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principles:

      “1. That the primary business of school is to train children in co-operative and mutually helpful living; to foster in them the consciousness of mutual interdependence, and to help them practically in making the adjustments that will carry this spirit into overt deeds.

      “2. That the primary root of all educative activity is in the instinctive, impulsive attitudes and activities of the child, and not in the presentation and application of external material, whether through the ideas of others or through the senses; and that, accordingly, numberless spontaneous activities of children, plays, games, mimic efforts, even the apparently meaningless motions of infants—exhibitions previously ignored as trivial, futile, or even condemned as positively evil—are capable of educational use, nay, are the foundation-stones of educational effort.

      “3. That these individual tendencies and activities are organized and directed through the uses made of them in keeping up the co-operative living already spoken of; taking advantage of them to reproduce on the child’s plane the typical doings and occupations of the larger maturer society into which he is finally to go forth; and that it is through production and creative use that valuable knowledge is secured and clinched.”[3]

      So little, however, are these principles understood as Froebel’s, that in the Pedagogical Seminary for July, 1900, a paper was published on “The Reconstruction of the Kindergarten,” wherein it was maintained that the basis of reconstruction must be the child’s natural instincts. The writer, Mr. Eby, had apparently no idea that the Kindergarten was originally based on this very foundation. He evidently did not know that Froebel has given, in his “Education of Man,” a very fair account of these instincts, omitting nothing of great importance, and pointing, at least, to a better principle of classification than that adopted by Mr. Eby.[4] It is, however, only fair to Froebel to mention that he himself regarded his own account as far from being commensurate with the importance of the subject, for the year following that of the publication of “The Education of Man” he writes:

      “Since these spontaneous activities of children have not yet been thoroughly thought out from a high point of view, and have not yet been regarded from what I might almost call their cosmical and anthropological side, we may from day to day expect some philosopher to write a comprehensive book about them.”—A., p. 76.

      The problems Froebel endeavoured to solve are precisely those which are absorbing the genetic psychologist of the present day, as stated, for example, in Mr. Irving King’s “Psychology of Child Development,” viz.: “to examine the various forms of the child’s activity, to get some insight into the nature of the child himself”—“to get at the meaning of child-life in terms of itself.”

      Every reader of “The Education of Man” will remember how Froebel uses his own boyish reminiscences to help others to understand childish actions often utterly misunderstood. In his paper on “Movement Plays” he writes:

      “In that nurture of childhood which is intended to assist development, it is by no means sufficient to supply play-material in proportion merely to the stage of development already outwardly manifest. It is at the same time of the utmost importance to trace out the inner process of development and to satisfy its demands. … In the nurture, development, and education of the child, and especially in the attempt to employ him, his own nature, his own life and energy must be the main consideration. The knowledge of isolated and external phenomena may occasionally be a guide-post pointing our direction, but it can never be a path leading to the specific aim of child culture and education; for the condition of education is none other than comprehension of the whole nature and essence of humanity as manifested in the child.”—P., p. 239.

      Just as Mr. Irving King, writing in 1904, says that we must take as our starting-point the child’s bodily activities, so did Froebel too declare, that:

      “The present time makes upon the educator the wholly indispensable requirement—to comprehend the earliest activity, the first action of the child.”—P., p. 16.

      To this first action, Froebel devotes a whole paper, “Das erste Kindesthun,” the opening sentence of which contains the words:

      “As the new-born child, like a ripe grain of corn, bears life within itself which will be developed progressively and spontaneously, though in close connection with life in general, so activity and action are the first manifestations of awakening child-life.”—P., p. 23.

      Writing in 1847, Froebel says that “decision, zeal, and perseverance” must be brought to bear upon his plan, in order that:

      “(a) More careful observation of the child, his relationships and his line of development, may become general amongst us; and thereby

      “(b) A better grounded insight be obtained into the child’s being, mental and physical, and the general collective conditions of his life. … Deeper insight will be gained into the meaning and importance of the child’s actions and outward manifestations.”—L., p. 248.

      

      This quotation is important as showing that Froebel was deliberately looking for “a line of development,” that he might better understand “the child’s being, mental and physical.” Considering that Froebel wrote between 1826 and 1850, the important points on which he may be said to have successfully anticipated modern psychology are, his recognition that the mind is what he calls “a tri-unity” of action, feeling, and thought; his treatment of early mental activity and his definition of will; his conception of the earliest consciousness as an undifferentiated whole; his recognition of the importance of action not only in the realm of perception, but also in that of feeling; and his surprisingly complete account of instinct. Such anticipations are due to the fact that the idea of development then new to the scientific world possessed his very soul.

      “Humanity, which lives only in its continuous development and cultivation, seems to us dead and stationary, something to be modelled over again and again in accordance with its present type. We are ignorant of our own nature and the nature of humanity. …”—E., p. 146.

      “God neither ingrafts nor inoculates. He develops the most trivial and imperfect things in continuously ascending series and in accordance with eternal self-grounded and self-developing laws. And God-likeness is and ought to be man’s highest aim in thought and deed.”—E., p. 328.

      Justice has already been done to Froebel’s philosophy by Dr. John Angus MacVannel, who says in his closing paragraph:

      “Froebel’s system has that unmistakable mark of greatness about it that makes it worth our faithful effort to understand it, and turn its conclusions to our advantage. … His philosophy of education taken as a whole seems, perhaps, the most satisfactory we have yet had. One cannot but believe, however, that the candid reader will at times find conclusions in his writings sustained by reasonings, that are inadequately developed and important questions by no means satisfactorily answered. … On the other hand we must not forget that it is insight, rather than exactitude, that is the life of a philosophy; herein lies the secret of Froebel’s lasting influence and power.”[5]

CHAPTER II

       Froebel’s Analysis of Mind

       Table of Contents

      It is probably due to the emphasis which Froebel laid upon the careful observation and equally careful interpretation of the very earliest manifestations of mental activity, that his views as to mental analysis approach so closely to more modern ideas. His psychology cannot possibly be dismissed as “faculty psychology” in which the mind of a child is regarded as a smaller and weaker replica of the mind of an adult. The older psychologies, Professor Stout points out, are based chiefly, if not entirely, on introspection alone, while Froebel, as we have already seen, demanded close observation of children in general, and of “each separate child,” as well as consideration of mental development in the race,

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