connection with the theoretical side 
 must be understood and expounded more and more thoroughly. 
 With the advance of science Frobel's philosophy of the uni- 
 verse must in course of time have its proper place assigned 
 to it, and his educational system, which is grounded on his 
 philosophy, Avill be brought into the necessary connection with 
 other scientific discoveries. 
 
 The great endeavour of modern educationalists, is to replace 
 the artificiality and restraint in which the purely conven- 
 tional educational systems of earlier times have resulted by 
 something more corresponding to human nature. To this end 
 it was necessary to go back to the ground motives of all 
 education whatsoever : the laws of development of the human 
 being. It was necessary at the same time to determine the 
 reason of educational measures in order to elevate them into 
 conscious, purposeful action. Former conventional systems of 
 education worked only unconsciously, according to established 
 custom, without any deep knowledge of human nature or 
 fundamental relation to it. 
 
 The science of humanity was then in its infancy, and, although
 
 Frobel's Method, and wJiat is New in It. 77 
 
 it has since made great progress,' the knowledge of child nature- 
 is still very meagre. 
 
 The services rendered by Rousseau, as the first pioneer of 
 modern educational theories, and the many errors and eccen- 
 tricities mixed up with his great truths, must here be assumed 
 to be known. 
 
 Pestalozzi, who carried on the work in the same track, fixed 
 the elements of his " Urform des Lehrens " in form, number, 
 and words, as the fundamental conditions of human mental 
 activity, and which can only be acqitired and gained by 
 observation. 
 
 For instance, every visible and every thinkable thing has a 
 form which makes it what it is. There are things of like and 
 things of different form, and there is a plurality of things 
 which stands in opposition to every single thing. Through 
 the division of things arises number, and the proportions and 
 relations of things to one another. In order to express these 
 different proportions of form and number, we have need of ivords. 
 
 Thus in these three elements we have the most primitive 
 facts on which thought is based. In every form, every number,, 
 and every word there exist two connected or united opposites. 
 In every form, for instance, we find the two opposites, beginning 
 and end, right and left, upper and under, inner and outer, and 
 so forth. 
 
 With regard to number, unity and plurality, as well as odd 
 and even numbers, constitute opposites. Then form and 
 number are in themselves opposites, for form has to do with 
 the whole, number with the separate parts. But the word by 
 which they are described reconciles these opposites by compre- 
 hending them both in one expression. 
 
 Pestalozzi has begun the work of basing instruction system- 
 atically on the most primitive facts and workings of the 
 human mind. To carry on this work, and also to find the 
 equally necessary basis for moral and practical culture, with 
 which must be combined exercises for the intellectual powers 
 before the period allotted to instruction, is the task that remains 
 to be accomplished. Pestalozzi's plan and practical methods 
 are not altogether sufficient for the first years of life.
 
 78 A New Method of Education. 
 
 It is a false use of language which separates education from 
 instruction. The word education, in its full meaning of human 
 culture, as a whole, includes instruction as apart, and comprises 
 in itself mental, moral, and physical development ; but in its 
 ^narrower use it signifies, more especially, moral culture. 
 
 One of the reasons why instruction has been so much more 
 considered and systematized than the moral side of education 
 is, undoubtedly, that the former is in the hands of educational 
 and school authorities who possess the mental training and 
 capacity necessary for their vocation. No one is allowed to be a 
 professional teacher who has not proved himself to possess a 
 certain degree of proficiency for the task. Moral education, on 
 the other hand, falls to the supervision of the family, as the 
 first and natural guardians of its children, and here neither the 
 father nor the mother, nor any of the other sharers in the work, 
 are really fitted for it ; not one of them has received a special 
 preparation, and it depends entirely upon the higher or lower 
 degree of general culture of the parents, and their natural 
 capacity or non-capacity for their educational calling, how far 
 the moral culture of the children will extend. 
 
 But over and above the preparatory training of parents and 
 other natural guardians which was already insisted on and 
 striven after by Pestalozzi moral education will only then be 
 placed on a par with intellectual instruction when a real founda- 
 tion has been given to it by the application of a fixed system of 
 rules, such a foundation as the laws of thought afford for instruc- 
 tion. 
 
 The human soul is one, all its powers and functions have a 
 like aim, and, therefore, feeling and willing as factors of moral 
 life cannot be developed in any other way than thought. The 
 parts which make up the whole of education must be subject to 
 the same laws as the whole, and conversely the whole must be 
 developed in like manner as the parts. 
 
 The moral world is concerned with two aspects of things the 
 good and the beautiful while the understanding has the dis- 
 covery of truth for its object. 
 
 Both the good and the beautiful have their roots in the heart 
 or the feelings, and belong thus to the inner part of man to
 
 Frdbel's MetJiod, and what is New in It. 79 
 
 his spiritual world. The power and habit of feeling rightly and 
 beautifully constitute moral inclination, which influences the 
 will, but does not yet necessarily lead it to action. 
 
 In its connection with the outer world morality appears in 
 the form of action. Through action, or the carrying out of the 
 good that is willed, the character is formed. The practice of the 
 beautiful, on the other hand, leads to art and artistic creation. 
 
 Thus education, in its essentially moral aspect, has to do with, 
 the cultivation of the feelings and the will. It need hardly be 
 said that the element of instruction cannot be altogether dis- 
 pensed with, even in this department, any more than the culti- 
 vation of the intellect can be carried on without a certain 
 amount of moral development. In earliest childhood the three 
 different natures of the human being are fused in one and must 
 be dealt with accordingly. 
 
 The good and the beautiful, like all other qualities, are known 
 through their opposites. Only by contrast with the not good, 
 or bad, the not beautiful, or ugly, are the good and the beautiful 
 apprehended by our consciousness. 
 
 As mental conceptions, the good and the bad, the beautiful and 
 the ugly, the true and the untrue, are irreconcilable (absolute) 
 opposites. Pure thought, however, has to deal with the absolute. 
 In all the manifestations of the actual world everything that 
 exists is only relatively good and bad, ugly and beautiful, true and 
 untrue ; all opposites exist here only relatively. No human 
 being is perfectly good or perfectly bad, just as nobody is com- 
 pletely developed or completely undeveloped. So, too, no work 
 of art is in an absolute sense perfectly beautiful, or perfectly 
 ugly whether as a whole or in its parts. 
 
 As, therefore, in all and everything belonging to the human 
 world opposites are found existing together, so, also, do they 
 pass over into one another and are " reconciled." Thus every- 
 thing is connected together, and constitutes an immense chain of 
 different members. 
 
 We do not mean to say that already in the actual world all 
 opposites are reconciled, all discords solved, and the great world- 
 harmony complete ; but it is going on to completion. This is 
 the aim and end of all movement, all life, all endeavour, and an
 
 8o A New Method of Education. 
 
 end which is only fully attainable to human beings by the 
 cessation of all self-seeking (as in Christ), the absorption of all 
 individuals into humanity ; and this by means of the highest 
 individual development and self-existence ; not by transforming 
 the individual into the universal. 
 
 In the most fundamental bases of good and evil we find again 
 two new opposites. 
 
 In whatever form evil manifests itself, it is always at bottom 
 self-seeking of some sort ; or else it is error or madness. Am- 
 bition, pride, avarice, envy, dishonesty, murder, hatred, &c., may 
 always be traced back to self-seeking, even though it be disguised 
 in the form of extravagant affection for others, or for one other. 
 So, too, what we call diabolical is, in reality, self-seeking. 
 
 And whatever shape good may take it must be essentially 
 the expression of love to others. A solitary individual in no 
 way connected with fellow-creatures would have as little op- 
 portunity for good as for evil. 
 
 All the impulses and passions of a human being have for 
 their object the procurance of personal happiness and well-being 
 and the avoidance of personal annoyance. And as long as the 
 happiness and well-being of others is not disturbed, nor the indi- 
 vidual himself injured, there is nothing to be said. The conflict 
 between good and evil begins when the happiness of an in- 
 dividual is procured at the cost of others or of the community. 
 
 True goodness consists, with rare exceptions, in preferring the 
 welfare of the many or of the whole of human society, to per- 
 sonal, egotistical advantage ; in striving after an ideal which, 
 without self-sacrificing love, would be unthinkable. Love to- 
 wards God, moreover, compels love towards mankind. 
 
 The moral battle-field is always between the two extremities 
 of personal and universal interest, and the reconciliation of the 
 two is the result aimed at. There also where the battle goes on 
 in the inner world of the human soul it is a question of personal 
 against general interest, or of the opposition between the sen- 
 sual and the spiritual natures of the individual. The object of 
 man's earthly existence is to reconcile the rights of personality, 
 self-preservation and independence with the duties of neces- 
 sary devotion and self-sacrifice to society. The personal
 
 Frobel's Method, and what is New in It, 81 
 
 services rendered to the whole, in any circle of life, determine 
 the -worth of the individual to society, and moral greatness con- 
 sists in the love -which, going out beyond the personal, seeks to 
 embrace the whole of God's world and therewith God him- 
 self. For God has herein placed the destiny of man, viz., to 
 expand from the circle of individual existence, through all in- 
 termediate circles, to the great circle of humanity. 
 
 In the world of the beautiful we meet with the same law, viz., 
 " the reconciliation of opposites." 
 
 What do we mean by the beautiful ? That which is harmonious 
 or rhythmical. Harmony is the co-operation of all the parts of 
 a whole towards the object of the whole. If the innermost 
 nature of beauty baffles our attempts at full definition, har- 
 mony is, nevertheless, its fundamental condition. 
 
 But a necessary condition of harmony is the balance of parts 
 tending in opposite directions. 
 
 Beauty of form (plastic art) depends on the opposites, height 
 and breadth, for instance, being rightly proportioned or 
 balanced ; on the contrasting horizontal and perpendicular lines 
 being kept in balance by their connecting lines. In the circle 
 we have the perfect balance of all opposite parts, and the circular 
 line is, therefore, the line of beauty. In architecture the tri- 
 angle is the fundamental shape that is to say, two lines start- 
 ing from one point and running in opposite directions are 
 connected together by a third line. And so forth. 
 
 Beauty in the world of colour is the harmonious blending 
 together of the opposites, light and shade, by means of the 
 scale of colour this at least is the primary condition. The 
 mixing of colours, too, consists in the right fusion of the ele- 
 mentary colours red, blue, yellow, which in themselves form 
 opposites. 
 
 In the world of sound beauty is in like mariner conditioned 
 by the harmony of single tones amongst each other. The basis 
 of musical harmony is the simple chord, i.e., the opposites, 
 which the keynote and the fifth constitute, are reconciled by 
 the third. 
 
 In poetry rhythm is obtained by the regular connection of 
 Jong and short syllables. And so forth.
 
 A New Method of Education. 
 
 The ugly, the imperfect, in all arts, is on the other hand the 
 inharmonious or the result of want of proportion and corres- 
 pondence in opposites or the absence of transitions to con- 
 nect them together. 
 
 And we come again across these same laws, which we have 
 summed up as the basis of thought, in the moral world also : 
 as well in that side of it which is known as " the good " (ethics), 
 as in that which is called " the beautiful" (aesthetics). 
 
 Whether this universal principle (Welt gesetz ivorld law, 
 as Frobel calls it) be formulated as " the reconciliation of op- 
 posites " or in any other way, is here, as has been already said, 
 of little importance. The most comprehensive formula would 
 perhaps be law of balance. 
 
 Science expresses itself very differently in this matter. New- 
 ton calls the law in question the " law of gravitation " (the con- 
 nection of attraction and repulsion). Naturalists designate it 
 as the law of " universal exchange of matter " (giving out and 
 taking in, connected by assimilation), &c. 
 
 This law, in which Frobel sees the foundation of all develop- 
 ment, and, therefore, also of human development it is his desire 
 to establish and apply as the " universal law of education." 
 
 It is with the application of the law, which will be demon- 
 strated in the practices of his Kindergarten method, that we 
 are chiefly concerned here, but in order to a clear understanding 
 of this the foregoing introduction was indispensable. 
 
 Not till one all-pervading principle of development, which 
 shall comprise in itself every variety of law, has been dis- 
 covered and applied to practical education in its minutest de- 
 tail will there be anything approaching to a veritable and com- 
 plete method. 
 
 It remains, therefore, n*ow to prove that this principle of Fro- 
 bel's is identical in the spiritual and material world, and, if this 
 be established, the connection or unity of all law will follow of 
 itself. 
 
 Frobel has over and over again told us how deeply his whole 
 development was influenced by the fact that from his earliest 
 childhood he was out of harmony with his immediate surround, 
 ings. The early death of his mother, the unloving treatment
 
 Fro bel' s Method, and what is New in It. 83 
 
 of his step-mother, and the small amount of attention and 
 sympathy bestowed on him by his father, partly owing to the 
 professional duties of the latter, which left him little time, and 
 partly to an uncommunicative and somewhat stern nature, 
 deprived the child of fostering love in the morning of his life, 
 and initiated him early into the sorrows of existence. 
 
 The yearning of his soul for love, the thirst of his mind for 
 knowledge, were never really satisfied, and he was for ever find- 
 ing himself driven back anew on the inmost depths of his 
 nature, left to stand by himself alone. Up to the years of early 
 manhood the gulf between his outer surroundings and his 
 inner world became greater and greater, and his young spirit 
 suffered deeply in consequence. 
 
 The pain that he experienced incited him to search out the 
 ^ause of it, and this he found in the sharp contrast that existed 
 between his inner and his outer world. 
 
 This discovery of " opposites," this want of the concord 
 and harmony that his whole soul was unconsciously yearning 
 after, .forms the first great and lasting impression of his 
 life. 
 
 The feelings which met with no response in the world of 
 humanity, all the warmth and ardour of his soul, now turned to 
 the world of nature. In the contemplation of this world, in 
 devotion to its invisible spirit, in which he soon learnt to 
 recognize the Divine Spirit, he found the consolation, and also 
 in part the instruction which had been denied him by his human 
 surroundings. 
 
 Already as a boy he would lose himself in profound medita- 
 tion on the laws of the universe, on the cause of organic life in 
 nature. 
 
 " From star-shaped blossoms," he says, " I first learnt to 
 understand the law of all formation, and it is no other than the 
 * reconciliation of opposites.' " 
 
 For instance : Each of the petals which form the corolla 
 round the calyx of the flower has another petal opposite it, and 
 between these opposite petals there are others which connect 
 them together. 
 
 "A humble little flower taught me dimly to suspect the
 
 84 A New Method of Education. 
 
 S3crets of existence, the mysterious laws of development, which 
 I afterwards learnt clearly," so writes Frobel. 
 
 Continuing his observations, he perceived that every single 
 petal is in itself a whole leaf, or a whole, but at the same time 
 only a part of the whole of the floral star. Thus a whole and a part 
 at the same time, or a glied games, as Frobel expresses it. Then 
 again, the flower is a whole in itself, but also only a part of the 
 whole plant. The plant is a whole, and at the same time a part 
 of the plant family to which it belongs, and this again is a part 
 of the genus. 
 
 In such manner did the child Frobel perceive the membership 
 in all natural objects, and he remarked at the same time how 
 one part is always sub-related or super-related or co-related to 
 another ; the flower is super-related to the root, the root is 
 sub-related to the flower, the petals are co-related to each other. 
 
 These divisions into members, which are found in all organic 
 and systematic formations, are now taught to children at school 
 by means of books ; it is a question, however, whether in this 
 way they can grasp them as easily and understand them as 
 clearly as did the child Frobel, through his own observation. 
 The first apprehension of things comes long before school 
 instruction, and what is taught with words must be based on 
 that which has been taken in through the senses. If this 
 first apprehension through observation is wanting, the founda- 
 tion for the understanding of what is taught will also be 
 wanting. 
 
 In the progressive course of his childish observations, Frobel 
 further remarked that it is not only in individual organisms 
 that the differents parts, by means of connecting transitions (or 
 the reconciliation of opposites) make up the harmony of the 
 whole, but that also between all and the most different organ- 
 isms there are everywhere to be found like points of transition, 
 which connect together the most opposite things by a series of 
 intermediate points growing more and more similar. Thus 
 through a countless series of intermediate plants he saw grasses 
 connected with trees. 
 
 The connection in the vegetable kingdom became apparent 
 to him through the fact that all plants, how great soever their
 
 Ftdbel's Method, and what is New in It. 85 
 
 differences, have something in common; all have roots, stems, 
 leaves, crowns, stamens, &c., the characteristics of the vegetable 
 world. Thus unity in spite of infinite variety. 
 
 But it was not in the vegetable world alone that organic life 
 manifested itself to him as the result of systematic working, of 
 division into parts, of a series of events, of sub and super ordi- 
 nation, of connection through transitions, of variety in simi- 
 larity, in short, of harmony and concord accomplished through 
 the reconciliation of opposites ; he saw the self-same truth per- 
 vading other kingdoms of nature. In the organism of animal 
 bodies, indeed, in the whole animal kingdom, he found his law 
 at work again. 
 
 As the sap of plants ascends and descends from the root to 
 the crown, and conversely, arid through this movement connects 
 together the opposite forces, expansion and contraction through 
 which the leaf-buds are formed in the stem, so is the circulation 
 of blood in the animal body. The blood streams out from the 
 heart, and back to it again by opposite movements ; the lungs 
 expand and contract together in the process of breathing, &c. 
 As the corresponding petals of a flower stand opposite one 
 another, so do the limbs of animal bodies ; the corresponding 
 feet, hands, ears, or eyes, are placed opposite to one another. 
 Frobel calls this entgegengesetztijleiche (like tt.ings set opposite 
 to each other), and he finds analogous occurrences in the spiritual 
 world. 
 
 And further, he perceived that not only throughout each of 
 the three kingdoms of nature the inorganic mineral kingdom 
 not excepted there exist common characteristics by w r hich the 
 members of the separate kingdoms are united, but that these 
 three kingdoms, taken as wholes, have points of similarity 
 through which they pass over into one another, and are con- 
 nected together. He saw that the vegetable world is fed by 
 the mineral world, which is contained both in the bosom of the 
 earth and in the atmosphere ; that the vegetable and mineral 
 worlds together feed the animal world, which also feeds upon 
 itself ; and that man, by the food he eats, by the air he breathes 
 in, &c., lives on all the three kingdoms of nature, and is thus 
 united and connected with them.
 
 86 A New Method of Education. 
 
 Here, too, in the chemical process of fusion, which is known 
 as " interchange of matter," he found his favourite law again. 
 For this process of interchange goes on as follows : Every 
 organism takes or sucks in nourishment, air, &c., and then gives 
 out again part of what it has taken in. Here, therefore, we 
 have the opposites, taking in and giving out. The reconciliation 
 of these opposites is accomplished by appropriation or assimi- 
 lation, for every organic body converts a portion of what it has 
 taken in in the shape of food, air, &c., into flesh and blood ; 
 and thus there is a constant mutual exchange of substance 
 going on between all organisms. And this process of exchange, 
 by which everything that exists is connected together organically 
 and materially, is not thinkable without the adjusting of oppo- 
 sites, or, as Frobel calls it, " the reconciliation of opposites." 
 
 But this was not all. Besides the continuous connection, the 
 unity which he discovered to exist in everything on earth, from 
 the lowest to the highest, from the nearest object to the most 
 distant, the same truth was borne in upon him concerning the 
 solar system. There was not the tiniest herb on earth that 
 did not drink in and feed on the sunlight. Without the con- 
 tinuous action of the sun's rays on all that exists on earth, all 
 life must perish ; the earth would be a dead body without the 
 light and warmth of the sun. And as everything on our earth 
 is kept alive by the action of the sun, so is it with all the 
 heavenly bodies on which the sun shines, every single planet of 
 our solar system. 
 
 And further still, our solar system itself is not isolated, alone 
 and unconnected with the other solar systems of the universe. 
 Arguing from the known (or that which was nearest to him) 
 to the unknown (or that which was furthest), from the visible 
 to the invisible, Frobel concluded that the law of membership, 
 which he had found to exist in the least as well as the greatest 
 organisms, and in all organisms on the earth, must in a like or 
 analogous manner pervade the whole universe. 
 
 The works of a Creator must be in connection one with 
 another, and all, without exception, bear the stamp of their 
 Creator. Not necessarily in exactly the same degree, but in 
 gradations from lowest to highest, and not in outward appear-
 
 Frobel's Method, and what is New in It. 87 
 
 ance either, but by one and the same system of law, according 
 to which each and all are developed, must this stamp of God 
 show itself. 
 
 " There is but one fundamental law of the universe out of 
 which all other laws in the world of outward phenomena 
 spring." Thus did A. von Humboldt also express the truth 
 which is the fundamental thought on which Frobel's method of 
 observation rests.* 
 
 Frobel has certainly about as good a right to argue from the 
 visible and known things of earth to the invisible unknown 
 things of the universe, as has the naturalist from a given ver- 
 tebrae to undertake to construct the whole organism of an 
 animal. 
 
 In a letter to his elder brother,t written in his twenty-fifth 
 year, Frobel sketches out a plan for his future life. A passage 
 in this letter, alluding to his childhood and early youth, plainly 
 shows how from his childhood up he busied himself with the 
 attempt to reconcile the workings of nature with his own inner 
 world, and to find the points of unity between the two. To 
 understand the connection of all phenomena of the outward 
 world, and the way in which these harmonized with the spiritual 
 world, was his constant endeavour. 
 
 Speaking of things in Nature, he says : " I felt that some- 
 thing simple informed them all, that they all had their origin 
 from something which was one, the same, identical ; that they 
 must all unite together in some one point ; for they all existed 
 collectively in Nature ! My own inner world was inspired by 
 one thought, one idea the suspicion of something higher in 
 man than humanity, of a higher end than this life. By means 
 of this continual searching and finding in the depths of my 
 inner being, this constant going down into self, I soon discovered 
 that a better knowledge of myself helped me better to under- 
 stand the outer world. I was driven to explore my little inner 
 world, that through it I might learn to know the great outer 
 world surrounding me. I learnt from the teacher experience, 
 
 * Frobel searched after and discovered the " unity of a'l development," a 
 theory which is universally occup\ing modern scientific enquiry. 
 f In vol. I. of " Frobel's Schriften," edited by W. Lang".
 
 88 A New Method of Education. 
 
 without suspecting, withcmt even knowing clearly, what I was 
 learning. In this way I arrived at an ideal knowledge of my- 
 self, of the world, and of humanity, such as few men possess 
 in youth. For every fresh discovery that I made in the out- 
 ward world I felt always compelled to find a corresponding point 
 in myself, to which I could fasten it," &c. 
 
 Frobel was then seeking for what he later designated by the 
 expression Lebenseinigung (unity of life). 
 
 In the life of the human soul he saw a repetition of the con- 
 tinual adjustment of opposites, which went on in the life of 
 nature. As the opposites of day and night were connected by 
 twilight, of summer and winter by spring and autumn, so in 
 the human soul do the day and night of conscious and uncon- 
 scious life, the light and darkness of good and evil, alternate 
 with one another. So, too, activity and rest, happiness and 
 sorrow, &c. 
 
 As the buds which burst open in the spring have developed 
 out of the invisible germ hidden under the hard crust of winter, 
 so do the opposites, life and death, alternate. And these are 
 only seemingly irreconcilable opposites. All earthly life con- 
 tains within itself the germ of death (of future change), all 
 death carries new life within it. 
 
 " How can any one," Frobel exclaims, " believe in real death, 
 in annihilation ? Nothing dies ; everything only becomes 
 changed in order to pass into a new and higher life. This is 
 true of every little herb, for its essential inherent qualities 
 are indestructible. Everything retains in each of its parts 
 the individual character assigned to it, i.e., its essence, to all 
 eternity. How, then, should the most marked characteristic 
 of a human being, the consciousness of his own individual per- 
 sonality, be lost, even though he should pass through millions of 
 new existences ? What you people call death is nowhere to be 
 found in creation, but only expansion, life ascending higher and 
 higher, always nearer to God. If you only knew how to read the 
 book of nature rightly you would find everywhere in it the con- 
 firmation of the revelation of the soul's immortality. Through- 
 out the whole of nature there is nothing but continually re- 
 peated resurrection ! . . . . The universal and the individual
 
 FrobeVs Method, and what is New in It. 89 
 
 are opposites, which presuppose one another. Without indi- 
 vidual human beings there would be no humanity, and without 
 humanity there would be no individuals. The race only con- 
 tinues because the personal units continue. Humanity com- 
 prises not only mankind of to-day, but mankind of the past 
 and of the future; all the human beings that have ever existed 
 on earth make up humanity, and humanity presupposes con- 
 scious existence, both general and personal." 
 
 The above quotations from Frobel's own words will be suffi- 
 cient proof that his theory of the unity of life (Lebenseinigung*) 
 did not, as has been asserted, rest on a pantheistic conception 
 of the universe. The immense unbroken whole of the universe 
 comprises, according to him, God, nature, and man, as an in- 
 separably connected whole, though not as finished and at rest, 
 but on the contrary, in a state of eternal " becoming " of 
 having become and being about to become, at the same time. 
 He had always in view the progressive development of all 
 things that is to say, the continual movement of forces ; he 
 saw nowhere repose or at any rate only passing repose 
 never lasting completion, for every apparently finished form 
 of development was always succeeded by a new one. 
 
 In his " Menschen-Erziehung " (Human Education) [see In- 
 troduction], he says, for instance : " The theory which regards 
 development as capable of standing still and being finished, or 
 only repeating itself in greater universality, is, beyond all expres- 
 sion, a degrading one, &c Neither man nor mankind 
 
 should be regarded as an already finished, perfected, stereotyped 
 being ; but as everlastingly growing, developing, living ; moving 
 
 onwards to the goal which is hidden in eternity Man, 
 
 although in the closest connection with God and nature, stands, 
 nevertheless, as a person in the relation of an opposite to nature 
 (or plurality) and to God (or unity). (Nature and God are 
 opposites in their character of plurality and unity.) Man (as 
 humanity) is the representative of the law of reconciliation, for 
 he stands in the universe as the connecting link between God 
 and creation." (For unconscious existence and absolute 
 conscious existence are connected by personal, or limited con- 
 scious existence.)
 
 90 A New Method of Education. 
 
 " As the branch is a member of the tree, and at the same time 
 a whole, so is the individual man a member of humanity, and 
 therefore a member of a whole. But each one is a member in 
 an entirely special, individual, personal manner; the destiny 
 of humanity that is 'to be a child of God ' manifests itself 
 differently in each individual. 
 
 " One and the same law rules throughout everything, but 
 expresses itself outwardly (in the physical world), and inwardly 
 (in the spiritual world), in endless different forms." 
 
 " At the bottom of this all-pervading law there must, of 
 necessity, lie an all-working unity, conscious of its existence, and 
 therefore existing eternally." 
 
 " This unity is God." 
 
 " God manifests himself as life in nature, in the universe ; 
 as love in humanity ; and as light (wisdom). He makes himself 
 
 known to the soul As life, love, and light does the nature 
 
 of man also manifest itself." 
 
 " As the child of nature, man is an imprisoned, fettered being, 
 without self-mastery, under the dominion of his passions. As 
 the child of God he becomes a free agent, destined to self-mas- 
 tery, of his own free will a hearing, conforming spiritual being. 
 As the child of humanity, he is a being struggling out of his 
 fettered condition into freedom, out of isolation into union, 
 yearning for love and existing to find it. 
 
 " The unity in the nature of all things is the in-dwelling spirit 
 of their Creator, ' the mind of God,' which expresses itself 
 as law." .... The destiny of man as a child of God and of 
 nature is to represent the being of God and of nature : as the 
 destiny of a child, as the member of a family, is to represent the 
 nature of the family, its mental and spiritual capabilities, so 
 the vocation of man, as a member of humanity, is to represent 
 and to cultivate the nature, the powers, and faculties of 
 humanity. 
 
 Frobel defines life, in whatever form it may express itself, as 
 progressive development from lower to higher grades, from 
 unconscious existence to a conscious existence, which ascends 
 higher and higher till it reaches the consciousness of God. 
 
 But all development is movement. It ascends from beneath
 
 Frobel's Method, and what is New in It. 91 
 
 to above, from lesser to greater, from the germ to its completion. 
 It is also, at the same time, a constant means of reconciliation 
 of opposites, and itself a product of that universal law, whidh 
 we have just acknowledged as the law of human thought, 
 the law of moral life, and the law of the physical or organic 
 world. 
 
 Movement, whether free or compulsory movement, which has 
 an object, is activity. 
 
 From which it follows that the law of the reconciliation of 
 opposites is also the law of all activity, of all human action, and 
 all human development which is based on activity and is the- 
 result of it. 
 
 And how could it be otherwise ? 
 
 Human beings belong, on their physical side also, to nature ^ 
 the whole process of their physical life is an interchange with 
 the products of nature ; therefore man, as a physical being, is 
 subject to the laws of nature. But the soul is inseparable from 
 the body, and can only express itself and act through the bodily 
 organs. It follows, therefore, that the soul cannot be subject to 
 conditions opposed to the bodily ones, but must obey laws 
 analogous to those which govern the other organisms of the 
 universe, though of a higher order than the laws of unconscious 
 life. 
 
 Every utterance or manifestation of the human spirit necessi- 
 tates action of the senses ; and we know that such action is based 
 on law, and, moreover, on the same law which governs all action 
 in the universe : the reconciliation, connection, or adjustment of 
 opposites. 
 
 If, then, the full development of human nature rests on this 
 universal law of activity there can be no other rule for the 
 guidance of this development in childhood and youth, or, in one 
 word, for education. Nature follows this law in her dealings with 
 children, and if education is to be in accordance with nature it 
 must do the same ; and then only, when this fundamental prin- 
 ciple is recognized and followed, and applied in the development 
 of human nature, with full understanding of its aim and object,, 
 will education be raised to the level of art or science. 
 
 Frobel is the first person who has hitherto fully recognized
 
 92 A New Metliod of Education. 
 
 this principle and rendered its application possible, and his 
 educational method is nothing more or less than constant 
 obedience to it at every stage of the pupil's development. 
 Which means to say that all the free spontaneous activity of 
 children is systematically regulated in the same manner as the 
 whole natural world unconsciously is, and as the world of 
 human nature would always be also were it not for the disturb- 
 ing element of consciousness which awakens the personal will, 
 and incites it to arbitrary action (i.e., free choice without 
 regard to right or wrong), thus coming in contact with the laws 
 of nature and hindering the direct accomplishment of her 
 purpose. 
 
 Bivt there can be no real freedom in human action, unless it 
 follows in the path, recognizes the limits, and subjects itself to 
 fche necessity of Law. The treatment of matter, substances, 
 the physical in short, which is the point of departure of all 
 human thought and action, can only accomplish the desired 
 end when it is carried on according to systematic rules. Arbi- 
 trary capricious action never reaches its end, or only by 
 accident. 
 
 Thus, then, Frobel's system consists in regulating the natural 
 spontaneous activity of the child according to its own inherent 
 law, in order that the purpose of nature, the complete develop- 
 ment of all the natural faculties, may be fulfilled. 
 
 This system aims at teaching the child from the beginning of 
 its existence to apply for itself the universal principle which 
 we have been considering. 
 
 The order of the children's performances is so planned, that 
 the application of this principle becomes continually wider, 
 and by this means there is gradually awakened in the children 
 the consciousness that all systematic working is based on it. 
 
 The above indications will, we hope, be sufficient, so far, to 
 explain Frobel's theory of the universe as is necessary to 
 show its connection with his system of education. A fnl 
 exposition of his philosophy is not contemplated here. 
 
 A true understanding of these generalities can only be 
 arrived at through their practical application, and the know- 
 ledge of their results. And conversely the pi'aetical appli-
 
 Frobel's Method, and what is New in It. 93 
 
 cation only gains meaning through knowledge of the funda- 
 mental idea. 
 
 The reason why Frobel was so much condemned and run. 
 down, and even derided, during his lifetime, is that his ideas,, 
 owing to their novelty and apparent opposition to old-estab- 
 lished methods, met, of necessity, with little comprehension. 
 
 Frobel's philosophy and educational theories have certainly^ 
 their " mystic " side, inasmuch as they are not at once appre- 
 hensible to every one, and in their entire scope, and also that 
 much cannot yet be positively proved. Everything, moreover, 
 may be said to be mystical which is still veiled from the 
 understanding, and, therefore, also the origin and growth of 
 every blade of grass is mystical. But that sort of mysticism 
 which upholds what is unnatural, believes in the unsystematic,, 
 and encourages the illogical, Frobel's philosophy with its clear- 
 ness, order and regularity, is distinctly opposed to. Prophetic 
 minds, of which all ages can boast some, see much that i& 
 hidden from the material eye, and that science has not yet dis- 
 covered. The general apprehension of these visions is reserved 
 for later times. 
 
 Those to whom the ideal side of Frobel's system is inac- 
 cessible must content themselves with the purely practical part 
 of it. 
 
 Those by whom the deeper foundations of the matter is 
 acknowledged and accepted need not fear temporary error,, 
 misunderstanding, and criticism. They can well afford to 
 leave the superficial part, possibly, too, here and there the 
 erroneous part, to take care of itself, if only they keep firm 
 hold of the kernel of the matter, without which its signification- 
 would cease. None must weary in their endeavour to get at 
 this kernel, to show the connection that exists between theory 
 and practice, to lay bare the fundamental thought which 
 inspires the whole. The smallest efforts in this direction are 
 not useless : and in this spirit we trust that the present work 
 will be judged.
 
 94 -A New Method of Education. 
 
 CHAPTER VII. 
 
 THE KINDERGARTEN. 
 
 " Die Kindheit von heute 
 1st die Menschheit von morgen, 
 
 " The children of to-day 
 Are the men of to-morrow." 
 
 FREDERIC FROBEL has succeeded in realizing what the edu- 
 cational geniuses who preceded him only strove after. But 
 he has done more than simply embody their ideas in reality 
 whereas they concerned themselves only with methods of 
 instruction, he has given to the world a true and complete 
 method of education. 
 
 Frobel gives to children experience instead of instruction, 
 he puts action in the place of abstract learning. In the Kinder- 
 garten the child finds itself surrounded by a miniature world 
 adapted to its requirements at different stages of growth, and 
 through action in which it can develop itself according to the 
 laws of its nature. 
 
 Let us first glance at the Kindergarten from outside, as it 
 strikes the eye of the casual looker on, before we proceed to a 
 comprehensive summary of Frobel's educational system as a 
 whole. 
 
 The pleasant sound of children's voices singing falls on the 
 ear of the visitor as he enters the Kindergarten, and in an open- 
 air space* shaded with trees he sees a ring of little children 
 from two to four or five years old, led by the Kindergarten 
 teacher, and moving in rhythmic measures round one of their 
 little comrades who is going through an energetic course of 
 gymnastic exercises, which the others imitate : after a time the 
 young instructor is relieved by another of the children, and so 
 
 * In winter the play-ground is a large heated room.
 
 The Kindergarten. 95 
 
 on. To the gymnastic exercises succeed other Bewegungs- 
 spiele (movement games) representing incidents of husbandry 
 and harvesting ; or the way in which birds build their nests in 
 woods, fly out and return home again, or phases of professional 
 life, scenes from the market, and the shop, and so forth. All 
 the games are accompanied by explanatory songs. 
 
 In the first period of childhood words and actions must always 
 accompany each other ; the child's nature requires this. Body 
 and mind must not yet be occupied separately, but the gym- 
 nastics of the limbs should at the same time exercise the men- 
 tal powers and dispositions. Frobel's " movement-games " 
 develop the limbs and muscles, while the accompanying music 
 works on the feelings and imagination, and the words and action 
 rouse the mind to observation, and finally the will to imitation of 
 what has been observed. The promotion of physical health and 
 strength is the main object of education in the Kindergarten. 
 
 A little further on in the garden, under a linen awning, will 
 be seen three tables surrounded by benches with leaning backs, 
 at each of which are seated ten children from four to seven 
 years of Sge, working away busily and attentively. At one of 
 the tables strips of different coloured papers, straw or leather, 
 are being plaited into all sorts of pretty patterns, to make 
 letter-cases, mats, baskets, boxes, &c. The patterns of the 
 elder children are of their own invention, and their little pro- 
 ductions are destined for presents to parents, brothers and 
 sisters, and friends. 
 
 At the second table building with cubes has been going on. 
 Before each child stands an architectural structure of its own 
 planning, and all are listening attentively to the narrative of 
 the teacher, in which each of the objects built up is made to 
 play a part. 
 
 At the third table paper is being folded into all sorts of shapes, 
 representing tools of different kinds, or flowers. All the various 
 forms which the children produce are arrived at by gradual 
 transitions from one fundamental mathematical form, and thus 
 the elements of geometry are acquired in the Kindergarten, not 
 through abstract instruction, but by observation and original 
 construction.
 
 96 A New Method of Education. 
 
 In playful work and workful play the child finds a relief for, 
 and the satisfaction of, his active impulses and receives an 
 elementary grounding for all later work, whether artistic or 
 professional. His physical senses as well as his mental faculties 
 are all exercised in proportion to his age. 
 
 But the half -hour is at an end, and there must be no more 
 sitting still. Spades, rakes, and watering-pots are now fetched 
 out to work in the flower-beds, of which each child has one for 
 its own. Flowers, vegetables and fruits are cultivated by the 
 children in these little patches of ground, but in the general 
 garden, which is the common charge of all the children, are 
 grown all sorts of corn, field-products, and useful plants, and 
 these serve as materials for an elementary course of botanical 
 observation and experiment, when the children cannot be taken 
 into the open fields and woods to study nature in her own 
 workshops, to learn singing from the birds, and to watch the 
 habits of the insects. In this garden, too, all kinds of animals 
 are kept ; chickens, doves, rabbits, hares, dogs, goats, and birds 
 in cages, which have to be looked after and cared for. 
 
 Thus the child grows up under the influences of nature. He 
 learns gradually to perceive the regularity of all organic forma- 
 tions ; by the loving care which he is encouraged to bestow on 
 animals and plants, his heart and sympathies are enlarged, and 
 he becomes capable of love and sympathy for his fellow- 
 creatures ; and in imitating the works of nature he is led to 
 discover and to love the Creator of nature, and to acknowledge 
 Him as his own creator also, and he becomes imbued with 
 the divine peace of nature before the turmoil of the world and 
 of sin find their way into his heart. 
 
 But to return to the Kindergarten. The little ones whom we 
 first saw engaged in gymnastics now come running and laugh- 
 ing up to the table deserted by the elder children, and in their 
 turn take their seats for half an hoar's work (for the quite 
 little ones the time is limited to a quarter of an hour), and 
 begin laying together and interlacing little laths or sticks in 
 symmetrical shapes " Forms of beauty," or systematic con- 
 structions without any special object ; "forms of knowledge,'* 
 or mathematical figures ; " forms of practical life " or tools,
 
 The Kindergarten. 97 
 
 buildings, &c. ; or else one of the many occupations of which the 
 results may be seen in the glass cupboard of the play-room, is 
 carried on. In this cupboard are a variety of articles modelled in 
 day, lace-ake arabesques cut out of fine white paper and pasted 
 on blue paper ; ingenious devices of plaited straw, riband, and 
 leather ; all manner of drawings and paintings, too, according 
 to F rebel's new linear method ; artistic little houses, churches, 
 furniture, &c., constructed of little sticks fastened together by 
 means of moistened peas, into which the ends of the sticks are 
 stuck ; in short, an art and industrial exhibition of the works 
 of little manufacturers, under eight years old. 
 
 But these pretty things are not all intended for birthday or 
 Christmas presents in the children's families. At the end of 
 the year most of them are put into a lottery through which each 
 of the children receives a little sum of money for its own work, 
 and the joint proceeds are spent in dressing a Christmas-tree 
 for the poor children of the neighbourhood, and the pleasure 
 which the little donors derive from this tree is far greater than 
 that which their own more costly one affords them. 
 
 By the ide of the glass cupboard, in which the children's 
 productions are kept, stands another containing dried plants, 
 mosses, insects, shells, stones, crystals, and other wonders of 
 nature, which have either been collected on different excursions, 
 or are presents from relations and friends. This is the children's 
 museum, and into it the little collectors often carry the 
 commonest stones and weeds, for to children everything that 
 they notice for the first time seems wonderful. 
 
 Work, which is at the same time fulfilment of duty, is the 
 only true basis of moral culture, but it is necessary that such 
 work should also satisfy the "child's instinct of love, and the 
 object of it must, therefore, be to give pleasure to others. With 
 this end in view difficulties will be overcome with courage and 
 cheerfulness, and the only effectual barrier will thus be opposed 
 to selfishness. Only let children's earliest work and. duties be 
 made easy to them and they will infallibly learn to love them, 
 and in later years they will not shrink from the sacrifices 
 demanded by love. A true system of national education, such 
 as the reforms of modern times render necessary, can only be 
 
 H
 
 98 A New Method of Education. 
 
 established by making work, such work as shall connect artistic 
 dexterity with the cultivation of intelligence, the basis of edu- 
 cation. The Kindergarten meets this want during the period 
 of early childhood ; the Jugend, or Schulgarten* (Youth, or 
 school-garden) with workshop, studio, camp, gymnastics, &c., 
 must carry on the work afterwards on the same foundation. 
 
 And now the working hours are ended, and a choral melody 
 resounds in our Kindergarten. The little ones with their teacher 
 and her assistants! form into a circle and sing with childish 
 reverence a short song, the words of which express gratitude to 
 God for the blessings enjoyed, and a promise to live according 
 to His will and that of their parents. The Kindergarten always 
 opens and closes in this way with religious worship. 
 
 The work of religious development must begin by directing 
 the child's imagination towards higher things, and there is no 
 better means to this end than sacred song which arouses the 
 devotional instincts. The influence of nature, in which the 
 spirit of God breathes, combines with the sacred melodies to 
 awaken in the mind its first dim perception of the organic 
 connection of the universe, which has its ultimate origin in 
 God. 
 
 Through association with its fellows, i.e., with other children 
 of its own age, the child learns to love beyond the narrow range 
 of self ; and the love of human beings leads to the love of God. 
 Religion means binding together, union (between God and man) 
 and without loving fellowship religion cannot exist. Frobel 
 defines religion as " union with God," which can only grow out 
 of union with mankind, or the love of human beings for one 
 another. 
 
 To the above influence is added religious narrative, which in 
 the case of the younger children is connected with facts ex- 
 perienced by themselves, and for the elder ones refers to Bible 
 history. 
 
 Four hours of the day thus pass quickly by for the little 
 
 * See "Die Arbeit und die neue Erziehung." Second edition, published by 
 6. Wigand of Kasset. 
 
 f Young girls who help in the work of teaching, and are thus trained to be 
 themselves Kindergarten teachers.
 
 The Kindergarten. 99 
 
 people, ar,d then they hurry off to join the fathers, mothers, or 
 nurses, who have come to fetch them, delighted at seeing them 
 again, and eager to tell of all the pleasures and labours of the 
 day, and to carry on by themselves at home the arts they have 
 learnt and there is never any room for the disagreeable guest, 
 ennui. 
 
 Such is more or less what the visitor to a Kindergarten will 
 see going on, and he will very likely think to himself, " This is 
 all very nice and delightful, the children must certainly nourish 
 better here, both physically and mentally, than in the close 
 atmosphere of rooms, under the supervision of nurses and 
 nursemaids (by whom the mother must at any rate be relieved 
 during some hours of the day), or else left entirely without 
 supervision. It is also better than the formal out-door walks 
 in which children are generally led stiffly by the hand, instead of 
 being allowed to run and jump about freely. Certainly these 
 Kindergartens must be a great benefit to children, but do they 
 deserve all the fuss that is made about them, all the expecta- 
 tions founded on them ? And, even if a salutary reform has been 
 effected in school education during its earliest stages, what 
 has been done for the improvement of education in the home, 
 which must always form the starting point, the kernel, of all 
 human culture ? 
 
 No, the Kindergarten is not all that is wanted, and Frobel 
 has not forgotten the important share which a family, above 
 all the mother, has in the work of education. The cultivation 
 of the female sex, through which the spiritual mother ol 
 humanity, its educator in the highest sense of the word, is to 
 be realized, is essentially the starting-point of his educational 
 method. The Kindergarten begins on the mother's lap. It is 
 to the mother that Frobel presents his " play-gifts ; " on her 
 preparatory training does the efficacy of the system depend ; by 
 her frequent presence at the Kindergarten it is hoped that she 
 will take a personal part in the proceedings, and during the 
 greater part of the day, when the child falls to her charge, she 
 can herself guide its occupations on the same plan. All 
 mothers will one day, we hope, be equal to this tasl:. We look 
 forward to a time when Frobel's method shall be taught in all 
 
 H 2
 
 ioo A New Method of Education. 
 
 girls' schools, and when it will have become universally acknow- 
 ledged that all who have to do with children, fathers and 
 mothers, nurses and governesses, should be versed in the science 
 of education, in order that they may be able to satisfy the 
 higher demands of the present stage of human culture. 
 
 Frobel's general principles of education may be summed up 
 under the three following heads : " freedom for development," 
 " work for development," and " unity of development." 
 
 1. In nature, where everything works freely, unrestrainedly, 
 and unartificially, there is scope tor freedom of development. Free- 
 dom of growth among plants is only possible where this syste- 
 matic development is not disturbed, and the necessary condi- 
 tions of their growth are attended to. If they are to attain to 
 full development, they must have proper care and attention. 
 Plants shut up in dark cellars degenerate and die, and human 
 nature, which lacks care and attention, especially in its earliest 
 stages, degenerates and dies also. Children, if brought up 
 among the wild animals of a forest, would become themselves 
 almost animals, and bear scarcely any resemblance to human 
 beings. It is only by applying the eternal principles of all 
 organic development in the higher scale of human nature 
 bhat the clue will be found to freedom of development in the 
 human being, as Frobel understands it. Only there, where 
 order and morality reign, where love and discipline are the 
 guiding powers, can there be any question of freedom of 
 development for the human soul. A wild up-shooting of 
 untrained natural forces, the unfolding of the young human 
 plant given over to chance, these are the very opposites of free 
 development. Whatever also is contrary to Nature's laws for 
 man hinders his development. His destiny, which is to 
 become a morally reasonable being, makes a morally reasonable 
 education indispensable. Development is emancipation : eman- 
 cipation from the bands of rude unspiritualized matter ; eman- 
 cipation of the limbs and senses, of all the mental powers and 
 faculties this it is that makes freedom. But freedom of 
 development is not sufficient without exercises for develop- 
 ment. 
 
 2. Frobel says: "Man is destined to rise out of himself
 
 The Kindergarten. 101 
 
 by means of his own activity, to attain to a continually higher 
 stage of self-knowledge." Thus it is only through its own 
 exertions, its own work, through personal action, that the child 
 can so develop itself, in accordance with its human nature, as to 
 realize its true self, to express, as it were, the thought of God 
 which dwells in every being. According to Frobel, man is 
 born into the world more weak and helpless than any animal, 
 in order that, by the resistance which the things of the outward 
 world oppose to his weakness, he may be incited to the exer- 
 tion of inward strength. A child cannot learn to walk without 
 trouble and effort ; and it is only after thousands ot times 
 repeated attempts that it learns to make itself understood, that 
 is to say, to talk. 
 
 But if the child's efforts and exertions be left to themselves, 
 they will fall very far short of their natural end, and, therefore, 
 education must come to their assistance and guidance, and 
 establish discipline and control where otherwise caprice would 
 step in, and confusion of ungoverned forces reign. There is, 
 however, a kind of discipline which is contrary to nature, as 
 well as one in accordance with it, and this unnatural discipline 
 leads to artificiality, and the suppression of individual person- 
 ality, which, indeed, it rather aims at doing away with and 
 replacing by something conventional. 
 
 What may be called new in Frobel's Kindergarten plan is the 
 practical means which he has discovered and apt/lied for 
 disciplining and developing body, soul, and mind, will, feelings, 
 and understanding, in accordance with the laws of Nature. All 
 the materials which he sets before children, all their playthings, 
 are so contrived as tu meet their innate impulse to activity, 
 and that in a rightly ordered sequence corresponding to e\ ery 
 stage of the soul's progressive development. The child is thus 
 led on by easy simple stages to modelling, production, and 
 creation. Only by original creation can it fully express its 
 inner self, its individual being ; and this it must do if it i to 
 attain to worthy existence. 
 
 Action, i.e., the application of knowledge, the carrying out 
 of ideas, is what our age calls for more and more loudly, and 
 what the young generation must be trained for ; and in view 
 
 ,.,-r-v /-.C r^Al 1V-OK. A
 
 IO2 A New Method of Education. 
 
 of this Frobel would have children learn even in their earliest 
 games to act and to create ; he would have work and action 
 precede abstract study, and be made the means and educator to 
 prepare for the later acquisition of knowledge. In order to 
 produce strength and greatness of character (and what is more 
 needed at the present time ?), it is necessary to awaken will 
 and energy, resolution and a sense of duty ; this is done in the 
 Kindergarten by means of personal activity in an atmosphere 
 of happiness and contentment. To train pupils in the great 
 workshops of the Creator to be themselves one day creators, to 
 bring human beings nearer and nearer to the likeness of Grod, 
 this is the purpose of the " Development exercises," which are 
 carried on in the Kindergarten. 
 
 3. All organic developmeut is continuous, unbroken, and, 
 progressing from stage to stage, forms a closely interconnected 
 whole. In Nature this continuity, or connectedness, exists 
 unconsciously, but in the world of human life it must be the 
 result of deliberate conscious volition, and must lead up to the 
 apprehension of the highest cosmic unity, i.e., to the knowledge 
 of God. 
 
 Education to be w r orthy of a human being must, therefore, be 
 continuous, must proceed upon the same plan from the begin- 
 ning, though in a progressive sequence, according to the natural 
 stages of development. The first playthings must stand in pro- 
 per social relation to the last, the first elementary lessons must 
 be in connection with the topmost pinnacle of later knowledge ; 
 the moral culture especially depends on harmony in the whole 
 treatment of the child. Human existence begins in uncon- 
 sciousness, and has to pass through all the successive stages oi 
 growing consciousness, until it reaches complete self-knowledge. 
 Frobel says : " The clearer the thread which runs through our 
 lives backwards back to our childhood the clearer will be 
 our onward glance to the^ goal." 
 
 Such continuity in education is as yet nowhere aimed at 
 fathers and mothers, nurses and governesses, servants and 
 friends, all influence the child in different, too often in quite 
 opposite, directions. There is no such thing as transition in 
 education no point of connection between the first period
 
 The Kindergarten. 103 
 
 which is the sport of caprice and chance, and the following 
 1 esson and school-time, between the first years of mere idle 
 amusement, and the beginnings of practical activity and 
 exercise of duty : nowhere, in short, is continuity in the lessons, 
 occupations, and lives of children so much as thought of. 
 
 The relations of the human being to the surrounding world, 
 ,o Nature and his fellow-creatures with which latter relations 
 is bound up the highest of all, that of the creature to its Creator 
 begin with his birth. The most important relation at the 
 commencement of life is that between child and mother, and it 
 is in the mother's hand accordingly that Frobel places the first 
 end of the Ariadne thread, which is to lead the child through 
 the labyrinth of life. The mother's play and cai esses (see 
 Frobel's " Mutter u. Koselieder ") form the first foundation on 
 v.nich the Kindergarten, and the after-training of school and 
 life, are built up. The logical continuity, the strict order of 
 sequence in its games and occupations, which hang together 
 like the links of a chain, so that the one always prepares for the 
 other ; the unbroken series of transitions ; the close connec- 
 tion between childish conceptions and ideas and their realiza- 
 tion all this can only be fully appreciated after a close study 
 of the details, both theoretical and practical, of Frobel's 
 system. But no one, having once made the study, can doubt 
 that the complete and universal carrying out of the Kinder- 
 garten theory, the first, though imperfect, steps towards which 
 have already been taken in many countries of Europe, and in 
 the United States of America, would contribute enormously 
 towards the production of men and women whose lives, actions, 
 and thoughts shall make up a complete whole, whose person- 
 ality and individual characteristics shall stand out strongly, 
 and who shall have the courage to be always themselves, and 
 not to lower themselves to the condition of conventional 
 puppets. 
 
 It is only a more harmonious development of the special 
 characteristics of individuals that can lead to the concord and 
 unity of masses, whether of families, communities, or nations, 
 and thence to the unity of mankind the goal towards which 
 the strongest impulse of our age is tending, and the next step
 
 104 A New Method of Education. 
 
 to which is union with God. Frobel sums up the various 
 syntheses which humanity has to work out under the title of 
 Lebenseinigung (unity of life), and calls to his contemporaries 
 to work in the field of education towards the fulfilment of 
 this idea with the motto : 
 
 " Kommt, lasst uns den Kinrlern leben !" 
 " Come, let us live tor our children." 
 
 In his book for mothers he says : 
 
 " Parents, let jour home a children's garden be, 
 Where with watchful love the young plant's growth you see 
 A shelter let it be to them from all 
 The dangers which their bodies may befall ; 
 And still more a soil in which will grow, 
 The inward forces that from God do flow ; 
 Which with a father's love He unto men has given, 
 That by their use they may upraise themselves to Heaven." 
 
 NOTE. It is not difficult to see why the hitherto imperfect organization of exist- 
 ing Kindergartens is only now beginning to approximate to something correspond- 
 ing to the original idea. The greatest obstacle to the perfect realization of this 
 idea (especially as regards national Kindergartens) arises from the insufficient 
 means of localization and the scarcity of teachers, which necessitate taking in too 
 many children at a time. The crowding together of herds of children, which 
 must result in confusion, and prevent the teacher from giving sufficient individual 
 attention to her pupils, is by no means what Frobel contemplated. He wished 
 the number of children in national Kindergartens to be limited to thirty, or at 
 the outside forty ; or else a larger number to be broken up into groups of thirty, 
 under one teacher. This, as well as many other points, which have hitherto 
 been overlooked, will meet with proper consideration, as the matter becomes 
 more fully understood, and its development progresses. At present the chief 
 thing to be considered, is how to make the establishment of Kindergartens as 
 general as possible.
 
 CHAPTER VITI. 
 
 FROBEL'S "MUTTER UND KOSELIEDER." 
 
 FROBEL himself says of this book : " I have here laid down the 
 most important part of my educational method ; this book is 
 the starting point of a natural system of education for the 
 first years of life, for it teaches the way in which the germs of 
 human dispositions must be nourished and fostered, if they are 
 to attain complete and healthy development." 
 
 But over and over again we hear people exclaim after a 
 superficial glance through the book : " "What wretched poetry, 
 what lame rhymes, what unintelligible illustrations, and, above 
 all, what absurdity ! the idea of wanting to regulate and con- 
 trol a mother's caressing and fondling of her child !" &c. 
 
 And such a judgment would not be incorrect as far as the 
 many imperfect verses and the style of the book generally is 
 concerned. But at the same time many successful rhymes, and 
 much true poetry will be found side by side with the philo- 
 sophic thoughts thus embodied in the form of verse: and what 
 is of greater importance, there is a fund of childlike sim- 
 plicity and naivete which seems to come straight from the 
 child's soul, and most meet with response there. But above all 
 it must not be forgotten that the mottoes contained in this book 
 are intended for grown-up people, i.e. for mothers, and only 
 the songs for children and of these the greater number are 
 fully adapted to infant comprehension. 
 
 Notwithstanding, however, that the form of the book is quite 
 a secondary consideration, it is capable of being improved 
 when its substance has come to be understood. And this sub- 
 stance is not only new and important, but it is in the highest 
 degree the production of genius. It reveals the process of
 
 ro6 A New Method of Education. 
 
 development of the inner, instinctive life of childhood, and con- 
 verts the intuitive, purposeless action of mothers into an intelli- 
 gent plan, in a way which has never before been even attempted. 
 The 1 ey-note of the book is the analogy between the develop- 
 ment of humanity from its earliest infancy, and that of the 
 individual. The fact that the germs of all human faculties and 
 dispo itions, as they show themselves in the life of humanity, 
 in its passions, its efforts after culture, its whole manner of 
 existence, are traceable in the nature of children as manifested 
 in their instinctive utterances, this fact, I say, must be taken 
 into account, in order that the games of children may be turned 
 to their natural purpose, viz., the assistance of the child's 
 development. 
 
 So long as the analogy between the course of the develop- 
 ment of humanity and that of individual man is only recognized 
 outwardly, and treated more or less as a fact in science, so long 
 will little practical use be made of it. But it acquires an im- 
 mense degree of importance, when once it is made the means of 
 supplying education with an infallible guide, childhood with a 
 regulate r for its blind impulses, its uncertain groping and fum- 
 bling, and the maternal instinct with a safe channel to flow in. 
 
 The practical hints contained in this book of Frobel's consist, 
 it is true, of mere disconnected fragments, too often couched in 
 obscure language. But experience proves that the mother's 
 instinct is equal to the task of piecing the fragments together 
 and rightly applying them. 
 
 All ideas assume at starting a crude, unbeautiful shape, which 
 for a time serves rather to hide and disfigure the inner meaning ; 
 but when this meaning has at last made itself felt, the outward 
 form becomes gradually remodelled and brought into accordance 
 with it. And so it has been with the play of children. Its 
 high significance had first to be discovered and made known 
 before it could be embodied in a form corresponding to its ob- 
 ject and to the degree of culture reached by civilized humanity. 
 
 And even Frobel in the book in question has only taken the 
 first step towards the attainment of this purpose, has done no 
 more than point out in what manner it is possible. The filling 
 Tp of gaps in the system, greater perfection of arrangement,
 
 Frobel's "Mutter u;id Koselieder" 107 
 
 and improvement in the outward form -will not be difficult when,, 
 through more universal practical application, Frobel's great edu- 
 cational theory meets with more and more thorough under- 
 standing. Genius has but to give utterance to its thoughts, and 
 they will in due time become embodied in appropriate forms. 
 
 Frobel rightly calls this book a, family book, for only by its 
 ase in the family, in the hands of mothers, can it fulfil its pur- 
 pose, and contribute towards raising the family to a level of 
 human culture corresponding to the advanced civilization of the- 
 day, and preparing mothers for their vocation in the highest sense.. 
 
 Frobel made his " Mutter u. Koselieder " the foundation of 
 his lectures to Kindergarten teachers on his theory, and over- 
 and over again repeated : " I have here laid down the funda- 
 mental ideas of my educational theory ; whoever has grasped 
 the pivot idea of this book understands what I am aiming at.. 
 But how many do understand it ? Learned men have too- 
 great a contempt for the book to give it more than cursory at- 
 tention ; and the majority of mothers only see in it an ordinary 
 picture-book with little songs. No doubt there are finer pic- 
 tures and better verses to be had than mine, but of what use- 
 are they if wanting in any educational power ? Only a small 
 minority of people get from my book a real understanding 
 of my educational theory in all its fulness, but, if only mothers 
 and teachers would follow its guidance they would at last see,, 
 in spite of all opposition, that I am right." 
 
 I once replied to a similar outburst : " It is not always easy to 
 trace the connection between the examples you give and the 
 idea you wish to illustrate : many of these are of such a kind 
 that one must search long before one sees the reason of their 
 being cited, and those who do not take this trouble will never- 
 find it out. This is the reason why so many people reject 
 great part of the substance of the book : they say it is- 
 so far-fetched, so unnatural, it is thought out artificially 
 instead of being taken from observation of child-nature. You 
 yourself have had experience of such objections, and so have- 
 I in the course of my exposition of the system. If you 
 would only draw the conclusions of your ideas yourself and 
 collect them together in a commentary they would be much
 
 io8 A New Method of Education. 
 
 easier to understand, and the book which you consider of so 
 great importance would at least be recognized by *he thinking 
 world." 
 
 To which Frobel answered : " You do not know what you 
 are asking : I should then be obliged to say everything, and I 
 should be still less understood. None but the children who are 
 brought up in Kindergartens will ever understand niy philo- 
 sophy in its breadth and depth. Let the world laugh at me now 
 as much as it likes for my ordering and arranging of children's 
 play, it will one day acknowledge that I am right, for the chil- 
 dren will understand me and know that I understood them and 
 fathomed the depths of their nature. If you are not afraid of 
 being laughed at with me, do you write what you think is 
 desirable for a better understanding of the system : I am only 
 too willing that you should." 
 
 It was Frobel's misfortune that he had not the gift of ex- 
 pressing himself clearly and attractively in words ; indeed, it 
 "was a long time before he even realized that this was necessary, 
 and that the concrete practical form in which he had so com- 
 pletely embodied his educational ideas, and which was to him 
 the most natural form of expression, was not universally intel- 
 ligible. Had it not been for the repeated experience that his 
 system was not understood by the general public, or even by the 
 thinking world, he would, perhaps, never have attempted to 
 translate his practical language into words. That neither his 
 written nor his spoken explanations contributed to make 
 Kindergartens more popular must be attributed to this want 
 in his own nature, and not to any fault in his method of educa- 
 tion. 
 
 The following very imperfect attempt to throw some light on 
 the contents of " Mutter u. Koselieder " would have been given 
 to the public sooner, but for the repeated experience that in no 
 way is so much opposition to Frobel's system excited, as by any 
 endeavour to propagate this book. Yet, at the same time, there 
 is no book that gives more pleasure, to mothers especially, than 
 ~this one. It will not be unprofitable to communicate my ex- 
 periences on this point. 
 
 In all the towns of different countries in which I deliverer!
 
 Frobel's "Mutter und Koselieder" 109- 
 
 lectures on Frobel's system (which lectures were almost always 
 followed by the introduction of the system), in Paris, Brussels, 
 London. Geneva, Lausanne, Neuchatel, Amsterdam, the Hague, 
 Rotterdam, &c., as also in many German towns, I found pretty 
 generally that the ideas most difficult to make intelligible, 
 both to the learned and the unlearned, both to men and women, 
 were the following : 
 
 1. That the first mental development of the child goes on in 
 its play, and that this play needs, consequently, to be as much 
 systematized as the instruction imparted at a later age. 
 
 2. That by rightly meeting and assisting the natural force 
 which vents itself in play, or by faulty and mistaken treatment 
 of it, it may be directed either to good i.e., to its true use 
 or to evil i.e., its abuse ; and 
 
 3. That the examples given in the " Mutter und Koselieder '* 
 are psychologically based on the instinctive life of the child,, 
 even though they are not always expressed in the most perfect 
 form. 
 
 Many profound thinkers, as well among psychologists as 
 natural philosophers, were beyond measure astonished at Frobel's 
 theory, and gave their hearty agreement to it. Women of 
 simple minds, but true motherly hearts, added their approval 
 with tears in their eyes. They were struck by so much truth 
 as " by lightning," as one of them expressed it, and they felt 
 the force of the book without yet thoroughly understanding it. 
 Indeed, the contents of this book never failed to touch the 
 hearts of mothers. It was only dry intellectual natures that 
 exercised their powers of criticism on it without ever grasping 
 its spirit. 
 
 And such criticism, we must own, is not unfair as regards 
 the choice of many of the examples. But these examples 
 must nevertheless be retained until a complete understanding 
 of the theory shall make a new and faultless selection pos- 
 sible. 
 
 The nature of babies and young children is still much less 
 considered by scientific observers than is that of plants and 
 animals, and there is consequently in this field an infinite 
 number of discoveries and experiences to be collected together,.
 
 no A New Method of Education. 
 
 which in their importance for the well-being of human society 
 are second to no science whatever. What Rousseau, Pesta- 
 lozzi, Jean Paul, Burdach, Schleiermacher, and others have 
 effected in this direction is still very little compared with what 
 has yet to be done in order that education may really bear good 
 fruit, and the secret workings of the child's mind and spirit 
 be fully revealed. The side of the question which Frobel 
 specially illustrated, and for which he devised his practical 
 method of application had, before his time, been almost wholly 
 neglected. It is true that he was generally in agreement with 
 Burdach's theories concerning the meaning of the first utter- 
 ances of children, and when reading his works in the company 
 of friends his face would beam with pleasure when he came to 
 a passage that specially pleased him, and he would exclaim, 
 " See, I am right after all ; he has found it out too ! " But at 
 the same time he was fully aware that in his fundamental idea 
 he had discovered a new point of departure which had been 
 overlooked by all his predecessors. 
 
 However much or little the nature of children may have 
 been studied, no one has come up to Frobel in his searching 
 analysis of every phase and detail of their development. Fol- 
 lowing the example of modern natural science, which has de- 
 scended from the study of the greatest phenomena to that of 
 the least, and is making its most important discoveries through 
 microscopic investigations, Frobel, in the field of human nature, 
 goes back to the smallest beginnings, and finds thus the first 
 link in the chain which connects one moment of human de- 
 velopment with all the others. He finds the law which lies at 
 the bottom of all systematic development, and discovers the 
 means for the application of this law. In the growth of the 
 child he sees the same system of law as in organic growth 
 generally, and he points out the complete analogy between the 
 development of the child and that of the organisms of Nature 
 ^nd of humanity as an organic whole. 
 
 A new basis has thus been given to education, and it remains 
 for us to build up upon it. But we must be content to wait 
 patiently. Frobel's philosophy will share the fate of all other 
 great truths, which come into the world as the hypotheses of
 
 FrobeVs "Mutter wid Koselieder" in 
 
 single individuals, and have to bide their time until by slow 
 degrees their importance has become generally recognized, and, 
 by the weeding out of superfluous matter, their essential points 
 survive as positive science.* 
 
 * In tbe work of the Baroness v. Marenholtz-Biilmv, entitled "Die neue 
 Arbeit und die Erziehung nach Frobel's Methode," Frobel's educational theories 
 are i'ully expounded.
 
 H2 A New Method of Education. 
 
 CHAPTER IX. 
 
 EARLIEST DEVELOPMENT OF THE LIMBS. 
 
 DURING the first years of life the physical development is the 
 most marked and prominent, but the growth of the soul, 
 though unperceived, goes on, nevertheless, all the while ; for in 
 infancy body and soul are still completely in union, and can 
 only be developed through mutual interaction. It is on this 
 principle that Frobel has compiled his " Mutter u. Koselieder." 
 The games introduced in this book are adapted both to cultivat- 
 ing the limbs and senses, and guiding and assisting the mind in 
 its first awakening stage.* 
 
 Gymnastic exercises have come to be regarded as essential to 
 bodily health, and their use in later childhood and youth is 
 consequently gaining more and more ground in the present 
 day. But bodily discipline is essential also to the moral well- 
 being of humanity. By developing muscular force the will is 
 strengthened, and grace of mind and spirit increases in propor- 
 tion to physical grace. 
 
 T^ow, if children require systematic muscular exercises when 
 they can already walk and run and jump, they need them still 
 more beforehand. Circus-riders and tight-rope dancers are 
 taken at the tenderest age to be trained for their professions, 
 because it is known that the pliability of the limbs decreases 
 with every additional year. 
 
 For centuries past the maternal instinct, following its playful 
 bent, has devised all manner of little games which tend to 
 exercise children's limbs; but these, like everything else that 
 
 * The following explanations would be more intelligible, if, side by side with 
 them, readers would study the book itself, in which the pictures help to illus- 
 traie the meaning.
 
 Earliest Development of the Limbs. 113 
 
 human beings do merely from instinct, fall far short of what 
 they should be. 
 
 The popular nursery-games that have been handed down by 
 tradition are very much alike in all civilized countries, for they 
 are the product of the natural instinct of mothers, which is the 
 same all over the world and in all ages. Of these Frobel col- 
 lected together all that were suitable for his purpose. During 
 the greater part of his life it was his habit to go about familiarly 
 among the homes of the people, in order to observe the ways of 
 mothers with their babies ; and in this way he accumulated a 
 whole store of national nursery and cradle songs, which he 
 adapted for his own use, taking care always to eliminate from 
 them all the coarse expressions, unchildlike ideas, or utter non- 
 sense, which too often disfigured and spoilt them. Mothers 
 never play with their children in perfect silence ; they invari- 
 ably talk or sing to them all the while, and those among us, 
 who can still recall, with inward emotion, the first songs with 
 which their mother's voice lulled them to sleep in their infancy, 
 will not wonder at Frobel's connecting the earliest awakening 
 of feeling .with the songs that accompany his games. 
 
 The object of ordinary gymnastic exercises is to produce the 
 completest possible development of all the muscles. This, 
 however, would be fatiguing for young children, who, during 
 the first years of their life, require to be equally stimulated on 
 all sides of their nature. Every branch, too, of their training 
 must be carried on by the most gradual process. Both these 
 essentials are fully considered in Frobel's "Gymnastic Games." 
 The gymnastics of the body serve, at the same time, to promote 
 the growth of the mental and spiritual organs, and the first 
 playful activity of the child is made the starting-point, and the 
 preparation for all later development, both in the Kindergarten 
 and the school, so that there may be sequence and continuity in 
 the whole course of education. 
 
 Life may be defined as activity, and all activity, which is in 
 proportion to the natural strength, and not over-straining, is 
 enjoyment. This truth is exemplified in the gambols of young 
 animals, and in the case of little children who derive the 
 greatest enjoyment from kicking their feet against some object 
 
 t
 
 114 A New Method of Education. 
 
 which offers resistance, or against the hands of their mothers, 
 who should encourage them to repeat the exercise, for it 
 strengthens the muscles of their backs and legs. But the 
 principal gymnastic exercises in Frobel's book have reference 
 to the hand, which is the most important member of the human 
 body. The increased use of machinery in the present day tends 
 more and more to relieve human beings from all the rougher 
 kind of manual labour, but there is, on the other hand, in all 
 branches of industry a growing demand for artistic work, and 
 it is, therefore, of the greatest importance that care should be 
 bestowed on cultivating manual dexterity. We have but to 
 look at the children of the working-classes to see how stiff and 
 awkward are usually those limbs which will one day be called 
 upon to work for their bread. Unless the hand be exercised at 
 the beginning of life a great measure of its pliability is lost, 
 and the muscles do not acquire sufficient strength to be able to 
 satisfy the modern technical demands of all kinds. Pianoforte 
 players, sculptors, and other artists, know that it is only by 
 practice, carried on from their earliest childhood, that they can 
 attain perfect mastery in the technicalities of their arts. Edu- 
 cation should, therefore, begin with teaching the management of 
 material, or manual work, then go on to the transformation of 
 material, which constitutes art or industry, and finally lead up 
 to the spiritualization of material. Not time only, but much 
 tedious discipline also would be saved in late years if children 
 acquired a certain amount of mechanical dexterity by means of 
 their early games. 
 
 In his " Mutter u. Koselieder," too, Probe! has had regard to 
 the threefold character of relationship in which the individual 
 is bound to Nature, to Humanity, and to God, in which all his 
 other relationships are comprised, and which the human being 
 enters into at his birth. 
 
 All things whatsoever that surround a child are either pro- 
 ducts of Nature or of human culture, and have their ultimate 
 origin in Grod. Now, the child's relation to these things should 
 be conveyed to him with the utmost possible clearness and defi- 
 niteness, while, at the same time, the impression of unity and
 
 Earliest Development of the Limbs. 115 
 
 continuity, in which, as yet, everything appears to him, must 
 be preserved as much as possible. A child is not a divided 
 being at variance with himself and the universe, but a har- 
 monious whole one in his unconsciousness, and, therefore, 
 still innocent, and without any suspicion of discords or divi- 
 sions. 
 
 We have thus seen that the object of the " Mutter u. Kose- 
 lieder "is to bring out in the infant, during its unconscious 
 period, the points of contact at which its being passes into 
 relationship with Nature, with Humanity, and with God. By 
 means of little hand-games, accompanied by songs, its atten- 
 tion is directed to objects of nature and human industry, and 
 by a gradual process its mind is led up to the Creator of all 
 things. 
 
 Let us examine a few specimens from the " Mutter u. Kose- 
 lieder," and see how Frobel carries out his ideas.
 
 Ii6 A New Method of Education. 
 
 CHAPTER X. 
 
 THE CHILD'S FIRST RELATIONS TO NATURE. 
 
 must here, of course, take for granted that the essential 
 conditions of true education are at hand, and also teachers who 
 understand how to make use of these conditions. In the 
 streets of great cities, where many a child grows up to the age 
 of ten years or more without making any acquaintance with 
 Nature, without seeing anything of the life of fields and forests, 
 of the animal and the vegetable universe, Frobel's system of 
 education cannot possibly be applied (unless there are Kinder- 
 gartens within reach to supply the life of Nature), and the 
 human bemg must go without the most essential and natural 
 elements of its development. The Kindergartens should supply 
 to children the atmosphere of country-life which is of such 
 vital importance to them, and we feel assured that the day will 
 come when it will be considered disgraceful for a human being 
 to grow up without coming into contact with the glorious 
 world of Nature, where the breath of Nature's Grod breathes 
 with life-giving power. 
 
 When a child of about a year old is taken out of doors, the 
 things that first attract its notice are those that move. Move- 
 ment signifies to children life, and is what they first become 
 aware of. Hence the child's glance will at once be arrested 
 by a weather-cock, or any other object, moved by the wind, 
 
 THE WEATHER-COCK 
 
 is the name given to one of the first games for hand -gymnastics 
 in the " Mutter u. Koselieder." 
 
 The hand stretched out sideways with the thumb held upright, 
 represents the weather-cock, and the movement from one side
 
 Tkt, Child's First Relations to Nature. 117 
 
 to the other forms an exercise for the muscles which connect the 
 arm and the hand, and are the most important in all handiwork. 
 
 But, in order that it may fulfil the purpose of strengthening 
 the muscles, the movement must be uniform and regular. This 
 is not generally the case with ordinary nursery hand-games. 
 
 Children only really understand what comes into immediate 
 contact with them, and is, so to speak, part of their lives. No 
 amount of vague staring at weather-cocks, or any other object 
 swayed by the wind, will produce in them anything like a true 
 impression of a force which causes the movement ; but, if they 
 imitate it themselves by the voluntary action of their hands, 
 they will, after frequent repetition of the exercise, begin dimly to 
 realize the idea of an invisible force at work behind the visible 
 manifestation. 
 
 Position of the hand. 
 
 The motto of this game, addressed to the mother, is as 
 follows : 
 
 " Wouldst thou give thy child of outward things a notion, 
 Let it learn early to imitate their motion. 
 Thus in these things deeply ground it, 
 It will learn 
 To discern, 
 And to copy things around it. " 
 
 A. G. 
 
 SONG. 
 
 " As the weather- cock on the tower 
 Turns about in wind and shower, 
 Baby moves its hands with pleasure, 
 Round and round in merry measure. " 
 
 A. G. 
 
 If the action were not accompanied by explanatory words,
 
 1 1 8 A New Method of Education. 
 
 the child's intelligence and power of speech would not be 
 called out. 
 
 The next important step, viz., to connect the visible pheno- 
 mena of which the child has been made conscious, with an in- 
 visible cause, is easily taken. The mother, for instance, says : 
 The wind moves the trees, the mill, the kite, &c.," and then 
 asks, " Where is the wind ? " and when the child begins to look 
 about in search of the wind, she says : " The wind does all this, 
 but we cannot see. the wind." 
 Another game is called 
 
 THE SUN-BIRD, 
 
 and consists in reflecting the sun's rays through a bit of glass, 
 and letting them play on the wall. The mother or teacher says 
 to the child, " Catch the bird," and after he has made two or 
 three vain attempts to do so, she adds, " We can see the bird, 
 but it will not let us catch it." The child thus learns at an 
 early age that it is not only material possession that gives 
 pleasure, that beauty has the power to penetrate to the soul, 
 and to produce greater happiness than mere enjoyment of the 
 senses can afford. 
 
 The knowledge impressed on its mind in various ways that 
 material things cannot be laid hold of with all the senses, and 
 that their ultimate cause cannot be grasped at all, leads the 
 child at the very beginning of its observations from the idea 
 of matter to something higher than matter, and accustoms it 
 to reason from the visible world to a higher invisible one, and 
 to a higher power ruling in everything. It must be well under- 
 stood, of course, that at first children are only capable of receiv- 
 ing a more or less distinct impression of this truth. 
 
 But not the phenomena of the earth only, those of the heavens 
 also, the sun, the moon, and the stars, are made use of by Frobel 
 to convey to the child's mind a sense of the relationship of man 
 to the universe. And here he adopts the only possible means, 
 viz., awakening in the child a perception of the living bond 
 of union which connects everything together as a whole, the 
 power of sympathy and love. The child suspects as yet no
 
 The Child's First Relations to Nature. 119 
 
 divisions and contradictions in the world; his nearest surround- 
 ings, which speak to him as love, are for him the measure and 
 pattern of everything else. Neither has he any conception of 
 distance, but snatches at the far-off moon as at the flower close 
 to him. And this sense of the unity and continuity of the 
 outward world, which is the result of his own inward harmony, 
 or innocence, it must be our endeavour to preserve for him, and 
 not let the knowledge of conflicting forces open his eyes any 
 sooner to divisions and discords than growing self -consciousness 
 will sooner or later unavoidably do for him. The intuitive 
 perception in the child's soul of the oneness and unity of Grod 
 is after all the eternal truth, and all the warring and strife in 
 the more conscious lives of men and women only a passing phe- 
 nomenon of spiritual growth. 
 
 THE CHILD AND TEE MOON 
 
 is an example of the only intelligible way in which the great 
 universal harmony and concord of all created things can be 
 communicated to the child's mind, viz., through the idea of love 
 to himself. 
 
 SONG. 
 (To be said or sung by the Mother.) 
 
 " See, iny child, the moon's sweet light, 
 
 Up in heaven shining bright. 
 
 Moon come down, come quickly here 
 
 To my little child so dear." 
 " Gladly would I come and play 
 
 With you, but too far away 
 
 I live, and from my home above 
 
 I cannot come to those I love. 
 
 But I send my shining light 
 
 To make the earth you live on bright, 
 
 Just to please you, little child, 
 
 I look down with ray glance so mild ; 
 
 And, although I'm far away, 
 
 I watch with love your merry play. 
 
 You must promise me to be 
 
 Good and kind, and then you'll see,
 
 I2O A New Method of Education. 
 
 I shall often, often conie, 
 And look in at your happy home ; 
 And when my shining light you see, 
 You must wave a kiss to me. " 
 " Qoofl-bye, good-bye, dear moon, 
 Cmue back again right soon ! '' 
 
 Thus Frobel would have the natural phenomena of the 
 universe made use of as stepping-stones to higher knowledge, 
 and, above all things, by leading the child's observations in 
 gradual stages from created things up to the Creator, he would 
 make these phenomena the means of conveying to the child's 
 soul a conception of the highest Being. As he himself says, 
 " My system of education is based on religion, and intended to 
 lead up to religion." 
 
 The child's relation also to the world of plants and animals 
 will only become real and vivid to him if he has to do with 
 them himself, if from his cradle he has grown up among 
 flowers, and has not lacked animal playfellows, " his brothers 
 beneath him," as the French historian, Michelet, says. 
 
 Frobel would have liked to see hung up before the cradle of 
 every infant a bird in a cage, the movements and twitterings of 
 which would occupy the child's attention immediately on its 
 awaking, and prevent that idle brooding by which the weight of 
 the material world smothers the feeble spark of the spirit. Even 
 young babies should be brought into contact with all the elemen- 
 tary forces of nature which are those most closely related to its 
 own nature and for this purpose they should spend the greater 
 part of the day, when the weather and season allow it, in the 
 open air, where the voices of wind and water, colour, form, 
 and sounds of thousand-fold kinds, will be their first instructors. 
 Thus the senses will be trained and fitted for conveying to the soul 
 its earliest nourishment. Without cultivation of the senses culti- 
 vation of the soul is impossible. Too little distinction, however, is 
 still made between disciplined and undisciplined enjoyment of the 
 senses. Real, elevated, mental enjoyment can only be realized 
 through cultivated senses, and it is only by means of such 
 enjoyment that the delight in coarse gratification of the senses, 
 which is incompatible with human dignity, can be overcome.
 
 The Child's First Relations to Nature. 121 
 
 Children should be encouraged, also, to call around them the 
 chickens, pigeons, or other domestic animals at hand, and, whilst 
 they are scattering food before them, little songs may be sung in 
 which the modes of life of these animals may be described. 
 Children are not capable of intelligent observation of human life, 
 and can only understand the actions of human beings in so far 
 as they have any relation to themselves. The life of animals, 
 on the other hand, supplies them with hundreds of scenes in 
 which the rude primitive existence, out of which humanity has 
 developed itself, is reflected. 
 
 "THE FARM- YARD G-ATE " 
 
 is imitated by the position of hands and arms as represented in 
 the accompanying illustration, and the song that goes with it 
 teaches the names of the different languages of domestic animals. 
 
 THE FARM-YARD GATE. 
 
 What can this be ? A gate I see! 
 
 Oh ! come into the court with me ; 
 The horses are springing, 
 The pigeons are flying, 
 The geese are chattering, 
 The ducks are quacking, 
 The hens are cackling, 
 The cock is crowing, 
 The cow is lowing, 
 The calf is sporting, 
 The lamb is baaing, 
 The sheep is bleating, 
 The pig is granting ;
 
 122 A New Method of Education. 
 
 Closely shut the gate must be, 
 That none may run away, 
 But all in peace together stay. 
 
 A. G. 
 
 It is generally the sight of animals that first awakens in 
 children a desire for knowledge. With a little encouragement 
 and direction they will easily learn their names and chief 
 characteristics, and be led to observe their movements, habits, 
 manner of life, &c. ; they will learn how to manage and look 
 after them, and so get to love them, and know their value to 
 mankind. And all this knowledge will be a preparation for life 
 and intercourse in the world of human beings. If children have 
 early learnt to observe the endless differences that exist in the 
 conditions of animals, how all the separate species, varying in 
 their ways and requirements, live and flourish in different 
 elements and surroundings, they will not be so liable to fall into 
 the philistine habit of criticizing and condemning everything in 
 which their fellow-creatures differ from themselves the seeds of 
 wide-hearted toleration and love of justice will have been planted 
 in them. 
 
 All the different images and influences of nature produce 
 corresponding moods in the human mind. A landscape, smiling 
 in the sunshine, impresses the mind very differently from a 
 hurricane by the sea-shore, and the song of the nightingale pro- 
 duces a different effect from the croaking of owls. The young 
 child perceives at first only individual objects in nature ; the 
 thing which is occupying him at the moment is all that will 
 excite his attention or influence his mind. 
 
 To grown people and children alike impressions produced by 
 nature seem, more or less, the creation of their own souls, and 
 for this reason, that there is everywhere harmony between the 
 outward world and the inner nature of man, everywhere analo- 
 gies may be traced between the material and the spiritual world : 
 and how should it be otherwise when the Spirit which pervades 
 both these inter-dependent worlds is one and the same Spirit of 
 God? 
 
 To a song called " The Little Fishes," which is accompanied 
 by a finger exercise imitating' the swimming undulating move-
 
 The Child's First Relations to Nature. 123. 
 
 ment of fish, Frobel has affixed the following motto (which, 
 indeed, may be considered the key to all the songs in the 
 book), 
 
 " Where there's movement, where there's action, 
 
 For the child's eye there's attraction ! 
 
 Where brightness, melody, and measure, 
 
 Its little heart will throb with pleasure. 
 
 Oh ! Mothers, strive to keep these young souls fresh and clear, 
 That order, truth, and beauty, always may be dear ! " 
 
 Cleanliness and order in everything that relates to a child's 
 bodily wants will also influence the purity of its soul, just as the 
 delight in clear sparkling water, and all that is bright and 
 transparent, has more to do with the spiritual nature than the 
 bodily senses. " All things are parables" (Alles ist Gleichniss),. 
 said Goethe, when he wanted to express the analogy between the 
 world of outward phenomena and the world of thought and 
 ideas. The time will come when the whole symbolic language 
 of nature will be dear and intelligible to mankind. 
 
 It is not mere infantine curiosity which is at work when 
 children peer with eager eyes into a nest full of young birds. 
 The snug little home, in which the parent-birds nestle out of 
 sight with their young ones, is to the child a picture of its own. 
 home life, which he cannot form a distinct objective conception 
 of, until he has seen it, as it were, placed at a distance from 
 himself. His own parents arp too closely united with him, too 
 much part of his own life, for him to be able to form a right 
 idea of his relations to them. 
 
 A child of two or three years old, who tries hard to round 
 
 his little hands into the shape of a bird's- nest, singing all the-
 
 124 A New Method of Education. 
 
 while the little " bird-song," will be sure at tlie same time to 
 think of his own dear mother. 
 
 Two pretty birds built a soft warm nest, 
 
 In which together they may rest ; 
 
 Three round eggs in the nest they lay, 
 
 And hatch three young birds one fine day I 
 "Twit, twit, twit," the young ones call, 
 " Mother, thou art so dear to us all." 
 
 A. G. 
 
 Frobel uses this example, of the visible providence of parents, 
 to lead the mind up to the invisible providence of the all- 
 protecting Heavenly Father. The child is then taught to 
 observe either in real life, or in the pictures of the " Mutter und 
 Koselieder," how every little bird is taken care of in a special 
 way, how it builds its nest where it is safe from danger, and 
 where the food it requires is within reach, and that it builds 
 this nest, and hatches its young ones, at the time of year when 
 the unfledged little creatures will be protected by the warmth 
 of the Spring sun, and so forth. And then the mother, drawing 
 the child's attention to the fearlessness with which the little 
 birds lie quietly in their nest, waiting for the return of their 
 mother, who has gone to fetch them food, repeats these words : 
 
 "The heavenly Father's glorious sun 
 
 Warms thy home too and makes it bright, 
 He shines on thee and every one, 
 Look up and thaak him for his light." 
 
 And many other verses of the book point in like manner to 
 God's all -ruling Providence. 
 
 The child, who, at the age of two years, has imitated the 
 watering of flowers, in the hand-game called the " watering- 
 pot," when it is a year or two older, will delight in carrying 
 water to real flowers, and somewhat later on will tend its patch 
 of ground diligently, for its senses will from the very first, 
 have been awakened to the fact that all living things require 
 care and love, and that love must show itself in action. What- 
 ever children ^ave to take care of they learn to love, and,
 
 The Child's First Relations to Nature. 125: 
 
 through the care and attention bestowed on plants and animals,, 
 their feelings will be so enlarged and cultivated that in after- 
 life they will be capable of making sacrifices for the human 
 beings whom they love. 
 
 As every human instinct has its analogy in nature, so has-i 
 that instinct of which conscience is in time developed. If the 4 
 order and regularity of nature be rightly understood, and the 
 evil recognized which follows neglect or violation of natural 
 laws, the order of the moral world, transgression against which 
 constitutes sin, will be easily grasped. Just as every breach of 
 the laws of Nature speaks distinctly in the outward visible 
 world, so does the voice of conscience make itself loudly heard 
 within, when, by something unworthy of its higher destiny, the 
 laws of human nature are violated. 
 
 None but those who do not understand or observe the nature 
 and character of children, who have forgotten their own child- 
 hood, and have no feeling or love for nature, will consider it a, 
 piece of far-fetched absurdity, thus to interpret the earliest 
 games of children as the starting-point of the life of the soul,, 
 and the beginning of mental development. If the first play 
 and laughter of the infant had no connection with the last 
 deeds of the old man, how could we pretend to believe in any- 
 thing like continuity in human life, and man's inward develop- 
 ment ? Only when the idea of this continuity has been fully 
 grasped, when education shall succeed in preserving unbroken 
 the thread which connects the child with the youth, will the 
 man live and act to the end of his days up to the ideal of his 
 youth. And then only shall we see real men and women truly 
 great and worthy characters. 
 
 In an age like ours, when fresh advances must be made in 
 order, as far as possible, to heal the breach which has hitherto- 
 existed between man and nature and which was necessary for 
 the growth of human understanding and consciousness arid 
 to bring humanity and nature, by the conquest and spiritualiza- 
 tion of the latter, into a new bond of union, in an age when 
 natural science places itself at the head of all science, and 
 subdues to itself one department of life after another, a new
 
 126 A New MctJiod of Education. 
 
 .generation must not be allowed to grow up without receiving 
 its initiation in this temple of Divine revelation, and being fitted 
 to exercise wisely the sovereignty assigned to man over the 
 kingdom of Nature. And this initiation must take place at 
 the very commencement of life, through the teaching of the 
 symbolic language of Nature, which children's eyes can read 
 better than others. As humanity in the dawn of its existence 
 apprehended clearly the language of Nature, and heard in it 
 distinctly the voice of God, so in the thousand voices of Nature 
 does the child hear God speaking to it, and lofty truths are 
 the first impressions made on its soul. The rippling brook tells 
 him the loveliest fairy tales ; the vine-leaves swayed by the 
 summer breeze reveal to him the first secrets of beauty ; the 
 flowers greet him as brothers and sisters, and exchange 
 smiling glances with him ; the wind-chased clouds, painted by 
 the evening sun, shape themselves to his fancy into magic 
 pictures of an ideal world ; butterflies and insects speak to him 
 in a familiar language, and the birds gladden his heart with 
 poetry that is ever new. 
 
 In such a world of beauty and divine peace, the young heart 
 will so expand and strengthen as to be able later to endure the 
 turmoil and strife of the human world, will acquire force 
 sufficient to overcome all adverse powers, and gain an indomit- 
 able belief in the Divine Spirit, and an immutable trust in the 
 fatherly love of God. 
 
 "What God has joined together, let not man separate ! " says 
 Trobel with regard to man's " union with Nature."
 
 CHAPTER XL 
 
 THE CHILD'S FIRST RELATIONS TO MANKIND. 
 
 THE child awakens to life in its mother's arms, its mother is, so 
 to say, its own wider life. Without her care, without her looks 
 of love, existence would offer a sorry prospect to the young 
 new-comer. The mother must be her child's first mediator 
 with the world and mankind. 
 
 The physical union between mother and child, which still 
 continues for some time after birth, becomes gradually loosened, 
 and that first by the child learning to walk, which is the first 
 stage of physical independence. But even in this earliest 
 period of the child's life a certain degree of spiritual union, 
 between mother and child, must have been gained, if, with the 
 growing freedom and independence of body, there is to be an 
 increase of the mental union from which the mother derives 
 her chief educational power. Woe to the child who learns to 
 ran without ever, during its first exercise of this new freedom, 
 hurrying back in terror to his mother's loving arms ! To the 
 end of his life there will be a void in his soul, for the first love- 
 bond in his life was not knit closely and securely enough. But 
 if the hearts of mother and child are rightly fused together, 
 during the period of bodily union and earliest nurture, then the 
 physical emancipation of the child will work in the opposite 
 direction as regards mind and spirit : spiritual union will 
 increase with the child's consciousness of its physical indepen- 
 dence of its mother, with the development of its personality. 
 
 The first utterance through which the child expresses its 
 love-relationship to human beings, to its mother, is smiling. 
 The human heart alone is capable of laughter and tears, and 
 for the newborn infant this is the only language at command to 
 express its wants and feelings.
 
 128 A New Method of Education. 
 
 All relationships start from, one point, one object, and they 
 must first be firmly knit round this point before they can 
 bear to have their limits widened. Thus the mother should 
 be the central point round which the child's being revolves 
 at first, she should not allow any one else to have so much 
 to do with him as herself, in order that his heart may learn 
 to concentrate itself. A great deal of harm is still done in 
 this respect by nurses and other servants. The children of 
 wealthy parents, who are surrounded by numbers of attendants, 
 and handed over first to one and then another, frequently 
 grow up with weak unstable affections. 
 
 The natural sequence of human relationship for the child 
 is from the mother to the father, the brothers and sisters, 
 the grandparents, the more distant members of the family, 
 and the servants of the house; and after these come its own 
 playfellows and the friends of its parents. Very young 
 children are apt to cry, or, at any rate, put on a look of 
 alarm, if taken amongst a large company of strangers, and 
 this is simply because they cannot yet feel any connection 
 between themselves and people outside their own family, and 
 are, therefore, frightened by them. Everything strange and 
 unknown, unless it be led up to by gradual transitions, gives 
 a shock to the system. If the harmony of the soul is to be 
 complete in the future, the child's feelings must not be over- 
 strained at first, but the circle of his affections allowed to 
 expand gradually. 
 
 Hence it must always have a pernicious effect to take young 
 children out of the family circle, and set them in the midst 
 of a larger community, where no natural bonds of affection 
 can be knit.* Children who have been placed at an early age 
 in orphanages, or who have spent the first part of their lives 
 in a foundling hospital, will generally be found to have a 
 melancholy, listless expression of countenance ; they always 
 look as if something was wanting to them, however good the 
 arrangements of these institutions may be. Nothing can fully 
 
 * It is quite another thing to take young children (even during their two 
 first years) for part of the day to Kindergartens, for they will tliei'e be throwa 
 only with children, and will have companions of their own age.
 
 The Child's First Relations to Mankind. 129 
 
 take the place of the natural atmosphere of family-life which 
 has been divinely ordained for children, though at the same 
 time it is fair to acknowledge that orphan asylums do, to an 
 immense extent, compensate the little ones received in them 
 for the want of a mother's care and love. 
 
 " Father, mother, and child make up at first the whole human 
 being," says Frobel. The family is the first link in the organ- 
 ism of humanity, the first social community. And if this first 
 link be imperfect, how can the others hang together properly ? 
 
 If, on the other hand, this small circle, in which the starting 
 point of morality may be said to lie, does not in course of time 
 extend its horizon, exclusive family love would degenerate into 
 family egotism, of which there is already quite enough in the 
 world. In the Middle-Ages such exclusiveness was to a certain 
 extent necessary ; it had its justifications and its good results. 
 But in the present day the conditions of life are different ; and 
 family egotism, such particularly as exists among the aristocracy 
 and in the seclusion of country life, must be rooted out as a 
 remnant of feudalism if the love of humanity is to increase 
 and spreacl. 
 
 Hence children, when once they have become thoroughly at 
 home in the family circle have embraced all its members in 
 their affections must be introduced to a larger circle, whict 
 should consist chiefly of children of their own age. The face 
 of the youngest child will brighten with delight when it meets 
 another of the same size or age. An instinctive feeling of 
 sympathy arises where there is a similar degree of development, 
 just as in later life people of kindred minds become attached to 
 one another. The Kindergarten affords the best possible play- 
 ground for infants, even before their second year ; but it is essen- 
 tial that they should be accompanied by their mothers or nurses. 
 
 The hand-games in the " Mutter u. Koselieder" furnish also 
 the first introduction to the family relationships. 
 
 Almost everything that comes under a child's notice will 
 suggest to it these relationships, because they are the only ones 
 known to it. Its dolls are made to represent father, mother, 
 and children ; it plays at being father or mother with its little
 
 130 A New Method of Education. 
 
 companions. A child of two years old or so will cry out : 
 " Father and mother stars !" while gazing at two large shining 
 orbs in the heavens (see " Mutter u. Koselieder "). These and 
 a hundred other examples teach us what a prominent place this 
 most natural of relations occupies in the minds of children. 
 
 In one of the finger-games the child's fingers are made to 
 represent its parents, brothers, and sisters. 
 For instance : 
 
 This is the mother, dear and good ; 
 
 This is the father, of merry mood ; 
 
 This is the brother, strong and tall ; 
 
 This is the sister, beloved of all ; 
 
 This is the baby, still tender and small ; 
 
 And this the whole family we call. 
 
 Count them one, two, three, four, five, 
 
 To be happy and good they always strive. 
 
 In another game the fingers are counted and doubled down 
 one after the other into the palm of the hand, while at the 
 same time the names of the brothers and sisters and of the 
 child itself are enumerated : 
 
 To thumb now I say one ; 
 
 To index finger, two ; 
 
 To middle finger, three ; 
 
 To ring finger, four ; 
 
 At little finger five I number. 
 
 Now I've put them all to bed, 
 
 Pillowed is each sleepy head : 
 
 Let them rest in peaceful slumber. 
 
 A. G. 
 
 Counting is an inexhaustible source of amusement to little 
 children, as, indeed, may be everything that is of importance 
 for their development, if only it be presented to them in a suit- 
 able form ; and it is extremely easy to make the importance 
 of number intelligible to them by degrees, either with the
 
 The Cliild's First Relations to Mankind. 131 
 
 measure of music, or the rhythm of verse, or by giving them 
 a mimber of things to count. This little game also affords 
 opportunity for exercising children's power of self-control. 
 Nothing is more difficult to them than to stand perfectly still 
 Avithout making a sound or movement ; it is in vain that they 
 are bidden to be silent unless they are made to feel that 
 there is a reason for silence. But here is a game of which 
 they understand the meaning, and they will remain perfectly 
 motionless, with an expression of the greatest importance, for 
 whole minutes, and even a quarter of an hour, under the im- 
 pression that they must not wake the sleeping little ones. 
 
 From young children only very little must be expected, and 
 only a little at a time can be taken in by them. The smallest 
 efforts increased by degrees will lead up at last to the greatest 
 ones. 
 
 In another of the finger-games the fingers represent a flower- 
 basket in which the child carries flowers to its father, and thus 
 opportunity is afforded to the tiniest human being of expressing 
 its love in action. 
 
 The motto to this is : 
 
 "Seek your children's hearts to hold, 
 By all the means you can devise ; 
 Even their love for you may grow cold, 
 A plant that is not watered, dies." 
 
 Further on in the book we find two grandmothers visiting 
 each other with their grandchildren : this is an expansion of 
 family relations. The story connected with this game strings 
 together all the various objects which have hitherto served the 
 child as playthings in order to produce on its mind an 
 impression of the continuity and connection of all things. 
 
 Frobel says : 
 
 " Ein ganzes soil das Leben ihm werden, 
 Dies ist schon des Kindes Bestimrunng auf Erden." 
 
 " The child should grow into a full harmonious who'e, 
 This is, while yet on earth, the destiny of his soul." 
 
 It is one of Frobel's leading ideas, and one which recurs 
 
 K 2
 
 132 A New Method of Education. 
 
 again and again, to impress the unity and continuity of the 
 universe and of humanity on the child's mind in all sorts of 
 different ways. 
 
 If the modern mania for associations would extend itself to 
 associations of families, for the combined purpose of improving 
 education and of introducing greater community into it, more 
 good would be done than by all the associations for material and 
 industrial ends. The Kindergarten furnishes the best means for 
 this purpose by placing the beginnings of education among a 
 community of friendly families, each member of which has the 
 opportunity of using his endowments for the greatest good of 
 the young generation. 
 
 As in the case of adult individuals, of nations, and of 
 humanity, there are great and critical periods of development 
 which have a decisive influence on their careers or histories so 
 is it with the growth of children. It is such periods as these 
 that Frobel endeavours to point out and explain to mothers 
 in order that they may turn them to their destined use. The 
 greater the child's unconsciousness at the time, the stronger will 
 be the effect on its moral development of all impressions it may 
 receive. If these critical periods of growth were judiciously dealt 
 Avith, not too roughly interfered with, while at the same time 
 sufficiently watched and helped to make their work lasting, the 
 whole development of the character would receive a different 
 and a better bias. The most trifling incidents are of impor- 
 tance in childhood ; for the whole future life is influenced by the 
 impressions made then 
 
 For instance, Frobel looks upon the child's first fall as an 
 important event in his early development, and one of which the 
 full impression should not be disturbed. The child's confidence 
 in running arises from his being still ignorant of danger rhe 
 is like virtue which has not yet been tried ! He falls, and is for 
 the first time frightened out of the repose of unconsciousness. 
 The wise plan then would be to leave him to himself, not to 
 lift him up at once and overwhelm him with pity and lamenta- 
 tions, even though he should have hurt himself a little and 
 begun to cry. This first fright and pain will thus produce
 
 The Child's First Relations to Mankind. 133 
 
 their full impression on him, and foresight will be awakened in 
 Mm ; his self-confidence will no longer be a blind instinct, and 
 the necessity of acquiring strength and skill will become 
 gradually recognized. 
 
 Nothing makes people so superficial as being subject to con- 
 stant rapid successions of impressions, the one effacing the other, 
 and no lasting mark being left on the mind or character. The 
 present generation, in the rich and fashionable world especially, 
 affords ample proof of this. Rapid reading, rapid travelling, 
 enjoyments of every kind (even the noble pleasures of art and 
 nature) crowded one on the other, the hurry and bustle of 
 modern life generally, tend more than anything else to produce 
 superficiality, emptiness, and dulness. 
 
 So little thought has hitherto been given to the signification 
 of children's earliest play, that we cannot too often remind our 
 readers not to look for this meaning in the outward form of 
 their games, but in the fact that the utterances of children, 
 being the natural expression of their human nature, reveal this 
 nature in" its earliest beginnings. A considerable number of 
 examples from the series in the " Mutter u. Koselieder " is 
 necessary to make Frobel's theories quite intelligible, and we 
 shall therefore insert here several other specimens, in order that 
 ohe fundamental idea which guided him may be more thoroughly 
 grasped. 
 
 One of the well-known games often played with little children, 
 and which always causes them great enjoyment, is Bo-Peep. 
 Xow it is Frobel's theory that whatever invariably calls forth 
 expressions of delight from the little beings, and has become a 
 tolerably universal practice, has always a deep significance for 
 their deveJopment ; and he explains the never-ending delight 
 afforded by the game of Bo-Peep in this manner : that the child 
 through the momentary separation from its mother (viz., when 
 she is hidden by the handkerchief) becomes more conscious of 
 its dependence on her, and for this reason that nothing can be 
 realized, or made objective to the mind, except by contrast with 
 its opposite. But if the mother should neglect to evince her 
 joy at seeing her child again after being hidden from him, or
 
 134 A A T ew Method of Education. 
 
 should allow the child to remain hidden too long without looking" 
 for him and rejoicing at finding him again, a love of hiding for 
 its own sake may gradually be acquired, and thus the first step 
 taken towards the habit of concealment, from which falsehood 
 and deceit are not far removed. 
 
 Who could pretend to decide exactly where the first imper- 
 ceptible germs of evil in the human soul originate, and how they 
 show themselves ? The faintest gleam that promises to light up 
 the darkness of early psychology is not to be despised by the 
 educationalist, and Frobel has certainly penetrated deeper than 
 any one else into the earliest beginnings of the soul's life. Grood 
 and evil lie always close together, but Divine Providence can 
 ma'ke good come even out of evil ; and education should do its. 
 utmost to use the impulses which might lead to evil for the 
 promotion of good. With regard to the danger of the game 
 of Bo-Peep exciting in the child a love of concealment Frobel 
 says : " From the very point whence danger threatens to come, 
 help may come also as it always is in God's world if only 
 you, the mother, rightly understand how to turn to a right 
 account every impulse of your child's nature. Through the 
 outward separation, rightly used, the sense of inward union- 
 will be strengthened in the child. The great end everywhere 
 to be kept in view is the attainment of unity, and every 
 separation should be made to conduce to this end." 
 
 What is most essential for the later educational influence of 
 the mother is that in the very earliest period of her child's 
 development she should have succeeded in gaining its confi- 
 dence, so that, when the moment of the first fault (or " fall ") 
 comes, the child should not think of hiding itself from her. 
 But chis confidence can only be won by the mother's living in 
 the child's life, that is to say, playing with it, entering into every- 
 thing that occupies its little mind ; in short, understanding and 
 rightly directing its earliest utterances. If the first fault has been 
 committed, loving sympathy with the child's inward suffering, 
 while at the same time he is made to feel that it is to a certain 
 extent brought on by himself, will have more effect than any 
 scolding or punishment. That these cannot be entirely dis- 
 pensed with as the child grows older is of course understood 5
 
 The Child's First Relations to Mankind. 135 
 
 but the natural consequences of a fault are always its most 
 effectual punishment. The youngest child can tell at once 
 whether praise or blame is intended in a look, and if the 
 mother possess true educational tact she can do much in 
 this way. 
 
 This occasion of the child's first fault is of the greatest 
 importance, because it brings with it the first awakening of 
 conscience. 
 
 In order that he may learn to listen to this inward voice, to 
 catch by degrees its faintest whispers, and follow them obedi- 
 ently, the child must first have been accustomed to pay atten- 
 tion to a call addressed to himself. Frobel associates the first 
 attention to the mother's call with 
 
 THE CUCKOO GAME. 
 
 The child is hidden in its mother's arms or close to her, does 
 not see her, but hears her call, and is delighted by the sound 
 of her voice. If the child be constantly kept up to following 
 obediently the voice of his mother directing him to what is 
 good and right, he will also listen to the voice within him, and 
 not let it speak in vain. If the mother has made her call 
 dear to him by never requiring of him anything in opposition 
 to his childish nature or to his particular character, then he 
 will also love the call of conscience as the voice of God, and 
 this voice will accompany him through life as a guardian angel 
 and bind him to God. The same relation which exists between 
 the child and mother after the former has learnt to distinguish 
 his own will, and therewith his own personality from that of 
 his mother, will exist later between his individual inclinations 
 and the judicial or warning voice of universal reason speaking 
 to him through conscience. If love, loving obedience, and 
 trusting confidence prevail between mother and child instead 
 of fear of severity and punishments, there will be a possibility 
 in later life of that true virtue which follows the dictates of con- 
 science, not from cowardice and fear of compulsion (inward or 
 outward), but from free choice and out of love of right, and of 
 God. Whether a human being become a moral freedwan (within
 
 136 A New Method of Education. 
 
 the given limits) or a slave to his own and others' caprices, 
 depends to a great extent on the foundation laid in the earliest 
 days of his development. It is not how often or how seldom 
 he fails, but how he lifts himself up from his falls and atones 
 for the sins committed, that determines the moral worth of a 
 man. 
 
 In our days, when obedience to personal authority is growing 
 less and less, it is certainly of the utmost importance that 
 education should do all in its power to encourage obedience to 
 law. The child should be made to feel at an early age that his 
 parents and teachers are, like himself, subject to a higher Power, 
 in order that there may be early awakened in his mind the con- 
 ception of a moral order, to whose authority he will in time 
 have to submit. All the qualities of a child may, if not care- 
 fully watched, pass over into their opposites and degenerate 
 into faults. 
 
 The first characteristic with which education has to contend 
 is self-will. Without a certain amount of self-will the character 
 would never develop itself; for it is precisely out of self-will, 
 i.e., one's own will, that the resolution, the assertion of one's own 
 personality and opinion, in short, all that makes of human 
 beings morally responsible men and women, is developed. 
 
 The child's self-will is the perverted expression of his grow- 
 ing feeling of personality. This feeling is roused when some- 
 thing contrary happens to it, or something that it wants is 
 denied to it. Now if this something be a thing that he is justified 
 in wanting, something that has to do with a necessity of his 
 preservation or development, the child is in the right ; but if he 
 simply will not submit to some justifiable demand of his elders, 
 then he is in the wrong, and must not be listened to. For 
 instance, a child cries in its cradle for food, or from an instinct 
 of cleanliness, or any other justifiable prompting of its nature, 
 and is not attended to, and this neglect excites him to anger, 
 and his screaming is set down to self-will. In such a case the 
 mother or nurse is to blame. But if a child simply cries when- 
 ever it wants to be taken out of its cradle, it must not always 
 be humoured ; so that its will or determination may not degene- 
 rate into obstinacy or wilfulness. True, the child may be said
 
 TJie Child's First Relations to Mankind. 137 
 
 to be justified in requiring that which is agreeable to it. and 
 wishing to get rid of what is disagreeable ; as, for instance, lying 
 alone and unoccupied in its cradle. But then some occupation 
 should be provided for it in its cradle, and thus the reasonable 
 part of its demand be satisfied. 
 
 It is most essential that children should learn from the very 
 beginning to submit to the conditions of life, and even some- 
 times to do without what they are justified in wishing for, and 
 to bear what is unpleasant to them for the sake of others ; they 
 must be trained from their cradles to subordinate the individual 
 will to the community, and to sacrifice self out of love to 
 others. But these exercises in self-denial must not at first 
 extend to giving up anything really necessary to them, and 
 must never last too long. 
 
 There is no more difficult task in education than to strike 
 the right balance in this matter, on which the whole struggle 
 of human life turns ; avoidance of all that is disagreeable, of 
 all pain and sorrow, and striving after well-being and happiness, 
 are the two opposite forces by means of which Providence works 
 out our "whole development. Here, too, love, the highest 
 principle of morality, is the only one that can lead in the right 
 direction. Let children learn through love to give up their own 
 will to others ; this is the only right sort of obedience and that 
 which arouses energy for good, whereas obedience from fear 
 produces cowardice. The obedience of love begets reverence, the 
 noble desire not to grieve parents or others who are beloved, 
 and from it there will spring later a holy fear and reverence of 
 God. 
 
 In training children to obey, very little distinction is made 
 between right and wrong obedience. The child's will is too 
 often cowed instead of being guided and directed towards right ; 
 and this is the reason why so few human beings attain that 
 true moral independence without which the highest kind of 
 freedom, that of the virtuous man who rules himself, is iu^jos- 
 sible, and the inner kernel of the character can never fully 
 unfold itself. 
 
 Frobel lays down the following general rules. To satisfy the 
 child's demands as much as possible ; to be wisely indulgent ;
 
 138 A New MctJiod of Education, 
 
 not to command and forbid unreasonably ; and to allow the 
 child, as far as it can do so without injury, to teach itself by 
 its own experiences. 
 
 It would not be nearly so difficult to make children obedient 
 if people began in earliest childhood, and set to work in the 
 right way. Before egotistic inclinations, selfish impulses and 
 passions have yet been aroused and become obstacles in the 
 way, submission to law, which presents itself in the guise of 
 parental authority, is not difficult to the child if only he has 
 been inspired with a sense that nothing but his welfare and 
 happiness are thought of. 
 
 This applies also to animals, who know at once whether 
 harm or good is meant them. One glance at the human eye 
 is enough to inspire the animal and the little child with con- 
 fidence or distrust. It is only by patience and love that 
 animals can be trained, not by commanding and forbidding ; 
 and yet this latter plan is the one chiefly adopted with young 
 children, in spite of the proverb which says, " Das verbot nur 
 reizt." These then are the chief things to be remembered : That 
 love begets confidence; that only what is right and wholesome 
 should be required of children ; that all compulsion should be 
 avoided from the beginning ; that they should never be taxed 
 beyond their strength, and that everything that is disagreeable 
 to them should as far as possible be averted from them. 
 
 As they grow older, more and more may by degrees be exacted 
 from them, and sometimes even that which for the moment is 
 difficult and disagreeable, for love and trust will submit blindly 
 and conquer the individual will. 
 
 And as it is only in childhood that a firm basis of true obedi- 
 ence can be laid, so is it with all virtues which depend chiefly 
 on the formation of good habits and experience of their bene- 
 ficial consequences. It is therefore of the greatest importance 
 that this first period of childhood should be understood in its 
 minutest details and treated accordingly. 
 
 Another critical moment in the development of children, and 
 one which the " Mutter u. Koselieder " takes note of, is when 
 they first begin to observe that people aie talking about them
 
 The Child's First Relations to Mankind. 139 
 
 and criticizing them. Without the desire to gain the lova 
 and approval of others, the human being would be deprived 
 of his strongest stimulus in his endeavours after the good 
 and the beautiful. This desire kindles in the child as soon as- 
 he arrives at a distinct perception of his own personality. He 
 then begins to wish to be loved and praised by others, and it 
 depends on the right or wrong guidance of this instinct whether 
 it will develop into proper love and reverence, or into vanity 
 and ambition. 
 
 In the games " The Riders and the Good Child," and " The 
 Riders and the Sulky Child," Frobel endeavours to teach mothers 
 the right way of dealing in this respect, by making the riders 
 delighted with the good child, while they leave the sulky one 
 behind. Children must be made to feel that they are loved 
 for their good qualities, and not for their outward appearance- 
 They are too apt to hear themselves praised as the " pretty 
 child," the " beautiful child ;" to have their clothes admired, &c- 
 The attention of many mothers is exclusively taken up with 
 their children's dress. " What will people say if you make 
 your frock dirty, crumple your hat ? " and so forth, is the 
 ordinary talk of nurses. Thus the child grows up with the 
 idea that people pay more attention to its outward person, and 
 value it more for this than for its real merits. Outward appear- 
 ance is, indeed, the standard of the many. Whatever the- 
 children see their parents value or despise, they will value or 
 despise themselves. 
 
 If ever a time is to come when appearance shall no longer 
 rule the world, or at any rate when reality shall have a humble 
 place by its side, children must be supplied with a proper 
 standard at the beginning of life. Pride, vanity and bragging, 
 which beget folly and crimes of every kind, originate in the 
 early perversion of noble impulses which were implanted by the- 
 Creator for the purpose of striving after good. And as succeed- 
 ing generations inherit from each other sins and iniquities, so- 
 the virtues that have been cultivated in humanity, and whose 
 germs lie in the first motions of the child's soul, may also* 
 be transmitted. The whole problem of the development of 
 humanity consists in passing from semblance to reality.
 
 Method of Education. 
 
 The first step to moral development must thus be the 
 cultivation of the senses. Whether these become ministering 
 organs to the spirit or slaves to sensual enjoyments will to a 
 great extent be decided in childhood. 
 
 As the sense of taste is the first which pronounces itself in 
 the child, so his first desires are wont to be associated with 
 eating. Most children are little epicures, and it would be 
 unnatural if they were indifferent to this earliest pleasure 
 which their senses afford them ; but it is owing to bad bringing 
 up that so many children are remarkable for greediness, dainti- 
 ness, and excessive love of eating and drinking. 
 
 There is only one way of opposing a barrier against low 
 desires, and that is by developing a capacity for higher enjoy- 
 ments. We do not mean to say that coarse desires and passions 
 can be entirely rooted out by following Frobel's system, but 
 that the physical organs will in this way be directed to the 
 utmost towards spiritual things, and the higher part of human 
 nature made to counteract the lower the animal. The sooner 
 this work is begun, the more completely will it be carried out. 
 Hence Frobel requires of mothers that they should rightly 
 discipline their children's senses. 
 
 He recommends, for instance, that when children are at their 
 meals little songs should be sung to them, or else that some 
 animal, such as a dog or bird, should be at hand for them to feed, 
 in order that the work of the palate may not engage their whole 
 ^attention. He would also have children encouraged in the 
 practice of giving part of their food to others instead of enjoy- 
 ing it all to themselves. But then what is offered by the child 
 must really be taken if selfishness is to be counteracted, or he 
 will soon find out that his sacrifices are only pretended ones. 
 These distractions must not, however, be great enough to 
 deprive the child of all enjoyment of its food, for that would 
 have an injurious effect on the health. 
 
 This sense of taste must, moreover, to a certain extent be 
 cultivated, for all the senses are given by the Creator for a 
 distinct purpose, and require development, or cultivation, in 
 order that they may fulfil this purpose. 
 
 The child acquires its first capacity for distinguishing, through
 
 The Child's First Relations to Mankind. 141* 
 
 the sense of taste ; it is in this way that it first becomes in a 
 measure conscious of what is pleasant or unpleasant, beautiful 
 or ugly. And here, as everywhere, we find an analogy between 
 the world of the senses and that of the spirit. Frobel points 
 out how the word taste not only describes the functions of the 
 palate but also the result of a cultivated sense of beauty, and 
 thus connects the two facts together. The child exercises the 
 power of comparison when it notices the differences in the taste 
 of food, and if later he is to become possessed of taste in its sense 
 of a feeling for the beautiful, he must learn also to distinguish 
 between the more or less beautiful and harmonious, the suitable 
 and the non-suitable ; must be taught to shade and group 
 together colours, to weigh and measure sizes and forms against 
 one another, and so forth. Following out the idea that all and 
 everything may be referred back to one fundamental principle, 
 Frobel traces taste in its aesthetic sense to the development in 
 the child of the taste for food, and explains in this way the fact 
 of their common appellation. It need scarcely be said that 
 it is only the earliest germ of aesthetic culture that we are 
 here alluding to, and that for the development of the complete 
 fruit, training of the most diverse kind is needed. 
 
 One of the little songs in the " Mutter u. Koselieder " is called 
 the "Schmeck-Liedchen" (Tasting-song), and directs the child's 
 attention to the different tastes of different fruits the sweet- 
 ness of cherries as opposed to the acidness of currants and 
 apples, &c. 
 
 Owing to the misunderstanding of much that Frobel has 
 written and said, it has been occasionally supposed that he 
 assumed nothing but good qualities in every child. If this 
 were the case, what need would there be for education ? All 
 the normal faculties and dispositions would unfold of themselves 
 without disturbance. Any one who, like Frobel, has spent his 
 whole life in observing children from their very birth, cannot 
 be blind to the great differences which are seen even in the 
 youngest children differences not only of individual endow- 
 ment but of impulses and inclinations. Symptoms of the 
 degeneration of naturally right instincts show themselves even 
 at the earliest age. It is not only in the families of great
 
 142 A New Method of Education. 
 
 'criminals that the heritage of evil is transmitted from fathers 
 to children : the proverb " The apple does not fall far from, the 
 apple-tree,"* will bear universal application. 
 
 Care must, however, be taken to distinguish between what- 
 ever in the original dispositions is broadly and universally 
 "human according to the divine conception of humanity and 
 the individual characteristics of generations and individuals 
 which appear in the course of the development of mankind, and 
 whose purpose is never far to seek. 
 
 For the transformation of the savage or the natural man 
 into a cultivated being, there must of necessity be a 
 wrestling with inborn dispositions. Without obstacles which 
 call forth exertion moral development is unthinkable. At 
 present, however, very little is done to facilitate this struggle 
 by exercising the moral forces in the first period of existence, 
 as Fi obel recommends, by seeing to it that the play of children, 
 while satisfying in a natiiral manner their childish require- 
 ments, also conduces to their moral well-Leing and acts as a 
 pleasant stimulus to their whole nature. If happiness be 
 secured to them through good means through the right use of 
 their powers the utmost possible will have been done to prevent 
 their seeking it in wrong ways. Unused powers are almost in- 
 variably the first cause of evil. 
 
 The physical nature should not be kept caged and chained 
 -down like a wild beast, but should be ennobled by worthy 
 culture. Passions kept down by force and terror will only 
 break forth with greater ferocity Avhen free scope is allowed 
 them, like a tiger escaping from its cage. Passion it, force un- 
 controlled and not directed to its proper object ; and this force 
 ought not to be suppressed, but so ruled and disciplined as to 
 be converted into energy for good. In the human organism 
 nothing can be assumed to serve unconditionally and of neces- 
 sity a bad or unlawful purpose. Where this is the case it is the 
 result of some abuse, and to prevent such abuses as much as 
 possible is the problem in question. The original intention of 
 all the powers and dispositions implanted by the Creator can 
 only be to bring about good in one way or another. But if it 
 * " Der Apfel fdllt nicht weit rom Stamra."
 
 The Child's First Relations to Mankind. 143 
 
 is the destiny of the human being to attain to moral freedom, 
 there must of necessity be room for him to err, for the choice 
 between good and evil must be left to him. Were we so con- 
 stituted that we must of necessity choose what is good, we 
 should be no better than machines. Only free choice, and the 
 experience of the consequences resulting from our choice, can 
 raise us to the dignity of conscious existence, self-knowledge, 
 and moral freedom. 
 
 Faith in the final triumph of good over evil under God's 
 guiding providence in the world's development this was Frobel's 
 philosophy, as it was that of Herder, as it was and still is the 
 philosophy of thousands of other thinkers. 
 
 When the child has become thoroughly at home in his 
 immediate surroundings, his notice will begin to be attracted 
 by the industrial life going on around him by the different 
 pursuits of handicraftsmen. Many of the hand-games with which 
 he will already have grown familiar, are based on the move- 
 ments and turns of the hand customary in these occupations. 
 The chitd who has seen the various processes of planing, saw- 
 ing, threshing, grinding, &c., represented in his games, will 
 observe them in real life much earlier and with far greater 
 interest than other children who have never had their attention 
 drawn to them. 
 
 The child ought to be initiated into the different functions of 
 human life, and therefore, of course, into manual labour of 
 different kinds. The imitation of the movements of the hand 
 in different kinds of work may be said to be the child's own 
 first work, and at any rate trains his principal instrument of 
 work viz., his hand. These gymnastics repeated, every day at 
 fixed times, may also be treated as the first little duties of the 
 child, and so form the introduction to later more serious 
 duties, and the foundation of moral culture. 
 
 The imitative games given in the " Mutter u. Koselieder " 
 have for their object to draw the attention of children to the 
 different qualities of things, and especially to the pursuits of 
 human life. 
 
 In the game called " The Joiner," for instance (where the
 
 144 -A New Method of Education. 
 
 movement of the hand represents the action of planing) the 
 child's attention is drawn to the high and low sounds produced 
 in planing, by the alternate long and short drawing out of 
 the plane. The observation of this and similar facts will make 
 it easier afterwards to understand the general fact that form 
 and sound, and time and space, correspond to one another. 
 
 (A quick short movement produces high sharp tones ; a 
 movement slowly drawn out, low deep ones.) 
 
 A variety of examples of long and short, of great and little 
 objects, of longer and shorter intervals of time and the 
 different tones connected with them, will gradually prepare 
 the child's mind for the easier apprehension of this idea. 
 
 The motto to this game is : 
 
 ' That all things speak a language of their own, 
 
 The child right soon discovers ; 
 But little heed we what is quickly known : 
 Lav this to heart, ye mothers." 
 
 It is only by means of contrasts, or distinctly pronounced differ- 
 ences, that children can learn to know things individually, and 
 distinguish or compare them. In the example cited above, the 
 long and short sticks used by the joiner serve as illustrations 
 of the law of contrasts, just as a similar illustration is afforded 
 by the measure between long and high notes of music. But 
 Frb'bel does not leave these opposites or extremes isolated, and 
 expect the child to fill up the space between : the long and short 
 sticks are connected together by others of intermediate sizes, 
 and the same with the high and low tones of music. 
 
 This universal principle, the constant application of which is 
 the kernel of Frobel's method, is thus brought before children 
 in its simplest manifestation. If, in their earliest years, they 
 have already gained some idea albeit, a very limited one 
 of the law of opposites and their reconciliation through the 
 observation of the different properties of things, the same law 
 will be discovered by them later in moral qualities. As, for 
 instance, the story of David and Goliath, in which the conquest 
 of skill and mental culture over mere rude strength is de- 
 scribed, being connected with the game of " The Joiner," the 
 contrast between mental and physical greatness is exhibited.
 
 The Child's First Relations to Mankind. 145 
 
 The hand-game called " The Carpenter " (in which the posi- 
 tion of the hands represents a wooden house with a balcony) 
 is used by Frobel to teach mothers to make their children's 
 home dear and sweet to them by the love and happiness 
 which they find in it ; whatever the child experiences in its 
 parents' house, whether love and concord, or quarrelling and 
 
 disagreement, that will it bring to its own hearth. Here, in 
 the home of childhood, will the foundation be laid either for 
 love of home and domestic life, or of that craving for dissipa- 
 tion which seeks its satisfaction outside the home. But here, 
 too, may that family egotism be developed which is a hindrance 
 to the universal love of humanity. It is one of the most 
 sacred duties of parents, to represent in miniature, through the 
 divinely-ordained organization of the household and family 
 life, a picture of the organization of the State and of society, 
 into which the citizen should carry the lessons learnt in his 
 home. The lowliest hut may be a temple of humanity if the 
 different members of the family constitute a true human 
 organism, standing in living relations to the community and 
 the nation. Education of the right sort will elevate the 
 instinctive love of kindred into the spiritual love of humanity 
 of humanity in God. But it is only the sacred fire on the 
 altar of the home that can kindle this holy flame in the child's 
 heart. 
 
 One of the greatest and most universal delights of children 
 is to construct for themselves a habitation of some sort, either 
 in the garden or indoors, where chairs have generally to serve 
 their purpose. Instinct leads them, as it does all animals, to 
 
 r,
 
 146 A New Method of Education. 
 
 procure shelter and protection for their persons, individual, 
 outward self-existence and independence. When they have 
 installed themselves in a corner with a few bite of furniture of 
 any sort, they delight in fancying themselves alone in their 
 own dominion. The instinct of habitation in animals which 
 prompts the bird, on its return in the spring, to seek out its 
 old nest, becomes, in the human being, the love of home, out 
 of which sentiment springs the love of country. 
 
 Frobel says : " The whole after-life of the human being, with 
 all its deep significance, passes in dim shadowy presentiments 
 through the child's soul. But the child himself does not under- 
 stand the importance of these presentiments, these dim strivings 
 and forebodings, and they are seldom noticed or attended to by 
 the grown-up people who surround him. What a change there 
 would be in all the conditions of life, of children, of young 
 people, of humanity in general, if only these warning voices 
 were listened for and encouraged in early childhood, and 
 apprehended in youth in their highest meaning, and welcomed 
 as guardian angels. 
 
 Were this the case human beings would certainly understand 
 each other better, and, therefore, love each other more through- 
 out life, and hundreds of the best and ablest people would not 
 live and die misxinderstood. 
 
 THE GOAL DIGGERS. 
 
 Deep in the mine below the ground, 
 The collier men and boys are found ; 
 With strength and skill they work a* 
 To bring the coal to the light of day.
 
 The Child's First Relations to Mankind. 147 
 
 They carry it up that others may burn it, 
 
 And the smith at his forge to his use will turn it. 
 
 For how should we get a knife, spoon, or fork, 
 
 If these honest coal diggers weren't willing to work ? 
 
 With much care and labour they dig the coal out, 
 
 And their faces grow black as they turn it about. 
 
 Come, child, let us give these good miners a greeting, 
 
 For spoons and for forks which we use for our eating ; 
 
 And though with their labour their faces are black, 
 
 Their hearts no true goodness or kindness do lack.* 
 
 A. GK 
 
 This song is specially intended to teach the value of manual 
 labour, and therefore also the importance of the hand. Chil- 
 dren should learn to honour this member, which is a distinctive 
 mark of the human being, as a valuable gift of Grod, and to 
 take care of and cultivate it accordingly ; and the mothers should 
 inspire them with reverence for the roughest and dirtiest work 
 as being necessary for human society. She should teach them 
 to respect human beings of every condition, even the lowest ; if 
 they are faithfully fulfilling their duties ; and not, as is so often 
 done, represent chimney-sweeps, colliers, or any other labourers 
 who become blackened by their work, as objects of terror and 
 disgust. 
 
 It has been reserved to our age to ennoble work, and to show 
 that it is not a disagreeable necessity but an essential condition 
 of human life and dignity, and thus give the lie to the 
 prejudice which for centuries has governed the world, viz., that 
 work at any rate rough, bread-winning work is a disgrace ; 
 and idleness, the true sign of nobility and the happy privilege 
 of the upper classes. 
 
 But Education has a nobler work before her than even to 
 counteract this prejudice which, moreover, has already in 
 part been overcome ; she has so to train the rising generation 
 that they may be able to turn the mighty industrial impulse of 
 the present day to a higher and worthier end than mere material 
 gain and material happiness. With the increase of wealth, 
 leisure, and intellectual capacity, there should be a widening of 
 
 * The "Charcoal Burners" not being an English institution, I ventured to 
 alter the song. A. Q. 
 
 L 2
 
 148 A New Method of Education. 
 
 the spiritual horizon and a growth of moral power. Precisely 
 here, where lies the cause of so much of the immorality of 
 our day, may be found also the most effectual lever for the 
 upraising of mankind ; and it cannot be set working too soon. 
 
 How are greater honesty and uprightness ever to be infused 
 into trade and commerce if, from their very cradles, the children 
 of the people not only hear worldly gain and prosperity held 
 up as the highest attainable end of existence, but are even led 
 on by their parents, either by example or by direct injunctions, 
 to trickery and fraud of every sort ? The idealism which has 
 always been considered the special characteristic of Germany, 
 and has been held to extend even to a fault, is not found there in 
 over-abundance now-a-days in any class of society so thoroughly 
 has the mercantile spirit spread everywhere. Striving after the 
 real, in the most material form, fills up the whole existence of 
 the majority of people, and leaves no room for any higher aim. 
 
 Two of the hand-games which represent a MarJit-bude 
 (Market-booth) afford an example of how the child's attentior 
 may be directed at an early age to the negotiations of trade. 
 It is a bad plan to encourage children to expect that whenever 
 they are taken into a shop something will be bought for them ; 
 greed of possession is apt to be awakened in them in this 
 manner. They should be allowed to look round at and admire 
 all the various products ol human art and industry, and, if any- 
 thing does fall to their own share, it should be pointed out to 
 them how many different pairs of hands, and what a variety of 
 industrial machinery, must have been called into play for the 
 production even of a single article ; and how all human labours 
 fit into each other and combine together to produce the requi- 
 sites of material existence. Every object which calls forth their 
 admiration may be made the occasion of representing the dif- 
 ferent labours of human beings for one another as so many signs 
 of mutual love which, at any rate, is the ideal side of com- 
 merce. And with this idea is associated the duty of preparing 
 the child to take, one day, its own share in the common work 
 of humanity. 
 
 One of the greatest educational problems of the day consists, 
 undoubtedly, in finding out the right means of welding the
 
 The Child's First Relations to Mankind. 149 
 
 material life of every-day reality with the higher, spiritual 
 aims which stretch out beyond the short span of human exist- 
 ence. 
 
 We are approaching an age in which physical and mental 
 work will no longer go on side by side in complete separation, 
 but will be for each individual more or less closely bound 
 together. Manual labour requires, every day, more and more 
 culture and insight of mind ; science is daily entering into more 
 intimate fellowship with technical and industrial works. Per- 
 fect health of body, mind, and spirit is only conceivable if all 
 the powers and organs are set in activity, and a three-fold equal 
 division of exertion is therefore necessary. The precise mode 
 in which this reform is to be carried out matters little, the 
 important thing is that the young generation be fully prepared 
 to meet this and every other demand made by the regenerating 
 ideas of the present and the future. 
 
 One of the most effectual means of calling the ideal side of 
 human nature into play is early artistic culture ; and now-a-days, 
 when art and industry may be almost said to be as twin sisters, 
 a certain amount of this culture is necessary for all classes. 
 There are few trades, for instance, that do not require some 
 knowledge of drawing. Music, too, is penetrating more and 
 more into all classes. Bat in these, as in all other branches of 
 human culture, the first grounding is still very deficient, and the 
 immense amount of time consequently required in after years 
 in order to arrive at even a small degree of proficiency, shuts 
 out many, even among the gifted, from these arts. 
 
 In the " Mutter u. Koselieder," we find sign-posts pointing in 
 this direction also. 
 
 THE FINGER PIANOFORTE 
 
 is the name of one of the little hand-exercises in which the 
 fingers moving up and down represent the notes of the piano, 
 and the accompanying voice gives the scale and exercises on the 
 different intervals. 
 
 Motto: "Baby fain would catch the sound 
 Of the lovely things around,
 
 150 A New Method of Education. 
 
 For the spirit oft can hear 
 Sounds uncaught by mortal ear. 
 Early teach thy darling this, 
 Wouldst thou give him joy and bliss." 
 
 A. a 
 
 SONG. 
 
 Now a carol gay, 
 
 We on our fingers play ; 
 
 As each finger down we press, 
 
 Hear the tone of loveliness. 
 
 12345 54321 
 * La, la, la, la, la ; La, la, la, la, la. 
 
 1234 
 La, la, la, la ; 
 
 2345 5432 
 La, la, la, la ; La, la, la, la ; 
 
 4321 
 La, la, la, la ; 
 
 532 12 3 2 
 
 Baby's hands are small and weak ; 
 
 42123 43 
 'Tis so small it scarce can speak : 
 
 22435 43 
 Yet it always loves to play, 
 
 23 421321 
 Singing songs the live-long day. 
 
 A. G. 
 
 In addition to the simple songs which serve to awaken and 
 cultivate the sense of hearing from the very beginning of life, 
 Frobel also recommends little glass harmonicas on which chords 
 and simple melodies may be played to children. The chief 
 thing always to bear in mind is, that all impressions should be 
 gentle and gradual, and that no discordant noisy sounds should 
 startle the sensitive young organs. For this reason, the har- 
 monicas used by Fiobel are constructed in such a manner that 
 they produce soft tones. The noisy jingling and clapping of 
 keys and other articles with which children are wont to be 
 amused in the nursery, does not certainly tend to the develop- 
 
 * The numbers represent the notes and their intervals.
 
 The Child's First Relations to Mankind. 151 
 
 ment of a musical ear. The obnoxious articles known as chil- 
 dren's rattles might also with advantage be replaced by some 
 more melodious instrument. 
 
 Children are generally very fond themselves of trying the sounds 
 of different objects, and it is therefore a good plan to produce 
 melodious notes for them with all sorts of objects, and to draw 
 their attention to the different qualities of sound which different 
 materials produce. A number of exercises for the ear, on pieces 
 of metal and other materials, have already been introduced into 
 schools for little children with great success. 
 
 But here again the first music lessons should be learnt from 
 Nature.. In this great school the child should be encouraged to 
 listen to the rustling of the wind and water, the twittering of 
 the birds, the buzzing of the insects. In one of the illustrations 
 in the " Mutter u. Koselieder " may be seen in close .proximity 
 to a player seated at the pianoforte, a bird singing in a cage, 
 corn swayed by the wind, a humming beetle, and a buzzing bee. 
 One of the greatest singers of modern times (Jenny Lind) relates 
 that her musical talent first showed itself, when she was only 
 four years old, by her habit of sitting for hours at a time, as if 
 chained to the ground, imitating all the sounds of Nature which 
 she heard around her. In later years she could still reproduce 
 them all, down to the buzzing of gnats and flies, with the 
 greatest perfection. Humanity, in like manner, made its first 
 musical studies in the school of Nature, and the first pipe con- 
 structed of reeds served also to imitate the sounds of Nature. 
 
 By the connection of counting with musical notes the child 
 soon learns to perceive the analogy between number and sound, 
 and the regularity and system of all movement forces itself on 
 him, even if only as an indirect impression. 
 
 But though Frobel would have children surrounded as much 
 as possible by an atmosphere of music and harmony, it is very 
 far from his ideas to make of them precocious virtuosos, or to 
 give them a one-sided musical education, such as hundreds of 
 children are now-a-days plagued with, to the detriment of the 
 rest of their development. 
 
 Song must precede instrumental music, as coming more easily 
 and naturally to the child. The learning of notes, which is
 
 152 A New Method of Education. 
 
 always a torment to children, can be got over without any 
 trouble, and even in play, by the use of Frobel's method. This 
 consists in making the children mark down the notes as they 
 sing them with counters of the colours of the rainbow (like the 
 six balls of Grift I.), on a large ruled sheet. 
 
 The value of the notes will be very quickly learnt by means 
 of the large cube divided into eight little ones. When a whole 
 note has to be sung, the whole cube is left standing before the 
 child ; for two half-notes the cube is divided into two halves ; 
 and so on. There is no easier and more simple way of teaching 
 children what is otherwise so difficult for them to acquire, viz., 
 a conception of the value of notes. In the first games with 
 balls, too, the chord of colour (two primary colours and one 
 composite one) is connected with the musical chord, and there 
 are other exercises of the same kind. 
 
 In order to develop the ear in a natural manner it is neces- 
 sary, as, indeed, it is in all training, to begin in the simplest and 
 most gradual way : the little exercises for the finger-pianoforte 
 are a good example of the right mode of proceeding. The 
 finger-practice connected with these, and the hand-gymnastics 
 in the " Mutter u. Koselieder " generally, are by no means useless 
 in facilitating the mechanical part of all instrumental playing. 
 But they serve also to direct the child's attention early to the 
 art of music, and to stimulate the will and the desire to learn 
 it. The vocal exercises begun in the first years of the child's life 
 should be continued without interruption, unless considerations 
 of health make it impossible. All children, even musically 
 ungifted ones, may have their voices and ears cultivated to a 
 certain extent. It is often falsely assumed of people that they 
 are entirely without musical capacity, whereas their deficiency 
 in this respect arises really from the lack of any musical cultur< 
 or stimulus in their childhood. Musical geniuses cannot cer- 
 tainly be produced by cultivation any more than geniuses of 
 other kinds ; but every soundly-constituted child can be trained 
 to a certain c^gree of musical sensibility, and also to some 
 degree of technical proficiency. And it is most important that 
 all children should receive a greater or less amount of musical 
 trainmf, i order that in the absence of any other elevating
 
 The Child's First Relations to Mankind. 153 
 
 tastes, they may, at least, be capable of the enjoyment of the 
 art -which more than any other rouses the higher emotions of 
 the soul. 
 
 DRAWING 
 
 should be made one of the earliest occupations of children, for it 
 is the art in which they may the most easily become themselves 
 productive. There is scarcely a child who will not at a very 
 early age begin to draw shapes in the sand with his fingers, or a 
 piece of stick, or any instrument that comes in his way; or else 
 he will sketch with his fingers the outlines of tables, chairs, &c. 
 In this way he fixes objects more easily in his memory. 
 
 Frobel's plan for assisting the child's instinctive efforts in 
 this direction is to strew some sand on the table, or on a 
 wooden board, and then to guide the little hand in drawing the 
 outlines of things in the room ; in this way the child's eye will 
 accustom itself to compare the real objects with the outlines, 
 and to regard the picture as a symbol of the object. The hiero- 
 glyphics used in the earliest ages of civilization to convey ideas 
 were nothing more than outlines of things, from which by 
 degrees letters were developed. And with children, too, pictures 
 should precede letters, and drawing come before writing, that is 
 to say, outline drawing. A child's eye can at first only discern 
 the outlines of things, not the filling in and the details. In the 
 drawings of the ancient Egyptians, too, we find nothing but 
 outlines, and those generally straight ones ; there is very little 
 attempt at curved lines, which mark a higher development of 
 the sense of beauty. 
 
 Frobel's method of linear drawing, which forms one of the 
 chief occupations in Kindergarten, exactly meets this want, and 
 enormously facilitates the right apprehension of form, size, and 
 number. Before the child is able to draw with a pencil, little 
 stick s about the size of lucifer matches are given to it, and 
 with these it is taught to lay out the principal lines of different 
 objects. In this way its mind becomes stored with a variety of 
 shapes and images, and not only is the foundation thus laid 
 for later artistic culture, but, still more, Frobel's first principle 
 of education is carried oat, viz., " to train children through the
 
 154 -A New Method of Education. 
 
 encouragement of original activity to become themselves cre- 
 tive beings." His oft- repeated saying, " Let it be our aim that 
 every thought should grow into a deed," can only be realized by 
 humanity if indolence is as far as possible suppressed in the 
 cradle. The fact has not hitherto been grasped that even in the 
 cradle it is necessary to regulate activity ; still less has it been 
 thought possible to do this. Frobel's " Mutter u. Koselieder " 
 gives the clue to how it may be done, and it is for this reason 
 that the book has an important bearing on the whole of his 
 system, and that we have given it so much consideration. 
 
 Children should not be content with merely taking in and 
 thus collecting in their minds a confused mass of forms and 
 images which remain as useless as dead ballast. The impres- 
 sions that are received within should be reproduced without. 
 This, too, is what the child itself wishes to do, only it lacks the 
 means and the power. Any one who watches children looking 
 out of a window will see how eagerly their eyes follow the 
 people and animals passing in the street ; how they notice every 
 little detail of the opposite houses, of the carriages and horses, 
 of the dress of human beings. If a slate should chance to be 
 at hand a few strokes drawn on it will serve to represent houses, 
 animals, men and women, &c. ; or vivacious children will try to 
 imitate the movements they observe. The imitative instinct is 
 the first spur to activity. But even suppose the child to be sup- 
 plied with the necessary materials which most children are 
 not he will still be unable to reproduce the objects as he 
 would like because he cannot draw. He will soon grow tired of 
 making meaningless lines and scratches, and will give himself 
 up to staring vaguely out into the street; and his mind will soon 
 become so inert that he will scarcely distinguish one thing from 
 another. 
 
 This is one of a thousand examples of the little help and 
 encouragement that is given to childish activity, and of the 
 almost systematic manner in which natural quickness is stifled, 
 and indolence allowed to grow into habit and inclination. Ever- 
 lasting cramming, first through the eyes and ears, then through 
 the understanding learning, endless learning, is almost all 
 that is thought of ; doing is quite an unimportant matter !
 
 The Child's First Relations to Mankind. 155, 
 
 F rebel's plan, however, is quite the opposite one : he would 
 have nothing seen or heard, nothing learnt, without being in, 
 some form or other given out again reproduced and thus 
 made the individual property of the recipient. And he puts 
 before us the means of cultivating this artistic activity both by 
 early training in drawing and also in construction of all sorts.. 
 In his " Menschen-Erziehung " he says : " The capacity for draw- 
 ing is as much inborn in a man as the power of speech, for word 
 and symbol belong to each other as inseparably as light and. 
 shade, day and night, body and soul." 
 
 The balance between productiveness and receptivity is at pre- 
 sent completely upset, and requires to be re-adjusted. This will 
 be accomplished when Frobel's method has become recognized^, 
 and children are taught in their earliest years by means of 
 individual experience and production, and action is made the 
 foundation and the constant companion of learning; when,, 
 in short, children are made to act according to the rules of 
 morality before they can possibly know them ; instead of, as is- 
 universally the case at present, knowing the rules without being- 
 able to act according to them. 
 
 With the help of the above examples we have now gone- 
 through the principal relations in which the child stands to- 
 human society, viz., his relations to the family and household,, 
 to industry, to trade, and to art. 
 
 By means of the exercises of which we have given examples- 
 the general powers of thought are called into play, and thus 
 a foundation is laid for later study. By familiarizing children 
 with the relations of words, number, shape, and size in their 
 most elementary form, and by drawing their attention to the 
 causes of the effects perceived by them in Nature, and their own 
 surroundings (see examples in " Mutter u. Koselieder "), a way 
 is opened up for the later study of science as could not possibly 
 be otherwise done in the period of unconscious existence. 
 Nature, that is to say, the whole visible world and the impres- 
 sions it produces, is the basis of all science and all thought, 
 the first awakener of the desire for knowledge. Impressions 
 arouse observation, observation brings images before the mind
 
 156 A New Method of Edttcation. 
 
 and induces comparison, and from comparison result conclu- 
 sions and judgment. And let it be well remembered that it is 
 in early childhood that the strongest impressions are produced 
 on human beings. 
 
 Agriculture and the care of animals were considered under 
 the head of relations to Nature. 
 
 And now will any one still ask, " What does all this matter 
 to the young child ; who understands nothing whatever about 
 the relations of human life ? " Will mothers still be of opinion 
 that the meaning of nursery-rhymes and games is of little 
 importance so long as children are amused by them ? 
 
 Those who still think in this way have certainly not grasped 
 the leading idea of Frobel's educational theory, viz., that child- 
 hood, as embryo humanity, must express one and the same 
 nature in all its stages of development, however great the 
 difference in degree of development and in mode of expres- 
 sion. The child is the embryo man, i.e., is destined to attain 
 to conscious existence. Whatever human society has given 
 birth to in the course of its development must have existed in 
 embryo in its infancy States and Churches, and all the insti- 
 tutions and organizations of civilized life. These all appeared 
 at first in the crudest possible shapes in fact in childish 
 shapes ; and childhood in its " unconscious actions " can do 
 no more than express these beginnings of human existence, 
 just as all young animals exhibit in their gambols the mode of 
 life of their tribe. 
 
 Children, of course, do not and cannot understand the philo- 
 sophy of the " Mutter u. Koselieder," but the games and rhymes 
 produce on them impressions which rouse them to observation 
 of their surroundings. Children will always be receiving 
 impressions of some sort which will help to determine their 
 development, and it is the business of education so to regulate 
 these impressions that they may contribute to right and natural 
 development. 
 
 If this theory of the necessary continuity between the life of 
 childhood and that of manhood be not accepted, and the con- 
 sequent logic of making the first instinctive utterances the 
 etarting-point of education, Frobel's system must of course lose
 
 The Child 's First Relations to Mankind. 157 
 
 all its signification, and his ideas seem very far-fetched and 
 void of all connection with such little simple games as the 
 " Mutter u. Koselieder " and many other books of the kind 
 contain. Neither in such a case can there be any question of 
 a plan of education proceeding continuously from the begin- 
 ning of the child's life ; for if the beginning of life does not 
 correspond to the end if Nature, speaking through the child's 
 instinctive utterances, cannot be taken as a guide in this matter 
 we are left without any certain guide at all, or any starting- 
 point.
 
 a $8 A New Method of Education. 
 
 CHAPTER XTL 
 
 THE CHILD'S FIRST RELATIONS TO GOD. 
 
 TROBEL'S principle, that whatever is evolved in the course of 
 the development of any human being is inherent in the human 
 race and has its root in inborn dispositions, is also applicable 
 with regard to man's relations to the highest Being. The 
 belief in Grod, in the Divine, is also inborn, intuitive, and can 
 be developed in every child. As all spiritual development, all 
 consciousness, has to be evolved from dim undefined feelings 
 and sensations, so is it with the consciousness of Grod. But 
 also, as no faculty whatever can be developed without stimulus 
 from outside and without appropriate means, so with respect 
 to belief in Grod there must come both to humanity and to 
 childhood some communication, some revelation from without, 
 which shall convert the unconscious yearnings into conscious 
 -apprehension, supply a channel for the feelings, and give a 
 definite form to the vague intuitive faith. 
 
 But how can Grod reveal Himself to the young child ? Is this 
 possible in the first years of life ? It may truly be said that 
 "childish unconsciousness is rest in God," it is inseparableness 
 from Grod. But that which is inseparable from ourselves can- 
 not become objective to us, for we cannot place opposite and 
 outside us what is part of us. The child cannot take cogni- 
 zance of himself is not as yet a personality ; he is one with all 
 that surrounds him and that he is related to. Hence Frobel 
 says, " The child is at unity with Nature, with mankind, and 
 with Gfod." He lives still, as it were, in Paradise, as in the age 
 before discord had entered the world, before there was division 
 between man's outward and inward nature. He cannot be 
 expected to have anything like religion, for the essence of
 
 The Child's First Relations to God. 159 
 
 religion is striving after union with God, and we do not strive 
 after that which we already possess. But at the moment when 
 the child first sins against what is good, that is, against God, 
 the unconscious union ceases, and division or discord begins. 
 
 With nothing and nobody hi the visible world is the child 
 so closely united as with its mother, and therefore Frobel gives 
 as motto to one of the little games in the "Mutter u. Kose- 
 lieder" (the one called Kinder ohne Harm), of which the 
 accompanying illustration represents a mother praying by the 
 side of her sleeping children : 
 
 " Glaube dass durch gutes was du denkst, 
 Du zum guten friih dein Kind schon lenkst ; 
 Dass was sich in deinein Herzen regt, 
 Auch des Kindes Seele mitbewegt. 
 Und nichts Bess'res kannst du ihtn verleih'n, 
 Als im Einklang mit der Allbeit sein. 
 
 " Believe that by the good that's in thy mind 
 Tby child to good will early be inclined ; 
 By every noble thought with which thy heart is fired, 
 Thy child's young soul will surely be inspired. 
 And canst thou any better gift bestow, 
 Than union with the Eternal one to know ?" 
 
 The mother's moods communicate themselves instinctively to 
 the child : for instance, she is frightened by something, and the 
 child, without knowing the cause of her alarm, at once takes 
 fright also. This immediate rapport and connection between 
 them shows itself in the most different ways, and is at any rate 
 not more wonderful than the influence which the mother's 
 moral dispositions and affections exercise on her infant even 
 before its birth. In like manner may the mother's piety affect 
 the character of her child both before and after its birth. 
 
 "The most delicate, the most difficult, and the most impor- 
 tant part of the training of children," says Frobel, " consists 
 in the development of their inner and higher life of feeling and 
 of soul, from which springs all that is highest and holiest in 
 the life of men and of mankind ; in short, the religious life, 
 the life that is at one with God in feeling, in thought, and in 
 action. When and where does this life begin? It is as with
 
 160 A New Method of Education. 
 
 the seeds in spring : they remain long hidden tinder the earth 
 before they become outwardly visible. It is as with the stars of 
 heaven, which astronomers tell us have shone for ages in space 
 ere their light has fallen on our eyes. 
 
 We know not, then, when and where this religions develop- 
 ment, this process of reunion with God, first begins in the 
 child. If we are over-hasty with our care and attention the 
 result will bo the same as with the seedling which is exposed 
 too early and directly to the sun's heat, or to the moisture 
 of rain. If, on the other hand, we are behindhand, the con. 
 sequences will be equally fatal. 
 
 What then must education do ? It must proceed as gently 
 and gradually as possible, and in this respect, as with all 
 other .kinds of development, work first only through general 
 influences. As the child's physical condition is healthily or 
 injuriously affected by the badness or goodness of the air 
 which it breathes, so will the religious atmosphere by which 
 it is surrounded determine its religious development. 
 
 Example does not work only like so many facts or actions 
 inciting to imitation : quite young children cannot understand 
 these facts; as such, they have no relation to them and no 
 ineaning for them, and in most cases they are not able to 
 imitate them. But the character of their surroundings will 
 act, as it were, magnetically upon them, the influence of 
 moods and affections will pass directly into their souls. 
 
 How, then, at this tender age can religious feelings be cul- 
 tivated ? Music will always find its way to the human 
 spirit, and will produce impressions even on quite little 
 children. Children, savages, and, indeed, all uncultivated 
 human beings, are much more easily moved to cheerfulness 
 by lively music, and to earnestness by serious music, than 
 are more reasonable and thinking people, who do not give 
 themselves up to every passing impression. Divine service 
 without music would be very cold and barren. Almost 
 every one must occasionally have experienced the power of 
 fine church music, or of the simplest chorale on an organ, to 
 rouse him out of even the most irreligious mood, or to stir 
 in him a spirit of devotion. And in the same way influences
 
 The Child's First Relations to God. 161 
 
 may be brought to bear on young children which shall at any 
 rate correspond to their dim innate sensations, which are the 
 precursors of religious devotion. Frobel recommends mothers 
 to sing choral melodies to their children on their going to sleep 
 and on their awakening. To sing children to sleep is already a 
 universal custom, but there should be a more frequent use of 
 sacred music, whether in singing or in playing on an instrument, 
 such as the harmonica, which Frobel recommends. 
 
 Next to the influence of music comes that of gesture and 
 expression, the earliest of all languages, and, therefore, that which 
 appeals most readily to children. Gesture is the direct expres- 
 sion of the soul's mood ; animals, savages, and children, who 
 are incapable alike of dissimulation and of self-control, invari- 
 ably make use of this language. Frobel would havo the 
 gesture which is expressive of inward collectedness, viz., the- 
 folding of the hands, applied to children when going off to 
 sleep as soon, that is to say, as their little hands are capable 
 of the action. Prayer is the highest expression of the inner 
 gathering up of all the powers of the soul, and demands the 
 deepest concentration of spirit, and the outward symbol or 
 gesture of folding together the hands, which are now no longer 
 to be occupied with external things, is in true correspondence 
 with the inner meaning. And here again Frobel's theory of 
 the analogy between physical and spiritual activity is borne 
 out. 
 
 At first the mother should pray at her children's bedside as 
 they go to sleep, and as soon as they themselves can speak they 
 should repeat the prayers after her. Bat if this exercise is not 
 to degenerate into a mere parrot-lik* repetition without under- 
 standing, the child must be able to concentrate its spirit, and 
 the words of the prayers must be in close relation to the 
 child's experiences and feelings. The mother should be able to 
 
 M
 
 A New Method of Education. 
 
 draw out these feelings. She should recapitulate to him, for 
 instance, when he is lying in his little bed, and all around is 
 quiet and peaceful, the pleasures and the blessings which he has 
 enjoyed during the day, and excite in him a feeling of gratitude 
 towards all those who have contributed to his happiness, and 
 finally lead his mind up in thankfulness to the great Griver from 
 whom all good things come. In such a mood as this, the simple 
 words, " Dear Father in heaven, I thank thee ! " will be a real 
 prayer. 
 
 If the child has been guilty of any naughtiness during the 
 day the recapitulation of all the little events of the day will 
 help him to detect how he came to commit the fault, whatever 
 it may have been. The sorrow expressed by his parents at his 
 naughtiness will make him unhappy, and when the mother 
 says : " You have grieved us, your parents, very much, but you 
 have grieved your Heavenly Father much more ; you must pray 
 to Him for forgiveness, and ask Him to help you to be a better 
 child," the childish petition for forgiveness will be a true prayer, 
 a real motion of the spirit. Frobel relates of one of his pupils, 
 a boy of five years old, that as one evening he (Frobel) was 
 saying his prayers with him, the boy asked him to repeat another 
 prayer, in which were the words, " when I am naughty, forgive 
 me, &c.," and that when he came to this passage, the child's 
 voice trembled, and became scarcely intelligible, thus showing 
 plainly that he was conscious of some naughtiness committed 
 during the day. 
 
 If only more pains were taken in education to cultivate the 
 right and sensitive feelings of children, or at any rate not to put 
 out of tune the pure tone of their conscience, how great might 
 be the gain to morality ! 
 
 There is scarcely any way in which greater harm may be done 
 than by allowing the holy name of God to be desecrated on 
 children's lips through meaningless babbling, as in the mechani- 
 cs I repetition of prayers learnt by rote, which is part of the 
 order of the day for children. It is hoped that children will be 
 made pious in this way, but the very opposite result is produced, 
 for it becomes a habit with them to approach their Maker 
 through outward forms only, without that inner uplifting of the
 
 The Child's First Relations to God. 163 
 
 soul, that outpouring of the heart before God, which alone 
 constitute true and effectual prayer. 
 
 Modern charitable institutions, those especially in which the 
 religious element is made the principal one, fail most lament- 
 ably in this respect. All reasonable people are fully aware that 
 Bible history, the book of Genesis, the Ten Commandments, the 
 Catechism, and all dogmas whatsoever, are entirely beyond the 
 comprehension of children between the ages of two and six. 
 Nevertheless, in the majority of such institutions all these sub- 
 jects are taught to young children, and though it is true that 
 an attempt is made to treat them in a childlike manner, it would 
 be better if it were realized that in no form whatever can they 
 be made intelligible to young children. 
 
 The idea which most often unconsciously lies at the root of 
 this practice is that the relations of the human race to God, and to 
 the highest things, should be presented to the child in historical 
 sequence (that of a monotheistic philosophy, moreover, be it 
 noted) from the creation of man to his redemption by Christian 
 truth. That in this way the child will become acquainted with 
 the continuity of human development in the past and the present. 
 And all this must be done because the development of children 
 corresponds to the development of the human race. 
 
 Now this is the very idea, as has over and over again been 
 pointed out, which forms the pivot of Frobel's whole system ; 
 but he has discovered a system by means of which the child is 
 prepared for future understanding of religion, and by which his 
 own religious feelings are awakened. And this is all that is 
 possible in early childhood ! Instead of presenting children, 
 in the old-fashioned way, with a completely formulated system 
 of truth, Fiobel aims at awakening and cultivating their organs, 
 so that with the help of fitly corresponding impressions from 
 without, religious belief and aspirations may grow and develop 
 in their souls ; in no other way can religion ever become a real 
 possession, a distinct and living conviction. 
 
 I once heard Frobel say : " If the Creator of the world were 
 to say to me, ' Come here, and I will show to you the mysteries 
 of the universe : you shall learn from me how everything hangs 
 together and works ; ' and, on the other hand, a gmin of sand 
 
 M 2
 
 1 64 A New Method of Education. 
 
 were to say, 'I will show you how I came into existence,' I 
 should ask of the Creator to let me rather go to the grain of 
 sand, and learn the process of development from my own 
 observation." 
 
 In these words Frobel's deepest conviction is expressed, that 
 it is only by his own individual activity and exertions, rising 
 gradually from the least to the greatest, that man himself can 
 be developed. 
 
 It is high time verily that religion should come to be looked 
 upon as the inalienable property of each human being, as, indeed, 
 beseems the full-grown and conscious soul, if the irreligiousness 
 of our day is not to increase and spread. And whence springs 
 this want of religion but from the fact that the majority of 
 human beings bring with them out of their childhood nothing 
 more than a religion learnt by rote, which, owing to the want 
 of understanding of its dogmas, kills instead of giving life. 
 
 One example from a pauper institution out of hundreds that 
 might be given will here suffice to show that children do not 
 understand the religious instruction that is imparted to 
 them. 
 
 It was the evening of Christmas Day, and the festival was 
 being celebrated, as usual, with a Christmas-tree. The children 
 were all assembled together, and a considerable number of 
 parents and of patrons of the institution were also present. 
 After the customary singing out of hymn-books, little adapted 
 to the children's capacity, stories of the birth of Jesus Christ, 
 of the adoration of the magi, of Christian doctrine, of the 
 sacrificial death of Christ, &c., were related to the children, 
 and printed questions were asked them to which they gave 
 answers learnt by heart. Then a little girl of five years old 
 was mounted on a chair to represent the mistress, and a learned 
 disputation, got up by heart, was carried on between her and 
 the other children, in which the doctrine of redemption through 
 the death of Christ, the proofs of the divine truth of the Bible, 
 the sinfulness of human nature, &c., &c., were discussed. At 
 the end of the proceedings I asked a child of four years old, 
 Whose birthday we were celebrating ? and received at once the 
 answer, " I don't know." I then asked the same question of f>
 
 The Child's First Relations to God. 165 
 
 child of six, who answered doubtfully, " My birthday, mother's 
 birthday," and seemed trying to guess whose birthday it could 
 be. To a variety of questions relating to the subjects which 
 they had just been hearing and talking about, which I asked 
 of the elder children, the answer, "I don't know," was almost 
 always given with great inquiring eyes ; or else something so 
 utterly wide of the mark that it was easy to see they under- 
 stood nothing at all of what had been said. During the whole 
 proceedings the children were either half asleep, or else restless 
 and inattentive, and taken up with admiration of the Christmas 
 tree and its load of pretty things. We shall have a word or two 
 to say later, as to the manner in which Frobel would have 
 this festival turned to account for children. 
 
 It stands to reason that we do not intend to find fault with 
 such of the hymns, narratives, and prayers used in these institu- 
 tions as are adapted to the stage of development of the children. 
 To all such Frobel has given a place in his Kindergartens. 
 
 Nor is it our intention to criticize this or that tone of religious 
 thought which may give its colour to education, but simply to 
 draw attention to the unnatural mode of proceeding as con- 
 trasted with Frobel's thoroughly natural system. 
 
 The most striking proof that he has hit upon the right plan lies 
 in the fact that all sensible mothers who have either thought for 
 themselves or been gifted with a strong and true educational 
 instinct have long acted on a similar one. Were it not that 
 such mothers form a very decided minority, Frobel's instructions 
 might be considered superfluous. But no more than in the 
 political world one would think of assuming that a few good 
 sovereigns and reigns made laws and constitutions un- 
 necessary, can a few rational and gifted mothers do away 
 with the necessity for principles and methods of education. 
 Wherever unerring management or administration, and universal 
 application is in question, the thinking, conscious mind must 
 draw up a code of rules ; a right code for education can only 
 be arrived at by deducing from the nature and character of 
 children a systematic plan capable of application in all direc- 
 tions. 
 
 No psychologist has yet made the child's soul the subject of
 
 1 66 A New Method of Education. 
 
 such profound research as has Frobel, nor so closely drawn the 
 parallel between the childhood of the individual and that of 
 humanity ; it is due to him, therefore, that even the smallest 
 details should not be cast aside as useless rubbish until their 
 inner meaning and principles have been sufficiently tested. 
 
 In considering the first relations of the child to Nature we 
 pointed out how the impressions and the observation of Nature 
 should lead him up to the Creator. In the chapter headed 
 " The Child's Utterances," we glanced at the analogy which 
 exists between the religious awakening of the child and that of 
 infant humanity. By all the impressions that come to him 
 through Nature, whether pleasing or terrifying, delightful or 
 awe-in'spiring, the undeveloped human being is unmistakably 
 pointed to a Higher Power on which his existence depends. The 
 language of Nature responds to that inner yearning of the soul 
 which compels man to search for the Author of his own being 
 and of everything that he perceives around him. This acknow- 
 ledgment (at first only a vague foreboding) of God as the 
 Creator, or the revelation of God in the visible world, must not 
 only precede the recognition of God in the historical develop- 
 ment of humanity, it must also be experienced by the child. 
 Children have no point of comparison whereby to connect the 
 narrative of the history of creation with the knowledge of the 
 Creator. Neither are the unaided impressions which they 
 receive for themselves from the free life of Nature sufficient. 
 The only way in which they can be led to know God us Creator 
 is through their own occupations in Nature, thiough the culti- 
 vation of the soil, on a miniature scale in short, through per- 
 sonal activity and experiences, as humanity in the beginning of 
 its existence found out God. 
 
 The following example taken from a Kindergarten will help 
 to illustrate our meaning. Two little girls of four and five years 
 old shared between them a flower-bed in the Kindergarten, and 
 in this bed they, like the rest of the children, had sown a few 
 peas and beans. Day by day they would grub up the earth 
 with their little hands in order to see why the seeds did not 
 come up. With disconsolate faces they used to look at their
 
 The Child's First Relations to God. 167 
 
 little neighbours' beds, where tiny green seedlings were seen 
 peeping above the ground. It was explained to them that if 
 they wished for the same result in their beds they must leave 
 off raking up the earth and wait patiently for the seeds to ger- 
 minate. And now on their daily visits to their gardens the chil- 
 dren might be seen exercising patience and self-control, while 
 refraining from grubbing the earth up. At last one morning 
 they were found kneeling down by their flower-beds and gazing 
 with wonder and delight at a few little green blades. 
 
 This process of the vegetable world had already gone on 
 frequently under their eyes, but hitherto unnoticed by them, 
 because they themselves had not taken the personal part in it 
 of sowing and watching. It cannot be often enough repeated 
 that in early childhood nothing will make a lasting impression 
 in which the child itself does not, in some way or other, take 
 an active part, in which its hands are not more or less brought 
 into play. And it is chiefly for this reason that Frobel's hand- 
 gymnastics are of such importance. Children always require 
 practical demonstration, material proof, to enable them to 
 apprehend abstract truth. The truth does not thereby cease 
 to be abstract and spiritual ; scientific truths proved by physical 
 experiments must still be apprehended by the mind, although 
 through the medium of the eyes. The more truths of every 
 kind are presented to children in a corporeal or symbolic form, 
 so much the greater will their power of spiritual or abstract 
 apprehension be in after years, for they will have vivid images 
 in their minds, and not merely a stock of statements learnt by 
 heart. Again and again we must repeat that in early childhood 
 all instruction which is conveyed solely in words is as good as 
 thrown away. The human mind in the first stage of its develop- 
 ment must have concrete demonstration; ideas must be presented 
 to it in visible images. 
 
 The universal mind of humanity developed itself in like 
 manner. Before understanding and learning could extend to 
 details and thus become exact science, it was necessary that the 
 influences of the surrounding world should awaken general 
 conceptions, which reproduced themselves outwardly in broad- 
 featured pictures and forms, and in the whole mode of exist-
 
 1 68 A New Method of Education. 
 
 ence; as, for instance, in the allegorical world of gods and 
 demi-gods, in the mythology of the Greeks and Romans. Not 
 till the mind of humanity had matured itself could it grasp 
 the pure abstract idea of the universal, of God in the soul and 
 in truth. 
 
 The two children at their flower-bed found themselves face 
 to face with a wonder of Nature ; only yesterday there WES 
 nothing visible, and to-day numbers of little green leaves were 
 sprouting above the ground. The following dialogue ensued : 
 " You see, now that you have waited patiently, the seeds have 
 come up ; or was it you who made them grow ? " The children 
 exclaim " No ! " " Who, then, has done it ? " " The good 
 God." " Yes, the good God made the sun shine so that the 
 earth became warm, and warmed the seeds ; and then He sent 
 dew and rain to soften the earth, and the soft, damp earth 
 softened the hard seeds so that the little germs could push 
 their way out as you saw had happened to several of those 
 that you took up out of the ground. The good God has done 
 this to give you pleasure, as He does in so many other ways. 
 Will you not try to give Him pleasure, too ? How can you do 
 it ? " The children answered, " If we are very good," and the 
 youngest one exclaimed, in a tone of the deepest conviction, 
 " I will do something to please God ! " 
 
 Later in the day, when the children were employed in plait- 
 ing strips of coloured paper, and one after another mentioned the 
 names of the people for whom their works of art were intended, 
 this little one replied to my question, " For whom was hers 
 destined ? " "I am going to give mine to God ! " However 
 trifling this incident may seem it was an entirely spontaneous 
 expression of child-nature, and serves to show how easily the 
 higher emotions may be awakened in children by means of 
 material facts. For the development of religion the teaching 
 of visible phenomena must come before that of words; the 
 Creator must first reveal Himself in His visible works before 
 He can be apprehended as the invisible God of our spirits. 
 
 The majority of children, especially in pauper institutions, 
 are never encouraged to observe Nature, indeed, scarcely ever 
 have a chance of receiving impressions from Nature ; would it
 
 The Child's First Relations to God. 169 
 
 not contribute far more to their religious development to take 
 them ont into the fields and lanes, or even only into a garden, 
 and show them the Creator in His works, than to weary them 
 with histories of the creation, of the fall of man, and all such 
 narratives and instruction as it is customary to present to 
 children, even in some of their games ? 
 
 The preceding remarks apply to the earliest years of child- 
 hood. A little later on it is desirable to teach children so much 
 of the Bible history as is suited to their capacity ; and this is 
 done in Kindergartens. 
 
 But until they can form for themselves some conception of 
 what history is, viz., a continuous series of events in human 
 life (both of individuals and nations), until then nothing more 
 must be communicated to them from the history of mankind 
 than broad simple facts which are in direct affinity with their 
 powers of observation. As with their affections so with their 
 understanding, they can only start from themselves ; everything 
 outside them must be associated with their own experiences ; their 
 own little past history with the events that mark it is the only 
 standard they can go by. But this must be made objective 
 for them they must see it represented in pictures, and 
 we must make clear to them their relations to events and 
 objects. 
 
 This it is that Frobel aims at in his " Mutter u. Koselieder," 
 which he intended to be the first Story and History Book for 
 children i.e., the history of their own short past. The illustra- 
 tions contain scenes which occur in the life of almost every 
 child or, at any rate, will occur if Frobel's system be followed. 
 As, for instance, a child catches sight of a weather-cock ; it is 
 put into its bath ; it feeds the chickens ; picks flowers ; looks 
 at a bird's-nest ; watches different handicrafts ; plays the hand- 
 games with its brothers and sisters, or little friends ; sings little 
 songs or draws pictures in the sand ; its mother prays by its 
 bedside ; takes it out shopping with her, &c., &c. 
 
 The history of a child's own little life is easily fastened on 
 to these and such like pictorial representations. " That's a 
 picture of you," one may say to him : " there you are going
 
 170 A New Mcf/iod of Education. 
 
 with your mother to see a bird's-nest, or a poor woman, or the 
 coalman in the wood ; " and so forth. The most marked fea- 
 tures of the child's life, which, according to Frobel's idea, 
 should be fixed in the mother's mind, must be woven into the 
 pictures. The frequent repetition of these little events, in 
 which all the members of the family, all the people and things 
 known to the child, find their place, and in which constant 
 reference is made to God's fatherly love and care, will give the 
 child, by degrees, a picture, on a scale suited to his powers 
 of apprehension, of the little bit of life that lies behind 
 him. 
 
 " Let a clear picture of their past lives," says Frobel, " be 
 given to children, let them learn to see themselves mirrored in 
 it, and when they are grown up the light which illumines the 
 way behind them will help them to see clearly the road that 
 lies before them ; childhood will be seen to be a connected part 
 of all the rest of life, and a distinct conception of the childhood 
 of humanity and of its connection with the rest of history will 
 be possible." 
 
 In this manner there will be a real progression from the near 
 to the distant. The child's mind will easily pass on from its 
 own little history and that of its family and surroundings to 
 the history of its nation, which must first be presented to it in 
 its broadest facts, embodied in single marked personalities. 
 Not until the mind has been led out of the present, first into 
 its own past and then into that of its race and people, will it 
 be in any measure prepared to be introduced to the history of 
 the childhood of humanity as presented to us in the Old Testa- 
 ment. Children can quite well wait till they are eight or nine 
 years old to begin this study. 
 
 What other idea is there at the bottom of this more or less 
 traditional custom of making sacred history the principal sub- 
 ject of instruction in childhood, than that of connecting the 
 facts of Divine revelation first with the history of the human 
 race and then with that of one nation the Israelites ? But 
 even on the supposition that there is anything in the child's soul 
 to which these universal ideas and truths, gradually laid hold 
 of by the human race, correspond, the events of a distant past,
 
 The Child's First Relations to God. 17 1 
 
 which, however much affinity they may have with the child's 
 nature, because themselves the outcomes of a childish age, appeaiy 
 nevertheless, in unfamiliar form and garb these events, I say, 
 cannot be made in the least intelligible to children until their 
 mental capacities are so far developed as to enable them to 
 compare unfamiliar facts with those that are familiar to them 
 in their surroundings. The fact is, that without giving the 
 matter any thought, people assume an inner conscious life in 
 the young child which is impossible at this early period of ex- 
 istence. But this inner life must, little by little, be cajled forth, 
 in order that in it the child may find the point of contact 
 between himself and the history of his race, in which the Divine 
 revelation is pre-eminently embodied. This revelation must 
 have appealed to the squl of the child itself before the most 
 important point of contact with the universe can be felt. 
 
 The moment of such an inner revelation is like a flash of 
 lightning, a holy shower of emotions, which cannot be called 
 up at will, and which is generally hidden from every eye. An 
 influence of Nature, a great joy, or the first anguish of the 
 soul, a look, a word, a mere nothing, will often recall it, and it 
 disappears again like lightning ; but the impression has been 
 made, the Divine revelation has taken shape in the child's soul. 
 For example, a child of three years old who was being ill-used 
 by its nurse wanted to complain to its mother, but the latter- 
 being absent the child exclaimed : " Father in heaven, tell 
 her ! " This was, perhaps, its first cry for help to God. 
 The injustice of man drives the human soul to seek a higher 
 refuge. 
 
 All that education can do in this respect is to furnish oppor- 
 tunities and means of preparation for this sacred moment, and to 
 see that its impression be not effaced. For this purpose Fi 61 el's 
 educational system, the beginnings of which are contained 
 in the " Mutter u. Koselieder," is specially adapted ; there is- 
 scarcely a single song in the book which does not, indirectly, 
 at any rate, point to God as the all-loving and all-protecting 
 father. The child's physical, mental, and spiritual natures ;ire 
 all fused in one, and must, therefore, be nourished with food- 
 suited to this threefold nature.
 
 1/2 A New Method of Education. 
 
 The "Mutter u. Koselieder," for instance, makes use of the 
 .game Brod oder Kuchen backen " Baking bread or cakes," 
 in the following sense. When the child goes through the 
 action of baking he is told that the baker cannot bake the 
 bread unless the miller has ground the flour; that the miller 
 cannot grind the flour unless the farmer brings him corn, and 
 that the farmer will not have any corn unless Grod makes it 
 grow, <fec. Every little incident can be used to refer all things 
 to God as their first cause. 
 
 Yes, every occupation which fixes the child's attention forms 
 part of the general preparation for that closest kind of atten- 
 tion which we call concentration, and without which religious 
 devotion is impossible. And because the attention of young 
 -children cannot be kept fixed for any length of time unless 
 their hands are also employed, every one of the hand-employ- 
 ments in Frobel's system helps at the same time to cultivate the 
 power of concentration. 
 
 And all work, too, all exercises which awaken the active 
 powers which form the capacity for rendering loving services to 
 fellow-creatures, will help to lay the groundwork of religion in 
 the child. The awakening of love goes before that of faith: he 
 who does not love cannot believe, for it is love that discovers 
 to us the object or the being worthy of our faith. Loving 
 self -surrender to what is higher than ourselves to the Highest 
 of all is the beginning of faith. But love mast show itself in 
 deeds, and this will be impossible unless there be a capacity for 
 doing. A child can no more be educated to a life of religion 
 and faith without the exercise of personal activity than heroic 
 deeds can be accomplished with words only. 
 
 The religious difficulties of our day will never find their solu- 
 tion till Christianity has been made a religion of action as well 
 :as of profession, and to effect this we need a generation trained 
 ior Christian action. 
 
 If we consider what in point of fact is done during the first 
 :six years of life to promote religious development we are 
 obliged to confess, either nothing, or else, we may almost say, 
 worse than nothing:.
 
 The Child's First Relations to God. 173 
 
 Now this period of the first six or seven years is regarded not 
 only by Frobel, but also by many other educationalists before and 
 after him, as the one in which the germs of all knowledge and 
 action, i.e., of the whole of civilized human life, are set. Art 
 and science cannot be practised before the requisite organs have 
 been called into play. So long as the child is incapable of any 
 higher sensations than those which relate to his immediate wants,, 
 of any degree of inner concentration, or of the slightest effort 
 to lift himself out of and beyond what most closely surrounds 
 him, so long there can be no question for him of religious prac 
 tice, of devotion and self-surrender to the Highest. That for 
 which the child has yet no organs of reception does not even 
 exist as far as ho is concerned. And while this is the case, of 
 what use would it be to him to know every syllable of Holy 
 Writ and all the commandments of the world ? We might as 
 well at once adopt the method of a certain sect of Christian 
 fanatics, who place Scriptural pictures before the cradles of 
 children only a few months old, and read out to them the cor- 
 responding passages from the Bible, with the idea that the 
 infants will thus be early initiated into the truths of Christian 
 revelation. 
 
 The only grain of truth at the bottom of all these customs is- 
 just what Frobel has fastened upon and turned to a right in- 
 stead of a mistaken use : viz., that the sensitiveness of young 
 children to impressions from their surroundings should be made 
 use of to assist in their development. 
 
 We have already seen what are Frobel's ideas with regard 
 to the religious training of children, what importance he at- 
 taches to the use of simple sacred music, and to the mother's 
 example of reverence and devotion ; how he would have the 
 prayerful spirit awakened by the symbolic gesture of fold- 
 ing the hands, and prayer itself taught as soon as speech be- 
 gins, to which the singing of hymns should soon follow ; and, 
 added to all this, how much he relies on the hallowing influence 
 of impressions from Nature combined with suitable illustrations 
 from the lips of the mother or other guardians. 
 
 Is not this enough during the first five or six years of a 
 child's life ?
 
 T74 A New Method of Education. 
 
 Some people, no doubt, will think this too much, but to such 
 we can only say that whatever nourishment the child's own 
 nature, physical, mental, or spiritual, requires, it must be good 
 for it to have, and it cannot have too soon : and any one who 
 rightly understands observing children will not fail to discover 
 amongst their other wants a necessity for the knowledge of God, 
 and this necessity, being the highest of which the human soul is 
 capable, should before all things be satisfied. 
 
 On the other hand, there are those who will require some 
 more direct and positive allusion to Christianity and Church 
 worship and doctrines. Now, although all people in any degree 
 acquainted with the nature of children must allow that during 
 the first six or eight years there can be no question of any real 
 apprehension of doctrinal religion, that whilst the development 
 of the organs is still going on, nothing more can be done than 
 to awaken religious feeling and implant purely elementary 
 and general conceptions, at the same time the youngest 
 children cannot fail to be influenced by the doctrinal tendency 
 -of their surroundings ; and here the matter should be allowed 
 to rest during the first six years at any rate, for the soil 
 must first be prepared before the seed can germinate. The 
 Kindergarten system dispenses with all doctrinal teaching and 
 confessions of faith, and if we look at God's method of dealing 
 in the education of mankind, do we not see that there 
 was a gradual preparation of the world for the reception of 
 Christianity ? 
 
 At the same time, we would not be understood to say that all 
 direct allusion to Church matters and (in Christian families) to 
 Christianity, should be entirely excluded during these first few 
 years. Frobel's " Mutter u. Koselieder " is intended to embrace 
 the germinal points of all human culture, and Church worship 
 and doctrine cannot, therefore, be altogeth or ignored in the book ; 
 but in this, as in many other cases, the allusions are so slight 
 that to outward observers they are almost imperceptible, and 
 are only truly intelligible to those who see clearly the connection 
 between the little and the great, between the physical and the 
 spiritual in the human soul, as clearly and distinctly as Frobel 
 saw through the mind and spirit of the child.
 
 The Child's First Relations to God. 175 
 
 The example in the " Mutter n. Koselieder " which first directs 
 the child's attention to Church worship is called " 
 
 THE CHURCH DOOR AND WINDOW. 
 
 Motto : Where harmony in unison is shown, 
 Alike in form and tone made known, 
 The infant mind doth readily embrace it, 
 And in its deepest mysteries doth trace it. 
 To guide thy darling's earliest perception, 
 Of this high unison to form conception ; 
 And thus of joy to catch the brightest gleams, 
 So hard a task will not he as it seems. 
 Yst, for thyself, in all thy works take care, 
 That every act the highest meaning bear ; 
 Thus shalt thou lead it to that haven bltst, 
 Wherein its infant heart shall be at rest ; 
 And nought can e'er deprive it of the benison, 
 Of being ever with itself in unison. 
 If this belief thou to thy child impart, 
 It aye will thank thee with a joyful heart ; 
 Think not 'tis yet too young this truth to prize, 
 Within its little heart a magnet lies, 
 Which, draws it on to union's highest joys, 
 And shows how severance sweetest bliss destroys. 
 \Youldbt thou unite thy child for aye with thee, 
 Then let it with the Highest One thy union see. 
 
 A G. 
 
 SONG. 
 
 Behold this window of clear glass, 
 Throngh which the blessed liaht doth pass, 
 And see the high -arched door b^low, 
 Through which into the church we go. 
 Bui ihi'ge who fain would enter there, 
 Must come with reverence arid car*,
 
 A New Method of Education. 
 
 For all that deeply moves the heart, 
 
 Within these sacred walls has part ; 
 
 Here all our high desires are stilled, 
 
 Our deepest longings are fulfilled ; 
 
 We hear of God, so good and true, 
 
 And of the blessed Christ-child too ; 
 
 And those dim yearnings are made plain, 
 
 Which oft with wonder fill your brain ; 
 
 When you behold the heavens wide, 
 
 Or in your parents' love confide. 
 
 And you, my child, shall go one d^y 
 
 To hear the deep-toned organ play : 
 
 Lo, lo, la ; la, lu, lu, la ! 
 
 While of bells the joyful -peal 
 
 Doth unceasing joys reveal J 
 
 Ding, dong, bell, 
 
 Ding, dong, bell. . 
 
 Through our ears it moves our hearts, 
 
 Oh what gladness it imparts ! 
 
 La, lu, la ; La, lu, la, la ; La, lu, lo. 
 
 A. a. 
 
 The mother, with her two or three-year-old infant on her lap, 
 sits at the window on Sunday morning, points to the church 
 which the people are flocking into, and makes the child repre- 
 sent with his hands the shape of the church window. She then 
 sings to him the above chorale, at the end of which the pealing 
 of hells is imitated. 
 
 T'he following example will show that something like a devo- 
 tional mood may really be produced, even in so young a child, 
 through the influence of sacred music, and of its mother's frame 
 of mind. 
 
 In Frobel's room one day there were assembled a number of 
 children between the ages of one and a half and four years, all 
 busily occupied with the Kindergarten gifts. A visitor who 
 chanced to come in ventured to question Frobel's assertion, 
 that a feeling of reverence could be called up in even the 
 youngest of these children. In order to prove his statement, 
 Frobel called on some of his older pupils to sing the chorale 
 given above, and it was curious to see how one after another 
 the children put down their playthings and listened to the 
 music with wide open eyes, and an expression of almost holy
 
 Tlie Child's First Relations to God. 177 
 
 reverence on their little countenances. Now it is certain that 
 no result of the kind is ever produced by the kind of religious 
 instruction which is so common in institutions, and even in 
 families, and which, with the best desire to produce piety, only 
 tends to make sacred things wearisome to children. 
 
 As is signified in the motto annexed to the "Church 
 Window," Frobel sees the first direct expression of the child's 
 religious instinct in its eager desire for fellowship. In the 
 chapter on " The Child's Utterances " it was pointed out that the 
 irresistible impulse of children to hasten to any spot where they 
 see a number of people collected together in earnest consultation, 
 or where a crowd is assembled for a common object, is only part 
 of the strong necessity of their nature to be in sympathetic 
 union with those around them. It is, so to say, a surrender of 
 their being to something outside their own personality, to a 
 universal power which is beginning to make itself daily felt in 
 their souls. And what else is true religion but a complete 
 surrender of self to the Highest Being ? 
 
 It is, however, necessary that the Being to whom one thus 
 surrenders one's self should be loved. Before a child can love 
 the invisible God he must love visible human beings. For 
 the child, as once for humanity, God must become man ; and 
 this must first be through the child's parents. The first condi- 
 tion of all religion is that we should come out of the narrow 
 circle of egotistic self-love ; and therefore love for its parents, 
 as the first representatives of God, is for the child the beginning 
 of love for God. 
 
 In all primitive religions sacrificial offerings play a principal 
 part, and it is because the offerings signify the giving up of 
 self, of the personality. If the child is made to feel the conse- 
 quences of such surrender in the piety of its parents and others, 
 in their manifest union with God, the unconscious union of 
 his own inner life with the Highest will gradually develop into 
 a greater or less degree of consciousness. His own dormant 
 religious faculties will awaken if he sees similar faculties 
 actively expressed by those around him. 
 
 Children thus brought up in a truly religious atmosphere, 
 accustomed to refer every duty fulfilled towards man, every
 
 178 A New Method of Education. 
 
 service of love, every trifling action of daily life, to God as the 
 highest power, who requires of us good in every shape, such 
 children will when they are grown np make their lives a con- 
 tinuous active expression of Christian love, and not merely carry 
 Christianity about on their lips as is too often the case at 
 present. 
 
 First, then, God must become more or less objective to the 
 child through Nature, and then He must be personified for him 
 in man. 
 
 Just as mankind needed the personification of the Divine in a 
 complete and perfect man whom it might follow as its pattern 
 and ideal, so the child needs a personal example. But a full- 
 grown perfect being, such as Christianity recognizes in Jesus 
 Christ as man, cannot serve as a pattern for children. They 
 must have placed before them an ideal suited to their stage of 
 development a Divine Child. Hence Frobel would have hung 
 np in Kindergartens and in nurseries pictures of the child 
 Jesus on his mother's lap, in the Temple, &c. All the good 
 qualities of children he would have associated in their minds 
 with the Holy Child, and whenever they do wrong he would 
 have them reminded that when Jesus was a child he was always 
 obedient, thankful, loving, and so forth. 
 
 In this way, by means of the facts and events of their own 
 lives, inward and outward, associated always with Jesus 
 as a child, children will acquire a perfect living ideal of 
 childhood by which they will become accustomed to measure 
 themselves, and with the aid of suitable Bible narratives 
 they will be gradually and naturally initiated into the centra) 
 truth of Christianity of God made manifest in man without- 
 having their understandings bewildered with dogmas, which 
 can only be grasped by the mature mind. Ideas of which the 
 child can form to itself no conception are worse than useless 
 to him, for they hinder the clearness of his mental vision 
 and thus act injuriously on his development. 
 
 Pictures and facts appeal to the childish imagination, and 
 Frobel would have the religious instruction of children based 
 also on this principle. For this purpose he revived the oid
 
 TJie Child's First Relations to God. 179 
 
 custom of exhibiting to children on Christmas evening a 
 pictorial representation of the birth of Christ. Middendorf 
 used often to tell how impressive this festival was wont to be 
 at Keilhau, when at the end of the long room, filled with 
 brightly-lighted Christmas-trees, and presents of all sorts for 
 the children, a transparency would all at once appear, repre- 
 senting the birth of the Divine Child surrounded by green pine 
 branches; how Christmas hymns most of them written by 
 IVbbel himself were then sung ; and how Frobel used him- 
 self to fetch the poor women of the village with their youngest 
 children, so that these too might, as he used to put it, have 
 a " distinct impression " of the meaning of Christinas. To 
 the older children it was explained in simple language that 
 this festival was to remind, people of the birth of Jesus Christ, 
 who had redeemed them from sin and error and brought back 
 great happiness to the world. 
 
 It all depends upon the manner in which religious impressions 
 are conveyed to children whether they Avill have a sacred 
 influence on them in the present, and be a blessed recollection 
 in the future. 
 
 The profound truths of the Gospel are far beyond the com- 
 prehension of children, but for this very reason the preparation 
 of their minds to receive them later cannot begin too soon. 
 All truths which take shape in the world are the blossoms of 
 plants whose seeds were sown thousands of years ago, and 
 have gone on germinating for centuries before they could 
 spring up in the mind of humanity and bear flowers and fruit. 
 And the same process which has gone on in the life of humanity 
 goes on in that of the individual, beginning in infancy. All ideas 
 and conceptions, and, therefore, also all religious conceptions, 
 have their origin in the first impressions made on the senses, 
 in the first childish imaginations, the first observations and 
 comparisons of objects in the outer world. All the faculties of 
 the soul must be cultivated up to a certain point if the human 
 spirit is to become capable of union with the Divine Spirit. 
 
 Our hopes for a new and living conception of Christianity 
 rest on our children. If we can only preserve to them the fresh-
 
 180 A New Method of Education. 
 
 ness and simplicity of their early innocence, their hearts will 
 remain open to the pure and childlike spirit which breathes in 
 the writings of the Old and New Testaments, and Bible truths 
 will no longer be to them as petrified fossils of a bygone age. 
 [f they have grown up in loving fellowship and community, 
 which is the true church for children, they will be able to 
 carry out the deepest meaning of the Gospels, viz., the brother- 
 hood of men, and the conception of Divine humanity and 
 human divinity will become a reality to them. 
 
 The right form of a church service for children has yet to be 
 discovered, but the Kindergarten meanwhile offers all the 
 necessary elements for the purpose. The churches of grown-up 
 people are certainly not the places for children. If momentary 
 feelings of devotion are produced in their minds by the general 
 stillness, the music, the number of people collected together, 
 these cannot last, and are quickly followed by distraction 
 and weariness, for the service is too long for the children's 
 powers of attention and beyond their understanding. 
 
 And this does not only apply to children before the age of 
 ten ; even at a later age their powers of religious apprehension 
 are not on a level with those of grown people. A boy of eleven 
 years old, on being once asked what was the subject of a sermon 
 he had just heard, answered, "The reconciliation of Christ," 
 because the preacher had frequently alluded to the work of 
 reconciliation When the boy was further asked the meaning 
 of this word, he could not answer at all. 
 
 So it is in the majority of cases : children's minds are 
 crammed full of expressions with which they connect no meaning. 
 
 We give as a last example from the " Mutter u. Koselieder '' 
 the hand-game called 
 
 THE FOOT-BRIDGE. 
 
 Motto : "Let thy child in play discover 
 How to bridge a chasm over. 
 Teach it that human skill and strength 
 Will alwajs find some means at length 
 Things most widely severed to connect 
 Uuion, where it seemed most hopeless, to effect."
 
 The Child's First Relations to God. 181 
 
 SONG. 
 
 Along the meadow flows a brook, 
 
 A child stands by it with longing look ; 
 
 He sees bright flowers on the other side, 
 
 But can't get to them the stream's so wide. 
 
 " On your back, take me over," he cries, to a duck, 
 
 "Those lovely flowers I want to pluck ! '* 
 
 Then up came a man with a wooden plank, 
 
 He laid it across from bank to bank ; 
 
 Safely along it the Httle boy ran, 
 
 Crying "Thank you, oh thank you, you kind clever man !' 
 
 If by such and similar examples children have been made 
 to understand the meaning of connecting together, or recon- 
 ciling, things that are separated ; if, according to Frobel's sys- 
 tem, they have been constantly occupied in their own little 
 labours in connecting (or reconciling) opposites, the application 
 of the word " reconciliation" to visibly separated objects will 
 have become quite familiar to them, and it will not be difficult 
 to explain to them later the meaning of the Christian doctrine ; 
 especially as they will also have become familiar, through a 
 variety of examples and applications, with the analogies be- 
 tween the visible physical world and the spiritual one. 
 
 That such teaching by analogy or parables is necessary for 
 the comprehension of spiritual truths is shown by the fre- 
 quent use of it in the Gospel itself. But to many of our readers 
 this comparison between the connecting together of physically 
 separated things and the union or reconciliation of individual 
 imperfect men v 'th God through the perfect and Divine man, 
 will seem as far-J tched as the analogies in other cases that we 
 have quoted. It is, v <wever, the fate, not only of new theories*
 
 1 82 A New Method of Education. 
 
 but also of new embodiments of old theories, to produce the 
 impression of exaggeration and eccentricity, and so it must bo 
 with F rebel's theory of the analogy between the outer and the 
 inner world and between physical and spiritual impressions, 
 until by frequent repetition and practical application it has 
 become familiar to the world. 
 
 Any one who observes the present methods of bringing up 
 children, and considers what it is that the latter really want, 
 must be of opinion that there is need for greater attention to 
 the beginnings of moral deflection and the early cultivation of 
 religious feeling. 
 
 Children can no more become religious by their own unaided 
 powers than they can become anything else that is desirable for 
 them. The fact that early religious teaching has hitherto been 
 conducted in a mistaken and senseless manner does not prove 
 that it cannot be done in a right and profitable way. This, how- 
 ever is beyond all question, that unless education, and especially 
 early education, be established on a right religious basis, the 
 next generation will be the most godless that has ever lived on 
 earth, more dissatisfied and melancholy even than the present one, 
 and just as little able to solve the great problems of the day. 
 
 Veritable progress for mankind as a whole is unthinkable if 
 religion be left out of account. The extension of material 
 knowledge, the widening of man's relations to nature and to 
 humanity in social and communal respects necessitates a corre- 
 sponding expansion in our relation to God and all that is highest. 
 It is still not sufficiently understood, that while on the one 
 hand religion and Christian truth must in their essential 
 character remain always the same, our apprehension of them 
 must continually increase and expand until we come to realize 
 their connection with every department of life. Whoever will 
 not agree to this must also consider the Reformation as unjus- 
 tifiable. 
 
 Not until men have gained for themselves the recognition of 
 an all-pervading omnipresent God, a firm central point round 
 which their whole being will revolve, in which laws, politics, 
 science, art, and all social endeavours will culminate, not till 
 \hen shall we see a regenerated society which, cemented to-
 
 The Child's First Relations to God. 183 
 
 gether in love, will realize the true conception of humanity, 
 or convert into a living reality the Christianity which is now 
 cramped and disfigured and deadened by church system. It is 
 grievous to see how much outward forms and dogmas still take 
 the place of true religion of the heart. It is not, however, by 
 rationalism and irreligiousness that the degenerate Christianity of 
 modern times can be conquered, but by a new generation which, 
 itself filled full with the true spirit of the Divine Teacher, shall 
 let this regenerating power stream forth through society. 
 
 The religious conflict of the present day has its meaning and 
 its use, and will bring forth fruit in the future ; but it must be 
 kept as much as possible removed from our children. If they 
 are to be capable in time to come of restoring harmony to a world 
 of discord, of j-e-adjusting balances and getting rid of contradic- 
 tions, their young spirits must be left undisturbed to strengthen 
 and develop, and must learn to soar up in love and enthusiasm 
 to the Infinite, and find their rest only in the Highest. Short 
 of this there can be no real religion, however much the intellect 
 may learn to speculate concerning spiritual things. True reli- 
 gion is the continuous action of a whole life a striving after 
 God in all and everything. 
 
 It is the high office of mothers to consecrate their children 
 to this life-service, and Probel offers them his " Mutter u. 
 Koselieder" as a guide to this sacred task.
 
 1 84 ^ New Met/tod of Education. 
 
 CONCLUSION. 
 
 THE leading ideas of F rebel's educational system may be summed 
 up in the following statements : 
 
 1. The task of education is to assist natural development 
 towards its destined end. As the child's development begins 
 with its first breath, so must its education also. 
 
 2. As the beginning gives a bias to the whole after de- 
 velopment, so the early beginnings of education are of most 
 importance. 
 
 3. The spiritual and physical development do not go on 
 separately in childhood, but the two are closely bound up with 
 one another. 
 
 4. There is at first no perceptible development except in 
 the physical organs, which are the instruments of the spirit. 
 The earliest development of the soul proceeds simultaneously 
 with, and by means of that of the physical organs. 
 
 5. Early education must, therefore, deal directly with the 
 physical development, and influence the spiritual development 
 through the exercise of the senses. 
 
 6. The right mode of procedure in the exercise of these organs 
 (which are the sole medium of early education) is indicated by 
 Nature in the utterances of the child's instincts, and through 
 these alone can a natural basis of education be found. 
 
 7. The instincts of the child, as a being destined to become 
 reasonable, express not only physical but also spiritual wants. 
 Education has to satisfy both. 
 
 8. The development of the limbs by means of movement is the 
 first that takes place, and, therefore, claims our first attention
 
 Conclusion. 185 
 
 9. The natural form for the first exercise of the child's organs 
 is play. Hence games which exercise the limbs constitute the 
 beginning of education, and the earliest spiritual cultivation 
 must also be connected with these games. 
 
 10. Physical impressions are at the beginning of life the only 
 possible medium for awakening the child's soul. These im- 
 pressions should therefore be regulated as systematically as is 
 the care of the body, and not be left to chance. 
 
 11. Fiobel's games are intended so to regulate the natural 
 and instinctive activity of the limbs and senses that the pur- 
 pose contemplated by Nature may be attained. 
 
 12. Through the gradual awakening of the child's will this 
 instinctive activity becomes more and more conscious action, 
 which, in a further stage of development, grows into productive 
 action or work. 
 
 13. In order that the hand which is the most important 
 limb as regards all active work should be called into play and 
 developed from the very first, Fiobel's games are made to consist 
 chiefly in hand-exercises, with which are associated the most 
 elementary facts and observations from Nature and human life. 
 
 14. Inasmuch as in the human organism, as well as in all other 
 organisms, all later development is the result of the very earliest, 
 all that is greatest and highest springs out of the smallest and 
 lowest beginnings, education must endeavour to emulate this 
 unbroken continuity of natural development. Frobel supplies 
 the means for bringing about this result in a simple system of 
 gymnastic games for the exercise of the limbs and senses ; these 
 contain the germs of all later instruction and thought, for 
 physical and sensual perceptions are the points of departure 
 of all knowledge whatever 
 
 15. As the earliest awakening of the mind has hitherto been 
 left to chance, and the first instinctive activity of childhood has 
 remained uncomprehended and unconsidered, there has of course 
 been no question of education at the very beginning of life. It 
 warf Frobel who first discovered a true and natural basis for 
 infant education, and in his " Mutter u. Koselieder " he shows 
 how this education is to be carried on, and made the foundation 
 for all later development.
 
 1 86 A New Method of Education. 
 
 It is, therefore, essential that the principles and methods laid 
 down by Frobel should be attended to at the very beginning of 
 education, if full benefit is to be derived from the Kindergarten. 
 
 The training of mothers, and all who have the management 
 of young children, in the application of F rebel's first principles 
 of education, is consequently the starting-point for the complete 
 carrying out of his system, and consequently, too, of immense 
 importance. 
 
 The little, seemingly insignificant, games and songs devised 
 for the amusement of infants are easy enough for girls of the 
 lowest degree of culture to master. The true development of 
 women in all classes will best be accomplished through training 
 them for the educational calling, seeing that Nature has pre- 
 eminently endowed them for this work. Simple receipts for the 
 management of health (and, above all, the practical application 
 of them in the care of children) are also within the grasp of 
 women of all degrees of culture. By placing such instruction 
 within the reach of women of all classes the first step will be 
 taken towards the full and perfect training of the female sex, of 
 all who have the care of children, of all future mothers in all 
 ranks of society, for their educational vocation. 
 
 THE BND,
 
 SONNENSCHEIN'S 
 
 KINDERGARTEN MANUALS. 
 
 Uniform in Crown Svo, French-grey cloth, each 3s. 
 
 THE CHILD AND CHILD-NATURE. 
 
 BARONESS MARENHOLTZ-BULOW. 
 
 HAND-WORK AND HEAD-WORK: Their Relation to 
 
 One Another BARONESS MARENHOLTZ-BULOW. 
 
 ESSAYS ON THE KINDERGARTEN. 
 
 FHOEBEL SOCIETY (London). 
 
 AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF FROEBEL. 
 
 Ed. by Mme. MICHAELIS and H. K. MOORE, B.A. 
 
 LETTERS OF FROEBEL BY THE SAME. 
 
 THE HOME, THE KINDERGARTEN, AND THE 
 
 SCHOOL ELIZ. P. PEABODY. 
 
 THE KINDERGARTEN: Principles of Froebel's System. 
 
 EMILY A. SHIRREFF (Is. 4d.). 
 
 THE FIRST THREE YEARS OF CHILDHOOD. 
 
 BERNARD PEREZ ; with Preface by JAS. SULLY, M.A. 
 
 LONDON: SWAN SONNENSCHEIN & CO.
 
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