\.h%JU I Book • P^ I>-A.I>EIIS FROEBEL'S KINDERGARTEN, WITH SUGGESTIONS ON PRINCIPLES AND METHODS OF CHILD CULTURE IN DIFFERENT COUNTRIES. C/ REPUBLISHED FROM Henry Barnard, LL. D., Editor. AMERICAN FROEBEL UNION EDITION. HARTFORD : Office of Barnard's American Journal op Educatiok. 1881. 1\^^ isy transfer frota I^t. OfflocLito. April 1»14. ^y^c.'C^ . KINDERGARTEN AND CHILD-CULTURE PAPERS. PLAN OP PUBLICATION. LETTER TO PRESIDENT OF THE AMERICAN FROEBEL UNION. Dear Miss Peabody: I propose to do more in 1880 than 7. ha.ve done as publisher since 1838,* in any one year for the eluci- dation of Child- Culture, and particularly of the Kindergarten as devised by Froebel, and developed by himself and others who have acted in his spirit and after his methods. The conviction expressed by me in printed report | and public addresses in 1854, that "the system of infant culture, presented in the Interna- tional Exhibition of Educational Systems and Material at St. Martin's Hall, by Charles Hoffman of Hamburg, and illustrated by Madame Ronge in her Kindergarten in Tavistock Square, Lon- don, was by far the most original, attractive, and philosophical form of infant development the world has yet seen," has been deepened by much that I have since read and observed. But the suggestion in my Special Report as Commissioner of Education to' the Senate in 1868, and again to the House of Representatives in 1870, on a System of Public Instruction for the District of Colum- bia, "that the first or lowest school in a graded system for cities should cover the play period of a child's life," and that "the great formative period of the human being's life " " in all that concerns habits of observation and early development, should be subjected to the training of the Kindergarten " — must be received now under at least the conditions of the original recommendation, A variety of agencies must be at work to train the teachers of each grade (and the Kindergartners with the rest) for their special duties, and to instruct and interest parents in the work of the school-room, and to give to them as such a direct right of inspec- tion and suggestion as to the schools where their children are in attendance. I believe that parents as such have more rights, and rights which should be respected by their own direct representa- *Iu the Connecticut Common School Journal from 1838 to 1842. and from 1849 to 1854; Educational Tracts (monthly) from 184-2 to 1845; the Journal of the Rhode Island Insti- tute of Instruction from 1S45 to 1848 ; and the American Journal of Education from 1855 to 1880. In every year of these periodicals are elaborate Papers, original a'"' Belect«>f' - - the Principles aiid Methods of early education applicable to childr"'- tReport to the Governor of Connecticut on tK« t,-- .,<.-•„. Systems and Material a ~" J 4* KINDERGARTEN AND CHILD-CULTURE PAPERS. tion in all educational boards, than are now conceded to them in State and municipal school organizations. All schools not under progressive teachers, and not subjected to frequent, intelligent, and independent supervision are sure to fall into dull, mechanical routine; and the Kindergarten, of all other educational agencies, requires a tender, thoughtful, practical woman, more than a vivacious, and even regularly educated girl. The power of influencing and interesting mothers in their home work and securing their willing co-operation, is an essential qualifi- cation of the Kindergartner. The selection of such cannot be safely left to school officers as now appointed, and who too often do not look beyond their neighbors, nephews, and nieces for can- didates. Until the principles of early child -culture are better understood, and school officers and teachers are more thoroughly trained in the best methods, the first establishment of Kindergar- t^xxo had better be loft to those who are already sufficiently interested to make some sacrifice of time or means in their behalf; and when found in successful operation and conforming to certain require- ments, they should be entitled to aid from public funds in proportion to attendance; and for such aid, be subject to official inspection. My desire is to help place this whole subject of the early devel- opment and training of the human being, especially of the claims and results of the Froebel Kindergarten in this work, clearly and fully before teachers, parents, and school officers; and in these efforts I solicit your advice and co-operation, and through you, of all who are laboring for the same object in the Home, the Kinder- garten, and the Primary School. My first plan of publication was to issue these Child-Culture Papers in separate Numbers or Parts alternating with the regular Numbers of my Journal, but not necessarily connected with the latter. On further consideration I have concluded to incorporate them all with the discussion of other educational topics, and then to issue the whole in a volume of Contributions to the literature of the Kindergarten. You will greatly oblige me by suggesting additions or modifica- tions to the accompanying scheme of treatment for the first portion of the volume (to page 400), as well as Papers with their authors on any topic in the wide range of child-culture for the concluding — irtion. \May I look to you for an article in the next Number on '^ ■ '>'lr>nr>->Qnt of Froebel's Kindergarten? DEVELOPMENT OF THE KINDERGARTEN. liETTER FROM MISS PEABODY TO THE EDITOR : Dear Sir : Nothing, it seems to me, can do more to establish the Kindergarten on a permanent foundation, and place its prin- ciples and methods fairly before American parents and teachers, than the full and exhaustive treatment which you propose to give, in the last volume of your truly Encyclopediac Journal, of the whole subject of child culture, as held by eminent educators, at home and abroad, giving due prominence to its latest de- velopment in the Kindergarten as devised by Frederic Frobel and others trained in his spirit and methods. Your willingr'; , to issue these papers in a connected form, and detached from other discussions, will enable Kindergartners to possess them- selves, at a moderate price, of a volume (a manual I think it will prove to be), in which the Frobel idea and institute will be pre- sented in their historical development, and in their pedagogical connection with other systems of human culture. I respond cor- dially to your invitation to co-operate in this work and to secure contributions from my correspondents and fellow-laborers in this field, in our own and other countries; and I will begin at once with the subject suggested by yourself, the "Development of the Kindergarten," as it was suggested to Frobel b}' his study of the vegetable kingdom of Nature, and his insight into the gracious purposes of the Father of Spirits. The Baroness Marenholtz-Biilow, in her " Reminiscences of Frobel," has told us of her discovery, in 1849, of this great gen- ius ; and her introduction of him to the Duke of Weimar, and to the leading educators of Germany ; and of the instantaneous acceptance of him by Diesterweg and others as " a prophet." Three years afterwards he died, when the reactionary govern- ment of Prussia had forbidden the introduction of his Kinder- gartens into the public system of education ; instinctively divin- ing that an education which recognizes every human being as self-active, and even creative, in his moral and intellectual na- ture, must be fatal, in the end, to all despotic governments. But already, through the friendship of the ducal family of 6* FROEBEL'S KINDERGAKTEN. Weimar, Frobel's normal school for Kindergartners was estab- lished at Marienthal ; and through the influence of Diesterweg over Madame Johanna Goldschmidt, he had established another at the free city of Hamburgh ; and the governmental prohibition in Prussia had stimulated the founding of private Kindergartens in Berlin and elsewhere. Some years after, his eminent and ap- preciative pupil and chosen apostle, the Baroness, brought abouf- the rescinding of the prohibitory decree. Nevertheless, not even yet, as you will see from a letter I send you, written by Frau Ber- tha Meyer on their present condition in Berlin, are there any but private Kindergartens in Prussia. These, indeed, are patronized by the best people, led by the Crown Princess of Germany, — Vic- toria of England, who has not only had her own children edu- cated by strictly Frobelian Kindergartners, but has interested among others the Princess Helena of Russia in the system, and lets herself be named as Lady Patroness of the training school for Kindergartners at 17 Tavistock square, London. Only two governments in Europe yet have recognized the Kin- dergarten as a public interest — that of Austria, which imposes on all pupils of normal schools in the empire, of whatever grade of instruction, to make themselves acquainted with Frobel's princi- ples ; and makes compulsory on the people to send all their chil- dren under six to some Kindergarten ; also the government of Italy, where Kindergartens were first established by the Italian Minister of Education, whose attention had been directed to the subject, in 1868, by our own American minister, the Hon. George P. Marsh, This attempt was, however, rather premature, for Italian Kindergartners were not yet properly prepared for the work, and though Frobel's educational method is found to be harmonious with the deepest motherly instinct, when that is un- derstood, it does not come by instinct into a systematic form. In 1871-2 the Baroness Marenholtz-Biilow was solicited by the Ital- ian minister to go to Florence and lecture upon the training, and she taught a large class. The resuvie of her lectures was printed in a pamphlet, in 1872, and translated and published by our Bu- reau of Education at Washington, in its circular of July, and forms an admirable syllabus for the training of teachers. In that same year, 1872, Madame Salis-Schwab introduced the system at Naples at great expense to herself of money and labor, and gained from the municipality the promise to make it the first grade of the public education, when Kindergartners should be trained for FROEBEL'S KINDERGARTEN. 7* it. You must publish in your volume the report of the success- * ful Kindergarten now kept in the GoUegio Medici, a copy of which I hope to furnish you. This proves one of the greatest charities in Europe, and princes send their children as pupils. But though the European governments do not yet adopt the system, Kindergartens are established widely in all the German L-tates, in Sweden, Denmark, Russia, Switzerland, France, Bel- gium, even in Spain, also in England, Scotland and Ireland ; and wherever there are Kindergartens there are more or less inade- quate attempts at training Kindergartners, Koehler's establish- ment at Saxe-Gotha, and lately the Frobel Stifturg at Dresden, being the best. The latter will probably swallow up the former, as Koehler has lately died. In England, in 1872, there was an association formed, among whose members are famed scientists like Huxley, as well as dig- nitaries of the Church of England, who have founded an institu- tion for training Kindergartners at Manchester, to be examined for certificates after two years study with observation in a model Kindergarten now kept by Miss Anna Snell, a pupil of Midden- dorf. Two years afterwards another training class was founded, as a part of the Stockwell training school for primary teachers in London, S. W., and another pupil of Middendorf, Miss Elea- nor Heerwart, who had been keeping Kindergarten some years near Dublin, Ireland, was made its teacher and the principal of the Stockwell model Kindergarten. Also, in 1874, the London Frobel Society was founded by Miss Doreck and Mr. Payne, whose present president. Miss Emily Shirreff, and her sister, the Hon. Mrs. Grey, have publislied most valuable lectures, among which I would mention, as most important, Miss Shirreff's " Life of Frobel," and her essay on the right of his Kindergarten to the name of the " New Education." This London society has a monthly meeting and lecture, and I can send you for your volume one of these: Miss E. A. Manning's lecture on "The Discour- agements and Encouragements of the Kindergartuer." She has sent it to me to be read at the meeting of our American Frobel Union, which was appointed for December 29-31, 1879, but had to be postponed. Some other articles were sent ; one by Miss Shirreff, one by Miss Lychinska, and one by Miss Heerwart, which are at your service also; and I hope to have Miss Shirreff's article about a chart of Kindergarten employments, made by Madame du Portugall for the direction of the Swiss Kindergart- 8* FROEBEL'S KINDERGARTEN. ners, and which has been asked for by the English Education Journal for publication in its pages. It was the Baroness Marenholz-Bulow who may be said to have started and done the most in this great propagandism. Acknowledged by Frobel, in 1849, as the one who more deeply than any one else saw into his "last thought," she must be considered as his most complete representative, and most effective apostle. In 1858 she went to Paris and, taking rooms at the Louvre, summoned to her parlor-lectures the most distinguished men of the time in Paris, of all churches, Catholic, Protestant and Jew- ish, and outsiders of every school of philosophy. Their wonderful unanimity in accepting the idea and system, as developed in her lectures, was expressed in letters to her from all of them, includ- ing the Cardinal of Tours, afterwards Archbishop of Paris, the Abbe Michaud, and many Catholic savants; Michelet, Edgar Quinet, Auguste Comte, Protestant pastors. Harmonists, etc , etc. These letters she has printed as an appendix, making one- half of her volume, which is entitled " Die Arbeit," relative to Frobel's Education, which was the resume of her lectures at the Louvre. This unanimity of assent is the best proof that the element in which the Kindergarten works is that of universal humanity, not yet narrowed from "the kingdom of heaven," which Christ declared that children represent, in their pre-intel- lectual era, when the Kindergarten takes them from the moth- er's nursery, to initiate them into the society of their equals. Madame Marenholtz also carried the system into Belgium, and the first guide-book of the method " Le Jardin des Enfants " was published in Brussels by F. Claasen, with an introduction by herself. She then went into England, where, however, she had been preceded by Madame Ronge, one of that Meyer family of North Germany which has been always a munificent benefac- tor of education, — Henry Adolf having given to Hamburg its Zoological Garden and Aquarium, the finest foundations of the kind in the world ; and he is still the most enthusiastic patron of Erobel's Kindergarten. But in England some accidental collateral circumstances inter- fered with Madame Rouge's perfect work, and broke her heart. The seeds of Kindergarten were however planted in several local- ities, and some good work done, among others by Madame du Portugall at Manchester, who is now the Inspector of Primary Education in her native city, Geneva, Switzerland, and is gradu- FKOEBEL'S KINDERGARTEN. 9* ally making the Kindergarten the foundation of the primary ed- ucation there. But the most important establishment on the Continent for the education of Kindergartners is in Dresden, founded in 1872 by the Union, which grew up since 1867, out of the Committee of Education of the Congress of Philosophers that met in Prague that year. This committee was appointed to inquire into the ultimate results on individuals of the Kindergarten education given by Frobel with Middendorf, who had been his faithful friend and coadjutor at the school for boys founded by them both at Keilhau in 1817, long before the Kindergarten was named in 1839. It took more than twenty years of earnest experiment- ing to enable Frobel to arrive at the complete Kindergarten practically. In that year he gave it its very expressive name. As long before as 1827 he had published ErzieJiung der Mensch (the Education of Mankind), a book addressed to the motlier, in which is found all the elementary principles of Kindergarten except one. In this book he took the ground that the mother exclusively should be the educator of the child till it was seven years old ; but a dozen years of observation had taught him in 1839, that no mother had the leisure and strength to do for her child all that needed to be done in its first seven years, without assistants and in the narrow precinct of a single family. For the social and moral nature, after three years old, requires a larger company of equals. The Kindergarten does just what neither the home nor the primary school can do for a child. In 1867, at the re-assembling of the " Congress of Philoso- phers " at Frankfort-on-the-Main, the Committee of Inquiry ap- pointed at Prague, of which Prof. Fichte of Stuttgart, son of the great J. G. Fichte, was chairman, reported that the pupils taught at the Kindergarten age by Frobel himself, had been looked up at the universities and elsewhere, and been found to be of excep- tion:..! intelligence : and that they themselves ascribed it to their Frobel education in the " connection of contrasts " or " law of equipoise," that secret of all nature and true life. At this meeting at Frankfort-on-the-Main, the Baroness Maren- holtz had four afternoons assigned her to explain Frobel's idea and method, and the result was the formation of the General Union, and the establishment of its organ. Die Erziehung der Ge(/. Batchelor 691-704 14. Free Kindergarten in Church Work, R.Heber Newion 705-730 15. Kindergarten for Neglected Children 731-736 Barnard's Kindergarten Papers, Hartford, Ct., 736 pages, will be eent by mail on receipt of p.SO I. FREDERICH AUGUST FEOEBEL. FRCEBEL AND THE KINDERGARTEN SYSTEM. Froebel (Friedrich.Wilhelm August) was born April 21, 1782, at Oberweissbach, in the principality of Scliwarzburg-Rudolstadt. His mother died when he was so young that he never even remembered her ; and he was left to the care of an ignorant maid-of-all-work, who simply provided for his bodily wants. His father, who was the laborious pastor of several parishes, seems to have been solely occu- pied with his duties, and to have given no concern whatever to the development of the child's mind and character beyond that of strictly confining him within doors, lest he should come to harm by straying away. One of his principal amusements, he tells us, consisted in watching from the window some workmen who were repairing the church, and he remembered long afterward how he earnestly desired to lend a helping hand himself. The instinct of construction, for the exercise of which, in his system, he makes ample provision, was even then stirring within him. As years went on, though nothing was done for his education by others, he found opportunities for satisfying some of the longings of his soul, by wandering in the woods, gathering flowers, listening to the birds, or to the wind as it swayed the forest trees, watching the movements of all kinds of animals, and laying up in his mind the various impressions then produced, as a store for future years. Not until he was ten years of age did he receive the slightest reg- ular instruction. He was then sent to school, to an uncle who lived in the neighborhood. This man, a regular driller of the old, time- honored stamp, had not the slightest conception of the inner nature of his pupil, and seems to have taken no pains whatever to discover it. He pronounced the boy to be idle (which, from his point of view, was quite true) and lazy (which certainly was not true) — a boy, in short, that you could do nothing with. And, in fact, the teacher did nothing with his pupil, never once touched the chords of his inner being, or brought out the music they were fitted, under different handling, to produce. Froebel was indeed, at that time, a thoughtful, dreamy child, a very indifferent student of books, cor- 12 FRCEBEL AND THE KINDERGARTEN SYSTEM. dially hating the formal lessons with which he was crammed, and never so happy as when left alone with his great teacher in the woods. It was necessary for him to earn his bread, and we next find him a sort of apprentice to a woodsman in the great Thuringian forest. Here, as he afterward tells us, he lived some years in cordial inter- course with nature and mathematics, learning even then, though un- consciously, from the teaching he received, how to teach others. His daily occupation in the midst of trees led him to observe the laws of nature, and to recognize union and unity in apparently con- tradictory phenomena. In 1801 he went to the University of Jena, where he attended lectures on natural history, physics, and mathematics ; but, as he tells us, gained little from them. This result was obviously due to the same dreamy speculative tendency of- mind which characterized his earlier school life. Instead of studying hard, he speculated on unity and diversity, on the relation of the whole to the parts, of the parts to the whole, &c., continually striving after the unattain- able and neglecting the attainable. This desultory style of life was put an end to by the failure of means to stay at the University. For the next few years he tried various occupations, ever restlessly tossed to and fro by the demands of the outer life, and not less dis- tracted by the consciousness that his powers had not yet found what he calls their ' center of gravity.' At last, however, they found it. While engaged in an architect's ofiice at Frankfort, he formed an acquaintance with the Rector of the Model School, a man named Gruner. Gruner saw the capabilities of Froebel, and detected also his entire want of interest in the work that he was doing ; and one day suddenly said to him : ' Give up your architect's business ; you will do nothing at it. Be a teacher. We want one now in the school ; you shall have the place.' This was the turning point in Froebel's life. He accepted the engagement, began work at once, and tells us that the first time he found himself in the midst of a class of 30 or 40 boys, he felt that he was in the element that he had missed so long — ' the fish was in the water.' He was inexpressibly happy. This ecstasy of feeling, we may easily imagine, soon subsided. In a calmer mood he severely questioned himself as to the means by which he was to satisfy the demands of his new position. About this time he met with some of Pestalozzi's writings, which so deeply impressed him that he determined to go to Yverdun and study Pestalozzism on the spot. He accomplished his purpose, and lived and worked for two years with Pestalozzi. His experience at FIWEBEL AND THE KINDERGARTEN SYSTEM. J 3 Yverdun impressed hira ■with the conviction that the science of edu- cation had still to draw out from Pestalozzi's system those funda- mental principles which Pestalozzi himself did not comprehend. *And therefore,' says Schmidt, 'this genial disciple of Pestalozzi supplemented and completed his system by advancing from the point which Pestalozzi had reached through pressure- from without, to the innermost conception of man, and arriving at the thought of the true development and culture of mankind.' [To the articles published in Vol. I., 1859, p. 449; IV. 792; XIX. 611, we add a paper by Prof. Payne on Froebel's System of Infant Culture. We repro- duce a former article by Dr. Wimmer, of Dresden, in part, to show the estima- tion of the system in Germany twenty years ago.] Friedrich Froebel, and the Kindergarten. Froebel, who died in 1852, was a Pestalozzian, and founder of the kindergarten, (children's garden.) Some gentlemen at Liebenstein, a watering place near Eisenach, called him " the old fool ;" but Diesterweg, on hearing the name, said that Socrates was such a fool, and Pestalozzi also. Froebel considered the kinderbewahr-anstalten, (schools for keeping and caring for abandoned children,) as insufficient, because merely / negative : he wished not only to keep, but to develop them, without cheeking the growth of the body, or separating the child from its mother, — as he would have the children in the garden but two or three hours daily. Children are born with the desire of acting. This was the first principle : hence, his garden was to be free, and planted with trees and shrubs, to enable the children to observe the or- ganic life of nature, and themselves to plant and work. Thus he would change the instinct of activity into a desire of occupation. The child will play ; hence the right kindergarten is a play ground or play school, though Froebel avoids the name school. The kindergarinerin, (the nurse or female gardener,) plays with the children. Froebel's chief object has been to invent plays for the purpose. His educational career commenced November 13th, 1816, in Greisheim, a little village near Stadt-Ilm, in Thuringia; but in 1817, when his Pestalozzian friend, Middendorf, joined him, (Froebel had been several years learning and teaching in Pestalozzi's school, at Tverdun,) the school was transferred to the beautiful village of Keilhau, near Rudolstadt, which may be considered as his chief starting- place, and is still, under Middendorf and Mrs. Froebel, a seminary of female teachers. Langenthal, another Pestalozzian, associated himself with them, and they commenced building a house. The number of pupils rose to twelve in 1818. Then the daughter of war-counselor Hoffinan of Berlin, from enthusiasm for Froebel's educational ideas, became his wife. She had a considerable dowry, which, together with the accession of Froebel's elder brother, increased the fi.mds and welfare of the school. In 1831 he was invited by the composer, Schnyder von Wartensee, to erect a similar garden on his estate, near the lake of Sempaeh, in the canton Luzern. It was done. Froebel changed his residence the next year, from Keilhau to Switzerland. In 1834 the government of Bern invited him to arrrange a training course for teachers in Burgdorf. In 1835 he became prin- cipal of the orphan asylum in Burgdorf, but in 1836 he and his wife wished to return to Germany. There he was active in Berlin, Keilhau, Blankenburg, Dresden, Liebenstein in Thuringia, Hamburg, (1849,) and Marienthal, near Lieb- enstein, where he lived until his decease in 1852, among the young ladies, whom he trained as nurses for the kindergarten, and the little children who attended his school. In August 7th, 1851, to the surprise of all, the kindergarten were 14 GERMANr. suddenly prohibited by the Prussian government, (and afterward in Saxony,) " because they formed a part of Froebel's socialistic system, and trained the chil- dren to atheism." This was an error ; Charles Froebel, Friedrich's nephew, was the socialist, and the kindergarten had no connection with him. A meeting of educationalists was called by Diesterweg, at Liebenstein, when the following resolutions were adopted : 1. Froebel intends a universal development of the talents given by God to the child. 2. For this purpose he intends, a. To cultivate the body by a series of gymnastic exercises. b. To cultivate the senses, particularly the more spiritual ; the sense for form and color by instruction, and the rhythmical and musical sense by songs and melodies. c. To cultivate the desired want of action, as well as the mental faculties in general, by a series of exercises furnished by plays of his own invention. d. To stimulate the moral and religious sense by addresses and narratives, and especially by the child's communion with the educating nurse. e. To extinguish the children's bad habits, and to accustom them to child- like virtues by keeping them by themselves in social circles and merry plays. Soon after this the garden at Marienthal was visited by an officer of the Prus- sian government, school-counselor Bormann of Berlin, who declared its tendency rather anti-revolutionary than otherwise, and bestowed upon it much praise. In the fifth general assembly of German teachers, in Salzungen, May 16-19, 1853, the following resolutions were adopted by a majority : that Froebel's educational method is in true accordance with nature, as developing and promoting independ- ent action ; and that his kindergarten is an excellent preparation for the com- mon school. The Volksfreund of Hesse, however, says that it furthers revolu- tion, and that every one who agrees with it by word or deed, is himself revolu- tionary. There are in Germany a great many klein-kinder-bewahranstelten, (institu- tions for keeping little children,) e. g, in Bavaria, in 1852, 182, with 6,796 chil- dren, (2,740 gratis,) and an income of 51,772 florins. In Berlin there are 33, the first of which was founded in 1830 by private charity, to keep little children whose parents are in daytime absent from home, under a good inspection, to accustom them to order, cleanliness and morality, and to fit them for attendance at school. These charity schools are provided, as to the age of children, by the well-known " Krippen,''^ (creches,) founded in 1844 by M. Marheau in Paris, the author of" Lcs creches, ou moyen de diminuer la misere en augmentant la popula- tion," a little book that received a price of 3000 francs from the French Academy. Filling a gap between the lying-in-institutions and the kindergarten, they were rapidly adopted by governments and cities, for children from a fortnight to two years old ; and in 1852 Paris had already 18. The first in London dates from March, 1850 ; in Vienna, from 1S49, (in 1852 there were 8 ;) in Belgium, from 1846; in Dresden, from 1851, etc. Further information is given in the Bulletin des creches, published monthly in Paris. On the education of little children, Mr. Foclsing, at the head of a kindergarten in Darmstadt on Froebel's principles but in a somewhat different way, publishes at Darmstadt a monthly paper called " Home and the Infant School." The Sunday and weekly papers published formerly by Froebel in Liebenstein, might be still read with advantage. FROEBEL AND HIS EDUCATIONAL WORK. X5 DATES CONNECTED WITH FROEBEL AND HIS EDUCATIONAL CIRCLE.* 1770. June 24 Birthday of Christian Ludwig Froebel. 1780. 8ept. 17. Birthday of Friedrich Froebel's wife, Henriette Wilhel- miue Hoffmeister. Christian's wife, Johanna Caroline Miigge, was born in August of the same year. 1783. April 21. Birthday of Friedrich Froebel. ' 1792. Froebel is given up to the care of Supt. Hoffman in Stadtilm. Heinrich Langethal was born in Erfust on the third of September. 1793. Sept. 20. Wilhelm Middendoi-ff's birthday. 1797. Fr. Froebel is under the instruction of a forester. 1799. Froebel returns to his parents' house, and then goes to Jena as a student. 1801. Fr. Froebel leaves Jena, and becomes soon after a farmer. Dec. 29. Albertine Middendorff, nee Froebel, was born. 180S. Fr. Froebel's father dies. Froebel receives the position of actuary of the forest department. He goes to the forest court in the I vicinity of Bamberg. Johannes Arnold Barop was born in Dortmund Nov. 29. 1803. Fr. Froebel goes to Bamberg and takes part in the land measure- ments ordered by the government. 1804. Fr. Froebel fills successively two offices of agricultural secretary, first in Bayreuth then in Gross-Milchow. On the eleventh of July Emilie Froebel, afterwards wife of Barop, was born. 1805. Supt. Hoffman dies. Froebel goes to Frankfort-on-the Main to become an architect. He becomes a teacher in the model school. In August he goes for two weeks to Pestalozzi at Yverdun. 1807. Froebel becomes instructor in the family of the Lord of Holy- hausen near Frankfort. 1808. Froebel goes again to Pestalozzi, in the company of his pupils. 1809. Froebel gives the princess of Rudolstadt an account of Pestalozzi's exertions. 1810. Froebel returns to Frankfort. 1811. Study in Gottingen begins. 1812. Departure to the University of Berlin. Enlists in the Volunteer Corps. 1814. Froebel becomes assistant in the mineralogical museum in Beriin. 1814. Jan. 5. Birthday of Elise Froebel, future wife of Dr. Siegfried Schaffner in Keilhau. 1816. Nov. 13. Froebel opens his public Educational Institution in Griesheim. 1817. Departure to Keilhau. Advent of Middendorff and Langethal. 1818. Sept. 20. Froebel marries Henriette Wilhelmine Hoffmeister from Berlin. 1819. Prospectus of German Educational Institution near Rudolstadt. 1820. Christian Ludwig with family enters the educational circle. Froe- bel writes a pamphlet entitled " On our German People." 1821. Publication of the following writings: (1) Fundamental positions, aim, and inner life of the public German Educational Institution in Keilhau; (2) Aphorisms. ♦Translated from W. Lange's F. FroebeVs Gesammetie Padagogische Schriften, by Misa Lucy Wheelock, Kindergartner in Chauncey HaU, Boston, Mass. [ 4 16 FKOEBEL AND HIS EDUCATIONAL WOKK. 1833. The following writings appear : (1) On German education generally, ' and the educational institution in Keilhau especially ; (2) Con- cerning the universal German educational institution in Keilhau. 1833. The following publication appears: Continued reports of the insti- tution in Keilhau. 1824 Publication of the pamphlet: Celebration of Christmas in Keilhau. 1826. Langethal and Middendorff marry. " Education of Man " appears. Later a weekly publication, " The Family Educator" was estab- lished. 1828. Barop joins the educational circle. 1829. Project of an Educational Institution for the People, in Helba. 1830. A true co-laborer, Wilhelm Carl, is drowned in the Saal. 1831. Journey to Frankfort. Opening of the educational establishment in Wartensee, Switzerland. 1833. Barop goes to Wartensee. Departure to Willisau. Froebel goes back for a short time to Keilhau. ■1833. Froebel, accompanied by his wife, goes to Willisau. The govern- ment of Berne transfers to him the direction of an advanced course for young teachers at Burgdorf, Langethal goes to Wil- lisau; Barop returns to Keilhau. 1835. Froebel and Langethal undertake the direction of an orphan-house in Burgdorf. Middendorff goes with Elise Froebel to Willisau. Froebel writes: "The year 1836 demands a renewal of life." 1836. In March his wife's mother dies and Froebel goes with his wife to Berlin. 1837. Opening of the Kindergarten in Blankenburg. 1838. The Sunday paper appears with the title — " Seeds, Buds, Flowers, and Fruits out of Life," for the Education of United Families. 1839. Froebel and Middendorff go to Dresden. Froebel's wife dies. 1840. Celebration of the Guttenburg festival. Opening of the universal German Kindergarten, established in Actien. Later it is re- moved to Keilhau. From Keilhau Froebel and Middendorff undertook different journeys in order to work for the establish- ment of Kindergartens. ,1848. One of the teachers' assemblies called by Froebel meets in Rtidol- stadt. In the autumn of this year Froebel goes again to Dresden. 1847. Departure to Liebenstein. Activity in Hamburg. 1850. Return from Hamburg to Liebenstein. Froebel starts a new weekly paper. Elise Froebel marries Dr. Schaffner. 1851. Jan. 7. Christian Ludwig Froebel dies. In July of this year Froe- bel married for his second wife Louise Levin. The "Journal of Fr. Froebel's Efforts " appears. 1853. Froebel is called to Gotha by the Teachers' Assembly, Theodore Hoffman presiding. 1853. June 21. Froebel's death. The school started by Mm moves from Marienthal to Keilhau. 1853. Middendorff speaks on Froebel's subjects to the Teachers' Conven- tion at Salzungen and wins the heartiest applause. Nov. 27. Middendorff's death, ■1860. Aug. 18. Emilie Barop dies. 1861 The " Education of the Present " is founded through the influence of the Baroness Marenholtz-Biilow. ' '1870. The General Educational Union formed in Dresdeii, A NEW LIFE OF FRIEDERICH FROEBEL Compiled from Original Documents in Dr. Wichard Lange's Collected Writings of Froebel. INTRODUCTOEY NOTE. The following reminiscences of Froebel, and aids to the better understanding of his life-work,by Dr. Wichard Lange, gathered from articles he wrote upon Froebel from time to time, are of inestima- ble value, for they show from the outside, as lie himself attempted to do in his autobiographical letter to the Duke of Meiningen from the inside, the growth of his great idea, as well as the estimation in which he was held not only by the world, who gradually saw in him the great man that he was, but that of his own inner circle, the members of which never lost their enthusiasm and devotion to him in spite of some human faults that one can easily see grew out of that temperament of genius which makes anything unbearable to the sensitive soul of such a man which even threatens to inter- fere Vv'ith the great purpose of his life. Our sympathy for him is quickened and intensified by the picture of his shady side, and we can understand the magic power he wielded over those whom he found ready to understand him and who were capable of helping him by such devotion of life as is seldom met with in this world. PREFACE TO COLLECTED EDITION OP FROEBEL'S WRITINGS. Friederich Froebel and William Middendorff were insepar- able in life. If Middendorff appeared, Froebel was not far off. Middendorff came before the German people in 1848 and 1861, and after his death that reputation which he acquired in his life greatly increased. He traveled as an apostle of the new idea in those districts and regions of Germany in which the efforts of his bosom friend were yet unknown, and by his philanthropic, versatile, radi- ant personality, and by his powerful because heart-winning and persuasive eloquence, he could not but excite enthusiasm. He was the Aaron who stood by the side of the heavy-tongued Moses as a needed expositor, and softened the heart of many a hardened Pharaoh. Here in Hamburg, up to 1840, he won unheard of success, and fastened general attention upon the cause of Froebel. Froebel found a smooth path made for him, but he still had to combat many difficulties, because people did not and could not find * Thoughts on the Kindergarten dedicated to the German Parliament in 1848. 2 (17) 18 FROEBEL AND HIS EDUCATIONAL WORK. what they had been led to expect; namely, versatility and elo- quence like Middendorff's. May the little messenger of 1861 have roused the desire and the impulse to draw full attention to the distinguished chief wherever the unskillful form makes the reading or the understanding of the idea difficult. I have endeavored to improve this form so far as such alteration is consistent with reverence for what is thus criti- cised. Originals must remain originals. I was obliged to give a new shape to the autobiography running through almost the whole, because its contents could only thus be deciphered from an almost unreadable manuscript. Since Froebel's appearance in Hamburg in the winter of 1849- 1850, I have been occupied uninterruptedly, even if sometimes only periodically, with his cause. At the period mentioned I was almost every afternoon, and often in the night also, active at his side. He had made me at that time editor of his paper, which appeared weekly, and endeavored to appropriate me wholly to himself. After a close trial of myself I was obliged to confess that I was not made to work among little children or for the training of kindergartners, that my special mission was the education of boys, and therefore I felt obliged to remain faithful to the Real School to which I once belonged. "When I declared this to him, he exclaimed, deeply displeased, "If you do not come now, come ten years hence, but you must surely come! '" I hope that his manes will be appeased by my " coming " now. The first stimulus for editing Froebel's writings I received through the superintendent of the educational institute at Keilhau, the cradle of the Frobelian efforts, Johannes Arnold Barop. At my last visit he conversed daily with me of the efficiency of his aforetime friend, of which every place that we set foot upon gave testimony. I vv'as made accurately acquainted with the whole development of that activity, and received an incidental oversight of the printed and literary legacy of the Thuringian friend of children. Barop handed over to me everything that was at his command, and was not a little amused when he saw me at once fall upon the offered material in Keilhau, in consequence of the impetus he had given me, and convert my freedom, which was to be devoted to recreation, into intense work. When I returned to Hamburg, Froebel's widow delivered up to me all that was want- ing and which I was seeking. So against my intention I became the editor of Froebel's writings. FKOEBEL AND HIS EDUCATIONAL WORK. 19 It has not "been easy to wind my way through his numerous scribblings, to separate the essential and the unessential, and to use only what is necessary for the full understanding of the idea and the correct estimate of the founder. Even a selected edition should not, in my opinion, go beyond bounds, for the price of the whole naturally rises with the dimensions, and in proportion the difficulty of its general dissemination. I trust the selection I offer will fully answer its purpose. Three chronological errors which I have found, I will here correct. Henrietta Wilheraine Hofmeister was born, not on the 20th, but on the 17th of September, 1780. Froebel was not an assistant in the mineralogical museum at Berlin in the summer of 1813, but in August, 1814. He did not die on the 21st of July, but on the 21st of June, 1852. In regard to my remarks on the letter to Krause, I will here confess to the votaries of Friederich Froebel that 'I do not con- sider it right that the shady side of this remarkable, indeed this great man, should be carefully covered up by his friends. I think we should honor the truth here as elsewhere, and that by such uprightness we injure neither the man, who could as little be an angel in human form as other men, nor his cause, which will stand, so far as it has emanated from God, the source of all truth. We are much more likely to obtain a favorable judgment from all thoughtful and quietly investigating men, who are not inclined or accustomed to throw away the true metal with the schlag, by such considerate uprightness. On this ground I shall never fear to speak freely of the human imperfections of a man who has done and brought into use so much good. I see in this man the future reformer of the education of little children in their homes. Only in the closest connection with his efforts will it be possible for the female sex to obtain that culture and those means of help of which this whole half of humanity is capable, in order to fulfil intelHgently their high mission. The recognition of this will stimulate me ultimately, on the ground of the practical works of Froebel which are now partially at hand in- these three volumes, to issue a " Book on the Care of Childhood," and with it to venture a comprehensive essay to make accessible to all the ideas and plans of the founder of kindergartens, so as at the same time to supplement those ideas and plans by whatever science and hfe have brought to me of insight and experience since Friederich Froebel's death. May fate not put any obstacle in the way of this purpose! 20 FROEBEL AND HIS EDUCATIONAL WORK. I believe farther, that Dr. Karl Schmidt is right when he sees in the efforts of this original pedagogue of ours those principles which will again set in motion and bring to flood tide the peo- ple's education of the time. Froebel will excite the need for learning by learning; he will not alone develop receptivity by means of productivity, according to Pestalozzi, but will develop men directly through productivity. It is not difficult to point out that a reformation in instruction can be easily attained on the ground of its demands, and that one may think of that reforma- tion without meaning a total revolution, of which now and then there is foolish talk. Its radical demand, that we must let univer- sal life and especially the life of nature influence the child, will very rarely be able to adapt itself to the reality of things. The theory which considers the universe as an organic whole and man as a member of the whole in all, and which will allow the laws of education to be dictated chiefly by the laws of life, governed Froebel through and through, governs the present time, and will make its influence felt more and more in the educational field, and if we should find ten times another '' conformity to law " of all life as the parson's son of Oberweisback saw it. In short, I look upon Friederich Froebel as a truly great man. 5e who has pursued a single thought for a whole lifetime and served that thought with the utmost self-devotion and self-denial, who like him is able to set aside everything else for this thought and allow himself if necessary to be stoned or hung on the cross in its service, who knew no flinching and wavering in its presence^ indeed even scarcely any weariness, and set aside everything the world calls happiness, which he found only in the realization of this thought (turning this thought into act), he is a great man, and would have hunted himself down in pursuit of an error. And because Froebel was a great man, he must for this reason not be forgotten, and deserves the attention of a nation to which he clung with infinite love, for whose outer and inner freedom he fought literally on the battlefield, and which perhaps is the only one in the world that would let so ideal-minded a man as Friede- rich Froebel go forth from its bosom. Eamhurg, April 21, 1862. Dr. "Wichard Lange. Note. — ^We hope yet to see Dr. Lange's ^'BooJc on the Care of Childhood."— Tb. FEOEBEL AND HIS EDUCATIONAL WORK. 21 AUTODIOGRAPHT IN LETTER TO THE DUKE OF MEININGEN.* Early Childhood — Loss of Mother. I WAS born in the Tliuringian forest in Oberweissbacli, a village of Schwarz- burg, April 21, 1782. My father, who died in 1802, was then priest, or pastor, there. I was early initiated into the painful struggle of life, and a deficient, unnatural education exerted its influence upon me. Soon after my birth, my mother became ill, and, after nursing me nine months, died. The whole outward direction and growth of my life was changed by this painful loss. I consider this event to have affected, more or less, the phenomena of my external life. My father had sole charge of a parish, scattered in six or seven groups, numbering probably five thousand people ; which, even to so ac- tive a man as he was — who, in his conscientiousness, never forgot his parish — was very arduous work, especially with the very frequent religious services then customary. It happened, also, that associate charge of a large new church was given him, so that he was more and more drawn away from his home and children. I was much left to the servant, who understood how to take advantage of my father's pre-occupation, and was consigned by her (certainly for my good) to my brothers and sisters, somewhat older than myself. From this and one cir- cumstance of my later life, my indelible love for the family,' and especially for my brothers and sisters, may have taken its rise, and which, up to the present moment, has had a strong hold on my heart. Although my father was a stirring, active man, seldom surpassed in his re- lations as country pastor in education, learning and experience, yet I re- mained a stranger to him through his entire life, owing to these separations caused by early circumstances. I had really no more a father than a mother. Under these conditions, I grew to my fourth year, when I received a second mother through my father's second marriage. My spirit must have felt then deeply the need of motherly and parental love, for in that year should have come the first period of consciousness. I remember that to my new mo'ther I brought richly the emotions of a simple, true child's love. They were en- couraged, developed and strengthened because they were good-naturedly re- ceived and responded to. Yet I did not long keep this joy — this good fortune. Soon the mother rejoiced in a son of her own, and now she not only withdrew her love from me for this one, but more than indifference met me — perfect es- trangement, which found expression in accent and speech. I am obliged to make this circumstance especially prominent because I rec- ognize herein the first cause of my early introspection, my desire for self- knowledge and my youthful separation from other human ties. Soon after the birth of her son, my second mother gave up the trustful and soul-uniting " thou," and began to address me in the third person, in a distant manner. As the word Er separates everything, so a great gulf was placed between my mother and me. I felt myself already, in my dawning boyhood, quite isolated, and my soul was filled with grief. Dishonorable people wished to use this feeling and state of mind to the in. jury of my mother ; but I indignantly turned away from them and avoided * Translated by Miss Lucr Wheelock, of the Chauncey Hall Kindergarten, Bos- ton, Mass. 22 LETTER TO DUIvE OF MEININGEN. them when I could. Under such circumstances, I early became conscious of my purely inner life^ and the foundation was laid for that becoming self- respect and moral pride which has accompanied me through life. Temptations returned from time to time, and took a still more threatening aspect. Dishon- orable things were not only demanded of me, but directly attributed to me, and this in a way wliich left no doubt of the impropriety of the thing desired and the falsehood of the accusations. Local Influences — Family Life. So I was led on powerfully in my early boyhood to the consideration of life and its inner development in opposition to its external appearances. My inner and outer life, at this time, even in the midst of my plays and activities, were the principal object of my thoughts and reflections. The location of my parents' house had also an essential influence in the development and formation of my inner being. This structure was closely surrounded by other buildings, walls, hedges and fences, and Avas further inclosed by a court-yard and ])y grass and vegetable gardens, entrance on which was severely punished. The dwelling had no other outlook than right and left on houses, in front on a large church, and behind on the grassy base of a high mountain. I was thus de- prived of a distant view ; only, above me I saw the clear sky of the mountain region, and felt around me the pure fresli air. The impression which this clear sky, this pure air, made on me has continuously remained present with me. My observation was truly directed on what was near me in nature ; the plant and flower world became, so far as I could see and touch it, an object of my contemplation and thought. I early helped my father in his favorite oc- cupation of gardening, and received in this way many lasting impressions ; yet tlie anticipation of the true life of nature first came to me later — to which I shall come in the course of my story. The family life, also, at this time gave me much opportunity for self-occupa- tion and reflection. There was much going on in our house ; both parents displayed great activity, loved order, and sought in all imaginable ways to beautify their surroundings. I had to help their activity according to my strength, and soon observed that I gained by that means in power and judg- ment. Through this increase of strength and reason, my self-organized plays and occupations gained greater value. From the free life in nature, from the external family life, I must now turn back to the internal one that I then led. My father was a theologian of the old school, who considered knowledge and learning of less value than faith, yet sought to keep pace, as far as possible, with the times. For this purpose he took the best publications of the time, and carefully considered what was offered to him in them. This contributed not a little to the genuine Christian life that reigned in our family. All the members of it were assembled morning and evening, even on Sundays ; al- though on that day divine service brought us together for a common religious observance. Zollikofer, Hermes, Marezoll, Sturm and others led us in these excellent hours of thought and communion with our inner selves, and tended to the inspiration, unfolding and elevation of our spiritual life. Thus, my life was early influenced by nature, by work, and by religious perceptions ; or, as I prefer to say, the natural and primitive tendencies of every human being were nurtured in tlie germ. In order to develop later my view of the being of man, and for the sake of LETTER TO DUKE OF MEININGEN. 23 I tny professional and individual efforts, I must mention that here, with feelings deeply stirred, I resolved to be truly noble and good. As I hear from others, this firm inner resolution often contrasted with my outer life. I was full of youthful spirits and the joy of life, and did not al- ways know how to be moderate in my activity, and through carelessness got into critical situations of all kinds, and in my thoughtlessness destroyed every- tliiug around me that I wished to investigate and become acquainted with. Siuce my father, tlirough his many duties, was prevented from instructing me himself, and especially because he had lost the desire to do it, from my causing him so much trouble in studies which were difficult to me, I was obliged to attend the public village school. The relation of my father to the village school-teachers, to the director of music, and the teachers of the girls' school— also, the hopes that he cherished from the instruction of both — deter- mined him to send me to the last-named. This choice, on account of the neat- ness, quiet, method and order which reigned there, had an important influence on my iuuer development. In confirmation of this, I will speak of my entrance into the school. Fiist Entrance into Scliool. As in that time church and school stood in interchangeable relations, so it was the case with us. The school-children had appointed places in the church ; they were not only obliged to attend church, but every child, as a proof of his attention to the preacliing, had, on Monday (on which day an examination was held for this purpose), to repeat to the teacher some one of the passages which the preacher had used in his discourse as proof texts. Tlie one most suitable for the childish mind was then selected to be committed to memory by the little ones. One of the larger school-children, at an appointed time, had to repeat the Bible verse to the smaller ones, sentence by sentence, through the whole week. The little ones, all standing, had to repeat the same, sentence by sentence, until the passage was perfectly comprehended by every child. I was brought to school on a Monday. The appointed passage for the week was the well-known " Seek first the kingdom of God." I heard these words repeated every day in a quiet, earnest, somewhat sing-song childish tone, now by one, now by the whole. The verse made an impression on me like nothing before or since. Indeed, this impression was so lively and deep, that to-day every word lives freshly in my memory with the peculiar accent with which it was spoken ; and yet since that time nearly forty years have elapsed. Per- haps the simple child's soul felt in these words the source and salvation of his life. Indeed, that conviction became to the struggling, striving man a source of inexhaustible courage, of always unimpaired joy and willingness in self- consecration. Enough to say, my entrance into this school was for me the birth to a higher spiritual life. Keij to the Inner Life. I pause here in my recollections to ask myself whether I shall dwell longer upon this first period of my life ; yet this is the time in which the germs of my life unfolded — in which the heart crisis occurred — the first awakening of my inner life. Should the delineation of this earliest period be successful, the comprehension of my mature life and struggles wiU be easy. Therefore, I prefer to dwell upon it a relatively long' time, and so much the more because I can then pass more quickly over the later periods of life. It seems to me as if it were with this account and view of my life exactly as with my educational 24 LETTER TO DUKE OF MEINIXGEN. and teaching method ; what is set aside as the most common and insignificail appears to me often tlie most important, and it always seemed to me a mis- take to leave a gap in what is original and fundamental. Yet I know well that by such a search into the hidden springs of action one may easily weary those who cannot yet see the whole picture clearly or comprehend the whole aim of the representation. Contrary to the existing regulation, I was placed, by the position of my father as village minister, in the girl's school. Hence I received no place near pupils of my own age, but next the teacher, and was so brought near the largest pupils that I shared, when I could, their instruction, especially in two studies. At one time I read with them, and then I had to learn, instead of the above-mentioned Bible quotations, the sacred songs which were sung on Sundays in the church. There are two songs, especially, which shone forth like two clear stars in the dark and awful morning twilight : " Soar above, my heart and soal; " " It costeth much to be a Christ." These Avere songs of life to me. I found my little existence pictured therein, and the purport of them so penetrated my being that in later life I have often strengthened and en- couraged mysejf by wliat then enriched my soul. The domestic life of my father accorded perfectly with the school arrange- ment mentioned above. Although two divine services were held on Sunday, yet seldom was I allowed to miss one of these solemn occasions. I followed my father's discourse with great attention, partly because I believed I should find therein many references to his own ministerial, professional, and spiritual activity. I do not now find it immaterial that at divine service I sat apart from the congregation, in the vestry, because I was less distracted there. I have mentioned before that my father belonged to the old orthodox school of theology; therefore the well-known, strong, highly-colored language pre- dominated as well in sermon as in song, a language which I, in more ways than one, might denominate a stone language, because it requires a strong ex- planatory power to free the inner life therein contained from the outer covering. Yet, later, the developed power appeared too weak to influence the active life, the stirring, responsive strength of a simple, introspective young soul, one just unfolding itself — a mind asking everywhere for cause and connection, very often after long experiment, investigation and consideration. Joy and Slrength in Self- Activity. Whenever the thing ardently sought was found, I experienced great joy. Among the circumstances under which I grew up, especially in my first child- hood, external charms influenced me much. They were early an object of at- tentive observation to me. The result of this investigating and inquiring observation coming in my earliest boyhood, was very clear and marked, al- though directed not so much to words as to things. I realized that the passing influence of external charms gives nothing really lasting and satisfying to man, and that on this account they are not to be valued above conduct. This result affected and determined my whole life, as this first consideration and comparison of the inner and outer world, and their interchangeability, is the key-note of my entire life since. Uninterrupted self-observation, self- reflection and self-education is the key to my life, early shown and continued to the later periods of it. To arouse, animate, awaken and strengthen man's joy in and power for working continually on his own education had been and remained the fundamental necessity of my educational work. All my efforts LETTER TO DUKE OF MEININGEN. . 25 and methods, as a teacher, are directed towards the awakening and fostering of this joy and strength, of this personality by which the human being first truly sets himself to work as a man. The hard, unpleasant expressions of an orthodox theology I soon trans- formed in my imagination, to which, perhaps, two circumstances especially contributed. I heard the same expressions an indefinite number of times ; for I lived also under the precepts of the confirmation instruction which my father imparted to his household. I heard the terms in the most different connec- tions, whence fiuallj' the conception sprang up of itself in my soul. Secondly, I was frequently the silent witness of my father's earnest and rigid pastoral care ; of the frequent interviews between him and the many people who vis- ited the parsonage, to obtain counsel and instruction. I was thus again led from the outer to the inner world. Life, with its most secret impulses, and the words and opinion of my father tliereupon, passed before my eyes, and I realized in this way things and words, deeds and professions, in their most vital connection. I saw the fragmentary and burdened, torn and dismembered life of man as it appeared in this collection of five thousand people to the ob- servant eye of their earnest and resolute pastor. Discordant Life — Harmony of Nature. Matrimonial and family relations were often the subject of his admonitory and corrective conversation and remonstrances. The way in which my father spoke of this made me consider the subject as one of the most pressing and difficult for man, and, in my youth and innocence, I felt deep grief and pain that man alone among created things should pay the penalty of such a sexual difference that made it hard for him to do right. I could find nothing to reconcile that within and without me which was ab- solutely adapted to my mind, heart and inner need. And, indeed, how could this be possible at my age, and in my position ? Just then my oldest brother, who Jived awa}'' from home (like all my older brothers and sisters), came back for a time, and when I told him my delight in the purple threads of the hazel buds, he made me notice a similar sexual dif- ference among flowers. Now my mind was satisfied ; I learned that what had troubled me was a wide-spread arrangement throughout nature to which even the quiet, beautiful growths of flowers were subject. Henceforth, human and natural life, soul and flower existence, were inseparable in my eyes, and my hazel blossoms I see still, like angels that opened to me the great temple of nature. I received what I needed : in place of the church, a natural temple ; in place of the Christian religion, the life of nature ; in place of harmful, hating human life, a quiet, speechless plant life. Henceforth it seemed as if I had the clew of Ariadne, which would lead me through all the wrong and de- vious ways of life — and a life of more than thirty years with nature, often, it is true, falling back and clouded for great intervals: — has taught me to know this, especially the plant and tree world, as a mirror ; I might say, an emblem of man's life in its highest spiritual relations ; so that I look upon it as one of the greatest and deepest conceptions of human life and spirit when in holy scripture the comparison of good and evil is drawn from a tree. Nature, as a whole — even the realms of crystals and stones — teaches us to discriminate good from evil ; but, for me, not so powerfully, quietly, clearly and openly as the plant and flower kingdom. I said my hazel blossoma furnished me Ariadne's thread. Much was thus 26 LETTER TO DUKE OF MEININGEN. solved to me again and again in an entirely satisfactory way ; for example, the first life experience of the first beings in Eden, and much that is connected ■with them. Three crises of my inner life, which happened before my tenth year, I must bring out here before I turn to my outer hfe of this period. As folly, miscon- ception and ignorance, even in the earliest epoch of the world, are presumed to have determined its ruin, so it happened in the time of which I now speak. My inner life was then very quiet. I said to myself, very determinedly and clearly, the human race will not leave the earth until it has reached so much perfection in this dwelling-place as can be reached on earth. Tlie earth — nature, in the narrow sense — will not pass away until men have attained a perfect insight into the composition of the same. Tliis thought often returned in different aspects to me ; to it I often owed rest, firmness, perseverance and courage. Reconcilement of Differences. Towards the end of this period, my oldest brother, of whom I have already spoken, was in the university. He was studying theology. The critical phi- losophy of that time began to illumine the doctrines of the church. It could not but happen that father and son were often of different opinions. I remem- ber that once they discussed, with a lively exchange of words, some religious or church opinion. My father was excited, and on no account would give up. My brother, although mild by nature, was growing red, and could not resign what he held as true. I was here also, as so often, an unobserved listener, and I still see my father and brother as they stood opposed in their war of opinion. It seemed to me almost as if I comprehended something of the subject of their strife, and that I must decide that my brother was in the right ; and yet there seemed to be something in my father's view that was not entirely incompatible with a mutual understanding. It came to my mind that in every foolish idea there is a true side to be found, which often misleads to a convulsive, firm hold of the wrong. This view came out in my life more and more, and later, when two men in my presence contended for the truth, I learned to know it from both. On this account, I never liked to take sides, and this was my salvation. Another experience of my youth which had a definite influence upon my inner life M'as the following : There are constantlj^ recurring, positive demands in our church religion to put on Clirist, to show Christ in the life, to follow Jesus, and so on. These demands were often presented to me through my father's zeal in teaching and his earnest life. The child knows no fear from the claims which are adapted to the childish spirit. As he receives to himself and recognizes the claim as a whole, so he wishes the fulfillment of the same to be entire and perfect. By the so-frequent recurrence of this demand came to me in its highest importance, also, the great difficulty in the way of its fulfillment ; it even appeared to me that the latter was quite impossible. The contradiction which I believed I discovered in this way was oppressive to me in a high degree. Finally, the blessed thought came to me : human nature, in itself, does not make it impossible for man to live and represent again the life of Jesus in its purity ; man can attain to the purity of the life of Jesus if he only finds the right way to it. This thought, by which as often as I think of it I am transplanted to that place and condition of my boyhood, was by chance the last of that epoch of life, and so it may close the account of my inner development at that point. In looking back upon it, I see that it was the heavenly moment of my life. LETTER TO DUKE OF 'lEININGEN. 27 Disturbed Outer Life. From the delineation of my inner boy life one might possibly infer a happy, satisfied outer life. Such a conclusion would not be correct. It appears to have been my destination to set forth and unravel the sharpest and hardest contrasts and contradictions. My external life was, therefore, of an entirely opposite character. I grew up without a mother ; my physical condition was neglected, and through this neglect I had acquired many bad habits. I liked to be occupied ; but often erred, in my awkwardness, in choosing material, time and place. So I often drew on myself the highest dissatisfaction of my parents. From my aroused feelings, I was deeply sensible of this, and for a longer time than it lasted with them, and so much the more because I found myself at best at fault in the scheme, though not in the motive. In my mind, I saw always one side, viewed from which my doing the thing was not entirely wrong, still less deserving of punishment. In my opinion, designs were attributed to my actions which did not lie in them. This consciousness first made me what I had the credit of being — namely, a bad boy. Finally, from fear of a severe punishment, I concealed the most innocent transactions, or shielded myself by false assertions, when I was asked. Enough, I early passed as bad; and my father, who did not always have time for investigation, received the thing as it was represented to him. ; In play with my half brothers and sisters, according to the mother's con- struction I was always the occasion of all improprieties that happened. As the sympathy of my parents separated itself from me, my life separated more and more from them, and I was deprived of contact and union with men. In this mournful condition, I ardently wished a change. I counted my older brothers and sisters happy who were all out of the house. At this troublous time, my oldest brother, already mentioned many times, returned home. He appeared to me as an angel of life ; for he recognized in and under my mistakes the human side of my being, and took me often under his pro- tection, with my misdemeanors. After a short time, he departed again, it is true ; but my inner being was bound in the closest way with his, and, after his death, this love was the turning-point of my life. The happiness of being able to leave the paternal roof finally fell to my lot, and it was of the highest necessity ; for otherwise the violent contradictions of my inner and outer life would necessarily have confirmed the bad reputation that had now attached itself to me. Life Away from Home. When I was ten and three-quarter years old, a new life began, quite differ- ent from the earlier one. I permit myself here to make a comparison of this my early life with my present, to show how the former is to me the source of knowledge, and experience for the latter. As I, when a child and boy, strove to educate myself properly, according to the laws placed by God himself in my nature, although yet unknown, so I strive now in a similar way, according to similar laws, and by a similar pro- cess, to educate men — the children of my fatherland. What I attained by my exertions as a boy, with a certain degree of unconsciousness, man often gains with a certain degree of ignorance, not less truly, but generally under more favorable circumstances than those which I experienced in my boyhood. So life is to me, in its great and small phenomena, in those of mankind and the human race, as well as in those of the individual (although he himself arbi- 28 LETTER TO DUKE OF MEININGEN. trarily distorts his life) ; so the present, past and future is to me an unbroken, continuous, great whole, in which one thing explains, justifies, conditions and demands another. My childhood taught me that when mistrust exists where confidence should be, where separation takes the place of unity, when doubt is active where be- lief in man should operate, sorrowful fruits must appear, and a burdensome, oppressed life is the consequence. I now go back to the recital of the history of the development of my inner and outer life. A new life now began for me, different from the former one. An uncle on my mother's side — Superintendent Hoffman, of Stadt-Ilm — visited us this year. He was a gentle, benevolent man. His appearance among us made a benefi- cent impression on me. As an experienced man, he may have perceived the unhappiuess of my situation ; for, soon after his departure, he asked my father, by letter, to give me into his charge. Consent was easily and gladly given. ToM'ards the end of the year 1792 I went to him. His wife and child had died early. Only his aged mother-in-law lived with him. As austerity reigned in my father's house, so here kindness and benevolence. I saw there, in respect to myself, distrust; here, confidence; there, I felt constraint; here, freedom. While there, I had been hardly at all among boys of my own age ; here, I found certainly as many as forty fellow-pupils — for I entered now the higher class in the town school. This market-town lies in a quite broad valley, by a clear little stream. My uncle had a garden, near the house, which I could visit, and I was allowed to roam through the whole region, if I only appeared at home again punctually at the right time ; which was an irremissible law. I dranlc here fresli courage in long draughts; for the whole country was to me a Physical Groicth and Play. place of action, as earlier our farm premises had been. I gained freedom of mind and bodily strength. The eyes of our higher spiritual teacher never dis- turbed our plays, which went on in an appointed jjlace before him, and were always merrily conducted. The frequent re-action after jjlay was often griev- ous to me, which took place because my bodily strength and activity M'ere not developed according to my age, and my bold daring could ilever supply the quiet, vigorous strength, and the knowledge of its limit, which mj^ companions enjoyed. These happy ones had grown up in the constant use of their youthful and boyish strength. I felt myself fortunate beyond measure when at last I was received as an equal companion in the play of my school-fellows. But what afterwards skill, purpose and life remedied in this respect, I then felt always a physical weakness at variance with boyish vigor. That of which my former education had robbed me being supplied, my life became vigorous, outwardly unconstrained — and, as I am told, I have made this useful to others in a high degree. The world lay open to me as far as I could take it in. It may be that my life at that time was as free and unconstrained as my former life had been confined and bounded ; at least my youthful comrades of that time have com- municated to me several incidents which make me believe that my gayety bor- dered on wildness and carelessness — so far did I, even as a boy, intend the outward acts of my life to be of a more simple kind than those of my contem- poraries. My heretofore quiet life in nature was now a more free and living one. At the same time, my uncle's house was a peaceful, generally a quiet LETTER TO DUKE OF MEININGEN. 29 one, so that I lived and grew in this direction also, and now consequently a true balance came into my life. Thus in two places of culture I was quite at home, as formerly — although more frequently distraction of mind took possession of me — I mean, the church and school. In the latter, the hour of religious in- struction quite captivated me. Like my uncle's life and character — gentle, kind, aud breathing love — so were his pulpit utterances. I followed them en- tirely, and gave an account of them at the Monday repetition. Religious and School Instruction. But the religious instruction of our teacher was most agreeable to me. In him and through him I received greater light and higher confirmation for everything that I had explained to myself. I spoke later, when a young man, of tlie excellence of tliis instruction, to my uncle, aud he expressed the opinion that it miglit be really good, but too philosophical, and for this degree of ad- vancement difficult to understand. " For you," he added, " it might answer, because you had already received excellent instruction from your father." This teaching sufficiently illuminated, animated, warmed, even inflamed me, to whom it was the thing desired, so that I was often deeply affected, especially by the representation of the life-work and character of Jesus. I was tlien dis- solved in tears and a most decided longing filled my breast to be able to lead at once a similar life. When I now hear reports of the youtliful overflow of my spirits at that time, I must believe that it may easily have led the super- ficial observer to the wrong opinion that all religious admonitions and teach- ings passed over me without making an impression. How incorrectly would such an observer have judged the true condition of my inner life ! Reading, writing, arithmetic, and religious instruction were well-conducted in the school of Stadt-Ilm. Latin was miserably taught and yet more spatiugly learned. Here, as in many similar schools, the element of generalization was entirely lacking. The time I spent on Latin was not lost, in so far as it taught me that a course of instruction so carried on can brine: forth no fruit in tlie scholars. Mathematics lay very near my nature. When I received private instruction in this braucli also, my advance steps were so marked that tliey bordered on the by no means small height of knowledge and ability of my teacher. How astonished I was when in my twenty-third year I went to Yverdun for the first time and could not solve the problems which were there given to the pupils ! This was one of the experiences which quickly captivated me with Pestalozzi's manner of teaching, and decided me to begin mathematics anew according to his method. Bi\t of that later. In Geography we recited everything parrot-like, used many words and knew nothing, for there was lacking in this instruction, also, the slightest connection with life and any intuition, although we could name properly our colored mar- ket towns and little boroughs. I received private instruction in Geography also. My teacher wislied to go on with me in this branch. He gave me England to study. I could not place this land in relation with the villages and country in which I lived, and so I received little from tliis instruction likewise. Special instruction in German was not thought of ; yet we received teaching in writing and spelling. I do not know with what orthography was connected. I believe with nothing exactly ; it floated in the air. I had instruction, also, in singing and playing the piano ; but without result. I mention aU this merely to connect it with something later. 30 LETTER TO DUKE OF MEININGEN. My life during the whole time of my abode at my uncle's had three direc- tions ; the religious, the unfolding and establishing of that which was expressed in my boyish play, and the quietly active ideas gained in my uncle's peaceful home. To this life I devoted myself fervently, without thinking what contrasts my outer life might show. My life passed, as that of my school-fellows, without a visible or perceptible control over me, quite unrestrained, ana yet I do not remember that a base act was ever perpetrated by any of us. | Influence of Manner on Childi-en. Something presses upon my thoughts now, which, as a teacher, I cannot leave unnoticed. We liad instruction from two teachers ; one was pedantically severe ; the other, tlie special teacher of our class, was humane and easy. The former never effected anything with the class; the latter, what he wished ; and if it had been laid upon him, or he had known his strength and power, he would have been able to accomplish something great. In the little city tliere were two clergymen, both directors of the school. My uncle, the first clergyman, was mild, gentle, and full of feeling, effective in his life as in his profession and pulpit. The second clergyman was rigid, even hard ; he quarreled and found fault disproportionately much. The former guided us by a look. Certainly few would have been rude enough to deny any word of his entrance to their hearts. The long admonitions of the other, as a rule, passed over us without making any impression. j\Iy uncle was, like my father, a true pastor of his flock ; but a gentle, human friendliness guided him. The couviction of the truth of his utterances guided my fatlier; he was earnest and severe. Both passed away more than twenty years since ; but how different the two congregations appear ! In one they are reckless, now that rigid control is shaken off, and if I hear cor- rectly, much unbridled license reigns ; in the other, the little city elevates itself to always greater prosperity, and everything thrives from an inner culture as well as from a true citizen-like industry. I mention these things because the consequences laid liold on me as a life experience. In this way I lived until my confirmation, a few weeks excepted, which I passed with my parents during the long school vacations Here also, every- thing appeared milder, and the tlirifty, economical activity whicli went on there, into which I was led anew during my temporary stay, exercised a very benefi- cent influence over me. At that time I sought first in the library of my father the engravings, espe- cially those which represented incidents in tlie universal history of the world. One plate on which was contained the representation of our alphabet together witli many others, made a very surprising impression on me. By it I was placed in a condition to understand the dependence and the deri- vation of our written characters from the old Phrenician letters. Tliis gave me a dark intimation of the inner dependence of languages, of which I heard and saw much from my brother's studies, and from pursuing the investigation myself. The Greek especially lost in my eyes much of its strangeness when I recognized these written characters again in German. The idea of harmony tliat I gained at that time had no effect on my life then, but a powerful one at a later period. At this time I read many kinds of juvenile writings. The story of Samuel Lawills made a lively impression on me. I wished a ring for myself Avhich by LETTER TO DUIvE OF MEININGEN. 31 a pressure on the finger could inform me of any objectionable design of the hand, and I was very indignant at the youthful possessor of this ring who threw it away in anger because it pressed him quite hard in a moment when he wished to do a passionate deed. The time of my confirmation passed, and this, like the preparation for it, waa carried on by my uncle. I experienced in this the most effective and penetrat- ing impression of my life — the threads of my being found their point of unity and rest at that time. Choice of Vocation. I was destined for some civil calling, and the question was now asked — for what ? It was already decided by my step-mother that I should not study. Since two of my brothers had devoted themselves to study, she feared that by new expenses the property of my father would be too much diminished. There is in our country a vocation which is frequently chosen by tlie most respectable and faithful parents for their sons. It is a situation in financial and mercantile affairs. The aspirants for this course have two ways of entrance ; either the one who enters it begins with a subordinate revenue offi- cer as secretary, or with one of the highest civil officers as servant. As my ability in writing and reckouing appeared to my father satisfactory and suffi- cient for this course, and as he also knew very well that it would lead later not only to a life free from care, but to property, he destined me for this calling. But the revenue officer who could use a young man of this kind gave reasons why he could not and did not wish to receive me then. Something in my soul strove against eitlier of these two resources, something which absolutely kept me from treading that path, although all kinds of invit- ing allurements were held out. My father meant well and honorably by me, but destiny willed it otherwise. Yet it is extremely probable that in this case an externally careless and happy lot would have fallen to me, while I now have to strive with care and poverty. Enough ; this course was closed to me. My wish and my desire were now considered. I wanted to be a husbandman, but in the entire meaning of the word, for I loved the mountains, the fields and the woods ; also I heard that to acquire skill in this department one must understand fully geometry and surveying. After what I had opportunely learned to know of the latter, this prospect was delightful to me. ]My father sought to find me a place, but the stewards demanded too much apprentice money. At this time he made the acquaintance of a forester who had a great reputation as geometrician and assessor of taxes. They came to an agreement, and a contract was made for two years' instruction in forest matters, taxing, geometry and surveying. I was fifteen years old when I began, in 1797, as the forester's apprentice. He showed me repeatedly his many-sided knowl- edge, only he did not understand the art of teaching others ; also the business of water transportation did not allow him to devote to me the promised and necessary time for my instruction. So soon as I was clear on that point, my own peculiar life drove me to use the really good books on forest affairs and geometry which I found there. I made the acquaintance also of a physician of a neighboring market town, who from love of it indulged in physics, and he gave me botanical books by which I became acquainted with other than wood plants. I used the long time of the forester's absence, during which I was left entirely to myself, for drawing a kind of m_ap of the district in which I lived ; botany, however, busied me chiefly. My church religion changed into a relig- 32 LETTER TO DUKE OF MEININGEN. ious life in nature, and in the last half year I lived entirely in and with planta, which attracted me wonderfully, without, however, the meaning of the inner life of the plant world yet dawning on me. The collecting and drying of plants I carried on with the greatest zeal. This time, in manifold ways, was devoted to my self education, self information and elevation. Influence of Theatricals. I now mention an incident, the most important to my inner condition. There is a little country town a league distant from my dwelling-place. A company of wandering actors had arrived there who played in the princely castle. After I had once seen one representation, hardly one of the following remained unsought by me. The exhibition made a deep and vital impression on me, and this so much the more as a long denied nourishment seemed to be supplied to my feelings by it. These impressions were much more lasting and effective to me, as every time after the play I retraced my way home in a dark or starry night and worked over to myself the purport of the play. My inter- est led me to seek the actors, and among them an earnest young man especially attracted me, with whom I spoke of his calling. I congratulated him on being a member of a company which was able to cause such beautiful effects on the human disposition, and expressed also the wish to be a member of such a com- pany. Then this honorable man painted the actor's vocation to me as a glar- ing and deceptive evil, and confessed to me that he had chosen tins calling only by necessity and would soon leave it. My father, to whom I had freely revealed my attendance at the plays, reproached me bitterly on this account, and regarded my action as highlj' culpa- ble, which contradicted greatly my own experience, as I placed my play attend- ance beside my best church attendance. Later, as so often already, my brother was the mediator between my father and myself. In 1799, St. John's day, my appreuticesliip was at an end. The forester who had now the advantage of my activity wished to keep me a year more ; but a higher purpose was awakened in me. I wished to carry on mathematics and botany more comprehensively, and would not remain. When my time had expired i left and returned to the paternal roof. My master knew well that he had not fulfilled his duty towards me, and in this probably oppressive consciousness he took a not exactly honor- able course of procedure towards me. He did not know my private work, for example, the study of some elementary mathematical books which I was easily able to comprehend. Besides he was dissatisfied that I would not remain a year longer. He sent a letter to my father in which he brought bitter com- plaints against me, and put the blame of my ignorance entirely on myself. This letter reached my parents' house before I did, and my father sent it to my brother, who was preacher in a village through which my homeward way led. Soon after I arrived at his residence he showed me the letter of accusation. I righted myself by disclosure of my master's unconscientious way of dealing, as well as by setting forth my private work, and in a reply to my master I exam- ined all the charges made against me and his conduct toward me, so that I satis- fied my father and brother. My mother saw, however, in the forester's verdict, the confirmation of her own views. The aspirations of my spirit, which al- ready began to quicken into existence, were again fettered, and my life ap- peared again cold and hard. LETTER TO DUKE OF JIEININGEN. 33 Studies at Jena. « It happened that my father had to make a remittance of money to one of my brothers, who was studying medicine in Jena. I had notliiug to do, and was appointed a messenger. Arrived in Jena, and penetrated by the active in- tellectual life, I wished to stay there. It was eight weeks to the close of the summer half year of 1799. My brother wrote my father that I could fill this time profitably an Jena, and, in consequence of his letter, I was allowed to re- main. I now received instruction in topographical and local drawing, and employed the whole time on it. On Michaelmas Day I returned home with my brother. My purpose and spirit were aroused in many ways, and I expressed the wish to my brother to be allowed to study also. My father was willing to give his permission, if I knew how to plan the means to reach my end. I possessed a very narrow maternal property, but esteemed it insufficient. I was still not of age, and so needed the consent of my guardian. When I had received this, I went, in 1799, to Jena as a student. My registration named me student of philosophy, which ai>peared to me very strange, because I had only thought of quite prac- tical knowledge as the object of my study, and had formed another idea of philosophy which I often heard named. The word made on my dreamy, easily-moved susceptible life a very great impression, and its effect did not fail. The impression disappeared, it is true, almost at the beginning ; but it gav& my studies an unexpected higher meaning. I heard lectures on practical mathematics, arithmetic, algebra, geometry, mineralogy, botany, natural history, physics, chemistry, the science of finance, on the care of forest trees and forest matters, on architectural and common building, and surveying. I continued topographical drawing. At first, the mathematical instruction appeared to me unimportant ; later, however, I could not follow in every case. The lectures of my excelleno teacher had not the same value that they might have had and would have had ii I had seen in the sequence of the instruction and the progress of the same more inner necessity and less arbitrariness. It was this consideration that decided me against this process of teaching. If I felt it already in the pure mathematics, how much more must it be the case with practical mathematics, and especially with experimental physics. The ex- periments could not captivate me. I sought and wished to see the whole in its inner connection. In botany, I had a sensible, loving and benevolent teacher (Batsch). Through him, my insight into nature was essentially quickened, and my love for observing it made more active. I shall always think of this man with gratitude. He was also my teacher in natural history. Two ideas which he set forth especially laid hold of and satisfied me : first, the thought of the relation of animals, branching out on all sides ; and, second, that the bone or framework of fish, birds and men is one and the same, and that of man is to be considered perfected as the ground type of all the rest, which nature strives to represent in their subordinate frames. During my abode at the university, I lived very much retired, and economi- cally. 1 appeared seldom in public places, and visited only my older brother, who was studying medicine at Jena during the first year of my stay there. Consequences of Debt. \Vlien I went to the university, my father had, I believe, given me the entire remittance for the first half year. My brother asked for a part of the money, 3 34 LETTER TO DUKE OF MEININGEN. which I did not n^d immediately. He hoped to he able soon to refund tno stun. I gave him willingly the greater part of my little stipend ; but, unfor- tunately, I could not get the money back, and thereby came into great diffi- culty myself. Towards the end of the third term the pressure of my situation increased. I had become thirty thalers in debt to the proprietor of an eating- house, if I mistake not. When this man had made legal demands for payment several times, which I could never satisfy, and had even turned to my father himself, but had received from him a very positive denial, I was threatened with imprisonment in case of longer failure to pay. And I really met with this punishment. My guardian, who still had some means at my command, would not assist me, because the letter of the law spoke against his stepping in as a partisan. I was the sport of the caprice of this inflexible man, and lan- guished as such for nine weeks in the prison at Jena. But, finally, my renun- ciation of any later paternal inheritance satisfied my father, and I was freed in the summer of 1801. I left Jena and my academical course immediately, and returned to my father's house. I was now just nineteen years old. Naturally, I entered the house with a heavy heart, a troubled mind and oppressed spirit. Spring, however, quickened and aWakened all nature, and called back my slumbering endeavors. My father now strove to obtain a suitable position for me in my cliosen call- ing— to create, at least, an activity which should bring me nearer it. A favor- able opportunity soou presented itself. A relative on my father's side had an estate in Hildburg which a steward managed. The friendship of this relation for my father allowed me to become acquainted with practical husbandry, un- der the oversight of this steward. The misunderstanding with my father often painfully occupied my thoughts at this time. I had to respect and reverence him. In his extreme old age he was strong and sound in body as in mind, impressive in word and counsel, and vigorous in action, earnest, and had a firm will, but was at the same time full of noble self-sacrifice. I knew that my father was old and near the grave — it grieved me not to be understood by him. Death of the Father. After an abode of some months on this estate, a letter called me home. My father carried his anxiety for my future on his heart until the end. He died in February, 1802. I now stood free in this relation, and could determine my life according to circumstances. With this feeling I left home again at Easter of the same year, in order to take the place of actuary of the forest court near Bamberg. The place lay in a rarely beautiful district. My duties were light. After them, I could go out freely in the spring weather, and grow strong in mind and feelings. Although this officer, with his whole family, was a Catholic, yet he chose a tutor recommended by Professor Cains, who had many excellent qualities, so that we were soon friendly. In tlie early spring of 1803 1 left this place and went to Bamberg with the firm expectation that the proposed government and land changes, and the projected land survey, would quickly give me an appropriate sphere of action. My expec- tation was in no wise disappointed. I made it my aim to become acquainted with the land geometers there, and immediately received from one a similar employment. He had had much surveying to do and had it still on hand. He LETTER TO DUKE OF MEININGEN. 35 commissioned me to prepare the necessar}^ maps because I had some readiness in map drawing. This gave me occupation for a longer time, ■which was com- pensated sufficiently for my needs. Now naturally with the new government the appointment of land surveyors was agitated, and those living in the city had to hand in plans of Bamberg as a test. I was not unacquainted with such work and prepared a plan with great pleasure and gave it in. My work received approbation, and I my reward ; yet as an inexperienced young man, a stranger, I received no appointment. After this work was finished I was commissioned to measure a little estate. This business had for me weighty consequences. I only mention one point ; the joint proprietor was a young Doctor of Philosophy who inclined toward the new school of Schelling. It could not but happen that we alluded to that which animated our inner life, and so it came to pass that he gave me to read, Schelliug's " Bruno or the Spirit of the Age." What I read in tliis book influenced me powerfully. The friendly young man, who was not much older than myself (we had already seen each other in Jena), saw my lively interest in the contents of the book. I had also repeatedly spoken to him of it. Therefore he said to me one day the following words. Philosophy and Art. which were very strange and inexplicable to me then : "Guard against philoso- phy ; it leads you to doubt and night. Devote yourself to art ; it gives life, peace, and joy." I remembered the words of the young man, yet I could not understand him since I looked on philosophy as belonging to tlie life of man, and could not comprehend how one could come into night and doubt if he fol- lowed quietly the inner life. His words made me turn my attention to myself, my life and endeavors, and showed two separate and very different ways of life. My friend, the teacher of the officer's family, had in the mean time left his place. He told me that he was on the point of going to Frankfort and from there to France. I saw him depart regretfully, not suspecting that some years later, life would bring us together and he would directly decide my career. Here also, as so often in life, separation led to unity and unity to separation. I pass over several essential influences for the building up of my character and moral life, and come to the end of my stay in Bamberg. I had now to think in earnest of seeking again a certain definite work. I really stood alone. I had no one who could help me. I caught the idea from a pai:)er then much read, "The Universal German Advertiser," of advertising for a place and adding as a proof of my qualifications some architectural and geometrical work to the illustrations of the paper. I immediately entered upon the scheme. For an architectural work I chose the plan of a nobleman's castle in the coun- try together with the proper out-buildings ; for the geometrical design I chose a table out of the maps prepared by me earlier, which I completed. In 1803 I sent these, together with my application for employment, to the paper named, with the request that the editor would add some approving words to my sketches. My work and testimonials won approbation. IMy request was grati- fied, and I received different commissions each of which brought something wel- come to me. The choice was difficult ; but I finally decided on the acceptance of a prirate secretarj'ship with the president and former private counselor of Dewitz in Mecklenberg, who now resided in Gross Milchow. In the rough and very severe winter days of February I journeyed thither on foot. The people, simple, active young men from Saxony and Prussia, received me in a friendly manner. I had never yet had the opportunity even to see the accounts 36 LETTER TO DUKE OF MEININGEN. of husbandry on a large scale, much less to carry them on, and here I had to do it by a perfect and plain scheme by which everything was written down in tlie most exact way. This was of the greatest advantage to me, and thus I was able to satisfy my new employer, and especially his wife, who examined into the smallest things in the closest manner. The surroundings of the estates of Dewitz were very charming. Good fortune had led me at all times into beautiful natural regions. I constantly enjoyed what nature offered me, and she was always truly bound to me like a mother. When I had acquired some skill my business became simple ; it had a regular recurring weekly course and gave me time to think of my own improvement. My work on these estates was, however, short. The direction of my life and mind was already decided, and a star had risen inwardly for me which I must observe. Therefore I could consider my occu- pation then only as a sheet anchor to be given up as soon as the opportunity was furnished to take up again my special vocation. This opportunity soon came. My uncle, who, like my brother, bore me in love on his heart, had just died. To the last he had thought of me, and charged my brother to do every- thing to give me a secure position in life, and to prevent my leaving the place which I had for a time, at least, without a certain prospect of a sure and better one. Providence ordered it otherwise. Directly after his death through the little inheritance falling to me, the means were in my hand to fulfill the wish of my heart, the strivings of my spirit. So wonderfully God guides the destiny of men ! So though healthy in body and soul, head and heart, yet my spirit felt soon the need of a higher culture. The president had two sons who were trained in Halle in pedagogy. They visited their parents in company with their teacher. He was a mathematician and versed in physics. I found him open and com- municative. He was so good as to name and point out to me the manifold problems which he had laid out for himself for solution, and thus awakened my long slumbering love for mathematics and physics. For some time my desire had turned especially to architecture, so that I was firmly resolved to choose it for my career and to study it with all earnestness. The time when my present Avork could no longer satisfy me had come, and I asked for my dismissal. The highest outward inducement to it was this : I remained in correspondence with the young man whom I learned to know as a teacher in Bamberg, who had left that place to go to Frankfort and then to France. He now lived again as tutor in a merchant's family in the Nether- lands. I imparted to him my wish to give up my place and seek a position in architectural affairs, and asked him whether in the accomplishment of my wish I could not work best in Frankfort, where so much life and human intercourse were united. My friend wrote me that in the beginning of the summer he should spend some time in Frankfort, and if I could also come there, a con- ference on the situation would be most advantageous. In consequence of this promise I took the firm and unchangeable resolve to step out of my place in the early spring and go to Frankfort. Yet where should I procure the money for such a journey ? In this difficulty I wrote again to my oldest brother who had so justly understood me and asked for assistance. His answer came. "With joyful trembling and anxiety I held it in my hands. For an hour I car- ried it around with me before I opened it ; for days I did not read it, for it appeared to me highly improbable that he would be able to do anything for the LETTER TO DUKE OF MEININGEN. 3 7 accomplishment of the wish of my soul, and so I feared to find in the letter the destruction of my life. When after some days of alternation between hope and doubt I finally opened it, I was not a little astonished that in the beginning of it the most heartfelt sympathy was expressed. The farther contents moved me deeply. It contained the news of my uncle's death, and the announcement that a legacy had fallen to me as well as to my brothers and sisters. Tlie die was cast. From tliis moment my inner life had quite a different signification and character, and yet it was all unknown to me. I was like a tree that blooms and knows it not. At the end of April, 1805, with peace in my heart and joy in my soul, I left the struggling purpose and spirit of my former condition. The first days of a rarely beautiful May I spent in the best sense of the word with a friend. This very dear friend lived on an estate beautifully situated in TJckermark. In these beautiful but very quiet and solitary surroundings I fluttered merrily about from one flower to another like a butterfly. I deeply loved nature in her colored and jeweled attire and drew near to her in my youthful gayety. When I first made the discovery that the landscape viewed with this feeling appears in heightened beauty, I expressed this perception in the following words : " The more deeply we bind ourselves to nature, so much the more adorned she gives us everything back." In May, 1805, I arrived on my journey at the house of my brother, so often mentioned, who had now re- ceived another place as pastor. He was kind and full of love as ever, and instead of blaming me expressed his assent in the most decided manner. He encouraged me to follow my inner determination faithfully and unchangeably, and wrote this sentiment in my album at my departure : " Man's lot is to struggle towards an end. Be a man, dear brother, firm and decided. Overcome the obstacles which oppose you and be confident. You will gain your end." So I departed encouraged by sympathy and agreement, strengthened and confirmed in my resolution by my brother. Just before midsummer I entered Frankfort, according to the agreement mentioned between my friend and myself. During my journey of many weeks in that beautiful spring-time I had time to become quiet and collected. My friend kept faith and we worked together towards bringing on a favorable future for me. The plan of seeking a place as architect was firmly held. Many favorable circumstances also seemed to point towards its accomplish- ment ; yet my friend was determined that I should ensure my support by pri- vate instruction until something farther should show itself for the maturing of my plan. But the more decided the prospect became, so much the more a repressed feeling took possession of me. I began to ask myself, " How can you work through architecture for the ciilture and ennobling of man ? " Yet I remained true to my resolution and began to work at my calling with an architect. My friend who was unceasingly active for the fulfillment of my aim, introduced me to a friend of his who was then head teacher in the model school just established in Frankfort. My life and aim was mentioned and dis- cussed. I expressed myself freely. " O ! " said Gruner, turning to me, " give up architecture ; it is not for you. Become an educator. We need a teacher in our school. Make up your mind and you shall have the place." My friend advised the acceptance of Gruner's proposal, and I began to waver. Then an outward circum.stance happened that decided me. I received news that my testimonials, especially those which I had received in Jena, were lost. They 38 LETTER TO DUKE OF MEININGEN. were sent to a man who had actively interested himself in me, and I could not divine by what ill luck the loss had happened. I therefore concluded that providence had taken doMn the bridge of retreat and hesitated no longer, but willingly and joyfully grasped the hand offered me and was soon a teacher in the model school in Frankfort-on-the-Main. Teacher in Model School — Pestalozzi. The watchword in education at that time was Pestalozzi. That word waa also pointed out to me as mine, for Gruner when an under teacher in the school had been Pestalozzi's pupil, and as head teacher had written a book on this method of instruction. I remembered now that in my early boyhood in my father's house I learned from a paper the following news : In Switzerland, so I understood, a man, Pestalozzi by name, living for forty years quite isolated from the world had learned to read, write and reckon by himself and his own exertions. This announcement acted beneficially on me. I felt then the slow- ness and unsatisfactoriness of my own development, and this intelligence con- soled me, and filled me with hope that I might supply the deficiency in my culture by my own efforts. It was natural that everything about Pestalozzi affected me wonderfully, and I formed the resolution of seeing this man, who so thought and strove to act in his life and work. In August, 1815, I went to Yverdun where Pestalozzi had come shortly before. As soon as I arrived I was received in an especially friendly manner by Pestalozzi and his teachers on account of the recommenda- tion of Gruner and his co-laborers, and was conducted into the recitations and left more or less to myself. I was still very inexperienced in teaching. What I saw elevated and depressed me, awoke and amazed me. My stay lasted four- teen days. I worked over what I could to give a true written account of how I saw the whole and the impression it made on me. I left Yverdun in the middle of October with the resolve to return for a lon- ger time as soon as I was able. When I returned to Fi'ankfort my appoint- ment was definitely confirmed by the consistory. The work which awaited me in the school was assistance in the preparation of an entirely new plan of instruction for the whole institution, which consisted of four or five boys' and two or three girls' classes, and was attended by nearly two hundred children. There were four regularly appointed and nine private teachers. The subjects which were assigned to me were arithmetic, dr.awing, geography, and the Ger- man language. I taught mostly in the middle classes. Of the impression of my first instruction and school keeping in a class of from thirty to forty boys, between the ages of nine and eleven, I spoke thus in a letter to my brother : " It seems to me as if I had found something not known and yet long desired, long missed ; as if I had finally found my native ele- ment." I was like a fish in water or a bird in the air. Before I carry far- ther this side of my life development, I must take up another thing which was more important for me by far as a man, an educator and teacher, and which was soon complicated with the first. Soon after my early friend M'hom I had met in Frankfort had established me with Gruner, he returned to his situation as tutor. Private Tutor. Since it was not possible for him to present me personally to a family that desired suitable private instruction for their sons, he did it in writing, and sev- eral days before my journey to Yverdun his kind letter introduced me to this LETTER TO DUKE OF MEIXl^'GEJT. 39 family. lustructlon and education were desired for three sons. I saw them, and after they had gone away their personal qualities were pointed out to me, the nietliod of teaching which they had formerly enjoyed and its consequence. I was taken into consultation on the subject of their farther instruction. I had really not thought of education at all as an objective thing. I had indeed an inner dread of giving private instruction; but the trustful indulgence Avith which I was met here, and the clear, fresh, friendly glance which met me, espe- cially from both the younger boys, determined me to give them daily two hours of teaching and to share their walks. I gave them lessons in arithmetic and the German language. The first were soon arranged. I gave them according to Pestalozzi's method. But I had great difficulty with the instruction in language. I began to give it according to the German grammars used then and now. I prepared mj^self as well as possible, and exercised myself in the most careful manner on what was unknown to me. But this way of teaching tired me. I could endure it neither for my pupils nor myself. Then I began to connect it with Pestalozzi's mother book. In this way it went much better, yet this did not satisfy me. In numbers, by the use of the tables in Pestalozzi's book, I reached the same result which I had seen in Switzerland. My pupils often had the solution almost before the last word of the problem was spoken. In our walks I exerted myself to enter into the life of the children and to fur- ther it. I lived my own early life once again, but in an improved form, and it now became clear to me in its individuality and its universality. I now devoted all my thought and all my work to building up and educating men. My life in the school with my pupils, excellent fellow-teachers, and occa- sioual visitors was also ver}- elevating and beneficial. Favored by the situation of the school building the scholars could exercise freely and play in the court and garden, and so an important means was given to the teachers of growing inwardly with their pupils. All voluntarily resolved that once a week each teacher should go with his pupils into the open air. Each one chose a lasting or temporary occupation with them as it suited him. I busied my class espe- cially with the plant world. As teacher of geography I used this opportunity to bring them to the contemplation and comprehension of the earth's surface, connected the instruction in geography with the view thus obtained, and let it grow out of it. I took everything according to nature, and drew the picture immediately, diminished in size, on an even surface of ground or sand chosen for the purpose. When the picture was firmly grasped and imprinted, we drew it in school on a blackboard lying horizontally. It was sketched first by the teacher and pupils together, then made an exercise for every scholar. Our representations of the earth's surface had at first a spherical form like the apparent horizon. At the first public examination which the school gave, I was so fortunate as not only to rejoice in the undivided approbation of the parents present, but especially of my superiors, and they said geography should be so taught. The child must first learn to know his surroundings before he goes into the distance. The scliolars were at home in the vicinity of the city as in their own rooms, and noticed quickly and promptly every relation of the surface of their district. In teaching numbers I did not have the lower, but only the middle classes. As teacher of this I received encouraging approbation. I had not only the joy of attaining results which perfectly satisfied the ex- aminers, but I saw that my pupils' worked with pleasure, zeal, and independ- 40 LETTER TO DUKE OF MEININGEN. ence. Concerning my own life and efforts at that time I expressed myself in tlie following words : " I M'ish to cultivate men who stand rooted in nature with their feet in God's earth, whose heads reach toward and look into the heavens, Avhose hearts unite the richly formed life of earth and nature, and the purity and peace of heaven — God's earth and God's heaven." Often now the wish arose to be released from my engagement to the model school. I had pledged myself to remain in it as teacher at least for three years. The celebrated head teacher Gruner knew enough of human nature to see that such an active man as I could not work well in such an institution as that of which he was the head, and I was released from my obligation. My departure from the school was decided and I could develop myself again freely and uncon- strainedly. The three boys to whom I had given private instruction in num- bers and language now needed a teacher on account of the departure of their former tutor. The task of seeking a teacher in the circle of my acquaintance was given me as being best acquainted with the character and needs of these children. I earnestly turned in all directions and among others to my oldest brother. I divulged to him the qualifications which appeared to me necessary for a teacher. He wrote me decidedly and simply. He could not propose a teacher such as I wished for the relations pointed out, and did not believe that I would find one ; for the pure inner life would be lacking in one possessing knowledge and the outside experience of life ; the care and recognition of the same in another who possessed this. So the thing stood for several months, when in my. deep love for the boys and anxiety for their education I sought to place myself in the parent's place. This decided me to become their teacher myself. After a very hard struggle I expressed my resolution. It was thank- fully received, and understood as I gave it. As my choice and decision were connected with a deep inner struggle, so was also my initiation into the place. There were two unchangeable things in our contract. One was that I should never be obliged to reside with my pupils in the city, and that from the first they should be freely given up to me. Takes Sole Charge of these Pupils. I entered this, my new educational work, in July, 1807. I was now really twenty-five years old, but my development was several years younger. I could not feel myself so old, nor had I a consciousness of my age. The highest activity for education and instruction began in me. The fiirst thing which occupied me was tlie distinct feeling that to live one's self is the true and proper education. Then the questions : What is education, and what do the means of elementary instruction set forth byPestalozzi signify? What ia principally the object of instruction ? To answer the question — What is the object of instruction ? — I proceeded from the following considerations : Man lives in a world of objects which act upon him, on which he wishes to work ; thus he must know them according to their nature, their character, and their relation to each other and to himself. The objects have form (lessons on form), size (lessons on size), are manifold (lessons in number). I had in the expres- sion outer world only nature before my eves. I so lived in nature that artistic or human works did not exist for me. Therefore it cost me a long struggle to make the consideration of the works of man a subject of elementary culture. It was for me a great widening of my inner and outer sight when at the expres-. sion " outer world," I thought of the realm of human work. So I sought to make everything clear through man, through his relation to LETTER TO DUICE OF MEININGEN. 41 himself and to the outer world. The highest sentiment which came from me then was : " Everything is unity ; everything rests in, proceeds from, strives for, leads and returns to unity." This striving for imity is the foundation of the different phenomena in human life. Fortunately works on education ap- peared then from Seiler, Jean Paul and others. They helped me partly by the agreement tlierein presented with my views, partly by their opposition. What especially pressed on me at this time was the lack of an organized series of objects of instruction. Cheerful and free action springs from viewing the whole as a unity ; it is made necessary by the being of everything and the life and action resting in it. AVhen I now seek to make clear to myself the life and influence of an educator, the notes of that time meet me, freshly inspiring and cheering me. I now look back into that childhood of my educational life and learn from it, as I look back to and learn from the childhood of my natural life. Why is all cliildhood and youth so full of richness and knows it not, and why does it lose it without knowing it, and learn first to know it when it is lost 1 Must it always remain so 1 Will it not finally — not soon — happen that the experience, the insiglit, the knowledge of age will build a defense, a support and protection around childhood and youth ? Otherwise what advantage to age is its experience, to the hoary man his wisdom ? What advantage to tlie human race is the experience of age, and the wisdom of the old man if it sinks with him into the grave ? My first life with my pupils was very circumscribed. It consisted in living and walking in the open air. Cut off from the influence of a city education, I did not yet venture to introduce the simple life of nature into the sphere of education. My younger pupils tliemselves taught me and guided me to that. In the following year this life of my pupils was especially roused and animated, when the father gave them a piece of a field for a garden which we cultivated in common. Their highest joy was to give their parents and me presents of the fruits of their garden. Oh, how their eyes glistened wlien tliey could do it ! Beautiful plants and little shrubs from the field, the great garden of God, were planted and cared for in the little gardens of the children. After tliat time my youthful life did not appear to me so entirely useless. I learned wliat a very different thing it is for tlie care of a plant, whether one has seen and watched its natural life at the different epochs of its unfolding, or if he has alwaj'S stood far from nature. Then when I lived in nature with my first pupils so cheer- fully and gayly, I said to myself that the life of man connects itself with the care of nature's life. For were not those jjresents of flowers and plants the expression of regard and acknowledgment of the love for parents and teacher, the expression of the child's own loA'e and joyful childish thought 1 A child that freely and voluntarily seeks flowers, cherishes and cares for them in order to wind them into a bouquet or wreath for parents or teacher cannot be a bad child or become a bad man. Such a child can easily be led to the love, to grati- tude to, and knowledge of his father, God, who gives him such gifts. I assert that a child naturally guided needs no positive ecclesiastical form, because the lovingly cared for, and thereby steadily and strongly developed, hiunan hfe, also the cloudless child's life, is of itself a Christ-like one. Life as an Educator. I now turn to the recital of my life as an educator. What a young man gains in one year from nature when she lies clear and open before him, slie does not give him when the vision is closed and he is separated from contact with her. 42 LETTER TO DUKE OF MEININGEN. Both these seasons give different results and make different demands. When more separated from nature he becomes more concentrated within himself. The life of youth then demands material for firmly establishing itself, and lends to otherwise s]iai3eless material a living form. My pupils soon came to me with this demand, from which arose the following self-questionings : What did you do as a boy ? What happened to you to quicken your impulse for activity and representation ? By what means was this impulse at that age most fitly satis- fied 1 What did you wish as the end of this satisfaction 1 Then out of my ear- liest boyhood something came to me which gave to me at that moment all that I needed. It was the simple art of imprinting on smooth paper signs and forms by regular lines. I have often tried this simple art and it has never failed of ita end. From these forms on paper we advanced to the investigation of the paper itself, then of pasteboard, and finally of wood. My later experience has taught me to know still other materials for making forms and shapes. But I must dwell yet a moment with that simple occupation of paper forms, because it occupies the child so entirely for a time, so satisfies and fills the demand of his strength. Man demands to know nature in the variety of her forms and shapes, and to understand it in its unity, in its inner activity and reality, and therefore he goes on in his course of development and formation according to the process of nature ; he imitates in his plays her creative process. In his early plaj-s the young human being likes to imitate the first activities of nature. Thus he likes to liuild, for are not the first solid forms of nature built 1 Let this intima- tion of the higher meaning of the free occupations and plays suffice here. From the love, zeal, persistence and joy with which claildren pursue these occu- Pla)/ — Activity — Gifts. pations arises- a very important thing of a different character. tPlay must necessarily bring a child into a deeper, higher communion with a higher exist- ing whole. If he builds a house he builds it to inhabit it, like grown people, and to realize limitations and to impart something to others ! Notice the fact that the child who receives freely, gives freely if his heart is not smothered and dulled by the profusion of the gifts he receives. This is inevitable with the innocent child. Fortunate is he who understands how to satisfy this need. That only has worth to a cWld at this time which he can use as a means of union between his loved ones and himself. This should be respected by par- ents and teachers and used as a means of awakening the instinct of activity and representation and unity with others, and therefore not even a trifling gift of a child should remain unnoticed. I strove earnestly to give my pupils the best possible education, the best pos- eible instruction ; this end, however, could not be reached in my condition at that time and with my degree of information. Residence iviih Pestalozzi. When I fully realized this, the thought arose that I should be benefited by a stay with Pestalozzi. I expressed this with great decision, and in conse- quence it was decided in the summer of 1808 that I should go to Yverdun with my three pupils. Thus it happened after a short time that I was there as both teacher and scholar, educator and pupil. In order to be fully and perfectly placed in the midst and the heart of Pestalozzi's work, I wished to reside with my pupils in the building of the institution, in the castle so called. We wished to share everything with the rest ; but this wish was not granted us, for strange selfishness interfered. Yet I soon came to dwell as near the institution as LETTER TO DUKE OF MEINIKGEN. 43 possiljle, so that we shared dinner, afternoon lunch and supper, the instruction adapted to us and the whole life of the pupils. I for myself had nothing more serious to do than to allow my pupils to take a full share of that life, strength- ening spirit and body. With this aim we shared all instruction, and it was a special care to me to talk with Pestalozzi on every subject from its first point of connection, to learn to know it from its foundation. I soon felt the need of unity of endeavor in means and end. Therefore I sought to gain the highest insight into everything. I was pupil in all subjects, numbers, form, singing, reading, drawing, language, geography, natural science, dead languages, etc. In what M'as offered for youthful life, for comprehensive teaching, for higher instruction, I missed that satisfying of the human being, the essence of the subject. Pestalozzi's views were very universal, and, as experience taught, only awakening to those already grounded in the right. I revealed my feelings on this subject very earnestly and plainly to Pestalozzi, and finally, in 1810, resolved to leave Yverdun. In connection Avith the subjects taught, the instruction in language struck me first iuits great imperfection, arbitrariness, and lifelessness. The discovery of a satisfactory method of teaching the mother tongue occupied me especially. I proceeded from the following considerations : Language is the image, tlie representat on of a world, and is related to the outer world through articulately formed tones ; if I wish properly to represent a thing I must know the original according to its character. Tlie outer world has ob- jects ; I also must have a decided form, a decided word for tlie object. The objects, however, show qualities ; language must, therefore, have qiiality words in its construction. These qualities are necessarily bound up with the objects ; qualities of being, having and becoming. I learned also to recognize boyish play in the free air in its power, develop- ing and strengthening spirit, disposition and body. In these plays and in what was connected with them, I recognized the chief source of the moral strength of the young people in the institution. The higher symbolical meaning of play had not then opened to me, so I regarded it merely as a moral power for mind and body. The walks were like the plays in their moral influence, especially those in Pestalozzi's company. There is no question that Pestalozzi's public, and especially his evening reflec- tions, in which he liked to exert himself to awaken and unfold the ideal of noble manhood and true human love, contributed most essentially to the devel- opment of the inner life. On the whole, I spent in Yverdun an inspiring, grand, and for my life, decisive time. In 1810 I returned to Frankfort. I had wished to enter a university immediately, but saw myself obliged to remain in my place until July of the coming year. Gottingen. — Study of Language and Nature. In the beginning of that month, I went to Gottingen. I arrived there in the middle of the half year, because I felt that I needed several months to right myself, to bring my inner and outer being, my thoughts and actions into har- mony. Several months really passed before my inner life quieted itself. I sought to find how to place mankind as a whole in and outside of me. So I was led back to the first appearance of man on earth, to the country where he originated, and to the first expression of mankind, his speech. The study and investigation of language formed now the object of my endeavors. Learning the eastern languages seemed to me the necessary object of my efforts and aspirations, and I forthwith began with Hebrew and Arabic. Trom these I 44 LETTER TO DUKE OF MEININGEN. wished to open a way to other Asiatic tongues, especially the Indian and Per- sian. Greek likewise allured me by its fullness, order, and law. I was now free. I was happy. I was cheerful, and peace reigned within and without me. As I lived alone through the day, I walked late in the afternoon in order to be greeted by the light, friendly rays of the sinking sun. I walked until nearly midnight in the beautiful suburbs of Gottingen, in order to strengthen body and mind. The heavens lit with stars accorded with my feelings So the summer half-year had flown and Michaelmas day had come. My self- development had imperceptibly led me away from my study of language to natural objects. My design of studying nature in her first phenomena and elements again sprang up. But my remaining means were too small to con- tinue longer at the university. Since I had nothing but my own mental strength I thought I could supply the means necessary for the farther attain- ment of my end by literary work. I began to be active in that direction, when my outer condition took a very different turn through an unexpected legacy. I had an aunt, my mother's sister, whose sudden death put me in a condition to carry on my desired studies in an unthought-of way. My situation was now highly agreeable, and I felt such a quiet joy and cheerfulness as never before. Physics, chemistry, mineralogy and natural history were my first studies. The study and investigation of nature seemed to me the foundation and cor- ner-stone of human development, improvement, and education. The lectures on natural history at this university gave me a view of the fundamental forms, of crystals and minerals. I could not live an entire term more by my own means, but hoped to be able to assure my support in Berlin by giving instruc- tion. Therefore I resolved to go there at the beginning of the next winter term, in order to study mineralogy, geology, crystallography and their laws. Residence in Berlin. After a visit of some weeks with my brother in Osterode, I went to Berlin in October, 1812. The lectures I had desired gave my mind and spirit what I needed, and unfolded in my feelings still more my conviction of the inner connection of all cosmic development. For my maintenance I gave instruc- tion in a then famous private school. Now came the year 1813, pregnant with fate. Every one was called to arms, to protect the fatherland. I had indeed a home, a native land, I might Bay a motherland, but no fatherland. My native country did not call me. I was not Prussian, and so it happened, owing to my retired life, the call to arms inspired me little. It was something different that called me, not with enthusiasm, but with a firm resolution to enter the ranks of the German sol- diers. It was the feeling and consciousness of the ideal Germany, that I re- spected as something high and holy in my spirit, and which I wished to be everywhere unfettered and free to act. Partlier, the firmness with which I held to my educational career, decided me. Although I coixld not really say that I had a fatherland, yet it must happen that every boy, that every child who should later be educated by me would have a fatherland, and that that fatherland now demanded protection, when the child himself could not defend it. I could not .possibly think how a young man, capable of bearing arms, could become the teacher of children whose country he had not defended with his life-blood. This was the second thing that influenced me to my decision. Thirdly, the summons to war appeared to me a sign of the common need of man, of the country, of the time in which I lived, and I felt that it would be LETTER TO DUKE OF MEINIKGEK. 45 unworthy and unmanly not to struggle for the common necessity of the peo- ple among whom one lives, not to bear my part towards rei^elling a common danger. Every consideration was secondary to these convictions, even that which grew out of my bodily constitution, too feeble for such a life. Short Campaign as Soldier. At Easter, 1813, I entered Dresden in order to join the infantry division of the corps of Lutzow at Leipsic. Owing to the retirement of my life, it was natural that I, although matriculated as a real student, yet stood far from the others, and really had no acquaintance among them, and so among my strong comrades, whom I joined in Dresden, I could find no acquaintance, although tliere were so many students from Berlin among them. At the first day's rest after our march out of Dresden, our leader introduced to mo one of our com- rades from Erfurt, as a Thuringian and fellow-countryman ; it was Langethal. Although a passing acquaintance at first, it was destined to be a lasting one. Our first march and halt was Meissen. We had already enjoyed, during the march, a beautiful spring day, and so we rejoiced during our rest in a yet more beautiful evening. Led by the same impulse, all who M'ere students found themselves together on an open place ou the banks of the Elbe, in the vicinity of a public house, and the old Meissen wine soon united us. We sat some twenty in number, a merry circle, at a long tabic, and greeted and pledged each other now really for the first time. It was here that Langethal brought me his friend at the university of Berlin, the young Middendorff, a theological student. We were together until the middle of tlie beautiful spring night, and on the following morning we visited the magnificent cathe- dral of Meissen. Thus we three found each other, who from that time have remained united for now almost fifteen years, in a common struggle and for a higher life ; although not always in the same outer bond of life, yet in the inner striving for self-education. Langethal and Middendorff had a third friend among our comrades, Bauer b}- name. I became acquainted with him also at Meissen, I believe ; yet we first associated as friends at Havelburg. With him tlie narrow circle of my companions in war was closed. My principal care was to improve myself in my present calling, and so one of my first endeavors was to make clear to myself the inner necessity and the connection of the demands of service and drill ; it came to me very soon and easily, from the mathematical, physical side, and strengthened me against many little disagreeable tilings which easily befell others when they thought this or that command could be omitted as too trifling. During the long stay in Havelburg I strengthened my inner life, so far as the service permitted, by living much in nature. We friends sought to bo together as much as possible. Our camping life was especially pleasant to me, because it made many facta of history clear to me. Owing to the fate of our corps, which was dislodged from the real theater of war, and with the great aggressiveness of our military activity, we passed, at least I did, our wr>,r life as in a dream. Only occasion- ally, as at Leipsic, at Dalenburg, at Bremen, and at Berlin, we seemed to wake up, yet only to sink again into a feeble dream. It was specially oppressive and enervating to me, never to know our real relation to the great whole, and to be able to say nothing satisfactory either of the reason or the aim of our employment. It was so to me, at least ; others might have seen it more clearly and better. The campaign afforded me one thing, however. In the course of the actual soldier's life, I aroused myself for 46 LETTER TO DUKE OF MEUSTINGEN. the interest of the German land and people; my exertions became patriotic in that direction. Everywhere, so far as the exhaustion of my mind allowed, I bore my future vocation about with me, even in the few battles in which we took part ; there also I could collect experiences for my future work. Our corps marched through the districts of Bremen and Hamburg, Holstein, and from there we came finally, in the year 1813, to the Rhine. Peace prevented us from seeing Paris. We were stationed in the Netherlands until the break- ing up of the corps. At last, in July, 1813, every one who did not wish to serve longer, was allowed to return home and to his earlier calling. At my entrance to the corps among Prussian soldiers, the promise of an ap- pointment in the Prussian state was given me through the intercession of honored friends. It was a position as assistant in the miueralogical museum of Berlin, under Weiss. Thither I turned my way as to the next place of my destiny. I wished to see the Rhine and Main, and also my native country. So I went from Dusseldorf back to Luneu, and from there through Maintz, Frankfort and Rudolstadt to Berlin. I left the army with an utter feeling of dissatisfaction. The inner longing for accord and harmony, for inner peace, was so powerful, that it pressed itself before me in symbol and form unconsciously. With an inexplicable, anxious desire, I passed through many beautiful regions and many gardens on my return ; but I was always drawn from them unsatisfied. In Frankfort I vis- ited a large garden ornamented with the most varied beauties. I looked at all the luxuriant growths and fresh flowers which it offered ; but no blo.ssom gave satisfaction to my inner being. When all the manifold beauties of the garden entered my soul at a glance, it flashed upon me vividly that I found no lily among them. I asked the owner of tlie garden, " Have you no" lilies in your garden ■? " He responded quietly, " No." When I expressed my sur- prise at that, he told me just as quietly that no one had ever missed them in the garden. But I knew, now, what I had missed and sought. How could my inner being express it in words more beautifully than thus : You seek quiet peace of mind, harmony of life, purity of soul in the image of the quiet, pure, simple lily. The garden in its beautiful variety, without a lily, seemed to me as the many-colored life passing before me, without unity and har- mony. I saw afterwards, in a walk, costly blooming lilies in a country gar- den ; but they were separated from me by a hedge. I must especially note one thing ; in the place where I saw the lilies in the garden, a three-years' old boy trustfully drew near me. Assistant in Museum of MirteraJogy. The first day of August, 1813, I arrived in Berlin, and immediately received the appointment mentioned above. The duties obligatory on me brought me in contact, for the greatest part of every day, with minerals, those dumb proofs of the quiet, creative activity of nature, and the witnesses of the same. Geology and crystallography opened to me a still higher circle of insight and perception, and also a h'gher aim for seeking, aspiration, and striving. Nat- ure and man seemed to me to explain each other, although in such different degrees of development. Although Langethal, Middendorff, Bauer, and I had during the whole war served not only in the same corps, but also in the same battalion, yet we were separated the last of the time, especially when quartered in the Netherlands, so that I, at least, at the dismissal of the corps, did not know to what region my friends had turned. LETTER TO DUKE OF MEININGEN. 47 Re-union with Middendorff and Langethal. So it was an unexpected joy to me when after some time I saw them all again iu Berlin. My friends pursued earnestly their theological studies, I, my study of nature. So at first there was little contact between us. Thus sped several niontlis when life suddenly called us together again. It happened through the summons to war in 1815. Together we reported as volunteers. According to our earlier position and the will of the king we could enter imme- diately as officers. Soon each one of us was assigned to his regiment. Such a number of volunteers reported themselves that neither state officers had to leave their posts, nor students to break up their studies. For this rea- son a counter order admonished us to remain. Middendorff, certain of his speedy departure to the army, did not wish to rent apartments for the short time of his stay in Berlin, and since mine was sufficient for us both, he came to me. At first, owing to the different directions of our lives, this seemed to bring us not much nearer ; soon a stronger point of union showed itself. Langethal and Middendorff, in order to support themselves accepted places in families as tutors ; but so that their attendance at tlieir lectures was not shortened. At first the work undertaken seemed simple to botli ; but soon they found difficul- ties in regard to the instruction as well as the education of the children in- trusted to them. Our conversation often led us to these subjects, and so they turned to me with questions especially in regard to mathematical instruction, and we ap- pointed two hours a week in which I imparted instruction to them. From this moment the mutual intercourse became active and permanent. SUPPLEMENT BY THE EDITOR — W. LANGE. Here the account breaks off suddenly. I had to decipher it out of an almost illegible manuscript. I do not know whether the letter destined for the Duke of Meiningen on the occasion of the negotiation concerning the people's educa- tional institution in Helha, was ever brouglit to an end, finislied and sent ; but I doubt it. Finally my own introductory account of the efficient activity of Froebel in Switzerland gives further information concerning the life of this remarka!)le man. In 1839, Froebel, accompanied by Middendorff and a Ilerr Frankcnburg, went to Dresden and was active there for the establishment of the Kinder- garten. After Frankenburg had undertaken a Kindergarten in Dresden, Froebel returned to Blankenburg and IVIiddendorff to Keilhau. The friends did not separate entirely ; but from time to time Middendorff took a helpful and active share iu the efforts at Blankenburg. Froebel now summoned a distant relative to him, but could not long con- tinue his establishment for pecuniary reasons in spite of the continued support from Keilhau. He took refuge again in his mother-institution, without, how- ever, any way influencing its direction. In August, 1848, he held a teachers' union in Eudolstadt, and laid before it his plan for the education of young cliil- dren. Tlie aim of the gathering was attained. He won imiversal approba- tion, aud the world of teachers became mindful of his exertions. In the autumn of 1848 he went to Dresden again in order to carry on there a course for the training of Kindergartners. In the spring of 1849 he sought a new abode in Liebenstein. In the fall of the same year he was called to Hamburg by a woman's union, after Midden- 48 LETTEK TO DUKE OF MEIKINGEN. dorff shortly before in the institution of the celebrated teacher, Doris Lutkens, had made an appeal for Froebel's cause. The idea of the Kindergarten quickly took deep root in Hamburg. In the spring of 1850, he returned to the hunting-castle, Marienthal, at Liebenstein, which the Duke of Meiningen had granted to him at his request for educa- tional purposes. He had established here an institution for training Kinder- gartners. In July, 1850, he was married for the second time to a pupil, Louise Levin. In 1852, the German Teachers' General Assembly, meeting in Gotha with Theodore Hoffman presiding, invited him to its sessions. At his entrance the whole assembly rose as one man, and he had the joy of a universal recognition of his efforts. Soon after, these same efforts were banned by the Prussian ministry. This ban was the indirect cause of his death. He made the greatest exertions day and night to avert the reproach of the unchristian spirit and the destructive tendency. The unfinished defense lies before me. I cannot read this his last work without emotion. On the twenty-first of July, 1852, death caused his pen to rest. [Mad. Marenholtz Bulow's Reminiscences of Froebel, supplement this auto- biography very satisfactorily. It Avas translated by Mrs. Mann, and pub- lished in Boston by Lee & Shepard.] FRIEDERICH FROBEL UPON PESTALOZZI. Letter to the Princess-Regent of Schwarzbukg-Eudolstadt, April 27, 1809. MAN AS THE SUBJECT OF EDUCATION. Pestalozzi's principles of education and instruction and his pro- ceedings, growing out of them, and the means for their application are founded entirely upon the phenomena of his existence as a created being. Man as he is represented to us is a union of three chief attributes; body, soul, mind ; to cultivate these harmoniously and as a whole is his object. Pestalozzi goes from this existence of man into the phenomena, that is, from that which he is by the sum of his powers and according to his destiny (its suitable culture). Hence he takes man into consid- eration according to this sum of his powers as a bodily, intellectual and emotional being, and works upon him in this sum of his powers and for their harmonious development and culture, from which first arises that whole which is called man. Pestalozzi, therefore, works not merely upon the bodily powers and their development, not only upon the culture of the mind and its devel- opment, nor only upon the soul and its development (although he is accused of doing so), nor merely upon two of these at once, as body and mind, or body and soul, or soul and mind. No ! Pestalozzi develops man, works upon man in the totality of his powers. Man in his manifestations must run through three principal epochs, according to his powers ; that of the body, that of the soul, that of the mind; he runs through them not separated, or singly, so that he first runs through that of the body, then that of the soul, and at last that of the mind ; no, these epochs are convertible in the man developed in per- fectly undisturbed natural relations ; their circular course returns ever again, and the more so the more perfect the man becomes — until the limits of his powers as well as of their development fall away and are removed, and the continuous whole — man — stands before us. It would be highly unjust, therefore, to say of Pestalozzi that be de- veloped men, the powers of men, each power separately at three differ- ent epochs, first the body, then the soul, and then the mind, since he really takes them all into view at once in harmonious and brotherly union, and although he seems, perhaps, for the time to be treating merely the physical powers, he is obsei-ving and taking into considera- tion equally the influence of this treatment upon mind and soul. He has man as a whole in his eye, as an unseparated and inseparable whole, and in all that he does and wishes to do for him and his culti- vation, he does it for him as a whole. At no time does he act only for 4 49 50 FKOEBEL ON PESTAI.OZZI. the development of one power, leaving the others without nourishment; for example, he never is acting for the mind alone and leaving uncon- sidered, unsatisfied and uncared for and in inaction the body and the soul ; all the powers are cared for at all times. But often oue or other of the three great divisions of man's nature stands forth and apparently dominates the others. Pestalozzi takes into view man according to and in his manifestation, according to the laws of nature and those which are grounded in the mind of man, when he works specially upon the predominant power ; it is not done in an isolated and divided way, but in order to work through his treatment upon the other equal but slumbering and resting powers. So, for example, in one and the same epoch upon the senses, through these upon the body, and through these again upon the feel- ings, and so in a perpetual round. Pestalozzi takes man according to his manifestation. But man does not manifest himself alone, for and through himself; he manifests himself under conditions determined by nature and by bis mother, and both these united — that is, by love. So the man becomes child, that is, the sum and substance of the love of the father and mother. Pestalozzi then wishes to develop and cultivate the man in his mani- festation as child, through the conditions under which he appears, that is, the love of the father and mother. "We think of the father and mother as united by love in order to exalt the child, i. e., the sum of their love, into an independent being by means of education. Can there be a truer, more careful nurse and developer of this love made visible, this independent essence, this child, than the father and the mother, than the two united by mutual love, to which the child owes his existence — indeed, whose sum and substance the child is ? Pestalozzi thus wishes only what nature and the being of man wishes ; he wishes that man in his manifestation as child shall be de- veloped by his father and mother, and in their mutual love be culti- vated throughout and educated according to his capacities as a corporeal, feeling and intellectual being. MAN IN HIS MANIFESTATION AS A CHILD. The existence of mind and soul in the child is expressed merely by simple life. Mind and soul appear limited by and in the mass, the body — for still all parts in the body are one ; the mind and the senses by which the world without works through the body upon the mind and soul are not yet distinguishable. The body of the child is still a mass ; it appears so tender and frail, so much too material and awkward for the mind and the soul of the child, yet slumbering and weak, to work through it. By degrees the senses, feeling, sight, etc., develop and separate. FROEBEL ON PESTALOZZI. 51 The child feels the warmth of the mother's breast and the breath of her loving lips ; it smiles (the first appearance of the soul, the first sign of the soul's existence). The child perceives the mother ; it feels her nearness, her distance, etc. ; the child looks (the first appearance of mind — the first sign of its existence). At the moment of the beginning of this separation of the senses, the true mother works upon the unfolding and development of the child according to its various capacities ; the love of the mother makes the child feel, see, hear. Thus are developed, without giving any account of themselves — yielding only to holy feeling, to the demands of their nature — the senses of the child, which are the paths to its mind and soul. Here is the third point, where Pestalozzi takes into account the par- ents — where he appeals to them with the view of exalting the being of their love to the higher life, to conscious independence — where he gives them means and guidance to develop and cultivate the capacities of their child. ' What Pestalozzi wishes as means of development he had pointed out in his Book for Mothers, which many have misunderstood and which is yet the highest which can be given to man, the most loving feeling could create, the highest and best gift which he could bestow in the present circumstances upon his brethren and sisters. What Pestalozzi expresses in that book are only suggestions of what lies in his soul, as a great, glorious, living and unspeakable whole. His soul felt the joys of heaven in his intuition of the perception of the father and mother following the call of nature by the education of their children. Overpowered by this heavenly joy, he sat down and wrote, not for word-catchers and quibblers — no ! he wrote for parents, for fathers, for mothers, who he thought would conceive and feel as he did, to whom he only needed to point out what they should do, what they could do, and how they could do it. The highest object of recognition, of the intuition of mind and soul to man, is humanity. Pestalozzi took pleasure, in his Booh for Mothers, in pointing out to man what he wished ; and, in order to point out all that he wished, could he choose anything higher and more perfect than man, whose body is destined for the earth and whose being is destined for heaven ? That he chose the highest, the most perfect thing, is now made a re- proach to him ! But is there a more glorious, more exalted, more beautiful, more worthy object of observation and recognition than man ? — and is not the body the house of our spirit, which is destined for eternity and for communion with God ? Can it, as he himself says, be contrary to nat- ure to learn to know it early, to respect it early, to rejoice in it early, that it may be made holy for us ? Can it, as they charge Pestalozzi, 52 FROEBEL ON PESTALOZZI. be contrary to nature to orient one's self early in the house where one dwells ? As I stand before you, it cannot be my aim to contradict the objec- tions of Pestalozzi's opposers, who for the most part misunderstand him, since I am merely striving to represent literally the essence of Pestalozzi's fundamental efforts according to his own representation ; I merely say that a great part of the objections made to these efforts consists in this; that Pestalozzi, for various reasons, errs very much when he enlists the child himself iu the first cognition and develop- ment of himself and the man, and even starts from the body of the child. But how can it be a crime; how can it be against nature to re- spect the body early, to learn early to know the body and its use, the use to which we all owe everything, by which alone we learn to know the world without, which helps us to sustain and battle for our life, as it helps us to recognize God, to do good, and to rescue our brothers and sisters with strong arms from the brink of perdition ? Ti'uly, whoever wishes to teach the child to respect his body must respect himself ; if he wishes to learn to know it, he must know him- self ; whoever wishes to instruct in the use of it, must know it himself, all this must come to his consciousness ; whoever works to make the child feel the sacredness of his body, to himself it must be sacred ! Indeed, no man could understand Pestalozzi who had not in his soul, when this elementary book first fell into his hands, that which Pesta- lozzi felt to be exalted in humanity ; to him those principles were dead forms without sense or significance, and afterwards one person, perhaps without examination, repeated the judgment of another who seemed to him well-informed. But were all these men parents to whom Pestalozzi spoke ? Noble Princess, if I were not afraid of wearying you, I could say much upon the excellence and the principles of Pestalozzi, of the man himself ; I only permit myself to express one thing of which I am deeply per- suaded in my own mind. Many a young man and boy, powerful by the nature of their collec- tive capacities, would not have lost his powers in the bloom of his youth, if his parents or teachers had followed in his education the principles laid down by Pestalozzi in his Book for Mothers. Many a young man would have known how to be a useful and esti- mable subject, in the years of his ripeness and understanding, if his body could have fulfilled the requisitions of his mind and heart. Pestalozzi's Booh for Mothers is only a suggestion of what he wishes to do ; he wrote significantly ; " or a guide for mothers in the observa- tion of their children, and to teach them to speak." But man is not the only thing upon earth ; the whole outward world is the object of his recognition, and the means for his development and culture. FROEBEL ON PESTALOZZI. 53 Pestalozzi said, therefore, and still says : " As I have shown you that you can bring man by degrees through gradual developmeut of the child to the conscious inspection and recognition of the world without, so bring every other object of the world without to his inspection and recognition, every object which approaches the child, which lies in his circle, in his world, as he himself lies in this world ! " Scarcely does it seem possible that herein can lie anything contrary to nature, difficult to be recognized, or difficult to be carried out, and yet the opponents of Pestalozzi find more than all this in it. Pestalozzi's oj)ponents reproach him strongly that he merely speaks of this obser- vation and recognition. But we observe with all our senses, and how could Pestalozzi believe that any one would accuse him, when he used the word observation, of meaning simple observation with the eyes ? The Book for Mothers is to teach the mother, in the first place, to develop and to cultivate the senses of the child both singly and in their harmonious united working. In the second place, it is to show how and in what natural series of steps, one may bring the objects of the world in which he lives to the observation and recognition of the child. In the third place, it is to put the mothers and the teachers in a condition to teach the child the use and destination of his powers and capacities, as well as the use and design of the objects of the world without ; and to bring them to his consciousness. And in all this they accuse Pestalozzi of expressing one-sided princi- ples and methods of instruction, although it is surely impossible to fulfill the conditions he requires without developing and cultivating man in all the directions of his great powers. Others came forward and said, Pestalozzi would have dead words and repetitions ; what he gives is dead and therefore killing. Still others came forward and said what Pestalozzi wishes the child to know should be taught him earlier and better ; they point to the number of children's books that have appeared for every age, and for children of all conditions ; to the books that have been written on natural history, on excursions, journeys, stories and picture books of all kinds, etc. By all these means that has not been done which Pestalozzi wishes to have done. Everything is given to the child prepared and related^ so that his understanding has no work to do. The powers of the child's mind are not rendered active and self- working. The understanding of the adult has already prepared every- thing so that the activity of the child's understanding and recognition are left without employment. The consequence of this is weakness of mind and especially of the self-acting judgment of the child, and his egress out of his own inner world instead of making him at home in it and acquainted with it. They have also reproached Pestalozzi for the form of his Book for Mothers. But when he wrote, it was not his opinion that the father, 54 FBOEBEL ON PESTALOZZI. mother, teacher, whose hand-book he designed it to be, would neces- sarily confine himself strictly and anxiously to his representations. He strove only to represent what was essential in general, so far as this was possible for him to do so, and to touch upon all parts of the whole. Some complained in regard to the book that the sequence was not logical enough ; bat Pestalozzi wished neither to establish a strong logi- cal sequence, nor, still less, to confine the use and application of it. What Pestalozzi had really contemplated was in the opinion of others too pi'ecise and stiff. Although it was hardly possible that Pestalozzi should not begin his list of the parts of the human body with the head, he did not say that if other parts, the hand for example, should attract the attention of the child, it should be withdrawn from that and directed to the head because that happened to stand first in the book. Pestalozzi says expressly, the peculiar Book for Mothers is the nature of the child in. its manifestations. I know a mother who has treated her child now two and a quarter years old in the spirit of Pestalozzi, and according to his meaning. It is delightful and exalting to the heart to see that mother and child. And surely the object of that mother's activity, the inner life of her soul, could not permit her through her love for her child, indeed, would make it impossible for her, to follow to the letter the directions in Pestalozzi's book ; yet this mother did not find his writings contrary to nature, nor killing to the mind of her child ; no ! It was what Pesta- lozzi wished that she comprehended in her inmost soul. It is a joy to see that child with his angelic voice, his childlike innocence, and his love not only for his mother, but for everything that surrounds him. It is the highest enjoyment to see how at home the child is in his world, how continually active and occupied he is in it. He stands now at a higher point of knowledge and acquaintance with the world around him, but uninjured in his innocent childishness. This child lives a gentle inner life ; he rejoices inwardly in awaken- ing nature, and seizes everything with attention that strikes his senses which his early awakened powers of body and mind make easily pos- sible to him. The mother followed Pestalozzi ; what she did she did by following his meaning. It is not possible in the working of these prin- ciples to see the limits of the culture of body, soul and mind. Often and willingly has this mother said, who always strove to do her duty before she knew of Pestalozzi, that from Pestalozzi she had learned how to be a mother. Pestalozzi's Book for Mothers would have been miich less unjustly judged if the second part had yet appeared. It is still wanting, alas f Pestalozzi has not expressed his idea fully in its application ; this is an important view which every one should take before forming a judgment. As much and even more should be taken into consideration in judg- ing of the book, is that what Pestalozzi wishes is not limited to the FKOEBEL ON PESTALOZZI. 55 time when the faculty of speech appears in the child, or even when it actually begins to speak ; no ! it begins in the working and apx^lication at the moment when the child perceives outward impressions decid- edly, that is, discriminates between light and darkness. The mother must already have taught the child to observe everything, to separate everything which comes within the circle of his life, before the peculiar moment of time when the development of language begins. I know children so treated who were a year and a half old before they began to speak, but who could discriminate between all things that immediately surrounded them, and appeared to have distinct and quite significant conceptions of everything. If the child has been so treated it has the very essential and useful advantage, when it does begin to speak, of knowing, well the objects it is about to name, and hence needs not to divide its powers but can apply them unitedly in the naming of them. It can now make important progress in speaking, and this is really the case with such children. The Boot for Mothers first gave a guide for teaching the child to observe that language is the medium of sympathy. The mother must work according to nature, at the same time upon the child's capacity for language and its development. To elevate the social life between mother, father and child, the mother widens the child's power of language. The father, the mother, the members of the family, now teach the child the meaning of the language they speak, that they may mutually understand each other more easily, and sympa- thize about everything that surrounds them. But Pestalozzi not only wishes that everything that happens uncon- sciously shall be brought to the consciousness, that that which has hap- pened shall not be left to chance, but that it shall happen consecutively, all-sidedly and comprehensively, and in conformity with the developing progress of the child. The meaning of language which Pestalozzi now wishes to have the child learn is the meaning of it in the closest sense, the special mean- ing ; for only from the knowledge of the particular and individual thing can man rise to the knowledge and command of the universal. The child is taught then the meaning of every single word, every sin- gle expression. The manner in which this is done lies darkly in the demands of human nature, but the Book for Mothers gives this guidance in the first place. According to Pestalozzi the child is now to learn by observation, for example, the meaning of contrasted words which it either hears or even speaks already intelligibly ; as dark, bright; heavy, light; black, white; transparent, opaque ; there, here ; furniture, tool ; animal, stone ; go, sit ; run, creep ; coarse, fine ; more, less ; one, many ; living, dead ; prick, cut, etc. Pestalozzi here shows particularly how contrast, which he always designates as to be found in every conception, is specially cultivating. 56 FEOEBEL ON PESTALOZZI, Thus far the mother has developed the child's capacity of language according to Pestalozzi's method ; she has taught it to speak. But now before she carries it farther, she and other members of her family must cultivate this capacity. Tlie speaking of the child rises by degrees to connected language. The child knows and raises itself to a determined knowledge of the meaning of all that it speaks. By all that the mother has hitherto done for the child, it is now in a condition to know precisely the objects with which it is surrounded, to observe them singly, to separate them from each other. Its power to observe is perfectly awakened, and in full activity. The circle of its knowledge widens as its world widens ; it accompanies its mother wherever her employments call her. It is continually led to know more objects of the surrounding world. The objects themselves stand forth more and more prominently. It recognizes intelligibly what was hitherto unknown and unsepa- rated, and still lies partly so, and will continue to be more or less so un- til it consciously surveys a fixed portion of the outward world, and free and independent of that world, can again create and represent it. To raise the child to this perfectly conscious recognition of the out- ward world, must hence be the object of its mother's striving. The glorious kingdom of nature now opens by degrees to the child ; led by its mother's hand it enters tliat glorious kingdom. Nature is now its world ; the child creates nature from its world. A hundred little stones, a hundred little plants, flowers, leaves, a hun- dred little animals, innumerable objects of nature accompany its steps ; its heart beats loudly. It finds friends, it carries about and takes care of objects ; but it does not know why it is happy, why it carries about and takes care of these objects, why its heart beats so loudly. Should these impressions be allowed to vanish without having been firmly retained ? According to Pestalozzi, the mother now teaches the child to perceive these objects on all sides, to recognize all their qualities, that is, with the help of all their senses ; she teaches it to use its observation upon the whole aspect of them, and to give an account of them to others. The child now holds firm points to which it can fasten its joy, — sound, motion, shape, form, smoothness, etc. It sees the connection of these qualities and a hundred others to qualities partly determinable, or merely supposable ; so that the child is now first conscious of its joy. How happy is the child novv^ whom its mother has made conscious of all these impressions, so that he possesses a firm point by which the outward world stands in contact with him, so that he does not remain in the dark with his heart oppressed with feeling ; so that he does not wander in a mist like the traveler who journeys through a pleasing country on a spring morning when nature is partly wrapped in vapor, and shows him the light that gleams through it, promising a delightful % FROEBEL ON PESTALOZZI. 57 view. As man longingly waits for the dispersion of the mist by the rays of the sun, so that the objects of nature may appear in light and clearness, so the child waits for the guidance of the loving mother who will explain to him the rapture of his heart and show him why he re- joices in anticipation. What a calling for the mother ! She teaches the child to become conscious of his joys, of the objects of his delight ; she teaches it how to give an account of all it sees and feels, to express it in words and to share it with others. The mother thus raises the child into a creature of intelligence and feeling ; she teaches him the qualities of objects ; she listens to every remark, every discovery, every word of her child ; she rejoices when he rejoices; she receives his love and sympathy in her own breast, she reciprocates it and guides it with delight. As the nature of the child receives life and significance thus, so the lan- guage which the child, the mother, the father, the family speaks, receives life and significance. Every word becomes an object, an impression, a picture ; to every word the child joins a world, a cycle of impressions ; he goes in his remarks upon the qualities of things, from the easier to the more difficult, from the simple to the complex ; he loves to seek and find it all himself; "Dear mother, let me find it myself," he says. Often have I with joy and light-heartedness heard children make this prayer with shining, sparkling eyes 1 Later, the mother leads her child to classifying similar things (which it tends to do of itself ) and to discriminating between different things ; thus the child learns to compare what it sees. The child besides observing, also imitates. Imitation betters and perfects his observations. The mother not only allows this imitation, she not only rejoices in it, but she aids it. The child likes above all things to imitate the sound which it has evoked from some inanimate object perhaps, or which it seems to him to produce. It tries to imitate the sound'of everything, falling, jump- ing, breathing, moving. All the objects of nature, animate and inani- mate, seem to emit sounds ; they speak audibly to him. The mother rejoices in the child's delight when in the spring it imitates the sounds of nature, and she challenges him to do it ; she does it unconsciously when her impulse to do it is not disturbed. Who has not seen a poor mother playing with her child or heard her say, " What does the sheep do? What does the dog say, the ox, the bird?" The child's imita- tions increase ; it imitates the twittering of the bird, and thus its own human tone is awakened. If the mother sings, and accompanies the song of the birds with her human tones, he will imitate this, and thus will not only his feeling be awakened for the highest human expression, song, but his whole being is exalted, from the humming of the bees to the representation of his own feelings by simple, connected and varied human tones. 58 FEOEBEL ON PESTALOZZI. The outward world is now no longer to the child, guided by Pestalozzi'g method, the chaotic, confused, misty mass, which it was earlier. 1. It is now individualized. 2. What is separated it can name. 3. It can seize it at a glance independent of other relations, and according to its relation to himself and to others. 4. It can designate what it observes and all its relations by language ; it can speak and knows the meaning of the language of its parents. 5. It knows an object not only on one side but on several sides. 6. It can take an object in at a glance in many relations. 7. It can compare one object with another and recog- nize tlie peculiar qualities of each. Ideas of Number. The first general quality of objects is their computability. Objects are now individually separated to the child's mind, consequently follow- ing each other in time and thus appear computable. The mother now teaches her child to recognize the computability of objects, and to separate the qualities and relations of computable objects in nature, with real objects before it, and not first by counting in an abstract manner. By the exercises arranged by Pestalozzi the mother brings to the consciousness of the child something which hitherto was merely an obscure presentiment, scarcely a conscious feeling ; she brings the con- ception of number, the precise knowledge of the qualities and relations of the computable, to his clear, intelligible consciousness. The mother teaches the child thatTane stone and again one stone are two stones, etc. Farther, she teaches him to know the value of numbers by the oppo- site process, for example, ten nuts less one nut are nine nuts. . Already this little exei'cise has brought conversation to life between mother and child, when, for example, in the first case, she says to the child, " Lay down two flowers and one flower ; how many flowers have you ? how many times one • flower have you ? how many times two flowers have you?" etc. Or, in the second case, for the solving of numbers, she says to the child, " Put away one of your six beans ; now how many have you ? how many times one bean have you still ? " The mother goes a step farther ; she nov/ lets him add two, three and four ; for example : " One stone and two stones are three stones." The child learns by observation that 5 are 5 times 1, are 4 and 1, and 3 and 2. Or, 1 and 3 are 4, 4 and 3 are 7, 7 and 3 are 10 objects. The mother then goes backwards over the same ground. For exam- ple : if you take 2 from 15, 13 remain. Questions enliven and elevate conversation between the mother and child. The mother may work in the field or in the house ; the child sits near FKOEBEL ON PESTAJLOZZI. 59 and plays with stones or flowers. The mother asks : " When you put 2 flowers to 1, how many have you?" All this is play to the child ; it handles its favorite objects ; it moves them about, and sees a purpose in doing it, for in all its plays the child gives itself a problem. The child is with its mother, so it is happy, and its mind and feelings are awakened. When the child knows how to count in these different ways, and knows the qualities of numbers thus represented, it will soon find that the pea leaf has 2 times 2 little leaves, and the rose leaf 2 times 3 little leaves. A hint to the mother, and she carries her child still another step in the knowledge of computation. The child has several single objects around it. "Place your little blocks," the mother says, "so that 2 will lie in every heap. Have you done it ? Count how many times 2 you have." The child will count : " I have 2 times 2, 3 times 2, or I have 1 time 2;" or it will say perhaps a little later, "I have 1 two heap ; 2 two heaps," etc. The mother goes farther and says : " Place your things so that 3 or 4 or 5 will lie together, and tell me how many times 3 or 4 or 5, etc., you have." [She selects one of these numbers, of course. We omit many similar exercises in numbers now familiar to kindergartners.] Form. So Pestalozzi would have the mother teach the child form in its play. " Here is a lath — it is straight ; here is a branch — it is crooked." The child remarks the laths on the fence, the prongs on the rake ; they are at equal distances from each other. His mother tells him they are parallel. The ribs on the leaf of the large plantain unite in a point; they are radiating. The child goes into the woods with its mother ; it sees the fir trees and the pines, it is pleased with the variety ; and it knows how to describe it. The needles of the fir tree are parallel, those - of the pine unite in a point. The child observes the relations of the branches to the stem. Its mother has taught it to observe angles. The branches and the stems form angles, but these joinings of branch and stem make in one tree quite a different impression upon the child from those in another tree. How delighted it now is to recognize this variety, so that it has a firm point to which it can fasten its impressions. It is the greater or less inclination of the branch to the stem. So in the surroundings in nature, which is its world it recognizes, led by its mother, it sees 3 or 4, or many cornered forms. The intersection of the hemlock twig forms a regular pentagonal (or five corners). The mother leads the child to a regular comparison of this form and to seek its variety. The child will soon pluck leaves and find other objects in view of their forms, and with childish critical senses will separate them from the ob- jects to which they belong. He will go farther than I venture to describe. " See, mother, what round leaves I have found," and the child shows 60 FKOEBEL ON PESTALOZZI. the mother many such leaves, of larger and smaller sizes, which he has picked. " See how little this one is, and how big this one is ! " he thus leads himself to the contemplation of size. A hint, a word from the mother, and the child has received a new item of culture. lie selects three leaves, lays them upon each other, and says : " That is the largest leaf, that is smaller, but that is the smallest." " Mother, look at this long stalk. The stalk of the flax is only half as long," he will perhaps say, if he has learned the meaning of the word half. Or, after the mother has laid the flax upon the corn stalk, he will say, " this is 2 times as long," or perhaps as long again as that one, or he breaks a pear leaf in the middle, lengthwise, and finds both halves equally long; perhaps he cannot describe what he finds and his mother tells him that these two parts of a whole are called halves, and thus widens the circle of his knowledge again. Pestalozzi wishes to make known intelligibly in small things the at- tributes of form as well as the recognition of the foundation of its qualities. The child will lead on the attentive mother and father still farther. Tlie child will soon come to the consideration of large equal objects in comparison with large unequal objects ; he will find that a part is smaller than the whole, the whole is larger than a part. Objects of nature as well as of art will lead the child to this com- parison. Everything in his circle, in his world, will thus become means of in- formation, material for development. If the child is in its earliest years where the mother is, and rightly guided, it costs but a suggestion from her and it can busy itself many hours. It accumulates objects, arranges and investigates them ; it is quiet and happy. One will scarcely realize that the child is occupied, and yet the powers of its soul and mind are coming forward and developing themselves by practice. In this way all the capacities and powers of the child are now devel- oped according to Pestalozzi's method ; his senses cultivated, his inner and outer being exalted to true life ; he errs no more unconsciously as one enveloped in mist ; the way is open for evei-y kind of knowledge, every shade of feeling. Sympathy, that beautiful attribute of man, is possible to him in its whole scope ; his language is formed. With deepest love he hangs upon the glance of his mother, his father — the parents to whom he owes all this joy. All which has thus far been done by the mother was the object of the Book for Mothers, and suggested by it ; at least this is what Pestalozzi wished for as belonging to the calling of the mother. Pestalozzi wishes that the child shall live in this manner seven happy, delightful years. FKOEBEL ON PESTALOZZI. 61 The child has now, thus guided, received its culture through the mother, for what is now in the child, what now transports it will always live in it, will give value to its life, dignity to its being. Slie now sur- renders it fully prepared to the father, the parental teacher, or to his representative, the school-master, for definite instruction, definite teaching. The instruction which the father or school-master will now give to the child will join on where the mother ended. The child should find no other difference between this teaching and that of its mother ; now every object stands singly, all iustruction has a determined time. The manner of handling the subjects of instruc- tion must be in harmony with that of its mother. Man as a Scholar. [The next division of this article upon Pestalozzi is entitled Man as A Scholar, and in it Frobel describes minutely Pestalozzi's mode of teaching everything :] Language — the mother tongue in reference to its meaning, the formal part of language ; descriptions of nature, of the products of art, of the earth's surface. Second course of geographical instruction, the knowl- edge of numbers, forms, size, singing, drawing (Schmidt's method), reading, writing. This instruction is not given from books, but from life, observation of nature, walks, examination of works of art and use, etc., etc. INTRODUCTION OF THIS METHOD INTO THE SCHOOLS. The demands which Pestalozzi makes upon the teacher are simple and natural ; they are founded in the nature of the teacher as well as in the nature of the scholar. Therefore they will be intelligible and easy of execution and representation to every teacher, even the country school- teacher, who can unite good will with power and understanding, as soon as he has suitably prepared himself in the method. It is the same with the subjects which Pestalozzi wishes to have taught. They go from the simple, their march is connected in a determined sequence lying in the nature of every subject of instruction. If the teacher has been taught only i\\e first point, the nature and essence of his subject, through observation in his own practice, he can not only proceed easily according to the demand of that subject, but even instruct the scholar in it con- secutively. The teacher with good will and the impulse to perfect himself (and upon what teacher who wishes to perfect others would not this requisi- tion be made ?) will very soon perceive with the utmost joy the glorious effects of the Pestalozzian method upon himself; he will find it grounded in his nature. The Pestalozzian principles will thus become his own ; they will flow into his whole life ; and thus he will express it with mind, love, warmth, life and freedom in all his acts, and instruct 62 FROEBEL ON PESTALOZZI. and represent it to his scholars according to their needs, as to his own children and brethren. There would be few difficulties in introducing Pestalozzi's method into the schools, if teachers, and those who feel it their destiny to be such, should make themselves familiar at his institution with his princi- ples, and should acquire the readiness and dexterity in applying them, which they could do on the spot. Supposing that they know and honor the duties and demands of their calling, strive to fulfill them with all their power, and, thinking for themselves, not act mechanically, their efforts would be facilitated by the Pestalozzian method ; in the fii'st place because it corresponds to their natures as well as to that of their pupils, and again because its workings will fill them and their pupils with inward joy and exhilarating pleasure ; it would enable them to fulfill their calling not only with love and joy, but with power and enthusiasm. They will not be behindhand in their own self-perfecting when they teach their scholars, even the lowly among the people, even the preliminary points of every subject ; they will have the opportunity for thought whereby their own minds will be farther developed. Their human hearts, their loving souls, will be filled with nourishment. They will never be machines even when they are teaching the simplest thing ; for they will never depend upon arbitrarily given rules, followed every day regularly without farther thought. Indeed, if they wish to teach according to Pestalozzi's principles, it will be necessary to think, so that what they teach will be living and active in itself, and be presented livingly and glowingly so as to awaken life and activity in others. By their knowledge of this method, the teachers, in order to under- stand its introduction, will make it not only possible to fulfill their duty far more comprehensively and better than before, but will find their work much facilitated by it, for by its conformity to nature it bears within itself the quality that every advanced scholar will be able to teach and instruct others. Very essential and many-sided advantages will arise out of this to both scholars and schools. 1. All the scholars will be, according to their needs and at all times, employed under a teacher, will be always under inspection, and never left to themselves or to indolence, a thing so common in schools, but will be at all times engaged in their development and culture. 2. For the instructed and assistant pupils will themselves penetrants deeper into the method, and hence be better able to comprehend the teaching they will receive. Their power of thought and judgment will be in continual exercise, their feelings and souls will have the opportu- nity to practice love and ready service, and thus, while upon one side their understandings will be cultivated, on the other they will rise to practical humanity. The school itself will thus be sustained like a family, the teacher of which is the father, the pupils of which are the children ; these will be like brothers and sisters of the same family, in which the weaker will be sustained by the stronger. FKOEBEL ON PESTALOZZI. 63 Whose heart does not beat quickly to see the schools of his beloved fatherland thus exalted ? The assistant teacher will receive thus the most highly essential advantage ; he must never weaken his powers by frittering them away, that he may always be able to devote them wholly to the department taught by him. The school receives this essential advantage — that unity reigns in the whole instruction. So much more important progress will the pupils make. The school can thus naturally answer perfectly to the demands of the parents, the children always be suitably and directly employed, and all things work together for their culture. The instruction will thus gain in life, interest and variety by every class of the pupils being occupied specially and particularly according to their ages. If we were to take into consideration the wants of the people in the arrangement and application of subjects of instruction in the people's schools and the country schools, a teacher in a country or village school, supported by some of his most capable pupils, could fulfill the demands of Pestalozzi for eighty or more scholars by seven hours of daily in- struction (two afternoons being excepted). Since the child is first capable at eight years of age of being treated as a scholar, according to Pestalozzi's principles, if hitherto but little has been done for his development by his parents and his mother, a fixed time, to fall between the sixth and seventh year, must be arranged by local conditions to receive him into the school in order to supply what the first education at home has neglected. Therefore at first all the children who go to the school will be divided into two principal classes or divisions. The first division will constitute the children's class, and these pupils will be under eight years of age. The manner of their treatment will be determined by their age, for they are children in the narrow sense of the word ; they have not emerged from the circle determined by the foregoing representation of the Book for Mothers. The second division will consist of the school classes, and the pupils will be from eight years up to the age in which they usually leave school. The manner of their treatment is determined by Pestalozzi's method of instruction. This second division must be divided again into two parts ; into the lower class in which the pupils are at all events from eight to eleven years old, and the upper class which contains the pupils from eleven years of age to the end of the school time. The whole school would be divided then into three classes ; the first or child's class ; the second or lower school class ; the third or upper school class. According to this division of the classes the following subjects of instruction are possible : The second class could receive two hours' instruction in the descrip- 64 FROEBEL ON PESTALOZZI. tion of nature ; tlie third class two hours in natural history. In this "way the pupils become acquainted not only with the greater part of the natural products of their fatherland, particularly of the region in which they live, but also of the foreign natural products of essential impor- tance to that region. The second class could devote two hours in the week to the descrip- tion of products of art; the third class two hours to technology. And here what is essential to the pupils in the circle in which they live is alone necessary. . Then two hours of description of the earth for the second class, and two hours of knowledge of different countries. The second class could give one of these hours in the middle of the week to a walk. Thus they would learn to know Germany (its physical limits) and especially the Thuringian valley accurately, and have a general view of Europe. In the description of other countries, they are taught the products of nature and art in each country, the manner of life and system of gov- ernment of the inhabitants, and the relations of every land and of the inhabitants of each to the territories in which they live. The fatherland of the pupils stands first in importance in all these three topics. The second class can have six hours of arithmetic. The third class also six hours of the same. In the second class it will be chiefly men- tal arithmetic, in the third class chiefly ciphering or written arithmetic (on the slate). The second class can have four hours upon the theory of forms and drawing ; the third class four hours in geometry and drawing. To fix more sharply the relation of the hours for arithmetic, theory of forms, geometry and drawing, a part should be precise local knowledge, a part dependent upon what knowledge the pupils of the child's class in the lower school class already have. The second class can have six hours of reading and mother tongue ; the third class four hours of the formal theory of language. The exercises in beautiful handwriting can be connected afterwards with grammatical exercises. The third class needs neither special hours for reading or writing, because the pupils have been firmly grounded in these before they passed into the third class. To practice and cultivate themselves more in both, they find sufficient opportunity in writing upon the other topics. The second class can have three hours in singing, and the third class the same. Lastly, the second class can have six hours of religious instruction, and the third class nine hours. In the third class this consists of the reports of the preaching, passages of scripture and songs ; in the recita- tion of Bible texts and songs, not only in the words but in the significa- tion which the pupil has given to both. The particulars of the instruction in the first or child's class I pass FROEBEL ON PESTALOZZI. 65 over, since the subjects, as well as their treatment, are designated in the way in which they are represented. In no other than the Pestalozzian method can the child be employed in such a variety of ways, or in so few hours could such a goal be reached on every topic. According to Pestalozzi's meaning and principles, no topic should stand isolated ; only in organic union do they lead to the desired goal, which is the cultivation and education of the child and pupil. This suggestion for the assignment of hours and subjects is only made for the country schools ; for the city schools, there are generally three regular teachers for greater p»erfection of instruction. But the organization of a school according to Pestalozzi's principles makes two essential requisitions ; first, that the children of the school age can only be received into the school at two fixed seasons ; and that all school children, except in the vacations, shall come to school punctu- ally and uninterruptedly. If a single hour is neglected by the papil, it is never possible to make it wholly up without great disadvantage to his companions in that topic, since this method makes a steady advance and is characterized by a continuous progress. All the faults which hitherto may be found in country and city schools are prevented by the introduction of this method. Order, permanent and spontaneous occupation, taking into account both mind and character, gradual progress in culture, living and funda- mental knowledge in the pupil, love, true love of it on his part, love for the school and for the teacher, contempt for all superficial knowledge in the schools of all kinds, or among the people. These are the essen- tial consequences of schools directed on Pestalozzi's jirinciples. To every one who relies upon the school for his circle of knowledge, he has marked out the path for perfecting and ennobling himself. Love for teachers and companions, parents and family, will in riper age become a more exalted love of country, deep reverence for the princes who are to be regarded as superior fathers. The many-sided practical power, the strength of mind and body he has acquired, will make it possible for every one so trained to act not only with power for the welfare of his own family, but to be an actively working subject for the good of the people. Simplicity, contentment with his condition of firm independence of character, thoughtful action, the promotion of family and public happi- ness, practical virtue, true religion, wiU characterize the citizens edu- cated according to Pestalozzi's method. Upon the Possibility of introducing Pestalozzi^s Method among the Mothers and Parents of the People, for the Natural Education and Treatment of their Children up to the Sixth Year. Even the introduction of Pestalozzi's method into the families is not so difficult as it is thought to be, for every mother loves her child, haa 66 FROEBEL ON PESTALOZZI. hiiii with her most of the time up to a certain age, and willingly con- verses and occupies herself with him. It needs little guidance, therefore, even of the uncultivated mother, in order to teach her how to treat her child according to its nature and to lead it farther on than usual ; it depends upon how this guidance is given to her. Mere words will work quite in a contrary way, but every mother likes to have people interested in her child. Could these dispositions of the mother be used to give her confidence in Pestalozzi's method so that she could converse with her child and occupy herself with it in an intelligent manner, one might so interest the mother herself in it that she would soon perceive the benefit and joy of the child in her occupation with it ; while she occupies herself with the child she cultivates herself also. But what is thus naturally given must not go beyond her power of conception and representation. The more simple, easy and comprehen- sible what is given her the better. And what country teacher or country clergyman has not often an opportunity so to influence parents and child I If even but little can be effected, what is really essential might be done by a country teacher or pastor, Vi'ith the help of a few members of the community, to spread the knowledge of a better nurture of little children, one more conformable to nature. By the direction of the schools according to the principles of Pestalozzi, where the older and more advanced pupils teach the more backward ones, the introduction and generalizing of the above mentioned treatment of the children would surely be possible, and made far easier because the older mem- bers of families are so often left in charge of the younger ones by their parents. By such direction of the schools, these representatives of the parents may receive the material with which they can develop and cultivate their little brothers and sisters by occupying them happily. How many evils which so often are inflicted upon children might be averted in this way ! The child so guided will never give itself by way of pastime to evil habits ; it will become accustomed early to a proper way of thinking and feeling and will then never have any pleasure in idleness. The number of children deserving of compassion who run about under the name of " blackguards " and do not know what to do with their time, would vanish out of sight under this influence. All would strive con- sciously and unconsciously for the high aim of becoming productive and estimable citizens, and of protecting those who are weaker in their endeavors to seek the same goal. Honored princess, linger a moment over this picture ; find in it the happiness which this method will spread abroad over all conditions of men. FROEBEL ON PESTALOZZI. 67 And how much more glorious would be the effect of such schools, when the pupil jouth so guided shall become a father, and the young woman educated on these principles shall once be a mother. She will be a true mother ; unconsciously and without farther guidance she will impart to her child what is in herself ; she will naturally treat and edu- cate her child according to Pestalozzi. Capable young people who feel the calling within themselves can thus cultivate themselves for still higher work, and be useful whether as husbands or fatliers by their information, counsel and acts. Let them unite with some others of the community who are most active for its welfare ; let them use this spirit to do good with. On Sundays and feast days let them come together, if only a few, to gather the youths and maidens around them ; let them invite some of the fathers and mothers to make it more agreeable. Let the knowledge of the world and of nature be the subject of their conversation, not formally or discursively ; no, let it proceed from their own observation and examination how they as well as children learn to occupy themselves from the simplest thing to the most complex. At least let the possibility of the introduction of the Pestalozzian method among the people be shown. By its introduction to the schools its in- fluence among the people will be so much the more secure and rich iu consequences. Upon the Connection of the Elementary Instruction of Pestalozzi with higher Scientific Instruction. The series of elementary instruction continues uninterruptedly into the higher and scientific. To represent this progress in detail would carry me too far. Permit me simply to indicate the connection. Language retains as higher scientific construction both the directions it had taken as elementary instruction. In one direction, and indeed formally, it rises to the philosophy of language (form is here taken in a wider sense) ; in the other direction it rises to scientific and artistic representation. Classification or system proceeds from the description of nature directly, according to one direction ; according to the other, the history of the products of nature. Both run parallel. As the description of nature rises to individual classification, so from natural history proceeds the individual histories of the species. The description of the surface of the earth becomes in uninterrupted sequence the history of the earth's surface ; afterwards it necessarily blends with ancient geography. Since the old geography proceeds according to its elements from the highest point of the earth's sur- face, this determines the biblical geography to be the beginning of this topic. 68 FKOEBEL ON PESTALOZZI. Description of men becomes anthropology, physiology and psychol- ogy (which must come out of history and through which, jfirst receives here its true meaning) and at last human history. Here first comes the history of individual men, then their history as fathers of families, then the history of the whole family of the people and the nation. Only biblical history corresponds to this natural continuous progress, since it ascends from t.he individual to the whole, therefore the begin- ning would be made with it ; in it lies the starting point for farther progress. Here comes in the study and learning of the ancient lan- guages. History and ancient geography now run parallel. The introduction of the Pestalozzian method of instruction in geog- raphy is highly essential to the study of ancient geography. Arithmetic develops without a break into the mathematics of abstract computable quantities in all its branches. • Geometry develops in a similar uninterrupted succession into the mathematics of fixed magnitudes in its whole extent and all its subdi- visions. Knowledge of the elementary powers of nature develops into natural history in the wider sense and in all its compass. The description of the products of art becomes the history of the products of art in its greatest range. Elementary drawing rises to drawing as an art and proceeds to plas- tic representation of different kinds. The theory of form according to its essence must stand in a higher contact with the aesthetic ; their connection is not yet found. Song rises to art and founds instrumental music in its various forms. Thus, according to Pestalozzi, the whole is carried out till all these sciences and arts meet again in one point from which they all issued — Man. The first of this encounter is Philosophy ; to recognize it makes the scholar a learned man. When he finds himself at this point, he may determine by himself the direction and aim of his life with clearness and true consciousness. And thus the Pestalozzian method sets man forth on his endless path of development and culture on the way to knowledge, bound to no time and no space, a development to which there is no limit, no hindrance, no bounds ! A. Froebel. LANGE'S REMINISCENCES OF FROEBEL. Abridged from Dr. Lange's " For the Understanding of Frxbel,^ by Mrs. Mabt Manit. TRCEBEL AT HAMBURG. WiCHARD Lange says of Froebel, whom he saw for the first time in 1849, on the evening when he met the ladies of a Hamburg society who had invited him to visit them and speak of the Kindergarten, — " Out of the single thoughts of Froebel one soon sees, as I saw that evening, that the question 'How can one contribute to the happiness of mankind? ' had attained in his mind what might be described as a fearful intensity. In every motion, in every word, in every gleam of his eye, the burning desire betrayed itself to further the happiness of his race. The essence of humanity is God-like; it consists in thinking, living, and willing. The aim of all life is to live. In the reaching of this aim lies happiness. Everything is happy that truly lives, that is, that exists according to its inner nature. This purpose impelled Froebel to all his efforts. What lives must develop itself; development is life; the cessation of develop- ment is death. In unintelligent creatures development is 'tlie necessity of nature, but where there is understanding this necessity becomes freedom, for man can hinder or further his own development at will. The funda- mental idea of Froebel is to educate man to freedom. He who can develop himself unhindered is happy, is free. A people to whom this possibility is given may be called a happy and free people. To make the individual free he must be brought to a freedom of development in which he is in a i condition to clear away all hindrances from his i^ath. But thi^ is only possible through education. ' My investigation has cost me much trouble, much expense, many plans,' said the old man to the ladies. '!■ have had to wrestle, aye, to fight, and my associates in the work have put the greatest hindrances in my way. A correct estimate of the subject was pos- sible only to a Diesterweg. The teachers of Meiningen thought Diester- weg could describe my cause in six lines; but who knows how manyi times six lines he has written upon it!'* 'Now,' he added with much emotion, ' I hope to be able to contribute to the welfare of mankind. If' I had not faith that I can do it, I should have found it difficult to come to( Hamburg. I should have preferred an easier life in my narrower home. ' Stimulated by sympathetic expressions, such as that of Herr Traun, who regretted that he had not made his acquaintance ten years before, he grew ' more and more eloquent, and let his attentive audience look deeper and deeper into his thoughts. ' That man must of necessity be brought into thai path of development, and that education is necessary for this, he spoke of as self-evident. As it is the problem of the world's spirit to conquer and * Deisterweg'* first notice of Froebel appeared in the Jdhlbach in 1851, which was fol- lowed up by frequent and full descriptions In the Bhine Blutter. 70 LANGE'S REMINISCENCES OF FROEBEL. explain matter, so it is the problem of the individual spirit to make all' phenomena, even all obstacles, serviceable to the aim of his own develop- ment in the arena of life. For this is necessary an exalted enthusiasm for the God-like and noble, a developed intelligence, pleasure in thinking, and a will full of the germs of life. The aspiration to the God-like and noble is the inner, more beautiful nature of man, and this must be fostered. To foster it negatively, injurious material influences must be removed from early youth; to be fostered positively, religious and moral feeling must be excited by the contemplation and observation of nature. Empty words and phrases must be avoided if we wish to develop the intelligence. The pupil must be led to observe what he is learning, not merely to look at it, but to look into it. The receptivity of the mind has hitherto been culti- vated; Froebel would cultivate its inborn power of production. lie would unfold, not mould; he would water, guide, and support the tree, not prop or force it. The fostering of the will is negative when it is guarded on the bad side; it is positive when the innate love of goodness is exalted to an unconquerable habit by continuous exercise, by marrying it to the enthu- siasm for the beautiful and true, by which it becomes all-powerful. This view of education, as well as his insight that the earliest youth is the most im- portant season of life, inevitably led Froebel to the idea of the Kindergarten, to that ideal intercourse of dumb innocence which must be guided and find its unity in an idealizing human breast. Here and nowhere else is guaranteed the possibility of holding off injurious influences. But the negative as well as the positive side of education utilizes the child's im- pulse to activity. Out of the true use and culture of this impulse all the rest follows of itself. "Man must not be instructed, but developed. 'I separate instruction from development very sharply,' Froebel said that evening, and it is a discrimination of the greatest importance. The instructed mind may be compared to a river which flows round the cliffs and impediments, nar- rows and widens according to necessity, crooks and bends, and skillfully and smoothly creeps to the ocean. Such a stream, hedged in by cliffs and impeded by rocks, is not adapted to commerce ; it loses its idea, its aim, for the aim of the living flood is to be the means of culture. The devel- oped man is like a stream whose powerful rush demolishes the rocks, levels the hills, pulses like a great vein through the earth, drawing thousands of cities to its brink, and tracing out the highway of commerce and culture. What is destined to be must be through the use of an idea; that power of being is thought alone. If man is developed like the last-mentioned stream he knows but one goal to his life, and that is to develop himself by developing humanity. The aim of humanity is development, as well as the aim of the individual. It must pass on to the human ideal. . . Materialism makes the earthly the aim; I know no more decided enemy of materialism than Frederick Froebel. His measures will in their last consequences offer the means of destroying materialism and idealizing the world. Even selfishness is stupid, that it has not more decidedly and powerfully opposed it. ' There exists no other power than that of thought, as I said to one of the princes,' said the old man that evening. • The oneness of the laws of the universe with the laws of the spirit must be LANGE'S REMINISCENCES OF FROEBEL. 71 recognized, — everylliing must be seized as bearer of the idea; every man must be governed by ideas, and every man must acknowledge matter to be the form for the realizing of thought.' Froebel himself often doubts if he shall reach the realization of this idea, which is, so to speak, him- self. He expressed this doubt in his short address to the ladies: ' Ladies, believe me, I gratify the demands of my heart in thanking you for your invitation. I have the pleasure of presenting to you an idea which is great and holy; an idea whose realization must lead to the happi- ness of man. If it is not salient in its truth and its might before your eyes it is because of my feeble presentation, and I beg you to throw the fail- ure upon me. Fate decided upon me and chose me for its bearer with- out having consulted me beforehand. It showed me the importance of an education conformable to nature by giving me bitter experiences and privations, while the early loss of my mother threw me upon self-edu- cation. What one has been obliged to contend with bitterly he wishes to soften to his fellow -men. Thus the necessity of self-education led me to the education of my fellow men. To strive for this is the aim of my life, and will be my occupation to the grave. Make allowances for my personality, and cleave to the cause, for the cause is great and important.' After his brief address, he conversed with Herr Traun upon collateral subjects, and I was astonished at his profound love of fat'xjerland, his deep knowledge and insight into our language, which he designated as "the flower of all Western tongues. " Frau Westenfeld said to us that Froebel's appearance had repelled many ladies. This was natural, but his en- thusiasm will yet animate and excite them. What is new in Froebel f " What is new in Froebel? Froebel's fundamental idea is to educate man for freedom. Rousseau rescued individuality; since his time all education has rested upon the recognition of the individual and the consciousness that the development of self is necessary. The one-sidedness of Rousseau's efforts consisted in this, that he would cultivate men only as men, without reference to society; therefore, he did not know what to do with his Emil. Pestalozzi found the means with which to cultivate the intellectual indi- vidual. Whoever wishes to be an individual must work and produce, not receive only. This insight awakened in Pestalozzi the principle of object, teaching— intuition; 'for nothing is in the mind that has not first been in the senses.' Self -activity in man, from childhood up, is the ground and means of a natural unfolding. But if education is to lead to self-activity it must be by taking into consideration tlie nature of man, for only what is really in man can be unfolded. . Does not the worst unbelief come out of the doubt of the possibility of perfecting and ennobling man? The essence of man is not of necessity recognized in history, for history is not a definite whole ; but the laws of the spirit are recognized in their totality in the affinities of nature. . . First in our time has the identity of the laws of the spirit with the laws of the universe been clearly seen. . . The mission of Froebel is to give to education not a one-sided but an all- Bided foundation. " With the use of the humanistic ideal appeared the following postulate: Y2 LANGE'S REMINISCENCES OF PROEBEL. Study the being of man in history! With the appearance of Pestalozzi came another: Study the being of man in its manifestation of individuality; with Froebel : Ground the being of man upon the macrocosmos* The micro- cosmos is understood to be in perpetual motion toward the macrocosmos. The jDath of this movement is history, — what has already been done. Out of the three — macrocosmos, microcosmos, and history, a sj'stem of natural developing education unfolds itself. The new thing which Froebel has done is that he has taken the study of this trinity as the foundation of the science of education, and has represented the necessity of starting from the laws of the macrocosmos. ' ' Upon this foundation alone can a Froebelian school be founded. Every system that has any meaning contains the past within itself. The Froebe- lian pedagogy differs from the Pestalozzian not in its demands but in its basis. The foundation of a developing education conformable to nature is first presented and shown in its full meaning by Froebel, and only through his school is it possible to raise pedagogy to a science in the true sense of that word. It is possible with him because he proceeds upon the principle upon which all science rests, — the laws of the mind are identical with the laws of the universe. "Pestalozzi and Froebel differ no less in the direction of their efforts. "When the call, consider individuality, rang up the Rhine, it was natural the new education created by Pestalozzi took with the poor whom the rich had utterly ignored. One class of men had stamped physical necessity into an atomized powder and thus destroyed individuality. Pestalozzi would suffer no smutty, ignorant, unskilled man to be de- prived of his right to express his will, or be condemned to a merely animal existence. He would create for the proletariat the possibility of improve- ment and independent industrial activity, and rouse a lawful, i^rotesting, hostile voice against human sway by brutality and vice. To this end he created the people's school. Pestalozzi was, if the appellation will not be misunderstood, tJie pedagogic socialist. "When, in the year of the French domination, the death of all German nationality seemed irremediable; when the dastardly. hirelings left their standards in a heap on the field of battle, Fichte saw that for the redemption of Germany a nation must be educated. ' Create a people by national educa- tion,' he cried to the princes. The princes appealed to the people, and out- ward freedom was inaugurated. It was not Blacher, or Scharnhorst, etc., it was Fichte who drove the French out of the land. It was Fichte's deepest conviction that the idea of the perfect State could be gained only by edu- cation. He said ' the State cannot be constructed intelligently by artificial measures and out of any material that may be at hand, but the nation must be educated and cultivated up to it. Only the nation which shall first have solved the problem of education to perfected manhood through actual practice, will solve that of the perfected State.' The philosopher was the creator of the idea of national education. Fichte was the pedagogic statesman. But Frederich Froebel is the pedagogic apostle of freedom. He resembles * In the medieval philosophy macrocosm expressed the great world, and man was con- ceived of as the microcosm, or opltoino of the great world. — Tr. LANGE'S REMINI-CENCES OF FROEBEL. ^3 Pestalozzi in so far as he has established the universal right to develop- ment, has recognized birth or wealth no longer as a criterion of the posi- tion of man in society, but makes the inner contents of the man the deter- mining force. He resembles Fichte in that, like that truly German man, he wishes to awaken the conviction that the individual has importance and significance only in connection with society, the whole. The unity of man supposes the antecedent necessity of thefHimitation of the individual. The love of the individual will waken to unity, and this love will tear up selfishness by the roots. He resembles Fichte in that he sees that humanity in concreto exists only in the form of nations, and thence awakens the national consciousness, holding to and developing the peculiarities of our nation. Fi-oebel is in this respect the union of Pestalozzi and Fichte. But he separates again from the other heroes of pedagogy by the means he has discovered for teaching the end he has in view. Pestalozzi reopened and utilized the school. He saw plainly that he had not done enough. He recognized the importance of the mother, and the necessity of elevating domestic education, but was sure no other means would help the latter object than the study of'two books. Fichte hoped for nothing from the home, where, according to his opinion, rooted selfishness had barricaded door and gate against rational education, and therefore he wished to with- draw children from the influence of the mother and let them be cultivated in large educational establishments. Froebel stands between the two. He sees the ' too little ' in the measures of Pestalozzi, the ' too much ' in the propositions of Fichte. He has struck the medium by the idea of the Kin- dergarten. He would have the children taken from home for a time, but only with a view of coming to the aid of the mother. He would have edu- cation in common like Fichte, in order to limit the feeling of individuality, and then let it have its play, that selfishness may not spring up, or that it may be nipped in the bud. He would have the isolation of the family, and then uproot the inactivity and vicious propensities often engendered by it by a thoughtful, systematic, playing system of occupation for the child. He, like Pestalozzi, wishes for the improved culture of the mother not by a little reading of books, but by initiation into an intelligent, be- cause natural, system of early education. The new thing which he has here brought into view is the consecration and systematic utilization of play. He has exalted the idea of the mother, for the mother is in his view the one who feelingly comprehends and fosters the being of the child in all the manifestations of the different periods of its life. He also gives unmarried women an opportunity to be mothers, and has thus given back to many unhappy beings the conditions of happiness. He has laid the way for the true emancipation of women by giving them the possibility of grasping the wheel of universal development independently, and making their central point the direction of the education of the future race. \ Pestalozzi brought the ideas of Rousseau to realization. Diesterweg explained and purified them. In the Roman states the idea of Rousseau took no root because education remained dependent upon the church. Pestalozzi could not annul that dependence, but Diesterweg gave it its death-blow, and first created the possibility of a people's school in the true sense of the word. Froebel received from him the purified idea of the 74 LANQE'S REMINISCENCES OF FROEBEL. people's school and fused it with the idea of national education.* By the fostering of Dicsterweg and Froebel the first people's school entered upon a new step of develojnncnt. lioth men will find their new Diestervveg, •who will explain the idea and purify the practice. Personal Relations of Froebel. "Frederich Froebol's fatligr was a man rich in insi£!;ht, truly religious; and he turned his attention with the greatest solicitude to the early educa- tion of this youngest son of his beloved, departed wife. He understood how to unfold mind and heart in the promising boy by a judicious train- ing. The child passed ten years in the parental house, w^hich stood at the foot of the Kirchberger, one of the highest summits of the Thuringian forest; separated from the great world only by a flower and fruit-garden aTul a church-yard; one the region of growth and bloom and ripe life, the other tlu' abode of death. These ten years were of the greatest impor- tance lo the development of our genius. To point out the dt'tails of this unfolding is not the aim of these lines. A fuller treatment can only prop- erly do it. " At the end of 1792 the father acceded to the wish of Froebel's maternal uncle, who had also long since lost his wife, and soon after his only son, to give him Frederich, the youngest son of his beloved sister, for further education. This maternal uncle was Superintendent Hoffman of Stadt- ilm, a little city in the principality of Schwarzburg-Rudolstadt. Hoffman was as humane as he was distinguished, and as gentle as he was earnest and decided. The boy who had been shut out from society was now in its full tide, among the numerous friends and relatives of his uncle. It was with him as with the seed, which, plunged into the earth by the hand of the sower, then transplanted to the manifold, continuous, and persistent intluencvs of universal life, unfolds and grows into the powerful tree. He remained four years in his uncle's house, receiving instruction during that time partly from him and his father,— culture partly from private instruc- tion, or in the public school. In 1796 he returned to his father's house. The time had now come when he must think of the choice of a calling for life. The boy already show^ed the disposition to comprehend clearly and thoroughly everything that came within his reach for his culture, but also a no less marked tendency to a practical calling. This tendency, as well as the circumstances of his fatlier, which were not brilliant, determined him not to follow the example of his elder brother, who had devoted him- self to purely scientific study, but to take up forest-lore. He assumed the calling with the intention of grounding himself in it as deeply and as all- sidedly as possible. In 1797 he entered upon this pursuit under the direc- tion of a practical forester. The young Froebel, in his unexampled efforts to learn the care of forest growths in the most thorough manaer, and by his zealous, unassisted study of practical geometry, earned the greatest admiration of his teacher, and indeed excited his astonishment in a high degree. He had passed almost two years thus, when suddenly his passion for the study of natural science was aroused. The physician of the place • Note by the translator: Froebel's Kindergarten was in full operation before Dieeter- weg knew him. LANGE'S REMINISCENCES OF FROEBEL. 76 where he then resided gave him a scientific work upon botany, which the young forester scarcely laid out of his hands till he had made its contents completely his own. From this time nothing could hold him back from devoting himself to the study of higher mathematics and natural science. In the autumn of 171)7 he entered the University of Jena with the purpose of studying agriculture in the most comprehensive sense, and also financial matheniiitics. A little property from his mother was now made over to him by his father. This insignificant sum enabled him to stay a year and a half at the university. After this he again studied by himself. "In 1802, when he was twenty years of age, his father died. He was now left quite at his own disposal. A combination of various circum- stances induced him in 1804 to take the place of private secretaiy to a man of considerable wealth in Mechlenburg. . . In this place his prac- tical scientific studies flourished as never before. ' The thought now occurred to him that he would gratify an inward desire for the thorough study of architecture. For this purpose, in 1805, he yielded to the urgency of a friend to come to Frankforton-the-Main. With that meeting began a new era in his life. An offer of private pupils enabled him to fix his residence in Frankfort. Ilis teaching made an impression upon the prin- cipal of a newly-created model school, Dr. Grilner. On the evening of his first interview with this gentleman, who greeted him in the most friendly manner, the twenty-three year old youth sjioke upon the subject that moved his soul so deeply, — the whole aim of his life and his strivings. After the lively conversation had ended, Griiner said to his young friend, with the deepest conviction: 'Froebel, you must be a schoolmaster!' At the same time he ofifered him a vacant position in the model school. As Froebel afterwards expressed it, 'the scales fell from his eyes.' It was clear to him in a moment that the offered reality was what his mind and heart had so long unconsciously .sought in this never-ending struggle for self-culture. Offer and response followed in the same moment, and Froe- bel became a teacher in the model school of Frankfort. EXPEKIENCE IN TE.\CniN(J. "We can readily imagine that the young teacher endeavored to satisfy' the demands of his present position to the best of his ability. He perceived very soon that the method of instruction must be directed by the laws of, development of the human mind as well as by that of the subject to be, taught, and that the essence of the method is the art of adapting the momentary stage of development in the scholar to the corresponding one' of the subject. This law of development he carefully sought; this art he, endeavored to make his own. Griiner perceived the restless striving of; Ibis young friend, and gave him for his theoretic outline in pedagogy the writings of Pestalozzi. This awakened in Froebel the burning desire to' know personally the man who was seeking to prepare the way to a new education conformable to nature. He went to Yverdun, was fourteen days in the Pestalozzi Institute, and returned to his former situation with the re.'?olution to understand precisely, earlier or later, by practice, the efforts of the Swiss schoolman. " He was soon able to carry out his resolution, for in 1807 a very esti- 76 LANGS' S REMINISCENCES OF FROEBEL. mable family in Frankfort gave him the direction of their children's edu- cation, which he undertook on the condition that after a time he should take his pupils to Yverdun, in order to put himself in connection with Pes- talozzi's Institute. From 1808 to 1810 he went to Yverdun with his three pupils, lived quite independently of the Institute, but put himself in living relation with it. He was now at the same time pupil and teacher. Deeply penetrated by the importance of the Pestalozzian efforts, he was eager to spread his principles actively in his own country. Yet he could not avoid seeing that the principle of Pestalozzi as developed did not reach the inner connection of the child's soul with the mother and outward things. He conceived the purpose of improving and contributing his own culture to laying a deep and firm foundation. This purpose determined him in 1810 to leave Pestalozzi and the family of his pupils in order to devote himself in Gottingen to the deeper study of the natural sciences. In 1811 he entered the University of Berlin for the same purpose. In Berlin the per- suasion was strengthened to ripeness in him that all life, that is, develop- •' ment into the whole, was founded upon one law, and that this unity must be the basis of all principles of development, its beginning and end. This conviction was the fruit of a profound study of nature in its law of devel- opment, and the most careful contemplation of the child. He gained an opportunity for this latter observation by teaching, while he was studying '■ in Berlin, in Plamann's famous Pestalozzian institution for boys. "In the spring of 1813 the extreme need of the fatherland called him into the ranks of the volunteer soldiers, and there quite early he made the acquaintance of his later companions and fellow-workers, Langenthal and. Middendorff, who had been also studying in Berlin. During the war he never lost sight of his fundamental thought, and he utilized all its phe- nomena to illustrate it. The rapid progress of events in the summer of 1814 left him free to go back to his former relations. He soon became, by the influence of higher patrons, assistant and inspector in the Royal Museum of Mineralogy, under Professor Weiss. " Froebel was now truly encompassed by the treasures of nature. When he had combined the results of his unwearied investigations in the univer- sity, it became more and more clear to him that the recognition of the con- formity to law and the harmony of nature was only so far of truth as it can be applied to human life, and thus effects its transformation. The more opportunity our investigator had to watch nature in its development, the more he was impelled to compare the results of this search with the conformity to law in the development of humanity in the cJiild. Ever clearer to him was the identity of the laws of development of the macro- cosm with those of the microcosm; more and more important did this knowledge appear to him to be for the development of individual men, as I well as for the race; ever anew was his delight kindled in putting in prac- tice an education conformable to nature. He resolved to give up his position in the museum, and devote himself wholly to the education of men and children. His repeated application for discharge was granted him, after friendly and urgent remonstrance from Professor Weiss. The question now was where to find the natural and vital point of connec- tion with his new undertaking. This soon appeared in his own family, LANGB'S REMINISCENCES OP FROEBEL. 77 for the war had left the children of his eldest brother fatherless. To begin his educational activity with these children was his plan when he left Ber- lin. He took leave of his friends Langenthal and Middendorff, who had returned after the war to their theological studies, and with whom Froebel continued in the closest friendship. He did not tell them anything about his plan, but promised to inform them when he had reached something definite. In 1816, at the end of September, he left Berlin and found in Greisheim five of his sister's children assembled for education and care, and there and with them his great educational undertaking began. He had no outward means for carrying it on, nothing but this inward convic- tion and firm trust in its result. By the sale of a collection of minerals he realized a few crowns, which he used for the adornment of his Christmas festival and the partial re-building of his little house. One brother took care of the maintenance of his two sons, who received education and care in the budding institution, and also for the maintenance of their charge. The mother, who in the beginning lived in Greisheim, took care of the fatherless nephews. In the early part of the year 1817 Middendorff, the youngest friend of Froebel, decided to aid him as far as possible in the execution of his purpose. He hastened, accompanied by the youngest brother of Langenthal, who, at the wish of this friend, joined the other pupils to Griesheim in April of the next year. The expenses of the young Langenthal were defrayed by a responsible family in which the brother was house-tutor. Middendorff was in circumstances that enabled him to assist in the plan by practicing some little economy. Griesheim was not long the place of the new institution. The widowed sister-in-law of Froebel was obliged to choose for her place of abode, the little village of Keilhau, which lies in what is called the Schalathal, an hour's ride from Rudolstadt. She purchased for her subsistence a little peasant's property. To be able to carry on the education of her children, Froebel and Middendorff followed her to Keilhau. Both men occupied a small tenement that had neither window, floor, or stove, and, with nar- row means, these friends of youth had to contend with the greatest obsta- cles. A sketch of these privations, as heard from the lips of Middendorff, would be instructive and interesting. School at Keilhau. "In October, 1817, the elder Langenthal joined the two friends. In November of that year a school-building was put up in the widow's yard, but it could not be finished immediately. Towards the spring of 1818, the number of pupils had increased to twelve. Froebel was now thinking of marrying, that his pupils might have a loving mother and superintendent of the house-keeping. It was his wish to bring home a motherlj"- woman, who could understand him and appreciate his efforts. Such a being was his now dead wife, Wilhelmine, Miss Hofmeister of Berlin. She was the daughter of a royal Prussian counsellor of war. She was full of enthu- siasm for Froebel's educational idea. As inspector of the Mineralogical Museum of Berlin, he had often in confidential conversations imparted to his friend Counsellor Hofmeister, and his daughter, what was moving in his inmost soul. The daughter had so often listened to the outpourings of 78 LANGE'S REMINISCENCES OP FROEBEL. his mind and heart with unspoken enthusiasm that she was now willing to follow him out of the throng and rush, the glitfrering halls and refined society of the great city, into the quiet village in which dwelt the man I who asked her to give him her hand for the realizing of a great idea. If it had not been for her, the world would never have known Frederich Froebel as the originator of the Kindergarten. "On the 20th of September, accompanied by one of her foster-daughters, Wilhelmine Hofmeister entered the Keilhau circle as wife, mother, and house-keeper. Shortly before his marriage, Froebel came into possession of the yard in which the newly-built school-house stood. In 1820 his eldest brother, father of his first two pupils, decided to give up domicile and manufactory in Asterode on the Nanz, an\i to devote the activity of his family and his outward means to the idea of his brother. He had so often carried his brother in his arms when a child, he wished now to live with him and associate himself with his thought, that bond which holds the world together most firmly. The development of the institution now made quiet, secure, and continuous progress. By degrees appeared the following writings, which testified of this progress to the world: Publications, 1819-1826. I 1. Concerning the German Educational Institution at Rudolstadt, 1819. 2. Continued information of the German Educational Institution at Keilhau; Rudolstadt, 1823. 3. Christmas festival in the Educational Institution at Keilhau — a Christmas gift to the honored parents of the pupils, the friends and mem- bers of the Institution, 1824. " Beautiful family festivals cast a beneficent light, from time to time, like brilliant sparks of illumination, over the whole lives of the united friends of education. Such irradiation shone out on the 16th of September, 1825. On that day were betrothed the two friends of Froebel, Hcinrich Langen- thal and the afore-mentioned foster-daughter of Frau Froebel, Ernestine Crispine, and "William Middendorll and Albertine, daughter of Froebel's eldest brother. The pupils of the Institute had made a path on the cele- bration of this festival, for the ascent of the encircling mountain, that the happy couples, in the beginning of this most important era of their lives, might be able to look down from that height on the result of many years of effort. There was inward and many-sided joy on that day in the quiet, peaceful valley in the Thuringian forest. This happy day was followed by a second, an ascension-day in 1826, — the day of Langenthal's and Mid- dendorff's marriage. "In the following year, 1826, appeared two books by Froebel: " 1. The Education of Man; the art of education, instruction, and theory practiced at the German Educational Institution in Keilhau, by the author, founder, and superintendent, Frederich Froebel. " 2. Educational Family weekly paper for Self -culture, and the culture of others. Edited by Frederich Froebel; Leipsic and Keilhau. " One work, entitled Ground Principles of the Education of Man, whose contents he imparted to his friends in Frankfort-on-the-Main, before their publication, gave the latter an opportunity for a longer scientific confer- \ LANGE'S REMINISCENCES OP FROEBEL. 79 ence upon the subject M'ith the autlior of the little work. Froebel pro- posed to visit these worthy friends in order to prosecute these conversations by word of mouth. Before Froebel set out upon his visit there appeared another powerful fellow-worker at Keilhau m the person of Johannes Arnold Barop, the nephew of Middendorff, married to the sister of Frau Middendorfl (Froebcl's niece). After he had finished his theological Studies in Halle he became a zealous cooperator in the Institute at Keilhau. Experience in Switzerland. " Froebel made his visit to Frankfort in the early part of May, 1831. It was one of marked importance for the further development of his cause. He met in Frankfort with the famous Xave Schnyder von Wartensee, well known m the musical world as a critical author and methodriker, as well as an opera composer, and he was a friend and cultivator of natural history. Froebel was soon on terms of intimacy with him. Schnyder von Wartensee was often a witness of the pedagogic and didactic efforts of his friend. Under this influence he asked Froebel to found an institu- tion according to his principles at his family-seat, the castle of Wartensee, on Sempacher lake, in the canton of Lucerne. Froebel joyfully seized this opportunity to spread further his efforts after a developing education conformable to nature. The 20th of July of that year foimd him in Swit- zerland, and on the 12th of August he and Schnyder, with the reqiusite authorization, founded the first educational institution for girls in Switzer- land. Schnyder then returned to his old occupation, and parted from Froebel with these words : ' I have given you a new field for spreading your views. Now win the love of men, which shall never fail you.'* The confidence, Indeed, the love of men, soon showed itself. Froebel was obliged to invite Ferdinand Froebel, his first pupil, who had just finished his philosophical studies at Jena, to come to his aid; a call which Ferdi- nand joyfully obeyed. He came to his uncle as fellow teacher and edu- cator on the fifteenth anniversary of the day on which he had come as a pupil. A year after, 1832, late in the autumn, Froebel was requested by a society of fathers to plan out his Institute at Willisau. The society offered to purchase for the purpose the Upper bailiwick's Castle. Nothing delayed the imdertaking but the want of the grant from the authorities. In the interval Froebel went to Germany, there to prepare for its estab- lishment. " Ferdinand Froebel and Arnold Barop, who had come on a visit to Keilhau in 1832, went with him to the Institute at Wartensee. The pleas- ure of returning to the old circle after six months' absence was very great to Froebel. A few days after his arrival his beloved nephew William, brother of Ferdinand Froebel, died. He was a teacher in the institution where he had been himself educated. His uncle specially loved our Wil- liam Froebel, and was plunged into the deepest grief by his sudden death. But he was soon called out of the quiet valley into the battle-ground of life. The consent of the S^iss authorities was obtained for the founding of the Institute for girls at Willisau. * This is not strictly correct. 80 LANGE'S REMINISCENCES OF FROEBEL. Scliool for Girls at WiUisau. In the beginning of 1833 Froebel returned to Switzerland, accompanied by his wife, ever ready to sacrifice herself, but with health much shattered by the complication of circumstances and her ceaseless motherly cares. On the 1st of May the two entered WiUisau, and on the 2d the institution was opened. In spite of storms and conflicts which were occasioned by Cath. olic opposition, the tender plant grew vigorously. During the conflict the neighboring government of the canton of Berne had been attentively observing the Froebelian Institute. This was proved in 1833, for the Berne government sent men of sense and experience to pass judgment on the results of the examination. Their report showed that out of five young schoolmen from Berne, who for the most part belonged to a certain sphere of active work, two went to WiUisau for a year and a half of cul- ture under Froebel's direction. The remote consequence of this was that Froebel was obliged to have a course of instruction at Burgdorf , in con- nection with several others for teachers, whose number increased to sixty. For the direction of this course, and to forw^ard his institution at the same time, he summoned his friend Langenthal to Switzerland, and this so much the more readily, that Barop had returned to Keilhau in 1833 in order to assist MiddendorfE in the mother Institute. In the same year the institu- tion at WiUisau received another co-laborer in the person of Adolf Franken- berg. In 1834 Froebel returned from Burgdorf to Willisau, into his old place, and to hold his second autumnal examination ; but he soon gave a hearing at Burgdorf to a call from the State authorities, who requested him to found an Educational Orphan Institute in the newly-erected orphan-house. In the summer of 1835 he entered upon his new field. Wlien the afore-men- tioned institution was again opened, Langenthal went with him as assist- ant, and his wife as Frau Froebel's assistant. The loss of Langenthal at Willisau was made good by Middendorff, who willingly left wife and children in Keilhau in order to help forward the prosperity of the daughter Institute. The tender plant at Burgdorf also took root by the unceasing care of the men and their wives, and grew apace. Frau Froebel, especially, and above all others, worked vigorously and unweariedly. But her health had been much shattered by the former journey to Switzerland, as mentioned above, and was still more so by the hard labors at Willisau, to say nothing of the trouble and care which the commencement of house-keeping at Burgdorf had required. Her body and mind needed rest and nursing, and she wished to go back to Keilhau ; but, at the same time, she wished to see once more her beloved aged mother in Berlin. A journey to Keilhau and Berlin was therefore projected for the early part of 1836, for the unceasingly working couple. But in March of 1836 came the news of the sudden death of the mother. The already sick woman, Madame Froebel, was prostrated by this blow, so that the physician urged her to return to Ger- many. Froebel now assigned his work at Burgdorf to Langenthal, and left for Berlin with his wife, partly to adjust the matter of her inheritance. Genesis of the Kindergarten. During Froebel's residence in Berlin the fundamental thought of his edu- cational efforts penetrated his soul more clearly than ever; here it was RANGE'S REMINISCENCES OP FKOEBEL. 81 rliiat his hours of musing were occupied with the plan that was forming pithiu him for the early instruction of little children. It was now clear him that the elevation of all education, that of the earliest childhood as le most important time for human development was indispensable, and lat in its behalf play, as the first activity of the child, mnst be spiritualized and systematically treated. The idea of the Kindergarten rose upon him;* he wrote to Berlin for his first materials for plays and occupations, and immediately formed the purpose of fovmding an institution for the care of the earliest childhood. He selected for this new institution the little town of Blankenburg, on the Schwarze, at the entrance of the so-called Thurin- gian-Switzerland — a place which, on account of its healthy, beautiful situ- ation, was particularly suitable for his sweet wife. In 1837 the institution was founded. In 1838 Froebel issued from Blankenberg a paper entitled 'Seeds, Buds, Floicers, and Fruits out of Life, for the Education of United Families.^ A Sunday issue was under the call: 'Come, let us live with our children. '■ '"' "This year, the year 1838, in reference to the system of Froebel in' genera], and the Kindergarten in particular, is a classical year, and should be so called, and the paper must here be recommended to readers to whom it is destined to give a fundamental conception of this pedagogic innova- tion. It contains an exposition of the great principles of the system, and a development of the material for play in its natural necessity and its har- monic connection. The new idea of the Kindergarten drew all the friends of Froebel again around him. Langenthal left Ferdinand Froebel to con- duct the orphan home in Burgdorf, and went to Blankenberg, IMidden- dorf left Willisau and returned to Keilhau, into the lap of his family, which had long missed the loving father. Froebel, in 1839, in company with Frankenberg, responded to a call from Dresden to speak upon his educational principles, especially to present his idea of the Kindergarten. We know that the seed fell upon good ground in that city. During his residence in Dresden his wife died ; one of those rare women who served an idea at the greatest possible sacrifice, that of her life. She lived to see the Kindergarten idea accepted through the representations of her hus- band, and parted from him satisfied. After this deep wound, — the bitterest experience to him — had done bleeding, the veteran worked on actively, and repeated at Hamburg what he had said in Dresden. A great purpose now took possession of his soul. He had not as yet an institution in which his sj'stem could be presented in its whole comprehensiveness, and which should at the same time secure the further development of his work for the young. Here and there were institutions in Froebel's sense, and also Kindergartens; but a central point was wanting, a heart from which life flows into all the limbs, in order to throw it back again to the source." ( To be continued.) * Prof. Payne presents his conception of the genesis of the Kindergarten in Froebel's meditations and experience, very happily in his 'L^cixiK.— Froebel and the Kindeigarten. 82 FROEBEL AND HIS EDUCATIONAL WORK. I i THE KINDERGARTEN — ITS GENESIS AND NAME.* ' To Froebel, the friend of children, to whom the childish nature readil^ and willingly revealed itself, was it given to find, in the very growt-'i of the child, the natural way of development. Long years of loving observation taught him that the individual inner life of the child reveals itself nowhere more freely and perfectly than in play. He wished to apply his means of development to the personality, as it makes its appear- ance in self -activity, and this could happen only in play. With this his problem was solved at once. He had only to allow the child to play; to give him suitable materials for it; to find proper games to teach the child and his companions, and to prepare them by degrees for useful occupa- tions, and eventually for real work, by methodically arranged gradations. Of this we will hear him speak. In a letter to Barop, written Feb. 18, 1829, he says: "During the short time employed in writing these lines the thought of my and our educational work has essentially unfolded itself, while it has gone further back in respect to its application, and grounded itself so much the more deeply. The education and training of little children from three to seven years old has occupied my mind for a long time. A multitude of thoughts and influences crowding upon me at once decided me to establish an institution for the care and develop- ment of orphan and motherless children of both sexes, of the ages above- mentioned." This thought appears much more clearly in a letter from Burgdorf , Switzerland, written March 1, 1836, in which he announces to the educational circle at Keilhau that he has decided to found an institu- tion for instruction in the art of accurate observation, leading to self- improvement, through play and occupation. In the course of the letter he says further : " For a long time I have cherished the thought of making my means of facilitating accurate observation for culture and instruction complete and universal by a multiplication and publication of the same. Only since the end of the last year, and especially since the beginning of this, do my circumstances and relations permit the carrying out of this under- taking. I consider and order my whole life in reference to it since I have taken the decided resolution and formed the plan; first to perfect all my methods of facilitating accurate observation, of teaching, instruction, and culture, into many series following each other, separated into mem- bei's, but vitally connected in the form of children's plays, and as a means of self -occupation and self-information through observation and creation, through a varied self-activity, and therefore through a methodical and legitimate satisfaction of the instinct for culture in the child. My under- taking diffei's very essentially from all similar ones ali-eady introduced, in its spirit, in its inner qualities, in its unity, from which everything pro- ceeds, and in conformity to the laws of life, according to which all mani- foldness is revealed, in its inner vital coherence; in a word, in the many- sided human scientific, as well as practical, foundation." Then follows the further presentation of the peculiarities of the system. Soon after *By Ferdinand Winther, in Diesterweg's Wegweiser.— Edition of 1876. Translated by MisB Lucy WbeeJock, of the Chauncy-Eall Kindergarten, Boston. PROEBEL AND HIS EDUCATIONAL WORK. 83 'this private announcement there followed, in the Sonntagsblatt, in 1838, a public request that families should unite to carry out the motto of this paper, " Come, let us live with our children." He says therein, "As this paper is designed, first of all, to explain and introduce the pro- posed institution, it begins immediately with the foundation of the whole. In the germ of every human being lies embedded the form of its whole future life. On the proper comprehension and care of this beginning depends solely the happy unfolding of the man leading to perfection, and the ability to accomplish his destiny, and thus to win the true joy and peace of life. The active and creative, living and life-producing being of man, reveals itself in the creative instinct of the child. All human education and true culture, and our understanding also, is bound up in the quiet and conscientious nurture of this instinct of activity, in the family; in the judicious unfolding of the child, to the satisfaction of the same, and in the ability of the child, true to this instinct, to be active." Froebel's practical experiment with the Kindergarten in Blankenburg was received at first with doubtful smiles. But when the people saw with what joyful zeal children of every age, after a short time, pressed to the merry sports, in the invention of which Froebel was inexhaustible, and in the guidance of which he was a master; when the children took home their ornamental sewing and weaving, where, contrary to their former habits, they devoted themselves, of their own free will, to enter- taining occupations, then, with their growing understanding of the sys- tem, the parents began to appreciate it, and doubt changed to true interest in Froebel's young creation. In the midst of this activity, full of life and experience, the idea of the Kindergarten grew clearer and fuller in Froebel's mind, so that in 1840, at the Guttenberg festival, which the educational institutions for children and youth in Blankenburg and Keil- hau celebrated in common, he could present a new and more comprehen- sive plan, which he hoped to call into life with the help and participation of the German people. Appeal to the Women of Germany in 1840. One cannot read without admiration and emotion the words with which, in his speech at the festival, he tried to win the German women for his work. " Therefore, I dare," he said, toward the end of his speech, "con- fidently to invite you who are here present, honorable, noble, and discreet matrons and maidens, and through you, and with you all women, young and old, of our fatherland, to assist by your subscription in the founding of an educational system for the nurture of little children, which shall be named Kindergarten, on account of its inner life and aim, and German Kindergarten, on account of its spirit. Do not be alarmed at the appar- ent cost of the shares ; for if you, in your housekeeping, or by your in- dustry, can spare only five pennies daily, from the presumptive time of the first payment until the end, the ten dollars are paid at the last payment. Do not let yourselves be kept from the actual claims of the plan by the contemptible objection ' Of what use to us is it all? ' Already the idea of furthering the proper education of the child through appropriate foster- ing of the instinct of activity, acts like light and warmth, imperceptibly and beneficently, on the well-being of families and citizens; how much 84 FROEBEL AND HIS EDUCAIIONAL WORK." greater then are the possibilities of the daily, or even weekly, or monthly, attendance at such an institution. Staying here for a few hours has a good and blessed influence for days, weeks, months, and years; for good is not like a heavy stone which only acts, and is perceived where it presses; no — it is like water, air, and light, which invisibly flow from one place to another, awakening, watering, fertilizing, nourishing what is concealed from the searching eye of man, — even slumbers in our own breasts unsuspected by ourselves. Good is like a spark which shines far and points out the way and direction. Therefore, let us all, each in his own way, advance what our hearts recognize as good — the care of young children. Do you ask for the profits of your investment; in technical language, the dividends on your shares? Open your eyes impartially, your hearts also ; there is more in it than we have represented in the plan of the undertaking. Or is the beautiful any less a gift and a real value in our life because it passes away easily? Is the good also any less a gift because only the heart perceives it? Is the true any less a gift because it is unseen, and only the spirit observes it? And shall we count for noth- ing the reaction on the family weal, and the happiness of the children, in joy of heart and peace of mind? You can enjoy these great gifts in full measure; for they are the fruit of your cooperation, the fruits of the Garden which you establish and care for, — the fruits of your property. Besides, is it not almost more than this to take the lead and stand as models for a whole country, to advance the happiness of childhood and the well-being of families throughout an entire nation?" Universal German Institution. • " FroebeVwas not deceived in his deep, unshaken confidence. Owing to the deeply-felt need of suitable training for children before their entrance into school, the Kindergarten was founded as a Universal German Insti- tution at the Guttenberg festival in 1840, a day which pointed to a universal breaking of the light, and in his report of June, 1843, which is signed by the burgomaster Witz, as well as by Middendorff and Barop, Froebel could announce good results of his effort and a general and honorable recognition. In order to kindle the sparks of appreciation glimmering here and there into a clear flame by the breath of his own never-failing enthusiasm, he proposed to visit all the larger cities of Germany. He succeeded, especially in Hamburg and Dresden, in winning laborers for his vineyard, and in establishing Kindergartens. The seed- corn which he thus scattered fell in good soil, and grew to flowering plants through the faithful care of his pupils and adherents. Mother Play and Nursery Song. SonntagsUatt. Of his literary works of this time, two, devoted to the pedagogics of the Kindergarten, deserve especial mention. Die Mutter- und Eoselieder is so called from the little rhymes which Froebel gives the mother to sing or repeat in order to occupy and entertain profitably her child from one to two years old, with all kinds of sports and plays, when dressing and undressing, washing, eating, etc. The little arms and legs, hands and fingers, play the principal part; they learn to do little feats, to manage and move themselves, and are strengthened by exercise. Many occur- FROEBEL AND HIS EDUCATIONAL WORK. 85 3nces also of domestic life or those nearly allied, are judiciously .lustrated by picture and song. This method happily discovered by '""roebel has since received the highest artistic development through ilichter and Oscar Pletsch. The Sonntagsblatt (1838-1840) has a special value from the fact that Froebel published in it his "play -gifts" which characterized the Kindergarten and its method of culture, explained their meaning, and described their use. A comparison of Froebel's play -gifts with those which from year to year competitive industry offers so richly — not exactly for the benefit of the world of children — first shows them la their true light. Almost all the playthings which we buy in our toy-shops filled with all possible expense, are finished and perfect in themselves, often perfectly constructed objects whose beauty cannot be denied. Children stand amazed and delighted at the sight of a Christmas table ornamented with such gifts. But how long does the joy last? After a short time it changes first to indifference, then to disgust; and economical parents put away under lock and key for a later time, the things that are still tolerably well preserved. What can the child do with playthings on which already the fancy of an artist has worked and has left almost noth- ing for the self -activity of the child. The only thing it can do with these is to take them apart and destroy them. But the punishments inflicted on such occasions, show how many parents entirely misunderstand this expression of the instinct of activity so worthy of recognition, and the desire for knowledge and learning of the children. If one give to an indulged child the choice of his play-material, he will see that a stick of wood will be the dearest doll, mother's foot-stool the coach of state, a little heap of sand material for cooking, baking, building, writing, and drawing, and father's cane a darling pony. According to these experi- ences Froebel was anxious to make his gifts for play as simple as possible. Gifts for Play. First Gift for Play. The Balls — three balls of prinyiry and three of secondary colors. With these the very little ones practice catching, swinging on a string, hopping, rolling, hide and seek, etc. With advanc- ing age all known ball-plays come in succession. Second Gift. Sphere, Cylinder, and Cube. The sphere, a solid ball, movable, but in every position the same. The cube stationary, but differ- ing according to the position. The cylinder, rolling or standing, connect- ing the other two. All three in their connection leading over to the build- ing plays. Third Gift. The cube, divided into eight equal parts. It shows the whole and its parts, outside and inside, relations of size and number, ar- rangement, and direction. The Fourth, Fifth, and Sixth Gifts form another step by perpendicular, horizontal, oblique divisions into different sizes. The variety of the differ- ent forms is infinitely great and is classified into — First, forms of knowl- edge, in which the laws of form, magnitude, and number are used; second, forms of beauty, by which the perception of what is pleasing to the eye is represented; third, forms of life, in which objects of real life, as furniture, implements, buildings, plants, and animals, are imitated. 86 FROEBEL AND HIS EDUCATIONAL WORK. The three following gifts, Seventh, Eighth, and Ninth, are, the flat O; ■ laying tablets, stick-laying, and ring-laying. These lead the child whi, has practiced representation with the building boxes, or through surfac* and linear forms, to drawing, which stands in relation with the interestin|l pricking and sewing. When the outlines of the form of life and beauty drawn on the paper are pricked through with the needle so that they show on both sides of the paper, then drawing in colored outline is again rep- resented by sewing with colored threads. Weaving comes in here, which is first practiced with colored paper strips, and later with the most diverse materials, such as straw, bast, leather, ribbon, etc., and intertwining with thin, pliable wooden sticks. As these occupations lead from the line to the surface, so the paper- folding, which follows, goes back to the solid imitating such things as a boat, hat, star, bird, etc. The hand is trained to skill, and the eye to careful observation, by the cutting by which the smallest piece of paper -is changed into a means of entertainment and culture; and still more by the pease-work, in which the pointed ends of fine wooden sticks are stuck into soaked peas, and by this means the forms laid are fixed. When they create little architectural works, the objects represented appear in outline; they are transparent, also, and explain and illustrate perspective, figurative representation. Modeling in wax and clay ranks here as the last and highest step in which self-activity is given the fullest play, as well as the opportunity for the satisfaction of any existing artistic talent. This close connection, at every step, with life, marks the standpoint from which Froebel wished to consider even the smallest thing in the life of a child. It is not the least excellence of the succession of clay mould- ing, pease-work, cutting, folding, weaving, building, pasting, pricking, isewing, and similar employments, which pertain to the first exercises in ithe comprehension of form and in training the eye, and form a necessary istepping-stone to geometry, geography, drawing, and writing, that they imingle in his plays and amusements, in whatever moves and animates childhood; and thereby satisfy the unity of the consciousness. Movement Plays, and Songs. The "play-gifts" mentioned form the part of the Kindergarten occupa- tions which Froebel classed under the name of "mental plays." He ishows quite a different phase of its workings in the "movement plays." They have, besides the common aim of plaj^s, the object of satisfying the limpulse of the child for the movement of its limbs, and also of advanc- ling the bodily development. For a gain in this direction should not only always go hand-in-hand with mental improvement, but in the Kinder- garten receives a prominent place. The Kindergarten must offer fundamentally what most dwellings allow •only occasionally from lack of room, and the grown-up inhabitants of them from desire of quiet; what the deplorable lack of free public places Igiven up to the young; what the larger cities, with their foot-passengers, 'riders, and wagons, make almost impossible to children — an unchecked (movement of their limbs, which is to them a necessity almost as pressing as drawing the breath. For, besides the closed room or hall, it must have, where possible, an open place planted with trees — a play-ground. FROEBEL AND HIS EDUCATIONAL WORK. 87 Here in the fresh air the little ones may live in cheerful activity and mo- tion, and thus bloom merrily like the flowers of a garden. From the numberless dancing and singing plays which are handed down to the child's world from age to age by tradition, and of which every province and every city carefully cherishes special ones as its peculiar property, Froebel has collected the best, improved many of them by stripping off excrescences marring the original, and made them serve the educational aim of the Kindergarten. He has also added to them by his own inven- tion. Through them all the pupils of the Kindergarten are first brought into living intercourse with each other, and share in the beneficent influ- ence which living with his equals exerts on the child. Every movement play furthers the activity of all participants for a common end, which can only be reached when law and order rule. The Kindergartuer guid- ing the play suffers no arbitrariness, no rude forwardness, no quarrelsome disputes, no domineering of the stronger and crowding of the weaker. Every one must do his part, according to his gifts and powers. The timid and those holding back must be encouraged, the forward ones in- structed and reminded of their bounds, and all must have their rights. Living in such a well-ordered and conducted community exerts a good Influence on the conduct of the children so very quickly that it shows itself in the family sometimes after a few weeks, in greater patience and ready willingness. The fear that a watchful guidance will disturb the happy little ones in their joy is quite unfounded. He misunderstands children who thinks that they prefer to play senselessly and aimlessly. On the contrary, when they are sure that a grown person will enter into their ways with kindness, they will invite such an one to show them an orderly play, or to decide how it must be properly plaj^ed, or to bring the right order into that already begun. The movement plays have another more vital center of union in the songs which accompany them. Every play has its song, which arises from it or is related to it, and which is sung sometimes by an individual, sometimes by the chorus. There is hardly anything which so claims the entire spiritual life of children and so irresistibly invites sympathy as singing. No sense lends its perceptions so directly to the heart as that of hearing. No activity is such a direct and almost involuntary expression of inner harmony as singing. Rightly then did Froebel and his friends devote to it an especially careful attention, and direct by it a prominent part in the plaj's. If, in spite of the many words and melodies given, one cannot repress the remark that neither the practical nor the musical Bide of the Kindergarten appear to be unfolded in the same degree as the educational, still he must think fairly, and not expect everything from one man. Many a roughness in Frocbel's often extemporized verses, which often digress too strongly to the instructive and playful, has been polished already by a tender hand. In our folk-songs there yet lie con- .cealed many grains of gold that should be unearthed and polished. Intercourse with Nature. A '.1. -d and by no means subordinate direction of the activity of the Kinderg . • -^ is devoted to the intercourse of the children with nature. 88 FROEBEL AND HIS EDUCATIONAL WORK. It is doubly important where circumstances render this intercourse diffi- cult, where they embitter to man the feeling of his kinship with nature, and at the same time spoil the life at many points by too much art. Chil- dren should not pass by unsympathetically the beauties which nature everywhere offers in rich abundance; their sense and perception of them must be awakened and trained. The care, under judicious guidance, of plants and animals, offers the best means for this. Whatever grows by the child's own care wins his deepest interest. The contemplation fur- nishes him solid knowledge and increases his sympathy to admiration and love. Therefore, a part of the play-ground should be reserved for a gar- den, in which every child has his own little bed which he cultivates him- self. If in any way a place can be made for some domestic animals, were it only a canary bird, a little dove, a pair of hens, or some gold-fish in a globe, it will furnish a fuller satisfaction to this instinct. If the fields can be reached without danger of too great exertion on the part of the little ones, a walk should be taken at a proper time, which affords num- berless opportunities, not only for the observation of nature, but for the entire unfolding of the spiritual life of the child. If such unsought occa- sions are used with tact they have often a greater influence than the methodical instruction imparted by the best system of teaching. In the Kindergarten, after a quiet occupation and the general play, there should also be pauses to be devoted to unconstrained oral intercourse between the Kindergartner in charge and the children, and which are filled up most suitably by stories. A little story often does more than a long sermon. But it is difficult to tell a story well, and the art must be practiced. More difficult still is the choice of material which must be adapted to the children's point of view. There are yet wanting good Guides, and Manuals, with model lessons and exercises ;* but with the means of occupation and play already spoken of the Kindergarten is in a condition to take hold of the child's life, rousing, animating, and unfolding it in all directions. The few hours of the day which the children spend there will echo in their homes through the rich- ness and vividness of their impressions. The never-resting instinct of ac- tivity in healthy children is no longer at loss for an object. The child does not trouble his mother so much; he is more skilful, happier; his bad angel, wearisomeness, is banished. Improved Domestic Ediication. In spite of all this the Kindergarten, according to Froebel's intention, has solved only half of its problem, and stands still before the other half, which consists in this, that it must be carried on by a bettering of the education in the family. This higher aim cannot be considered as reached when only an indirect influence is exerted on the family life through the pupils of the Kindergarten. No, quite the reverse. Froebel created the Kindergarten with the special intention of perfecting by practice in it, united with theoretical cultivation, the education of woman for her vocation, which, as experience teaches, cannot be consid- * Our American Kindergartners, and Mothers, who wish to adopt the Froebel Material , and Methods into the Nursery, have now an excellent Manual in ''The Kindergarten Guide, by Maria Kraus-Boelte and John Kraus," published by E. Steiger, New York. FROEBEL AND HIS EDUCATIONAL WORK. 89 ered to liave been generally accomplished by simple theory and books for mothers, excellent as these may be in themselves. This aim, however, must not be lost sight of, for important reasons. For since the mother's influ- ence is the first, and therefore the strongest, it follows, of course, that it is of the highest importance that it should be the best. And since it is not so everywhere, should we not use every opportunity to bring it to this ideal? We have lower, middle, and higher girls' schools. Which' of these has made a specialty of training young maidens for housewives and teachers of their own children? Not one! And they will have nothing to do with jt. But this problem still exists. Surely the time will come for the young girls when they must take care of children, wait upon the sick, and look after kitchen and store-room. Is it to be supposed that they learn everything of themselves? The theory of educating little children, for which most young girls receive their only preparation in playing with dolls, must become a regular and essential part of female education, before the "experimenting and educating by hearsay " cease. Nowhere can this be learned better than in the closest connection with the Kindergarten. Froebel developed this in the first detailed plan which he carried out in this direction. In such a seminary for Kindergartners and nurse-maids, with which also a Kindergarten must be connected, young maidens can, in a year, be so instructed and practically trained in the care of little children, that they learn to avoid grave errors and gain a foundation, from which an independent, wider culture is possible. And can not one in this way, better than in any other, come nearer a satisfactory solu- tion of the vexed "Woman question?" Will not the administration of household affairs and the education of children continue to be the occu- pation most suited to woman's nature, and, at the same time, the noblest aim of all feminine activity? And will not the unmarried young women find in them reconciliation and contentment in richer measure than any 'emancipation' is able to furnish? There have been already women who were zealously active in this direction, and in the greater cities where the need is the most urgent, glorious results can be shown. It seems to be reserved for these associations of women, with the aid of all the strength active in this direction, to smooth the way for a more compre- hensive organization. The seminaries for Kindergartners in Hamburg, Berlin, Dresden, Gotha, and other places, all of which are under the direction of private individuals and supported by voluntary contribution, to which the pupils add a small nominal sum for instruction, have for a number of years sent out a good number of well prepared and trained young women of all conditions, who are much in demand as domestic assistants, especially for educating children, and help to a more universal appreciation of a natural method of treating the little ones. It is for the interest of the teacher to advance this work in every way, because the Kindergarten, which does not seek to supply the family education (for this is by all means the best and generally desirable), but only wishes to aid the parents in the care of their children for the period when they do not devote themselves to their education and cannot be represented by teach- QO FKOEBEL AND HIS EDUCATIONAL WORK. » ers, which should even teach all parents the proper discharge of their duties as educators, is a preparation for the elementary school. Much could be said here of the mental helplessness of children who, sent to school in their sixth or seventh year, sometimes bring to the teacher an extraordinarily small number of impressions, scarcely any clear conceptions, and a very limited use of the mother tongue. The experiences of Froebel in Switzerland are repeated in different degrees almost everywhere, and are not new to the teachers of the lowest elementary classes. But they express the wish to establish an organic connection between the Kindergartens and the school, and previously show at least, theoretically, their possibilities and usefulness. The "General Union for family education and that of the people," has repeatedly offered a prize for an essay on this subject, without re- ceiving a satisfactory solution of it according to their ideas. Recently, the prize was adjudged to a paper of Carl Richter, a teacher in Leipsic, the author of the " Pedagogical Library," and of another work ' On Object- Teaching in Elementary Schools,' of which honorable mention is made. The hope of a future organic connection between the Kindergarten and the school, as well as the wished-for introduction of Froebel's method into charitable institutions for little children, is not entirely unfounded. There are hardly any serious obstacles, since the Kindergarten in no way anticipates the real school instruction. And as the Gymnasium has rec- ognized it as useful to have scholars properly prepared for its Sexta, by the passing through some elementary classes of the so-called Vorschule or preparatory school, so in the future perhaps it will be considered nec- essary to add a Kindergarten to every elementary school, which will grow in time to be an excellent bond between the school and home. So the Kindergarten shows itself on every side as an institution in ac- cordance with the spirit of the age for bettering the education, of which it is the natural foundation, and helping to restore it again in families. In spite of the obstacles arising at first from misunderstanding and from the feeble support of the public, in the course of a year it won for itself an honorable place among the institutions for the education of youth. This was owing to the sound strength of the fundamental idea from which it proceeded, to a need arising from circumstances, and to the continuous exertions of enthusiastic adherents, especially among women. Under their guidance the Kindergarten has quietly accomplished a great work, in giving to thousands of children happy hours whose stimulating influ- ence is felt in the family. Although it has not yet received the desired recognition, it may be, per- haps, that well-meant but mis-directed zeal has contributed as much to this as the cool reserve of those who scorned it under the form, so little like a school, into which Froebel poured his full heart to nourish the living germ. When it shall be developed more clearly and richly by the unwearied zeal of intelligent and judicious patrons, it will then remain an integral part of our children's education. THE KINDERGARTEN SYSTEM. gj THE KINDERGARTEN SYSTEM.* Froebel first gave the name of Kindergarten about the year 1840 to his school of voiuig children between three and seven years of age at Blankenburg, near Rudolstadt. Its purpose is thus briefly indicated by himself: — "To take the oversight of children before they are ready for school life ; to exert an influence over their whole being in correspondence with its nature; to strengthen their bodily powers ; to exercise their senses ; to employ the awakening mind ; to make them thoughtfully acquainted with the Avorld of nature and of man ; to guide their heart and soul in a right direction, and lead them to the Origin of all life and to union with Ilira." To secure those objects, the child must be placed under the influence of a properly trained governess for a portion of the day after reaching the age of three. Fi'cebel differs from Pestalozzi, who thought that the mother, as the natural educator of the child, ought to retain the sole charge up to the sixth or seventh year. This necessarily narrows the child's experience to the family circle, and excludes in many cases the mutual action and reaction of children upon each other — under conditions most favorable to development. Mr. Payne erabodiea the genesis of Fruebel's system in his own mind as follows : Let us imagine Froebel taking his place amidst a number of children disport- ing themselves in the open air without any check upon their movements. After ^looking on the pleasant scene awhile, he breaks out into a soliloquy : " What exuberant life ! What mimeasurable enjoj'racnt ! What unbounded activity ! What an evolution of physical forces ! What a harmony between the inner and the outer life ! What happiness, health, and strength ! Let me look a little closer. What are these children doing ? The air rings musically with their shouts and joyous laughter. Some are running, jumping, or bounding along, with eyes like the eagle's bent upon its fjrey, after the ball which a dexterous hit of the bat sent flying among them ; others are bending down towards the ring filled with marbles, and endeavoring to dislodge them from their position ; others are running friendly races with their hoops ; others again, with arras laid across each other's shoulders, are quietly walking and talking together upon some matter in which they evidently have a common interest. Their natural fun gushes out from eyes and lips. 1 hear what they say. It is simply expressed, amusing, generally intelligent, and often even witty. But thei'e is a small group of children yonder. They seem eagerly intent on some subject. What is it 1 I see one of them has taken a fruit from his pocket. He is sliowing it to his fellows. They look at it and admire it. It is new to them. They wish to know more about it — to handle, smell, and taste it. The owner gives it into their hands ; they, feel and smell, but do not taste it. Tlioy give it back to the owner, his right to it being generally admitted. He bites it, the rest looking eagerly on to watch the result. His face shows that he likes the taste; his eyes grow brighter with satisfaction. The rest desire to make his experience their own. He sees their desire, breaks or cuts the fruit in pieces, which he distributes among them. He adds to his own pleasure by sharing in theirs. Suddenly a loud shout from some other part of the ground attracts the attention of the group, which scatters in all directions- Let me now consider. What does all this manifold movement — this exhibition of spontaneous energy — really mean ? To me it seems to have a profound meaning. " It means — "1. That there is an immense external development and expansion of energy of various kinds — physical, intellectual, and moral. Limbs, senses, lungs, tongues, minds, hearts, are all at work — all cooperating to produce the general effect. • Lecture delivered at the College of Preceptors at London, Feb. 25th, 1874, by Joseph Pajne, Professor of the Science and Art of Education to the College. ^2 'i'il^ KINDERGARTEN SYSTEM. " 2. That activity— doing — is the common characteristic of this development of force. " 3. That spontaneity — absolute freedom from outward control — appears to be both impulse and law to the activity. "4. That the harmonious coml)ination and interaction of spontaneity and activity constitute the happiness which is apparent. The will to do prompts the doing ; the doing reacts on the will. " 5. That the resulting happiness is independent of the absolute value of the exciting cause. A bit of stick, a stone, an apple, a marble, a hoop, a top, as soon as they become objects of interest, call out the activities of the whole being quite as effectually as if they were matters of the greatest intrinsic value. It is the action upon them — the doing something with them — that invests them with interest. " 6. That this spontaneous activity generates happiness because the result is gained by the children's own efforts, without external interference. What they do themselves and for themselves, involving their own personal experience, and therefore exactly measured by their own capabilities, interests them. What another, of trained powers, standing on a different platform of advancement, does for them, is com])aratively uninteresting. If such a person, from whatever motive, interferes with their spontaneous activity, he arrests the movement of their forces, quenches their interest, at least for the moment ; and they resent the interference. " Such, then, appear to be the manifold meanings of the boundless spontaneou.s activity that I witness. But what name, after all, must I give to the totality of the phenomena exhibited before me? I must call them Play. Play, then, is spontaneous activity ending in the satisfaction of the natural desire of the child for pleasure — for happiness. Play is the natural, the appropriate business and occupation of the child left to his own resources. The child that does not play, is not a perfect child. He wants something — sense oi'gan, limb, or generally what we imply by the term health — to make up our ideal of a child. The healthy child plays — plays continually — cannot but play. " But has this instinct for play no deeper significance ? Is it appointed by the Supreme Being merely to fill up time — merely to form an occasion for fruitless exercise? — merely to end in itself No! I see now that it is the constituted means for the unfolding of all the child's powers. It is through play that he learns the use of his limbs, of all his bodily organs, and with this use gains health and strength. Through play he comes to know the external world, the physical qualities of the objects which surround him, their motioi*6, action, and re-action upon each other, and the relation of these phenomena to himself; a knowledge which forms the basis of that which will be his permanent stock for life. Through play, involving associateship and combined action, he begins to recognize moral relations, to feel that he cannot live for himself alone, that he is a member of a community, whose rights he must acknowledge if his own are to be acknowledged. In and through play, moreover, he learns to contrive means for securing his ends; to invent, construct, discover, investigate, to bring by imagination the remote near, and, further, to translate the language of facts into the language of words, to learn the conventionalities of his mother tongue. Play, then, I see, is the means by which the entire being of the child develops and grows into power, and, therefore, does not end in itself. "But an agency which effects results like these is an education agency; and Plaij, therefore, resolves itself into education; education which is inde'pendent of the formal teacher, which the child virtually gains for and by himself. This, then, is the outcome of all that I have observed. The child, through the spon- taneous activity of all his natural forces, is really developing and strengthening them for future use ; he is working out his own education. " But what do I, who am constituted by the demands of society as the formal educator of these children, learn from the insight I have thus gained into their nature ? I learn this — that I must educate them in conformity with that nature. I must continue, not supersede, the course already begun ; my own course must be based upon it. I must recognize and adopt the principles involved in it, and frame my laws of action accordingly. Above all, I must not neutralize and deaden that spontaneity which is the mainspring of all the machinerv ; I must rather encourage it, while ever opening new fields for its exercise, and giving it THE KINDERGARTEN SYSTEM. 93 new directions. Plaj', spontaneous play, is the education of little children ; but it is not the whole of their education. Their life is not to be made up of play. Can 1 not tlien even now gradually transform their play into work, but work which shall look like play ? — work which shall originate in the same or similar impulses, and exercise the same energies as 1 see employed in tiieir own amuse- ments and occupations 1 Play, however, is a random, desultory education. It lays the essential basis ; but it does not raise the superstructure. It requires to be OH'-anizad for this purpose, but so organized that the superstructure shall be strictlV related and conformed to the original lines of th" foundation. " / see that these children delight in movement ; — they are always walking, or running, jumping, hopping, tossing their limbs about, and, moreover, they are pleased with rythmical movement. I can contrive motives and means for the same exercise of the limbs, which shall result in increased physical power, and consequently in health — shall train the children to a conscious and measured command of their bodily functions, and at the same time be accompanied by the attraction of rythmical sound through song or instrument. "/ see that they use their senses; but merely at the accidental solicitation of surrounding circumstances, and therefore imperfectly. I can contrive means for a definite education of the senses, which shall result in increased quickness of vision, hearing, touch, etc. I can train the purblind eye to take note of delicate shades of color, the dull ear to appreciate the minute differences of sound. "/ see that they observe ; but their observations are for the most part transitory and indefinite, and often, therefore, comparatively unfruitful. I can contrive means for concentrating their attention by exciting curiosity and interest, and educate them in the art of observing. They will thus gain clear and definite perceptions, bright images in the place of blurred ones, — will learn to recognize the difference between complete and incomplete knowledge, and gradually advance from the stage of mei-ely knowing to that of knowing that they know. " 1 see that iheij invent and construct; but often awkwardly and aimlessly. I can avail myself of this instinct, and open to it a definite field of action. I shall prompt them to invention, and train them in the art of construction. The materials I shall use for this end, will be simple ; but in combining them together for a purpose, they will enjoy not only their knowledge of form, but their im \gination of the capabilities of form. In various ways I shall prompt them to invent, construct, contrive, imitate, and in doing so develop their nascent taste for symmetry and beauty. "And so in respect to other domains of that child-action which we call play, I see that I can make these domains also my own. I can convert children's activi- ties, energies, amusements, occupations, all that go»s by the name of play, into instruments for my purpose, and, therefore, transform play into Avork. This work will be education in the true sense of the term. The conception of it as such I have gained from the children themselves. They have taught me how I am to teach them. frcebel's theory in practice. I must endeavor to give some notion of the manner in which Frcebcl reduced his theory to practice. In doing this, the instances I bring forward must be considered as typical. If you admit — and you can hardly do otherwise — the reasonableness of the theor}% as founded on the nature of things, you can hardly doubt that thei'C is some method of carrying it out. Now, a method of educa- tion involves many processes, all of which must represent more or less the principles which form the basis of the method. It is quite out of my power, for want of time, to describe the various processes which exhibit to us the little child pursuing his education by walking to rhythmic measure, by gymnastic exercises generally, learning songs by heart and singing them, pi'actising his senges with a definite purpose, observing the properties of objects, counting, getting notions of color and form, drawing, building with cubical blocks, modeling in wax or clay, braiding slips of various colored paper after a pattern, pricking or cutting forms in paper, curving wire into different shapes, folding a sheet of paper 'md gaining 94 THE KINDERGARTEN SYSTEM. elementary notions of geometry, learning the resources of the mother-tongue by hearing and relating stories, fables, etc., dramatizing, guessing riddles, working in the garden, etc., etc. These are only some of the activities naturally exhibited by young children, and these the teacher of young children is to employ for his purpose. As, however, they are so numerous, I may well be excused for not even attempting to enter minutely into them. But there is one series of objects and exercises therewith connected, expressly devised by Frcebel to teach the art of observing, to which, as being typical, I will now direct your attention. He calls these objects, which are gradually and in orderly succession introduced to the child's notice, Gifts, — a pleasant name, which is, however, a mere accident of the system : they might equally well be called by any other name. GIFTS FOR THE CULTURE OF OBSERVATION. As introductory to the series, a ball made of wool, of say a scarlet color, is placed before the baby. It is rolled along before him on the table, thrown along the floor, tossed into the air, suspended from a string, and used as a pendulum, or spun around on its axis, or made to describe a circle in space, etc. It is then given into his hand ; he attempts to grasp it, fails ; tries again, succeeds ; rolls it along the floor himself, tries to throw it, and, in short, exercises every power he has upon it, always pleased, never wearied in doing something or other with it. This is play, but it is play which resolves itself into education. He is gain- ing notions of color, form, motion, action and re-action, as well as of musculai" sensibility. And all the while the teacher associates words with things and actions, and, by constantly employing words in their proper sense and in the immediate presence of facts, initiates the child in the use of his mother-tongue. Thus, in a thousand ways, the scarlet ball furnishes sensations and perceptions for the substratum of the mind, and suggests fitting language to express them ; and even the baby appears before us as an observer, learning the properties of things by personal experience. Then comes the first Gift. It consists of six soft woolen balls of six different colors, three primary and three secondary. One of these is recognized as like, the others as unlike, th« ball first known. The laws of similarity and dis- crimination are called into action ; sensation and perception grow clearer and stronger. I cannot particularize the numberless exercises that are to be got out of the various combinations of these six balls. The second Gift consists of a sphere, cube, and cylinder, made of hard wood. What was a ball before, is now called a sphere. The different material gives rise to new experiences ; a sensation, that of hardness, for instance, takes the place of softness ; while varieties of form suggest resemblance and contrast. Similar experiences of likeness and unlikeness are suggested by the behavior of these different objects. The easy rolling of the sphere, the sliding of the cube, the rolling as well as sliding of the cylinder, illustrate this point. Then the examination of the cube, especially its surfaces, edges, and angles, which any child can obsei-ve for himself, suggest new sensations and their resulting per- ceptions. At the same time, notions of space, time, form, motion, relativity in general, take their place in the mind, as the unshajied blocks which, when fitly compacted together, will lay the firm foundation of the 'understanding. These elementary notions, as the very groundwork of mathematics, w'ill be seen to have their use as time goes on. The third Gift is a large cube, making a whole, which is divisible into eight ( THE KINDERGAKTEN SYSTEM. gg, -mall ones. The form is recognized as that of the cube before seen; the size is different. But the new experiences consist in notions of relativity^-of the whole ■ a its relation to the parts, of the parts in their relation to the whole ; and thus the child acquires the notion and the names, and both in immediate connection with the sensible objects, of halves, quarters, eighths, and of how many of the small divisions make one of the larger. But in connection with the third Gift a new faculty is called forth — imagination, and with it the instinct of construction is awakened. The cubes are mentally transformed into blocks ; and with them building commences. The constructive faculty suggests imitation, but rests not in imitation. It invents, it creates. Those eight cubes, placed in a certain relation to each other, make a long scat, or a seat with a back, or a throne for the Queen ; or again, a cross, a doorway, etc. Thus does even play exhibit the characteristics of art, and "conforms (to use Bacon's words) the outward show of things to the desires of the mind" ; and thus the child, as I said before, not merely imitates, but creates. And here, I may remark, that the mind of the child is far less interested in that which another mind has embodied in ready pre- pared forms, than in the forms which he conceives, and gives outward expression to, himself. He wants to employ his own mind, and his whole mind, upon the object, and does not thank you for attempting to deprive him of his rights. The fourth, fifth, and sixth Gifts consist of the cube variouslj^ divided into solid parallelepipeds, or brick-shaped forms, and into smaller cubes and prisms. Observation is called on with increasing strictness, relativity apprediated, and the opportunity affoi'ded for endless manifestations of constructiveness. And all the while impressions are forming in the mind, which, in due time, will bear geometrical fruits, and fruits, too, of Eesthetic culture. The dawning sense of the beautiful, as well as of the true, is beginning to gain consistency and power. I cannot further dwell on the numberless modes of manipulation of which these objects are capable, nor enter further into the groundwork of principles on which their efficiency depends. OBJECTIONS TO THE SYSTEM CONSIDERED. It is said, for instance, without proof, that we demand too much from little children, and, with the best intentions, take them out of their depth. This might be true, no doubt, if the system of means adopted had any other basis than the nature of the children ; if we attempted theoretically, and without regard to that nature, to determine ourselves what they can and what they can- not do ; but when we constitute spontaneity as the spring of action, and call on them to do that, and that only, which they can do, which they do of their own accord when they are educating themselves, it is clear that the objection falls to the ground. The child who teaches himself never can go out of his depth ; the work he actually does is that which he has strength to do ; the load he carries cannot but be fitted to the shoulders that bear it, for he has gradually accumulated its contents by his own repeated exertions. This increasing burden is, in short, the index and result of his increasing powers, and commensurate with them. The objector in this case, in order to gain even a plausible foothold for his objection, must first overthrow the radical principle, that the activities, amusements, and occupations of the child, left to himself, do indeed constitute his earliest education, and that it is an education which he virtually gives himself. Another side of this objection, Avhich is not unfrequently presented to us, derives its plausibility from the assumed incapacity of children. The objector points to this child or that, and denounces him as stupid and incapable. Can 96 THE KINDERGARTEN SYSTEM. the objector, however, take upon himself to declare that this or that child has not been made stupid even by the very means employed to teach him ? The test, however, is a practical one : Can the child play ? If he can play, in the sense which I have given to the word, he cannot be stupid. In his play he employs the very faculties which are required for his formal education. " But he is stupid at his books." If this is so, then the logical conclusion is, that the books have made him stupid, and you, the objector, who have misconceived his nature, and acted in direct contradiction to it, are yourself responsible for this. "But he has no memory. He cannot learn what I tell him to learn." No memory ! Cannot learn ! Let us put that to the test. Ask him about the pleasant holiday a month ago, when he went nutting in the woods. Does he remember nothing about the fresh feel of the morning air, the joyous walk to the wood, the sunshine which streamed about his path, the agreeable companions with whom he chatted on the way, the incidents of the expedition, the climb up the trees, the bagging of the plunder ? Are all these matters clean gone out of his mind 1 " Oh, no, he remembers things like these." Then he has a memory, and a remarkably good one. He remembers because he was intepested ; and if you wish him to remember your lessons, you must make them interesting. He will certainly learn what he takes an interest in. I need not deal with other objections. They all resolve themselves into the category of ignorance of the nature of the child. When public opinion shall demand such knowledge from teachers as the essential condition of their taking in hand so delicate and even profound an art as that of training children, all these objections will cease to have any meaning. My close acquaintance with Frcebel's theory, and especially with his root-idea, is comparatively recent. But when I had studied it as a theory, and witnessed something of its practice, I could not but see at once that I had been throughout an unconscious disciple, as it were, of the eminent teacher. The plan of my own course of lectures on the Science and Art of Education was, in fact, con- structed in thought before I had at all grasped the Frobelian idea ; and was, in that sense, independent of it. The Kindergarten is gradually making its way in England, without the achievement as yet of any eminent success; but in Switzerland, Holland, Italy, and the United States, as well as in Germany, it is rapidly advancing. Wher- ever the principles of education, as distinguished from its practice, are a matter of study and thought, there it prospers. Wherever, as in England for the most part, the practical alone is considered, and where teaching is thought to be "as easy as lying," any system of education founded on psychological laws must be tardy in its progress. "The Kindergarten has not only to supply the proper materials and oppor- tunities for the innate mental powers, which, like leaves and blossoms in the bud, press forward and impel the children to activity, with so touch the more energy the better they are supplied. It has also to preserve children from the harm of civilisation, which furnishes poison as well as food, temptations as well as salvation ; and children must be kept from this trial till their mental powers have grown equal to its dangers. Much of the success of the Kindergarten (invisible at the time) is negative, and consists in preventing harm. Its posi- tive success, again, is so simple, that it cannot be expected to attract more notice than, for instance, does fresh air, pure water, or the merit of a physician who keeps a femily in health." — Karl Froebel. FROEBEL AND HIS EDUCATIONAL WORK. 97 CRITICAL MOMENTS IN THE LIFE OF FROEBEL, BY BAROP. " At the end of twenty years," said Barop, when we were talking of the early history of Keilhau, "we were in a very critical position. You know we had little outward means at our command when we began our enterprise. Later, Middendorff offered his paternal inheritance; but the acquisllio.i of the land, and the erection of the necessary buildings, required considerable funds, so that Middendorfif's contribution soon van- ished like drops of water that fall on a hot stove. My father in law. Christian Ludwig Froebel, stepped in and gave Avhat he could iulo the hands of his brother, without any conditions; but even his offerings could not hold at bay care and want. My father was a wealthy man, but he was so displeased at my joining the Frocbelian circle and settling at Keilhau that he atiorded mc no support of any kind. Distrust surrounded us on all sides in those first years ; both open and .secret enmities from far and near tried to embitter our life and check our efforts in the germ. Not the less did the institution bloom out quickly and gloriously, but was brought later to the verge of ruin by the well directed persecutions against the Burschenschaften (an association of students for patriotic pur poses); for the spirit of 1815 was incarnated in the institution, and just that spirit was exposed to the most extreme opposition. It would carry me too far if I were to describe this fully. It seemed to me at that time as if the enemy would really conquer. The number of" our pupils (origi- nally thirty) had diminished to five or six, and, consequently, the vanish- ing little revenue increased the burden of debts to a height that made us dizzy. From all sides the creditors rushed in, urged on by the attorneys, who washed their hands in our misery. Froebel vanished through the back door up the mountain when the duns appeared, and it was left to Middendorflf to quiet most of them, in a degree which only he can believe possible who has been acquainted with MiddcndorfT's influence over men. On {he side of the workmen who had to ask for money, there were touching scenes of re.'^ignation, confidence, and magnanimity. A lock- smith, for instance, was required by an attorney to 'bring a suit against the churls,' since nothing was to be got from them and their destruction. The locksmith, enraged, refused to assault our persons, and retorted that he had rather lose his hardly earned money than to doubt our lionorable intentions, and that nothing was further from his purpose than to increase our troubles. Ah! and this trouble was hard to bear, for Middendorff was already married, and I was following his example. When I asked my wife for her hand, my father and mother in law asked: 'but you will not remain at Keilhau?' ' Yes,' I replied. 'The thought for which we are living appears to me important and suited to the times, and I do not doubt that men will be found who will trust us to carry out the idea cor- rectly, as we trust the Invisible One.' In fact, in spite of all obstacles, we have never for a moment lost faith in our educational mission, and even the worst dilemma at that time saw no wavering band of men in this valley. 7 98 FEOEBEL AND HIS EDUCATIONAL WORK. [I will insert here a note which I find in a Wichard Lauge's edition of Middeudorff's writings, for if more than justice is done to one man, it is probable that less than justice will be done to another, or to others.] " In the last years of his life Froebel lived at jNIarienthal, apart from the family circle of Keilhau, and here founded his training school. Here he had to bear the burden of the housekcopiug and other inconveniences, and he determined to marry again, to give his pupils motherly care and sympathy. He married a trusted pupil, who had endeared herself to him, and who had accompanied him to Marienthal from the beginning. He stood at the marriage altar again, then in his seventieth year, for the second time, and sometime before he had said to me that it was in fact ' a living union.' The marriage excited bad blood in the beginning among the members of the family, and made a quarrel, which had alreaily arisen, much worse. This difference between him and those (Middeudorff ex- cepted) who had worked v;ith him in earlier times, indeed, at his call, had willingly shown themselves capable of the greatest self-sacrifice and devo- tion, was easily explained. Once for all, Froebel's brother. Christian Lewis, Middendorflf, and Barop, had one attribute of character which was wanting in Froebel, — a stern consciousness in the fulfillment of past obli- gations. But Froebel turned away from all the obstacles and difficulties that obstructed his activity with an ingenious facility, was often highly impractical and thoughtless, and did not allow himself to be essentially disturbed by the pressure upon his creditors. If this had not been com- pensated by the« opposite quality in his fellow-workers, both men and women, he must, in my opinion, have been wrecked very early upon the hard, inflexible rock of reality. But the others held on to him, and desired for the progressing old man that there should be a limit set to the eternal, restless life and striving at various points in Germany and Swit- zerland, which was not unlike one kind of vagabondage, and something whole and perfected in itself should be done at one point. The care for his own increasing troop of children called for foresight and economy. As he had contempt for every other kind of opposition, so he also had for those which grew up in his family; indeed, in the resentment which opposing difficulties always excited in him, he was fabulously unjust to the persons from whom they sprung. His expressions against his own brother, who was simple human greatness personified, a living magna- nimity, and against my mother-in-law, who had stood by him from early youth, were often of so revolting a kind that 1 could not refrain from opposing him in the most decided manner. Middcndorff suffered infi- nitely on these occasions. He could not blame the actions of his own family, but he tried as faithfully to turn aside the slightest aspersion against the man whose personality, life, and action, fettered him with magic power. They both rest under grassy mounds; the inseparable ones, — Froebel and Middendorflf. Diesterweg apostrophized the latter, — pia anima, anima Candida; never- tobe-forgotten friend! Great men have great weaknesses; the shady side, belonging to their finite nature, dies with them; but what they have thought, lived, and striven for remains for posterity. Froebel himself often acknowledged with deep FROEBEL AND HIS EDUCATIONAL WORK. 99 regret that lie knew himself to be full of faults and weaknesses. Indeed, he even thought the eternal Spirit had selected so miserable an instru- ment for the bearer of his idea in order that it might be clearly seen that it is the idea and not the man by which what is lasting and blessed for humanity is offered. " The institution at Marienthal made its beautiful and sacred progress, and the second wife of Froebel fulfilled her task excellently. Every one who has seen Maiionlhal, and realized the impulse given there, will have wondered at her judicious and fervent and inspiring life among her pupils, as well as at that attractive power which the Froebelian cause may exert upon the unspoiled womanly feelings. The dii-ect personal influence of Troebel was astonishingly great. He knew how to penetrate to the deep- est deptlis of the souls of his hearers; he could transform and make thcni young again, root out the taste for external things, and thoroughly banish trifling from the life, and in their place set a deepl3'^-moral, earnest, and entlmsiastic striving. When I saw him speaking and working among his pupils tlie following thought possessed me: One may think this or that upon the activity and efficiency of Froebel, ascribe to this or that correctness, discover in it greater or less influence, — one thing stands fast; he is the apostle of women, Ihe reformer of home education." "When our trouble was greatest, new prospects opened upon us. At the instigation of several influential friends who stood by us, the attention of tho Duke of Meiningen was fixed upon ns. He became acquainted with Froebel, and asked him about his plans. Froebel laid before him the plan of an educational institution worked out and agreed upon by us in common, in which should be taught not only the usual things, but manual labor, joiner's work, basket work, bookbinding, tillage, etc., etc., should be used as means of culture. During half the school-time there was to be study, and during the other half, with the limbs. This work was to give direct material for instruction, and, above all things, excite in tlie mind of the cfiild the desire for learning and explanation, so as to stimulate and strengthen the mind for invention and practical work. The awakening of this desire, this impulse to learn and to create, was one of the fundamental thoughts of Frederich F'roebel. Illustration, in the Pes- talozzian sense, was not far reaching and deep-reaching enough, and he endeavored to look upon man radically as a creative, not merely receptive, but chiefly as a productive being. We had not been able to realize the thought at Kcilhau, because the means for working out technical instruc- tion were specially wanting to the pupils. But with the help of the Duke of Meiningen the boldest of our hopes seemed likely to be satisfied. The preparation of the above-mentioned plan led to many technical construc- tions which already contained the elements of the Kindergarten plays. They are mostly lost and destroyed, but the plan has remained. I will look it up for the use and advantage of the cause, when wanted. The Duke of Meiningen was very well satisfied with Froebel's explanations, and particularly with the straightforward and open hearted way in which they were given. There was an agreement by which Froebel was promised for educational purposes the estate at Helba, with thirty acres of land, and an annual grant of 1,000 gulden. It may be incidentally 100 FROEBEL AND HIS EDUCATIONAL WORK. mentioned that tlie duke consulted Froebel about the education of his heir. Froebel told him frankly that nothing would come out of the future ruler if he was not educated in compauionshqi with others. The duke followed his advice. The prince was taught and disciplined in common with other boys. " When Froebel returned from Meiningen, the whole circle was highly pleased, but the joy was not to last long. A prominent man, in the Meiningen region, the autocrat, as it were, in educational matters, because he was on that subject the right hand of the prince,— a man who also had his merits in literary respects, and who had not been taken into consultation, w^as afraid of losing his commanding influence by the springing up of Froebel. We were suddenly again beset with the most degrading and hateful public and secret accusations, to which our precarious position in Keilhau offered welcome, and, alas! more than sufficient plausibility. Tlie duke had secretly a flea put into his ear. lie began to waver, turned suddenly upon Froebel, and demanded a proviso of about tv.-enty pupils for an indefinite time. Froebel saw the design of this, and was put out of tune; for where he scented mistrust he immediately gave up all hope, and he dashed out of his mind what had a few liouVs before filled him with enthusiasm. He broke off all negotiations, and started off to Frank- forton the Main in order to impart to his friends of former times there the results of his action, for he had become perplexed by the many obsta- cles. Here he luckily met the well-known musical composer, Schnyder von Wartensee. He told this man of his recent experiences and his plans, and exercised over that artist those electrifying and inspiring influences peculiar to his creative nature. Schnyder knew how to estimate his efforts, and offered him his castle of Wartensee, in Switzerland, for an educational institution. Froebel eagerly and joyfully grasped the hand which was offered him, and set out for Wartensee with his nephew Fer- dinand, my brother in law. "There Frederich and Ferdinand Froebel resided and worked a long time, when I (B.) was asked by my fellow members of the educational circle to inform myself precisely of the situation of things in Switzerland. With ten dollars in my pocket, and an old summer coat, which I wore, and a threadbare dress-coat, which I carried with me, I trudged off on foot. Should I tell you how I fought my way, I should probal)ly excite in you a suspicion of stark exaggeration. Enough; I arrived, inquired in the surrounding regions about my friends and their activity, and heard that nothing further had been charged to the 'heretics' than that tlioy were ' heretics.' Some peasant children of the neighboring regions had been found; but they did not meet the strangers whom they had judged in the beginning by their outward condition. The agitation of the clergy, which began as soon as the institution could be called such, and which becarne the greater the more our friends stood firmly on their feet, had its effect, and prevented a quick growth of our enterprise. Besides, the ground for our enterprise was not found at Wartensee. Schnyder liad, with a generosity which cannot be too much praised, not only placed his castle at our disposal, but even the inventory of its contents, — his silver plate, his glorious library, in short, everything that was in and about the castle; FROEBEL AND HIS EDUCATIONAL WORK. 101 but lie would permit no building of any kind to be erected, and. as the room was in no way sufTicient for us, we could only make a temporary and passing use of bis sujiport. "We saw the precariousness of our position in its whole sharpness, but knew of no escape from it. "In a wonderful way new prospects opened before us at a moment when we least expected it. We were sitting in a hotel near Wartensee, and conversing with the strangers who were there about our efforts. Three travelers were quite transfixed by our representations. They said they were merchants known at Willisau, and declared expressly that they were disposed to work for us and our efforts in Willisau, and to make a set- tlement there themselves, and carry out our plans to a greater extent. The company had traded in the cantonal government, and had for that reason moved, provisionally, into a castle like building. About forty pupils out of the canton immediately entered, and we seemed at least to have fouud what we were seeking. But the enraged pastors rose now with truly devilish power against us. Our lives were not safe, and we were warned several times by compassionate souls, if we thought of taking a solitary walk, or struck out into a road over the mountain. To what fearful measures the bigotry extended, the following occurrence shows: " In Willisau, every year, a church festival takes place, in which a host spotted with blood is shown. The drops of blood, according to the pop- ular belief, were drawn out by two gamblers, who, cursing Jesus, drew their swords upon him, and who, in consequence of this crime, were caught by the devil. When the ' God be with us ' seized the miscreant by the throat, a few drops oozed from Jesus's wounds. Now, in order that other drops should not fall in a similar manner from the miscreant, a thanksgiving festival is celebrated every year, and the host shown, for a warning, to the worshipping people, who stream in in troops from the whole country to join the procession. We were obliged to attend the fes- tival, and, in order to have something to do, we had undertaken the musical direction of it. I anticipated a storm, and had urged my friends to keep quiet under all circumstances, and to show no trace of embarrass- ment. The singing was finished, and, in place of the expected clergyman, there appeared suddenly a boisterous, fanatical Capuchin monk. He entered into complaint of the godlessness and wickedness of the present generation, painted in glowing colors the stripes of hell which would hit the cursed race, then turned to the terrified Willisauers and explained pointedly as one of the evil deeds of that people, that, by calling in the heretics, meaning us, of course, they had brought ruin into their midst. More and more violent were his words, more and more ghastly his curses upon us and our abettors, more and more terrific his descriptions of the stripes of hell prepared for the Willisauers for their abhorrent deed, Froebel stood benumbed, without moving a limb or withdrawing his gaze from the Capuchin just opposite to him, standing in the midst of the people; and the rest of us looked on motionless. The parents, our pupils, and many others, had already fled in the midst of this Jeremiad. We expected the worst for ourselves, and had already taken precautions for our protection, and measures to overcome the brawler. But we stood 102 FROEBEL AND HIS EDUCATIONAL WORK quietly in our places and heard the closing words of tlic Capuchin- ' Then, if you would earn eternal treasures in heaven, make an end to the griev- ance, and suffer the wretches no longer in your midst Hunt the wolves out of the country, to the honor of God and the confusion of the devil! Then peace and blessing will return, and great joy will be with God in heaven and with those who serve Him and His holy One from their hearts! Amen! ' Scarcely had he spoken the last word when he vanished through a side dooi-, and was not seen again. But we passed quietly through the gaping and threatening crowd. No hand was raised at the moment; but mischief lowered upon us from all sides, and it was not pleasant to see the sword of Damocles already suspended over our heads. With this painful feeling of insecurity they sent me to the government of the canton, and especially to the Abbe Girard, and the justice of the peace, Edward Pfyffer, with a petition that he would protect our safety to the best of his power. On the way 1 was known at a tavern as one of the lately-oppressed band of heretics, by a clergyman. They whispered about me, and cast threatening and contemptuous glances at me from all sides. At last the priest became more and more audacious, and accused me aloud of being an abominable heretic. I arose slowly, advanced with a firm step toward the black-coat, and asked him : ' Do you know who ^esus Christ was, sir?' and, 'Do you hold anylLing from Him?' 'Surely; He is God — the Son, and we must honor Him and believe in Him, if we do not wish to be eternally damned!' 1 continued, — 'You can, perhaps, tell me whether Christ was a Catholic or a Protestant?' The priest was silent; the crowd gaped and soon applauded me. The priest left, and they let me alone. The question had effected more than a whole speech would have done. In Edward PfyiTer I learned to know a man of humane and firm character, of sterling worth, and worthy of all respect. He goes upon the principle that it is not of much use to take this or that superstition from the people, but that one must work against sluggishness of thought and want of independence from the foundation through an intelligent education. For that reason he esteemed our under- taking highly. When I gave him an outline of our griefs, and the danger we incurred in our lives, he replied; 'There is only one way to make yourselves secure, — you must win the hearts of the people. Work on for a long time, and then invite all the people from far and near to a public examination. If you pass through that trial and win the multitude, then, and only then, will you be secure.' 1 went back, and we followed his counsel. A great crowd of people from the various cantons streamed in to the examination, and delegates from Zurich, Berne, etc. Our battle with the clergy, particularly, was an occurrence that was spoken of in most of the Swiss papers, and the genei'al attention had been directed to it. We conquered perfectly at the examination. The boys developed a happy state of mind and a warmth of zeal; indeed, they answered in such an unembarrassed and inoffensive manner that all present were delightedly surprised and gave us loud applauses. The examination lasted from seven o'clock in the morning till seven in the evening, and closed with social plays and gymnastic exercises. We rejoiced inVardly, for our cause was now to be considered established. The thing came to FKOEBEL AND HIS EDUCATIONAL WORK. 103 public action, to public notice, and the most brilliant speeches were made in our favor by Pfyffer, Amryu, and others. The assembly made a decree that the castle-like educational building should be given to us at a reason- able price, and tliat the Capuchins, who had publicly made such an uproar against us, should be showed out of the canton." ' ' Some time after the above-mentioned examination appeared a deputation from the canton of Berne, and invited Froebel to undertake the erection of an orphan-house in Burgdorf. Froebel proposed that the instruction in the newly-founded orphan-house should not be restricted to the orphan children, gained his object, and followed the summons. " Now I looked upon my mission as providentially closed, and I desired to go back to Keilhau, for my eldest son was already a year old, and I had never yet seen him. Middendorff, therefore, left his family and took my place ; he lived four years in Willisau away from his wife and child. In Keilhau things had, in the meantime, worked more favorably, and the attendance had increased in a joyful manner. I resolved now to raise the mother institution out of its economical swamp. I set in motion an express, even if a permitted swindle, borrowed a sum here to discharge a creditor there, and covered up one debt by another. In this manner I restored the lost credit, and, as the revenues increased to our delight, I soon acquired land, and from that time have been able to support the imder- taking of the others more and more, and create for the whole circle a grati- fying and increasing sense of stability, and a refuge from all chances. " In Switzerland the cause did not develop according to our wishes, in spite of the decree of the legislative assembly. The institution in Willisau enjoj'ed unlimited confidence, but the opposing agitation of the priesthood bloomed in secret afterwards as well as before, and drew much animadversion upon the institution from a distance. For this reason we could not reach what, under other circumstances, with the activity and capacity of self-sacrifice of our circle, might certainly have been possible. "Ferdinand Froebel and Middendorff remained in Willisau; Froebel went to Burgdorf with his wife, and, a little after, was appointed director of the orphan-house by the government. In that capacity he had to con- duct a so-called repetition-course for teachers. In that canton was the following excellent arrangement : every two years the teachers had a fur- lough of a quarter of a year. During this time they assembled in Burgdorf and exchanged their experiences and worked at their further cultivation. Froebel had to conduct the proceedings and associated studies. His own personal experience, and the communications of the teachers, led him anew to the conviction that school education is wanting in the correct and indispensable foundation, until the reformation of home education shall be kept in view and made preliminary. The necessity of building up wise mothers came into the foreground in his soul, and the importance of the earliest education seemed to him more significant than ever. He determined to employ his educational thoughts, whose intelli- gent working out a thousand obstacles had prevented, at least to the guid- ance of the earliest childhood upon all sides, and to enlist the woman- world for this idea and its efficient working. He would supplement the 'Book for Mothers' (Pestalozzi's) by a theoretico-practical guide for 104 FROEBEL AND HIS EDUCATIONAL WORK. women. Something occurred from without which urged him forward. His wife became very dangerously ill, and the physicians required a total change from the rough mountain air of Switzerland. Then he determined to give up his situation and go to Berlin. The institution at Willisau, which flourished outwardly, but was more and more hampered in its organic development by the bigotry of the priests, was obliged to be given upj for the government went into the hands of the Jesuits. Langethal and Ferdinand Froebel were appointed teachers of the institution in Burg- dorf. Later, Langethal separated himself from the whole, and undertook the direction of a girls' school in Berne which the well-known Frohlich now conducts ; in so doing took a step which Froebel never pardoned. Fer- dinand Froebel remained director of the orphan-house in Burgdorf until his sudden and unexpected death. The general mourning, which had never known its equal in Burgdorf, showed what his efforts had been and how well they had been understood there. "When Frederich Froebel went back from Berlin, the idea of an insti- tution for little children was already fully formed in him. I rented him a locality in the neighboring Blankenburg. For a long time he could not find a name for his cause. Middendorff and I walked over the mountain with him to Blankenburg. He exclaimed, repeatedly, ' If I could only find a name for my youngest child! ' Suddenly he stood still, as if trans- fixed, and his ej'e took an almost transfigured expression. Then he called out to the mountain, and called again to all the four winds: ''EvpiiKa] Eureka! Kindergarten the institution shall be named! ' " So far Barop. He is the only one who now [1861] enjoys the blossoming out of the mother institution. He has become wealthy,* and has enjoyed many honors. The University of Jena bestowed upon him a doctor's diploma at its jubilee, and the Prince of Rudolstadt appointed him Coun- cilor of Education. Froebel sleeps in Liebenstein, and liliddendorff at the foot of Kirschberg in Keilhau. They sowed and did not reap ; it may be, then, that the enjoyment which lies in sowing exceeds that of reaping. Certainly it was glorious that Froebel, shortly before his death, was highly honored by the Teachers' Convention in Gotha. When he appeared, the whole assembly rose like one man; and Middendorff also, shortly before his death, had the joy of hearing the same assembly at Salzungen declare the Froebel cause to be one of universal importance, and a subject for their special attention and continued experiment. * By inheritance. FKOEBEL AND HIS KDUCATIONAL WORK. 105 TU Tear 1825. KEILHAU. — OFFICIAL TESTIMONY OP SUCCESS.* In the article called "Critical moments in the life of Frederick Frffibel," I mentioned that the " Universal German Educational Institution " nearly came to its complete ruin, in its twentieth year. In another article, entitled " Unity of life," I have given some internal causes by which the institution, which had once been flourishing, came to the verge of ruin. But there were other causes, which perhaps in and by themselves would not have been able to bring about such disastrous effects. First, the cross- fire of the enemy in the camp and outside of it had that melancholy effect. Every one well informed in history knows the dcmagogery of a certain Hcrr von Kampz, the persecutions of the Biirgenschafteu, which culminated in the death of Kotsebue, in the midst of that twenty years. Johannes Arnold Barop was especially the subject of these perse- cutions, and as he was already in Keilhau, even if not considered a fellow- worker there, when his papers were taken into custody, yet his presence there might pass as an excuse for the suspicion entertained of Keilhau. Keilhau was represented openly and in secret as the brooding nest of dema- gogism, and they stormed from Prussia, and on the day appointed for the meeting of the confederates of the Schwarzburg Riidolstadt government, they demanded the breaking up of the institution. The government sent the then Superintendent Zeh as a committee of inquiry to Keilhau, and met the oppressors with the subsequent report. The government left the institution unshorn, and only made the famous requisition that the pupils of the institution should cut their hair short. But the persecutions none the less had their intended effect. A part of the terrified parents, partic- ularly the nobles, took their children away, and the institution was crip- pled on all sides by the crafty and barefaced agitation of its enemies. In 1829 the number of pupils diminished, as has already been mentioned, from sixty to five. Similar machinations against Keilhau took place at a later time, when the general reaction followed the flare up of 1848. At that time there was as little occasion for enmity towards Keilhau as in any part of the twenty years. It scarcely needs to be affirmed in this place that there was not the most distant trace of political agitation there. They were only trying to culti- vate men in the way which is pointed out quite correctly in the following report. The old fighters for freedom, Froebel, Middendorff, and Lange- thal, who had learned to esteem each other more and more as Liitzow's fol- lowers in the war, naturally hung with great love upon our nation, and were trying to cultivate German children. That their efforts were directed to building up men in the children, and Germans in the men, constituted their whole crime, but still more, that the spirit of 1813-15 had found a sort of refuge in Keilhau. The devoted teachers were as far from using their efforts at education * A Public Voice in 1825 upon the efforts of Frederick Procbel, from W. Lange, Vol. I, p. 22. 106 FROEBEL AND HIS EDUCATIONAL WORK. for political purposes as Sirius is from the earth. But from the year 1819, which the yEg is (a newspaper), justly called the "mad year," begins a period of German degradation and shame to which the "Universal Ger- man Educational Institution " almost fell a sacrifice. The expressions of Froebel are interesting which he addressed to Barop in March, 1828, at that time. They show that he neither lost courage nor his spirits, and that his chief fellow-workers wavered not a moment. " The outer life stands quite at the same point of its development, and at this time surrounded by a dark night, pregnant with storms, out of whose black clouds every moment annihilating lightning threatens to flash. But God has thus far held his protecting shield over us with His almighty arm, and so we have lived like the little chickens in the thunder storm, under the protecting wing of their mother; we have reposed like the child in the tempest in the lap of the living, careful, true mother." And at the close he says: "What you tell me of the Berlin opinion of Keilhau I well know, but I have nothing to say about it. Act firmly on your convictions; you can do It, for more and more everything unites and reveals itself to me, and what I believed earlier, indeed was convinced of, and was founded only partially on my own intuitions, I see ndw in all creation, in the being of things, in nature, and in the ordering of the world, and the progressive culture of humanity; God in creation, in the order of nature and the world, in the progressive cul- ture of humanity, is the source of human education; — this is the funda- mental thought of my spiritual inward and outward educational life. On this foundation, you as well as I can, with more than Lutheran firmness, affirm the rights of nature in education, and so come forward as fighters for our educational progress." And as one fellow-worker, Ilerr Carl (who afterwards, to the great distress of his associates, was drowned in the Saale) was once wavering, he expressed himself sadly in a letter to Barop, dated the 18th of February, 1839: "Man is but a weak being; he must always rest upon something out of himself, and can so rarely depend upon himself; and if he needs to be tried, punished, and strengthened to carry out a great thought, he sees the means of trial,' purification, and strength- ening are destined to be the destruction of his personality and of himself, and then comes back to the original feeling; life is dearer to him than the thought; he cannot sacrifice his own little life, his own little personality to it; or rather, the show of existence is dearer to him than really, livingly to exist." So Froebel laid out new plans, excited by the offers of the Duke of Meiningen, and expresses himself thus in his last letter: "During the short time 1 have been in writing these lines, the thought of my and your educational effort has imfolded essentially, while in reference to carrying out and representing it, it has receded more and more and grounded itself more and more deeply. For a long time the education and handling of little children from the third to the seventh year of age has occupied my thoughts. A unity in a moment of consecutive thought, together with circumstances and other influences has now brought me to the con- clusion to erect in Helba, together with the People's Educational Institu- tion, an institution for the care and development of children of both sexes from three to seven years of age, either orphans or motherless, and 'FROEBEL AND HIS EDUCATIONAL WORK. 107 of the middle class. I do not call this institution T)y the name which is now given to similar institutions, (that is, little infant cJiildren's scJiooU) because it is not to be a scliool, for the children in it will not be schooled, but freely developed, because so far as it is possible for men who are * aemselves no angels, the God-like in man must be truly guarded and fos- tered. I would have orphans, or at least motherless children, because the injurious influence of half-cultured parents and of generally uncultivated mothers is thus done away Vvith by the very condition of things. I take children of both sexes, because children of that age have no sex, and because the reciprocal influence at that age beautifully develops mind and heart. I choose children of the middle class that we may be able to carry out the work we shall undertake." OFFICIAL REPORT ON THE FROEBEL EDTJCATIONAL INSTITUTION. To the Princely Consistorium at Schwarzburg-Rudolstaclt, 1825. In conformitj^ with instructions received on the 9th of September of last year (1824) from the princely Consistorium, to visit the Froebel institution in Keilhau and report on the same, I visited Keilhau for this purpose on the 23d of Kovember of last year, and remained there from half-past eight in the morning till five o'clock in the evening. But to get a deeper insight into its true life and spirit, and ascertain wherein the peculiarity of this institution consists, as on a first visit only the fundamental instruc- tion in its very various modifications could be laid before me, I passed a second day there on the 1st of March of this year, in order to look at the higher classical instruction, the methods of the teachers, and the attain- ments and development of the pupils. The principal teachers at that time, and also at present, were Froebel, Langetlial, and ]\Iiddendorff, which three are considered the founders of the institution. Froebel has undertaken the oversight of the whole from the beginning, and with invincible courage has carried it on happily to the present day with incessant struggles, heavy cares, and the extremest needs. Two years ago were added to the founders (in order, as it seems, not to separate so soon again) Herzog, a Swiss, and Schonbein, a Wurtemberger, as upper teachers, the last-mentioned one for the department of the nat- ural sciences, the first-mentioned for history and German literature. An elocutionist, Herr ]\Ionnet, and Hanen Schmidt, and Bromel, workers in the present princelj^ chapel, preside a few days every week at the institu- tion, and teach respectively French and instrumental music. The pupils numbered fifty at the time of zny last visit, from among whom George Luther has gone to the University to study theology. Both days that I passed at the institution, and so intimately with it, were agreeable to me in every respect, highly interesting and instructive, and have heightened and confirmed my esteem for the whole and for the founder, who in the midst of the storms of want and care, has carried it on and sustained it with the warmest and most unselfish zeal. It vras very delightful to be breathed upon by the fresh, vital, free, and yet self-con- tained spirit which hovers over this institution in and out of the hours of study. What life never and nowhere represents in its actual phase, one finds here — a family of at least sixty pupils living in heartfelt quite mu- 108 FROEBEL AND HIS EDUCATIONAL WORK. tual understanding, all of whom do willingly what they have to do, each in their different places — a family in which because the strong bond of con- fidence unites them and every member strives for the whole, everything prospers of itself in an atmosphere of enjoyment and love. "With great esteem and hearty affection all greet their director, and while the fivu- 3'ears-old little ones climb upon his knee, his friends and associates hear and honor his counselling words with the confidence that his insight, experi- ence, and unwearying zeal for the good of the whole deserve ; while he has bound himself with brotherly love and friendship to his fellow work- ers as to the supports and bearers of his truly holy life work. That this close union, we may say this brotherhood of teachers, has the most benefi- cent influence upon the instructions given, and upon the pupils them- selves in every respect, is self-evident. The care and esteem with which the latter embrace all their teachers is expressed by an attention and obe- dience which makes all discipline of rules unnecessarj'. In the two days I was there, in and out of the buildmgs, in the merriment out of school hours as during the time of instruction, 1 did not hear a corrective word from the mouths of the teachers. In the heartfelt gayety with which as soon as they emerge from school hours into the fresh air, all spring and frolic together, I saw no real ill breeding, no rough, unmannerly, still less immoral conduct. The pupils live on an equality among themselves, without reference to condition, or birth, or dress, nor even the name by which they are called, because each one bears only his baptismal name, or some characteristic nickname given him. Great and little ones mix cheer- fully and happily as if each obeyed but one Jaw, as brothers in their father's home, and while all seem free to use their powers and form their plays, they are imder the continual superintendence of the teachers, of whom now this one, now that one, overlooks their games and exercises, some of them almost always mixing with them, and joining sympathetic- ally, all on an equahty before the law of the play. But how joyously united ! with what delight this scene is to be contem- plated, each one in free, vigorous process of formation in a child world not be ruled by the sway of the whip, a world in which every one secures his place by outward or inward power; how its effect is at the same time to educate and cultivate the circle of teachers ! No slumbering faculty remains unwakened, each finds the stimulus it needs in so large and closely united a family, and also the place, small though it may be, where it can ex- press itself; every feeling of curiosity shows itself freelj^ and meets an equal or similar feeling which may express itself openly, and in which the germ- inating faculty stands forth distinctly; on this account an impropriety can never make headway, for every individual who goes to excess is punished forthwith; he is asked to step out of the circle or to sit down; if he wishes to come into it again he must yield and learn to be humble and to improve. Thus the boys rule, reprove, furnish, educate, and cultivate each other without knowing it by the many-sided stimulus, as well as the opposing restraints. If on this side one cannot contemplate the movement and life of this institution otherwise than with pleasure, so the agreeable impres- sion which a glance over the whole makes upon the visitor is increased by the visible order of the house, whose law alone can keep so large a whole FROEBEL AND HIS EDUCATIONAL WORK 109 together, by the punctuality which savors of nothing like pedantry, and by a cleanliness which is rare to be seen to such a degree in an educational institution. To this vigorous and freely moving, and yet •well-ordered outward life, corresponds perfectly the inner life of mind and heart, which is here awak- ened and fostered. It would involve too much detail and it is therefore impossible to represent the instruction according to its subject or its form in each single department. In order to give an idea of its compass, I give the substance of the last study plan sent to me from the institution. The instruction begins in the fifth year of the child's life, by teaching it to get the command of its senses by observation of external things, and then to distinguish these from each other, and at the same time to designate them by the right words, and to learn also to rejoice in this first knowl- edge, which is the first little item for the future spiritual treasure. Inde- pendence of mind is the first law of this instruction, therefore the manner of instruction pursued here does not make the young mind a strong box into which as early as possible, all kinds of coins of the most different val- ues and coinage, as they are estimated in the world, are stuffed; but slowly, constantly, gradually, and always inwardly, that is, according to connec- tion in nature, founded on the nature of the human mind, the instruction goes on earnestly, without the tricks and trying of the old philanthropists who let the letters be baked in sugar, but going from the simple to the complex, from the concrete to the abstract, so well adapted to the child and its needs, that it goes as happily to its learning as to its play; indeed, I was a witness of the little ones, whose study hours were pushed ahead somewhat for my convenience, crying for the superintendent, and want- ing to know whether they must play all day and not learn, or whether the great boys alone were to have a session. In the upper grade of the classical instruction stands those who were to take " Selecta " according to the usual arrangement in gymnasiums. In the winter previous they read Horace, Plato, Phoedrus, and Demosthenes, and translated Cornelius Nepos into Greek. If on the day of my first visit, on which I had learned the plan of the fundamental instruction nearer, I had not been able to suppress the wish that the instruction might be such as this in all the lower schools, so now in the classical instruction which was first begun in 1820, in its whole compass, I could not but be astonished at the progress which had been made in that short time, and its profound accuracy (and afterwards, so far as the time permitted, all had gone on from the minimum of elementary instruction to the maximum of classical instruction); I felt as perfectly satisfied with regard to the instruction, as I had been with regard to the education. I had met with nothing else before than what every impartial examiner has experienced. From all the stran- gers whose judgment I have taken after they had become acquainted with the institution at Keilhau, I have not found one who was not satisfied, but many whom I consider highly intellectual, who have come away enthusias- tic, and with full recognition and acknowledgment of the highest aim which the institution had set for itself, and the perfectly natural way which it has struck out to reach that aim as surely and completely as pos- sible. This aim is by no means knowledge and science, but free, inde- 110 FROEBEL AND HIS EDUCATIONAL WORK. pendent culture of mind from within, wliereby nothing is fastened upon the pupil from without, of which he has not formed a clear conception, and which, therefore, like tinsel, in no way elevates his intensive powers, and by which the scholar is never made happy because only the conscious- ness of his growing power gives him true jo3^ Inspired by what is noble, which the man who is developed on all sides considers the essence of rea- son and feeling, and by the elevation of his purpose, the superintendent of the institution has made it his goal to develop in each pupil the whole man, whose inner being reposes between the two poles of true en- lightenment and genuine religion, in such a way that he" may unfold him- self and realize by clearer consciousness of the power bestowed upon him, what he can be according to its measure. Science is held in no worth at Keilhau, exce^Dt as it becomes a more universal means of awakening the mind, of strengthening the individual, and guiding him to his highest des- tiny; and it is only fostered there speciall}^ because in the limited time, and according to the nature of the human mind, there is no more certain means of culture. But that all knowledge truly serves and is made useful to the pupils of the institution for so high an aim, one soon observes in the various stages of their acquisition "What they know is not a dead mass, but has form and life, and is converted into life as soon as possible. Each one is, so to speak, at home witliin himself, and neither the small nor the large pupils have auj^ conception of a thoughtless parrot -like imitation, or of any knowledge that is not clear to their understandings. What they speak of they have observed intuitively, and it conies from them like an inner necessity and with decision and discrimination, and which do not waver by the objections of the teachers until they have themselves been persuaded that they are in error. Every thing must be thought out ; therefore they cannot think of anything that they do not improve upon it; even the dead grammar with its mass of rules becomes living before them, for they are incited to take hold of every language according to the history, manners, and character of the people who speak it. Thus looked upon, the institution is really an intellectual gymnasium, for every individual study that is pursued is a true gymnastic of the mind. Happy the children who are educated here from their sixth year! Could all schools be changed into such educational institutions, after a few generations a more intellectually powerful, and in spite of earthly sins, a purer, nobler people must be formed. Of this I am so firmly convinced, that I congratulate my fatherland for possessing within its borders an institution that even in its present development, can measure itself with the best in our borders, and whose reputation will spread far beyond the limits of Germany. With deep respect for the Princely Consistorium, Your most obedient subject, May 6, 1825. Christian Zejh. FROEBEL AND ms EDUCATIONAL WORK. • m THE UNITY OF LIFE. From Dr. W. Lange's Aids to the Understanding of Froebel. This word {Lebenseinigung) was always in Froebel's mouth; indeed, he not rarely named his method of education "the culture of man for all- sided unity of life by a developing education." His philosophy set out from life and ended with life. As I have already previously endeavored to explain, he looked upon the universe as a great organic whole, which is "pervaded and penetrated," "lightened and illuminated," upheld and taken care of by the spirit of God. He did not exactly identify the Divine Spirit with the life of nature ; nevertheless the immanency stood out more distinctly than the transcendency, in his conception of God, as Johann Heinrich Deinhardt has very justly remarked. The tree, "the rector in his Gymnasium," had taught him that the essence of an organic whole is found also in each member of that whole, and that a member must be comprehended in a two-fold manner: once in its independence, self sufficiency, and exclusiveness, and then in its dependence upon the whole. Accordingly, the life of nature and of man was to him the life of God in individual form; in the life of the people he saw the individ» ualized life of men, in the life of the family carried on in the right spirit he saw the individualized life of the people, and the individual man appeared to him, as to Schleiermacher, a "representative of humanity in a specific combination of its elements." God, as the final unity of all living things, is a creative being, and unfolds the infinite contents of his being by the stream of growth and self-development which continues to infinity. Development is the outcoming of a being from unity into manifoldness. The child, as a bud on the everlasting tree of life, must, like the first cause of his existence, shape his being out of himself by creative activity, and must be so guided that the bud may throw out roots which will strike into the everlasting life, so that stem, leaf, and blossom may arise, and so that in the fruit of his doing and living the divine and human may appear again in its unity, that is to say, that his deeds may spring from his inner being to the honor of God and the use and advant- age of man. Education has to guide him so that he may be conscious in all his doing and striving of the|3urest motives and principles, and, above all, so that he may feel the unity of his disposition to will with that of God, who can only will the good, that is, education has to lead him upon the road to "union with God" {Gotteinigung); it has further to implant in him most deeply the feeling that he is a member of humanity and can only truly unfold his being in disinterested service to it; it has to give him the impulse for the process of " union with the world" {Weltein- igung); in the third place, it has to guide him so that he may endeavor to put an end to the dualism in himself, the opposition between "flesh and spirit," between sensitiveness and sensibleness, between willing and per- forming, and so that the "law in his limbs" may come into agreement with the "law in his mind," that is, it has to incite him to "union with himself" (Selbsteinigung)* But that only comes about by his being steeped by education as deeply as possible in the life of nature and ia truly human life, that is, in human life which is wholly and disinterestedly devoted to the whole. 112 FROEBEL AND HIS EDUCATIONAL WORK. In order to expose the child to the influence of nature on as many sides as possible, he chose the different mountain valleys of Thuringia for the basis and ground of his institution, and it often sounded mystical and strange when he founded his choice of a place in reference to the pecu- liarities of the child's life. The Rchalathal surrounded by the dark, rigid mountain with its pine woods and sterile soil, appeared to him particularly suited for the education of boys; the lovely Marienthal near Liebenatein with its rich vegetation and soft heights for the education of girls. He often exclaimed, enthusiastically, when he spoke of Marienthal, "I have now found the place for working out the last consequence of my funda- mental thought. An institution for the culture of women could never have succeeded in Keilhau. Look at the mountain and country around and feel with me that nature will not have them there." And how he appealed to the life of nature in Keilhau, from the begin- ning, as a co-educator for his institution for boys! He opened his " Uni- versal German Educational Institution" on the 13th of September, 1816, in Griesheim, seizing the opportunity which was offered him by the widow gf his brother and three orphan nephews, his brother's children, requiring his help. In June, 1817, he was obliged by circumstances to transplant himself to Keilhau, with his fellow-worker and bosom friend, William Middendorff, who had already come to his side in Griesheim. But this pressure of circumstances seemed to him, according to his own words, the expression of the will of Providence, for nature here harmon- ized with the demands of his ideal. A miserable peasant's hut scarcely afforded room to the inseparable ones, and they were obliged to help them- selves in this respect in a way which touches upon the comical ; but nature opened her arms to them joj'fully. With the little band of five nephews and one brother of their later true fellow-worker, Langethal, they ram- bled over mountain and plain, and the mountain-spirit may have groaned when Middendorff bestowed new names on the heights and fountains, names of the first impression made upon him, and which afterwards really and completely thrust aside the historic names. Indeed, this bold troop cultivated ground and soil, smoothed the way over rugged heights, and created mountain resorts which afford the most various, the most charm- ing, and the most magnificent landscapes. This spirit of cherishing nature, and of life in nature, and of unity with nature developed in consequence, Keilhau has retained; and if a malicious critic could discover nothing else peculiar in the institution, this spirit will breathe upon him, fetter him, and inspire him under all circumstances. So a short time ago a Schiller festival was celebrated all over the world ; but has the "ideal man of Weimar" been honored anywhere more beautifully than by the troop of boys at Keilhau? They were obliged with great trouble to make a new path over the stoniest part of the Kirschberg, to cast away fragments of rock in order to reach a beautiful, quiet place which lies just opposite the Schiller height in Volkstadt. They planted flowers of many kinds, in the newly-won place, and at last the Schillerlinde, which now grows lustily out of a rocky world; and when the day of the festival had at last come, they ascended the newly-smoothed path, rejoicing and sing- ing songs of freedom, and the youthful band heard, in view of the favor- FEOEBEL AND HIS EDUCATIONAL WORK. 1 \ 3 itc seat of our immortal poet, what Schiller had been to the German peo- ple. Then there were bonfires and mirth of all kinds, so that even the gloomy owl thrust out a friendly face. Indeed and in fact, nature did her duty in Keilhau and does it to this day, and it has always been felt to be true what the last brave associate of the Froebel Circle said to me as an experience of life: "Nature fiirst wins us lovingly and exercises its full influence on us when we take it under our care, and in its service learn how to strengthen our muscles and nerves." Froebel certainly carried out what he knew to be necessary ; he knew how to steep his pupils deeply in the life of nature. But he also wanted a truly human life, that is, one which is wholly and disinterestedly devoted to the whole, to have its influence, so he first connected himself with Middendorff, then with Langethal, men whom he had learned to know and love in the war, to whom he opened his " Idea," and in whom he found a ready sympathy and genuine enthusiasm for the cause. They were willing to sacrifice everything to the cause, and gain only so much earthly good from it as appeared necessary, indispensa- bly necessary for a frugal life. For that reason the number of pupils was fixed at twenty, and upon that the plan of the educational buiMing was drawn up. The chest, in spite of this small number of pupils, was to be open to all, and each worker was to take from it according to his need. It could almost be said of them as of the first Christians: no one had any wealth, but everything was held in common. But alas, in this circle there was far less of the " worldling's lookout " than of the " enthusiast's ear- nestness;" there was wanting a necessary element, which first came later with Barop's entrance into it. Even the delicately cultivated and noble Henriette Wilhelmine, from Berlin, whom Froebel chose for his wife in 1818, was not able to supply the deficiency that existed, but rather stood completely on that side, and was in no way fitted to make allowance for the practical needs. They had forgotten in drawing up the original plan, that capital was necessary for building houses, and that with their very limited resources, the moderate income could neither cover nor pay an increasing burden of debt. In this way they soon came into straits which paralyzed their ideal flight. They had also forgotten that a time would come in which the fellow workers must think of founding families. They had sacrificed the most brilliant prospects, and were ready for every other sacrifice, but not ready for celibacy. It was also part of Froebel's plan to connect families with his educational aims. The increasing distress of the circle seemed, in spite of the worm which was gnawing the heart of the tree, to be ready to come to an end in 1820. At that time. Christian Ludwig Froebel, the third brother of Friedrich, left his lucrative manufactory at Osterode, in the Harz, and placed him- self, his family, and his means at the disposal of his brother. The heroic deed of this man was explained by the fabulous power of attraction which Froebel exercised over all those whose inner life touched his, even in a meas- ure ; also by the character of Christian, who was a true Cato in sentiment, and dominated by the most ideal striving. He was now to manage and to supply the externals, which all darkly knew to be a great need. But a personal weakness of Froebel allowed this experiment to be wrecked. J 14 FROEBEL AND HIS EDUCATIONAL WORK. He was conscious of his originality, he expected in all the same susceptibilty for that which animated him, and therefore looked into the future in the most pressing circumstances intoxicated with victory, but alas! he did not recognize himself as autocrat in reference to the thought alone, but also in points of its application. He did not give himself the trouble to inquire into the peculiarities of his fellow workers, and to make the best of them for the service of the whole. Differences of opinion often appeared to him as the promptings of self-seeking, he took just blame for abuse. Froebel, who sought to develop independence in his pupils, and reallj^ developed it in them, could neither recognize nor esteem, in his fellow workers, this grand attribute of character, which first makes the individual a real man. Thence it came that nothing essential was changed by the entrance into the family of his brother, who soon cast his economical superintendence at his feet; that Henriette Wilhelmine still managed unpractically in the house, while the family of her brother-in-law, who afterwards made Keilhau great, were obliged to lay their hands in their laps; hence came the gradual sinking of the institution, which at the end of twenty years reached its utmost limits, but did not go completely to ruin. For in spite of all the disappointments, the men of the circle, Mid- dendorff, Langethal, Christian Ludwig, lost not a moment in their endeav- ors, and never repented of refusing the most glittering prospects and all material well-being in order to serve the "Idea." The "truly human life" of the circle was thus saddened in many ways, and Froebel did not reach in this regard what he was striving for. Happily for Keilhau, new prospects opened upon him. He went forth Snto the world. Middendorff seized the helm, and when he, unshakably -true till death, was called to Switzerland, the work of Barop began, who Siad the goal firmly in view, and firmly followed it, and lifted Keilhau (Completely from its economical abyss. The documents upon the work of this man, who is still in the midst of a far-reaching activity, and was now recognized and praised highly by Froebel, now formally abjured, are not yet finished, and cannot yet be finished. Certain it is that he and 31iddendorff were the only ones who practically held a curb over Froebel, and that out of the whole circle three human stars, Froebel, Midden- dorff, and Barop, take the precedence as Pestalozzi did far above all other phenomena of their educational circle ; and it is worthy of remark, that these men not only consecrated their own powers, but their whole families to the service of the idea; for Middendoi-ff and Langethal married in 1826, and Barop in 1831. They also left wife and child, as I have remarked in my description of the work in Switzerland, without murmuring, whenever it was required by circumstances. Truly such lives, such capacity of sacri- fice, are hardly to be conceived of in the present times ; the sense of it has been lost If then the "unity of life" of the families of Keilhau found imperfect expression, it still existed, and alone made possible the work of Friedrich Froebel, who, great in creative power, was small in administration and government. And certainly at least three of the united families stood «[uite out of range, when Froebel complained at Blankenburg on the 7th of January, 1838, " My whole life is a battleground between the uni- PROEBEL AND HIS EDUCATIONAL WORK. 115 versal and pure elements of humanity and the special disturbed human element, the personal, individual, and truly selfish striving of individual men." This battle must be met with in life, and must be fought out; but since pure humanity has its source and its sanctuary in the inmost recesses of family life, that battle had, of necessity, to take place in the in- most recesses of a family which is striving to preserve unity within itself and to manifest outwardly the purest humanity. In spite of these drawbacks, the Keilhau circle were all one in reference to the principles of education and instruction. The children enjoyed the greatest fretJom. A continuous, intimate communion between teachers and pupils exerted a deep influence. Love and self-sacrifice, as well as independence in knowledge and action, were developed and strengthened, and the individuality of each was fostered. The instruction aimed at an all-sided stimulation to human activity, receptive and productive, especially the latter. The curiosity of the children was excited by giving them ideas of things, and bodily labor was called into play. Thus the need and desire for explanation and in- struction were awakened. For this purpose the children were not only kept cultivating nature, but taken into all kinds of workshops and kept at all kinds of technical representations. It would be out of place here to describe this kind of instruction fully. The elements of many things were there brought to light, which were carried out later by other persons who now have the credit of them. For instance, Spiess, the reformer of the gymnastics, got his fundamental ideas from Froebel at Burgdorf, though he improved upon them. Froebel's one-sided traits prevented many buds and blossoms from unfolding, and in the domain of instruc- tion even came forward often in tbe most disturbing manner. When the first pupils grew up, the need of higher scientific instruction showed itself, but almost too late. Important men, Bauer, fo; example, later Professor at the Friedrich-Wilhelms-Gymnasium in Berlin, whom Froebel had already learned to know in the war, Michaelis, and others, offered their services, and wanted to devote themselves, like Middendorff andLangethal, to the united efforts. But Froebel would even interfere where he had no positive insight, and in this way, as well as by his vehemence, which hardly bore contradiction, he so offended these scientifically versed men that they either went right away or did so very soon. Middendorf always, and Langethal for a long time, had the self-control to bear many griev- ances from Froebel, to overlook his weak sides, and in the service of the Idea to keep constantly in view his mission as the ci'eator of the spirit of the circle. But Barop was, after all, the most prudent; he accepted his ideas, and then acted according to his own judgment and conscience, without allowing himself to be disturbed by contradiction, mourning inwardly that Froebel was not always in a condition to respect and sup- port what was individual in his fellow-workers. I have already told what was accomplished in Switzerland by the " unity of life" of that one family, and how gradually the idea of the Kindcri,rar- ten arose. But there was need of a greater number of suitable faniilies to carry out the idea which, as soon as Froebel perceived, he immediately turned to the community. IIQ FROEBEL AND HIS EDUCATIONAL WORK. Progress — Interdict in 1851. Owing to his restless and itinerating habits of work, Froebel's institu- tions of education did not attain to any considerable local reputation, so as to attract visitors or Press notoriety, nor did his own publications, set- ting forth his peculiar principles and methods in didactic form or in an nual programmes, wake much discussion, or even win, by their style or novelty, the attention of educators. But, in spite of embarrassments inevitable to inadequate resources and insuflftcient assistance, with a few staunch and appreciative disciples he did succeed, after thirty years' study and experimentation, in concentrating his energies and developing his educational views in two institutions — one of which was a place of domestic and general education, and the other of special child culture, with much prominence given to training young women for the manage- ment of similar institutions elsewhere. His own presence and that of his gifted and devoted associate, William Middendorf, was welcomed to Dresden and Hamburg, and other places, to establish Kindergartens and interest women in their own self-improvement. In this condition of affairs, he had the good fortune to attract the atten- tion and win the friendship of the Baroness Von Marenholtz-Biilow, whose social position and personal influence soon brought him and his work to the notice of eminent educators and government officials ; and, iu 1850, it seemed as if henceforward his last days would not only be his best days, but that the calm serenity of assured success would crown a life of restless and apparently unproductive activity. The great popular educator of Germany, after much distrust arising from imperfect knowl- edge, had endorsed the originality and immense practical value of Froe- bel's Idea and Methods, and secured for him and them recognition in peda- gogical journals, circles, and conventions. The governing families of Thui- ingia had manifested their interest in him personally, and were ready to adopt the Kindergarten in the early training of their own children. In the midst of this peaceful and successful work and such brightening prospects, the interdict of the Prussian Minister of Education fell with stunning effect on the Froebelian circle, shortening the life of its founder, and bringing the Kindergarten into a disrepute with the conservative classes in Germany, from which it has not yet recovered. The Baroness Mar«nholtz-Billow has told the story with simple pathos in her admirable Reminiscenses of the last days of Froebel — the sharp surprise on read- ing the ordinance of August 7th, 1851 — the haste to clear up an evident mistake of person and aim — the indignation at the perverse misunder- standing of the Minister — the sickness of the heart which comes from hope deferred in spite of the tender appreciation of those who knew the whole truth, and the sublime reliance in which he resigns himself to tem- ]nyi-ary misconstruction and obloquy, in the faith of the ultimate triumph of the right. The ordinance was revoked by the new Minister in 1861, but the in- telligence could not reach the dull cold ear of death, or soothe the he^rt which had ceased to beat on the 21st of June. 1853. FROEBEL A^'D HIS EDUCATIONAL WORK. 117 LAST DAYS OF FROKBEL.* At Whitsuntide of 1852, Frcibel attended by invitation, the Teachers' Convention in Gotha. When he entered the hall in the midst of a dis- course, the whole assembly rose. At the end of the discourse the presi- dent of the meeting gave him a hearty welcome, followed by three cheers from the whole assembly. Frobel thanked them in a few simple words, and immediately taking up the subject in hand, which was " Instruction in the Natural Sciences," was listened to with profound attention. After the Convention, Frobel was made specially happy in the garden of a friend of nature in Gotha, where he examined almost every group of flowers, and happily and gratefully acknowledged all the good things that were offered him. In the kindergarten of Gotha he explained the intellectual signifi- cance of some of his occupation-materials. In the evening he took part in a reunion of the friends of his cause, although he was somewhat exhausted by the excitement of the day ; he spoke of the importance of the kindergarten for the female sex, and the duty of teachers to learn to understand it on its own theory, and prepare for its introduction into the schools. During his last illness (June 6), his repose and cheerfulness never left him for a moment, and he took part in and enjoyed everything, particu- larly when flowers were brought him. He once said on such an occa- sion, " I love flowers, men, children, God ! I love everything ! " The highest peace, the most cheerful resignation, were expressed, not only in his words, but in his face. The former anxious care to be active in his life-task resolved itself into trust in Providence, and his spirit looked joyfully in advance for the fulfillment of his life's idea. On the Sunday before his death, a favorite child came to bring him flowers ; he greeted her with unbounded delight. Although it was diffi- cult for him to lift his hand, he reached it out to her, and drew the child's little hand to his lips. The care of his flowers he recommended in these words : " Take care of my flowers and spare my weeds ; I have learned much from them." And in his very last hours he asked again for flowers. The window must be opened frequently, and he brightened up visibly at the aspect of nature, and often repeated the words, "pure, vigorous nature"; and at another time, " Always hold me dear," also, " I am not going away, I shall hover round in the midst of you." He spoke much about truth to Barop, who had come with the teacher Clemens, saying, among other things, " Remain true to God." He then asked them to read his godfather's letter, which in Thuringia, according to old custom, was given to the baptized child by the god- * Reminiscences of Friedrich Frobel, by Baroness von Marenholz-Bulow. Trans- lated by Mrs. Horace Mann. 359 pages. Boston : Lee & Shepard. Price, $1.50. 118 LAST DATS OF FEOEBEL. father, and contained the confession of Christian faith. In some places he exclaimed, " My credentials 1 my credentials, Barop ! " especially at the passage in the confession, "from this time forth our Savior will confide in thee in justice, grace, and mercy." For the third time he cried out aloud, " My credentials ! " at the words, " Let my son hear ! look upon and hold with immovable truth to thy soul's best friend, who is now thine." It was as if he would say, " To him have I been conse- crated from the beginning of my life, and I have never in my life neg- lected this bond." One could see how earnestly his Christianity dwelt within him, little as he was ordinarily accustomed to speak of jt. Thus he said in the Teachers' Convention at Rudolstadt : " I work that Christianity may become realized." Another time he said : "Who knows Christ? But I know him, and he knows me. I wUl what he wills. But we must hold to his testament, the promise of the Spirit." He repeatedly admon- ished the friends around him in Keilhau "to preserve unity, concord, and peace ; to lead a model life, as one family, in a united striving. Have trust in God ; be true to life ! " And ever and again he ex- pressed love and thanks to those around him. At midnight of the 21st of June the last moment approached. His eyes, which had been closed for rest, were partially open. He was in a sitting posture,* as if his wish to find his last rest sitting up was to be fulfilled. His breathing became shorter and shorter, till, at half-past six, he drew two long breaths, and all was still. So quietly, without a struggle and without a death-throe, ended a life which had at no moment served selfish interests, but was devoted wholly and completely to humanity, and to childhood in humanity. Middendorff added to his communication about Frobel's last mo- ments : " It involuntarily drew us who stood around the death-bed to our knees. We felt near the consecrated one. . Never was the awe of death so effaced to me. I had felt something similar to it at the death of a beloved child. Nature made her last struggling efforts, and then stood still untroubled. The mind, clear to the last, fervent, joyful and lov- ing, went home like a child to its pure source ; a life well-ordered in all directions, united within and without, was fulfilled and closed. What he loved so much, and so often gazed upon on a clear evening. — the going-down of the sun, — he himself represented. As the sun sinks to our eyes, so sinks to our eyes the light of his being; and as, at sun- set, I have no thought of its passing ■ away, but only of its receding from view, and thereby know the certainty of its return, so I felt heie in sorrow the certainty of the eternal duration of life. Yes, true is the promise, ' Death and lamentation shall be no more.' As he often, when plunged in meditation, penetrated to the light of a new thought, so his mind, freed from all limitations and absorbed in his inmost soul, in his own being and life, penetrated to a new existence, — to the light of another day. LAST DAYS OF FROEBEL. 119 "O, what stillness, what deep stillness, now! Consecration and holiness breathed around me. I felt joy in the midst of my pain ! He who stood so near to nature, and not only saw, contemplated, and in- vestigated it, but who was sunk in it as a child in purest love on the breast of a mother, — he had followed its teachings, trusted implicitly its laws and holy commands, had not been deceived in his hopes ; and how it had rewarded his love. In his illness, he had been as quiet and gentle as a lamb. He scarcely allowed an expression of pain to be heard ; no murmuring, no unwillingness, was perceived. True pon as he was to Nature, so was she his true mother, who took him softly and lovingly into her arms. *' But how could he have trusted her so well, if he had not clearly known who she was, — if he had not known who inspired her and pene- trated her, who governed her and wrote her laws, held her together in unity and self-consciousness, and kindled intelligence of her in tlie hu- man mind? How could he have been so serene, if he had not known himself to be a son of that Almighty One, — if he had not recognized and known the first of men who lived this unity of the Son with the Father, and had not felt himself one with him in all his striving? How could he have been so cheerful, if he had not carried within himself the knowledge that the consciousness of the Sonship of this only One would break forth by degrees in all sentient beings, and thus the con- scious unity and salvation of the minds for which he lived and strug- gled would surely and certainly appear? Therefore were his last words to his friends the prayer with which he closed his work upon earth, — ' God, Father, Son, and Holy Ghost. Amen.' "My soul was full of thanksgiving for the favor vouchsafed to me that I could close the eyes and bestow the last cares npon him to whom my dying father had commended me, and who had received me upon his breast. How grateful it was to my heart that it was my duty to be so near, at his last moment, in his last battle, to him whom I had ac- companied so long in life, with whom I had fought the battle, with whom I had, for a time, worked and suffered the heaviest trials I Chiefly was I thankful because I saw this life end as it had begun, — because I saw that he was what I had heard and believed him to be, and that he remained wholly in unison with himself; for to the last moment was revealed this repose springing from inward concord, — this clearness, truth, and unity. As he himself characterized it, 'One must himself perfect his life to a ripe fruit.* And so his life dropped as a ripe fruit from the tree of the life of humanity. So can and also will be fulfilled what he said : ' The age of ripeness is coming.' And again : * The fragrant flower has withered, but the fruit has set which will now ripen. Behold in it three in one, — the connection with the earlier time, the steady advance in the present, and the seed of the future.' " Of the burial-service Middendorff said : " The bier, adorned with garlands of flowers and a laurel crown made by the wife and pupils, 120 LAST DAYS OF FROEBEL. stood in the place -where lately Frbbel's bed had stood. All gathered round to look once more upon the beloved friend, and to gain an inef- faceable impression of the dear features. No trace of pain was to be found upon the countenance ; a holy earnestness and inward cheerful- ness shone forth from it. It was a look of introspection united with a light, blissful smile. The countenance showed an extraordinary ten- derness. The lips were slightly open, as if his mouth would pronounce the secret of the other world, — as if it said, 'I see in light what I have here seen darkly. Believe, follow the truth ; it leads to freedom, to bliss.' There is something striking in standing before such a counte- nance ; the soul becomes a prayer. We sank upon our knees. ' O might we all die like him, and rest in the grave with such a certainty 1 ' was the expression of one of the bystanders. The bier was carried out first through his work-room, where he had labored with unwearied in- dustry, often half through the night, for those near and far, under the impulse of the living idea in himself and his all-encompassing love for humanity ; past his beloved flowers, of which he took such care, and which, as if from gratitude, made plain to him the highest truths, like his yet dearer pupils, the children ; then through the sitting-room, ■where Pestalozzi seemed to call to him from his portrait, — ' Slowly, step by step, will be laid the sure foundation for the temple of pure human- ity,' — and the divine Madonna looked at him as with thanks that he had so deeply divined her heart's desire, and shaped it into deed and love for all ; and finally thi'ough the lecture-hall, where his scholars had listened with rapt attention to his words, which kindled them to their high calling, — where strangers from north and south had thronged to- gether, and from whence they had gone possessed by the might of truth. As one said, 'He does not preach like the learned, but his speech is powerful ; ' and many of these have widely borne the seed with his motto, ' Come, let us live with our children ! ' " The garlanded bier was set down in the spacious vestibule, to be strewn with wreaths and flowers by the numerous children. All, even the smallest, tried to show their love and gratitude to him once more. " But not only children came ; friends, known and unknown, pressed forward to show their esteem and reverence ; the teachers of the coun- try round about, one and all, kindergartners and those he had be- friended, came even from a great distance, invited by their own hearts to that solemn day. " The teachers united in a solemn song, in moving tones. Then the train was set in motion towards the churchyard of the village of Schweina. " A heavy shower fell while it was on the way, so that we were obliged to stand imder shelter for a long time. Parson Bucket re- marked, ' Even his last journey is through storm and tempest.' " When the procession was again set in motion, and passed over the bridge of the brook, Ernst Luther, a descendant of the great reformer, LAST DAYS OF FBOEBEL. 121 wliom Frobel and his brother had educated gratuitously in Keilhau, out of regard for his ancestor, said, ' Thirty-five years ago to-day he here led me by the hand through Schweina.' " The bells of the village church began to toll ; it was so earnest and sacred, as if these solemn peals called him to come up into the land of the blessed, and said with their voices that the night had passed, that we should hasten to follow his onward, conquering banner, and build the new world by means of the children I At the gate of the church- yard the teachers took the bier upon their shoulders, to carry it to the place prepared for it. " The newly laid out churchyard, situated outside the village upon an eminence, has a singularly beautiful location. The town lies half concealed in verdure, at the foot of a tower which rises up alone, like a finger-post pointing to heaven ; the whole glorious country lies spread out before the eye like a living picture. At the left, Altenstein, with the summer dwellings of the ducal family, stretches out its high hand with noble grace, as if protecting the young colony, showing by its act that it truly reverences the cross which is erected in memory of Boni- facius, the earliest promulgator of Christianity here. Directly in front stands the old castle of Liebenstein, whose name has a good sound near and far for its healing springs ; and on the right, shaded with lofty pop- lars and surrounded by green meadows and waving fields of grain, with the murmur of clear waters streaming from the rock of Altenstein, the quiet, lovely Marienthal, the seat of peace, of untiring work for the worthiness and the unity of life, consecrated by him who had now come to this spot for undisturbed rest and barmony. " Notwithstanding the storm and the rain which still continued, a large part of the community had assembled, and mothers and fathers, maidens and youths, and numerous children stood around the open grave. The venerable old burial-hymn, ' Jerusalem, thou lofty city,' was sung. Then Pastor Riicket began his address at the grave, and at that moment the rain ceased. The address began with the following words : — " ' Up to the lofty city of God soars the spirit of the man whom, we now, grieving, gaze after ; far above mountain and valley it soars over all and hastens from this world. Loved, honored, admired, praised by some, misunderstood, misapprehended, calumniated, condemned by others, he soars over all. The body which for seventy years served this rare spirit as a vigorous instrument, after the last spark of this richly active and remarkable life has gone out, shall now rest here in the churchyard of our community, which with pride counted the great man among its citizens ; in sight of this mountain which he not long ago climbed with eagerness, of this house of God where he celebrated with us piously the feast of Pentecost, of the lovely Marienthal where the noble old man had found in the evening of his days a peaceful refuge for his philanthropic activity. 122 LAST DATS OF FROEBEL. "'Blessed are the dead who die in the Lord from henceforth, saith the spirit, that they may rest from their labois ; and their works do follow them.' These words belong to our dead also Yes, this is one who died in the Lord. He has lived in the Lord, therefore he has also died in the Lord, sweetly and happily.' " The following passages from this discourse may be added here : — " The fame of knowledge was not his ambition. Glowing love for mankind, for the people, left him neither rest nor quiet. After he had offered his life for his native land in the wars of freedom, he turned with the same enthusiasm which surrenders and sacrifices for the high- est thought, to the aim of cultivating the people and youth, founded the celebrated institution at Keilhau among his native mountains, and talked, snd planted in the domain of men's hearts. And Vinw many brave men has he educated, who honor his memory and bless his name ! .... But then the thought came to him that the educators of men must imitate the creative and productive divinity in nature, which pre- figures and determines the future plant in the tenderest germ, shields and protects it carefully, out of the smallest and simplest, gradually and step by step develops the highest and the noblest ; that the body and soul of the tender little one shall be brought from the eai-lie.st child- hood under a more intelligent and more careful nurture tlian has been done heretofore, when children were sent to school already corrupted in body and soul ; and that, above all, this loving nurture should be trusted to the tender hand of women, whom the heavenly Father has created for this maternal calling; and to found such kindergartens, and to train such kindergartners, was henceforth his whole endeavor, from which he hoped with full confidence for the future salvation of human- ity, and the deliverance from manifold bodily and spiritual ills " To this high aim he now sacrificed all his powers, his property, his time, his repose. And perhaps children of his own were denied him by the decree of the Eternal Wisdom, that he might not be bound and limited by the cares for his own, that he might see and love in the poorest human child the child of God, and in the eye of every child might read the command, ' Thou shalt take care with all thy strength that the divine image be not defaced or distorted ; thou shalt, with all thy gifts, work and help that it be preserved and shaped more purely and beautifully, and that not the least of these be lost.' "For tbis he labored now; he moved about unceasingly teaching and working, imitating the Master, who had not where to lay his head ; gathered unto himself little children, and laid his hand upon their heads and said, * Suffer little children to come unto me, for of such is the kingdom of heaven.' For this he labored into the late evening of his life, and thereby the venerable old man himself was made young again amongst the playing children. For this he lived, for this he suf- fered, and regardless of the cry 'Hosanna,' or 'Crucify him,' he took his cross patiently, and bore it after his Master, and submitted trust- LAST DAYS OF FROEBEL. i23 ingly to abuse, calumny, and persecution, and Christ-like, pardoned the deluded ones who knew not what they did, since he knew well that the disciple was not above his Master. However, the mental excitement and effort which these struggles cost him contributed to break up the vitality of the vigorous old man So have we too, among whom he spent the last years of his life, learned to know and to love this guileless soul, this pure, childlike nature ; you will all bear witness, even if you did not bear his last pious words, this our dead died in the Lord, for he lived for the Lord. Henceforth, lack of understanding and misunderstanding will no more afflict thee. Just souls are in the hands of God, and no pains touch them. Thou hast now found peace, and heaven, which thou didst foreshadow among thy dear little ones in the vale of earth, now surrounds thee with its purified indwellers, whose image our innocent children are The fruits of thy toil wilt thou there enjoy ; from the abode of holy spirits thou wilt look with transport upon the plantation which thou hast founded upon earth. And here too shall thy works not perish. Works like these, instituted out of pure love to God and to man, without selfishness and ambition, are wrought in God and cannot perish. Thy work will be continued. If thou art now laid to rest, others will rise up and carry on the work. The seed which thou hast sown will, ripening in quiet, always bring richer and richer harvest for the salvation of mankind. May the earth which rises over thy grave, pious soul, rest lightly upon thee, and when moss and turf grow green, and flowers bloom over this heart which beat so warmly for its brothers ; when the little ones with whom thou didst play shall have grown gray, then will posterity bend its steps to this pleasant burial-spot, and crown it with garlands, and some strong man will tarry here thoughtfully, thanking and blessing thee, and the spirit within him will say, ' Here a great, noble heart rests from its work ; it has labored for the earliest childhood and for the latest future ; labored in hope, and its hope was not lost, — his works follow after him.' " I quote again from Middendorff's letter : " The teachers sang the song, ' Rest softly,' etc. Then the coflBn was lowered into the grave, which was filled with flowers. The heavens had withdrawn their dark curtain, and the sun shone down into the open grave. I stepped forward and said : ' If thy ear were not closed and thy mouth not dumb, thy lips would now open and thou wouldst exult over what thou hast heard, that that of which thou wert so cer- tain has already been fulfilled, even though in a small circle, — the acknowledgment of the truth proclaimed by thee. . . . Even thy last journey was through storm and tempest, as has been already said. Thou hast taken the storm and the heavy way for thy companions, and hast reminded us what journeys thou didst make through thy whole life in night and tempest, and what heavy ways thou hast traveled for us. Thou permittest us now to proclaim the not-to-be-forgotten truth 124 LAST DAYS OF FROEBEL. that he who is with thee, and will follow thee, must be ready to follow thee through storm and through toil and hardship ; must be ready for what thy life has taught, ^Through conflict to victory ! ' Thou hadst not merely the courage to pledge thy life in war, in peace also hast thou pledged it again and again, and joyfully hast sacrificed all to thy cause. " Thou didst often say, ' I like the storm ; it brings new life ; ' the lightning which on our way here flashed out of the cloud shall remind us that the darkness which still obscures the time can be rent and illuminated by a mighty ray ; it reminds us how thy words, thy in- spired action, feU like a fire-flame into the dark heart, summoned the sleeping conscience to awake, and made clear to itself the darkened mind. Does not one (the descendant of Luther) stand here by my side, who feels now in his heart, with burning thanks, how thou didst lead him many years ago in the path of a worthy existence ? Will not many of those present confess that thou hast thrown into their minds a kindling and illuminating torch, hast opened up to them new ways of culture, and hast furnished them the means of turning the kindled thought into act ? and for how many maidens in the night of an embit- tered existence hast thou lighted the star of a better hope, and cast the saving rope into the dangerous breakers and drawn them to the green shore of child-nurture ? . . . . " Thou callest upon us : ' You are my last witnesses, be my true dis- ciples and heralds ; be the true little band which shall always increase, and which the greater one shall join. Think of me and my words ; He who was with me will be with you, and will give you courage and strength as he has vouchsafed it to me, even to the grave Thank me by silence and action, by a deeply penetrating insight and a united creative practice.' .... There stand the mothers with their nurslings in their arms, their children by their sides, who bear witness that thou hast smoothed the way to the minds of men not only by the fire of thy speech, but also by the tones of song with which, like the delicious, caressing wind and the fresh morning breeze, thou hast imbued the hearts of the mothers. " Now a song I had written for the occasion was sung, which was followed by the sacred hymn, ' Rise again, thou shalt rise again.' The pastor said, as he threw a handful of earth into the grave, ' May God grant to each of us such an end as that of this just man.' " As the bystanders repeated this act, Luther cried with a loud and agitated voice into the grave, ' I thank thee, too.' " The scholars threw flowers upon flowers into the grave ; one took her bouquet from her breast and threw it in ; then I cast in my song also, as the last gift. " Mutually consoled, we separated quietly, and with inward confi- dence, to go in our various directions ; and over the minds and feelings of all spread the wings of an exalted peace." froebel and his educational work. 125 Contents op Lange's Collected Wbitings of Froebel. XOLUMB L—fmUrich Frcebel and his Development, 1-549 1. IntrodacUon by the Editor, 1 A. Chronological View of Principal Events in Life of Froebel, 1 B. Critical Momente in the Froebelian Circle, 4 C. Unity of Life, 14 D. Report on the Efforts of the Froebelian Circle, 23 2. Antoblographical Letters, 32-153 A. Letter to Dake of Meiningen, 32 B. Letter to K. Ch. Fr. Krause, ' 119 3. Froebel'B View of Pestalozzi, 154-213 4. An Appeal to our German People from Keilhau, 204 6. Principles, Aim, and Inner Life of the Universal German Educational Institu- tion at Eeilhaa, 242 6. Aphorisms, 1821, with Preface by the Editor, 7. Concerning the Universal German Educational Institution at Keilhau, 284 8. Upon German Education in general, and the Institution at Keilhau in particular, 291 Appendix of Krause's Judofmeut on the foregoing Essay, 311 9. Report on Institution at Keilhau, with Plan of Study, 322 10. The Christmas Festival at Keilhau, 1817, 364 11. Announcement of the People's Educational Institution at Helba, 399 12. Froebel at the grave of Wilhelm Carl, 1830, 418 13. Announcement of the Institution at Wartensee, 423 14. Ground Principles of the Education of Man, with a Study — Plan of the Insti- tution atWillisau, 428 15. Plan of Educational Institution for the Poor in the Canton of Berne, 456 16. Plan of the Elementary School and Educational Institution in the Orphan House in Burgdorf, 1833, 479 ArPEViDix.— Letter to Christopher Froebel in 1807, 524 VOLUME II., Fatit O^TE.— Education 0/ Man, and other Essays, 1-561 Education of Man. — I. Foundation op thb Whole 27 II. Man in Earliest Childhood, 27 m. Man as a Boy, 64 IV. Man as a Scholae, 89 1. Whatisa School? 89 2. What Should Schools Teach, 96 8. Chief Group of Subjects of Instruction, 98 A. Religion and Religious Instruction, 98 B. Natural Science, and Mathematics, 108 C. Language, and Instructions in Language, with Reading and Writ- ing in Connection, 158 D. Art, and Subjects of Art, 178 4. The Connection between Family and School, and the Subjects of Instmc- tion Conditioned upon it, 182 A. General Survey, 182 B. Special Survey of Single Subjects, 182 a. Culture of the Religious Sense, 190 b. Culture of the Body, 200 e. Contemplation of Nature, and the External World, 203 d. Union of Poetry and Song, 225 e. Exercises in Language, 233 /. Pictorial Dlustrations, . 245 g. Drawing in the Net, 250 h. Comprehension of Colors, 266 '•Play 275 k. Story -telling, 277 t. Short Journeys and Long Walks 282 126 FROEBEL'S COLLECTED WRITINGS. Education or MAif — Continued 283 m. Science of Numbers, 289 n. Science of FormB, 303 0. Exercises in Utterance, 307 p. Writing, 319 g. Reading, 328 r. Review and Close of the Whole 330 Appendix to Pabt Ose.— Treatises Upon Different Subjects, 337 I. Essays of the Yeab 1826, A. The Being and Destiny "f Man 340 B. Betrothal,... *. 341 C. Children's Plays and Festivals, 353 D. Walking and Riding, 358 E. The Little Child, or the Significance of its Various Activity, 384 F. Got of Child-life, 397 G. The Science of Forms and its Higher Significance 413 H. Instructions in Science of the Earth, with a Chart of Schale Valley, 462 U. The Yeab 1836 Reqctires the Renbwino of Life, 499-561 VOLUME II., Part Tyro.— Papers by Froebel in Different Periods, 1-583 1. The Double Glance, or a New Year's Meditation, 1 2. Plan of an Institution for the Fostering of Inventive Activity, 11 3. The Child's Life— The First Act of the Child, 18 4. The Ball the first Plaything of the Child, 25 5. The Seed com and the Child ; a Comparison, 47 6. Play and the Playing of the Child, 48 7. The Sphere and the Cube the Second Plaything, 58 8. First Oversight of Playing, 79 9. The Third Play and a Cradle Song, 82 10. Progressive Development of the Child, and Play Developing with the Ball, 110 11. The Fourth Play of the Child 127 12. Second Oversight of Play, 150 13. The Fifth Gift, 154 14. Movement Plays, 182 15. A Speech made before the Queen in 1839, , 223 16. Frederich Froebel, in Relation to the Efi'orts of the Time and its Demands,. .. 239 17. The Children's Garden in the Kindergarten, 271 18. How Lina Learns to Read and Write, 278 19. Spirit of the Developing Educating Human Culture, 320 20. The Child's Pleasure in Drawing, , 351 21. Directions for Paper-folding, , 371 22. The Laying of Strips, 389 23. The 22d of June, 1840, 415 24. Plan for the Founding of a Kindergarten, and Report upon the Expense, 456 25. Appeal for an Educational Union, with the Statutes of such a Union, 484 26. Plan of an Institution for Kindergartners, and Kindergarten Nurses, 493 27. The Intermediate School, 501 28. Speech at the Opening of the first BUrger Kindergarten in Hamburg, 523 29. The Play Festival at Altenstein, 627 ao. An Intelligible Brief Deecription of the Materials for Flay in the Kindergarten, 659 "WALTER'S FROEBELIAN LITERATURE. 127 PTTBLICATIONS RELATING TO FROEBEL AND HIS SYSTEM. "Under the title of " The Froebel Literature," Mr. Louis Walter, teacher in Dresden, has issued a pamphlet of 197 pages devoted to the publications which Froebel's system has called forth in elucidation, attack, or defence since Froebel issued the Sonntagsblatt in 1838. The author does not claim to have exhausted the list of contributions, although it is evident he must have had in the Baroness v. Marenholtz- Biilow the best informed individual and in her own library access to the best collection in the world relating to the subject. The title page of each publication is given in full, with brief notice of the contents which enables Mr. Walter to classify these contributions as follows : 1. Written from the medical standpoint to the number of 16; 2. Do. from the Philosophical, 17; 3. Do. from the Theological, 8; 4. Do. from the Scientific and Official, 8; 5. Do. from the Pedagogic, 138; 6. Do. from the Journalistic, 47; 7. Do. by women, or women associated with men, 46; making an aggregate of 335 treatises. Under the 5th classification is the names of 11 authors who are connected with gymnasiums or Real Schools; 17 with Teachers' Seminaries; 30 with the Common Schools; 6 with In- stitutions for feeble-minded children; and 24 with practical Kindergart- ners. In addition to this classification Mr. Walter brings together the authors who treat of (1) Froebel's Life and Educational Work; (2) Froebel's System of Education ; (3) the Kindergarten, its special aim and field ; (4) Manuals of Method; (5) Material and Equipment; (6) Music and Songs; (7) Relation of Kindergarten to the School, School-garden, and School Shop; (8) Special Features of the New Education; (9) Related subjects. Mr. Walter gives the address where the best Kindergarten Material and Manuals and Froebelian Literature can be had in diflferent countries. The last chapter is devoted to a list of authors arranged chronologically each year from 1838, the date of Froebel's first issue of the Sonntagsblatt. This list, with some modifications, or else a new bibliography, arranged alphabetically, we hope to print before we close our " Kindergarten and Child Culture Papers " in this Journal. The interest in Froebel's system, judged from the publication standpoint, does not die outf there being more issues (30) in 1879-80, than there was from 1838 to 1850. We give elsewhere a List of Publications relating to Froebel and the Kin- dergarten, which are accessible to American students, and hope hereafter, as is intimated above, to make that list complete up to the date of its publication. * Die Froebel Litebatur, Zusammen stellung, Inhalts-Angabe und Kritik derselben, von Louis Walter. Dresden: Verlag von Alwin fluhle, 1881, S. xi 4-197. Mr. Walter Is also the author of an interesting volume of 156 pages devoted to the Baroness von Marenholtz-BOlow's labors for the disBemination of Froebel's System of Education and Kindergarten. Oihei- worlis are announced by him: "On Diesferweg and Froebel" ; "Development of the Froebel Idea in different Coun- tries " ; " Froebel 8 Place iu the History of Pedagogy." NOM, Miss Josephine Jarvis^btChxc&go,'^ having lovinffly studied Proebel for nine years,'* has made an English version of the chapters in the second volume of his Collected Writings (Lange), which she will publish under the title of Froebel's Pedagogics, as soon as she receives subscriptions for 650 copies, at $1.50 per copy, — "the minimum num- ber necessary to meet the actual expense of an edition of 1,000 copies." We have signified our desire to possess copies, without knowing more of the merits of the translation than the reputation of the author in kindergarten work, and we hope there are others who will addrtiss a postal to the same purport to Miss Josephine Jaevis, U Fortieth Street, Chicago, Illinou. II. FROEBEL'S EDUCATIONAL SYSTEM. WILLIAM MIDDENDOEFP AND THE KINDERGARTEN. Compiled from Lange'a and Diesterweg's Notices in Pedagogisches Jahrbuchfor 1855. MEMOIR. William Middendokpf, who in all his working days was associated with Frederick Froebel, and whose name should not be divorced from his in any historical development of the Kindergarten, was born in Brechten on the 20th of September, 1793. He was the youngest child, and only son of six children born to a .peasant family in Westphalia. The local surroundings and family occupations were rural, and his were all the inherited traditions of genii and other inspirations of such locality and homes. These Genii brake the woodland paths / And speak the language of the trees ; Startle the birds in their green shades, And watch in meads the browzing kino. They know where broods the little birds That guard their fledglings till they fly ; They brown themselves in sun and storm, And know not human speech nor love.—Thieme. The father had an intense desire that his darling son should be qual- ified by education to rise into a position of higher culture and influence than his own, and to this end should become a preacher. He soon had caught the brightness and sweetness of the natural scenery round him as he tended the flocks on the hills and followed or watched the kine as they browzed, or wended to and from their wickered sheds night and morning, and all things conspired to develope the poetical side of his nature. In his solitary musings on the impressions which streamed in through eye and ear, "presentments of a life of his own, and of the connection and union of all tilings" were his, and in this ideal he ever afterwards acted. The fields and the uplands and hill-tops were always full of enjoyment to himself, and themes for the instruction of others. At the age often Middendorflf attended the gymnasium of Dortmund, and resided in the family of his uncle, the father of Arnold Barop. A school comrade of that period writes: "He took rank before all others, and was a model to us all — somewhat formal in manner, and terribly orderly and conscientious." His uncle had destined him for the university of Jena, but his inward promptings (his demon) insisted on his going to Berlin, and go he did, and there listened to the teach- ings of Fichte, Neander, and Schleiermaeker, and ever after held them all, and especially the latter, in the deepest reverence. In Berlin he was on very friendly terms with Justinus Kerner, and especially with Qustav Schwab. He was introduced by a countryman 132 WILLIAM MIDDBNDORFP. to the Counsellor of War, Hoffmeister, the father of Froebel's first wife. In the Spring of 1813 he joined Lutzow's free corps in Dresden. "While in service he became acquainted with Friederick Froebel and Heinrich Langethal — the former, " that strange owl, who goes his solitary way and reads something strange in stones and plants." He was in military service for a year. Then he was discharged with a reversionary into the Iron Cross and the place of an officer in case he should be called upon again. When Napoleon came back from Elba, he offered himself again to the corps, but was sent back to his studies by the influence of others. He returned to Berlin and became private teacher in the family of a banker. Langethal was at the same time private teacher in the family of the brother. Friederick Froebel received an appointment to the Mineralogical Museum of Berlin ; he was an assistant of the well-known mineralogist, Weiss. The friendly relation between the three men was a very intimate one. The plan of founding an educational institution had been discussed by them while in service. But on account of outside obstacles the thought still slum- bered in their minds. -Then Froebel suddenly vanished, as he had received a call to Stockholm as Professor of Mineralogy. His friends knew nothing of him for a long tihie. At last he wrote to them from Griesheim and asked them to come to him. Middendorff did this in 1817, against the wish and in spite of the weeping prayers of his parents, who at last, calming their feelings, dismissed him with these words: "Heaven has richly blessed us, one must be sacrificed to the Lord ! " Langethal soon followed the example of his friend, and thus began the life drama at Keilhau, which, in its trials, had a closer resemblance to a tragedy than a comedy. In 1826 Middendorff was married, and was blessed with seven chil- dren. His family life was simple and earnest, but cheerful. He exacted from all its members an unselfish devotion to the idea which the found- ers of the Universal German Educational Institution were striving to realize, and would tolerate nothing useless or self-indulgent, not even in the days and ^eeks of customary reckless recreation. To his wife he was always tender, frank, and considerate; and his children, vnth whom he was strict, but not harsh, he put into the path of free devel- opment, and they always regarded him with great filial piety and tender reverence. He was a friend and example of order and neatness ; and diligent and earnest, even to overworking, in his efforts to realize in the institution the idea, or disseminate a knowledge of its principles. He was intensely patriotic and national, and to the German Parlia- ment of 1848, he dedicated his treatise " The Kindergarten — the need of the present time;" and when the scarcely risen sun set again, he did not lose courage and hope. " Come let us live with our children," he cried so much the louder, with his friend Froebel, and when that friend departed this life, in 1852, he exclaimed, " Now I must be born ! " In the struggle precipitated by the Positivists, he declared himself WILLIAM MIDDENDORFF. I33 attached to that which, although unseen and spiritual, still was solid as the rock. " Faith sees the Infinite as the Being out of which every- thing tliat is, was, or will be, proceeds, even our own spirits. Faith is sensibility to the spirit of creation, and holds firmly and unchangeably to the Infinite, which is an immediate intuition, and manifests itself to the soul as the architype of the true, the right, and the good. Those who would imprison the spirit of Christianity in crystalized forms are the worst sort of Positivists." On the 26th of November, 1853, MiddendorflF stepped to the window to look out on the fields and woods, while a deep snow was falling — " Oh, how tlie snow enchants me ! " and then returned to the group to which he was giving religious instruction, which having finished, he stepped again to the window and said : " See how nature lets everything apparently decay and fall, and seem to die; but it hides the new buds and the new life for the coming spring, only we cannot see them. So it is with human life." He then played cheerfully with the children, and spoke in his last instruction on the immortality of the soul, sug- gested by his last look on the outer world. He died in the night of a nervous spasm, and his eyes were closed forever. Middendorflf 's motto was : Be transparent, true, and faithful. SERVICES FOR KINDERGARTEN. Middendorflfs great service to the Froebel idea, was in his unselfish devotion of himself for life to its realization in practical methods, and the magnetic infiuence of his oral exposition of its principles in private,, and occasionally in public. His few printed thoughts are not of much pedagogical value. In 1848 MiddendorflF published his " TTioughts on the Kindergarten,^'^ which he dedicated to the German Parliament (to which many appeals had gone up from the people for the improvement of the schools and of educational institutions generally), and to the beloved children, "the budding hope of the people" to whom his whole life has been devoted. To the inquiry "Why must the Kindergarten be?" MiddendorflF shows that parents generally have r.either the knowledge or the leisure to look after the early development of the cliild's physical and mental faculties, and which will grow in sonie direction in spite of the indiffer- ence, ignorance, or perversity of parents or nurses. Intelligent parents gladly welcome the trained kindergartner. To the inquiry, " How is a Kindergarten carried on," the author de- scribes briefly the whole process of child culture from the baby play and song to the later occupations and tlie Christmas festival. To the inquiry, "What does the Kindergarten efl'ect in the Child?'* Middendorff appeals to parents to come and see the real development of the whole being. Seeing is here — believing. In the last division of his little treatise, the author unfolds the necessity and ways of meeting the higher and deecper social and moral wants of 234 WILLIAM MIDDENDORFF. the poorer classes of society, in the right beginnings of child culture which the Kindergarten offers in its plays and occupations. First Beginning in Hamburg. Out of the stirring year, 1848, issued numerous projects of social and national reform, in some of which German women participated, particularly in the commercial city of Hamburg. Among other forms of this activity was the German Catholic Congregation, to which George Weigert was attached as the religious teacher. This society had turned its attention to Friederich Froebel, who had, in various ways, appealed to women as the true educators of the race, whose mission it was to clear the path for their own emancipation, and the elevatien of humanity by a new education which should take hold of the child in the cradle and in the age of impressions when impressions are deepest and most lasting. To Froebel an invitation was extended to spend six months in Hamburg to give lectures, found Kindergartens, and train suitable persons to conduct the same. In some complication of affairs growing out of the engagement with Carl Froebel, to establish a Girl's High School in Hamburg, Midden- dorff became personally known to the committee charged with that movement, and on the occasion of a visit to his daughter, in Septenibei", 1849, was invited to address the "Woman's Union, to which known friends, doubters, and opposers of the new education were invited. When he closed his address all present were fused by his fervid elo- quence, and — borne on the stream of his flowing narrative of work done at Keilhau, and clear statement of principles and glowing anticipations of good fi'om the general and earnest enlistment of women in the work of their own emancipation, the ennobling of the family state, and the elevation of humanity — were united in a common feeling and pur- pose. On the evening of the 23d following Middendorff spoke again for two hours on the same themes to a numerous audience, with the same results, and when Froebel came, the way was open for him to begin his work. If the immediate results in founding Kindergartens were not as marked as was anticipated by some of the original movers, this may be attributed partly to the absorption of a portion of the interest awakened by Middendorf which was personal to himself, by the Girl's High School movement; and partly to the delays in the growth of any institution, which depends on the cooperation of many independent agencies acting from different standpoints, and to the conflicting claims of other interests. One thing is certain, out of this purely accidental but always identically harmonious aimed labor of the two friends, the Kindergarten work was begun in Hamburg, and out of that beginning in 1849 has flowed a mighty stream of influence which has disseminated the Froebel idea t© many countries. william middendorff. 135 Characteristic Traits. By Dr. Diesterweg. The loved and lost we see no more, But their glorious light we see, Shining from the other shore. With these words of Goethe* I introduce the following tribute to the characteristic traits of William Middendorff. Whoever knew him will not soon forget him ; whoever came into his sphere was illuminated by the warmth and light which radiated from him; from many the benign influence has not yet passed away. To speak figuratively, he was a star that gratefully absorbed into itself the light of other stars ; but he shone also with his own radiance. A monument to Friedrich Froebel has been placed upon his grave, on the hill above Marienthal, in the beautiful church-yard that stands over the little city of Schweina, where the view of the castle of Altenstein and the ruins of Liebenstein enchants the traveler. The monument represents the cube, cyUnder, and ball, the ground symbol of Froebel's intuition — and is hewn out of sandstone. A per- ishable monument ! still it was excellently devised by Middendorff. But what need have men of the inner being of outward tokens of honor during their life time, or outward monuments after their death ? Monuments are erected to the heroes of war ; these men have made themselves an imperishable monument — if anything is imperishable in tliis world — in the hearts of men. The divine discovery of Johann Guttenberg offers itself as a fitting means of relating to their co- temporaries and successors the life of these noble friends of men. These words have this aim. May they find a receptive ear and heart ! As, according to Niebuhr's remarks, at the death of an honorable man in old Rome, there was not a sorrowful voice, but all took pains to honor his memory and to make known to a wide circle his services to his country, and to life, together with his other virtues, so we, late minstrels of the dead (Epigoni), will do with our dead. An hon- orable remembrance is all we have to offer them. If further we are excited to emulate them, their influence extends beyond the limits of their immediate activity. I have nothing to say of Middendorff but what is good and noble. Indifferent readers might suspect that I am covering up or concealing weaknesses, exaggerating virtues, and, instead of giving historical traits, delivering a panegyric. It is not so ; the truth is everything with me, but I have perceived nothing blameworthy in Middendorff. I do not think it useful to create ♦Was vergangen, kehrt nicht wieder ; Doch wae leuchtend ging hernieder, Leuchtet lange noch z[iriick..—Gdthe. Diesterweg's PMagogisches Jahrbuch for 1855. 136 WILLIAM MIDDBNDORPF. beings of ideal perfection at the expense of truth ; but it would be still more objectionable to hunt up weaknesses, if they did not pre- sent themselves. Of Middendorff it may truly be said, " He was a man whose steps may be followed, but whose place no man can fill." Lange, in his representation, does not disclaim the sentiment of a son-in-law, or daughter's husband, but far from falling into the rhe- torical tone of the flatterer, he speaks only the language of a grate- ful son and of just veneration for a man who was not only his father, but his friend and teacher. Indeed, I am sure that he is so careful not to excite the opinion that he has said too much, that he holds back some information which I, who was not connected with Middendorff by the ties of relationship, but only (only, do I say ?) of spiritual friendship, have undertaken to add. I speak, of course, not in the name of another, but in my own name. But before I proceed I must, for the right estimate of the stand- point which I take in such a representation of another's life, repeat a saying of Wieland's, which he puts into the mouth of Diogenes of Synope: "A small mind perceives, in the narrow circle which he describes with his nose, the smallest motes. Hence the readiness with which Lilliputian minds ai'e so much too active in perceiving little spots or little faults, while they are incapable of being touched by the beauty of d whole character. They do not consider that this sharp-sigh tedness for trifles is nothing but a childish trait, and that through their own inability to take in a whole and judge it correctly, they lack one of the most essential advantages by which a man may be discriminated from a creature in leading-strings." Unquestionably Froebel and Middendorff were both interesting men and belonged to this category. Both friends, whose friendship began in Liizow's free corps and lasted through life, were pupils, esteemed dis- cij)les of Pestalozzi ; Froebel was his immediate pupil. *' The disciple is not above the master," but the disciple works in the spirit of the master, else he does not deserve that title of honor. Rich is the creative power of the master of the world, but yet it seems, at times, that this power — ceases to act, who could think that ! — manifests itself in other ways. Thus the spirit of Pestalozzi seems to vanish. Perhaps the men named were the last of his true pupils. That would be a matter of regret, for the spirit of Pestalozzi was the spirit of true ideality, and yet (or was it just for that reason) the spirit of true love for the people, the lowly-bom and the poor, the spirit of true pedagogj'. "We have, as teachers, the same right as other professions. There- fore, in modesty, we call the last century pedagogically the century of Pestalozzi, just as men in general speak of the century of Alex- WILLIAM MIDDBNDORFF. 13^; ander, of Charles the Great, of Frederick II. With Pestalozzi, our two friends shared a similar fate, poverty and misunderstanding. Like him, they fought all their lives with the want of sufficient means, and their purest purposes were not spared mistrust and con- tempt. Whoever is desirous of material treasures must not choose the path of the teacher, who verifies the proverb uttered three thou- sand years ago, " Whoever will teach much, must suffer much." The pedagogue must not expect to see outward results, but so much more is it our duty to acknowledge what the true pedagogue has done, to support him with all our power, and be true to his memory in our hearts. Good men often shake off the grateful memory of men to whom they owe their knowledge and insight. In the spring of 1849 I met with Froebel ; in the autumn of the same year with Middendorff. The meeting with these two closely- united friends I look upon as the last happy event of my teaching life. Like the dew-drops, in every one of which the corporeal eye of creation, the sun, mirrors itself, but each in its own way : so the spirit of true pedagogy mirrored itself in those men, characteristically in each (which is a token of their truth to nature). I have spoken of Froebel in the " Pedagogic year-book for 1851,'' and often in the " Rhein. Blatter ; " but one cannot speak of Mid- dendorff without speaking of Froebel; they belong together. But here Middendorff stands in the foreground. What I have to say of him I write with renewed deep sorrow over the unexpected loss of that man, I say, although the word is not satisfactory ; but alas ! I know of no word that will distinctly express the nature of Middendorff's being. There is no word, as there are no symbols for a richly-endowed nature, a manifoldly-culti- vated personality, for a uniform combination of rare excellences. These peculiarities present themselves to every one who knew Mid- dendorff. I shall be accused of extravagance in what I shall say further of him, but it cannot be helped. I must rather add that my words do not satisfy me ; the impression I carry away of him is not to be represented in words, so I do not think of trying for any ; I write unsatisfactory, cold words of the man in whom has appeared to me thus far the noblest, most rounded personality that I have had the happiness of beholding. Middendorff was a God-like man. If one wishes to praise a teacher, one ascribes these and those qualities to him, and rejoices in them ; and if one is praising a man, one will say that he is sincere and true, upright and without blemish, friendly and grateful, and worthy of recognition, but, thank God, not of uncommon virtue; but these and those qualities do not reach 1381 WILLIAM MIDDENDOEFF. Middendorff. He stood outside the limits of every thing common. He moved like an ordinary man among ordinary men ; there was nothing peculiar in his manners, but what and how he was was a thing of the rarest kind. Of the men I have known in life I can place no one by the side of him in respect to the oneness and indi- vidually-personal perfection of his nature. Whoever reads this will think of Friedrich Froebel, and will perhaps remember what I have said of him. I remember how Middendorff looked up to him as already far superior to himself, and it is true he was more rich in invention, more creative, more full of genius, than Middendorff; but in respect to the oneness of the whole being, to visible, palpable, obvious ingenuousness and devotion, and purity of heart and soul, I place no one over — I place no one near Middendorff. He is gone, he is lost to us ; and therefore I can speak of him, What would the man say, if here, in his — what shall I say ? in his innocence, in his simplicity, in his maiden modesty, if he should know that any one spoke of him thus ? He would glow with anger. as I have seen him do, but the capacity for that I look upon in him as a high one ; he was a child, and again no child ; a child in inno- cence and purity of heart, but also a man, and at the right time a most commanding and powerful man. But I cannot go on thus ; I must control myself; I must relate individual traits. There is a science of physiognomy ; one can recognize the essen- tial nature of a man in the build of his body, in his walk, his atti- tudes, in the shape of his head, in his mien — I mean the incommun- icable, direct conception of the most profound and peculiar quality of a man. The capacity for it is peculiar only to men of simple and sincere nature ; only in a pure mirror can be seen a true picture of objects. So-called connoisseurs of men, the worldly-wise men, are far removed from it. They deceive themselves in all the routine of which they boast ; they have no touchstone for simple, grand natures. By such natures we can test, exalt, and strengthen the degree which we have had the happiness to possess of this touchstone of character. Middendorff was peculiarly fitted for this. His appear- ance wholly and purely proclaimed his nature, the very essence of the man. Other men, too, have an expression of spirituality and sensibility in their countenances. Middendorff's face was transfig- ured. In his eye there lay something which it is difficult to describe ; H can only be indicated when I say there was something supernatural in it. In his daughter's eye it is found again. If one should say a large, beaming eye, of spiritual yet mild brilliancy, expressive of greatness of soul, showing love, devotion, friendship, and trust, all WILLIAM MIDDENDORFF. I39 that is true of him, but still it does not indicate the peculiar quality. We come nearer to it if we remember a wide-open pupil yielding itself to a pure conception of the world, and of men — who has seen it otherwise — when he thinks of and portrays to himself the spirit- uality of expression in jjictures of prophets and seers, as — to mention no higher example — Socrates must have looked when he received communications from his demon. That Middendorff, like every man penetrated with deep sensibility to the inner meaning of things, and to the understanding of himself and the recognition of the duties of life obligatory upon him, had his demon, and received communications from it and followed its warnings, was certain. Lange has expressed it already. It was seen in the mirror of his eye ; the intrinsic tone of his voice pro- claimed it to every one wlio had the ear for it ; the confessions which his intimate friends received from him in confidential conversation confirmed it (his voice then took a peculiar elevated tone, and yet a lower key) ; and this peculiarity of the man drew children to him with an indescribable charm, and fettered them to his side. He was, like Salzmann, certain of the immediate guiding of a power, not incompatible with freedom, swaying the fate of the world at large and the affairs of individual men, and this inward assurance, confirmed by the whole course of his life and experience, gave him, when he became aware of it, what was expected of him in emergen- cies, self-command, self-conquest, and self-sacrifice, of which latter he was capable in the highest degree, as Lange gives us proof. Among a thousand men, how many are there who can conceive of a man, destitute of favorable circumstances, working for years in a remote region, resolved upon a kind of vagabond life, subjected to privations of all kinds, and in spite of all this, and of misconception and unkind judgments, greeting every day's work joyfully? So felt, thought, and acted Middendorff. He lived in the world among men as they are, but he did not belong to the world ; he scarcely knew it ; yet he was a man who understood human existence, the inmost soul of the whole race and of individuals, as few do. It was possible to overlook him, but who- ever fince knew him could never forget him. It is conceivable also because of that quality which can be designated as deep inwardness of mind and sensibility, that he was specially attracted by little children and by womanly natures, and also attracted them. Com- pared with men he had a soft, tender, womanly nature. The im- pression he made immediately was such that one felt it to be impos- sible in his presence to undertake or to say anything coarse and 2 40 WILLIAM MIDDENDORFF. uncouth, impure or vulgar. His mere presence ennobled and brougtit out the best in every one. In spite of this purity and loftiness, no one felt oppressed or constrained, but freed and exalted. And in spite of this effect of the nature born with him, he was a man, a whole man, adorned with all manly attributes, with delight in all that was powerful and virtuous, with energy of character and with the strongest feelings, full of earnestness and anger against every thing mean and unworthy. Endowed with the deepest sensibility, he was anything but what is usually called in these effeminate times, in the favorite sense of the word, a " charming man." Ho was much too conscientious and earnest for that, and the lofty, inspiring idea of his life left no room for weak sentimentality. He made the most earnest demands of those around him as well as of himself. A man was put into that tenderly-built body ; he had steeled himself early, he had fought at twenty in Lutzow's corps, and I learned to know him in the last five years as a robust mountain-traveler in the Thiiringian forests. He knew nothing of what men think belongs to advanced years, or what self-indulgence means. This man had to be seen among the girls or young ladies who were in Froebel's institute at Marienthal, near Liebenstein, which he carried on after Froebel's ,death ; had to be seen in the kindergarten at Liebenstein, to form a conception of the attachment not only of the young ladies, but of the smallest children for him. Froebel sur- passed him in the conceptions of his genius, but he surpasi^ed Froebel in clearness and direct fruitfulness of representation. The purity of mind, the enthusiasm for the idea which had captivated them, their magic powers over receptive feelings, they shared in common. Two hearts and one thought, two souls and one feeling, Orestes and Pylades, Castor and Pollux, Damon and Pythias, Froebel and Mid- dendorff ! Froebel knew what he had in MiddendorflP, and Midden- dorff, when old, still looked with wondering eyes up to Fi'oebel. Both were united by their ideal of education, both were nourished and greatly attracted by the spirit of Pestalozzi, whom they honored as long as they lived, without losing their own individuality. The world of to-day has lost the power of comprehending this. The leaders and guides of pedagogy have missed it all or they have never learnt to know it. They have had no idea of its existence or its possibility, and the endless majority of teachers know nothing of it. We ask, with the deepest pain, where has the enthusiasm for youth and the public weal gone ? Is there not discontent, despond- ency, mediocrity, in its place ? Does anything else proceed from those who consider themselves the reformers of the time, and declare themselves such, but wordy exhortations for a faith that does WILLIAM MIDDJSNDOKFF 141 not rouse the spiritual powers of man, but paralyzes them ? And do they not seek for the salvation of the teachers and their pupils in stupefying morning and evening devotions, in liturgies and songs, and in other measures for the limiting of knowledge and ability ? How it is amongst the teachers of the present time, as to the enthusiasm, the aspiring, cheerful feeling, the inner enjoyment of their calling, which without these is a badly-rewarded, hirehng ser- vice ; how it is as to the pleasure with which they once looked for- ward to the teachers' conventions : he knows who can compare past times and the present. He also knows what spirit predominated among the young people who devoted themselves to the teachers' calling in the institutions which were animated by the youth-restor- ing Pestalozzian spirit ; and what is it now ? The whole world knows that men of the purest enthusiasm, of the noblest strivings, of the highest capacity of self sacrifice — that Friedrich Froebel, and all who adhered to him, especially Middendorff, were suspected of communism, of socialism, of atheism and free-thinking ! Was Middendorff also a Christian ? I hold it to be a disgrace, after such a man was found by expe- rience to be what he was, that such a question should arise. It pro- ceeds from those who seek for the essence of Christianity in externals, and who never have shared its spirit. Such low fellows, who now have an opportunity to show themselves off, but who are an abomi- nation to the more profound and modest men who dislike to cast the pearls of their souls before swine and to boast of their faith, — deserve no answer. It has, therefore, struck me unpleasantly that even Lange notices the question and answers it. I know very well whence the impulse came ; it lies very near ; but in spite of that we must not gratify the men of words and show, by recognizing the title to such a questioning. For what but vanity, spiritual pride, spite for the popularity of their superiors, what else but absorption in palpable externals and immeasurable arrogance in spite of their humble words, lies at the bottom of it ? Middendorff a Christian ? That St. John's-soul a Christian ? Thus ask those who presume to measure with their wooden rule the infinite diversity of minds ? Would these men, who think themselves alone good and pious — (the question is allowable in view of the well-known deeds of our day), would they have found Christ himself correct according to their system ? Hardly ; he was in his time declared by the scribes and creed-followers to be an adversary and a heretic. A feehng seizes me of mixed disgust and abhorrence when I think that such presumption even enters into the teachers' institutes, where it is looked upon as faith well pleasing to God, and is filtered into the 142 WILLIAM MIDDENDORFP. young teachers. A dark, mournful spirit rests upon the schools. A fearful mistrust spreads over the teachers; fear arises when a hundred or fifty of them meet together without superintendence ; they have ceased "to believe in love and faith " ; even a Midden- dorff could not escape their suspicion, that pure, white human soul, in which, with a microscope, no trace of falsehood and deception could be discovered, who fought in youth for German life, German freedom and unity, and devoted his whole existence to the development and education of German youth ! What could this man as well as Froebel not have done for the creation of the most intrinsic devotion and love to our children, those rarest qualities in teachers, and of the equally rare knowledge of children, so peculiar to them, if the powers and qualities of these men, who do not return to us — foe when will another Pestalozzian time come ? — if they had been used in suitable places ? In vain they made life-long exertions to find a quite suitable and permanent asylum and sufficient means for their object, which was a pedagogic, central point, unifying and acting in all directions ; they tried in foreign lands, and even there did not find the right place ; the time was past when thousands flocked to Basedow, and a noble prince received him ; " faith in love and truth " had vanished, and even the hope of seeing a living central institution for the intellectual culture of the nation blooming out at "Weimar in Goethe's centennial jubilee, proved to be a delusion. They laughed at and derided our plan in Berlin as well as in Weimar, and what have they now reached ? One statue more instead of a living institution, an increase of the dead treasures of their closed museum, instead of a factor taking hold of the present time. Froebel mourned over it on his death-bed, and MiddendorfF was grieved. I pass over a great deal, and mention but one thing more. Mid- dendorfF was no writer ; writing was disagreeable to him ; the rush of his thoughts hindered a systematic arrangement of them ; yet he wrote as he could not help doing, intellectually and subjectively ; but his greatest power was not in that, it was shown in the living word ; he was an orator. He showed that in Hamburg, in Liebenstein, and in Salzungen. In the autumn of 1850 the friends of Froebel held a meeting in the Liebenstein * Kurhause,' at the well-known ' Erdfalle.' On the second day was the exhibition of the fruiis of the efforts made for little children in the spirit of Froebel. The teachers told this, the kindergartners that. At last came Middendorff, who told what he had observed in the children of the peasantry and their mothers in the region around Keilhau, which he was in the habit of visiting on Sundays. It went home to all hearts. WILLIAM MIDDENDORFP. 143 And how he spoke in May, 1853, at Salzungen, at the fifth Gen- eral Assembly of German teachers ! I do not deny that there as well as here I trembled with joyful exultation. This extraordinary effect of the appearance of Middendorff I ascribe essentially to his sincerity. Everything was in harmony in him, bodily as well as spiritually. One always knew where to find him. A true, beautiful, beneficent image of him is left to his friends. He stands before their recollection in the perfected harmony of his being. In a man of this kind one cannot ask after this or that peculiarity, whether he possessed this or that quality ; that would be impertinent. He was not this or that ; he did not make himself this or that ; he was a unit, and therefore he was everything that he had the capacity of being. The pygmies and Lilliputians of the pedagogues of to-day wish to produce this and that; they wish to make everything, to make, that is to pervert and train, but they produce nothing, because they will not let nature, which is God-given, exist or grow. How far removed wert thou, noble friend, from this old-new " wisdom !" "Who of those present at the Liebenstein meeting will not remember how he dealt with the man who wanted to subordinate everything to the model of " Christian orthodoxy," and was not willing to recognize the right of each individual to his own natural development. He, the single-minded, harmoniously-cultivated, perfect man of his kind, felt, as others did, a detestation of the thought of what must yet become of the world which he found so glorious and beauti- ful in the manifoldness of its manifestations, if the priests of all sects should succeed, like shepherds, in casting the net of their faith, as the only saving one, over the heads of their flocks ! At this idea a terror seized the pure soul which knew so well what it owed to a natui'al, free development. How this man clung to nature, how he worshiped the hand of the Creator, when he dwelt upon the laws of man's nature ! His soul soared into God's free heaven, where he felt at home; there he was nearer to his God, there he understood the decrees of his genius. It moves me when I think of the expression of his face, the glory of his eyes, and the tone of his voice, as he poured out his inmost soul upon the top of the island mountain ! He was convinced of the immortal existence of the human soul, and of its progressive development as the source of blessedness. Where does that pure, transfigured human soul linger now ? To see and enjoy thee again, released from earthly tribulations, would alone be a heaven, an unspeakable rapture ! Have pia anima, anima Candida, Never-to-be-forgotten friend I 144 DIESTERWEQ AND FKOEBEL. It was by such hearty characterizations as tlus of Middendorff, and his earlier notices of Froebel and the Kindergarten in the Rheinische Blatter, and Padagogishes Jahrbuch, as soon as he became thoroughly acquainted with them, that Diesterweg rendered such essential service to the New Education. Until its principles and methods, its founder and co-laborers were recognized by Diesterweg, the ablest champion of a broad liberal elementary education for the whole people, and whose voice was potential in spite of the disfavor of the court, the Kinder- garten had not arrested the attention of pedagogical circles in Germany. Diesterweg, though late in the field, was the first to proclaim the full significance of play, Froebel's addition to pedagogical science, as the firm foundation in the child's earliest instruction, for his own Prussian- Pestalozzian system of intuitional teaching.* The Baroness Marenholtz Billow, in all her great and varied and ubiquitous service to the Frobe- lian cause, never did a better day's work than when she persuaded the great master, in spite of his prejudices " against all fooling in educational matters," to go and listen and see what Froebel had to say and do, on the 15th of July, 1849, in his little modest farm house in Liebenstein. He went, was charmed, and was satisfied that Froebel " had actually some- thing of a seer and looked into the inmost nature of the child as no one else had done." From that day he went every day for weeks after- wards, with the " Mother and Cosset Songs " under his arm, to learn more of the Kindergarten and converse with Froebel. Both Di«sterweg and Froebel were pupils of Pestalozzi, and both found, in the instinctive activity of the child, the impulse and method of mental development; but Froebel was the first to formulate these methods in the Nursery and Kindergarten for the full development of the entire human being, and furnish the basis of the intuitional instruc- tion which Pestalozzi was the first to discover, and Diesterweg and other Directors of Teachers' Seminaries to develop into a system of elementary education for the people. The Prussian-Pestalozzian system of elementary instruction, as de- scribed by Stowe, Bache and Mann, before the restrictions of the " Regulativ " of 1854 were applied to the currriculum and methods of the Primary Teachers' Seminaries, was the creation of such Directors of Seminaries as Hamisch, Diesterweg, and others of the Pestalozzian school. In the original issue of the Wegweisser we find no special recognition of the Kindergarten. In the latest edition, there is a very valuable paper on both Froebel and the Kindergarten by Ferdinand Winthur.f * For the contentB of this model Guide for German teacherg, see Barnard's Jonmal of Education, vol. vii, p. 312. In the same connection will be found a brief memoir of this great teacher and popular educator., Diesterweg' s chapter in edition of 1854, on Intui- tional and Speaking Exercises, as published in same Journal (Vol xii, p. 411-430), and Dr. Busse's article in edition of 1876, republished in Vol. xxx, p. 417-450, are in the true spirit and method of Froebel applied to children after leaving the Kindergarten. t This paper will be found in Barnard's Journal xxxi, p. 82-90. FRIEDRICH ADOLF WILHELM DIESTERWEG. Fkiedrich Adolf Wilhelm Diestebweg, an eminent educator, and efficient promoter of the general principles of Pestalozzi, was born in the then Rhine provinces of Prussia, at Seigen, in Nassau, October 29th, 1790. His first education was received at the Latin school of his native place. Thence he went to the univers- ity of Herborn, intending to devote himself to the study of theol- ogy ; but his academic course was finished at Tubingen. At first a private tutor in Manheim, he was afterward second teacher in the secondary school at Worms ; and in 1811 entered the model school at Frankfort-on-the-Mayne, where his holy zeal accomplished much good. Having become known as a scientifically-trained and well- practiced educator, he was chosen second rector of the Latin school at Elberfeld. From this place he was called, in 1820, to be director of the teachers' seminary at Meurs. In this place he labored with intelligence, energy, and singleness of purpose, during a series of years, for the cause of elementary instruction, which, under the French domination, had been entirely neglected on the Rhine. He was, moreover, very useful as a writer— discussing more particularly mathematics and the German language. In 1827, he commenced publishing (by Schwerz, in Schwelin,) the " Rhenish Gazette of Education and Instruction " {Rheinische Blatter fur Erziehung und Unterricht,) with especial reference to the common schools. The first volume contained much valuable matter, much condensed ; and the succeeding volumes (to 1859,) have not fallen beneath it in excel- lence. Through this periodical, the educationists of the Rhine prov- inces were afforded a good opportunity for discussing pedagogical subjects ; upon which much interest was then beginning to appear. In 1833, Diesterweg was appointed director of the royal seminary for city teachers, at Berlin. Here he labored for eighteen years ; his eyes fixed fast and unvarying upon his object — exposing all sorts of pedagogical faults and weaknesses, seeking in every way to raise the position of teachers, and pursuing his work without any fear of men. The meetings of the Pedagogical Society of Berlin were set on foot by him. In 1849, his connection with the seminary was terminated by the government, in consequence of his popular sympathies mi 10 146 FRIEDRICH ADOLF WILHELM DIESTERWEG. 1848. During this period, Diesterweg ipuhMshed " Autobioffraphies of Distinguished Educators,'" " Education of the Lower Classes,^^ " Degeneracy of our Universities^'' " Education for Patriotism, c&c," " Controversial Inquiries on Educational Subjects.'^ In these writ- ings, Diesterweg appears as a man of progress ; as one who seeks to reconcile the existing discrepancy between actual life and learning ; between living practice and dead scholastic knowledge ; between civilization and learning. The works contain true and striking thoughts. In his zeal for good objects, the author sometimes over- passed the bounds of moderation, and assailed the objects of his opposition with too much severity. His " Pedagogical Travels through the Danish Territories,''^ [Pad- agogische Reise Nachden Ddnischen Staaten,) 1836, involved him iu an active controversy with several Danish literati, and especially with Zerrenner, of Magdeburg. Diesterweg's objections to the monitorial system of instruction, which prevails in the schools of Denmark, are : — That it modifies, decreases, or destroys the teacher's influence upon his scholars ; that it is disadvantageous to their outward and inward intercourse ; reduces to a minimum the precious period of close intercourse between the ripe man and the future men ; and sinks the school, in by far the majority of cases, into a mere mindless mechanism, by which the children, it is true, acquire facility in reading and writing, and in a manner outwardly vivid and active, but in reality altogether unintelligent ; but become intellectually active not at all. That Diesterweg is in the right in this matter, is daily more extensively believed. In 1846, Dr. Diesterweg took an early and influential part in the celebration by German teachers of the centennial birthday of Pes- talozzi, and in founding an institution for orphans, as a living and appropriate monument to the great regenerator of modern popular education. His " Year Book^'' or " Almanac,^'' (Jahrbach,) which commenced in 1851, is a valuable contribution to the current discussion of educa- tional topics, and to the history of the literature and biography of education. Diesterweg's " Guide for German Teachers,''^ ( Wegweiser fur Deutscher Schrer,) of which a third enlarged and improved edition appeared in 1854, in two large volumes, is one of the best existing manuals for teachers, of both elementary and high schools, and has been made a text-book in several teachers' seminaries. We give the contents of this valuable " Guide," DIESTERWEG'S WEGWEISER. l^fj DiESTERWEG, F. A. W., " Guide for German Teachers," Wegweiser fwr Deutacher Schrer. 2 vols. pp. 675 and 700. CONTENTS. VOL. I. Paob Introdcction T. 1. Dedication to F. Frbbel III. 2. Preface to Third and Fourth editions VII. 3. From the address to Denzel, in the Second edition XIV. 4. From Preface to First edition XIX. 5. From Preface to Second edition XXIV. 6. Conclusion XXXII. PART I. GENERAL VIEWS. I. Purpose and problem of human life, and the teacher's life 3 II. VVliat are the conditions of success in endeavoring to secure, by means of books, intellect- ual culture, insight, and knowledge 19 III. Introduction to the study of elements of pedagogy, didactics and methodology 49 1. To whom these studies are especially recommended, and to whom not 49 2. What has hitherto been accomplished in such books as have been devoted to peda- gogy, didactics, and methodology in general, or with special reference to the element- ary ichools 52 3. The chief constituents of the ideas of pedagogy, didactics, and methodology 58 4. The best works on the elements of pedagogy, didactics, and methodology 60 (1.) On education (and instruction,) generally 62 (2.) On the whole subject of school education and instruction 82 (3.) On school discipline 99 (4.) Psychology and logic 104 (.5.) Training of teachers (seminaries) 107 (6.) Education of girls Ill (7.) Relations of school to state and church 119 (8.) School inspection OOO (9.) Social pedagogy, (social reforms, temperance, &c.) 124 (10.) Infant schools 129 (11.) Mutual system of school organization 135 (12.) Higher burgher schools 138 (13.) Bibliography 143 (14.) Works which include biographies 145 (15.) Popular writings 151 (16.) School laws 156 (17.) School reform 157 (18.) School organization in 1848 162 (19.) Periodicals 168 IV. Human faculties, and didactics 172 1. Rules for instruction, as to the scholar (the subject) 204 2. Rules as to what is taught (the object) 254 3. Rules as to external relations 268 4. Rules as to the teacher 278 PART II. SPEOIAL DEPAKTMENTa. I. Intuitional instruction; exercises in language 302 II. Religious instruction ; by K. Bormann, of Berlin 332 nr. Rending 381 IV. German language 4.56 V. Writing; by Prof Dr. Miidler, and C. Reinbott, of Berlin 532 VI. Singing ; by Hentschel, of Weissenfels -. 5.59 VII. Drawing; by Heutschel 672 VOL. II. Vni. Geograpliy ; by K. Bormann 3 IX. History; by W. Prange, of Bunzlau ._. 40 X. Natural History ; by A. Liiben, of Merseburg ' 251 XI. Naiural Science, mathematical geography, astronomy 306 XII. Arithmetic 343 XIII. Geometry 395 XIV. French; by Dr. Knebel, of (Koln) Cologne 4^6 XV. English; by Dr. Schmitz, of Berlin 477 XVI. Genetic method in foreign languages; by Dr. Mnger, of Eisenach 492 XVII. Instruction of the blind ; by J. G. Knie, of Rre.^lau 567 XVIII. Instruction of the deaf-mutes; by Hill, of Weissenfels.., 601 XIX. Lnve of country, patriotism, and connected subjects 675 XX. External situation of the German common school teachers 727 XXI. School discipline — plan of teacliing and of work 770 Appendix ; by G. Hentschel 791 List of authors mentioned 795 148 DIESTERWEG ON FROEBEL. In his notice of Froebel and the kindergarten, in the Jahrluch for 1851, Diesterweg sums up his estimate of the former as " a man of uncommon power and original views." Like Comenius and Ratich and Pestalozzi, he could not rest, with the inspiration of new ideas in his soul. He must go on, from one portion of the field to another — from one institu- tion to another — under an irrepressible impulse to break the path for new truths. Age with him did not deaden his interest in children, and the older he grew the deeper was his fondness for the youngest, whose restless activity found in his sympathy and devices its freshest satisfac- tion. A student of Pestalozzi, to whom in taste, vocation, and fate he had great resemblance, he carried his investigations into the philoso- phy of education still deeper, and evolved methods of development out of the child's activity, in harmony with the nature of the infant mind, which his master sought in vain at later stages of the child's growth. Like Pestalozzi, he strove to attach to his work the agency and influ- ence of women — Pestalozzi limiting his efforts to mothers, while Froebel organized young women into classes for special training for his kinder- garten, and everywhere proclaiming women to be the true educators of tlie race, and that in fitting themselves for their mission as teachers they would most directly and efiectively improve and elevate themselves. Froebel differs from Pestalozzi in attaching less importance to books, and, indeed, would dispense with all printed manuals to a later stage of development, and finds in the natural activity — the play-impulse, the motive and method of mental and moral, as well as of physical growth. While he believes, with Pestalozzi, that home and the mother are the God-indicated place and protector of the infant, Froebel believes, and acted on the idea, that the child has a social nature, which seeks and profits by companionship with other children, and that for short periods in each day such companionship should be provided and regu- lated. Hence the kindergarten gradually rose in his conception, as the play-place of children, and that in the growing and most impressionable period of their lives everything should be shaped to foster a healthy growth, and make and deepen the right impressions. In devising and improving plays and occupations for children in his kindergarten, Froebel has shown the genius of a poet and an in- ventor; and, although he may not have exhausted the subject, his Mother Play and Nursery Songs is an original and most valuable contri- bution to our manuals of education. Like Pestalozzi, Froebel relies on the intuitive method in teaching anything new — and goes beyond mere inspection and handling, where the case will admit of it, and resorts to actual doing, to real experience of knowledge. In the field of occupations he utilizes the child's in- stinct of motion and construction, and develops those aptitudes into habits which afterwards distinguish the artist and artisan. In this direction the kindergarten prepares as well for life as for the school, and, without any forced, unnatural methods, a habit of productive labor is formed unconsciously in play. BERTHA VON MAEENHOLTZ-BtJLOW AND THE KINDERGARTEN. ME\IOIR.* The Baroness von Marenholtz-Bulow, whose life work is insepa- rably associated with the dissemination of Froebel's system of child- culture in different countries, belongs to the Redum line of a princely family whose name appears in the time of Charles the Great. Her father, Baron Frederick von Biilow-Wendhausen, the owner of the fine estate of Kiiblingen in the Duchy of Brunswick, was president of the Ducal Chamber and member of the regency charged with the administration of affairs during the long minority of the Duke. Her mother was the imperial Countess von Wartens- leben, of the Mark of Brandenburg. The Baroness Bertha was born in Brunswick, March 15,1816, the second of eight sisters. Not yet twenty years old, she was mar- ried to Baron v. Marenholtz, lord by primo-geniture of Gross- Schwulper and a member of the Privy Council in Brunswick, and afterwards Court Marshal in Hanover. By this marriage she had one son, whose education till his death at the age of twenty, with that of several children of her husband by a prior marriage, was superintended in all its details by the Baroness, who, in addition to the training which the best private teachers could impart to herself and her own sisters, had the higher educative advantage of practical work, by which her own thoughtful mind was always accustomed to the consideration of pedagogical problems. Her own reflections on what she read and did, and what she saw done by her teachers in her own and her father's family, were recorded by her in a book, and which she afterwards found were in singular accord with the principles and methods which Friedrich Froebel had worked out in his profounder study of child-nature and nurture. AVhen free to act for herself, the Baroness broke away from the brilliant but narrow circle of court life to which she was born, and without entering the field of social reform, as the avowed champion of certain ideas, she sought in every way to acquaint herself witli * We are indebted mainly for the facts of tliis Memoir to a pamplilet of 150 pages by Lous Walter, printed in Dresden in 1881 by Berlag von Alwin Huahe, with the title Beiiha V. Marenholtz Bulow in ihrer Bedeutung fur das Werk of Fr. Froebel. 150 BERTHA VON MARENHOLTZ-BULOW. the best methods of education ; and in this spirit in the summer of 1849, while sojourning at the Baths of Liebenstein in Thuringia, introduced herself to Froebel, who had quite recently settled down on a small farm in the neighborhood of the Springs, and was train- ing a class of young women to become Kindergartners. She has told the story of this interview and of their intercourse, whicli con- tinued .during that and her subsequent visits to the Baths, in her charming and instructive volume of " Reminiscences."* In these personal interviews she became thoroughly acquainted with the principle of the Kindergarten and its application, both to the actual development of young children, and in the training of young Kindergartners, by the great master himself. To these oj>- portunities of educational study were added elaborate discussions of the philosophy and practice of the new education between its first expounder and Dr. Diesterweg, the acknowledged* head of the Pes- talozzian method in Germany, and several experienced men of scien- tific and practical ability who were concerned with actual teaching, and with the administration of systems of public instruction, so ad- mirably described by herself.* With every advantage for reaching cultivated people which bright and solid mental endowments, improved by the best private teaching and select social experience, could give, — with a loving acceptance of the doctrine of human development, by rational methods applied to the earliest conscious action of the child by agencies which nec- essarily belong to the nurture period of the human being, and ex- tend into school and self-activity, which the insight and experience of such born educators as Pestalozzi, Froebel, and Diesterweg have brought to a good degree of practical efficiency, — thus equipped by nature, study, and observation added to home experience, the Bar- oness von Marenholtz-Bulow has not only given to the world, and especially to her sex, a beautiful example of a broadly beneficent life- work, but the results of that personal work has already entered into the educational institutions and literature of nations, to an extent not yet recorded of any other woman in the annals of education. Of this, her personal services to the Froebelian Education in different countries, we shall speak elsewhere. We close this brief introduction to a fuller treatment of her own understanding of Froebel's idea of the Child, with a List of her Publications (see page 127, 128), made up from Mr. Walter's pamphlet. * Reminiscences of Friediich Froebel. Translated by Mrs. norace Maun, and publiehed by Lee & Shepard, Boston, 1877, p. a59. BERTHA VON MARENHOLTZ-BULOW. 151 1. Personal Services for FroebeVn System. The Baroness became acquainted with Froebel in May, 1849, and once thoroughly possessed of his aims and methods, she began in that summer a work of dissemination, which she still continues (in 1881) with unabated zeal, and with still widening influence. In July, 1849, she had brought one of the best practical educators of Germany into a personal knowl- edge of Froebel's work, and thus secured a medium of communication with the pedagogic world. Diesterweg, before the close of the year, in a holiday book for young people, his Rheinische Blatter, and his Pedagogical Year Book, had set teachers and children to reading about the new education going on at the Baths of Liebenstein. In the year following, another seminary director and school official (Dr. Bormann of Berlin), through her introduction, had become interested in Froebel's original views of the child's activity, and proclaimed their importance through the Brandenburg School Journal. It was by her womanly tact that Froebel and Middendorff were introduced to the knowledge of the court circles of Weimar and Meiningen, and thus secured an opportunity of making the system known to people who set as well as those who follow the fashion, in schools as well as in dress and manners. In this way his little children and young kindergartners were transferred from the narrow limits of an unsuitable farmhouse, to the spacious apartments of the "Hunting Box" of the Duke of Meiningen, with the use of the grass plot, with its shrubbery and lindens for his out- of-door morning lessons and movement plays. The attractions of this spot helped the Baroness in her efforts to bring thoughtful and influential persons to witness the methods, and listen to the explanations given by Froebel of their educating aim in the development of the child. In the winter of 1850, which she spent in Weimar, she laid the founda- tion for the first kindergarten there, interested the Grand Duchess of Russia to introduce Froebel's methods into the orphan asylums of St. Petersburg, and the Countess of Hesse to employ one of Froebel's pupils, Miss Kramer, in the early education of her son, the future prince. In the summer of that year she brought the Minister of Education in the Princi- pality of Saxe- Weimar (Von Wydenbrugk) and Froebel into conference, and several men of science, and teachers, who afterwards became advo- cates of the system in special treatises, or in periodicals. In the winter of 1850 51, both the Baroness and Diesterweg were busy in making the system known in Berlin, and in the following summer the pen of many writers were employed in making known the educative value of the kindergarten festivals, such as was given at the castle of Altenstein. The article by Herr Borman, then director of the Berlin seminary for the preparation of female teachers, in the Brandenburg School Journal, should have shielded Froebel and his kindergarten from the cruel interdict of the Prussian minister of education, which was published in August 7, 1851. That interdict damaged the kindergarten in court circles for a life time, and although it was officially canceled in 1860, the progress of the work has been slow in Prussia. In 1854, the Baroness visited London in the interest of the kindergarten, where the good work had been begun by Madame Ronge, the details of which will be found elsewhere. She thus writes of her Paris work: 152 KINDERGARTEN IN FRANCE. Marerilholtz-Biilow's Labors in Paris. When I went to Paris in January, 1855, Froebel's name was wholly unknown there. Nor did I know a single person in that great city, whither I went without a letter of introduction, from London, where I had been spending half a year, not without results, in the propagation of Froebel's cause. My decision to go was so suddenly taken that there was no time to procure introductions or recommendations. My confi- dence in the intrinsic truth of the cause induced me to venture the exper- iment, whose success certainly proves the justice, the appropriateness, and even the necessity of introducing the Froebelian education to the French. It not only found acceptance wherever I spoke of it, but re- sulted many times in the immediate establishment of Kindergartens. My wish that the votaries of Froebel's method would work for its spread in foreign lands, induced me to show that even a foreigner in a foreign land may do this. The chief conditions are: a full knowledge of the fundamental thoughts of Froebel, and consequently a deep conviction of the worth of the cause ; also the knowledge of the practical use of the Kindergarten occupations, and ability to speak currently the language of the country. Recommendations to influential people are obviously of the greatest use. I therefore addressed myself, although without recom- mendations, to influential persons, in order to secure the necessary sup- port of their presence at my lectures. Now that Froebel and his cause are so well known, and many prejudices and much ill-will are overcome, infinitely less difficulty in spreading the cause is met with than at that time, almost twenty years ago. This difficulty is not to be denied, and can only be understood in its whole scope by those who have undertaken to introduce a new cause into the great cities of foreign lands. For a woman, who undertook this work alone, it was obviously a far greater task than it would have been for a man. By the publicity alone of the necessary discourses to be pronounced, the latter would have been able to secure a more rapid spread of it. But experience in different countries has convinced me that it is far easier for a woman to gain a hearing in intelligent circles, in other countries than in Germany, where the public action of women is limited to a very narrow range. That time of my activity in Paris was very favorable for the opposition. People were afraid of all associations, without which, in our days, the realization of an idea is scarcely possible; and society was also dejected about political matters. And apart from many other causes was the mis. trust of anything new that came from another country. The majority of those who showed the liveliest interest and the best understanding of that side of the cause, were, almost always disciples oi Fourrier, or at least those acquainted with his doctrine. They were fully penetrated with the importance of educational influences upon the first, earliest age, and were striving to cure the mistakes of society upon that subject. Among the men of this direction of thought Froebel's methoc found the most support, but the exception to this, even among that class were the quite exclusive votaries of Fourrier. They said the whole o? this system was given by their master, and some of them strove to dis , KINDERGARTEN IN FRANCE. I53 criminate between the ideas of Froebel and those of Fourrier, even before they had seen the fundamental difference in the ground principles of the two thinkers, especially the positively religious side in Froebel's views. Every thinker in France, as well as elsewhere, who has any interest in the progress of humanity, and who sees the necessity of new conditions to bring about that end, wishes for a new education, in order to see new men come forward. Nowhere else — and least in Germany, where the prophet of method is at home — have I found such ready sympathy, so much comprehension and profound penetration into Froebel's ideas, as in Paris. That the reason of this is to be sought in the intellectual life of great centers, as well as in the circumstance that many circles of intel- ligent people were opened to me, is not to be doubted, but the fact is very striking that the votaries won there belonged to the most various and opposing parties of France, politically, religiously, and socially. In no case have I found the often-expressed view confirmed that it is more difficult to break the way for the cause in catholic than in protestant countries. The distrust excited in Germany by the religious side of the cause I have seldom met with in foreign countries, and always in less measure. Indeed, they have received the cause more free from prejudice, since, on account of its novelty, no accusation of heresy had been brought. In the lower classes I have«iever and nowhere found so much true and intellectual agreement in the practical side of Froebel's method as in Paris. The handicraftsmen recognized the importance of it as a prepara- tion for all work, and often with surprising sharpsightedness. As the Empress was the titular President of the Central Committee of the Salles d'Asyle, and the Cardinal de Tours, Morlot (afterwards Arch- bishop of Paris), was acting President, the introduction of the method into the public asylums was reached only by direct application to these two authorities. My application to the Empress was immediately con- sidered, and the Minister of Instruction (de Fortoul) was asked to look into the cause. In audience with him, I expressed the wish that he would name a committee for the practical examination of it, which was appointed in the State Normal School, rue Ursuline No. 10, under the conduct of Mad. Pape-Carpentier. This was done. After this, for three months, under my guidance, the children of the institution were occupied according to Froebel's method, and the above- named commission, after the official examination, declared itself not only satisfied with the desired result, but even the Ministry of Instruction rec- ommended, in its official report, " that the Kindergarten method be intro- duced into existing institutions, and that the Kindergartens be connected with the elementary schools as soon as possible." With the permanent introduction of the Froebelian occupations into her institute. Mad. Pape- Carpentier, a very deserving lady, was requested, and the order issued, for the improvement of the asylum, to instruct the pupils of her normal school to be conductors of the method in asylums. To describe the com- munications made in the course of the first introduction of the cause into France would carry me too far. The following instances are sufficient. A protestant lady. Mad. Andre KOchlin, built a hall in rue de la Pepin- ifere. No, 81, for the introduction of Froebel's method. By the support 154 KINDERGARTEN IN FRANCE. of Mad. Jules Mallet (a well-known philanthropist in Paris), I also intro- duced it to the sisters of St. Vincent de Paul, whom I instructed in the method in the Little Orphan Asylum, Chausse Menilmontant, 119. Also in the Asylum of the Deaconnesses, 95 rue de Neuilly, and in the protest- ant school, 19 rue St. Genevieve. The introduction of single occupa- tions was effected in vaiious institutions. A practical course of instruction in the method was introduced intq an institution for young ladies, rue St. Etienne, 40. In the Cloister V Assomption, the directress of the asylum, Sister Marie, a very intelligent nun, was so interested in the method and learnt it so industriously with my help, that they would have introduced it into her institution at her earnest request, if she had not been called to Spain by the order of the Superior of her order, when we were in the midst of our activity. The nuns of the cloister are very imjustly charged with being nnrrcw and one-sided, in consequence of the passive obedience to which they are bound. In some cloisters, I found many intellectual women who were truly waked up to the appreciation of Froebel's system. The great injury done by the one-sided spiritual education given in catholic countries, in the institutions conducted by nuns, cannot be denied. The unmistakable traces of it are seen everywhere. The mechanical instruction in the schools of protestant countries is in full tide also. Everywhere, even in the earliest childhood, we find the levelling and breaking down of the mind instead of free and fresh development and awakening. These institutions make the impression that they are waiting for the magic word which will dispel the bann and create for child-nature the free motion and gay carelessness suited to it. Would that every- where the right formula could soon be recognized in Froebel's idea, and the present mechanical and repressing system even of existing Kindergart- ens, be banished forever. The present want of training-schools for Kindergartners in foreign countries makes the quick spread of Kindergartens impossible. Those educated in Germany are rarely sufficiently versed in foreign languages, and very unwillingly leave home. The present incapacity of the majority of those who are active abroad destroys very much the good opinion that has been gained of the cause. On the other side, the ignorance of the German language, as well as the frequent lack of means for distant jour- neys, prevents the foreign women from using the German training insti- tutions. Only when each country possesses a training-school for Kinder- gartners (and consequently a normal school for teachers), will the present occupants of these positions be able to be supplanted. This was my repeated experience in the various countries in which I made known the cause; the contemplated founding of institutions was again and again prevented by the want of directors to carry the plans into execution. Even in France the above-mentioned beginnings could not have been made, if I had not been able to procure Kindergartners from Germany who could speak French. It is true that many other hindrances have been in the way of increasing such institutions during my presence there; hindrances which are palpable to the intelligent. At that time I sent KINDERGARTEN IN PKANCB. 155 three ladies from Paris to Germany, to learn what was necessary for the conduct of Kindergartens. One of these, Miss Chevalier, is at present at the head of a Kindergarten in Orleans, and is intrusted by the author- ities with the instruction of directresses of asylums. Another is ia Jliilhausen, in Alsace, where I made the cause known in 1857. A Kin- dergarten was established there for the well-to-do classes, which is con- ducted by a Kindergartner from Hamburg. Various beginnings of similar Kindergartens went down, after my departure, on account of personal relations, and in consequence of the dissolution of a society which I had founded. The favorable moment for the full introduction of the cause into Paris has not yet arrived. The future will bring il yet, and then there will be a quick and universal acceptance of it after the first foundation has been laid. One of the numerous proofs of the recognition of the cause in Paris was the offer of 100,000 francs from the Countess of Noailles for a per- manent Kindergarten, in case the Emperor would grant the use of a part of the Park of Ronceaux. I had obtained more than a hundred signa- tures to my appeal for it on the part of well-known and influential per- sons. The good reception which this met with in higher places was prevented by local and personal interests from bringing the desired result. Perhaps ten years hence we shall everywhere find Kindergartens in the great parks and gardens of cities. Nowhere else but in Paris have the journals responded so readily and willingly to the Kindergarten cause. La Presse (in 1855 and 1856) edited by Mr. G. de Girardin, Journal de debats. Gazette de France, SiScle, La Revue Britanique, La Revue de deux Mondes, La Revue' de Paris, Le disciple de Jesus Christ, Le Journal de la Jeunesse, La vie humaine, Le Monde, L'ami del enfance, Le Bul- letin des Creches, L'ami des sciences, etc., representing all parties. Mr. Riche-Gardon, editor of La vie Humaine, founded a journal specially for the support of the Kindergarten cause. In Tours, I could only make a little beginning for the cause. In Montpelier, Mad. Mares placed a German Kindergartner over an asylum, but she did not answer her expectations. Mad. Mares had heard my lectures in Paris. Froebel's occupations, however, were introduced. The want of works by French authors upon this subject was one of the greatest obstacles to the spread of the cause in France, and in coun- tries where the French language is spoken. This is what obliged me to publish my first little treatises in French, for which I was often blamed in German circles. This is the reason why we have a French manual and no German one. As they could use in Germany Froebel's own first pupils, the need of one was less felt there than in foreign lands, and I was obliged to create one for instruction in the method. Its contents are the foundation of the manual published by H. Goldhammer. It was also necessary to have the materials for play manufactured in each country. To be obliged to pay the duties upon these is always an obstacle. In France, Belgium, Holland, Switzerland, and England I found handicraftsmen who prepared them very well after patterns given. The following are extracts from many French letters addressed to me, from 1855 to 1859. See page — 156 BERTHA VON MARENHOLTZ-BULOW. The following citations from letters addressed to the Baroness, and published in the appendix to her "Education by Doing" CDie. Arbeit), show the impressions produced on some of the first minds of France by her exposition of Froebel's system in 1855-57. Cardinal Archbishop Merlot writes: "I am astonished at the far-sightedness of Froebel, who has found means to exercise each one of the child's organs." " Froebel's methods offer just what is wanting in our asylums, which are only nurseries — nothing more." "As president of the Commission of Asylums, I will see that the methods of Froebel are properly tested by actual trial, in the model and training institution of Madame Pape-Carpentier. " M. Marbeau, Founder of the Creche, and President of the Inter- national Society of Charity, writes : "I feel the liveliest interest in your Froebelian method, and earnestly wish for its introduction into France. We shall draw nourishment for future generations from Froebel's discoveries. I will speak on the subject at the next meeting of the Society of Charity." BucHET DE CuBiERE, an eminent mathematician, writes : " I shall never forget the evening on which you explained for three hours Froebel's great thoughts on the education .of the race, and the rich material which you showed he had created for the young of the future. He is one of the most eminent men that Germany has produced in this century. M. GuEPiEN, physician and naturalist of Nantes, and author of the Encyclopedia of the Philosophy of the 19th Century, writes: " Froebel's educational method is the most complete and rational that I am acquainted with. On my return from Paris I took steps to have a paper prepared for the Academic Society of Nantes. My wife will write to several ladies to interest themselves practically in the establish- ment of societies and Kindergartens. I will write to friends in Barce- lona and Madrid, where your treatise will be printed in Spanish. Our newspapers will insert articles — the Courier, the Journal of the Loire, Journal of Commerce, etc." Madame Mallet, author of the treatise on Prisons for Women, crowned by the Academy, writes : " I agree with you, we must go into families and teach the mothers how to develop aright the first germs of observation and intelligence. We must induce them to go to the Kindergarten to see and feel the right way of treating their own children." Dr. Laverdant, physician and author, writes: "Froebel's method, as expounded by you, develops the universal, the creative, and the artistic faculties in harmony. In your next conference, which will be composed of representatives of all shades of religious and social thought — Catholics, half-catholics, and non-catholics, fourrierites, phalansterists, Protestants, rationalists, etc., I hope you will dwell on the relations of women as mothers and members of society to this work of child-culture, and on the utilitarian element which enters into the Kindergarten method. Abbe Mitraud, author of La Democratic et la Catholicisme, writes: "I accept Froebel's idea, theory, and method, in all its magnitude and fruitfulness. Its tendencies to pantheism will be modified by sound Catholicism, to which I give my faith and understanding. You must visit Italy and Rome. I will co5perate with you. " M. Michelet, the historian : " By a stroke of genius Froebel has found what the wise of all time have sought in vain — the solution of the problem of human education." BBRTHA VON MARENHOLTZ-BULOW 157 While achieving this mighty conquest in the field of official, literary, and scientific influence in Paris, and preparing the way for a silent and gradual change in the methods of child culture in the asylums and infant schools of Paris,* the Baroness did not leave other portions of France and adjacent countries unvisited and untouched by her magnetic presence. In the summer of 1857 she attended the International Congress of Beneficence in Frankfort, and by her lectures in German and French interested some of the best minds in Europe in Froebel's system of educa- tion — and particularly the founders and conductors of Farm Schools and Asylums for neglected children. In December of the same year, on the invitation of the Prime Minister Rogier, who had become interested in her work at Frankfort, she visited Brussels, and addressed conferences of inspectors, teachers, directors of gardiennes or infant schools, who came together on invitation of the Minister. Out of this work, which was con- tinued for five months, kindergartens were established in all the chief cities of Belgium, the methods were introduced into infant schools, and by a decree of the government, " instruction in the system of the great German pedagogue" was given in all the Normal schools and Training classes for primary school teachers. The kindergarten is now recognized as the first grade of all formal instruction — both public and private. In the summer of 1858 and the two years following this indefatigable worker was in Holland, Switzerland, and France helping to found societies in which earnest women could work together for the promotion of the Froebelian system, — in Amsterdam, the Hague, and other cities in Hol- land; inMulhausen; in Zurich, Neuchatel, Berne, and other large cities in Switzerland, under the auspices of the Swiss Society of Public Utility. In this way a public interest was awakened, and the public intelligence was cultivated, until in several cantons the kindergarten directly by name, or as infant school, is now a recognized grade in the system of public instruction. In the canton of Geneva, Madam de Portugal is inspectress of all the institutions of this grade, and a regular normal course of training is conducted by Miss Progler. She had previously conferred with advanced schoolmen in Bohemia, Hungary, and Austria proper, by whom the Kindergarten was earlier than elsewhere recognized by the highest ministerial authorities of education as essential to true pedagogical progress. The Minister von Stremayr, in 1857, induced several municipal authorities to convert their Children's Asylums into Infant Schools, with Froebel's methods; and subsequently at Vienna and Gratz, to establish Kindergartens "to strengthen and complete the family education for the youngest children, and prepare them for the school instruction which is to follow after the sixth year." It is now made obligatory on all directors of Normal Schools and Training classes, to give instruction in the principles and practice of Froebel's System. •According to the report of Mr. Grfiard, Director of Primary School? in the Depart- ment of the Seine, the SaUes (TOrSile of this Department have been divided iuto two classes : the SaUes cTasile proper, or Asylums for the nurture of children, from 2 to 4 years of age, and the Froebel doss for children from 4 to 6 years of age. The Froebel class is preparatory for the Public Primary School. About 65 per cent, of all the children Detween the ages of 2 and 6, in Paris and the suburbs, are in the SaMes d'asiles and the Froebel classes. 158 BERTHA VON MARENHOLTZ-BULOW. In Bavaria, Baden, and Wirtemburg, through her personal visits and correspondence, Froebel Unions of efficient women, and Model Kinder- gartens were established in 1857. The Munich Society was established in 1868, and in 1873 it had seven Kindergartens with 2,890 children. In 1861 and the years immediately following we find her organizing in Berlin a "Union for Family and Popular Education," and superin- tending a course of practical instructions in kindergarten plays for nurses. In the pedagogical section of the Congress of Philosophers, called and sustained mainly by Professor Leonhardi of Prague, the Baroness took an active interest, and it was through her influence that Prof. Von Flchte of Tubingen expressed the views of the section in his report sub- mitted to the Congress at Frankfort, in 1869, in which Froebel's solution of the problem of the popular education demanded by the age, is ably set forth. During the session at Frankfort, she delivered, on special invita- tion, public lectures in exposition of Froebel's system, and took the initiatory steps for the establishment of the General Educational Union, which was organized at Dresden in 1871, by the election of Prof. Fichte as President. Among the members we notice the names of Dr. Barop of Keilhau, Dr. Wichard Lange, Dr. Langthal, State Councillor Heub- ner. Baron von Teubern, Dr. Hohlfeld, Prof. Leonhardi, Dir. Mar- quard, and many excellent teachers who are coming to the front in pedagogical work. To the periodical established by this union, and the Normal Class, the Baroness devotes much time, having since the opening of the latter assisted in the training of over 1,000 kindergartners. In the organ of the Union, Die Erziehung der Oegemcart, she has first published her educational views. We have enumerated in another place the various publications issued by the Baroness in elucidation of Froebel's system. In the winter of 1871, she visited Italy, delivered lectures in Florence, and assisted in conferences and by letters in the establishing of kinder- gartens in Venice, Rome, and Naples. The lectures delivered by her were republished by the United States Commissioner of Education in 1872. Out of her labors in Florence originated one feature of Madame Salis- Schwabe's great institution at Naples in the old Medical College buildings-, placed at her disposal by the Italian Government. This noble woman still lives, and denying her years the peaceful hours of rest, still works on for the furtherance of the same cause which has been so blest at her hands. May the evening of her busy and useful life be long cheered by the grateful voices of thousands of women whom she has inspired and trained to lives of beneficent activity, and of tens of thou- sands more to whom her works or teaching secured the priceless inheri- tance of a happy childhood, and brought light, sweetness, and strength to their widely separated homes. It is the privilege of only a few in any one or many generations, so to live ; and living, to see the work of their hands still progressing to large, and still larger results, in every civilized country. One who knew by experience something of such work says: "The good begun by yon shall onward flow In many a branching stream and wider grow; The seeds that in these few and fleeting hours, Your hands unsparing and unwearied sow, Shall deck your grave with amaranthine flowers. And yield you fruits divine in heaven's immortal bowers." FROEBELIAN LITERATUER. I59 Publications by Bertha V. MarenholtzBulow. 1. EiNE Frauenstimme aus dem Bade Liebenstein im Juli 1849 [A woman's voice from the Liebenstein Bath in July, 1849]. Contained in the pamphlet : " Einiges iiber die Nothwendigkeit und Wu-k- samkeit der Frob. Kindergarten. Stinimen aus dem Bade Liebenstein, 1849 ira Juli " [Something upon the necessity and effect of the Froebelian liinder- gartens. Voices from the Liebenstein Bath in July, 1849]. Also in: " Rhcinische Blatter," 1849, pt. 2, p. 325—. 2. Fk. Frobel und die Kindergarten. . . , [Fr. Froebel and the Kinder- gartens. Reply to an accusing article in No. 21 of the Hannov. Zeitung, 1852]. Contained in : " Zeitschrift ftir Frobels Bestrebungen, 1852, No. 5, p. 3, 3-[l81]. 3. Wiliielm Middendorff. Contained in : " Rheinische Blatter," 1854, Sept. — Oct. No., p. 142-149. 4. EiN zusAMMENHANGENDES Ganzes von Spielen und Beschaftigungen fiir die erste Kindheit von Fr. Frobel [A connected whole of pla^ys and occupa- tions for the earliest childhood, bv Fr. Froebel]. Dresden, Fischers Druckerei, 1854. 12 p. Engl, transl. : " A connected series of playthings and occupations for early childhood by Fr. Frobel, Dresden, Fischers Printing Office, 1854." 5. Die erste Erziehung durch die Mutter nach Fr. Frobels Grundsatzen [The first education by the mother, according to Fr. Froebel's principles]. Leipzig, Gust. Mayer, 1854. 32 p., with 2 lith. pi. 6. AuFFORDERUNG an die Frauen zur Griindung von Erziehungsvereinen [Demand upon women for the establishment of educational unions]. Separate from Dr. Georgens and H. Klemm's " Illustrirten Monatsheften fiir Familienleben, weibliche Bildung und Humanitatsbestrebungen " [Illus- trated monthly for family life, culture of women, and strivings of humanity]. Dresden, Klemm, 1854, No. 6, p. 187-191. 7. Woman's educational mission, being an explanation of Fr. Frobel's system of infant gardens. London, Darton, 1854. (Published with the Coun- tess Krockow. ) 8. Der Kindergarten, des Kindes erste "Werkstatte [The Kindergarten, the child's first workshop]. 3d ed., Dresden, Kammerer, 1878. (68 1) p., with 3 lithogr pi. Appeared first under the title : " Les jardins d'enfants " [The Kindergartens]. Paris, Borrani and Droz., 1855. The journal: " Le disciple de Jesus-Christ" [The disciple of Jesus Christ], publ. by Martin Pachoud, . . . contained this pamphlet in several numbers. The German translation ("by Isidore von Bulow) appeared first in Lauck- hard's pedagogical quarterly ' Reform," Leipzig, Weber, v. 2, No. 1, and As a separate, entitled : "Die Frobelschen Kindergarten [The Froebelian Kindergartens] . The 2d ed. appeared under the title : " Der Kindergarten, des Kindes erste Werkstatte [The liindergarten, the child's first workshop]. Dresden, Kubel, 1873. Polish translation (by a young Pole, Xaveria Kuwiczinska) : Dresden, 1864. Publ. at Florence, in French, and in Italian, by a Union formed there for tho Froebelian cause. 9. Nothwexdigb "Verbesserung der Kleinkinder-Bewahranstalten [Nec- essary improvement of the asylums for little children]. Berlin, Dunker, 1857. (Reprinto,d in the Rheinische Blatter, 1857, pt. 2, p. 69-85 ; Representatives.) IQQ FROEBELIAN LITEEATUUE. 10. Les jardins d'enfants. Expose jnesente ... an Congres interna- tional de Bienfaisance de Frankfort sur Je Meiu [The Kindergartens. State- ment presented by Mme. the Baroness of Marenlioltz to the International Congress of Beneticence, of Frauiifort on the Main]. Bruxclles, 1858. Also in: "Congres int. de Bienf. de Frankfort s. 1. M. Session 1857. Frankfort s/M. et Bruxelles, 1858, v. 1, p. 295—, p. 307—. In 1858 she contributed to the: "Manuel pratique des jardins d'enfants" . . . [Practical manual of the Kindergartens of Fr. Froebel, for the use of instructresses and mothers ; composed upon the German documents by F. F. Jacobs, with an introduction by Madame the Baroness of Marenholtz]. Bruxelles, 1859. In 1861 she founded the periodical: "Die Erziehung der Gegenwart" [The education of the present], edited by Dr. Schmidt in Kothen, in which she pub- lished a series of articles, which were re-published in her work " Das Kind und sein Wesen" [The child and its nature]. Berlin, Habel, 1868. 1 1. Die Arbeit und die neue Erziehung nach Frohels Methode [Work and the new education according to Froebel's method]. Berlin, Habel (Enslin), 1866. More than 259 p. Same, 2d ed. Kassel und Gottingen, Wigand, 1875. [4] 329 p., 4.5 Mark. Russian transl. English transl. in America (by Mrs. Mann.) Italian transl. in Palermo. 12. Das Kind und sein Wesen. . . . [The child and its nature. Contri- bution to the understanding of Froebel's doctrine of education]. 2d ed. Kassel, Wigand, 1878. (A part of the articles in this appeared in 1861 and 1862^in the "Erziehung der Gegenwart.") The first edition of this work was transl. by Prof. Sanzo del Rio into Spanish ; and by Matilda Kriege in New York into English : " The child, its nature and relations. A free rendering of the German of the Baroness Marenholtz Biilow. New York, 1872"; — also, from the 2d edition, into English, by Alice M- Christie: "Child and child-nature. Contributions to the understanding of Frobel's educational theories, by Baroness Marenholtz-Bulow." London, Sonnen- schein, 1879 ; — the same, republished by Dr. Barnard, in the American Journal of Education, for March, July, and September, 1880, and in Pamphlet of 128 p.iges, Hartford, 1880, and in the Kindergarten and Child-Culture Papers, 1881. 13. Beitrage zum Verstandnisse der Frobelschen Erziehungsideen [Con- tributions to the understanding of the Froebelian ideas of education]. Vol. 1. Reminiscences of Fr. Froebel. Appeared first in the " Erziehung der Gegenwart," 1874-76. In America this work was translated into English: " Reminiscences of Fr. Frobel by Bar. B. de Marenholtz-Biilow, translated by Mrs. Horace Mann. With a sketch of the life of Fr. Frobel by Emily Shirreff ." Boston, Lee & Shepard. Vol. 2. Kassel, Wigand, 1877. 14. Die Erscheincngen der Zeit und die Aufgaben der Erziehung. . . . [The phenomena of the times and the task of education. An exhortation to carry out the solution of the educational tasks of the present]. In Kommission derkonigl. Hofbuchhandlung von BuBdach in Dresden, 1879. Appeared first in the "Erziehung der Gegenwart," 1878 and 1879. FROEBEL'S EDUCATIONAL VIEWS. BY BARONESS MARENHOLTZ-BULOW.* I. CHILD-NATURE. The child is born into the world ! He enters it struggling; a scream is his first utterance. Ilis destiny is labor ; 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 newborn 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 per- ilous weapon in the hands of a scoundrel. 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 1 If a few sickly sprays shoot out and blossom, it is as much as can be hoped for. 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 fulfill all the condi- tions 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. * " Child and Child-Nature." Contributions to the Understanding of Frobel's Edu- cational Theories, by the Baroness Marenholtz-Biilow. Translated from Revised Berlin edition (1878), by Alice M. Christie. London : W. Swan Sonneuschein, 15 Paternoster Square, 1879. 161 11 162 CHILD-NATURE. Or let us imagine the most highly gifted of human beings brought up under all the best conceivable educational influeiaces, whether ac- cording to Frobel's principles or others — would such au one appear before us as a completely perfect man ? Certainly not ! If we pre- sumed to answer this question in the 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 educa- tion and surroundings, and we cannot attempt to determine how much of the imperfection of human beings is to be attributed to natural qualifications and how much to outward influences — to the education ■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 sys- tems are adapted to this knowledge, the nearer will they be brought to perfection. Human nature has not as yet attained to its full standard of devel- opment, nor does any one yet know to what height it is capable of rising even on earth. Once only did mankind behold its pei-fect 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 pro- gressing development can alone solve the problem of his existence. Frobel aptly describes human nature when he says : " Man is at once the child of nature, the child of humanity, and the 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 com- prehension of this threefold 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 God. THE child's relation TO NATURE. (1.) As a child of nature, man is connected with all the elements of creation, even down to the inorganic ones, which can 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 comes out from her and goes back to her ! He is sur- rounded by her atmosphere, 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. ''''! -NATURE. 163 Everywhere there goes on a perpetual interchange of material between man and nature, nature and man ; and when a human being has fin- ished his course on earth, he bequeaths to the earth iiis 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 kingdoms 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 analogy, is mutual understanding possible. And this understanding, 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 A B C 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. RELATIONS TO HUMANITY. (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 nat- ure belong, and enters the realm of freedom, of self-knowledge, and self-mastery. The stamp of natural organisms is simple and easily recognized ; the species is a sure index to the individual. In the human organism, inflividuality grows into personality, which once established can never more be lost, but expands and develops con- tinually in the chain of conscious existence, whose highest member leads up to the Godhead. But here, too, the species, the tribe, the na- tion, 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 char- acter live on from forefathers to descendants? No one can entirely separatehimself from the chain of which he is a link. None can repu- diate 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. 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 1 64 CHILD-NATURE. themselves in like manner, and it is within the free choice of every separate personality to diminish the sum of wickedness and to increase tliat of virtue. The moral progress of mankind depends on this, that each individual and each generation make such use of the talent received from its predecessor, that it shall yield manifold 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 incessant yearning after something better (even under earthly conditions) in the human breast, and has based on this yearning the whole moral and mental development of man. With- out the assumption of the possibility of perfection, for the individual as well as the race, human education would be without end or aim. To what extent man is the offspring of humanity is seen in a thou- sand 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 faculty 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 wTioIe, 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 under- stood when considered as part of the race, while it is only through individuals that the race can receive the full impress of all its manifold features. The paradox, " the more individual, so much the more uni- versal ; 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 par- ticular note cleai'ly 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." CHILD-NATURE. 165 All knowledge must ascend from the easier to the more difficult ; 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 Shaks- peare 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 thi'ough, the different stages of childhood, youth, man- hood, 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 has found the method of drawing them out in the various stages of childish devel- opment, 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 heights 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 labor and exertions, by the mighty power of his inventive spirit, and through thousands of errors and by-ways, from the first rude conditions of a wild life of nature to the heights of civilization. The history of human culture shows this. 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 fijrst rude outlines, copied from the shadows of objects, to the wonders of sculpture and painfcing ; 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 166 CHILD-NATUitE. a later stage of development that the genius of mankind has been capa- ble 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 of divine beauty in Art, and of divine truth in the Word, has God 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 grojiing 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 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 modeling, 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 crowing 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 rudi- ments 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 fulfillment 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 nat- ure. Through this understanding alone can the secret of human exist- ence be discovered. • THE CHILD OF GOD. (3.) Every human being in his spiritual origin belongs to God. 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 ob- ject of his earthly existence. At the beginning of existence the cJdld of nature rules in a man as instinctive life, as an impulse which awakens the will — at first only as an ungoverned force of nature. Self-preserva- CHILD-NATURE. 167 tion is almost exclusively the unconscious object of all childish utter- ances. 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 center of a little world of his own activity ; and this desire drives him to a thousand exertions, to countless inventions, to continu- ous change of 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 personality to de- vote himself to the good of the whole. He that enters the service of mankind has entered the service of God. The saying : " He that lov- eth 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 community which exists outside the visible world. By every ideal upsoaring we overstep the limits of this earthly visi- ble 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 him- self 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 1G8 CHILD-NATURE, of sorrow, but that moment has been enough to point to something be- yond the confines of this existence. Is there any work of man, even the highest, any deed, even the greatest, which does not presuppose something higher than itself, more perfect? Nowhere in human exist- ence is full satisfaction to be found, everywhere 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 breth- ren — on to the fountain of all fullness and perfection— to God Himself ! Such is the ddUl 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, 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 kin- dled 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 mankind, 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 inhab- itants 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 hierarchy 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 toward the fulfillment 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 painful sufferer and faithful worker will once have his share in the glory of fulfillment. 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 CHILD-NATURE. 169 great reason why religion has so little hold on the world now-a-days is, that it mostly leaves this belief out of account. So long as it is con- sidered 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 is done, 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 humanily. The full harmony of human nature can only be produced when its due weight is given to each side, and the higher nature^raws the others up to equal perfection with its own. Education will only then fulfill 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 discovered a way of supplying them with their first mental nourish- ment, and of treating the chill of humanity, from its first entrance into the world, as a being destined to become reasonable. Woman — the Educator of Mankind. Bat 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 ai'ound in all classes of society to see how 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 many 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 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 di- vine 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 man- kind is bound up everything needful to place woman in possession of the full rights of a worthy humanity. 170 FKOEBEL'S EDUCATIONAI. VIEWS. II. THE FIRST DEVELOPMENTS OF THE CHILD. " Sicli selbst und ilire Welt zu schatfen, welche Gott erschaffen, ist die Aufgabe der Menschheit, wie des Einzelnen." " To fasliion himself, to fashion the -world, which God created, is the task of hu- manity, as well as of the individual." Not Ficibel 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 management and education must be ob- tained through observation of the development of collective humanity. Fiiibel grounded his Kindergarten system to a great extent on this principle, without, however, carrying its application to the individual; a few explanations, therefore, by which this analogy may be more closely established, and Frobel'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 com- mon to all children alike, and in which we can point to the beginnings of human efforts after culture. PHYSICAL MOVEMENT. 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 througii movement. Before a human being can in any degree begin to take possession of himself aiid 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 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 tlie same ground in a dozen different 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 de- velop strength and skill. No such object, however, is present to the child's consciousness, who is simply driven by his impulses, the satisfac- tion of which causes him amusement and joy. Whatever alfords pleasure to children in general, and in all times, conduces always to their development in some way or other. THE FIEST DEVELOPMENTS OF THE CHILD, 171 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 I The commencement of history with the heroic age ex- hibits 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 overcoming of obstacles or enemies, are always the highest pleasure of youth and early manhood. And even in middle age we still see the tournament, 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 constituted 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 be drinking cheerily at the feast. EXERCISES OF THE LIMBS. The members and organs of the body must have been developed up to a certain pitch, before they can serve as fit instruments for the mind. We see plainly that the wise. direction 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 in- ward impulse, 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 lead 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 con- sists in so strengthening and encouraging all the natural dispositions of a child that they may conduce to the end which nature has set be- fore 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 pro- vision, or as good as none, for the first years of childhood, except where Frobel's Kindergarten system is in vogue. Hence the first stage in the process of infant development is called " Exerci^^es 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 cul- 172 THE FIRST DEVELOPMENTS OF THE CHILD. ture. 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. SENSE OF TOUCH — USE OF HAND. 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 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 as- Bistance, 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 scepter which raises man to the position of sovereign of the earth. "With his hand man has fashioned for hiiHself all his weapons of self-defense, whereas animals are pro- vided with them by nature ; with his hand he has made all the imple- ments needful for mastering the forces and materials of nature, and for procuring the necessaries and ornaments of his life. Without the cul- tivation of the hand, industry and art would be impossibilities. But the marvelous organism of this member would not alone have been sufficient to produce the wonders of industi-ial 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 w'ord, 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. INSTINCT OF CONSTRUCTION. 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 unregu- lated feeling and grasping of their little hands, their favorite occupa- tion is to dabble in some soft mess — earth, sand, or what not — and to try their skill at shaping and producing. Modeling is one of the first necessities of child-nature. But even this instinct, if left to itself, will lead to no end : education must supply the material and guidance THE FIRST DEVELOPMENTS OF THE CHILD, 173 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 ad- ventures 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 un- doubtedly 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 out- lines, 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 colors of natural objects exercise even on the least-formed character. Every- thing glittering, bright, or gaudy, excites pleasure 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 un- consciously 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, color, or sound. But it is not only shaping and modeling that childish hands practice instinctively — drawing and painting are also attempted by them. As Frobel says, the child first perceives the linear — the outlines of objects. Whoever observes the actions of children will see how they almost in- variably 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 unpracticed 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 practiced 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 174 THE FIRST DEVELOPMENTS OF THE CHILD. cliildren 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. SENSE OF SOUND — EYHTHM. Attention to the differences of sound is one of the first awakenings of children, and early instruction in song avowedly one of the most effectual means of education. Savages, like children, have the keenest desire for song and dance — i. e., for rhythmic sound and movement. Rhythm is one of the great fundamental principles of all that is ex- pressed 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 iu various ways. It is not only to the fresh living air that children of the tenderest years stretch out their hands so joyfully, when the mother or the nurse produces hat and cloak to take them out of doors. The forms and immediate impressions of surrounding nature already afford the infant being pleasure and delight. GARDENING. 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 gar- dens of their own. At first the little spade, which accompanies the child out of doors, is only used for heaping 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 agriculture 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 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. THE FIRST DEVELOPMENTS OF THE CHILD. 17S 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 begin- ning in unnoticed utterances which have been the germs of future de- ,velopments. The largest tree may have sprung from the least percep- tible 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 spurs to all human 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 requirements, 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 1 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 a 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 al- ways 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 compre- hensive 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 labor 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 principle : " Duties and rights should correspond to one another." CURIOSITY TO KNOW. Not till the child has to a certain extent mastered the use of its limbs and senses, and its spontaneity and faculties of observation 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 desife lies already at the bottom of the fii'st groping and feeling of the hands, but it only then awakens with anythintr 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 se- ries of impressions, images, and ideas, before thoughts will germinate in its mind. In order to knoiv, the child makes experiments ; it knocks different objects together, or throws them on the ground, to test the 176 THE FIRST DEVELOPMENTS OF THE CHILD. 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. COMPARISON. To observation and investigation follows the comparison of one thing with another, and by comparison a perception of size, form, color, number, etc., 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 not 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 knowl- edge first wakens in them, begin by occupying themselves with the re- lations 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 men- tal horizon. With a knowledge of nature, — however superficial it may h ive been, and based merely on appearances — did the learning of man- kind begin, and the learning of children must begin in like manner. ]t was inevitable that the first deductions from this experimental knowledge should lead to mathematical conclusions, should consist in the measurement of compared objects. Not till things had been classi- fied according to their size and number, could they present themselves clearly to the understanding. As the child carries on its first geographical observations by the ex- ploration of the garden and the nearest environs of its dwelling-jilace, so the geographical knowledge of infant mankind began with the in- vestigation of the neighboring tracts of land, their soil, their products, their climates, etc. With the history of the family, the patriarchs, be- gan the history 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 himself is, whether they, too, were THE FIEST DEVELOPMENTS OF THE CHILD. 177 once little. It was possibly this thought which once ino'v%d 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. SOCIAL IMPULSE. 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 hu- man nature, the source and the means of all his culture and civiliza- tion. Only by means of association can man conquer time and space, subdue to his own uses the forces of nature, and make himself more and more the ruler of the earth, which he shall, in time, permeate and dominate even as God permeates and dominates 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 im 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 joyousness which are- awakened by life in a community ; and premature seriousness, if aot 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 qhildren 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. RELIGIOUS INSTINCT. According to Friibel 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 un- derstanding of what is going on, or the participation in the spirit of the devotions, which the child is quite incapable of entering into. No 12 178 THE FIEST DEVELOPMENTS OF THE CHILD. doubt this is only the first unconscious aspiration penetrating the child's soul, and with it is bound up at the same time the love of man- kind, 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 as- piration. As every sensation, and all other knowledge rests immediately on instinct, so, too, does religious knowledge. Frobel's statement that by rejpeatedly 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 it from the contemplation of the appearance of things to the in- vestigation 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 ex- tent, 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 outv/ard phenomena, shows itself first as a blind impulse ; and that, therefore, all instruction must start with the concrete and mount up to abstract thought. Frbbel says : " From objects to pictures — from pictures to symbols — from symbols to ideas, leads the ladder of knowledge." And Pestalozzi : " There is nothing in the mind which has not passed into it through the senses." God through Nature. — Symbols. The first intimation of a higher being c^me to mankind in the be- ginnings of its development — as it still does to the child — through the impression^ of the visible world of nature. Man felt his own weak- ness in the presence of the giant forces of Nature, contemplated while €till in the fermentation stage of its development, and bowed trem- blingly before its unknown ruler. He saw that he himself and his ex- istence 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 worshiped her through symbols chosen from her own treasure-house, till at last, as he became to a cer- tain extent acquainted with himself and his own being, he humanized the soul of nature after an ideal standard, and worshiped 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 THE FIRST DEVELOPMENTS OF THE CHILD. 179 loves in his parents. A child, with his lap full of sweet-smelling flow- ers which he 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 whisper : " 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 nat- ure has been apprehended. The develoj)ment of nature and the de- velopment of mankind are mutually symbolic 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 development 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 Frdbel of the path which ed- ucation 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. UTTERANCES. 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, notliing 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 nature, or of the human individual. 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 fulfill its destiny as a grown being. In like manner the combined activity of mankind — the results of which appear in the progressive stages of civilization 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 fulfillment of the divine idea of humanity. But hu- manity is made up of individual men, and thus it follows of necessity, 180 THE FIRST DEVELOPMENTS OF THE CHILD. that the life's aim of the latter must be the same as that of the com- munity of which they are members. No one thinks of denying that the individual plant, or the individual animal, develops itself according to the laws of its tribe. And it is only because we understand how the development of the tribe and family of a plant or an animal proceeds that we know how to manage the indi- vidual specimens. According to the various modifications of this natural method of treatment, is the special, individual character of an- imals stamped on them ; and this shows itself most distinctly in house- dogs. Amongst the same tribe of dogs, one may be much more obedi- ent, 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, involuntary expressions and ac- tions, which are common to all the individuals of a race, must serve the natural end of their development. 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 inwai'd impulses and outward attractions to procure the satisfac- tion of their needs, first in order to preserve themselves in existence, and then to attain the highest possible state of well-being. The nec- essary exertions and practices to this end are the means of their culture. The history of the development of mankind teaches us how the bodily necessities, food, clothing, shelter from inclement weather, danger, etc., and later on the spiritual needs, social intercourse, desire after the true and the beautiful, spurred men on to the discovery of all that consti- tutes our present possessions 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 Frbbel's Kinder- garten, 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 minia- ture in the work of the child the progressive development of the race, as manifested in the work of mankind. FEOEBEL'S EDUCATIONAL VIEWS. 181 III. EDUCATION IN GENERAL FROEBEL'S THEORY. " The purpose of nature is development. The purpose of the spiritual world is cul- ture. The problem of this world is au educational one, the solution of which is pro- ceeding according to tixed 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 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 sun- light, 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 unchanging 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, cor- responds to the course of the blood in animal and human organisms, starting from the heart and returning to the heart, and in the action of the ventricles, exhibiting in like manner expansion and contraction. LAW OF DEVELOPMENT. Everything in the kingdom of nature, however different the stages of progress may be, comes under one universal law, and development means the same as progress according to law, — systematic going on from the unformed to the formed, from chaos to cosmos. And as does the physical so also must the spiritual development pro- ceed 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 as- pect. But how common a thing it is to hear people maintain that dur- ing the instinctive, unconscious period of a child's life, it should be left to follow its impulses entirely, and no attempt made to deal with it systematically. But, as the soul undoubtedly begins to unfold and form itself in the period of unconsciousness in the same systematic 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 concerned 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 182 EDUCATION IN GENEKAL,— FBOEBEL'S THEORY. certain extent the slave of arbitrariness, 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 un- derstand 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 complexity of cultivated plants." For this purpose he grew 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 understand- ing observer the systematic regularity, the logic of nature's dealings in her development process, spite of the variety of individual endowment. In the foregoing essay we attempted to demonstrate what 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 conse- quently be reduced to a law, we arrive at the key-note to the knowledge of the natural order of child development. CORKESPONDENOES. — INDIVIDUAL THE EACE. Frbbel 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 determine 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. 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 at- tain 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 m.ethod of education remains undiscovered, so long will even the best education be more or less an arbitrary work. EDUCATION IN GENERAL— FEOEBEL'S THEORY. 183 It was also Pestalozzi's chief endeavor to discover and apply that Vfhich he called " the principle of the organic," and to him, and his ed- ucational 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 endeavors to comple- tion. 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 movements in the life of hu- manity depend on the law of unity of life." — And further : " As the laws of the fruit are developments of the laws of the flower, and the laws of the flower developments of the laws of the bud, and the laws of the 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 sys- tem 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 appli- cation of these laws, as one stage of progressive human cultivation." Frobel's aim and efforts may, I think, be summed up thus : he was striving to hit on a regular course or method of education, corresponding to the method of instruction long ago established by pedagogic science. Education Includes Character. As instruction aims before all things at imparting knowledge, so ed- ucation has for its chief object moral culture, the formation of the character ; and for this end it is above all necessary that there should be freedom of individual movement, room for the development of per- .sonality. 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 forests, under the same conditions of soil, climate, etc., each individual growth assimilating to itself those outward influences only which befit its special nature. So the person- ality of the child will only absorb into itself out of that which is pre- sented to it, whatever corresponds to its special wants and endowments. 184 EDUCATION IN GENERAL— FROEBEL'S THEORY. And as it is only in consequence of the order of all movement in space that the free movement of the heavenly bodies is possible, and that dis- tm'bing collisions are avoided, so in the child's nursery, as in the state, it is through systematic government alone that freedom is attained — freedom of the individual through the freedom of all. That education should be carried on in accordance vpith 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 mankind — 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 full- grown 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 comprehensive 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 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 cooking, 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 essential features ; not in the shape and conformation of his body ; nor altogether in his im- pulses, passions, and inclinations, or in his processes of thinking, feel- ing, 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 endeavors in human fashion. But are not the barbarian and the cultivated human being just as much dis- tinguishable from one another by their outward appearance and de- meanor as by their inclinations and endeavors, their thinking and willing ? The physical development of the working-classes is so uni- versally 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 laborer. This difference is transmitted to pos- terity ; it is not only physically that children bear the stamp of their parents, they also inherit from them mental dispositions. The child of EDUCATION IN GENERAL— FROEBELS THEORY. 1S5 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 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 un- couth 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 endow- ments will its children bring with them into the world. Can there 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, how- ever, belongs a special virtue, and it is precisely this which is commonly overlgoked 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 attention 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 ed- ucation 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 resounding 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 without practice ; practice without the stamp of indi- viduality; thought precociously developed before fancy and feeling, like to 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 186 EDUCATION IX GENERAL— FROEBEL'S THEORY. 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; learning has come to be little more than acceptance of what is imparted, 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 sadness I gaze on mankind of to-day. Who of premature culture the penalty taste ; To doubt and to learning a too-early prey, They look forth on a future of darkness or waste," And because this is the case we see everywhere restlessness, discon- tent, a piteous seeking for unattaiued happiness — a deep vein of sad- ness 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 which 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 attempted, requires a new truth, a new idea of genius for its foundation. But such an idea will seldom seem new in its entirety ; the pages of history wiU almost certainly prove that the same idea has already been expressed, though in a different setting, by former thinkers, and that, constantly recurring, it 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 exposition can do no more than represent the matter in its general outlines, and thus awaken the de- sire 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 full compass, and he is, pej'haps, even more justified than Hegel and other thinkers in complaining that he has not been mider- stood. Far be it from us to pretend here to expound this idea in its * " In Trauern blick' ichhin auf das Geschlecht von heute, "Wie es die kiinstlich-friihe Beife biisst ; Eriih schon des Zweifels, der Erkenntniss Beute, In eine Zukunft schaut, die dunkel oder wust." EDUCATION IN GENERAL-FROEBEL'S THEORY. 187 whole breadth and depth — we would only attempt by means of the fol- lowing short statements to open up the way to an understanding of it : The process of spiritual development goes on according to fixed laws. These laios correspond to the general laws which reign throughout the uni- verse, but are at the same time higher, because suited to a higher stage of de- velopment. This sijstem of laws must be able to be traced back to a fundamental law, however much the latter may vary in itsformulce. Frbbel calls it : " The law of opposites and their reconciliation," or "the law op balance." There is nothing, animate or inanimate, to which this law does not apply, for everything consists of related opposites : a proposition always implies the counter proposition — the existence of God presupposes that of the world, that of the world presupposes that of God ; man, as a be. ing both conscious and unconscious, links together nature — or uncon. scious existence, with God — absolute conscious existence. The inward and outward aspects of things are opposites, which the thing itself con- nects together. This universal law manifests itself in nature in the interchange of matter. Every organism possesses the property of giv- ing 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 appro- priation — a process which varies in each different organism. It is by intercliange 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 development is also exchange — a mental interchange of matter. The soul takes in from outside, through the senses, a stock of impressions 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 cen- tripetal forces that rule throughout the cosmic universe, or in the in- spiration or expiration of the lungs, or the expansion and contraction of the sap of plants, etc., has established itself as the law of all life, growth, and being — this law Friibel 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 pro- 188 EDUCATION IN GENERAL— FROEBEL'S THEORY. ceed according to nature (Natur-gemass*) and they must apply 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 develo{> ment, in the stage of unconscious existence, which is the germ of all others. In this way the human mind wiU be trained to render to itself an ever clearer and clearer account of the laws of its thinking and act- ing, 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 distinguishing between hard and soft, solid and fluid, near and distaiit, etc. 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, thei-efore, 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 in- stance, it is to leai'n to distinguish between the size of things, let two objects, relatively great and little, be given to it, or for distinction of color two contrasting colors, and so forth. In Frobel's "second gift," for instance, the sphere (a single surface without 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 iviUing arise, and later on understanding and thinking, and it is because all later development depends on them that early im- pressions 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 tlie principle of contrasts. The musician in the trichord connects together two discordant tones ; the artist in his pictures blends light and shade, dark tints and bright ones, by means of middle tints, etc. The child, too, in the Kindergarten, plaits and twists in like manner; lays one little stick horizontally, another perpendicularly, and a third * The word NaHir-gemdss (according to nature) must never be understood to refer to nature in its distorted, corrupted condition, in wMch sense the word natural is often used.— iVb^e by the Author. EDUCATION IN GENERAL— FROEBEL'S THEORY. 189 half horizontally, half perpendicularly, in order by means of the slant- ing line to connect together the two others. And, whilst the child is applying this simple law in a thousand dif- ferent 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 rule, i. e., method, this is not pos- sible. 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, al- though at the time conscious of nothing more than that by this simple means it could produce the most manifold shapes, figures, etc., far more will have been done for its general development, than if it had been at once prep ired for all the various branches of school instruction. Ar- rangement, distribution, classification, without which no instruction 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. froebel's theory of education. As a result of the foregoing we find the first general educational requisites to be : Assistance of si^ontaneous development which shall accord with the laws of nature ; Considerations for the outward conditions of life of each epoch, and for each personality ; Understanding and application of the universal laws of spiritual development. With regard to the special Service rendered by Frbbel, let me here repeat what I have already mentioned, that Frbbel has discovered the method and practical means of disciplining, or of developing, body, soul and mind, will, feeling and understanding according to the systematic laws of nature. In the practical application of the positive and individual portion of it, the simplicity and naturalness of Frbbel's method stand out mark- edly, and at once do away with any idea of its being pedantic or arti- ficial, 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 de- mands of human nature, and of modern times, is of immense impor- tance, 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. 190 FROEBEL'S EDUCATIONAL VIEWS. IV. EARLY CHILDHOOD. " The renovation of society depends on its moral reform, and this again chiefly on improvement in the nature of education. But the results of education depend on its first commencements, and these are in the hands of women." " Poor humanity! " exclaims Madame de Stael at the sight of all the manifold miseries of mankind. With much more truth might one exclaim : " Poor childhood ! " for in childhood, and its perverted man- agement, lies the source of the greater part of this misery. Adult man- kind has weapons wherewith to repel the assaults of temjitation and trouble ; helpless childhood 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 impres- sions, 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 imman being who has not to bear the weight — often a very heavy one — of 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 chil- dren, 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 knowledge. ERRORS IN PHYSICAL TRAINING. 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 manaQ:ement of health is concerned ? And even if she herself be EARLY CHILDHOOD. 191 thoroughly fitted for her work, can she prevent nurses, and nursery- maids, 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 bold up its great heavy head. When the mother was at her balls the nurse used to give it de- coctions 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 idiocy for life ! There again is one whose tottering, uncertain gait tells of bandy legs. Born with a scrofulous 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, peihaps, of a good- natured nursery-maid who was in the habit of sharing her coffee, coarse bread, potatoes, etc., with her young chai-ge. Inflammation of the chest, brought on during the first months of its life by a draught when it was being washed, has developed in another child the seeds of consump- tion. Wlio 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 sickl}^ child is always, and indeed must be, a coddled and a spoilt one, and grows up into a man of ill-health, unable properlj' to maintain his family, or a suffering housewife and mother who cannot fulfill her duties. Errors in Moral Training. 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, vul- garity 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 characteristics 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 offspring of his family, of his mother, his nurse, his nursery, his playfellows, etc., 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 traceable to these 192 EAULY CHILDHOOD. first impressions which influenced the inborn dispositions like rain or sunshine. The boy who has been reared in tlie turmoil of camp-life will bear a different stamp of character from one who has grown up in peace- ful quiet amongst the flowers of a garden. The Spartans and Athenians grew up in the self-same country, under the same sky — but how differ- ently did culture and morals color their national 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 pernicious and hampering effect on the development of good in humanity as the one which treats children in their earliest childhood merely as physical be- ings, and regards the soul at this period as wholly unsusceptible and without requirements. The soul, which makes its existence unmistak- ably 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 influ- ence of the surroundings. Body and soul at the beginning 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 resist- ance of the being in question. The reason why children so easily con- tract 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 influences 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, unre- fined manners of servants have no effect on children in their first two or three years, or even in their first months. It 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, fail- ings 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 behavior may have been the beginning of lust. Anger and lying piost children learn from the servants of the house — if not from their par- ents ! 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 management, and unable to teach him either by example or guidance ; or because she was too weak to resist the wishes EARLY CHILDHOOD. 193 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 my- self, 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-tete with the nurse. And every glance into the world reveals such-like hideous pictures. They show that even the best of mothers cannot be too careful, can never be over rich in precautions, and that they all need preparation for their calling. Neglect of the Intellect. 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, per- sons 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 broken objects, through which it has to acquire its first knowledge. Yes, knowledge ! For can the child understand anything else before it has, to a certain extent, learned to know form, color, material, size, number, etc. — 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 de- light 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, etc., 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 perception ? 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 nour- ishment 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, 13 194 EARLY CHILDHOOD. 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. Frbbel 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 pre- pare 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 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 de- nied 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 there- fore also of infant, development. REQDISITES FOR HEALTHY MENTAL GROWTH. The first requisite then is to discover the right method by which children should take in knowledge before the period in which the under- standing begins to work. Because it has hitherto 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 considered 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 the outwai'd world present eveiywhere forms, colors, 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 notliing, the ear that has heard nothing — not in the simple and elementary form required by the unpracticed eye. Can a child's eye in its eai'liest 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 sym- phony, 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. In- fluences and attractions of undue magnitude and power weaken the young organs, and leave the soul wholly indifferent, because untouched. EARLY CHILDHOOD. 195 As nature has prepared for the child its fit bodily food in its mother's milk, so must the mind of the mother pi-epare the food for her child's soul by placing all the widely scattered 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 surroundings whatever may influence perniciously the germinat- ing 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 com- prehension. To determine these symbols for the earliest stage of de- velopment is an art, and a difficult art; it involves a knowledge 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 en- abling the simplest women often to work wonders ; and without this wonder of love humanity would hardly have developed itself in its in- fancy. 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 arrested, but all brought to their full development. It is always individuals who find out what all need. For all its ne- cessities 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 existence and quenched the thirst of the human soul after truth. Frobel has fulfilled the mission of satisfying the need and higher de- mands of childhood, arising out of the new stage of human develop- ment, 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, colors and sounds with elementary simplicity, and in such a manner that they might penetrate the child's soul without dis- turbing 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. But what is this right method? Is everything to be prepared 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 existence the world of its surroundings must be adapted, arranged and modeled according to its needs, as its cradle and clothing are prepared for its body, because the sucking babe 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 begin to stretch out its 196 EAKLY CHILDHOOD. 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 spon- taneous action of the child, which is the beginning of future labors, begins already in the earliest months. It shows itself in the first grasp- ing with the hands ; but instead of encouraging and assisting this prac- tice, 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 study- ing it by touch. Child's Instinct to Play. 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., tak- ing 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 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 indi- vidual 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 prescribes 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 pro- cess 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 the 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 child 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. EARLY CHILDHOOD. 197 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, etc., 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, etc., or whatever it sees going on in the kitchen, in the work- shop, in the garden, in the street, the instinct of imitation is developing its ideas, and stimulating it to ever new dramatic representations from the life of gi'own 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 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 individu- ality 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 com- posers do not, like tlie little Mozart, compose sonatas at six years old. Doing and handling alone are not enough to cause the individuality of a child, the kernel of its personality, the Divine thought in it to blos- som 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 labor is misused, for it is employed like a machine, always in one direction only. But the child's mind can only produce in the joyousuess of play, with the stim- ulus of a desired end to be attained, of an awakened sense of the beau- tiful to be satisfied, or contentment of one kind or another, to be reached as the result of its endeavors. 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 labor. 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 ; 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 amuse- ments of children, understand but imperfectly how to be wise leaders, and the materials at hand are seldom suitable. Chance-found material 198 EARLY CHILDHOOD. is generally 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 evi- dent that the continually increasing wealth and perfection of toys only serve to produce dullness 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 superfluity 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 material and guidance, even for the exerc^es 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 employment during the first childhood," which are applied in his Kindergarten. ULTIMATE PURPOSE OF PLAYTHINGS. 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, num- ber, color, sound, etc., and by their definiteness, serial order, and con- nection, to produce clear and distinct impressions which shall corres- pond to the first budding powers of comprehension. They serve, also, to assist the development of the senses and organs in the easiest man- ner, viz., through the own action of the child, so that it may be rendered capable of living out its innerself in accordance with its individual en- dowments, 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 converted into conscious action. He perceived the end which nature intended to reach by its means ; saw the analogy 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 : " Genius 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 themselves the means of their fulfillment ; but who can say how much labor, how many fruitless struggles, how many tears of despair might have been saved them ? Or how much EAKLY CHILDHOOD. jgg greater tlieir services, how much wider their hearts might have been ? Many, no doubt, would say that it is just these tears, and struggles, and agouies of despair, which develop genius or character; — and certainly a man has always to thank his own endeavors 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 Humboldt, like Casper Hauser, had been confined for fifteen years in a dark cellar where they could see and hear and do nothing, their genius would 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 indi- vidual is made plain to him when still a child, and the shortest way to its fulfillment painted out. All Sysiphus labor 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 in accordance with their needs, to collect experiences, and to learn for themselves without school disci- pline. The creative spirit must be allowed to work in them, that thus the rising generation may be saved from the demon of excitement-seek- ing, 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 observ- ing 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 expres- sion to the inward self. Morality and virtue must be learned through doing and practicing; 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. 200 EAELY CHILDHOOD. But all the slower, alas, does the moral reconstraction 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 contribute to the purifying and sanctifying of human society in an age when a new phcenix is striving to rise from the ashes of centuries ? It is not enough that saving ideas should be carried about 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 barren, large tracts 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 " Zove ybrce " of woman for redeeming works. The cry of the children calls to the hearts of moth- ers 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 with- out , a soul. A new key has been found to unlock 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 ? FROEBEL'S EDUCATIONAL VIEWS. 201 ( V. GENERAL IDEAS. PECULIARITIES OF METHOD. We have attempted so far to draw out more fully and to make universally comprehensible the following general ideas of Frobel. 1. The destiny of a child is, to be the child of nature, the child of humanity, and the child of God. 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 relation 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 characteris- tics of the race, as may be proved by the analogy between 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 development 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 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 sufiiciently con- sidered and cared for ; the first needs of the soul are almost entirely dis- regarded ; Frobel offers the means by which the female sex may be more adequately prepared for its vocation as the first educators of childhood. These fundamental ideas must be accepted before Frobel's method and means of education can be understood and appreciated in their full significance. In their general acceptation these ideas have un- doubtedly been more or less expressed in different ages and at dif- ferent times, and every thoughtful educationalist has more or less recognized them. But in the relation which Frobel gives them, and the application discovered for them by him, they are new. An idea is never realized by one human mind, or even by one gen- eration ; 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 202 GENERAL IDEAS.— PECULIARITIES OF METHOD. 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 anil 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 hap- pens that the man or woman in whose mind the light of a new truth first kindled remains forever 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 pio- neer, each one of whom will have something to contribute to what has been already conceded — not merely an amendment here or there, but a new thought which will alter, or give afresh basis to the entire scheme. And this is essentially the work of genius — the fire in which evei-y 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 from an inde- pendent stand-point. Evei-y 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 received a fresh amount to be added to it. What but the intuitive power of genius would be equal to such a task? In the field of education the same truth holds good : Frbbel's idea of " human education conducted according to an infallible method " had been groped after, worked at, nourished and fostered for centuries by minds kindred to his own, until at last it was able to be formulated and expressed with some sort of clearness. Method or Plan of Work. The pith of the educational theory in question may be summed up in few words, as follows : — there must be a methodical and systematic plan, according to which every healthily born human being (relatively speaking !) can be in such manner surrounded and guided that his inborn faculties and powers may be sure of complete development. Before the theory in question, together with what Frobel has done towards carrying it out, can be clearly esi^ounded, it is necessary to come to an understanding as to what is meant by method, and to dis- tinguish rightly between an educational and instructional method. ^here are many people who while allowing that instruction shoiild 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 hin- dered 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 experiences it has become, for reaching any given end in the easiest and best possible way. Or the following of definite rules to attain an object in view. GENERAL IDEAS.— PECULIABITIES OF METHOD. 203 In all and everything that has to be accomplished there must be owe 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 pro- cesses ai^plies equally to artistic and mental work. Poetry cannot dis- pense with metre and the laws of versification ; musical compositions must be based on the laws of harmony. Even when people wa-ite poetry without any knowiedge of metrical rules, they nevertheless unconsciously apply these rules ; their composi- tions could not be called poetry if a definite plan of syllables did not produ:e rhythm. In the same way, people gifted with musical talent do not need to have learned the laws of harmony, in order to apply them in musical improvising. But without that unconscious application, only discordance would be the result, and never a complete tune. Tills 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 learned 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 appre- hension, the understanding of the pupil, -and, in addition to the impart- ing of positive knowledge, aims at exercising and developing the power of thought. The laws of instructional methods must therefore corres- pond to the laws of human thought. 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 psychological treatment of it would be out of place. These indications, moreover, will not be given in accordance with the numerous definitions of philo- sophical authorities, but only in the sense in which inward and out- ward observation brings them to the notice of every sound human in- tellect, and in which they lie at the bottom of Frobel's views. 204 GENERAL IDEAS.— PECULIAEITIES OF METHOD. Frahel's Law of Opposites and their Reconcilement, 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 in a picture, without the details of leaves, blossoms, sta- mens, etc. 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 diffei'ence — but difference, side-by-side with similarity. The qualities which are similar will be the universal ones, which everything possesses, as form, size, color, material, etc., 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, etc., as, for instance, round and square, great and little, hard and soft, etc. 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 color with all the lightest by all the intermediate shades ; from an angular shape one can gradually go over to a round one through a series of modifications 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 qual- ities 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, etc., which lie between the opposites, are the connecting links, or, as Frobel puts it, " the means of reconciliation of opposites " (and Frbbel's system can- not 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 aflSnity 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 known ones, in all the details of its different parts — leaf, flower, fruit, etc., 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 : percep- tion, observation, comparison, judgment and conclusion. GENERAL IDEAS.— PECULIARITIES OF METHOD. £05 Without this series of preliminary steps no thought can be worked out, and the ruling principle is the law of the reconciliation of oppo- sites, or the finding out the like and unlike qualities of things. It matters not how far the thinker be conscious or unconscious 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 impressions ; then perception comes in ; gradually ideas begin to shape themselves in its mind, and it then learns to compare and disting-uish ; 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 con- scious thought of the adult. PestalOfZi's Fundamental Laic, Any system of instruction which is to be effectual must therefore take into account this law of thought (or logic); it must apply the fun- damental principle of connecting the known with the unknown by means oj comjmrison. 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 con- ception and can form none. And this is done even after Pestalozzi by his " method of observation and its practical application " has placed in- struction on a true basis. Of the manner in which Frobel has built upon this foundation 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 meth- odical process is applicable to it, as Frobel considers it to be. When Pestalozzi was endeavoring to construct his "Fundamental Method of Instruction " (" Urform des Lehrens ") according to some definite principle, he recognized the truth that the problem of educa- tion cannot be fully solved by any merely instructional system how- ever 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 facul- ties, 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 ac- quired. 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 perception," which is to precede Pestalozzi's "A B C of observation," and speaks as follows : " The new method must be able to shape and determine its pupil's course of life according to fixed and infallible rules." 206 GENERAL IDEAS.-PECULIARITIES OF METHOD. " 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 invaria- bly right will. This moral activity, which has to be developed in the pupil, is with- out doubt based on laws, which laws the agent finds out for himself by direct personal experience, and the same holds good of the voluntary development 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 edu- cation — searched for the laws of human nature, in order to apply these laws in the cultivation of human nature. Frdbel strove to refer back all these manifold laws to one funda- mental law which he called the " reconciliation of opposites " (of rela- tive opposites). 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 center, and to which they may be re- ferred. For the undeveloped mind of tlie 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 come to the application of Frobel's theory in practice. Frdbel's observations of the human soul are in accord with the gen- eral results of modern psychology, in spite of small deviations 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 Frdbel's system into the judgment 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 pre- serve this part of it from becoming mechanical, and to maintain its vitality, its connection with the theoretical side must be imderstood and expounded more and more thoroughly. With the advance of sci- ence Frdbel's philosophy of the universe must- in course of time have its proper place assigned to it, and his educational system, which is grounded on his philosophy, will be brought into the necessary connec- tion with other scientific discoveries. The great endeavor of modern educationalists is to replace the arti- ficiality and restraint in which the purely conventional educational sys- tems 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 con- GENERAL IDEAS.— PECULIARITIES OF METHOD, 207 scious, 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 it has since made great progress, the knowledge of child nature is still very meager. The services rendered by Rousseau, as the first pioneer of modern educational theories, and the many errors and eccentricities mixed up with his great truths, must here be assumed to be known.* Insufficiency of Pestalozzi's Doctrine of Form. Pestalozzi, who carried on the work in the same track, fixed the ele- ments of his '■'■Urform des Lehrens" in form, number, and words, as the fundamental conditions of human mental activity, and which can only be acquired 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 dif- ferent form, and there is a plurality of things which stands in opposi- tion to every single thing. Through the division of things arises num- ber, 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 words. Thus in these three elements we have the most primitive facts on which thought is based. In every form, every number, and every wor4 there exist two connected or united opposites. In every form, for in- stance, 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 them- selves 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 comprehending them both in one expression. Pestalozzi has begun the work of basing instruction systematically 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 prac- tical methods are not altogether sufficient for the first years of life. It is a false use of language which sejiarates education from instruc- tion. The word education, in its full meaning of human culture, as a whole, includes instruction as a part, and comprises in itself mental, moral, and physical development ; but in ito narrower use it signifies, more especially, moral culture. *An elaborate exposition of Rousseau's system, principles and methods will be found in Barnard's Journal of Education, v. pp. 450-486; also in Barnard's Frencli Pedagogy. 208 GENERAL IDEAS— PECULIARITIES OF METHOD. One of the reasons why instruction has been so much more consid- ered and systematized than the moral side of education is, undoubt- edly, that the former is in the hands of educational and school author- ities 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 fam- ily, 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 prepara- tion, 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 foundation has been given to it by the application of a fixed system of rules, such a foundation as the laws of thought afford for instruction. 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 discovery 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 his spiritual world. The power and habit of feeling rightly and beautifully consti- tute moral inclination, which influences the will, but does not yet nec- essarily 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 dispensed with, even in this department, any more than the cultivation 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, GENERAL IDEAS.— PECULIARITIES OF METHOD. 209 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 man- ifestations 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 completely 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 everything 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 gi-eat world-harmony com- plete ; but it is going on to completion. This is the aim and end of all movements, all life, and all endeavor, and an 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. Ambition, pride, avarice, envy, dishonesty, murder, hatred, etc., may always be traced back to self-seeking, even though it be disguised in the form of extrav- agant affection for others, or for one other. So, too, what we call dia- bolical is, in reality, self-seeking. And whatever shape good may take it must be essentially the expres- sion of love to others. A solitary individual in no way connected with fellow-creatures would have as little opportunity for good as tor evil. All the impulses and passions of a human being have for their object the procufance 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 individual himself injured, there is nothing to be said. The conflict between good and evil begins when the happiness of an individual is procured at the cost of others or of the community. True goodness consists, with rare exceptions, in preferring the wel- fare of the many or of the whole of human society, to personal, ego- tistical advantage ; in striving after an ideal which, without self-sacri- ficing love, would be unthinkable. Love towards God, moreover, com- pels love towards mankind. j^ 210 GENERAL IDEAS.-PECULIAEITIES OF METHOD, The moral battle-field is always between the two extremities of per- sonal 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 sensual and the spiritual nat- ures 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 necessary devotion and self-sacrifice to society. The personal services rendered to the whole, in any circle of life, determine the worth of the individual to society, and moral greatness consists in the love which, going out beyond the personal, seeks to embrace the whole of God's world — and therewith God himself. For God has herein placed the destiny of man, viz., to expand from the circle of in- dividual existence, through all intermediate 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 bafiles our attempts at full definition, harmony is, nevertheless, its fun- damental 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 triangle is the fundamental shape — that is to say, two lines starting from one point and running in opposite directions are connected together by a third line. And so forth. Beauty in the world of color is the harmonious blending together of the opposites, light and shade, by means of the scale of color — this at least is the primary condition. The mixing of colors, too, consists in the right fusion of the elementary colors — red, blue, yellow, which in themselves form opposites. In the world of sound beauty is in like manner conditioned by the harmony of single tones amongst each other. The basis of musical har- mony is the simple chord, i. e., the opposites, which the key-note and the fifth constitute, are reconciled by the third. In poetry rhythm is obtained by the regular connection of long and short syllables. And so forth. The ugly, the imperfect, in all arts, is on the other hand the inhar- monious — or the result of want of proportion and correspondence in opposites — or the absence of transitions to connect them together. GENERAL IDEAS.— PECULIARITIES OF METHOD, 211 And we come again across these same laws, which we have summed up as the basis of thouglit, 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 " (esthetics). Law of Balance — Universal and Beneficial. Whether this universal principle (Welt ge.ietz — world law, as Frobel calls it) be formulated as " the reconciliation of opposites " or in any other way, is here, as has been already said, of little importance. The most comprehensive formula would perhaps be kuo of balance. Science expresses itself very differently in this matter. Newton calls the law in question the " law of gravitation " (the connection of attrac- tion and repulsion). Naturalists designate it as the law of "universal exchange of matter " (giving out and taking in, connected by assimu- lation), etc. This law, in which Frobel sees the foundation of all development, and, therefore, also of human development — it is his desire to establish and apply as the " universal law of education." It is with the applica- tion of the law, which will be demonstrated 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 indis- pensable. Not till one all-prevading principle of development, which sliall comprise in itself every variety of law, has been discovered and applied to practical education in its minutest detail will there be any- thing approaching to a veritable and complete method. It remains, therefore, now to prove that this principle of Frobel's is identical in the spiritual and material -world, and, if this be established, the con- nection or unity of all law will follow of itself. Frobel has over and over again told us how deeply his whole develop- ment was influenced by the fact that from his earliest childhood he was out of harmony with his immediate surroundings. The early death of his mother, the unloving treatment 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 nat- ure, deprived the child of fostering love in the morning of his life, and initiated him early into the borrows of existence. ■Frobel's Personal Experience. The yearning of his soul for love, the thirst of his mind for knowl- edge, were never really satisfied, and he was forever finding himself driven back anew on the inmost depths of his nature, left to stand by himself alone. Up to the years of early manhosd 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 cause of it, and this he found in the sharp contrast that existed between his inner and his outer world. 212 GENERAL IDEAS.— PECULIARITIES OF METHOD. This discovery of "opposites," tbis 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 ardor of his soul, now turned to the world of nature. In the contemplation of this W'orld, in devotion to its invisible spu-it, in which he soon learned to recognize the Divine Spirit, he found the consolation, and ^Iso in part the instruction which had been denied him by his human surroundings. Already as a boy he would lose himself in profound meditation on the laws of the universe, on the cause of organic life in nature. " From star-shaped blossoms," he says, " I first learned 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 op- posite petals there are others which connect them together. " A humble little flower taught me dimly to suspect the secrets of existence, the mysterious laws of development, which I afterwards learned 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 gauzes, 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 be- longs, 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 re- marked 3,t 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 foundation 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 different parts, by means of connecting transitions (or the reconciliation of oppo- sites) make up the harmony of the whole, but that also between all and the most different organisms 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. GENERAL IDEAS.— PECULIARITIES OF METHOD. 213 Thus through a countless series of intermediate plants he saw grasses connected with trees. The connection in the vegetable kingdom be- came apparent to him through the fact that all plants, how great soever their differences, have something in common ; all have roots, stems, leaves, crowns, stamens, etc., 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 mani- fested itself to him as the result of systematic working, of division into parts, of a series of events, of sub and super ordination, of connection through transitions, of variety in similarity, in short, of harmony and concord accomplished through the reconciliation of opposites ; he saw the self-same truth pei'vading other kingdoms of nature. In the organ- ism 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 I'oot to the crown, and conversely, and through this movement connects together the op- posite 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, etc. As the corresponding petals of a flower stand opposite one another, so do the limbs of animal bodies ; the cor- responding feet, hands, ears, or eyes, are placed opposite to one another. Frobel calls this entgegengesetztgleiche (like things set opposite to each other), and he finds analogous occurrences in the spiritual world. And furthej', he perceives that not only throughout each of the three kingdoms of nature — the inorganic mineral kingdom not excepted — there exist common characteristics by which the members of the sep- arate 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 connected 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, etc., lives on all the three kingdoms of nature, and is thus united and connected with them. Here, too, in the chemical process of fusion, which is known as " inter- change of matter," he found his favorite law again. For this process of interchange goes on as follows : — Every organism takes or sucks in nourishment, air, etc., 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 appro- priation or assimulation, for every organic body converts a portion of what it has taken in in the shape of food, air etc., into flesh and blood ; and thus there is a constant mutual exchange of substance go- ing on between all organisms. And this process of exchange, by which 214 GENEEAL IDEAS.— PECULIARITIES OF METHOD. everything that exists is connected together organically and materially, is not thinkable without the adjusting of opposites, or, as Frbbel 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 continuous 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 svm. And as everything on om- 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 un- connected 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, Frbbel con- cluded 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 appearance 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 Frbbel's method of observation rests.* Frbbel 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 vertebrae to undertake to construct the whole organism of an animal. In a letter to his elder brother,! written in his twenty-fifth year, Frbbel 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 endeavor. Speaking of things in Nature, he says : — " I felt that something * Frobel searched after and discovered the " unity of all development," a theory which is universally occupying modern scientific enquiry, t In vol. I. of " Frobel's Schriften," edited by "W. Lange. GENERAL IDEAS— PECULIARITIES OF METHOD. 215 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 liigher 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 understand 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 learned from the teacher experience, without suspecting, without even knowing clearly, what I was learning. In this way I arrived at an ideal knowl- edge of myself, of the world, and of humanity, such as few men possess in youth. For every fresh discovery that I made in the outward world I felt always compelled to find a corresponding point in myself, to which I couid fasten it," etc. Frobel was then seeking for what he later designated by the expres- sion Lebenseinigung (unity of life). In the life of the human soul he saw a repetition of the continual adjustment of opposites, which went on in the life of nature. As the opposites of day and night were con- nected by twilight, of summer and winter by spring and autumn, so in the human soul do the day and night of conscious and unconscious life, the light and darkness of good and evil, alternate with one another. So, too, activity and rest, happiness and sorrow, etc. 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 oppo- sites, life and death, alternate. And these are only seemingly irrecon- cilable opposites. All earthly life contains 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 personality, 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 expan- sion, life ascending higher and higher, always nearer to God. If you only knew how to read the book of nature rightly you would find every- where in it the confirmation of the revelation of the soul's immortality. Throughout the whole of nature there is nothing but continually repeated resurrection ! . . . The universal and the individual are opposites, which presuppose one another. Without individual human beings there would be no humanity, and without humanity there would be no individuals. The race only continues because the personal units 216 GENERAL IDEAS.— PECULIARITIES OP METHOD. continue. Humanity comprises not only mankind of to-day, but man- kind 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 Frbbel's own words will be sufficient proof that his theoi-y of the unity of life (^Lehenseinigunfj) did not, as has been asserted, rest on a pantheistic conception of the universe. The im- mense unbroken whole of the universe comprises, according to him, God, nature, and man' as an insepai-ably connected whole, though not as finished and at rest, but on the contrary, in a state of eternal " be- coming " — 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), he says, for in- stance : " The theory which regards development as capable of standing still and being finished, or only repeating itself in greater universality, is, beyond all expression, a degrading one, etc Neither man nor mankind should be regarded as an already finished, perfected, stereo- typed 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 natm-e, 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 conscious existence.) " 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 si^iritual 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 himseK 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 mani- fest itself. GENERAL IDEAS— PECULIARITIES OF METHOD. 217 " As the child of nature, man is an imprisoned, fettered being, with- out self-mastery, under the dominion of his passions. As the child of God he becomes a free agent, destined to self-mastery, 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. Frbbel defines life, in whatever form it may express itself, as progres- sive development from lower to higher gi-ades, from unconscious exist- ence 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 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, which we have just acknowledged as the law of human thought, the law of moral life, and the law of the physical or organic world. Move- ment, 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 sub- ject 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 fol- lows, 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 necessitates 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 218 GENEEAL IDEAS.— PECULIAMTIES OP METHOD. when this fundamental principle is recognized and followed, and applied in the development of human nature, with full understanding of its aim aud object, will education be raised to the level of art or science. Frobel is the first person who has hitherto fully recognized this prin- ciple 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 spon- taneous 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 disturbing 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. But there can be no real freedom in human action, unless it follows in the path, recognizes the limits, and subjects itself to the 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. Arbitrary capricious action never reaches its end, or only by accident. Thus, then, Frbbel's system consists in regulating the natural spon- taneous activity of the child according to its own inherent law, in order that the purpose of nature, the complete development of all the natural faculties, may be fulfilled. Tills 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. Tlie 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 full 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 knowledge of their results. And conversely the practical application only gains meaning through knowledge of the fundamental idea. The reason why Frobel was so much condemned and run down, and even derided, during his lifetime, is that his ideas, owing tq their novelty and apparent opposition to old-established 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 apprehensible to every one, aud in their entire scope. FROEBEL'S EDUCATIONAL VIEWS. 219 VI. THE KIXDERGARTEIT. Frederic Froebel bas succeeded in realizing what the educational 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 Kindergarten the child finds itself surrounded by a miniature world adapted to its require- ments 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 sum- mary 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 (or in a large heated room in winter) he sees a ring of little children from two to four or five years old, led by the Kinder- garten 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 on. To the gymnastic exercises succeed other (Beweffungftspiel'') 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 accom- pany each other ; the child's nature requires this. Body and mind must not yet be occupied separately, but the gymnastics of the limbs should at the same time exercise the mental powers and dispositions. Frobel's " movement games " develop the limbs and muscles, while the accom- panying music works on the feelings and imagination, and the words and action rouse the mind to observation, and finally the will to imita- tion 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, rmder 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 age, working away busily and attentively. At one of the tables strips of different colored papers, sti-aw or leather, are being plaited into all sorts of pretty pat- terns, to make letter-cases, mats, baskets, boxes, etc. The patterns of the elder children are of their own invention, and their little produc- tions are destined for presents to parents, brothers and sisters, and friends. 220 THE KINDERGARTEN. 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, rep- resenting 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. In playful work and workful play the child finds a relief for, and the satisfaction of, his active impulses and receives an elementary ground- ing 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 brought out to work in the flower-beds, of which each child has one for its own. Flowers, vege- tables 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 botan- ical 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, rab- bits, 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 formations ; 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 laughing up to the table deserted by the elder children, and in their turn take their seats for half an hour'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 syste- matic constructions without any special object ; " forms of knowledge," or mathematical figures ; " forms of practical life," or tools, buildings, etc. ; or else one of the many occupations of which the results may be THE KINDERGARTEN. ^21 seen in the glass cupboard of the play-room, is carried on. In this cup- board are a variety of articles modeled in clay, lace-like 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 paint- ings, too, according to Frobel's new linear method ; artistic little houses, churches, furniture, etc., 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 manu- facturers 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 lit- tle sum of money for its own work, and the joint proceeds are spent in dressing a Christmas tree for the poor children of the neighborhood, 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 side 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 fulfillment 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 toothers. With this end in view diSiculties will be overcome with courage and cheerfulness, and the only effectual bar- rier 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, (fan only be established by making work, such work as shall connect artistic dexterity with the cul- tivation of intelligence, the basis of education. The Kindergarten meets this want during the period of early childhood ; the Jugend, or Scliulgnrten* (Youth, or school-garden) with workshop, studio, camp, gymnastics, etc., must carry on the work afterwards on the same foun- dation. And now the working hours are ended, and a choral melody resounds in our Kindergarten. The little ones with their teacher and her assist- antsf form into a circle and sing with childish reverence a short song, *See " Die Arbeit und die neue Erziehung." Second edition, published by 6. "Wigand of Kasset. tToung girls who help in the work of teaching, and are thus trained to be themselves Kindergarten teachers. 222 THE KINDERGARTEN. 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. Beligion means binding together, union (between God and man), and without loving fellowship religion cannot 'exist. Frbbel defines religion as " union with God," wliich 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 experienced by them- selves, and for the elder ones refers to Bible history. Four hours of the day thus pass quickly by for the little people, and 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 labors of the day, and to carry on by themselves ai home the arts they have learned — 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 flourish better here, both physi- cally and mentally, than in the close atmosphere of rooms, under the supei-vision 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 stifliy 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 expectations 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 educa- tion in the home, which must always form the starting point, the ker- nel, of all human culture?" No, the Kindergarten is not all that is wanted, and Frbbel 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 of humanity, its educator in the THE KINDERGARTEN. 223 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 hopt^d 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 daj^, we hope, be equal to this task. We look forward to a time when Fiobel's method shall be taught in all girls' schools, and when it will have become universally acknowedged that all who have to do with children, fathers and mothers, nurses and governesses, should be versed in the science of educatioii, 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 de- velopment," and " unity of development." 1. In nature, where everything works freely, unrestrainedly and un- artificially, there is scope for freedom of development. Freedom of growth among plants is only possible where this systematic develop- ment is not disturbed, and the necessary conditions 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, that the clue will be found to free- dom 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 devel- opment 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 des- tiny, which is to become a morally reasonable being, makes a moi-ally reasonable education indispensable. Development is emancipation : emancipation from the bands of rude unspiritualized matter ; emanci- pation of the limbs and senses, of all the mental powers and faculties ■ — this is it that makes freedom. But freedom of development is not sufficient without exercises for development. 2. Frobel says : " Man is destined to rise out of himself 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 accord- 224 THE KINDERGARTEN. ance with its human nature, as to realize its true self, to express, as it were, the thuught 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 out- ward world oppose to his weakness, he may be incited to the exertion of inward strength. A child cannot learn to walk without trouble and effort ; and it is only after thousands of 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 ungovei-ned forces reign. There is, however, a kind of discipline which is contrary to nature, as well as one in accordance with it, and this un- natural discipline leads to artificiality, and the suppression of individ- ual personality, 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 practi- cal means which he has discovered and applied 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 to meet their innate impulse to activity, and that in a rightly ordered sequence cor- responding to every stage of the soul's progressive development. The child is thus led on by easy simple stages to modeling, production, and creation. Only by original creation can it fully express its inner self, its individual being; and this it must do if it is 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 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 Kinder- garten by means of personal activity in an atmosphere of happiness and contentment. To train pupils in the great workshops of the Cre- ator to be themselves one day creators, to bring human beings nearer and nearer to the likeness of God, this is the purpose of the " Devel- opment exercises," which are carried on in the Kindergarten. 3. All organic development is continuous, unbroken, and, progress- ing from stage to stage, forms a closely interconnected whole. In Nat- ure this continuity, or connectedness, exists unconsciously, but in the world of human life it must be the result of deliberate conscious voli- THE KINDEEGAP.TEN. 225 tion, and must lead up to the apprehension of the highest cosmic unity, i. e., to the knowledge of God. Education to be worthy of a human being must, therefore, be contin- uous, must proceed upon the same plan from the beginning, though in a progressive sequence, according to the natural stages of development. The first playthings must stand in proper social relation to the last, the first elementary lessons must be in connection with the topmost pin- nacle of later knowledge; the moral culture especially depends on har- mony in the whole treatment of the child. / Human existence begins in unconsciousness, and has to pass through all the successive stages of growing consciousness, until it reaches complete self-knowledge. Frb- bel says : " The clearer the thread which runs through our lives back- wai'd — 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 be- tween tlie first period, which is the sport of caprice and chance, and the following lesson — 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, to 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 accord- ingly 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 caresses (i^ce Frobel's Mutter tin Koselieder) form the first foundation on which 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 occujiations, 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 connection between childish conceptions and ideas and their realization — 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 Kindergarten theory, the first, though imperfect, steps towards which have already been taken in many countries of Europe, and in tlie 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 personality 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. 15 226 THE KINDERGARTEN. It is only a more harmonious development of the special characteris- tics 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 to which is union with God. Frbbel 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 fulfillment of this idea with the motto : " Come, let us live for our children." In his book for mothers he savs : I " Parents, let your home a children's garden be, Where witli 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 existing Kindergartens is only now beginning to approximate to something cor- responding 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 contem- plated. 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 others points, which have hitherto been overlooked, will meet with proper considera- tion, as the matter becomes more fully understood, and its development pro- gresses. At present the chief thing to be considered, is how to make the estab- lishment of Kindergartens as general as possible. FROEBEL'S EDUCATIONAL VIEWS. 227 VII. THE MOTHER AND HER NURSERY SONGS. Frobel himself says of this " Matter und Koselieder " 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 di human dispositions must be nourished and fostered, if they are to attain com- plete 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 regulating a mother's caressing and fondling of her child I " And such a judgment would not be iucoirect as far as the many imperfect verses and the f-tyle 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 philosophic thoughts thus embodied in the form of verse ; and what is of greater importance, there is a fund of cliild- like simplicity and naivete which seems to come straight from the child's soul, and must 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 sec- ondary consideration, it is capable of being improved when its sub- stance has come to be understood. And this substance is not only new and important, but it is in the highest degree the production of genius. It reveals the process of development of the inner, instinctive life of childhood, and converts the intuitive, purposeless action of mothers into an intelligent plan, in a way which has never before been even at- tempted. The kej'-note of the book is the analogy between the devel- opment of humanity from its earliest infancy, and that of the individual. The fact that the germs of all human faculties and dispositions, 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, — 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 cours^ of tiie development 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 immense degree of importance, when once it is made the means of supplying education with an infallible guide, childhood with a regulator for its blind impulses, its uncertain groping and fumljling, and the maternal instinct with a safe channel. The practical hints contained in this book of Frobel's consist, it is true, of mere disconnected fragments, too often couched in obscure Ian- 228 THE MOTHER AND HER NURSERY SONGS. gUAge. 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 remodeled 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 object 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 up of gaps in the system, greater perfection of arrangement, and improvement in the outward form will not be difficult when, through more universal practical appli- cation, Frobel's great educational theory Mieets with more and more thorough understanding. Genius gives utterance to its thoughts, which will in due time become embodied in appropriate forms. Frobel rightly calls this book a family look, for only by its use in the family, in the hands of mothers, can it fulfill its purpose, and con- tribute towards raising the family to a level of human culture corre- sponding to the advanced civilization of the day, and preparing mothers for their vocation in the highest sense. Frobel made his " Mutter und Koselieder " the foundation of his lec- tures to Kindergarten teachers on his theory, and over and over again repeated : " I have here laid down the fundamental ideas of my educa- tional theory ; whoever has grasped the pivot idea of this book under- stands 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 attention ; and the majority of mothers only see in it an ordinary pict- ure-book with little songs. No doubt there are finer pictures 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 fullness, 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 yourseK have had experience of such objections, and so have I in the course of my exposi- tion of the system. If you would only draw the conclusions of your ideas yourself and collect them together in a commentary they would THE MOTHER AND HER NURSERY SONGS. 2£9 be much easier to understand, and the book which you consider of so great importance would at least be recognized by the thinking world." To which Frobel answered ; " You do not know what you are ask- ing : I should then be obliged to say everything, and I should be still less understood. None but the children wbo are brought up in Kinder- gartens will ever understand my philosophy in its breadth and depth. Let the world lattgh at me now as mttch as it likes for my ordering and arranging of children's play, and it will one day acknowledge that I am right, for the children will understand me and know that I under- stood 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." It was Frbbel's misfortune that he had not the gift of expi'essing 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 completely embodied his educational ideas, and which was to him the most natural form of expression, was not universally intelligible. Had it not been for the repeated experi- ence 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 education. The following very imperfect attempt to throw some light on the contents of "Mutter und Koselieder" would have been given to the public sooner, but for the repeated experience that in no way is so much opposition to Frbbel's system excited, as by any endeavor 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 experiences on this point. In all the towns of different countries in which I delivered 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, etc., 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 (its true use) — or to evil (its abuse) ; and 3. That the examples given in the " flutter und Koselieder " are psychologically based on the instinctive life of the child, even though they are not always expressed in the most perfect form. 230 THE MOTHER AND HER NURSERY SONGS. Many profound thinkers, as well among psychologists as natural philosophers, were beyond measure astonished at Frobel's'theory, and gave their hearty agi-eement 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 ex- pressed 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 S2:)irit. And such criticism, we must own, is not unfair as regards the choice of many of the examples. A complete understanding of the theory will make a new and faultless selection possible. 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 experi- ences to be collected together, which in their impoi'tance for the well- being of human society are second to no science whatever. What Rousseau, Pestalozzi, 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 Frbbel 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 tlie first utterances 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. Following the example of modern natural science, which has descended from the study of the greatest phenomena to that of the least, and is making its most important dis- coveries 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 develop^ ment with all the others. He finds the law which lies at the bottom of all systematic development, and discovers the means for the applica- tion 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 and 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 FKOEBEL'S EDUCATIONAL VIEWS. 231 VIII. EARLIEST DEVELOPMENT OF THE LIMBS. DuRiXG 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 Frdbel has compiled his " Mut- ter und Koselieder." The games introduced in this book are adapted both to cultivating 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 disci- pline is essential also to the moral well-being of humanity. By de- veloping muscular force the will is strengthened, and grace of mind and spirit increases in proportion to physical grace. Kow, if children require systematic muscular exercises when they can already walk and run and jump, they need them still more before- hand. 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 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 collected together all that were suita- ble 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 ob- serve the ways of mothers with their babies ; and in this way he accu- mulated 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 course expressions, unchildlike ideas, or utter nonsense, which too often disfigured and spoilt them. Mothers never play with their chil- dren in perfect silence ; they invariably 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 awak- ening of feeling with the songs that accompany his games. The object of ordinary gymnastic exercises is to produce the com- pletest possible development of all the muscles. This, however, would be fatiguing for young children, who, during the first years of their 232 THE FIRST DEVELOPMENT OF THE LIMBS. 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 Frbbel's " Gym- nastic 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 prepa- ration 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 propor- tion 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 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 labor, 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. Education should, therefore, begin with teaching the manarjement of material, oi' manual work, then go on to the iransformation 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. All things whatsoever that surround a child are either products of Nature or of human culture, and have their ultimate origin in God. Now, the child's relation to these things should be conveyed to him with the utmost possible clearness and definiteness, while, at the same time, the impression of unity and continuity, in vrhich, as yet, everything appears to him, must be preserved as much as possible. Let us examine a few specimens from the "Mutter und Koselieder," and see how Frobel carries out his ideas. FBOEBEL'S EDUCATIONAl, VIEWS. 233 IX. THE CHILD S FIRST RELATIONS TO NATURE. We must here, of course, take for granted that the essential condi- tions 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 Kindergartens within reach to supply the life of nature), and the human being 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 God 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. Movement 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. The hand stretched out sideways with the thumb held upright repre- sents the weather-cock, and the movement from one side 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 fulfill 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, pai-t 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. 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." — Amelia Gumey. 234 THE CHILD'S FIRST EELATIONS TO NATURE. SONG. " As the Tveather-cock on the tower Turns about in wind and shower, Baby moves its hands with pleasure, Round and round in merry measure." — Amelia Gumey. If the action were not accompanied by explanatory words, the child's intelligence and power of speech would not be called out. The next important step, viz., to connect the visible phenomena of which the child has been made conscious, with an invisible cause, is easily taken. The mother, for instance, says : " The wind moves the trees, the mill, the kite, etc.," 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 let- ting 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 posses- sion 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 understood, of course, that at first children are only capable of receiving 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 Frbbel 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 every- thing together as a whole, the power of sympathy and love. The child suspects as yet no divisions and contradictions in the world ; his near- est surroundings, which speak to him as love, are for him the meas- ure 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 endeavor to preserve for him, and not let the knowledge of conflict- ing forces open his eyes any sooner to divisions and discords than grow- ing self-consciousness will sooner or later unavoidably do for him. The THE CHILD'S FIRST RELATIONS TO NATURE. 235 intuitive perception in tlie cliild's soul of the oneness and unity of God is after all the eternal truth, and all the warring and strife in the more conscious lives of men and women only a passing phenomenon of spiritual growth. THE CHILD AND THE 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 he said or sung by the mother.) " See, my 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 my 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, I shall often, often come. And look in at your happy home ; And when my shining light you see. You must wave a kiss to me." " Good-bye, good-bye, dear moon, Come back again right soon ! " Thus Frobel would have the natural phenomenaof 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. •' 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 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 elementary foi'ces 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 236 THE CHILD'S FIRST RELATIONS TO KATUKE. it, in the open air, where the voices of wind and water, color, 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 cultivation 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 such enjoyment will overcome that delight in the coarse gratification of the senses which is incompatible with human dignity. Children should be encouraged, also, to call around them the chick- ens, 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 capa- ble of intelligent observation of human life, and can only understand the actions of human beings in so far as they have any relation to them- selves. 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, as in THE FARM- YARD GATE. What can this be ? A gate I see ! Oh ! come into the court with me ; The horses are springing, Tlie pigeons are flying, The geese are chattering, The ducks are quacking, The hens are cackling, The cock is crowing, Tlie cow is lowing, The calf is sporting, The lamb is baaing, The sheep is bleating, The pig is grunting ; Closely shut the gate must be. That none may run away, But all in peace together stay.— Amelia Chirneij. 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 ob- serve their movements, habits, manner of life, etc. ; 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 learned to observe the endless differences that exist in the condi- tions of animals, how all the separate species, varying in their ways and requirements, live and flourish in different elements and surround- ings, they will not be so liable to fall into the Philistine habit of criti- cising and condemning everything in which their fellow-creatures differ from themselves — the seeds of wide-hearted toleration and love of jus- tice will have been planted in them. THE CHILD'S FIRST EELATIONS TO NATUKE. 237 All the different images and influences of nature produce correspond- ing moods in the human mind. A landscape, smiling in the sunshine, impresses the mind very differently from a hurricane by the seashore, and the song of the nightingale produces 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 analogies 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? To a song called " The Little Fishes," which is accompanied by a finger exercise imitating the swimming undulating movement of fish, Frobel has affixed the following motto (which, indeed, may be consid- ered the key to all the songs in the book), — " Where there's movement, where there's action, For the child's eye tliere's attraction ! Where briglitness, 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 ex- press the analogy between the world of outward phenomena and the world of thought and ideas. The time will come when the whole sym- bolic language of nature will be clear 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 nest!e 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 are 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 while the little " bird-song," will be sure 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 ! " Twit, twit, twit," the young ones call, " Mother, thou art so dear to us all." — Amelia Gumey. 238 THE CHILD'S FIKST RELATIONS TO NATUKE. Frobel uses this example, of the visible providence of parents, to lead the mind up to the invisible providence of the all-protecting Heav- enly Father. The child is then taught to observe either in real life, or in the pictures of the " Mutter uud 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, di-awing 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 : " Tlie lieavenly Father's glorious sun Warms thy home too aud makes it bright, He shines on thee and every one, Looli up and thank 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. Whatever children have to take cai'e of they learn to love, and, 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 thai instinct of which conscience is in time developed. If the 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, trans- gression 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 childhood, 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 start- ing-point of the life of the soul, and the beginning of mental develop- ment. 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 anything like continuity in human life, and man's inward develop- ment ? Only when the idea of this continuity has been fully grasped, THE CHILD'S FIRST RELATIONS TO NATURE. 239 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 under- standing and consciousness — and to bring humanity and nature, by the conquest and spiritualization 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 generation must not be allowed to grow up without receiving its initiation in this temple of Divine revelation, and being fitted to exer- cise 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 chil- dren'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 impres- sions 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 sis- ters, and exchange smiling glances with him ; the wind-chased clouds, painted by the evening sun, shape themselves to Lis fancy into magic pictures of an ideal world ; butterflies and insects speak to him in a familiar language, and the birds gladden 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 indomitable belief in the Divine Spirit, and an immutable trust in the fatherly love of God. '' AVhat God has joined together, let not man separate ! " says Frobel with regard to man's " union with nature." 240 FKOEBEL'S EDUCATIONAL VIEWS. X. 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 cure, without her looks of love, existence would offer a sorry prospect to the young new-comer. The mother must be her child's fii'st 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 independ- ence. 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 run 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 independence of its mother, with the development of its personality. The first utterance through which the child expresses its love relation- ship to hum^n 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. 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 nmch 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 tins 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 sim- ply because tl^ey 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 THE CHILD'S FIRST RELATIONS TO M'ANKIND. 241 gradual transitions, gives a shock to the system. If the harmony of the soul is to be comjjlete in tlie future, the child's feelings must not be overstrained at first, but be allowed to expand gradually. Hence it must always have a pernicious effect to take young children out of tlie family circle, and set them in the midst of a larger commu- nity, 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 arrange- ments of these institutions may be. Nothing can fully take the place of the natural atmosphere of family-life which has been divinely or- dained for children, though at the same time it is fair to acknowledge that orphan asylums do, to an immense extent, compensate the littl 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 Frbbel. The family is the first link in the organism of liumanity the first social community. And if this first link be imperfect, how can the others hang together properly ? If, on the other hand, tliis 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 sucli 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 spread. 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, which should consist chiefly of childi'en of their own age. The face of the youngest child will brightea with delight when it meets another of the same size or age. An in- stinctive feeling of sympathy arises where there is a similar degree of development, just as in later life people of kindred minds become at- tached to one another. The Kindergarten affords the best possible playground for infants, even befoi-e their second year; but it is essen- tial that they should be accompanied by their mothers or nurses. The hand-games in the " Mutter und Koselieder " furnish also the first introduction to the family relationships. Almost everything that comes nnder a child's notice will suggest to it these relationships, because they are the only ones known to it. Its *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 there be thrown only with childreB, and will have companions of their own age. 16 242 THE CHILD'S FIEST KELATIOKS TO MANKIND. ■" dolls are made to represent father, or mother and children ; it plays at being father or mother with its little companions. A child of two years old or so will cry out : " Father and mother stars 1 " while gazing at two large shining orbs in the heavens (see ^'3Iutler und 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 ia 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.— ^»ie?ia Gumey. Counting is an inexhaustible source of amusement to little children, as, indeed, may be everything that is of importance for their develop- ment, if only it be presented to them in a suitable form ; and it is ex- tremely easy to make the importance of number intelligible to them by degrees, either with the measure of music, or the rhythm of verse, or by giving them a number of things to count. This little game also affords opportimity for exercising children's power of self-control. Nothing is more difficult to them than to stand perfectly still without 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 impression 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 CHILD'S FIRST RELATIONS TO MANKIND. 243 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 ])roduce on its mind an impression of the continuity and connection of all things. Frobel says : " The child should grow into a full harmonious whole, This is, while yet on earth, the destiny of his soul." It is one of Frobel's leading ideas, and one which recurs 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 associa- tions 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 matei-ial 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 judiciouf^ly dealt with, 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 importance 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 — he 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 lamentations, even though he should have hurt himself a little and 244 THE CHILD'S FIRST RELATIONS TO MANKIND. begun to cry. This first fright and pain -will thus produce their full impression on him, and foresight will be awakened in him ; 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 constant rapid successions of impressions, the one effacing the other, and no lasting mark being left on the mind or character. The present genera- tion, in the rich and fashionable world especially, affords ample proof of this. Rapid reading, rapid traveling, 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 dullness. So little thought has hitherto been given to the signification of chil- dren'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 und Kosdieder " is necessary to make Frobel's theories quite intelligible. One of the well-known games often played with little children, and which always causes them great enjoyment, is Bo-Peep. Now 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 development ; 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 noth- ing 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 should allow, the child to remain hidden too long without looking for him and rejoic- ing at finding him again, a love of hiding for its own sake may gradu- ally 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 imperceptible germs of evil in the human soul originate, and how they show them- selves ? 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. Good and evil lie always close together, but Divine Providence can make 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 : THE CHILD'S FIRST RELATIONS TO MANKIND. 245 " 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 every- where to be kept in view is the attainment of unity, and every separa- tion 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 confidence, so that, when the moment of the first fault (or " fall ") comes, the child should not think of hiding itself from her. But this confidence can only be won by the mother's living in the child's life, that is to say, playing with it, enter- ing into everything that occupies its little min^ ; in short, understand- ing 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 dispensed with as the child grows older is of course understood ; 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 obediently, the child must first have been accustomed to pay attention 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 nbt 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 oppo- sition 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 learned to distinguish his own will, and therewith his own personality from that of his mother, will exist later between his indi- vidual 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 246 I'HE CHILD'S FIRST RELATIONS TO MANKIND. of severity and punishments, there will be a possibility in later life of that true virtue which follows the dictates of conscience, not from cow- ardice and fear of compulsion (inward or outward), but from free choice and out of love of right, and of God. Whether a human being becomes a moral freedman (within 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 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 conception of a moral order, to whose au- thority he will in time have to submit. All the qualities of a child may, if not carefully watched, pass over into their opposites and de- generate 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 growing feel- ing of personality. This feeling is roused when something 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 de- mand 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 in^ stinct 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 whenever it wants to be taken out of its cradle, it must not always be humored ; so that its will or determination may not degenerate into obstinacy or willfulness. True, the child may be said 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 begin- ning to submit to the conditions of life, and even sometimes to do without what they are justified in wishing for, and to bear what is THE CHILD'S FIRST RELATIONS TO MANKIND. 24*7 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 tliat is disagreeable, of all pain and sorrow, and striving after well-being and happiness, arejthe 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 leai-n 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 self-government, is impossi- ble, 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; 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'^n the way, submission to law, which pre- sents 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 wel- fare 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 confidence 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 cliildren, 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. 248 THE CHILD'S FIRST RELATIONS TO MANKIND. 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 obedience can be laid, so it is with all virtues which depend chiefly on the formation of good habits and experience of their beneficial consequences. It is therefore of the greatest importance that this first period of childhood should be understood in its minutest details and treated accbrdingly. Another critical moment in the development of children, and one which the " Mutter und Koselieder " takes note of, is when they first begin to observe that people are talking about them and criticising tbem. Without the desire to gain the love and approval of others, the human being would be deprived of his sti'ongest stimulus in his endeavors 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 aud 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 Eiders and the Sulky Child," Frobel endeavors 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 ad- mired, etc. 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 llie idea that people pay more attention to its outward person, and value it more for this than for its real merits. Outward appearance 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 succeeding 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. THE CHILD'S FIRST RELATIONS TO MANKIND. 249 The first step to moral development must thus be the cultivation of the senses. Whether these become ministering organs to the spirit, or to the animal nature, 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, daintiness, 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 enjoyments. 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 hu- man 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 liand 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 enjoying it all to themselves. But tlien 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 injure 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, that they may fulfill this purpose. The child acquii-es its first capacity for distinguishing, through the sense of taste ; it is in this way that it first becomes in a measure con- scious 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 de- scribes the functions of the palate but also the result of a cultivated sense of beauty, and thus connects the two facts together. The chijd 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 colors, to weigh and measure sizes and forms against one another, and so forth. Fol- lowing out the idea that all and everything may be referred back to one fundamental principle, Frobel traces taste in its aesthetic sense to the 250 THE CHILD'S FIRSl RELATIONS TO MANKIND. 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 {esthetic 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 und Koselieder" is called the " Schmeck-Liedchen " (Tasting-song), and directs the child's attention to the different tastes of different fruits — the sweetness of cherries as opposed to the acidness of currants and apples, etc. 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 endowment but of impulses and inclinations. Symptoms of the degeneration of nat- urally right instincts show themselves even at the earliest age. It is not only in the families of great 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 whatever 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 devel- opment of mankind, and whose purpose is never far to seek. For the transformation of the savage or the natural man into a culti- vated being, there must of necessity be a wrestling with inborn disposi- tions. AVithout 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 exist- ence, as Frobel recommends, by seeing to it that the play of children, while satisfying in a natural manner their childish requirements, also conduces to their moral well-being 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 invariably 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 when free scope is allowed them, like a tiger escaping from its cage. Passion is force uncontrolled and not directed to its proper object ; and this force should not be suppressed, but so ruled and disciplined as to be converted into energy for good. In the human organism nothing can THE CHILD'S FIRST EELATIONS TO JIANKIND, 251 be assumed to serve unconditionally and of necessity 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 is the destiny of the human being to attain to moral freedom, there must of necessity be rooui for him to err, for tlie choice between good and evil nmst be left to him. AVere we so constituted 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 exist- ence, 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 Frdbel's philosphy, 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 hiin — by the dilferent pursuits of handici-aftsmen. Many of the hand-games with which he will already have grown famil- iar, are based on the movements and turns of the hand customary in these occupations. The child who has sefen the various processes of planing, sawing, threshing, grinding, etc., 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 labor 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 re- peated, 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 und 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 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 alter- nate long and short drawing out of the plane. The observation of this and similar facts will make it easier afterwards to understand the gen- eral fact that form and sound, and time and space, correspond to one another. (A quick short movement produces high sharp tones ; a move- ment slowly drawn out, low deep ones.) A variety of examples of long and short, of great and little objects, 252 THE CHILD'S FIRST RELATIONS TO MANKIND. of longer and shorter intervals of time and the different tones connected •with them, will gradually prepare the child's mind for the easier appre- hension of this idea. The motto to this game is : " That all things speak a language of their own, The child right soon discovers ; B'Ut little heed we what is quiclily known ; Lay this to heart, ye mothers." It is only by means of contrasts, or distinctly pronounced differences, 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 Frobel 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 sim- plest 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 proper- ties 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 mei'e rude strength is de- scribed, being connected with the game of " The Joiner," the contrast between mental and physical greatness is exhibited. The hand-game called " The Carpenter " (in which the position 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 ex- periences in its parent's house, whether love and concord, or quarreling 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 dissipation 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 tlie 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 learned in his home. The lowliest hut may be a temple of humanity if the different members of the fam- ily constitute a true human organism, standing in living relations to the community and the nation. Education of the right sort will ele- vate 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. THE CHILD'S FIRST RELATIONS TO MANKIND. 253 One of the greatest and most universal delights of children is to con- struct 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 procure shelter and protection for their persons, individual, outward self-existence and independence. When they have installed themselves in a corner with a few bits 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 wbich sentiment springs the love of country. Frobel says : " The whole aftei'-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 understand 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 appre- hended in youth in their highest meaning. Were this the case human beings would certainly understand each other better, and, therefore, love each other moretthi-oughout life, and hundreds of the best people would not live and die misunderstood. THE COAL DIGGERS. Deep in the mine below the ground, The collier men and boys are found ; With strength and skill they work away, To bring the coal to the light of day. 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 labor 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 labor their faces are black, Their hearts no true goodness or kindness do lack.* — Amelia Chimey. This song is specially intended to teach the value of manual labor, and therefore also the importance of the hand. Children should learn to honor this member, which is a distinctive mark of the human being, as a valuable gift of God and to take care of and cultivate it accord- ingly ; 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 ar.e faithfully fulfilling their duties ; and not, as is so •The " Charcoal Burners " not being an English inBtitution, I ventured to alter the BODg. 254 THE CHILD'S FIRST RELATIONS TO MANKIND. often done, represent chimney-sweeps, colliers, or any other laborers 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 worth- ier end than mere material gain and material happiness. "With the increase of wealth, leisure, and intellectual capacity, there should be a widening of the spiritual horizon and a growth of moral power. Pre- cisely 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 peo- ple not only hear worldly gain and prosperity held up as the highest attainable end of existence, but ai-e 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 nowadays 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 the people, and leaves no room for any higher aim. Two of the hand-games which represent a Markt-bude (Market-booth) afford an example of how the child's attention 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 of 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 labors fit into each other and com- bine together to produce the requisites of material existence. Every object which calls forth their admiration may be made the occasion of representing the different labors of human beings for one another as so many signs of mutual love — which, at any rate, is the ideal side of commerce. And with this idea is associated the duty of preparing the child to take, one day, its own share in the common work. THE CHILD'S FIKST EELATIONS TO MANKIND. 255 One of the greatest educational problems of the day consists, un- doubtedly, ill finding out the right means of welding the matai'ial life of every-day reality with the higher, spiritual aims which stretch out beyond the short span of human existence. 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 labor re- quires, every day, more and more culture and insight of mind; science is daily entering into more intimate fellowship with technical and in- dustrial works. Perfect health of body, mind, and spirit is only con- ceivable if all the powers and organs are set in activity, and a threefold 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 nowadays, 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 in- stance, that do not require some knowledge of drawing. Music, too, is penetrating more and more into all classes. But 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 unci 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 accom- panying voice gives the scale and exercises on the different intervals. Motto : " Baby fain woiild catch the sound Of the lovely things around, For the spirit oft can hear Sounds uncaught by mortal ear. Early teach thy darling this, "W'ouldst thou give him joy and bljss." — Amelia Gurney, 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. *The numbers represent the notes and their intervals. 256 THE CHILD'S FIRST RELATIONS TO MANKIND. 12 3 4 La, la, la, la; 2 3 4 5 5 La, la, la, la; La, 4 3 2 la, la, la; 4 3 2 1 La, la, la, la; 5 3 2 12 3 2 Baby's liands are small and weak; 4 2 12 3 4 3 'Tis so small it scarce can speak; 2 2 4 3 5 3 4 Yet it always loves to play, 2 3 4 21321 Singing songs the live-long day.— Amelia Gumey. In addition to the simple songs which serve to awaken and cultivate the sense of hearing from the very beginning of life, Frobel also recom- mends little glass harroonicas 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 harmonicas used by Frobel 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 development of a musical ear. The obnoxious articles known as children's rattles might also with advantage be re- placed 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 learned 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 und Rose- lieder " may be seen in close proximity to a player seated at the piano- forte, 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 per- fection. Humanity, in like manner, made its first musical studies in the school of nature, and the first pipe constructed of reeds served also to imitate the sounds of nature. By the connection of counting with musical notes the child soon THE CHILD'S FIRST EELATIOXS TO MANKIND. 257 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 nowadays plagued with, to tiie 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 always a tor- ment 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 colors of the rainbow (like the six balls of Gift I.), on a large ruled sheet. The value of the notes will be very quickly learned 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 w^ay 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 color (two primary col- ors 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 necessary, as, indeed, it is in all training, to begin in the simj^lest 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-gj'mnastics in the " Mutter und Koselieder " gener- ally, are by no means useless in facilitating the mechanical part of all instrumental playing. But they serve also to direct the child's atten- tion 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 ungif ted 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 culture or stimulus in their childhood. Musical geniuses cannot certainly be produced by cultivation any more than geniuses of other kinds; but every soundly-constituted child can be trained to a certain degree of musical sensibility, and also to some de- gree of technical proficiency. And it is most important that all chil- dren should receive a greater or less amount of musical training, in order that in the absence of any other elevating 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. 17 258 THE CHILD'S FIRST RELATIONS TO MANKIND. 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 instru- ment that comes in his way ; or else he will sketch with his fingers the outlines of tables, chairs, etc. In this way he fixes objects more easily in his memory. Frobel's plan for assisting the child's instinctive efforts in this direc- , tion 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 ob- jects with the outlines, and to regard the picture as a symbol of the object. The hieroglyphics 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 oc- cupations in Kindergarten, exactly meets this want, and enoruiously facilitates the right apprehension of form, size and number. Before the child is able to draw with a pencil, little sticks 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 foun- dation thus laid for later artistic culture, but, still more, Frobel's first principle of education is carried out, viz., "to train children through the encouragement of original activity to become themselves creative beings." His of ^repeated saying, " Let it be our aim that every thought should grow into a deed," can only be realized by humanity if indo- lence 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 und 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 col- lecting in their minds a confused mass of forms and images which re- main as useless as dead ballast. The impressions that are received within should be reproduced without. This, too, is what the child it- self 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 THE CHILD'S FIRST RELATIONS TO MANKIND. 259 their eyes follow the people and animals passing in the street ; how they notice eveiy 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, etc.; 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 supplied with the neces- sary 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 oif making meaningless linee 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 encourage- ment 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. Everlasting 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 ! Frobel's plan, however, is quite the opposite one ; he would have nothing seen or heard, nothing learned, 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 culti- vating 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 drawing is as much inborn in a man as the i:)0wer 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 present completely upset, and requires to be re-adjusted. This will be accom- plished when Frobel's method has become recognized, and children are taught in their earliest years by means of individual expeiience and production, and action is made the foundation and the constant com- panion of learning; when, in short, children are made to act according to the rules of morality before they can possibly know them ; instead of 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 gen- eral 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 und 260 THE CHILD'S FIRST RELATIONS TO MANKIND. Koselleder") a way is opened up for the latei* 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 impressions it produces, is the basis of all science and all thought, the first awakener of the desire for knowledge. Impressions arouse observation, observa- tion brings images before the mind and induces comparison, and from comparisons result conclusions and judgment. And let it be well re- membered 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 childhood, as embryo humanity, must express one and the same nature in all its stages of development, however great the difference in degree of devel- opment and in mode of expression. 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 institutions 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 begin- nings 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 philosophy of the ^^ Mutter und Koselleder," but the games and rhymes produce on them impressions which rouse them to observation of their surround- ings. Children will always be receiving impressions of some sort which it is the business of education so to regulate that they may contribute to right and natural development. If this theory of the necessary continuity between the life of child- hood and that of manhood be not accepted, and the consequent logic of making the first instinctive utterances the starting-point of education, Frobel's system must of course lose all its signification, and his ideas seem very far-fetched and void of all connection with such little simple games as the " Mutter und Koselleder " 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 beginning 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 cer tain guide at all, or any starting-point. FKOEBEL'S EDUCATIONAL VIEWS. 261 XI. THE CHILD S FIRST RELATIONS TO GOD. ' Froebel'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 God, in the Divine, is also inboi'n, 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 God. But, also, as no faculty whatever can be developed without stimulus from outside and without appropriate means, so with respect to belief in God there must come both to humanity and to childhood some com- munication, 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 God reveal Himself to the young child ? Is this possible in the first years of life ? It may truly be said that " childish uncon- sciousness is rest in God," it is inseparableness from God. But that which is inseparable from ourselves cannot become objective to us, for we cannot place opposite and outside us what is part of us. The child cannot take cognizance of himself — is not as yet a personality ; he is one with all that surroun^is him and that he is related to. Hence Frobel says, " The child is at unity with nature, with mankind, and with God." 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 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 in 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 und Koselieder " (the one called Kinder ohne Harm), of which the accompanying illustration represents a mother praying by the side of her sleeping children : " Believe that by the good that's in thy mind Thy child tq 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 vfith. 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. 262 THE CHILD'S FIRST RELATIONS TO GOD. 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 exer- cise 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 important 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. AVhen and where does this life begin ? It is as with the seeds in spring : they remain long hidden under 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 religious development, this process of reunion with God, first begins in the child. If we are over- hasty with our care and attention the result will be 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 consequences will be equally fatal. Wiiat then must education do ? It must ^oceed as gently and gradu- ally as possible, and in this respect, as with all other kinds of develop- ment, work first only through general influences. As the child's physi- cal 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 meaning 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 cultivated? 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 choral 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 may be brought to bear on young children which shall at any rate corres- THE CHILD'S FIRST RELATIONS TO GOD, 263 pond to their dim innate sensations, which are tlie precursors of religious devotion. Frdbel recommends mothers to sing choral melo- dies 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, 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 chihken. Gesture is the direct expression of the soul's mood ; animals, savages, and children, who are incapable alike of dissimulation and of self-control, invariably make use of this language. Frobel would have 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 ai'e now no longer to be occupied with exteriial things, is in true correspon- dence 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. But if this exercise is not to degenerate into a mere parrot-like repetition without understanding, the child must be able to concentrate its spirit, and the woids of the prayers must be in close relation to the child's experiences and feelings. The mother should be able to 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 Giver 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 gi-ieved 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, etc.," and that when 264 THE CHILD'S FIRST RELATIONS TO GOD. he came to this passage, the child's voice trembled, and became scarcely iutelligible, thus showing plainly that he was conscious of some naugh- tiness 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 mechanical repetition of prayers learned by rote, which is part of the order of the day for children. Jt 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 soul, that outpouring of the heart before God, which alone con- stitute true and effectual prayer. Modern charitable institutions, those especially in which the relig- ious element is made the principal one, fail most lamentably in this respect. All reasonable people are fully aware that Bible history, the book of Genesis, the Ten Commandments, the Catechism, and all dog- mas whatsoever, are entirely beyond the comprehension of children be- tween the ages of two and six. Nevertheless, in the majority of such institutions all these subjects 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 hu- man race. Now this is the very idea, as has over and over again been pointed out, which forms the pivot of Frdbel's whole system ; but he has dis- covered 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 earlj^ childhood ! In- stead of presenting children, in the old-fashioned way, with a com- pletely formulated system of truth, Frdbel 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 THE CHILD'S FIRST RELATIONS TO GOD. 265 to me, ' Come here, and I will show to you the mysteries of the uni- verse ; you shall learn from me how everything hangs together and w^orks ; ' and, on the other hand, a grain of sand wore 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 learned by rote, which, owing to the want of understanding of its dogmas, kills instead of giv- ing 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 cel- ebrated, as usual, with a Christmas-tree. The children were all assem- bled 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 child len's capacity, stories of the birth of Jesus Christ, of the adoration of the magi, of Christian doc- trine, of the sacrificial death of Christ, etc., were related to the chil- dren, and printed questions were asked them to which they gave answers learned by heart. Then a little girl of five years old was mounted on a chair to represent the mistress, and a learned disputa- tion, got up by heart, was carried on between her and the other chil- dren, in which the doctrine of redemption through the death of Christ, the proofs of the divine truths of the Bible, the sinfulness of human nature, etc., etc., 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 a 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 chil- dren, 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 understood 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 2GS THE CHILD'S FIRST EELATIONS TO GOD, 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 institutions 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 criticise this or that tone of religious thought which may give its color to education, but simply to draw at- tention to the unnatural mode of proceeding as contrasted 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 them- selves 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 super- fluous. But no more than in the political world one would think of assuming that a few good sovereigns and reigns made laws and consti- tutions unnecessary, 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 applica- tion in all directions. No psychologist has yet made the child's soul the subject of such profound research as has Frobel, nor so closely drawn the parallel be- tween 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 awaken- in" of the child and that of infant humanity. By all the impressions that come to him through nature, whether pleasing or terrifying, de- lightful or awe-inspiring, the vmdeveloped human being is unmistaka- bly 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 every- thing that he perceives around him. This acknowledgment (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 development of humanity, it must also be experienced by the child. Children have no point of comparison whereby to con- THE CHILD'S FIRST RELATIONS TO GOD. 267 nect the narrative of the history of creation witli the knowledge of the Creator. Neither are tire 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 as Creator is through their own oc- cupations in natui'e, through the cultivation of the soil, on a miniature scale — in short, through personal activity ind experiences, as humanity in the beginning of its existence found out God. The following example taken from a Kindergarten will help to illus- trate 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 little neighbors' 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 germinate. And now on their daily visits to their gardens the children 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 freqi;ently under their eyes, but hitherto unnoticed by them, because they them- selves 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, tijce 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 coi-poreal or symbolic form, so much the greater will their power of spiritual or abstract apprehension be in after yeai's, for they will have vivid images in their minds, and not merely a stock of statements learned 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 development 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 sur- rounding world should awaken general conceptions, which reproduced themselves outwardly in broad-featured j)ictures and forms, and in the 268 THE CHILD'S FIRST RELATIONS TO GOD. whole mode of existence ; 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 was 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 I " " 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 pleas- ure, 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 plaiting strips of colored paper, and one after another mentioned the names of the people for whom their works of art were intended, this little one re- plied to my question, for whom was hers destined, " I am going to give m'ne 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 appre- hended 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 not contribute far more to their religious development to take them out 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 childhood. 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 communi- cated to them from the history of mankind than broad simple facta THE CHILD'S FIRST RELATIONS TO GOD. 269 ■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 Frbbel aims at in his " Mutter und Koselieder," which he intended to be the first Story and History Book for children — i. e., the history of their own shoi't past. The illustrations 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 bed- side ; takes it out shopping with her, etc., etc. 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 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 features of the child's life, which, according to Fro- bel'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 concep- tion 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 his- tory 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. 270 THE CHILD'S FIRST KELATIOXS TO GOD, What other idea is there at the bottom of this more or less traditional custom of making sacred history the principal subject 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, which, however much affinity they may have with the child's nature, because themselves the outcomes of a childish age, appear, neverthe- less, in unfamiliar form and garb — these events, 1 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 tlieir surroundings. The fact is, that without giving the matter any thought, people assume an inner con- scious life in the young child which is impossible at this early period of existence. But this inner life must, little by little, be called forth, in order that in it the child may find the point of contact between him- self and the history of his race, in which the Divine revelation is pre- eminently embodied. This revelation must have appealed to the soul of the child itself before the most important point of contact v.ith 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 noth- ing, 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 opportunities and means of preparation for this sacred moment, and to see that its impression be not effaced. For this purpose Fiobel's educational sys- tem, the beginnings of which are contained in the " Mutter umd Kose- licder" 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 are all fused in one, and must, therefore, be nourished with food suited to this threefold nature. The " Mutter und Koselieder," for instance, makes use of the game Brod Oder Kuchen Z»af^•en " 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 THE CHILD'S FIRST RELATIONS TO GOD. 27l him corn, and that the farmer will not have any corn unless God makes it grow, etc. 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 attention 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-employments in Frobel's system helps at the same time to culti- vate 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-crea- tures, 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 can- not 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 our- selves — to the Highest of all — is the beginning of faith. But love must 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 solution till Christianity has been made a religion of action as well as of profession, and to effect this we need a generation trained for 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. 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 prac- ticed before the requisite organs have been called into play. So long as the child is incapable of any higher sensations than those which re- late to his inmiediate 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 re- ligious practice, 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 he 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 com- mandments of the world ? We might as well at once adopt the method of a certain sect of Christian fanatics, who place Scriptural pictures be- fore tlie cradles of children only a few months old, and read out to them the corresponding passages from the Bible, with the idea that the in- fants will thus be early initiated into the truths of Christian revelation. 272 THE CHILD'S FIRST RELATIONS TO GOD. The only grain of truth at the bottom of all these customs is just ■what Frobel has fastened upon and turned to a right instead of a mis- taken use : viz., that the sensitiveness of young children to impressions from their surroundings should be used to assist in their develoi^ment. We have already seen what are Frobel's ideas with regard to tlie re- ligious training of children, what importance he attaches to the use of simple sacred music, and to the mother's example of reverence and de- votion ; how he would have the prayerful spirit awakened by the sym- bolic gesture of folding the hands, and prayer itself taught as soon as speech begins, to which the singing of hymns should soon follow ; and, added to all this, how much he relies on the hallowing influence of im- pressions 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? 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 can- not 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 w'Oi'ship 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 ger- minate. The Kindergarten system dispenses with all doctrinal teach- ing 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 und Koselieder " is intended to embrace the germinal points of all human culture, and Church worship and doctrine cannot, therefore, be altogether 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. 273 The example in the " Mutter und Koselieder " which first directs the child's attention to Church worship is called " — THE CHUECn DOOR AND WIKDOW. IMotto ; Wliere 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 taslc will not be as it seems. Yet, for thyself, in all thy works take care, That every act the highest meaning bear ; Thus Shalt thou lead it to that haven blest, "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. Wouldst thou unite thy child for aye with thee. Then let it with the Highest One thy union see.— Amelia Gumey. SONG. Behold this window of clear glass. Through which the blessed light doth pass, And see the high-arched door below, Through which into the church we go. But those who fain would enter there, Must come with reverence aud care, 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, "V\1iich 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 day To hear the deep-toned organ play : Lo, lo, la; la, lu, lu, la ! While of bells the joyful peal Doth unceasing joys reveal ! D'ng, 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. — Amelia Gumey. 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 represent with his hands the 18 274 THE CHILD'S FIRST BELATIONS TO GOD. shape of the church window. She then sings to him the above choral, at the end of which the pealing of bells is imitated. The following example will show that something like g, devotional 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 Frdbel'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 Frbbel'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 choral 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 reverence on their little countenances. Now it is certain that no result of the kind is ever pro- duced by the kind of religious instruction which is so common in insti- tutions, 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 Utter- ances " it was pointed out that the irresistible impulse of children to hasten to any spot where they see a number of people collected to- gether 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 condition of all religion is that we should come out of the narrow circle of egotistic self-love ; and therefore love for its parents, 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 per- sonality. If the child is mr.de to feel the consequences of such sur- render in the piety of its parents and others, in their manifest union with God, the unconscious union of his own inner life with the High- est 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 THE CHILD'S FIRST RELATIONS TO GOD. 275 to refer every duty fulfilled towards man, every 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 up make their lives a continuous active expression of Christian love, and not merely carry Christianity about on their lips. 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 com- plete 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 up in Kindergartens and in nurseries pictures of the child Jesus on his mother's lap, in the Temple, etc. All the good quali- ties of children he would have associated in their minds with the Holy Child, and when they do wrong he would have them reminded that when Jesus was a child he was always obedient, thankful and loving. 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 be- come accustomed to measure themselves, and with the aid of suitable Bible narratives they will be gradually and naturally initiated into the central 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 obscure 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 prin- ciple. For this purpose he revived the old 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 chil- dren, a transparency would all at once appear, representing the birth of the Divine Child surrounded by green pine branches ; how Christmas hymns — most of them written by Frobel himself — were then sung ; and how Frobel used himself, 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 Christmas. 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 276 THE CHILD'S FIRST RELATIONS TO GOD. conveyed to children whether they will 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 comprehension of children, but for this very reason the preparation of their minds to receive them later cannot begin too soon. All truths v?hich take shape in the world are the blossoms of plants whose seeds were sown thou- sands 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 human- ity 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 fiirst impressions made on the senses, in the first childish imaginations, the first observations and comparisons of ob- jects in the outer world. All the faculties of the soul must be culti- vated 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 freshness and sim- plicity 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 petri- fied fossils of a bygone age. If they have grown up in loving fellow- ship and community, which is the true church for children, they will be able to carry out the deepest meaning of the Gospels, viz., the brotherhood 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 discov- ered, but the Kindergarten meanwhile offers all the necessary elements for the puri^ose. The churches of grown-up people are certainly not the places for children. If momentary feelings of devotion are pro- duced 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 chil- dren'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 fm-ther 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 and Koselieder " the hand-game called THE CHILD'S FIRST KELATIONS TO GOD, 277 THE FOOT BRIDGE. Motto : " Let thy child in play discover How to bridge a chasm over, Teach it that human skill and strength ■Will always find some means at length Things most widely severed to connect — Union, where it seemed most hopeless, to effect.' 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 flo\yers 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 little boy ran, Crying — " Thank you, oh thank you, you kind, clever man!" If by such and similar examples chiklren have been made to under- stand the meaning of connecting together or reconciling things that are separated ; if, according to Frobel's system, they have been con- stantly occupied in their own little labors in connecting (or reconciling) opposites, the application of the word " reconciliation " to visibly sepa- rated objects will have become quite familiar to them, and it will not be difficult to explain to them later the meaning of the Chi-istian doc- trine ; especially as they will also have become familiar, through a va- riety of examples and applications, with the analogies between the visible physical world and the spiritual one. That such teaching by analogy or parables is necessary for the com- prehension of spiritual truths is shown by the frequent 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 with God through the per- fect and Divine man, will seem as far-fetched as the analogies in other cases that we have quoted. It is, however, the fate, not only of new theories, but also of new embodiments of old theories, to produce the impression of exaggeration and eccentricity, and so it must be with Frobel's theory of the analogy between the outer and the inner world and between physical and spiritual impressions, until by frequent repe- tition 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 de- flection and the early cultivation of religious feeling. Childi-en 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 mis- 278 THE CHILD'S FIRST RELATIONS TO GOD. taken and senseless manner does not prove that it cannot be done in a right and profitable way. This, however, 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 life. 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 corresponding expansion in our rela- tion to God and all that is highest. It is still not sufficiently under- stood, 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. 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 endeavors will culminate, not till then shall we see a regenerated society which, cemented together in love, will realize the true concep- tion 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 rational- ism and irreligiousness that the degenerate Christianity of modea-n 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 re-adjusting balances and getting rid of contradictions, 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 re- ligion 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 Frobel offers them his " Mutter und Koselieder " as a guide to this sacred task. FROEBEL'S EDUCATIONAL VIEWS. 279 SUMMARY VIEW OP FROEBEL's PRINCIPLES. The leading ideas of Fiobel's educational system may be summed up in the following statements : 1. The task of education is to assist natui-al 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 development, so the early beginnings of education are of most importance. 3. The spiritual and physical development do not goon 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 develop- ment 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 exer- cise 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 reason- able, 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. 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 con- nected with these games. 10. Physical impressions are at the beginning of life the only possi- ble medium for awakening the child's soul. These impressions should therefore be regulated as systematically as is the care of the body, and not be left to chance. 11. Frobel's games are intended so to regulate the natural and in- stinctive activity of the limbs and senses that the purpose contemplated by nature may be attained. 12. Through the gradual awakening of the child's will this instinct- ive activity becomes more and more conscious action, which, in a further stage of development, grows into productive action or work. 13. In order tliat the hand — which is the most important limb as regards all active work — should be called into play and developed from the very first, Frobel's games are made to consist chiefly in hand- 280 SUMMARY. exercises, with which are associated the most elementary facts and ob- servations from nature and human life. 14. Inasmuch as in the human organism, as well as in all other or- ganisms, all later development is the result of the very earliest, all that is greatest and highest springs out of the smallest and lowest begin- nings, education must endeavor to emulate this unbroken continuity of natural development. (Frbbel 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 de- parture 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 un- comprehended and unconsidered, there has of course been no question of education at the very beginning of life. It was Frdbel who first dis- covered a true and natural basis for infant education, and in his " Mutter und Koselieder " he shows how this education is to be carried on and made the foundation for all later development.. 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 ti'aining of mothers, and all who have the management of young children, in the application of Frobel's first principles of educa- tion, is consequently the starting-point for the complete carrying out of Ms 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 instruc- tion 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. CHILD LIFE ACCORDING TO CHRIST. BY REV. STOPFORD A. BROOKE. "FOR OF SUCn IS THE KINGDOM OF GOD."* It is a happy thouglit that the children who climb upon our knees are fresh, from the hand of God, living blessings which have drifted down to us from the imperial palace of the love of God, that they still hear some of the faint notes of the music of God's life, still bear upon their faces traces of the uncreated light. Heathen sage and Christian poet have enshrined the thought, each according to his knowledge, and though there is no proof of its truth, yet we cannot neglect as quite fruitless in wisdom so wido^ spread an intuition. It is vain to sneer at it as poetry, in vain at least for some of us. He cannot scorn this thought who feels, as his children's faces light up at his coming, not pleasure only, but an inner sense of gratitude that things so pure, so close to God, should give to him, with the sense of his unworthincss deep within, so much and so unsuspectingly. Their trust seems to carry with it something of the forgiveness of Heaven. The man sees the tolerant tenderness of God his Father in the child whom He has sent him — that his little one believes in him, bestows on him the blessing of an ever-renewed hope. Nor can he scorn this thought who on philosophic grounds believes that all living beings are held in God, are manifestations of part of the Divine thought. He knows that a phase of that idea which God has of the whole race is incarnate in his child, that his child is destined to reveal it, that this is the purpose for which God sent it into the world. There- fore hidden within this speck of mankind he recognizes a germ of the Divine essence which is to grow into the harvest of an active life, with a distinct difference from other lives. And if, born of these two thoughts, a sadness succeeds the first touch of joy and gratitude, when the parents think how soon the inevitable cloud of life will make dim the heavenly light; how long, how evil, may be the days of their child's pilgrimage; how far he may retreat from God — yet, we who believe, not in a capricious idol of power, but in a just Father who loves — we who hold that there is nothing which is not in God, can- not distrust the end. Our children are in His hands; they will some time or other fulfill the work of revealing God ; they must, for God does not let one of His thoughts fail. If all life be in God, no life ever gets loose from God; it is an absolute imperative of the philosophy which denies that anything can be which is not of God, that nothing can ever finally divide itself from Him. Our children, like ourselves, are already saved by right. Years of what we call time will be needed to educate them * Child Life.—K Sermon preached in St. James' Chapel, London, by Rev. Stopford A. Brooke, Chaplain-in-Ordinary to the Queen. " Suffer little children to come unto me, and forbid ihem not: for of such is the kingdom of God."— Luke xviii, 16. 282 CHILD LIFE-BROOKE. into unioD with God in fact, but that end is as certain, if God exist, as God's existence. This thought of what I may call the divinitj'- of childhood is still further supported by the exquisite relation in which Christ put Himself to chil- dren. The heart of woman will never forget that beautiful wayside story ■where He consecrated the passion of motherhood. The religious spirit will never cease, when disturbed by the disputes of the worldlier life, to remember his words when, bringing the disciples back to the sweetness of early charity. He took a child and placed it in their midst. The soul dis- tressed with questions of belief remembers with a touch of peaceful pleas, ure how Christ recalled his people to the natural simplicity of faith, to that higher and deeper religion which lives beyond the wars of the under- standing, when He said, " Whoso shall receive one such little child in My name receivcth Me." And when mistaken religious persons press hard upon the truth and tenderness of the relation of parents to children, and bid the one look upon the other as children of the devil— corrupting with their poison the sweetest source of feeling in the world and the love which of all human love links us closest to the heart of God, we fall back in indignant delight upon the words of the Saviour: "Take heed that ye despise not one of these little ones; for I say unto you, that in heaven their angels do always behold the face of My Father which is in heaven." And once more, when we think that God revealed Himself in the child- hood of the Saviour, the thought of the divinity of childhood becomes still more real. To us it is much, in our stormy and sorrowful life, to think of Christ in his manhood conquering and being made perfect through suffering; but when we wish to escape into a calmer, purer air, we turn from the image of our Master as "the man of sorrows and ac- quainted with grief," dear as that is to us, and look with infinite pleasure on the earlier days at Nazareth, imagine Him playing in the meadow and rejoicing in the sunlight and the flowers, taking his mother's kiss, and growing in the peace of love — and so learn to dream of God, revealed not only as the Eternal Father, but, in some not unworthy sense, as also the Eternal Child. It is a thought which bathes all ovr children in a divine light.. They live for us in the childhood of Christ; they move for us and have their being in the childhood of God. In the directest opposition to all this— to the poetic instinct of Greek and Christian poetry and philosophy, to the natural instincts of the human heart, to the teaching and acts of Christ, to the revelation of God in child- liood — is the dreadful explanation which some have given of original sin. Children are born, we are told, with the consummate audacity of theologi. cal logic, under the moral wrath of God, are born children of the devil. I have already denied this from this place, and stated instead of it the fact — that we are born with a defective nature which may and does lead to moral fault, but in itself it is no more immoral than color-blindness. I have said that this imperfectness is the essential difference of human nature; that which makes man differ from God, from angels, from brutes; that which makes him, so far as we know, the only being in the universe CHILD LIFE— BROOKE. 283 capable of progress. It is a defectiveness distinctly contemplated, dis- tinctly initiated by God, "who wished for a being in Ilis universe the hist- ory of which should be the attainment of pcrfectncss through struggle and defectiveness. As such, the defectiveness of our children, as well as our own, has in it a thought which glorifies it. We see in iti lirst develop- ments, and in the way in which the spiritual element meets it, the begin- ning of that noble struggle in which the soul will have the glory and pleasure of advance, the delight of conquest as well as the misery of fail- ure ; the interest of a great drama, and the final resurrection into freedom from weakness, error, and restraint. Whatever way we look, then, upon our children, our first feeling should be reverence for the divine within them, infinite desire to help them to recognize that divine idea, and to express it through life, in a noble form. This should be the basis of education. If it were, we should have less bad men and bad women. For we should remember that children on whom we can make almost any impression we please, so ductile is their wax, will become what they are believed to be, will reverence their own nature when they feel that it is reverenced, will believe that they are of God, and know and love him naturally when they are told that God is in them. But the other basis of education has an irresistible tendency tO' degrade them, and it only shows how near they are to God that it does not degrade them more. What conceivable theory is more likely to make them false, untrustful, cunning, ugly-natured, than that which calls them children of the devil, and acts as if the one object of education was, not to develop the God within them, but to lash the devil out of them? Let them think that you believe them to be radically evil, and the consequences be on your own head. You will make them all you think them to be. Every punishment will make them more untrue, more fearful, more cunning; and insteid of day by day having to remit punishment, you will have to double it and treble it, and at last, end by giving it up altogether in des- pair, or by making your child a sullen machine of obedience. Instead of trusting your child, you will live in an atmosphere of con- stant suspicion of him, always thinking that he is concealing something from you, till you teach him concealment and put lies in his mouth and accustom him to the look and thought of sin; and then — having done this devilish work and turned the brightness and sweetness of childhood into gloom and bitterness, and having trodden into hardened earth the divine germs in his heart — what happens? You send him into the world already a ruined character, taught through you to live without God in his soul, without God in the world, to believe in evil and not in good. Do not complain afterwards if he disappoint you, if he turn out a cruel, or a dishonorable, or a miserable man. It is you who have made him so, and God will have a dreadful reckoning with you. " I mistook," you will say, as you tremble before His judgment-seat; "I did it for the best." Alas! there will be no possible excuse for you, but this, which links you with the slayers of Christ, ' ' Father, forgive me, for I knew not what I did. " Teach your children to believe in the goodness of his nature, in his nearness to God. And this leads me to the first characteristic of child- hood, faith; faith, the quality whose outward form is trust. 284 CHILD LIFE-BROOKE. It speaks well for the beauty of the human quality of faith that it is so lovely a thing to us when we see it pure in childhood. No pleasure is so great as that which we receive when, in their hours of joy, stiii mor j when sorrow or disease attack them, we see the light of our children's iailh in us shining in their eyes. It speaks well for the spiritual power of this quality that it has on us such winning force. "We grant to it as we recognize it, what we s:i0uld grant to notliing else — we cannot hold back from its often mute request anything which is not wrong for us to give. It overcomes the wor'd in us: it leads us to make a thousand sacrifices. It charms our weary iiic, it attracts and softens our sated heart. It makes us feel our own rejation to God, and what it should be, for it is its earthly image. The p- .rents who have not encouraged and loved this quality in children towards them- selves, will have but little of it in their own relation to God. They will give no pleasure to the Divine Father, they will have no natural power with Him. Having this faith, the child is, as long as it is unspoilt by us, i'carless, and fearless under the difficulties of a vivid imagination, not the high im- agination which composes images towards an artistic end, but the untu- tored quality which works without an impulse or an aim. On the child's receptive heart everything makes a strong impression, numberless images arc received. And at night, when no new impressions are made by out- ward objects, these images rise up a thronging crowd in the brain. And the work of the brain, just beginning to learn itself, and as yet under no ordinance of the will, composes, combines, contrasts these images into a thousand fantastic forms. Spoil the child's faith in the world being good to it and pleasant; frighten it with falsehoods to keep it quiet, tell it a single lie, and let it lose a grain of its divine trust in you; show yourself violent, unreasonable, harsh, or cruel, and every one of these images may take a frightful form. What it has suffered from you, the distrust it has gained from you, will creep like a subtle element of fear into the creations of its fancy, and terror is born in its heart. Again, this unquestioning faith makes the child think that everything is possible, and as many things are possible which the fear which reasons deters us from attempting, the child often does feats which astonish us. So nations in their childhood, and men inspired by intense faith, have believed in themselves and done things called miraculous. It is unwise to attack too rudely even this self confidence of childhood. Lessen the child's faith in his own powers, and you will check the growth of that happy audacity which in boyhood and youth wins afterwards so much — that easy daring and self-confidence which, when it is limited by good manners, is so charming in society. Nature herself will teach him humility soon enough, and you had better let him find out his limits in this direction for himself. She has a way of teaching which is irresistible; which, though it stops audacity with firm- ness, yet shows that she is pleased with the audacity; which points out a way of conquering herself. And in the child's relation to his home and society, you yourself can check the fearless self-confidence when it degen- erates into impertinence or thoughtlessness, not by harsh rebuke, but by CHILD LIFE-BROOKE. 2S5 appealing to the natural impulse of affection. The limit placed by saying and enforcing this— "Do nothing, my child, say nothing, which will give pain to others " — is not a limit whigh will crush the natural boldness of the heart. It is a limit which appeals to love, and the desire to be loved is an element in the child's nature as strong as faith. It will be seen to be natural and reasonable; it will be accepted. Again, as to this faith in its relation to God, how does it take a religious form? The child's religious faith is, fii'st, faith in you— mother, father, guardian; to early childhood you are God. And when you come to give a name to the dim vision of the growing child, and call it God, it will grow into form before him, clothed with your attributes, having your character. If the child learn to worship an idol — a jealous, capricious, passionate God — it is not his fault half so much as yours. What were you to him when he was young? Were you violent, sulky, exacting, sus- picious, ruling by force and not by love? Whatever you were, his God in boyhood will wear your shape and bear your character, and he will grow like the character he contemplates. As he grows older, he needs more direct teaching. He asks who is God, what is His character, what His will. For He cannot but desire to know these things, through a vague curiosity, if through nothing more. For by and by, God touches him. Spiritual impulses, slight, but distinct, come to him in hours of temptation; voices make themselves heard in his heart; passion renders life exulted, and in the more wakeful state it genders, the germs of spirit- ual life push forth; nature speaks her dim message in some lonely moment on the hills or in the wood, and he is conscious of an undefined want. What has he to fall back on then? What ideas have you given him to which he may now fly for solution of the growing problem? what forms of thought which the new powers of spiritual faith and love may breathe upon and make a living God? The whole spiritual future of his youth then trembles in the balance. Fathers and mothers, you do not know often what you are doing; what misery, what bitterness, what hard- ness of heart, what a terrible struggle, or what a hopeless surrender of the whole question you have prepared for your child by the dismal theology and the dreadful God, and the dull heaven, which you have poured into the ear of childhood. Long, long are the years, before the man whose early years have been so darkened can get out of the deadlj'' atmosphere into a clear air, and see the unclouded face of God. So far for the faith of childhood ; on its love I need not dwell, the same things apply to it as apply to faith ; but on its joyfulness and the things connected therewith we speak as we draw to a conclusion. The child's joy comes chiefly from his fresh receptiveness. His heart is open to all impressions as the bosom of the earth is to the heavenly airs and lights. Nothing interferes to break the tide of impressions which roll in wave on wave — no brooding on the past, no weary anticipations of the future. He lives, like God, in an eternal present. The world is wonder- ful to him, not in the sense of awaking doubts or problems, but as giving every moment some miraculous and vivid pleasure, and it is pleasure in the simplest things. His father's morning kindness makes him thrill ; his food is to him the apples of paradise. The sunlight sleeping on the grass. 286 CHILD LIFE-BROOKE the first fall of snow in winter, the daisy stars he strings upon the meadow, the fish leaping in the stream, the warm air which caresses his check, the passing of the great wagon in the street, the swallows' nest above his bedroom window, the hour of rest at night, and his prayer at his mother's knee — all are loved lightly and felt keenl}^, and touch him with a poetic pleasure. And each impression, as it comes, is clothed in simple words — words which often, in their spontaneousness, their fearless unconscious- ness, their popular quality, their fitness for music, have something of a lyric note, something of the nature of a perfect song. For the chdd lives in a world of unconscious art. He is fearless in his delight, and when he is happy he trusts his own instincts as revelations: and if we could get back in after-life something of this, we should all be artists in heart. One knows in the highest genius that, united with manhood's trained power of expression, there is an eternal clement of childhood. Take, for example, the perfect song, such as the songs of Shakespeare were. They were spontaneous, sudden, popular, simple, and able to be sung. But above all, they derive their magic and winning power from the poet's fearless- ness, from his trust in, and his delight in his instinctive emotions. The songs of other poets are spoiled by their fear of their simplicity being called absurd by the public, by that doubt whether the thing is quite right, that thinking about thought, that shyness of one's own feeling ■which come from want of that unconscious trust in his rightness and de- light in it which a child possesses. The kingdom of a perfect song, the kingdom of a perfect work of art, is like the kingdom of heaven, one must enter it' like a little child. " Fostered alike by beauty and by fear," fear which has its thrill of joy, the child grows into union with the world, and into consciousness of his own heart, till "the characters of danger and desire" are impressed upon all outward forms, and day by day more vividly that great enjoyment swells which makes The surface of the universal earth With triumph and delight, with hope and fear, Work like a sea. And in quieter moments, calmer pleasures are his — pleasures of love given and received, pleasures of childish friendship, pleasures of first successes in learning and in new pursuits, pleasures of obscure feelings just touched, not understood, which make in after-life Those recollected hours that have the charm Of visionary things, those lovely forms And sweet sensations which throw back our life, And almost make remotest infancy A visible scene, on which the eun is shining. We look back on them with reflection, but there was no reflection, or but little, then ; the life was natural, unthoughtf ul, only now and then, amid the full movement of unconscious pleasure, flashes of deeper thought arose and passed away, a faint touch of something to come, a weight within the pleasure, a dim sense of sublimity or calm, a suspicion of what duty meant, just came and were forgotten, but did not die. They went to form the heart, to build up that which was to become the man, and they arose afterwards in maturer life to impregnate and to elevate the mind. CHILD LIFE -BROOKE. 287 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 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 imitative 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 God 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 if we keep these early days pure and joj^ful, full of the blessedness of uninjured faith and unconscious love, we give to the man that to which he can always look back with hope, and use for the kindling of effort and aspiration. For the dim remembrance of their pure and powerful pleas- ure, the divinity within them, have virtue to recall us in after-life, when high feeling is dulled with the cares of this world, to loftier and better thoughts; to nourish and repair imagination when its edge is blunted by distress and doubt ; to exalt the soul with hope, that though innocence is lost, yet goodness remains to be won ; to tell us, in the midst of the tran- sient and the perishable, that our life is hidden in God, and our spirit at home in immortality. It is true that inimitable innocence, that perfect trust, that belief that nothing is impossible, that fresh and honest freedom, that divine joy, cannot be the blessing of the man. He has been driven out of Eden, and the swords wave forever over the gate and forbid return. But there is a nobler paradise before us, the paradise of the soldier spirit whicli has fought with Christ against the evil, and finished the work which the Father has given him to do. There the spirit of the child shall be min- gled with the power of the man, and we shall once more, but now with ennobled passion and educated energies, sing the songs of the fearless land, children of God, and men in Christ. It is true that, tossed with doubt, and confused with thoughts which go near to mastering the will, we are tempted to look back with wild regret to the days, when children, we dreamt so happily of God, and lived in a quaint and quiet heaven of our own fanciful creation, and took our dreams for realities, and were happy in our belief. But after all, though the simple religion is lost, its being now more complex does not make it less divine; our faith is more tried, but it is stronger; our feelings are less easily moved, but they are deeper; our love of God is less innocent, but how much more profound ; our life is not so bright in the present, but its future is glorious in our eyes. We are men who know that we shall be made partaker's of the child's heart towards our Father, united with the awe and love and experience of the man. And then, through death, again we enter the imperial palace whence we came. We hear the songs and voices which of old we heard before we left our home, but we hear them now with fuller, more manly comprehension; we see again the things which eye hath not seen, but our vision pierces deeper. We worship God with the delight of old, before we went upon our Wander- Year, but the 288 CHILD LIFE— BROOKE. • joy is more stately, for it is now the joy of sacrifice; and all things now are new to us, for we have gi'own into men, and we feel the power and joy of progress. But never, as we look to Him who led us all our life long until this day, shall we lose the feeling of the child. Through all eternity the blessing of the child's heart shall be ours. In the midst of our swiftest work, in the midst of our closest pursuit of new knowledge, in the midst of all the endless labor and sacrifice of the heavenly life, we shall always turn with the sense of infinite peace to God, and say, Our Father, suffer a little child to come to Thee. THE GREEN PASTURES. I walk'd in a field of fresh clover this morn. Where lambs play'd so merrily under the trees. Or rubbed their soft coats on a naked old thorn, Or nibbled the clover, or rested at ease. And under the hedge ran a clear water brook, To drink from, when thirsty or weary with play; And so gay did the daisies and buttercups look. That I thought little lambs must be happj'- all day. And when I remember the beautiful psalm. That tells about Christ and his pastures so green, I know he is willing to make me his lamb. And happier far than the lambs I have seen. If I drink of the waters, so peaceful and still. That flow in his field, I forever shall live ; If I love him and seek his commands to fulfill, A place in his sheep-fold to me he will give. The lambs are at peace in the fields when they play. The long summer's day in contentment they spend; But happier I, if in God's holy way I try to walk always with Christ for my friend. — Mrs.Duncan. THE CHILD'S DESIRE. I think, as I read that sweet story of old, "When Jesus was here among men. How He called little children as lambs to His fold, I should like to have been with them then. I wish that His hands had been placed on my head. That His anns had been thrown around me, And that I might have seen His kind look when He said, "Let the little ones come unto me." But still to His footstool in praj-er I may go, And ask for a share in His love ; And if I thus earnestly seek Him below, I shall see Him and hear Him above, In that beautiful place He has gone to prepare For all that are washed and forgiven; And many dear children are gathering there, "For such is the kingdom of Heaven." — Mrs. Luke. FROBEL'S SYSTEM IN CONGRESS OF PHILOSOPHERS. SESSION HELD AT FRANKFORT-ON-THE-MAIN, IN OCTOBER, 18G9. INTRODUCTION. The Congress of Philosophers first met at Prague, on the call of Prof, von Leohnardi, of that University, on the 26th of September, and continued in session till the 4th of October, 1868.* There were fifty-five members present, and one hundred more responded in letters of sympathy, representing the prominent chairs of phi- losophy in European Universities. It had a section of Pedagogy in which, among other phases of education, Frobel's system and the Kindergarten were discussed. The meeting decided to hold a sec- ond session in October and November, 1869. In May, 1869 a circu- lar was issued in the Augshurger AUgemeine Zeitung, in which due prominence is given to the Pedagogical section. True philosophy, as an educator, is ever active to clear away the barriers that stand in the waj^ of clear, unbiased comprehenKion of science and life in their relations and inteprrity. Philosophy raises the banner, not of any one special science, but of human culture, and however regarded by the material- ists of the day as a foolish pursuit, it is the only basis of rightful education — nothing less than which has been the aim of all the eminent educators of our time, such as Cojienius, PESTALOZzr, Diestbrweg, Frobel. So far as the General German Teachers' Convention and the Austrian Teachers build on the foundations these men iiave laid, they work for the same ends as the Philoso- phers' Congress, from which tliey are onlj' distinguished in this, that the}' have special educational aims, while the Philosophers' Congress takes into considera- tion all questions of interest to cultivated persons and society at large. A del- egation was sent to tlie Teachers' Convention at Berlin, asking them to take part in the Congress at Frankfort-on-the-Main ; to aid, by word and co-opera- tion, to solve tlie educational problems of the present, the most prominent of which are the completing and remodeling of the public schools, especially the establishing and reorganizing of Kindergartens, in accordance with the spirit of Frobel. One problem to be solved in the establishing of a philosophical normal school for the training of educators and teachers, by which not only a remodeling and improvement of the primary, but also of the high-schools, shall be attained. Finall}'' they will ask for an improvement in female education, in accordance with the demands of the present time and the vocation of the female sex. As these points are felt to be of importance by every thinking educator, it is be- lieved that all the teachers will meet with confidence and good-will, a conven- tion of thinking friends of humanity, to devise means for its welfare. The Berlin Teachers' Convention responded favorably, and was present in force at the session held in Frankfort, Oct. 26, 1869. • We are referred by Dr. Hnrris, to the Jlugsburger Jillgemeine Zeitung for October, 1868, and the Philosophische Mnnertshafte, Vol. I, p. 514, Vol. II, p. 139, 236, 322, 424 ; and Leohnardi's Die Neuve Zeit for 1867-9, for a. full account of the proceedings of the Philosophers' Congress. 19 (289) 290 FROEBEL IN PHILOSOPHERS' CONGRESS. " In tlie beginning of our century, education needed a new impulse ; and it ■was given by Pestalozzi and Fichte who broke tlie road for the national edu- cation of Germany. But the question, what is the true humane mode of educa- tion, applicable to all men every where, comes up anew, and asks for the right means to fulfill its mission. "i'RiEDRicK Frobel, the great educational reformer of our era, in his sys- tem of education, promises these means. But, as yet, his method has been only partly and inadequately carried out in the widely-multiplying Kindergartens. It asks for a thorough investigation, on the part of scientific men, of the princi- ples on which it is based ; and if its claims prove to be well founded, it should be recommended to all governments and communities, and its adoption decreed. In view of the great importance of this question, an educational committee, which counts eminent scientific men among its members, was formed last year in Berlin, during tlie teachers' convention, for the purpose of taking the matter into consideration ; and they are invited to attend the Philosophers' Congress as members, taking active part in it, discussing the general educational questions, and devising means to establish a central normal school for the education of male and female teachers, who may meet all the demands of our time in all directions ; and an address to the government and school authorities of Ger- many for the reform of iho normal schools, will be submitted for discussion." The subjects thus announced in the manifests of the BerUn Teach- ers' Convention were discussed in the Pedagogical Section of the Philadelphia Congress at Frankfort from Oct. 26th to Nov. 4th, and the conclusions reached in the field of popular education, were em- bodied in a Report of a special committee of which Prof, von Fichte was chairman. During the session, the Baroness von Marenholtz- Bulow gave four public lectures in Frankfort whick were largely at- tended, and took the initiatory steps for the establishment of a "General Educational Union," which was organized in 1871-72. Prof. I. H. vok Fichte, the author of the following Report, was a philosopher and writer of great eminence and remarkable versatility. He was born July 8, 1797, the son of the distinguished philosopher Johann Gottlieb Fichte, whose writings and personal influence are world renowned, and who died the 27tli of June, 1814. His widow died five years later. The son took his degree as Doctor of Philosophy in 1818, at the University of Berlin, where for a short time he was established as Privat-docent. Later he became a Gymnasial teacher in Saarbriicken, and subsequently in Diisseldorf. For several years till 1840, he was Professor Extraor- dinary of Philosophy in Bonn. In 1842 he was called to Tubingen as Professor of Philosophy, where he remained till 1863, when he resigned and removed to Stuttgart, where he resided till his death, at the age of 83. He was a voluminous writer upon a vari- ety of subjects, on Philosophy, Ethics, Pedagogics, and Theology, singularly clear, candid, and sensible, earnestly theistic and chris- tian. He founded the journal which bears his name and has reached the 78th volume, and is highly esteemed in Germany and wherever German Philosophy is studied. THE NATIONAL EDUCATION DEMANDED BY THE AGE, CONSIDERED IN CONNECTION WITH THE EDUCATIONAL SYSTEM OF FRIEDRICH FROBEL. By Prof. J. H. Von Fichte.* I. EDUCATION — THE PROBLEM OF THE AGE. Since Pestalozzi's great movement, it has become, at least in Germany, a universally recognized conviction, that only by means of an improved popular education, can the many defects of civil, social and family life be thoroughly corrected, and a better future be assured to our posterity. It may be asserted, still more universally, that the fate of a people, its growth and decay, depend, ultimately and mainly, on the education which is given to its youth. Hence follows, with the same indisputable certainty, the next axiom : that nation which, in all its classes, possesses the most thorough and varied cultivation, will, at the same time, be the most powerful and the happiest, among the peoples of its century ; invin- cible to its neighbors and envied by its contemporaries, or an example for them to imitate. Indeed, it can be asserted, with the exactness of a mathematical truth, that even the most reliable preparation for war can be most surely reached through the right education of physically- developed young men. This conviction also gains ground in Germany ; and renewed efforts are now made to introduce gymnastics (turnen) into the system of common school education, freed from all cumbersome modifications, and restored to their simple, first principles. But the problems of national education are far from being limited to these immediate, practical aims. Its workings must not alone cover the present and its necessities ; the great plan of national education must comprehend unborn generations, the future of our race, the immediate and therefore the most distant. Finally, man must not be educated for the State alone (after the manner of Greece and Rome), but the highest civil and educational aim must be to lead the individual and the whole race toward their moral perfection. National education must therefore extend beyond the popular and expedient ; must construct its foundations on pure and universal humanity, and then raise upon these whatever national and professional wants require. This grada- tion of requirements strictly held, will prove to be a guiding rule of great importance. Here now, it may seem — and " idealizing educators " have frequently received such reproaches — as if in these demands, far off, impossible * Translated by Emily Meyer, with slight verbal alterations and abridgements. 292 THE PROBLEM OF POPULAR EDUCATION. problems were treated of, as if educational Utopias were desired, instead of looking after what is nearest and most necessary. And one could say, even with an appearance of right, that inasmuch as we perform what is near and sure, we approach, at least progressively, our highest goal. For national education is a work so comprehensive, complicated and prodigious, that it can be realized only in favorable periods and within very circumscribed limits. Admitting this last, we hope still to show how directly practical the consideration of that universal question of principle is, and that the edu- cation of the present will only reach its aim by beginning at this point. We are undeniably entering a new era. We are preparing to cast aside the last remnants of the middle ages. Inherited rights are precarious, or at least they can claim no legal sanction, while, nevertheless, much in our manners and customs remind us of the past. No one is compelled to serve another, and no individual enjoys in idleness the profits of another man's labor; but for each, labor and capacity are to be the sole supports of his position in life. Thus each is thrown upon his own exertions, and the path of unlimited competition and zealous efibrt is opened to all. For this reason there should no longer be a privileged class, but to each, approximately at least, must be oflfered every thing which belongs to a universal human culture, and what his particular capacities de- mand or are able to appropriate. Only upon these two conditions can the citizen of the commonwealth be fitted for the future " struggle for existence," to continue equal to the increased requirements, and fulfill ably his chosen calling. This new great principle of the equal rights of all to all which their talents can grasp, demands a plan of education fundamentally renovated and readjusted. In every given case, the education must be strictly proportional to the conditions which the period oifers. But it can not be denied, that in the present period this proportional relation has not been reached ; yes, there is even danger that it may be missed of, by a mis- taken arrangement of details. For this reason, those upon whom the responsibility of educating rests, must recognize clearly the final aim of the same, and prepare it with practical certainty, through all the neces- sary grades. Above all, therefore, theoretically there must be no vacil- lation in principles, practically no failure in the correct issues ! If we should succeed only in spreading a wholesome light over these two points, we should feel that we had solved our present problem. Our politicians and State educators differ widely in regard to that aim; and this is the next ground where the struggle should begin. Whoever considers a republic the highest goal to which a State can attain, laments that he sees no republicans around him ; these true education must make. But what the republican spirit, in which the people are to be educated, really is, there is no thorough insight. This spirit is the op- posite of that which has till now existed, and which sees true freedom PROBLEM OF POPULAR EDUCATION. 293 only in a leveling equality, and the overthrow of old authority and social barriers ; and above all admits no civil compulsion in education. Each individual must cultivate himself for such practical purposes as he chooses, and as well as he can. Education and its institutions must be entirely untrammeled. As a fitting example we can refer to what is delated of North America, where the educational conditions, and the consequent family life, are free in general. The pupil is prepared, as early as possible, to help himself onward, in some form of profitable business. The greatest activity, and the richest accumulation of prop- erty, is the aim of each. Though German republicanism may reject these principles, it must still admit that there is consistency in them, and that if thg State has no higher aim than to become a great indus- trial and fiscal institution, an immense phalanstery for the most enhanced pleasures of this mortal life, this purpose is being realized on the other side of the ocean, in a highly pi'actical way, and without unnecessary complications ; not, indeed, without already displaying the moral evils which unavoidably accompany its progress, and to which our republican sages persistently shut their eyes. Those who find their ideal state in old feudalism, in simple submission to the fatherly care of " princes by the grace of God," and see in a full return to such conditions the only safety from the dangers of the present, must also contemplate a reform, indeed a retrograde movement, of the educational system. They will insist upon clinging to old things, even to preserving what is decayed, solely because it is consecrated by author- ity. Nor are we without example of this ; for we find a North German State, betraying a lamentable inconsistency and blindness in settling the most important question of popular education, limits the range and thoroughness of instruction, and thus destroys the germs of its future growth as a State. These two parties — we have mentioned only their extreme character- istics, while numerous intermediate grades exist — designate only the extreme limits of the antithesis, which touches all the political and social questions of the age. They stand upon the broad field of the literature and opinions of our time, as if separated by a wide chasm, and in irre- concilable hostility. They could, however, by returning to their first, true principles, and acquiring a clearer insight, be brought to recognize each other ; and, instead of incessantly quarreling, be made to acknowl- edge their relative rights, and work harmoniously upon the common task of improving the education of the people. We consider it not only de- sirable, but possible, that the work of reconciliation should begin with a true appreciation of popular education, which is the common aim of both sides. By this we mean that the conservatives, who will sacrifice nothing which is sanctified by age and authority, do not see how, in thus destroying, that which is truly valuable and enduring can be pre- served. For the new form in which it is to arise more enduringly, does not present itself so distinctly that they can recognize it. This gives 294 THE PROBLEM OF POPULAR EDTICATION. them a right to protest that it is better to retain the oldest positive forro than sink into the nothingness of a bare negation ; no new form should be introduced which is not at least a full compensation for the old. On the other side, we see reformers too frequently losing themselves in what is external or unessential. They do not often get beyond empty plans of abolition. They are clear as to what they do not want, but do not perceive as clearly what is permanently to fill the place of that which they reject. They are deeply mistaken if they think, that, in ridding themselves of certain hindrances, they gain creative freedom, the power to erect a positive structure. We can not err, in asseiting that most revolutions have failed and become unfortunately retrogressive, because their leaders did not know what they wanted, or at least what they ought to want. In the first place, it is necessary to understand the past correctly, and to recognize clearly what in it has still a relative right to continue, and what must serve as a transitional basis and means for that which is new and necessary. The law of continuity, of gradual transition, which we see ruling organic life with irresistible sway, has also in all intellectual processes, whether political or social, its highest authorization, the vio- lation of which never escapes punishment. We might call it the educa- tional law of the world's history. If we may be allowed to presume that, as a general thing, the best thinkers agree upon these fundamental principles, then we may consider the following inference as admitted. It is plain, namely, that the path of this gradual, complete, and peaceful transition from the present into the new period, must take place in the field of education ; for in the growing race, the old and new time, the decaying past and vigorously- developing future, meet and are reconciled. And thus in this direction, the decisive truth is proved : All political and social controversies of the present concentrate finally in the question of education; tut not only in regard to what must be done in detail and immediately, but more universally still, in this: What is the only true education, the education worthy of the human being ? This is plainly a psychological-ethical question. It can be decided — • with the permission of our practical teachers — only on philosophical ground. Not — and here experience must be our guide — not that a cer- tain philosophical system is to construct for all time, an educational plan which all must follow, but that correct insight into the nature of the human intellect must first fix the nature and the end of all human edu- cation, and must at the same time designate the fundamental principles by which the several questions of education and instruction are to be decided. Thus we shall be able to dispose of the final question : Which one, of the now ruling educational systems, is best adapted to the nature of the human mind ? THE PROBLEM OF POPULAR EDUCATION. 295 Without prolonging the discussion unreasonably, we can not omit, at least not completely, the psychological questions as to the nature of the soul — what is received from without into its growing consciousness, and on the other hand how much its original (Opacities contribute to its development. The controversy concerning these psychological princi- ples is by no means concluded, and it can not be even briefly discussed here. It will sufifice to point out historically the tendencies which have become prominent, as far at least as they have had an influence upon the science of instruction. IT. PHILOSOPniCAL PRINCIPLES IN POPULAR EDUCATION. At present, there are only two philosophical systems which have had a controlling influence in this direction ; those of Herbart and Beneke. JoTiann Friedrich Herhart. Herbart deserves particular attention, because, as he himself confesses, it was his educational studies which incited him to psychological re- searches. He says, " The incentive to these researches, which are not easy, was my conviction that a great part of the defects of our ed- ucational systems was traceable to an ignorance of psychology, and that we must first understand this science, indeed must destroy the blind which we now-a-days call psychology, before we can safely say what work we have performed correctly and what incorrectly in our teachings." He starts, in his system, with strict consistency, from the conception of the soul as a simple and in itself an unchangeable essence. Intuition may be called acts of self-assertion on the part of the soul, with which it responds to impulses which act on it from without. Consciousness is only the sum of the relations between the soul and the external world. Out of this arises the necessity of education, i. e., a correct outward influence upon the undeveloped man. For the soul possesses no fixed original capacities; man is only physically a being who brings with him, into the world, the germs of his future shape ; on the contrary, his soul may be compared to a machine, constructed wholly and entirely of ideas. For this very reason, it possesses an unlimited capacity of culture, and this decides, on the whole, the possibility of education. A systematic education should seek to preserve the pupil from ruin, and raise him to inner freedom, by teaching him guiding conceptions, and by rousing his intellectual interests, while in the midst of its present life and under its- influences, from which it is neither possible, nor advisable to withdraw him ; — moral culture is its aim. The object of education, is "an equally developed variety of intellect- ual interests," subject to the aim of moral culture. "All must be lovers of every thing, each one must excel in one branch." This is Herbart's highest canon for education and instruction. This signifies, if it is cor- rectly and comprehensively understood, the height to which human cul- 296 THE PROBLEM OF POPULAR EDUCATION. ture can attain. Herbart's premises, in his conception of the soul, we must consider insufficient (why, and why also to the injur}'' of his peda- gogical theories, we shall show below), but he has, nevertheless, given us safe guides for education rfnd instruction, in his conception of the capac- ity of culture and his sharp and unprejudiced study of child and man, and above all, in his psychological observations of the inner gra- dations, through which the growing consciousness passes, especially those that banish what is injuriously eccentric and extravagant, and preserve what is essential and necessary. We find in almost no work, as far as pedagogical literature is known to us, so many practically com- prehensive hints, precepts and warnings, in as small space, as in Herbart's " Outlines of pedagogical lectures." They betray every where, the sharp glance of the experienced teacher which Herbart really was. The following are the reasons why the principles of his pedagogism do not satisfy us. They are the same which compelled us critically to oppose his fundamental, psychological views. Here we will take note only of what has flowed from his psychological into his pedagogical reasonings, which he has conducted with sharp, steadfast logic. According to those principles, the conscious condition of the soul, each given moment, is equal to the sum of the conceptions which, through the psychical mechanism, have collected in it, by means of the relations which exist between the soul and other beings ; and the course, the change of its conscious condition, is again strictly dependent upon this psychical mechanism. The soul itself is only to be considered as es- sentially idealess, as the unalterable soul-unit which is roused to self- assertion, by objective influences. Each conscious state of the soul is thus a common product of those two factors, one formal (because it does not disturb the fundamental nature of the soul) self-assertion, on the part of the soul, and one variously composed excitement of ideas, on the part of the object, by which (as a critic of Herbart's theory says) "the definition of objective truth is naturally lost to our recognition." Each single, so created idea expresses itself in consequence of its op- position to others, as a " force," by which a mutual, greater, or smaller check is caused among the ideas. Through this, motion is first intro- duced into the mass of ideas, which form among themselves combina- tions, complications, and groups. The relations between objects and their corresponding ideas are not all equally strong; one displaces, strengthens, obscures the other; the suppressed ideas wait at the threshold of consciousness, until they can rise again and unite with simi- lar oneSj and then press forward with combined power. The working ideas, repelled at the threshold of consciousness, waiting only in the dark, we call sensations. They express themselves, in proportion as their struggles forward are more or less successful, as "desires." Desire becomes will, when it is united to the hope of success. Will is not, according to this definite ex- planation, a real and acting self-determination, arising out of the funda- THE PROBLEM OF POPULAR EDUCATION. £97 mental nature of the soul, against excitements from without, but only a manifestation of ideas, which forms itself in the soul by means of an in- voluntary, psychological mechanism. We believe that we ourselves will, but both the will and the belief in it are only the necessary products of the continuously running machine within us. We will, because we must, /. f., because the forward struggling mass of ideas is finally concen- trated into the idea of a subject which wills, and an object which is willed. According to this, what is called in common language, fancy, memory, understanding, reasons, desires, will, etc., or what is cited as the sup- posed faculties of the soul, is only a certain activity, in a certain mass of ideas, the conduct of the ideas toward each other. The question of the possibility of education presupposes a mutability in the mind of the pupil, in the course of his ideas, which the educator must be able to control, at least under certain conditions. He can direct his attention to those states only, not however to their real subject, which, as soul, is the immutable foundation upon which the intellectual life, i. e., the variety of results occurring in and •between the ideas, constructs, ennobles or degrades itself, and in which appear the principal tenden- cies through which the signs of human nature first become visible. It follows from this that psychology must become the fundamental science of pedagogism. As pedagogism is first brought to perfection as a doctrine by the aid of thorough psychological knowledge, so again, through the same knowledge alone can educational activity rise to the rank of art. Psychology shows finally the causes of the fluctuations of minds between truth and error, between good and evil, and thus teaches, that a need of education is present in them, and that this is even necessary, in order to plant what is essentially human in the s6ul. All educational activity may be divided into the three functions, gov- ernment, instruction, discipline. The child is born without a will ; a personal will is formed gradually in him. During this time, all kinds of disorder and impetuosity make their appearance ; it is the business of government to keep these within bounds. What nature teaches by ex- perience and intercourse, is too imperfect and irregular, is scattered and fragmentary. An artistic activity must perfect, arrange, and unite the mass of ideas thus collected. This artistic activity is instruction. The goal of instruction is not solely or chiefly to be the imparting of knowledge or the acquisition of an outward technical skill, but directly the improvement of the pupil by its means, the most important part of education. Therefore, education more closely defined, is the systematic conception and cultivation of ideas, as the elements of the soul's life, until that " variety of interests " is attained, out of which spring the ability and readiness to will, on the one side, and on the other, "taste," or " moral aesthetic judgment." Discipline — Self- Education. 'The idea of discipline points at something which does not yet exist, 298 THE PROBLEM OF POPULAR EDUCATION. but that is hoped and intended, for the future, to which the pupil must first be led. Discipline is principally applied to the will. It consists in influencing the mind of the pupil, with the view of ennobling him and developing him morally, which can only be done by training his will to be correct and steadfast. Its object is the formation of character. Character is the art of ruling the will, the peculiar individual construc- tion of the inclinations, in their quantitative relations. The subjective part of character is "taste," moral aesthetic judgment, whose office it is to criticise the objective element. Finally, the highest goal and most perfect success of education is the ability of self-education. Out of the moral-testhetic power of "con- scientious judgment," can arise a pure, unselfish enthusiasm for good- ness, united with courage and prudence, through which genuine morality is strengthened into character, and by means of which the in- dividual practices a preserving, restoring and improving art upon him- self — self-education. In accordance with these three aspects of government, instruction, and discipline, special maxims and precepts are developed whose truth and manifold practical value can not be disputed, even though one may not acknowledge these principles. They are emphatically recommended to the earnest consideration of every educator, particularly every teacher, and to constant self trial for his educational deportment. We scarcely presume too much, when we assert that Herbart was the first among all the German pedagogical writers, to introduce order, light, and a comprehensive gradation of pedagogical problems, as also a quiet in- sight into pedagogical procedures, into the previously fragmentary mass of observations and precepts. Others followed their instincts, or tradition, and a certain practiced routine, whose results might be successful or not; and this is still gen- erally done. Herbart rejects this entirely ; he demands for the whole, an educational art which shall reach back to the first principles of psy- chological life, and carefully follow its development, thereby founding a soundly arranged, educational art ; for details, a constantly conscious, psychologically controlled application of those universal precepts. He has thus laid the foundation of the science of pedagogism. Nevertheless, there is no contradiction in asserting, that the excel- lence of these pedagogical precepts is by no means a guaranty for the truth of his psychological first-principles, and for the correctness of his conception of the nature of the soul. For if we look more closely, we do not find that these precepts are deduced from this as a principle, or are simply confirmed by it even, and that they would be untenable without it, but that the}^ are derived from sharp and extensive observation, and thus possess an absolute value, independent of the judgment which one vasLj be obliged to pronounce upon the principle itself On the contrary, we might say, as far as the principle has had any real influence upon Herbart's pedagogical theories, it has placed them in THE PROBLEM OF POPULAR EDUCATION. £99 open contradiction to experience. His theory of the formal simplicity of the soul's nature, of its deficiency in all original capacities, has com- elled him to exaggerate the work of instruction, and ascribe to it a value which experience by no means confirms. This contradiction does not arise because the educational art recommended by Herbart is a faulty one, but from the deeper and more universal cause, that the nature of the human soul is quite different, more richly gifted, than Herbart, compelled by metaphysical and not psychological reasons, can ac- knowledge. According to that principle, of course, education can make what it pleases out of the wholly indifferent soul ; it needs only, aft>/ >^ ^^ TO WHICH IS ADDED ^ ^The Affembly of Divines, andy^ ^ Mr. Cotton's Catechifm. }<^ |> BOSTON: « ^Printed by Edward D r a p e r, a«< ^ his Printing-OfSce, in Newbury-i ^} Street, and iSoZtZby Jo H N Bo YLE^ ^ in Marlborough- Street. 1777. ^ ^^^^^^^m^^^^^^^^ * ^^^-^o^i^^t*^^^'^ * A. Divine Song of Praife to G O D , for a Child, by the Rev. Dr. Watts. JLWOW glorious is our heavenly King^ Jlm. Who reigns above the Sky ! Hoio piall a Child pre fume tojing His dreadful Majejly I How great his Power is none can tell, Nor thinkjiow large his Grace : Nor men below, nor Saints that dwell On high before his Face. Nor Angels that ftand round the Lord, Can fearch his fecret will : But they perform his heav''nly Word, Andfmg his Praifes ftill. Then let me join this holy Tram, And my fir ft Offerings bring ; The eternal GOt) u'ill not difdain To hear an Infant fing. My Heart refohes, my Tongue obeys^ And Angels piall rejoice. To hear their mighty Maker''s Praife, Sound from a feeble Voice. The young Infant's or Child's mom- ing Prayer. From Dr. Watts. ALMIGHTY God the Maker of every ^^ Thing in Heaven and Earth; the Dark- nefs goes away, and the Hay light comes at thy Coinmand. Thou art good and doeft good con- tinually, r 1 ^ I thank thee that thou haft taken fuch Care of me this Night, and that I am alive and well tnis Morning. Save me, O God, from Evil, all this Hay lortg; and let me love and ferve thee forever, for the S(tke of Jefus Chnp thy Son. Amen. The Infant's or young Child's Evening Prayer. From Dr. Watts. OLORD Godioho knoweflall Things, thou feeft me by Night as ivell as by Day. Iftray thee for ChrifVs Sake, forgive me what- Joever 1 have dune aniifs this Day, and keep me all this Night, while I am aflecp. I defire^ to lie down under thy Care, and to abide forever under thy Bleffing, for thou art a God of all Power and everlafling Mercu. A.M EN. ^^m^^^^^M^^^^^:^^ ^mm^m^^m^^'^^^^* 382 THE NEW ENGLAND PETMER.— 1777. Eafy Syllables, <^c abcdefghijklmS nopqrfstuv ^ w X y z &. ^ Vowels. ^ a e i o u J. ^ ^ Coiifonants. -^ ^b c d f g h j k 1 m n p q r f St V w X z^ ^ Double Letters. ^ idi ff fi fl ffi ffl fh fi ffi 11 ir {M % r • , ^ j!^ Italick Letters. ^ l^o; .F5 Cc Dd Ee Ff Gg wM ^li Jj Kk LI Mm Nn Oo Pp Qq^ ^RrSfs TtUuVvWfvXxYyZzM ^ W: K Italick Double Letters. w |^#/# flffllhfiffffi fiM */'^/'Vsk/Nsl Ba be hi bo bi ca da fa ce de fe ci di fi CO do fo CI di ha be hi gf ho g« hi ka la ke le ji ki li jo ko lo J'J k^ lu ma ma mi mo ID na ne ni no m pa ra fa po re fe ri fi po ro fo ft ta te ti to W va ve vi vo vu wa we wi wo wu ya za ye zo zi yo zo yu zu Words of one Syllable. Age Babe Cat Deal all boef cake dead ape beft crown dry are bold ci;]) dull Great Letters. Words of one Syllable Eat ear eggs eye* ABCDEFGHIJKI. MNO E*«« ^®®\ ^^^^: ^°"^ Gate good grais great xt f\ o e T" TT WT V ^T rj Hand hat head heart f (4 K b 1 U W A 1 Z. i^g i^j^ ijlg j^,jb Kick kind kneel know Ab eb ib ob nb Lamb lame land long ac ec ic oc uc Made mole moon moutl ad ed id od ud Name night noife noon af ef if of uf Oak once one ounc< ag eg ig og ug Pain pair pence pound aj ej ij oj uj Quart queen quick quilt ak ek ik ok iik Rain raife rofe run al el il ol nl Saint fage fait faid am em im om um Take talk time throat an en in on un Vain vice vile view ap ep ip op up Way wait wafie woidd ar er ir or ur Words of two Syllables. BA es is OS us Ab-fent ab-hor a-pron au-thor at et it ot ut Ba-bel be-came be-gtiile bold-ly av er iv ov uv Ca-pon cel-lar con-ftant cub-boa: ax ex ix ox ux Dai-ly de-pend di-vers du-ty az ez iz oz uz Ea-gle ea-ger en-close e-ven Fa-ther fa-mous fe-male fu-ture Eafy (ra-ther gar-den gra-vy glo-ry THE NEW ENULAMD PRlMiiK.— 1777. Words of two Syllables. Hei-nous In-fant Ja-cob La-bour Ma-ny hate-ful in-deed jeal-ous la-den ma-ry hu-mane iii-cence juf-tice la-dy mo-tive hus-band i-fland ju-lep la-zy mu-fick Words of three Syllables. A-bn-fing a-meiid-ing ar-gu-ment Bar-ba-roiis be-ne-fit beg-gar-l\ Cal-cu-late can-die-stick con-foun-ded Dam-ni-fy dif-fi-cult drow-fi-nefs Ea-ger-ly em-ploy-ing evi-dence Fa-cul-ty fa-mi-ly fu-ne-ral Gar-de-ner glo-ri-ous gra-ti-tudo Hap-pi-ness har-mo-ny ho-li-nefs Words of four Syllables. af-fec-ti-on be-ne-vo-lent ce-re-mo-ny du-ti-ful-ly e-vi-dent~ly for-mi-da-bly gra-ci-oiis-ly A-bi-li-ty Be-ne-fi-ted Ca-ia-mi-ty De-li-ca-cy E-dy-fy-ing Fe-bru-a-ry Ge-ne-ral-ly ac-coni-pa-ny be-a-ti-tude ca-pa-ci-ly di-li-gent-ly e-ver-lafl-ing fi-de-li-ty glo-ri-fy-ing In A D A M • s Fall We finned all. Heaven to find, The Bible Mind. Chrift crucify'd For finners dy'd. The Deluge drown'd The Earth around. E L ij A H hid Bv Ravens fed. The judgment made F £ L i z afraid. Words of five Syllables. A-bo-mi-na-ble ad-mi-ra-ti-on Be-ne-dic-ti-on Ce-le-bra-ti-on De-cla-ra-ti'On E-du-ea-ti-on For-ni-ca-li-on Ge-ne-ra-ti-on be-ne-fi-ci-al con-fo-la-ti-on de-di-ca-ti-on ex-hor-ta-ti-on fer-men-ta-ti-on ge-ne-ro-fi-ty Words of fix Syllables. A-bo-mi- na-ti-on G ra-ti-fi-ca-ti-on Be-ne-fi-ci-al -ly Con-ti-nu-a-ti-on De-ter-nii-na-ti-on E-di-fi-ca-ti-oa Fa-rai-li-a-ri-ty Hu-mi-li-a-ti-on I-ma-gi-na-ti-on Mor-ti-li-ca-ti-oa Pu-ri-fi-ca-ti-oa Qua-li-fi-ca-ti-on A Leffon for Children. Pray to God. Call no ill names. Love God. Fear God. Serve God. Take not God's Name in vain. Do not Sw^ear. Do not Steal. Ufe no ill words. Tell no lies. Hate Lies. Speak the Truth. Spend your Time well Love your School. Mind your Book. Cheat not in your play. Strive to learn. Play not with bad boys. Be not a Dunce. As runs the Glass, Our Life doth pass. My Book and Heart Must never part. Job feels the Rod, — Yet bleffes GOD. Proud Korah's troop Was fwallowed up Ju o T fled to Zoar^ Saw fiery Shower On Sodom pour. Moses was he Who IsraePs Hoft Led thro' the Sea. TAB NEW ENGLAND PRIMER.— ITH. Noah did view The old world & new Young Obadias, David, Jos IAS All were pious. Peter deny'd His Lord and cry'd. Queen Esther fues And faves the Jews. Young pious Ruth, Left ail for Truth. Young Sam* I, dear The Lord did fear. WHO was the firft man ? Who was the firft woman ? Who was the firft Murderer ? Who was the firft Martyr ? Who was the firft Tranllated ? Who was the oldeft Man ? Who built the Ark ? W^ho was the Patienteft Man ? Who was the Meekeft Man ? Who led Ifrael mto Canaan ? Who was the ftrongest Man ? Who killed GoUah? Who was the wifeft Man ? Who was in the Whale's Belly ? Adam. Eve. Cain. Abel. Enoch. Methujelah. Noah. Job. Mofes. Jofhua. Sampfon. David. Solomon. Jonah. Who faves loft Men ? Jefus Chriji. Who is Jefus Chnft ? The Son of God. Who was the Mother of Chriji ? Mary. Who betrayed his Mafter ? Judas. Who denied his Mafter 1 Peter. Who was the firft Chriftian 'M.?LXiyx'{ Stephen. Who was chief Apoftle of the Gentiles ? Paul. Ttte Infants Grace before and after Meat. "O LESS me, O Lord, and let my food -*-^ ftrengther me to ferve thee, for Jesus Chrift's fake. Amen. IDefire to thank God who gives me food to eat every day of my life. Amen. Jfoung Timothy Learnt fin to fly. V A s t H I for Pride, Was fet afide. Whales in the Sea, GOD's Voice obey. X E R X B s did die, And fo mnft L While youth do chear Death may be near. ZAccHKOshe Did climb the Tree Oiur Lord to fee. ''^|7'HA'l''s right and good now fhew me " ^ Lord, and lead me by thy grace and word. Thus fhall I be a child of God, and love and fear Ihv hand and rod. An Alphabet of Lejfons for Youth. \ Wife fon maketh a glad father, but a •^^ foolifhfon istheheavinefsof his mother. TO Etter is a little with the fear of the Lord, ^^ than great treasure ot trouble therewith. /^ Ome unto Chrift all ya that labor and are ^^ heavy laden and he will give you reft. '8^ Onot the abominable thing whichlhatc -■--' faith the liord. Xj^ Xcept a man be born again, he cannot ~~ fee the kingdom of God. Vi^ Oolifhnefs is bound up in the heart of a -*- child, but the rod of correction fhall drive it far from him. f^ ODLINESS is profitable unto all things, ^-* having the promife of the life that now is, and that which is to come. TTOLINESS becomes GOD's houfe -*--■- for ever. T is good for me to draw near unto GOD. THE NEW ENGLAND PRIMEK.— 1777. KEEP thy h.eart with all diligence, for out of it are the ifl'ues of lil'e. LIARS ihall have their part in the lake which burns with fire and brimUone. MANY are the afilictions of the right- ous, but the Lord delivereth them out of them all. NOW is the accepted time, now is the day of falvation. OUT of the abundance of the heart the mouth fpeaketh. PRAY to thy Father which is in fecret; and thy Father which fees in fecret (hall reward thee openly. QUIT you like men, be flrong, Hand faft • in the faith. REMEMBER thy Creator in the days of thy youth. SEeft thou a man wife in his own conceit, there is more hope of a fool than of him. TRUST in God at all times, ye people, pour out your hearts before him. TTPON the wicked, God (hall rain an ^ horrible tempeft. WO to the wicked, it fhall be ill with him, for the reward of his hands (hall be given him. E"V" HORT one another daily while it is -A- called to day, left any of you be hardened thro' the deceitfulnefs of fin. YOUNG men ye have overcome the wicked one. ZEal hath confumed me, becaufe thy ene- mies have forgotten the word of God. The LORD'S Prayer. ^\ UR Father which art in heaven, hallo w- ^^ ed be thy name. Thy kingdom come. Thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven. Give us this day our daily bread. And for- give us our debts as we forgive our debtors. And lead us not into temptation. But deli- ver us from evil. For thine is the kingdom, the power and the glory, forever. Amen. The CREED. T BELIEVE in God the Father Almighty -■- Miker of heaven and earth, and in Jefus Chrift his only Son our Lord, which was con- ceived by the Holy Ghoft, born of the Virgin Mary, fuffered under Pontius Pilate, was cru- cified, dead and buried. He defcended into hell. The third day he arofe again from the dead, and ffcended into heaven, and fit- teth on the right hand of God, the Father, Almighty. From thence he fhaU come to judge both the quick and the dead. I be- lieve in the Holy Ghoft, the Holy Catholic Church, the communion of Saints, the for- givenefs of fins, the refurrection of the body, and the life e^-erlafting. Amen. Dr. W A T T s ' s Cradle Hymn. W U S H my dear, lie Itill and ilumber, •*--*- holy angels guard thy bed. Heavenly blefi'ings without number, gently falling on thy head. Sleep my babe, thy food and raiment houfe and home thy friends provide, All without thy care or paymeiu, all thy wants are well fupply d. How much better thou'rt attended, than the Son of God could be, When from heaven he defcended, and became a child like thee. Solt and eafy i? thy cradle, coarl'e and hard thy Saviour lay. When his birth-place was a fiable, and his foftcft bed was hay. Bleflcd Babe ! wh'.t glorious features, fpotlefs fair, divinely bright ! ! Muft he dwell with brutal creatures, how could angels bear the fight ! Was there nothing but a manger, curfed finners could afibrd. To receive the heavenly Itranger ; did they thus afiront their Lord. Soft my child I did not chide thee, tho' my fong may found too hard ; 'Tis thy mother fits befide thee, and her arms fliall be thy guard. Yet to read the Oiameful ftory, how the Jews abus'd their King, How they ferv'd the Lord of glory, makes me angry while I fing. See the kinder lliepherds round him, telling wonders from the fky ; There they fought him, there they found him, with his Virgin Mother by. See the lovely Babe a drefllng ; lovely Infant how he smil'd ! When he wept, the Mother's blefling sooth'd and hufh'd the holy child. Lo I he flurabers in his manger, > where the horned oxen fed ; Peace my darling here's no danger, here's no Ox a near thy bed. Twas to fave thee, child from dying fave my dear from burning flame, 886 THE NEW ENGLAND PRIMER.— ITH. Bitter groans and endlefs crying, that thy blefl Redeemer came. May'ft thou live to know and fear him, truft and love him all thy days ! Then go dw^ell for ever near him, fee his face and ling his praife. I could give thee thonfand kiOes, hoping what I mod delire : Not a mother's fondefl wiflies, can to greater joys afpire. Verses for Children. THOUGH I am young a little one, If I can fpeak and go alone, Then I muft learn to know the Lord, And learn to read his holy word. 'Tis time to feek to God and pray For what I want for every day: I have a precious foul to fave, And I a mortal body have, Tho' I am young yet I may die, And haften to eternity : There is a dreadful fiery hell. Where wicked ones must ahvays dwell : There is a heaven full of joy. Where godly ones must always ftay : To one of thefe my foul must riy, As in a moment when I die : I rnud obey them in the Lord. Nor Ileal, nor lie, nor fpend ray days, In idle tales and foolifh plays, I muft obey my Lord's commands, Do fomething with my little hands : Remember my creator now. In youth while time will it allow. Young Samuel rhat little child, He ferv'd the Lord, liv'd undefil'd; Him in his fervice God employ'd. While Eli's wicked children dy'd: When wicked children mocking faid, To a good man. Go up bald head, God was difpleas'd with them and fent Two bears which them in pieces rent, I muft not like thefe children vile, Difpleafe my God, myfelf defile. Like young A b i j a h , I muft fee. That good things may be found in me, Young King J o s i a h , that blefled youth, He fought the Lord and lov'd the truth ; He like a King did act his part. And follow'd God with all his heart. The little children they did fing, Hofannahs to their heavenly King. That blelfed child young Timothy, Did learn God's word moft heedfidly. When God that made me, calls me home, I muft not stay I muft be gone. He gave me life, and gives me breath, And he can fave my foul from death. By Jesus Christ my only Lord, According to his holy word. He clothes my back and makes me warm: He faves my flefh and bones from harm. He gives me bread and milk and meat And all I have that's good to eat. When I am fick, he if he pleafe. Can make me well and give me eafe : He gives me fieep and quiet reft, Whereby my body is refrefli'd The Lord is good and kind to me. And very thankful I muft be : I muft oboy and love and fear him. By faith in Chrift I muft draw near him. I muft not fin as others do. Left I lie down in forrow too : For God is angry every day, With wicked ones who go aftray. All finful words I must reftrain : I muft not take God's name in vain. I muft not work, I muft not play, Upon God's holy fabbath day. And if my parents fpeak the word. It feem'd to be his recreation. Which made him wife unto ialvation : By faith in Chrift which he had gain'd With prayers and tears that faith unfeign'd. Thefe good examples were for me ; Like thefe good children I must be. Give me true faith in Chrift my Lord, Obedience to his holy word. No word is in the world like thine. There's none fo pure, fweet and divine. From thence let me thy will behold, And love thy w^ord above fine gold. Make my heart in thy ftatutes found, And make my faith and love abound. I/Ord circumeife my heart to love thee : And nothing in this world above thee : Let me behold thy pleafed face, And make my foul to grow in grace, And in the knowledge of my Lord And Saviour Chrift, and of his word. Another. AWAKE, arife, behold thou haft, -^^ Thy life a leaf, thy breath a blaft , At night lay down prepar'd to hflve Thy fieep, thy death, thy bed, thy grave. T" R D if thou lengthen out my days, -*— ^ Then let my heart lo fixed be. THE NEW ENGLAND PRIMER— ITTT. 887 Thai I may lengthen out thy praise, And never lurn alide from thee. So in my end I fhall rejoice, Jn thy falvation joyful be ; My foul fliall say with loud glad voice, JEHOVAH who is hke to thee ? Who takell the lambs into thy arms, And gently leadefl thofe with young, Who faveil children from all harms, Lord, I will praife ihee with my fong. And wiieu my da)'^s on earth Ihali end, And I go herice and be here no more, Gi/e me eternity to fpend, My G O D to praife forever more. Another. Good children mufl, Fear God all day, Lo\e Chrift alway, Parents obey, In fecret pray, No falfe thing fay. Mind little play, By no (in ftray. Make no delay, In doing good. Another. T In the burying place may feo -■- Graves fhorter there than L From death's arreft no age is tree Young children too mufl die. My God may fuch an awful fight. 1 he Sum of the ten Commandments. WITH all thy foul love God above, And as thyfelf thy neighbour love. Advice to Youth. Eccle. xii. TVrOW in the heat of youthful blood, -'-^ Remember your Creator God ; Behold the months come hafl'ning on. When you fhall fay, My joys are gone- Behold the aged finner goes Laden with guilt and heavy woes, Down to the regions of the dead. With endlefs curfes on his head. The dull returns to dufl again, The foul in agonies of pain, Afcends to God not there to dwell, But hears her doom and finks to hell. Eternal King I fear thy name. Teach me to know how frail I am, And when my foul muft hence remove. Give me a manfion in thy love. Remember thy Creator in the days of thy youth. C^ HILDREN your great Creator fear, ■^ To him your homage pay, While vain employments fire your blood, And lead your thought,"? aflray. The due remembrance of his name Your first regard requires ; Awakening be to me ! Oh ' that by early grace I might For death prepared be. Another. ]\[0 W I lay me down to take my Jlcep, I pray the Lord my foul to keep, If Ifhouid die before I wake, I pray the Lord my foul to take. Another. tplrfi in the morning when thou dofl awake, To God for his grace thy petition make. Some heavcniy petition ufe daily to fay. That the God of heaven may bhfs thee alway. Duty to God and our neighbour. LOVE God with all your foul & ftrength, With all your heart and mind ; And love your neighbour as yourfelf. Be faithful, jufl and kind. Deal with another as you'd have Another deal with you : What you're unwilling to receive, Be lure you never do. Our Saviour^s Golden Rule. BE you to others kind and true, As you'd have others be to you ; And neither do nor fay to men, Whate'er you would not take again. Till your breaft glows with facred love, indulge no meaner fires. Secure his favour, and be wife. Before thefe cheerlefs days, vVhen age comes on, when mirth's no more And health and ftrength decays. Some pi'oper Names o/" M B N and Women, to teach Children to fpell their own. Men's Names A Dam, Abel, Abraham, Amos, Aaron, Abijah, Andrew, Alexander, Anthony, Bartholomew, Benjamin, Barnabas, Benoni, Barzillai, Caleb, Caefar, Charles, Christopher, Clement, Cornelius, David, Daniel, Ephraim, Edward, Edmund, Ebenezer, Elijah, Eliphalet, Elifha, Eleazer, Elihn, Ezekiel, Elias, Elizur, Frederick, Francis, Gilbert, Giles, George, Gamalial, Gideon, Gerfhom, Heman, Heitry, Hezekiah, Hugh, John, Jonas, Ifaac, Jacob, Jared, Job, James, Jonathan, Ifrael, Jofeph, Jeremiah, Jofhua, Jofiah, Jedediah. Jabez, Joel, Judah, Lazarus, Luke, Mathew, Michael, Mofes, Malachi, Nathaniel, Nathan, 888 THE NEW ENGLAND PRIMER.— 1777. Nicholas, Noadiah, Nehemiah. Noah, Obadiah, Ozias. Paul, Peter, Philip, Phincas, Peletiah, Ralph, Richard, Samuel, Sampfon, Stephen, Solomon, Seih, Simeon, Saul, Shcm, Shubal, Timothy, Tnonias, Tiius, Theophilus, Uriah, Uzzah, Walter, William, Xerxes, Xenophon, jZachariah, Zebdiel Zedekiah, Zadook, Zebulon, Zebediah, WomerCs Names. \ Bigail, Anne, -^^ Alice, Anna, Bethiah, Bridget, Cloe, Charity, Deborah, Dorothy, Dorcas, Dinah, Damaris, Elizabeth, Efther, Eunice, Eleanor, Frances, Flora, Grare, Gillet, Hannah, Huldah, Hepzibah, Henrietta, Hagar.' Joanna, Jane, Jamima, Ifabel, Judith, Jennet, Katharine, Katura, Kezia, Lydia, Lucretia, Lucy, Louis, Lettice, Mary, Margaret, Martha, Mehitable, Marcy, Me rial. Patience. Phvlis, Phebe, PrifciUa, Rachel, Rebecca, Ruth, Rhode, Rofo. Sarah, Sufanna, Tabitha, Tamefin, Urfula, Zipporah, Zibiah. Home few days before his death, he ivrote the following Advice to his Children. GIVE ear my children to my words Whom God hath dearly bought. Lay up his laws within your heart, and print them in your thoughts. I leave you here a little book for you to look upon. That you may fee your father's face when he is dead and gone : Who for the hope of heaveidy things While he did here remam, Gave over all his golden years to prifon and to pain. Where I, among my iron bands, iucloi'ed in the dark, Not many days before my death, 1 did compofe this work : And for example to your youth, to whom I wilh all good, I fend you here God"s perfect truth, and feal ii with my blood. To you my heirs of earthly things : which i do leave behind. That you may read and underftand and keep it in your mind. That as vou have been heirs of that MR. JohnRogers, minifter of the gofpel in London, was the firil mar- tyr in Queen Mary's reign, and was burnt at Smithfield, February 14, 1554. — His wife with nine small children, and one at her breast following him to the (lake ; with which forrowful fight he wps not in the lead daunted, but with wonderful patience died courageoufly for the gofpel of J s s u » GaaisT. that once fhall wear away. You alfo may poflefs that part, which never lliall decay. Kepp always God before your eyes, with all your whole intent, Commit no fm in any wife, keep his commandment. Abhor that arrant whore of R o m K , and ail her blafphemies. And drink not of her curfed cup, obey not her decrees. Give honor to your mother dear, remember well her pain. And recompence her in her age, with the like love again. Be always ready for her help, and let her not decay. Remember well your father all, who would have been your flay Give of your portion to the poor, as riches do arife. And from the needy naked foul, turn not away your eyes : For he that doth not hear the cry of thofe that ftand in need, Shall cry himfelf and not be heard, when he does hope to fpeed. THE NEW ENGLAND PRIMER.— 1777. 389 If GOD hath given yoii mcreafe, and blell'ed well >our liort;. Remember you are put in truil, and (hould relieve the poor. Beware of foul and filthy lull, let fuch things have no place, Keep clean your veflels in the LORD, that he may you embrace. Ye are the temples of the LORD, for you are dearly bought, And they that do defile the fame, fnall iurely come to nought. Be never proud by any means, build not your houfe too high, But always have before your eyos, that you are born to die. Defraud not him that hired is, your labour to fuitain, But pay him dill without delay, his wages for his pain. And as you would that other men againll you fhould proceed. Do you the fame to them agam, when they do fland in need." Impart your poition to the poor, ia money and in meat a..d you enjoy the land, I do befeech the living LORD, to hold you in his hand. Though here my body be adjudg'd in flaming fire to fry, My foul I trull;, will Itraight afceud to live with GOD on high. What though this carcafe Imart awhile what though this life decay. My foul 1 hope will be with GOD, and live with him for aye. I know I am a fuiner born, from the original, And that I do delerve to die by my fore-father's fall : But by our Saviour's precious blood, vfhich on the crofs was i'pilt, Who freely olTer'd up his lite, to fave our fouls from guilt ; I hope redemption I fliall have, and all who in him truft. When I iTiall fee him face to face, and live among the jult Why then Ihould I fear death's grim look fmce CHRIST for mo did die', For King and C(Bfar, rich and poor, the force of death mult try And fend the feeble fainting foid, of that which you do eat. Aflc counfel always of the wife, give ear unto the end. And ne'er refufe the fweet rebuke of him that is thy friend. Be always thankful to the LORD, with prayer and with praile, Begging of him to blefs your work, and to direct your ways. Seek firft, I fay, the living GOD, and always him adore, And then be lure that he will blefs, your bafket and your (lore. And I befeech Almighty GOD, replenifh you with grace, That I may meet you in the heavens. and fee you face to face. And though the fire my body burns, contrary to my kind, That I cannot enjoy your love according to my mind : Yet I do hope that when the heavens fhall vanifh like a fcrol!, I fhall fee you in perfect fhape, in body and in foul. And that I may enjoy your lore, When I am chained to the flake, and fagots girt me round, Then pray tlie LORD my foul in heaven may be with glory crown'd. Come welcome death the end of fears, I am prepar'd to die : Thofe earthly flames will fend my foul up to the Lord on high. Farewell my children to the world, where you mult yet remain ; The LORD of hoils be your defence, 'till we do meet again. Farewell my true and loving wife, my children and my friends, I hope in heaven to fee you all, when all things have their end. If you go on to ferve the LORD, as you have now begun, You (hall walk fafely all your days, until your life be done. GOD grant you fo to end your days, as he (hall think it bell, That I may meet you in the heavens, where 1 do hope to reft. |r\UR days begin with trouble here, "-^ our life is Init a (pan. 390 THE NEW ENGLAND PRIMER.— 1777. And cruel death is always near, fo frail a thing is man. Then fow the feeds of grace whilft young, that when thou com'ft to die, Thou may'fl fing forth that triumph fong, Death where's thy victory. Choice Sentences. 1. PrayIng will make us leave finning, or finning will make us leave praying. 2. Our weaknefs and inabilities break not the bond of our duties. 3. What we are afraid to fpeak before men, we Ihould be afraid to think before OOP. Learn the fe four lines by heart. HAVE communion with few, Be intimate with ONE, Deal juflly with all, Speak evil of none. A G U R' s Prayer. REMOVE far from me vanities and lies ; give me neither poverty nor riches ; feed me with food convenient for me : left I be full and deny thee, and fay, Who is the Lord ■; Or left I be poor and fteal and take the name of my GOD in vain. A. There is but ONE only, the living and true GOD. Q. 6. How many persons are there in the God'head 1 A. There are three perfons in the God- head, the Father, the Son, and the Holy Ghoft, and thefe three are one GOD, the fame in fubftance, equal in power and glory. Q. 7. What are the decrees of God 1 A. The decrees of God are his eternal purpofe, according to the counfel ot his own will, whereby for his own glory he hath fore-ordained whatfoever comes to ])afs. Q. 8. How doth God execute his decrees ? A. (xod executeth his decrees in the works of creation and providence. Q. 9. What is the work of creation ? A. The work of creation is God's making all things of nothing by the word of his pow- er, in the fpace of fix days,and all very good Q. 10. How did God create man 1 A . God created man male & female after his own image, in knowledge, righteoufnefs and holinefs,with dominion over the creatures Q. 11. What are God's works of providence? A. God's works of providence are his moft holy,wife and powerful,preferving &• govern- .ff^^ggi^^ ^^p^^ ^ ^f igjs ^jj^wj The Shorter CATECHISM, Agreed upon by the Reverend AiTembly of Divines at Wefiminfter. Oueft "H^*"^ ^ "^ ^^ ^^^ chief end of man ? Anf Man's chief end is to glorify God and enjoy hirn forever. Q. 2, What rule hath God given to di- rect us how we may glorify and enjoy him ? A. The word of God which is contained in the fcriptures of the old and new tefta- ment is the only rule to direct us how we may glorify God and enjoy him. Q.3. What do the fcriptures principally teach? A. The fcriptures principally teach what man is to believe concerning God, and what duty God requireth of man. Q. 4. What is God? A. God is a fpirit, infinite, eternal, and unchangeable, in his being, wifdom, power, holinefs, juftice, goodnefs and truth Q. 5. Are there more Gods than one .«' ing all his creatures and all their actions. Q. 12. What fpecial act of providence did God exercife towards man in the eftate wherein he was created ? A. When God had created man, he en- tered into a covenant of life with him upon condition of perfect obedience, forbidding him to eat of the tree of knowledge of good and evil, upon pain of death. Q. 13. Did our fir ft parents continue in the eftate wherein they were created ? A. Our firft parents being left to the freedom -)f their own will, fell from the eftate wherein they were created, by finning agaiuft God. Q. 14. What tsfin? A. Sin is any want of conformity unto, or franfgreflion of the law of God. Q. 15. What was the fin whereby our firf). parents fell from the eftate wherein they were created ? A. The fin whereby our firft parents fell from the eftate wherein thev were created, was their eating the forbidden fruit. Q. 16, Did all mankind fall in Adam's firfl transgrejfion ? A. The covenant being made with Adorn, not only for hirafelf, but for his polterity, THE NEW ENGLAND PRIMKB— 1777. 891 all mankind defcendinf^from him by ordina- ry generation, linned in him, and fell wi;h him in his tirft tranigreilion. Q. 17. Into what ejiate did the fall bring mankir.d 1 A. The fall brought mankind into an es- tate of fin and mifery. Q. 18. Wherein conjifts the finfulnefs oj that ejiate whereinto man fell ? A. The finfulnefs of that efiate whereinto man fell, confifts in the guilt of Adam's firft fm, the wantof originalrighteousnefs,& the corruption of his whole naiure,which is com- monly called original fin, together with all actual tranlgrefiions which proceed from it. Q. 19. What IS the mifery of that efiate whereinto man Jell ? A. All mankind by the fall loft commu- nion with God, are under his wrath «fe curfe, and fo made liable to the miferies in this life, to death itfelf, & to the pains of hell forever. Q. 20. Did God leave all mankind to per- ! (h in the fiate of fm and mifery ? A.. God having out of his mere good pleafure from all eternity elected fome to everlafting life, did enter into a cove- nt ef grace, to deliver them out of a liate A. Chrift executeth the office of a prielt in his once offering up himfelf a facrifice to fa- tisfy divine justice, and reconcile us to God, and in making continual interceflion for us. Q. 26. How doth Chriji execute the ojice of a king ? A. Chrift executeth the office of a king in fubduing us to himfelf, in ruling and de- fending us, and in reftraining and conquer- ing all his and our enemies. 0,27 Wherein did Chriff s humiliation conf ft? A. Chrift's humiliation confifted in his being born and that in a low condition, made under the law, undergoing the miferies of this life, the wrath of God, and the curfed death of the crofs, in being buried and con- tinuing i*der the power of death for a time. Q. 28. Wherein confifts Chriff s exaltation? A Chrift's exaltation confilteth in his ri- fing again from the dead on the third day, in afcending up into heaven, and fitting at the right hand of God the Father, and in coming to judge the world at the last day. Q. 29. How are we made partakers of the redemption purchased by Chrift ? A. We are made partakers of the redemp- tion purchafed by Chrift by the effectual ap- of fin and mifery, and to bring them into a ftale of falvation by a Redeemer. Q. 21 . Who is the Redeemer of God's elect? A. The only Redeemer of God's elect, is the Lord Jefus Chrift, who being the eternal Son of God, became man, and fo was, and continues to be God and man. in two dif- tincl natures, and one perfon forever. Q. 22. How did ChriJI being the Son of God become man ? A . Chrift the Son of God became man by taking to himfelf a true body and a refona- ble foul, being conceived by the power of the Holy Ghoft, in the womb of the virgin Mary, and born of her, and yet without fin. Q. 23. What offices doth ^hrlfl execute as our Redeemer ? ^.Chrift as our Redeemer executes the of- fice of a prophet, of a pr left, & of a king, both in his ellate of humiliation and exaltation. Q. 24. How doth Chrifi execute the office of a prophet ? A. Chrift executeth the office of a pro- phet in revealing to us by his word and fpi- rit, the will of God for our falvation. Q. 25. How doth Chrift execute the office of a priefi ? plication of it to us by his holy Spirit. Q. 30. How doth the Spirit apply to us the redemption purchafed by Chrifi ? A. The Spirit applieth to us the redemp- tion purchafed by Chrift, by working faith in us, and thereby uniting us to Chrift in our eflectual calling. Q. 31. What is effectual calling ? A. Effectual calling is the work of God's Spirit, whereby convincing us of our fin and mifery, enlightening our minds in the kucw- ledge of Chrift, and renewing our wills, he do'ih perfuade and enable us to embrace Je- fus Chrift, freely offered to us in the gofpel. Q. 32. What benefits do they that are ef- fectually called partake of in this life ? A. They that are effectually called do in this life partake of juftification, adoption, and fanctification, and the feveral benefits which in this life do either accompany or flow from them. Q. 33. What ts juflif cation? A. Juftification is an act of God's free trrace, wherein he pardoneth all our fins, and accepteth us as righteous in his fight, only for the righteoufnefs of Chrift imputed to us, and received by faith alone. 392 THE NEW ENGLAND PRIMER.— 1777. Q. 34. What is adoption 1 A. Adoption is an act of God's free grace, whereby we are received into the number, and have a right to all the privileges of the fons of God. Q. 35. What is fanctijication ? A. Sanctiticatioii is the work of God's free grace, whereby we are renewed in the whole man, after the image of God, and are enabled more and more to die unto lin, and live unto righteoufnefs. Q. 36. What are the henefits which in this life do accompany or fiow from jujlijication^ adoption and fanctif cation ? A. The benefits which in this life do ac- company or flow from juliifi cation, adoption and fanctification, are aflurance^f God's love, peace of confceince, joy in t'ne holy Ghoft, increase of grace, and perfeverance therein to the end. Q. 37. What henefits do believers receive from Chrifl at their death ? A. The fouls of believers are at their death made perfect in holinefs, and do im- mediately pafs into glory, and their bodies being (till united to Chrifl do reli in theii graves 'till the refurrection. commandments ? A. The preface to the ten command- ments is in thefe words, / am the Lord thy God which have brought thee uut of the land of Egypt, and out of the houfe of bondage. Q. 44. What doth the preface to the ten commandments teach us ? A. The preface to the ten commandments tcacheth us, that becaufe God is the Lord, and our God and Redeemer, therefore we are bound to keep all his commandments. Q. 45. Which is the first commandment ? A. The firft commandment is, Thou f halt have no other Gods before me. Q. 46 What IS required in the firft com- mandment ' A. The firft commandment requireth us to know and acknowledge God, to be the only true God, and our God, and to wor- fhip and glorify hin) accordingly. Q. 47. What is forbidden in the first com- mandment 1 A. The firfl commandment forbiddetU the denying or not worfhipping and glorify- ing the true God, as God, and our God, and the giving that worfhip and glory to any otner which is due to him alone. Q. 38. What benefits do believers receive from Chrifl at the resurrection ? A. At the refurrection believers being raifed up to glory, shall be openly acknow- ledged and acquitted in the day of judg- ment, and made perfectl)'' blelTed in the full enjoyment of God to all eternity. Q. 39. What is the duty which God re- hires of man 1 A. The duty which God lequires of man, is obedience to his revealed will. Q. 40. What did God at firft reveal to man for the rule of his obedience ? A. The rule which God at firft revealed to man for his obedience was the moral law. Q. 41. Where is the moral law fammarily comprehended ? A . The moral law is funimarily compre- hended in the ten commandments. Q. 42. What is the fum of the ten com- mandments ? A. The fum of the ten commandments is, to love the Lord our God with all our heart, with all out foul, with all our flrength, and with all our mind, and our neighbour as ourfelves. Q. 45*. Wltat is the preface to the ten Q. 48. What are we efpecially taught by thefe words (before me) in the firfl command- ment ? A. Thefe words {before me) in the firft commandment, teach us, that God who feeth all tilings, taketh notice of and is much dif- pleafed with the fin of having any other God. Q. 49. Which is the fecond commandment ? A. The fecond commandment is, Thou fhalt not make ujito thee any graven image, or the likeness of any thing that is in heanen a- bove, or that is tn the earth beneath, or that is in the water under the earth ; thou fJialt not how down thy f elf to them nor serve them, for I the Lord thy God am a jealous God, vifitmg the iniquities ^ the fathers upon the children, unto the third and fourth generation of them that hate me and fhewing mercy unto thoufands of them that love me (Sj- keep my commandments. Q. 50. What is required in the fecond commandment 1 A. The fecond commandment requireth the receiving, obferving,& keeping pure and entire all fuch religious worfhip and ordi.ian- ces, as God hath appointed in his word. Q. 51. What is forbidden in the fecond commandment ? THE NEW ENGLAND PRIMER.— 1777. 893 A. Tlie fecond commandment forbiddeth the worfliipping of God by iniitge*? or any other way not appointed in his word. Q. 52. What are the reafons annexed to the fecond commandment ? A. The reafons annexed to the fecond commandment, are God's fovereignty over us, his propriety in us, and the zeal he hath to his own worlliip. 0. 53. Which is the third commandment ? A. The third commandment is, Thou Jhalt not take the name of the Lord thy God in vain, for the Lord will not hold him guilt- lefs, that taketh his name in vain. Q. 54. What is required in the third commanilment 1 A. The third commandment requireth the holy and reverent ufe of God's names, titles, attributes, ordinances, word and works. Q. 55. What is forbidden in the third commandyient ? A. The third commandment forbiddeth all profaning or abufing of any thing whereby God maketh himlelf known. Q. 56. What a.v the reafon annexed to the third commandment ' A. From the beginning of the world, to the refurrection of Chrift, God appointed the feventh day of the week to be the weekly fabbath, and the firfl day of the week ever fmce to continue to the end of the world, which is the Chriflian Sabbath. Q. 60. How is the fabbath to be fanctified ? A. The fabbath is to be fanctified by an holy refting all that day, even from fuch worldly employments and recreations as are lawful on other days, and fpeuding the whole time in public and private exercifes of God's worfhip, except fo miicli as is to be taken up in the works of necellUy and mercy. Q. 61. What is forbidden in the fourth commandment ? A. Tne fourth commandment forbiddeth, the orniiiion or carelefs performance of the duties reqirired, and the profaning the day by idlenefs,or doing that which is in itfolf finful, or by unnecedary thoughts, woids or works, about worldly employments or recreations. Q, 62. What are the reafons annexed to the fourth commavdrnrnt 1 A. The reafons annexed to the fourth com- mandment, are God's allowing us fix days of the week for our own emnloyment, his chal- A. The reafon annexed to the third com- mandment is. That however the breakers of this commandment may eicape punifhment from men, yet the Lord our God will not fuffer them to efcape his righteous judgment. Q. 57. Which is the fourth commandment ? A. The fourth commandment is. Remember the fabbath day to keep it holy, fix days fhalt thou labor and do all thy work, but the fe- venth day is the fabbath of the Lord thy God, in it thou fhalt not do any work, thou nor thy [on, nor thy daughter, thy mun-fervant, nor thy maid fervant, nor thy cattle, nor the flranger that is within thy gates, for in fx days the Lord made heaven and earth, the fea and all that in them is, and refted the feventh day, wherefore the Lord blejfed the fabbath day and hallowed it. Q. 58. What is required in the fourth commandment ? A. The fourth commandment requireth, the keeping holy to God fuch fet times as he hath appointed in his word, expreflly one whole day in leven to be an holy Sabbath to himfelf. Q. 59. Which day of the feven hath God appointed to be the weekly fabbath ? lenging a special propriety in the feventh.his own example, & his bleding the fabbath day. Q. 63. Which is the ffth commandment? A. The fifth commandment is, Honor thy fatlier an d thy mother, that thy days may be long upon theland which the Lord thy Godg-ivelhthee. Q. 64. What is required in the ffth com- mandment ? A. The fifth commandment requireth the preferving the honor, and performing the duties belonging to every one in their feve- ral places and relations, as fuperiurs, infe- riors, or equals. Q. 65 What is forbidden in the fifth commandment ? ^.The fifth commandment forbiddeth the neglecting of, or doing any thingagainst the honour and duty which belongeth to every one in their feveral places and relations. Q 66. What is the reason annexed to ths. fifth commandment ? A. The reason annexed to the fifth con\- mandment is a promife of long life and pro(-. perity, (as far as it ihall ferve for God's glo- ry and their own good) to all fuch as keep this commandment. Q. 67. Which is the fixth commandment t THE NEW ENGLAND PRIMER.— 1777. A. The fixth commandment is, Thou fhalt not kill. Q. 68. What is required in thejixth com- mandment ? A. The lixth commandment requireth all lawful endeavors to preferve our own life, and the life of others. Q. 69. What is forbidden in thejixth com- mandment ? A. The fixth commandment forbiddeth the taking away of our own life, or the life of our neighbour unjuftly, and whatfoevcr ten- deth thereunto. Q. 70. Which is thefeventh commandment ? A. The feventh commandment is, Thou Pialt not commit adultery. Q. 71. What is required in the feventh commandment ? A. The feventh commandment requireth the prefervation of our own and our neigh- bor's chastity, in heart, speech & behaviour. Q. 72. What is forbidden in the feventh commandment ? A. The feventh commandment forbiddeth all unchafte thoughts, words and actions. Q. 73. Which is the eighth commandment ? A. The eighth commandment is, Thou A. The tenth commandment is, Thoufhalt not covei thy neighbour's houfe, thou fhalt not covet thy neighbour's wife, nor his man-fer- vant, nor his maid-fcrvant, nor his ox, nor his afs, nor any thing that is thy neighbour's. Q. 80. What IS required in the tenth com- mandment ? A. The tenth commandment requireth full contentment with our own condition, with a right and charitable frame of fpirit towards our neighbour, and all that is his. y. 81. What IS forbidden in the tenth commandment ? A. The tenth commandment forbiddeth all difcontentment with our own eflate, en- vying or grieving at the good of our neigh- bour, and all inordinate motions and affec- tions to any thing that is his. Q. 82f. Is any man able perfectly to keep the commandments of God ? A. No mere man fmce the fall is \\<\(\ in this life perfectly to keep the comn iui- ments of God, but daily doth break th in i" thought, word and deed. Q. 83. Are all tranfgrejfwns cf the law equally heinous ? A. Some fins in therafelvcs, and by rea- Pialt not Jleal. Q. 74. What is required in the eighth commandment ? A. The eighth commandment requireth the lawful procuring &i furthering tho wealth and outward eftate of ourfelves and others. Q. 75. What IS forbidden m the eighth commandment ^ A. The eighth commandment forbiddeth whatfoever doth, or may unjuftly hinder our own or our neighbour's wealth or outward eflate Q. 76. Which is the ninth commandment ? A. The ninth commandment is. Thouflialt not bear false witnefs againjt thy neighbour. Q. 77 What is required in the ninth com- mandment ? A. The ninth commandment requireth the maintaining and promoting of truth between man &l man, & of our own & our neighbor's good name, efpecially in wimefs bearing. Q. 78. What IS forbidden in the ninth commaridment ? A. The ninth commandment forbiddeth whatfoever is prejudicial to truth,or injurious to our own or our neighbor's good name. Q. 79. Which is the tenth commandment i fon of feveral aggravations, are more J' i:. ous in the fight of God than others. Q. 84. What doth every fn deferve A. Everyfindeferves God's wrath & no both in this life, and that which is to . ( .nc. Q. 85. What doth God remtireof us thai we mayefcape hiswrath andcurfe dueto usfjr iln? A. To efcape the wrath and curfe of (>•:.('. due to us for fin, God requireth of us f itt' u Jefus Chrift,repentance unto life,with the di- ligcntufeofall outward means whereby Chrift communicateth to us the benefits of redemp- tion. Q. 86. What is faith in Jefus Chrift ? A. Faith in Jefus Chrifi is a faving grace whereby we receive & reft upon him alone for falvation as he is offered to us in the gofpel. Q. 87. What is repentance unto life ? A. Repentance unto life is a faving grace, whereby a finner out of the true fenfe of his fin and apprehenfion of the mercy of God in Chrift, doth with grief and hatred of his fin turn from it unto God, with full purpofe of and endeavours after new obedience. Q. 88. What are the outioard and ordi- nary means whereby Chrifi communicateth to^ us the benefits of redemption ? A . The outward and ordinary means where- j THE NEW ENGLAND PRIMER— 1777. by Chriftcommunicateth to us the benefits of redemption, are his ordinances, elpecially the word, I'acraments and prayer ; all which are made effectual to the elect for falvation. Q. 89. How is the word made effectual to falvation ? A. The fpirit of God maketh the reading, but efpccially the preaching of the word an effectual means of convincing and converting linners, and of building them up in holinefs and comfort, through faith unto falvation. Q. 90. How is the word to he read and heard that it may become effectual to falvation? A. That the word may become effectual to falvation, we must attend thereimto with diligence, preparation and prayer, receive it with faith and love, lay it up in our hearts, and practice it in our lives. Q. 91 How do thejacraments become effec- tual means of falvation ? A. Tbe facraments become effectud means of falvation not from any virtue in them or in him that doth admimlter them^ but only by iho bleffmg of Chrift, and the working of the Spirit in them that by faith receive them. Q. 92. What IS a facrament ? A. A facrament is an holy ordinance in- and blood, with all his benefits, to their fpi- ritual nourifhment and growth in grace. Q. 97. What is required in the worthy re- ceiving the Lord" s /upper ? A. It is required of them that would wor- thily partake of the Lord's fupper, that they examine themfcives of their knowledge to difcern the Lord's body, of their faith to feed upon him, of their repentance, love and new obedience, left coming unworthily, they eat and drink judgment to themfelves. Q. 98. What is prayer ? A. Prayer is avi offering up of our defires to God for things agreeable to his will.in the name of Chria, with confeffion of our fins, & thankful acknowledgment of his mercies. Q. 99. What rule hath God given for our direction in prayer 1 A. The whole word of God is of ufe to di- rectusinprayerbutthefpecialruleof direction is that form of prayer which Chrift taught his difciples commonly called, TAe Lord's Prayer. Q.^ 100. What doth the preface of the Lord's prayer leach us ? A. The preface of the Lord's prayer which is Our Father which art in heaven, teacheth us, to draw near to God with all holy reverence ftituied by Chrift, wherein by fenfible figns, Chrift & the benefits of the new covenant are reprefented fcaled and applied to believers. Q. 93. What are the facraments of the New Teftament? A. The facraments of the New Tefta- ment are baptifm and the Lord's fupper. Q. 94. What is baptism ? A. Baptifmisafacraiwentwhereinthe wafli- ing of water in the name of the Father and of the Souanduf the IIolyGhoftjdothfignify and feal our ingrafting into Chrift and par- taking of the benefits of the covenant of grace, & our engagements to be the Lord's. Q. 95. To whom is baptism to be administered 1 A. Baptifm is not to be adminiftered to any that are out of the vifible church, till they profefs their faith in Chrift, and obedience to him, but the infants of fuch as are mem- bers of the vifible church are to be baptized. Q. 96. What is the Lord' s fupper ? A. The Lord's fupper is a facrament, wherein by giving and receiving bread and wine according to Chrift's appointment, his death is fhewed forth, and the worthy recei- vers are not after a corporal and carnal man- ner, but by faith made partakers of his body and confidence, as children to a father, able and ready to help us, and that we fhould pray with and for others. Q. 1 01 . What do we pray for in the first petition ? A. In the firft petition, which is. Hallowed he thy name, we pray that God would enable us and others to glorify him in all that where- by he makes himfelf known, and that he would difpofe all things to his own glory. Q. 102. What do we pray for in the fe- cond petition ? A. In the fecond petition, which is, Thy kingdom come, we pray that fatan's kingdom may be deftroyed, the kingdom of |race maybe advanced, ourfelves and others bro't into It, and kept in it, and that the kingdom of glory may be haftened. Q. 103. What do toe pray for in the third petition ? A. In the third petition, which is, Thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven, we pray that God by his grace would make us able and willing to know, obey and I'ubmit to his will in all things, as the angels do in heaven. Q. 104. What do we pray for in the fourth petition 1 A. In the fourth petition, which is, Give 896 THE NEW ENGLAND PRIMER.— 1777. iM this day cur daily bread, we pray, that of God's free gift we may receive a competent portion of the good things of this hfe, an-i enjoy his bleffing with them. Q,. 105. What do we pray for vn the fifth petiUon ? A. In the fifth petition, which is, Andfoi'- give us our debts as toe forgive our debtors, we pray that God for Chrift's fake, would freely pardon all our sins, which we are the rather encouraged to afk, because by his grace we are enabled from the heart to forgive others. Q,. 106. What do we pray for in the fixth petition ? A. In the fixth petition, which is. And lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil, we pray that God would either keep us from being tempted to fm, or fup- port and dehver us when we are tempted. Q,. 107. What doth the conclufion of the Lord's prayer teach us ? A. The conclufion of the Lord's prayer, which is. For thine is the kingdom, and the p^wer,and the glory, forever, AMEN,teach- eth us, to take our encouragement in prayer from God only, and in our prayers to praife him, afcribing kingdom, power and glory Q.. Are you then bom holy and righteous ? A. No, my firft father finned and I in him. Q.. Are you then born a finner ? A. I was conceived in fin, & born in iniquity. Q,. What is your birth fin ? A. Adam's fm imputed to me, and a cor- rupt nature dwelling in me. Q,. What is your corrujit nature ? A. My corrupt nature is empty of grace,bent unto fm, only unto fin, and that continually. a. What is fin ? A. Sin is a tranfgreffion of the law. Q,. How many commandments of the law be there ? A. Ten. Q.. What is the first commandment ? A. Thou fhalt have no other Gods before me. Q,. What is the meaning of this com mandmen t ? A. That we fhould worfliip the only true God, and no other befides him. Q,. What is the fecond commandment ? A. Thou fhalt not make to thyfelf any graven image, &c. Q.. What is the meaning of this commandmen t ^ A. That we fhould worfliip the only tr > God, with true worfhip, fuch as he hatL '•■ dained, not fuch as man haih invented. Q,. What is the third commandment ? to him, and in teflimony of our defire and afTurance to be heard, we fay, Amen. Blejfed are they that do his command^nents that they may have right to the tree of life, and may enter in through the gates into the city. Rev. xxii. 14. SPIRITUAL MILK FOR American BABES, Drawn out of the Breafls of both Tefiamenti for their Souls Nourifhment. By JOHN COTTON. Q "WMJ^HAT hath God done for you ? ^ A. God hath made me, he keep- eth me, and he can fave me. a. What is God ? A. God is a Spirit of himfelf & for himfelf. Q,. How many Gods be there ? A. There is but one God in three Perfons, the Father, and the Son, and the Holy Ghofc Q,. How did God make you ? A. In my firfl parents holy and righteous. A. Thou fhalt not take the name Lord thy God in vain. Q,. What is meant by the name -.jf C'M • A. God himfelf & the good thirjg.s nf Go. i whereby he is known as a man by H ir wam^' and his attributes, worfliip, word uik: works. Q,. What is it not to take his name in A. To makeufe of God&- "he c-oodthu.y^ of God to his glory, and our ov/'. good, not vainly, not irreverently, not unprotiir-bl'.- Q,. Which is the fourth comiyiandment ? A. Remember that thou keep holy the fabbath day. Q,. What is the meaning of this commandment ? A. That we fhould reft from labor, and much more from play on the Lord's day, that we may draw nigh to God in holy duties. Q,. What is the fifth commandment ? A. Honor thy father and thy mother, that thy days may be long in the land which the Lord thy God giveth thee. d. What are meant by father and mother ? A. All our fuperiors whether in family, fchool. church and common wealth. Q,. What is the honor due unto them ? A. Reverence, obedience, and (when I am able) recompence. THE NEW ENGLAND PRIMER— 1777. 397 Q. What is the ftxth commandment? A Thou fhalt do no murder. Q.What is the meaning of this cummandmrnt? A. That we fhould not fhorten the life or health of ourfelves or others, butpreferve both Q. What is the feventh commandment ? A. Thou Ihah not commit adultery. Q. What is the fm here forbidden ? A. To defile ourfelves or others with un- clean hids. Q. What is the duty here commanded ? A. Chaitity to poffefs our veflels in holi- nefs and honor. Q. What is the eighth command?nent ? A. Thou fhalt not fleal. Q. What is the Jtealth here forbidden ? A. To take away another man's goods without his leave, or to fpend our own with- out benefit to ourfelves or others. Q. What is the duty here commanded? A. To get our goods honefUy, to keoi diein fafely, and fpend them thriftily. Q. What is the ninth com7nandinent? A. Thou fhalt not bear falfe witnefs a- gaiaft thy neighbour. Q What is the fin Iiere forbidden f A. The holy fcriptures of the prophets and apoRles, the old and new tettament, the law and gofpel. Q,. How doth the minifiry of the law bring you to\card Chrifl ? A. By bringing me to know my fin, and the wrath of God, again ft me for it. Q.. What are you hereby the nearer to Chrift? A. So I come to feel my curfed eflate and need of a Saviour. Q,. Hoio doth the minifry of the Gospel help you in this curfed eflate 7 A. By humbhng me yet more, and then raifing me out of this eltate. Q. How doth the miniftry of the Gofpel humble you yet more? A. By revealing the grace of the Lord Jefus in dying to fave finners, and yet con- vincing me of my fin in not believing on him, and of my utter infufficiency to come to him, and fo I feel myself utterly loft. Q,. How doth the minijiry of the gospel raife you up out of this loft eflate to come to Chrift 1 A. By teaching me the value and virtue of the death of Chrift, and the riches of his grace to lofl finners by revealing the proniife of grace to fuch, and by miniftring the Spirit of 1 To lie Mfely, to think or fpeak uutru . >f ourfelves or others. ^. What is tiif. duty here required 1 A. Troth and taiiafnlnefs. Q. What is the tenth cfymmandment ? A. Thou fhalt not covjt, &c. Q. V/hat is the covciing here forbidden ? A. Lull .f'ter the things of other men, and want of cuiiioiiiment with our own. Q. Whether haje you kept all thefe com- mandments ? A. No, I and all men are finners. Q. IVJiat are the wages of fin ? A . Death and damnation. Q. How then look yon to befaved? A. Only by Jefus Chrifl,. Q. Who is Jefus Chria ? A.The eternal Son of God, who for onr fakes became man, that hemighi. redeem &fave us. Q. Hoxo doth Chifi redeem and fave us ? A. By his rigliteous life, and bitter death, U)d glorious refuirection to life again. Q. How do V!e come to have a part I refolve in this my prime, In fports and plays to fpend my time. iSorrow and grief I'll put away. Such things agree not with my day: fion of their faith, and of their fubjection to the gofpel of Chrift ; and fo they and their feed are received into t.ie fellowfhip of the church and the feals thereof. • Q. What are the feals of the covenant now in the days of the gofpel ? A. Baptifm and the Lord's Supper. Q. What is done for you tn baptijm ? A. In baptifm the walhing with water . a fign and feal of my wafhing in the blood and fpirit of Chrift, and thereby of my in- grafting into Chrift, of the pardon and clean- ifing of my fins, of my raifing up out of afflic • lions, and alfo of my relurrection from tic dead at the laft day. Q. What is done for 7/ou in the Lord'sfuppn t A. In the Lord's fupper,the receiving of the bread broken and the wine poured out i, a fign and feal of my receiving the communion of the body of Chrift broken for me, and of his blood filed for me, and thereby of my growth in Chrift, and the pardon and healing of my fins, of the fellowfhip of ihe Spirit, of my ftrengthening and quickening in grace, and of my fitting together with Chrifi on h's throne of glory at the Jaft judsmeni. Q, What was the refui rection from the From clouds my morning ftiall be free ; And nought on earth fhall trouble me. I will embrace each fweet delight. This earth affords me day and night : Though parents grieve and me corrent, Yet I their counsel will reject. Devil. The refolution which you take, Sweet youth it doth me merry make. Iftiiou n)y counsel wilt embrace, And fhun the ways of truth and grace, And learn to lie, and curfe and swear. And be as proud as any are ; And with thy brothers wilt fall out, And lifters with vile language flout ; Yea, fight and fcratch, and alfo bite. Then in thee I will take delight. If thou wilt but be rul'd by me, I^n artift thou fhalt quickly be, In all my ways which lovely are, Ther'e few with thee who fhall compare. Thy parents always difobey ; Don't mind at all what they do fay : And alto pout and fullen be, And thou fhalt be a child for me. When others read, be thou at play, Think not on God, don't sigh nor pray THE NEW ENGLAND PRIMER.— 1777. Nor be thou fuch a filly fool, To mind thy book or go to fchool ; But play the truant ; fear not I Will ftraitway help you to a lie, Which will excufe thee from the fame, From being whipp'd and from all blame ; Come bow to me, uphold my crown, And I'll, thee raife to high renown. Youth. Thefe motions I will cleave unto, And let all other counsels go ; My heart againft my parents now, Shall harden'd be, and will not bow: I won't fubmit at all to them. But all good counsels will condemn, And what I hft that do will I, And ftubborn be continually. CHRIST. Wilt thou. O youth make fuch a choir*. And thus obey the devil's voice ! Curft finful ways wilt thou embrace. And hate the ways of truth and grace ? Wilt thou to me a rebel prove? And from thy parents quite remove Thy heart alfo? Then fhalt thou see, What will e'er long become of thee. Come, think on God, who did thee make, N^o more good days then fhould I have CHRIST. Wourft thou live long and good days fee Refrain from all iniquity : True good alone doth from me flow, It can't be had in things below. Are not my ways, O youth ! for thee, Then thou fhalt never happy be ; Nor ever fhall thy foul obtam, True good, whilit thou dolt here reraaia Youth. To thee, O Chrilt, I'll not adhere, What thou fpeak'st of does not appear Lovely to me I cannot find, 'Tis good to fet or place my mind On ways whence many forrows Ipring And to the flefli fuch crofl'es bring, Don't trouble me, I mull fulfil, My flefhly mind, and have my will. CHRIST. Unto thyfelf then I'll thee leave, That Satan may tliee wholly have : Thy heart in fin fhall harden'd bo, And blinded in iniquity. And then in wrath I'll cut thee down, hike af the grafs and flowers mown ; And to thy woe thou fhalt efpy, And at his prefence dread and quake Remember him now in thy youth, And let thy foul take hold of truth: The Devil and his ways defy. Believe him not, he doth but lie : His ways feem fweet, but youth beware, He for thy foul hath laid a fnare. His fweet will into bitter turn, If in thofe ways thou ftill wilt run, Ho will thee into pieces tear. Like lions which moft hungry are. Gram me thy heart, thy folly leave. And from this lion I'll thee fave ; And thon Ihalt have fweet joy from me. Which fliall laft to eternity. Youth. My neart fhall cheer me in my youth, I'll have my frolicks in good truth. What e'er feems lovely in mine eye, Myfelf I cannot it deny, in my own ways I ftill will walk, And take delight among young folk. Who fpend their days in joy and mirth, Nothing like that I'm fure on earth : Thy ways, O Chrift ! are not for me, They with my age do not agree. If I unto thy laws fhould cleave, Childhood and youth are vanity ; For all fuch things I'll make thee know To judgment thou fhall come alfo. In hell at laft thy foul fhall burn, When thou thy finful race haft run. Confider this, think on thy end Left God do thee in pieces rend. Youth. Amazed, Lord ! I now begin, help me and I'll leave my fin: 1 tremble, and do greatly fear, To think upon what I do hear. Lord ! I religious now will be, And I'll from Satan turn to thee. D^vil. Nay, foolifli youth, don't change thy mind. Unto fuch thoughts be not incjin'd. Come, cheer up thy heart, roufe up, be glad. There is no hell ; why art thou fad ? Eat, driiik, be merry with thy friend, For when thou dieft, that's thy laft end. Youth. Such thoughts as thefe I can't receive. Becaufe God's word I do believe ; None fhall in this deftroy my faith, Nor do I mind what Satan faith. Devil. 400 THE NEW ENGLAND PRIMER.— ITT?. Although to thee herein I yield, Yet e'er long I fhall win the field. That there's a heaven I can't deny, Yea, and a hell of mifery : That heaven is a lovely place I can't deny ; 'tis a clear cafe ; And eafy 'tis for to come there, Therefore take thou no further care, All human laws do thou obferve, And from old cuftoms never fwerve; Do not oppofe what great men fay. An I thou fhalt never go aftray. Thou may'ft be drunk, and fwear and curfe. And finners like thee ne'er the worfe ; At any time thou may'ft repent ; 'Twill ferve when all thy days are fpent. CHRIST. Take heed or elfe thou art undone ; Thefe thoughts are from the wicked One, Narrow's the way that leads to life. Who walk therein do meet with ftrife. Few fhall be faved, young man know, Mofl do unto deflruction go. If righteous ones fcarce faved be. What will at laft become of thee ! Oh ! don't reject my precious call, Left suddenly in hell thou fall ; But didit to me turn a deaf ear; And now in thy calamity, I will not muid nor hear thy cry ; Thy day is pafl, begone from me, Thou who didlt love iniquity, Above thy foul and Saviour dear ; Who on the crofs great pains did bear, My mercy thou didft much abufe. And all good counfel didft refufe, Juftice will therefore vengeance take. And thee a fad example make. Y OUTH. O fpare me. Lord, forbear thy hand^ Don't cut me off who trembling fland, Begging for mercy at thy door, O let me have but one year more. CHRIST. If thou fome longer time fhould have, Thou wouldft again to folly cleave : Therefore to thee I will not give. One day on earth longer to live. Death. Youth, I am come to fetch thy breath, And cany thee to th' fhades of death. No pity on thee can I fhow, Thou haft thy God offended fo. Thy foul and body I'll divide, Unlefs you foon converted be, God's kingdom thou fhalt never fee. Y OUTH. Lord, I am now at a great Hand: If I fhould yield to thy command. My comrades will me much deride. And never more will me abide. Moreover, this I alfo know, Thou can'ft at laft great mercy fhow. When I am old, and pleafure gone. Then what thou fay'ft I'll think upon, CHRIST. Nay, hold vain youth, thy time is fhort, I have thy breath, I'll end thy fport ; Thou fhalt not hve till thou art old, Since thou in fm art grown fo bold. I in thy youth grim death will fend. And all thy fports fhall have an end. Youth. I am too young, alas to die, . . Let death fome old grey head efpy. O fpare me, and I will amend, And with thy grace my foul befriend, Or elfe I am undone alas. For I am in a woful cafe. CHRIST. When I did call, you would not hear, Thy body in the grave I'll hide, And thy dear foul in hell mufl lie With Devils to eternity. The conclujion. Thus end the days of woful youth, Who won't obey nor mind the truth ; Nor hearken to what preachers fay, But do their parents disobey. They in their youth go down to hell. Under eternal wrath to dwell. Many don't live out half their days. For cleaving unto finful ways. The late Reverend and Venerable Mr. Na- thaniel Clap,o/" Newport on Rhode Island ; his Advice to children. I^OOD children fliould remember daily, God their Creator, Redeemer, and Sanctifier ; to believe in, love and ferve him ; their parents to obey them in the Lord; their bible and catechifm ; their baptifm ; the Lord's day; the Lord's death and re- furrection ; their own death and refurrecti- on ; and the day of judgment, when all that are not fit for heaven muft be fent to heli. And they ITiould pray to G o d in the name of C H R 1 8 T , for faving grace. I THE PETTY SCHOOL.* BY CHARLES HOOLB, A. M., Master of Grammar School at Rotherham in 1(>36, and of a Private School in London in 1660 Chapter I. — Hop) a child may he helped in the first pronunciation of his letters. My aim being to discover the old Art of Teaching School, and how it may be improved in every part suitable to the years and capacities of such children as are now commonly taught, I shall first begin my discourse concerning a Petty School ; and here or elsewhere I shall not busy myself or reader about what a child of an extraordinary towardliness, and having a teacher at home, may at- tain unto, and in how short a space, but only show how a multitude of various wits may be taught all together with abundance of profit and delight to every one, which is the proper and main work of our ordinary schools. "Whereas, then, it is usual in cities and greater towns to put children to school about four or five years of age, and in country villages, because of further dis- tance, not till about six or seven, I conceive the sooner a child is put to school the better it is, both to prevent ill habits which are got by play and idleness, and to inure him betimes to affect learning and well doing. Not to say, how the great uncertainty of parents' lives should make them careful of their chil- dren's early education, which is like to be the best part of their patrimony, whatever good thing else they may leave them in this world. I observe that betwixt three and four years of age a child hath great propen- sity to peep into a book, and then is the most seasonable time (if conveniences may be had otherwise) for him to begin to learn ; and though perhaps then he can not speak so very distinctly, yet the often pronunciation of his letters will be a means to help his speech, especially if one take notice in what organ or iii- Btrument he is most defective, and exercise him chiefly in those letters which belong unto it. Now there are five organs or instruments of speech, in the right hitting of » The following is a copy of the original title page:— THE PETTY-SCHOOLE. SHEWING A way to teach little Children to read English with delight and profit, (espe- cially) according to the New Primar. By C. H. LOJ^DOJT, Printed by F. T. for Andreie Crook at the Green Dragon in Pavis Church Yard, 1659. 402 THE PETTY SCHOOL. which, as the breath moveth from within through the mouth, a true pronuncia tion of every letter is made, viz., the lips, the teeth, the tongue, the roof of the mouth, and the throat; according to which if one rank the twenty-four letters of our English alphabet, he shall find that A, E, I, 0, U proceed by degrees from the throat, along betwixt the tongue and the roof of the mouth to the lips contracted, and that Y is somewhat like I, being pronounced with other letters; but if it be named by itself, it requireth some motion of the lips. B, F, M, P, W, and V consonants belong to the lips, C, S, X, Z to the teeth, D, L, N, T, R to the tongue, B, H, K, Q to the roof of the mouth. But the sweet and natural pronunciation of them is gotten rather by imitation than precept, and therefore the teacher must be careful to give every letter its distinct and clear sound, that the child may get it from his voice, and be sure to make the child open his mouth well as he uttereth a letter, lest otherwise he drown or hinder the sound of it. For I have heard some foreigners to blame us Englishmen for neglecting this mean to a plain and audible speaking, saying, that the cause why we gen- erally do not speak so fully as they, proceeded from an ill habit of mumbling, which children got at their first learning to read, which it was their care there- fore to prevent or remedy betimes, and so it should be ours, seeing pronuncia- tion is that that sets out a man, and is sufficient of itself to make one an orator. II. — How a child may be taught with delight to know all his letters in a very Utile time. The usual way to begin with a child, when he is first brought to school, is to teach him to know his letters in the hornbook, where he is made to run over all the letters in the alphabet or Christ-cross-row, both forward and backward, until he can tell any one of them which is pointed at, and that in the English character. This course we see hath been very efiectual in a short time with some more ripe-witted children ; but others of a slower apprehension (as the most and best commonly are) have been thus learning a whole year together, and though they have been much chid and beaten too for want of heed, could scarce tell six of their letters at twelve months' end, who, if they had been taught in a way more agreeable to their mean apprehensions, (which might have wrought more readily upon the senses, and affected their minds with what they did,) would doubtless have learned as cheerfully if not as fast as the quickest, I shall therefore mention sundry ways that have been taken to make a child know liis letters readUy, out of which the discreet teacher may choose what ia most likely to suit with his learner. I have known some that (according to Mr. Brinsley's direction) have taught little ones to pronounce all the letters, and to spell pretty well before they Knew one letter in a book ; and this they did, by making the chUd to sound the five vowels, a, e, i, o, u, like so many bells upon his finger's ends, and to say which finger was such or such a vowel, by changes; then putting single consonantg before the vowels,' (leaving the hardest of them till the last,) and teaching him how to utter them both at once, as va, ve, vi, vo, vu, da, de, di, do, du ; and again, by putting the vowels before a consonant, to make him say, as, es, is, os, us, ad, ed, id, od, ud. Thus they have proceeded from syllables of two or three, or more letters, till a child hath been pretty nimble in the most. But this ia rather to be done in a private house than a public school; however this man THE PETTY SCHOOL. 403 ner of exercise now and then amongst little scholars will make their lessons more familiar to them. The greatest trouble at the first entrance of children is to teach them how to know their letters one fi-om another when they see them in the book altogether; for the greatness of their number and variety of shape do puzzle young wits to difference them, and the sense can but be intent upon one single object at once, 60 as to take its impression and commit it to the imagination and memory. Some have therefore begun but with one single letter, and after they have showed it to the child in the alphabet, have made him to find the same any where else in the book till he knew that perfectly ; and then they have proceeded to another in like manner, and so gone through the rest. Some have contrived a piece of ivory with twenty-four flats or squares, in every one of which was engraven a several letter, -and by playing with a chQd in throwing this upon a table, and showing him the letter only which lay upper- most, have in a few days taught him the whole alphabet. Some have got twenty-four pieces of ivory cut in the shape of dice, with a letter engraven upon each of them, and with these they have played at vacant hours with a child till he hath known them all distinctly. They begin first with one, then with two, afterwards with more letters at once as the chUd got icnowledge of them. To teach him likewise to spell, they would place conso- nants before or after a vowel, and then join more letters together so as to make a word, and sometimes divide it into syllables, to be parted or put to- gether. Now this kind of letter sport may be profitably permitted among be- ginners in a school, and instead of ivory, they may have white bits of board, or smaU shreds of paper or pasteboard, or parchment with a letter written upon each to play withal amongst themselves. Some have made pictures in a little book, or upon a scroll of paper wrapped upon two sticks within a box of isinglass, and by each picture have made three sorts of that letter with which its name beginneth ; but those being too many at once for a child to take notice of, have proved not so useful as was intended. Some likewise have had pictures and letters pruated in this manner on the backside of a pack of cards to entice children, that naturally love that sport, to the love of learning their books. Some have written a letter in a great character upon a card, or chalked it out upon a trencher, and by telling a child what it was, and letting him strive to make the like, have imprinted it quickly in his memory, and so the rest one after another. One having a son of two years and a half old, that could but even go about the house, and utter some few gibberish words in a broken manner, observing him one day above the rest to be busied about shells and sticks, and such like toys, which himself had laid together in a chair, and to miss any one that was taken from him he saw not how, and to seek for it about the house, became very desirous to make experiment what that child might presently attain to in, point of learning. Thereupon he devised a little wheel, with all the capital Ro- man letters made upon a paper to wrap round about it, and fitted it to turn in a little round box, which had a hole so made in the side of it, that only one letter might be seen to peep out at once. This he brought to the chUd, and showed him only the letter 0, and told him what it was. The child being overjoyed with his new gambol, catcheth the box out of his father's hand, and runs with 404 THE PETTY SCHOOL. it to his playfellow a year younger than himselfj and in his broken language tells him there was "an 0, an 0." And when the other asked him where, he said, "In a hole, in a hole," and showed it him; which the lesser child then took such notice ofj as to know it again ever after from all the other letters. And thus by playing with the box, and inquiring concerning any letter that appeared strange to him what it was, the child learned all the letters of the alphabet in eleven days, being in this ABC character, and would take pleas- ure to show them in any book to any of his acquaintance that came next. By this instance you may see what a propensity there is in nature betimes to learn- ing, could but the teachers apply themselves to their young scholars' tenuity ; and how by proceeding in a clear and facile method that all may apprehend, every one may benefit more or less by degrees. According to these contriv- ances to forward children, I have published a Neiu Primer; in the first leaf whereof I have set the Roman capitals, (because that character is now most in use, and those letters the most easy to be learned,) and have joined therewith the pictures or images of some things whose names begin with that letter, by which a child's memory may be helped to remember how to call his letters, as A for an ape, B for a bear, &c. This hieroglypliical device doth so affect chil- dren, (wlio are generally forward to communicate what they know,) that I have observed them to teach others, that could not so readily learn, to know all the letters in a few hours' space, by asking them wiiat A stands for? and so con- cerning other letters backward and forward, or as they best liked. Thus when a child hath got the names of his letters, and their several shapes withal in a playing manner, he may be easily taught to distinguish them in the following leaf, which containeth first the greater and then the small Roman char- acters, to be learned by five at once or more, as the child is able to remember them ; other characters I would have forborne till one be well acquainted with these, because so much variety at the first doth but amaze young wits, and our English characters (for the most part) are very obscure, and more hard to be imprinted in the memory. And thus much for learning to know letters ; we shall next (and according to order in teaching) proceed to an easy way of dis- tinct spelling. III. — How to teach a child to speU distinctly. The common way of teaching a child to spell is, after he knows the letters in his alphabet, to initiate him in those few syllables, which consist of one vowel before a consonant, as ab, eb, ib, ob, ub, &c., or of one vowel after a consonant, as ba, be, bi, bo, bu, Sec, in the hornbook, and thence to proceed with him by little and little to the bottom of the book, hearing him twice or thrice over till he can say his lesson, and then putting hun to a new one. In which course I have known some more apt children to have profited pretty well, but scarce one of ten, when they have gone through the book, to be able to spell a word that is not in it. And some have been certain years daily ex- ercised saying lessons therein, who, after much endeavor spent, have been ac- counted mere blockheads, and rejected altogether as incapable to learn any tiling; whereas, some teachers that have assayed a more familiar way, have professed that they have not met with any such thing as a dunce amid a great multitude of little scholars. Indeed, it is Tully's observation of old, and Erasmus' assertion of later years, THE PETTY SCHOOL. 405 that il is as natural- for a child to learn, as it is for a beast to go, a bird to fly, or a fisL to swim, and I verily believe it ; for the nature of man is restlessly de- sirous to know things, and were discouragements taken out of the way, ana meet help aflbrded young learners, they would doubtless go on with a great deal more cheerfulness, and make more proficiency at their books than usually they do. And could the master have the discretion to make their lessons fa- miliar to them, children would as much deliglit in being busied about them, aa in any other sport, if too long continuance at them might not make them tedious. Amongst those that have gone a readier way to reading, I shall only mention Mr. Roe and Mr. Robinson, the latter of whom I have known to have taught little children not much above four years old to read distinctly in the Bible, in six weeks' time or under; their books are to be had in print, but every one hath not the art to use them. And Mr. Coote's English Schoolmaster seems rather to be fitted for one tliat is a master indeed than for a scholar. Besides the way then which is usual, you may (if you think good) make use of that which I have set down in the New Primer to help little ones to spell readily, and it is this : 1. Let a child be well acquainted with his vowels, and made to pronounce them fully by themselves, because they are able to make a perfect sound alone. 2. Teach him to give the true value or force of the consonants, and to take notice how imperfectly they sound, except a vowel be joined with them. Both these are set apart by themselves. 3. Proceed to syllables made of one consonant set before a vowel, (section 5,) and let him join the true force of the consonant with the perfect sound of the vowel, as to say ba, he, M, bo, hu, &c. Yet it were good to leave ca, ce, ci, CO, cu, and ga, ge, gi, go, gu, to the last, because the value of the consonant, in the second and third syllables doth differ from that in the rest. 4. Then exercise him in syllables made of one vowel set before one conso- nant, (section 6,) as to say ab, eb, ib, ob, ub, &c., tiU he can spell any syllable of two letters backward or forward, as ba, be, bi, bo, hu; ah, eb, ib, ob, ub; ba, ab; he, eb ; bi, ib ; ho, ob ; bu, ub ; and so in all the rest, comparing one with another. 5. And if to any one of these syllables you add a letter, and teach him'how to join it in sound with the rest, you will make him more ready in spelling; as if before ah you put h, and teach him to say bah ; if after ba you put d, and let him pronounce it bad, he will quickly be able to join a letter with any of the rest, as nip, pin, hut, tub, &c. To inure your young scholar to any, even the hardest syllable, in an easy way, 1. Practice hira in the joining of consonants that begin syllables (section 7) 80 that he may give their joint forces at once ; thus Having showed him to sound hi or hr together, make him pronounce them, and a vowel with them, bki, bra, hie, bre, and so in any of the rest. 2. Then practice him likewise in consonants that end syllables, (section 8 ;) make him first to give the force of the joined consonants, and then to put the vowels before them; as ble with the vowels before them sound able, eble, ible, able, uhle, to all of which you may prefix other consonants and change them into words of one syllable, as fable, peble, bible, noble, bubble, with a h inserted or the like. "Where observe that e in the end of many syllables, being silent, doth qualify the sound of the foregoing vowel, so as to make words different from 406 THE PETTY SCHOOL. those that have not e ; as you may see made differeth quite from Tnad, bett^-om bet, pipe from pip, sope from sop, and cube from cub. Whereby I think them in an error that leave out e in the end of words, and them that in pronouncing it make two syllables of one, in stable, bible, people, &c., which judicious Mr. Mulcaster wUl not allow. f In this exercise of spelling you may do well sometimes to make all the young beginners stand together, and pose them one by one in all sorts of syllables, till they be perfect in any ; and to make them delight therein, 1. Let them spell many syllables together which differ only in one letter, aa and, hand, hand, land, sand. 2. Teach them to frame any word of one syllable, by joining any of the con- sonants which go before vowels, with those that are used to follow vowels, and putting in vowels betwixt them, as black, block; clack, clock. And this they may do afterward amongst themselves, having several loose letters made and given them to compose or divide in a sporting manner, which I may rightly term the letter sport. When a child has become expert in joining consonants with the vowels, then take him to the diphthongs, (section 9,) and there 1. Teach him the natural force of a diphthong, (which consists of two vowel3 joined together,) and make him sound it distinctly by itself, as ai, ei, &c. 2. Let him see how it is joined with other letters, and learn to give its pro- nunciation with them, minding him how the same diphthong differs from itself sometimes in its sound, and which of the two vowels in it hath the greatest power in pronunciation, as in people, e seemeth to drown the o. And besides those words in the book, you may add others of your own, tUl by many examples the child doth well apprehend your meaning, so that he can boldly adventure to imitate you, and practice himself. Thus after a child is thoroughly exercised in the true sounding of the vowels and consonants together, let him proceed to the spelling of words, first of one sj'llable, (section 10,) then of two, (section 11,) then of three, (section 12,) then of four, (section 13,) in all of which let him be taught how to utter every sylla- ble by itself truly and fully, and be sure to speak out the last. But in words of more syllables, let him learn and part them according to these profitable rules : 1. An English syllable may sometimes consist of eight letters, but never of more, as strength. 2. In words that have many syllables, the consonant between two vowels belongeth to the latter of them, as hu-mi-li-tie. 3. Consonants which are jomed in the beginning of words are not to be parted in the middle of them, as my-ste-ry. 4. Consonants which are not joined in the beginning of words are to be parted in the middle of them, aa for-get-ful-ness. 5. If a consonant be doubled in the middle of a word, the first belongs to the foregoing syllable, and the latter to the following, as pos-ses-si-on. 6. In compound words, every part which belongeth to the single words must be set by itself, as in-a-bi-li-ty. And these rules have I here set down to inform the less skillful teacher how he is to guide his learner, than to puzzle a child about them, who is not yet an weU able to comprehend them. THE PETTY SCHOOL. 407 I have also divided those words in the book, to let children see how they ought to divide other polysyllable words, in which they must always be very careful (as I said) to sound out the last syllable very fully. To enable a child the better to pronounce any word he meets withal in read- ing, I have set down some, more hard for pronunciation, (section 14,) in often reading over which he may be exercised to help his utterance ; and the master may add more at his own discretion, till he see that his willing scholar doth not stick in spelling any, be it never so hard. And that the child may not be amused with any thing in his book when he cometh to read, I would have him made acquainted with the pauses, (section 15,) with the figures, (section 16,) numeral letters, (section 17,) quotations (sec- tion 18) and abbreviations, (section 19,) which being but a work of a few hours' space, may easily be performed after he can readily spell, which when he can do, he may profitably be put to reading, but not before ; for I observed it a great defect in some of Mr. Robinson's scholars, (whose way was to teach to read presently without any spelling at all,) that when they were at a loss about a word, they made an imperfect confused sound in giving the force of the con- sonants, which if they once missed, they knew not which way to help them- selves to find what the word was ; whereas, if after a child know his letters, he be taught to gather them into just syllables, and by the joining of syllables to- gether to frame a word, (which as it is the most ancient, so certainly it is the most natural method of teaching,) he will soon be able, if he stick at any word in reading, by the naming of its letters and pronouncing of its syllables, to say what it is, and then he may boldly venture to read without spelling at all, touching the gaining of a habit whereof I shall proceed to say somewhat in the next chapter. IV. — How a child may be taught to read any English book perfectly. The ordinary way to teach children to read is, after they have got some knowledge of their letters, and a smattering of some syllables and words in the hornbook, to turn them into the A B C or Primer, and therein to make them name the letters and spell the words, till by often use they can pronounce (at least) the shortest words at the first sight. This method takes with those of prompter wits ; but many of more slow ca- pacities, not finding any thing to aflect and so make them heed what they learn, go on remissly from lesson to lesson, and are not much more able to read when they have ended their book than when they begun it. Besides, the ABC being now (I may say) generally thrown aside, and the ordinary Primer not printed, and the very, fundamentals of Christian religion (which were wont to be contained in those books, and were commonly taught children at home by heart before they went to school) with sundry people (almost in all places) slighted, the matter which is taught in most books now in use is not so famihar to them, and therefore not so easy for children to learn. But to hold still to the sure foundation, I have caused the Lord's Prayer, (sec- tion 20,) the Creed, (section 21,) and the Ten Commandments (section 23) to be printed in the Roman character, that a child having learned already to know his letters and how to spell, may also be initiated to read by them, which he will do the more cheerfully if he be also instructed at home to say them by healt. 408 THE PETTY b^iHOOL. As he reads these, I would have a child name what words ne can at first sight, and what he can not, to spell them, and to take notice what pauses and numbers are in his lesson, and to go over them often, till he can tell any tittle in them, either in or without the book. When he is thus well entered in the Eoman character, I woald have him made acquainted with the rest of the characters now in use, (section 23,) which will be easily done by comparing one with another, and reading over those sen- tences, psalms, thanksgivings, and prayers (which are printed in greater and less characters of sundry sorts) till he have them pretty well by heart. Thus having all things which concern reading English made familiar to him, he may attain to a perfect habit of it, 1, by reading The Single Psalter; 2. The Psalms in Meter ; 3. The School of Good Manners, or such other like easy books which may both profit and delight him. All of which I would wish he may read over at least thrice, to make the matter as well as the words leave an impres- sion upon his mind. If any where he stick at any word (as seeming too hard) let him mark it with a pin, or the dint of his nail, and by looking upon it again he will remember it. "When he can read any whit readily, let him begin the Bible and read over the book of Genesis (and other remarkable histories in other places of Scripture which are most likely to delight him) by a chapter at a time ; but acquaint him a little with the matter beforehand, for that will entice him to read it, and make him more observant of what he reads. After he hath read, ask him such gen- eral questions out of the story as are most easy for him to answer, and he will the better remember it. I have known some, that by hiring a child to read two or three chapters a day, and to get so many verses of it by heart, have made them admirable proficients, and that betimes, in the Scriptures, which was Tim- othy's excellency and his grandmother's great commendation. Let him now take liberty to exercise himself in any English book (so the matter of it be but honest) till he can perfectly read in any place of a book that is ofiered him ; and when he can do this, I adjudge him fit to enter into a grammar school but not before. For thus learning to read English perfectly, I allow two or three years' time, so that at seven or eight years of age a child may begin Latin. V. — Wherein children, for whom the Latin tongue is thought to ie unnecessary, are to ie employed after they can read English well. It is a fond conceit of many that have either not attained, or by their own negligence have utterly lost the use of the Latin tongue, to think it altogethei unnecessary for such children to learn it as are intended for trades, or to be kept as drudges at home, or employed about husbandry. For first, there are few children but (in their playing years, and before they can be capable of any serious employment in the meanest calling that is) may be so far grounded in the Latin as to find that little smattering they have of it to be of singular use to them, both for the understanding of the English authors (which abound now-a- days with borrowed words) and the holding of discourse with a sort of men that delight to flaunt it in Latin. Secondly, Besides I have heard it spoken to the great commendation of some countries where care is had for the well education of children, that every peas- ant (almost) is able to discourse with a stranger in the Latin tongue ; and why THE PETTY SCHOOL 409 may not we here in England obtain the like praise if we did but, as they, con- tinue our children at the Latin school till they be well acquainted with that language, and thereby better fitted for any calling. Thirdly, And I am sorry to add, that the non-improvement of children's time after they can read English any whit well-throweth open a gap to all loose kinds of behavior ; for being then (as it is too commonly to be seen, especially with the poorer sort) taken from the school, and permitted to run wild, up and down, without any control, they adventure to commit all manner of lewdness, and so become a shame and dishonor to their friends and country. If these or the like reasons therefore might prevail to persuade them that have a prejudice against Latin, I would advise that all children might be put to the grammar school so soon as they can read English well, and suffered to con- tinue at it till some honest calling invite them thence ; but if not, I would wish them rather to forbear it than to become there a hindrance to others, whose work it is to learn that profitable language. And that they may not squande ; away their time in idleness, it were good if they were put to a writing-school where they might be, first, helped to keep their English by reading a chapter (at least) once a day; and second, taught to write a fair hand; and thirdly, afterward exercised in arithmetic and such preparative arts as may make them completely fit to undergo any ordinary calling. And being thus trained up in a way of discipline, they will afterward prove more easily pliable to their master's commands. Now, forasmuch as few grammar schools of note will admit children into them till they have learned their Accidents, the teaching of that book also becometh for the most part a work for a Petty School, where many that undertake to teach it, being altogether ignorant of the Latin tongue, do sorrily perform that task, and spend a great deal of time about it to little or no purpose. I would have that book therefore by such let alone and left to the grammar school as most fitting to be taught there only, because it is intended as an introduction of grammar to guide children in a way of reading, writing, and speaking Latin, and the teachers of the grammar art are most deeply concerned to make use of it for that end. And instead of the AccidenU, which they do neither understand nor profit by, they may be benefited in reading orthodoxal catechisms and other books that may instruct them in the duties of a Christian, such as The Practice of Piety, TJie Practice of Quietness, The Whole Duty of Man; and afterward in other delightful books, of English history, as The History of Queen Elizabeth, or poetry, as Herherfs Poems, QuarVs Emblems; and by this means they will gain such a habit and delight in reading as to make it their chief recreation when liberty is afforded them. And their acquaintance with good books will (by God's blessing) be a means so to sweeten their (otherwise sour) natures, that they may live comfortably towards themselves, and amiably converse with other persons. Yet if the teacher of a Petty School have a pretty good understanding of the Latin tongue, he may the better adventure to teach the Accidents, and proceed in doing so with far more ease and profit to himself and learner, if he observe a Bure mothod of grounding his children in the rudiments of grammar, and pre- paring them to speak and write familiar Latin, which I shall hereafter discover, having first set down somewhat how to remedy that defect in reading English with which the grammar schools are very much troubled, especially where there is not a good Petty School to discharge that work aforehand. And before I 410 THE PETTY SCHOOI,. proceed further, I will express my mind in the lext two chapters touching the erecting of a Petty School, aaa how it may probably flourish by good order and discipline. VT. — Of the founding of a Petty School. The Petty School is the place where, indeed, the first principles of all religion and learning ought to be taught, and therefore rather deserveth that more en- couragement should be given to the teachers of it than that it should be left as a work for poor women, or others whose necessities compel them to undertake it as a mere shelter from beggary. Out of this consideration it is (perhaps) that some nobler spirits, whom God hath enriched with an overplus of outward means, have, in some places where- unto they have been by birth (or otherwise) related, erected Petty School-houses, and endowed them with yearly salaries ; but those are so inconsiderate toward the maintenance of a master and his family, or so overcloyed with a number of free scholars to be taught for nothing, that few men of good parts will deign to accept of them, or continue at them for any while, and for this cause I have observed such weak foundations fall to nothing. Yet if any one be desirous to contribute toward such an eminent work of charity my advice is, that he erect a school and dwelling-house together, about the middle of a market town, or some populous country village, and accommo- date it with a safe yard adjoining to it, if not with an orchard or garden, and that he endow it with a salary of (at least) twenty pounds per annum, in con- sideration whereof all such poor boys as can conveniently frequent it may be tauglit gratis, but the more able sort of neighbors may pay for their children's teaching as if the school was not free, for they wiU find it no small advantage to have such a school amongst them. Such a yearly stipend and convenient dwelling, with a liberty to take young children to board, and to make what advantage he can best by other scholars; will invite annan of good parts to undertake the charge, and excite him to the diligent and constant performance of his duty, especially if he be chosen into •the place by three or four honest and discreet trustees, that may have power also to remove him thence, if by his uncivil behavior or gross neglect he render himself incapable to perform so necessary a service to the church and common- wealth. As for the qualifications of one that is to be the teacher of a Petty School, I would have him to be a person of a pious, sober, comely and discreet behavior, and tenderly affectionate toward children, having some knowledge of the Latin tongue, and ability to write a fair hand and good skill in arithmetic, and then let him move within the compass of his own orb so as to teach all his scholars (as they become capable) to read English very well, and afterward to write and cast accounts. And let him not meddle at all with teaching the Accidents, ex- cept only to some more pregnant wits which are intended to be set forward to learn Latin, and for such be sure that he ground them well, or else dismiss them, as soon as they can read distinctly and write legibly, to the grammar school. I should here have closed my discourse, and shut up this Petty School, were it not that I have received a model for the maintaining of students from a worthy friend's hand, (and one that is most zealously and charitably addicted to advance learning, and to help it in its very beginning to come forward to ita THE PETTY SCHOOL. 411 full rise,) by which I am encouraged to address my reiiiair ing words to the godly-minded trustees and subscribers for so good a worlc, (especially to those amongst them that know me and my school endeavors;) and this I humbly re- quest of them, that as they have happily contrived a model for the education of students, and brought it on a sudden to a great degree of perfection, so they should also put to their hands for the improvement of school learnii^, without which such choice abilities as they aim at in order to the ministry can not pos- sibly be obtained. And for the first foundation of such a work, I presume to offer my advice, that in some convenient places, within and without the city, there may be Petty Schools erected, according to the number of wards, unto which certain poor children out of every parish may be sent and taught gratis, and all others that please to send their children thither may have them taught at a reasonable rate, and be sure to have them improved to the utmost of what they are capable. And I am tho rather induced to propound such a tiling be- • cause that late eminent. Dr. Bathurst, lately deceased, Mr. Gouge, and some others yet hving did, out of their own good aflfection to learning, endeavor at their own charge to promote the like. YII. — Of Uie discipline of a Petty School. The sweet and orderly behavior of children addeth more credit to a school than due and constant teaching, because this speaketh to every one that the child is well taught, though (perhaps) he learn but Httle, and good manners in- deed are a main part of good education. I shall therefore take occasion to speak somewhat concerning the discipline of a Petty School, leaving the further discourse of children's manners to books that treat purposely of that subject, as . Rasmus de Tnorihus, YoutKs Behavior, &c. 1. Let every scholar repair to school before eight o'clock in the morning, i* in case of weakness before nine; and let him come fairly washed, neatly combed, and handsomely clad, and by commending his cleanness, and showing it to his feUows, make him take pleasure betimes of himself to go neat and comely in his clothes. 2. Let such as come before school-time take liberty to recreate themselves about the school, yet so as not to be suffered to do any thing whereby to harm themselves or school-fellows, or to give offence or make disturbance with any neighbor. 3. When school-time is called, let them all go orderly to their own places, and here apply themselves diligently to their bfeoks without noise or running about. 4. When the master cometh into the school, let them stand up and make obeisance, (so likewise when any stranger cometh in ;) and after notice is taken of those who are absent, let one that is most able read a chapter, and the rest attend and give some little account of what they have heard read. Then let him that read say a short prayer fitted for the school, and afterward let every one settle to his present task. 5. The whole school may not unfitly be divided into four forms, whereof the first and lowest should be of those that learn to know their letters, whose les^ •ons may be in the Primer ; the second, of those that learn to spell, whose les- sons may be in the Single Psalter ; the third, of those that learn to read, whose lessons may be in the Bible ; the fourth, of those that are exercised in reading, writing, and casting accounts, whose lessons may be in such profitable English books aa the parents can best provide and the master think fitt'jst to be taught 412 THE PETTY SCHOOL. 6. Let the lessons be the same to each boy in every form, and let the master proportion them to the meanest capacities; thus,those that are abler may profit themselves by helping their weaker fellows, and those that are weaker be en- couraged to see that they can keep company with the stronger. And let the t'jvo highest in every form give notice to the master when they come to say_^ it, of those that were most negligent in getting the lesson. "7. WHen they come to say it, let them all stand orderly in one or two rows, and whilst one sayeth his lesson, be sure that all the rest look upon their books, and give liberty to him that is next to correct him that is saying it if he mis- take ; and in case he can say it better, let him take his place and keep it till the same boy or another win it from him. The striving for places (especially) amongst little ones will whet them on to more dOigence than any encourage- ment that can be given them ; and the master should be very sparing to whip any one for his book except he be sullenly neghgent, and then also I would choose rather to shame him out of his untowardness by commending some of his fellows, and asking him why he can not do as well as they, than by falling upon him with rating words or injurious blows. A great care also must be had that those children that are slow-witted and of a tender spirit be not any way discouraged, though they can not make so good a performance of their task as the rest of their fellows. 8. On Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays they may say two lessons in the forenoon and two in the afternoon, and on Tuesdays and Thursdays in the fore- noon they may also say two lessons ; but on Tuesdays and Thursdays in the afternoon and on Saturday mornings I would have the time spent in examining and directing them how to spell and read aright, and hearing them say the graces, prayers and psalms, and especially the Lord's Prayer, the Creed, and the Ten Commandments, (which are for that purpose set down in the New Primer) very perfectly by heart. And those that can say these well may proceed to get other catechisms, but be sure they be such as agree with the principles of Christian religion. 9. Their lessons being all said, they should be dismissed about eleven o'clock, and then care must be taken that they every one go orderly out of the school, and pass quietly home without any stay by the way. And to prevent that too common clamor and crowding out of the school door, let them rise out of their places one by one with their hat and book in their hand, and make their hon- ors to their master as they pass before his face, one following another at a dis- tance out of the school. It were fittest and safest that the least went out the foremost, that the bigger boys following may give notice of any misdemeanor upon the way, 10. The return to school in the afternoon should be by one o'clock, and those that come before that hour should be permitted to play within the bounds till the clock strike one, and then let them all take their places in due order, and Bay their lessons as they did in the forenoon. After their lessons are ended, let one read a chapter and say a prayer, and so let them again go orderly and quietly home, about five o'clock in the summer and four in the winter season. 11. If necessity require any one to go out in the school-time, let him not in- terrupt the master by asking him for leave, but let him leave his book with the next fellow above him for fear he should else spoil or lose it, and in case he tarry too long forth, let notice be given to the monitor. 12 Those children in the upper form may be monitors, every one a day in THE PETTY SCHOOL. 413 nis turn ; and let them every evening, after all the lessons are said, give a bill to the master of their names that are absent, and theirs that have committed any disorder, and let him be very moderate in correcting, and be sure to make a difference betwixt those faults that are viciously enormous and those that are but cMIdish transgressions. "Where admonitions readily take place, it is a need- less trouble to use a rod, and as for a ferule I wish it were utterly banished out of all schools. If any one, before I conclude, should ask me, how many children T think may be well and profitably taught (according to the method already proposed) in a Petty School ? I return him answer, that I conceive forty boys wiU be enough to thoroughly employ one man to hear every one so often as is required ; and so many he may hear and benefit himself without making use of any of hia scholars to teach the rest, which however may be permitted and is practiced in some schools, yet it occasioneth too much noise and disorder, and is no whit .so aooeptable to parents or pleasing to the children, be the work never so well done. And therefore I advise, that in a place where a great concourse of chil- dren may be had, there be more masters than one employed according to tlie spaciousness of the room and the number of boys to be taught, so that every forty scholars may have one to teach them ; and in case there be boys enough to be taught, I would appoint one single master to attend one single form, and have as many masters as there are forms, and then the work of teaching little ones to the height of their best improvement may be thoroughly done, especially if there were a writing-master employed at certain hours in the school, and an experienced teacher encouraged as a supervisor, or inspector, to see that the whole school be well and orderly taught and disciplined. "What I have here written concerning the teaching and ordering of a Petty School was in many particulars experienced by myself with a few little boys that I taugh^amongst my grammar scholars in London, and I know those of eminent worth and great learning that, upon trial made upon their own chil- dren at home and others at school, are ready to attest the ease and benefit of this method ; insomuch as I was resolved to have adjoined a Petty School to my grammar school at the Token House in Lothbury, London, and there to have proceeded in this familiar and pleasing way of teaching, had I not been unhandsomely dealt with by those whom it concerned, for their own profit's sake, to have given me less discouragement. Nevertheless, I think it my duty to promote learning what I can, and to lay a sure foundation for such a goodly structure as learning is ; and though (perhaps) I may never be able to effect what I desire for its advancement, yet it will be my comfort to have imparted somewhat to others that may help thereunto. I have here begun at the very groundwork, intending (by God's blessing) forthwith to publish The New Dis- covery of the Old Art of Teaching, which doth properly belong to a grammar school. In the meantime I entreat those into whose hands this little work may come to look upon it with a single eye, and whether they like or dislike it, to think that it is not unnecessary for men of greatest parts to bestow a sheet or two at leisure time upon so mean a subject as this seems to be. And that God which causeth immense rivers to flow from small spring-heads, vouchsafe to bless these weak beginnings in tender age, that good learning may proceed hence to its tull perfection in riper yeara. ENGLISH PEDAGOGY— OLD AND NEW. counsel, he had failed to have the ablative case in his mind, we dare not con- jecture. Our forefathers had strict views on the subject of sparing the rod, and spoiling the child. Thus one old writer observes of children in general : To thir pleyntes mak no grete credence, A rodd reformeth thir insolence; In thir corage no anger doth nbyde, Who spareth the rodd all virtue sette asyde Yet the strictness was mingled, as of old, with paternal tenderness, and children appeared to have treated their masters with a singular mixture of fa- miliarity and reverence. And_it is pleasant to find among the same collection of school fragments, a little distitch which speaks of peace-making : Wrath of children son be over gon, With an apple parties be made at one. There is good reason for believing that schoolboys of the fourteenth century were much what they are in the nineteenth, and fully possessed of that love of robbing orchards, which seems peculiar to the race. In the 'Pathway to Knowledge,' printed in London in 1596, occur the fol- lowing verses, composed by W. P., the translator from the Dutch of ' the order of keeping a Merchant's booke, after the Italian manner of debtor and creditor:' Thirty days hath September, Aprill, June and November, Febuarie eight and twentie alone, all the rest thirtie and one. Looke how many pence each day thou shalt gaine, Just so many pounds, halfe pounds and groates: With as many pence in a yeare certaine. Thou gettest and takest, as each wise man notes. Looke how many farthings in a week doe amount. In the yeare like shillings, and pence thou shalt count. Mr. Davies, in his key to Hutton's Course quotes the following from a manu- script of the date of 1570 : Multiplication is mie vexation, And Division is quite as bad, • The Golden Rule is mie stumbling stule. And Practice drives me mad. In 1600, Thomas Hylles published 'The Arte of Vulgar Arithmeticke, both in integrals and fractions,' to which is added Ifasa Mercatorum, which gives the following rule for ' the partition of a shilling into its aliquot parts.' A farthing first findes fortie eight An halfepeny hopes for twentie foure Three farthings seekes out ]6streight A peny puis a dozen lower. Dicke dandiprart drewe Soutdeade Twopence took 6 and went his way Tom trip and goe with 4 is fled But goodman grote on 3 doth stay A testerne only 2 doth take Moe parts a shilling can not make. Nicholas Hunt, in 'The Hand-Maid to Arithmetick Refined,' printed in 1633, gives the rule of proof by nines as follows: Adde thou upright, reserving every tenne, And write the dighits doweall with thy pen, The proofs (for truth I say), Is to cast nine away. For the particular sumnies and several! Reject the nines ; likewise from the totall When figures like in both chance toremaine Subtract the lesser from the great, nothing the rest, Or ten to borrow, you are ever prest, To pay what borrowed wiis thiiike it no paine, But honesty redounding to your gaine. ENGLISH PEDAGOGY -OLD AND NEW. EARLY ENGLISH SCHOOL BOOKS. The ancient Primer was something very different from the school-books to vrhich we ordinarily give the name. For in dames' schools of which Chaucer speaks, children were provided with few literary luxuries, and had to learn their letters off a scrap of parchment nailed on a board, and in most cases covered with a thin, transparent sheet of horn to protect the precious manu- , uscript. Hence the term ' hornbook ' applied to the elementary books of chil- dren. Prefixed to the alphabet, of course, was the Holy Sign of the Cross, and so firm a hold does an old custom get on the popular mind, that down to the commencement of the present century, alphabets continued to pre- serve their ancient heading, and derived from this circumstance their customary appellation of ' the Christcross row,' a term so thoroughly established as to find a place in our dictionaries. The Medieval Primer is, however, best de- scribed in tlie language of the fourteenth century itself The following lan- guage occurs in the introduction to a MS. poem of 300 lines, still preserved in the British Museum, each portion of which begins with a separate letter. In place qs men may se When a childe to schole shal sette be A Bok is hym ybrought, Naylyd on a bord of tre, That men cal an A, B, C, Wrought is on the bok without. V paralTys grete and stoute, Royal in rose red. That is set, withouten doute. In token of Christes ded. Red lettar in parthymyn, Makyth a childe good and fyn Letters to Inke and see, By this bok men may devyne, That Christe's body was full of pyne, That dyed on wod tree. After the difficulties of the primer had been overcome, a great deal of ele- mentary knowledge was taught to the children, as in Saxon times, through the vehicle of verse. For instance, we find a versified geography, of the four- teenth century, of which the two following verses may serve as a specimen, though the second is not very creditable to our mediaeval geographers; This world is delyd (divided), al on thre, Asia, Affrike. and Eu-ro-pe. Wol ye now here of A-si-e, How mony londers ther inne be? The lond of Macedonie, Egypte the lesse and Ethiope, Syria, and the land of Judia, These ben all in Asia. The following grammar rules belong to the fifteenth century : — Mi lefe chyld, 1 kownsel the To form till vi tens, thou avise the, And have mind of thi clensoune Both of nonne and pronoun, And ilk case in plurele How thou sal end, avise the well; And the participyls forget thou not, And the comparison be in thi thought, The ablative case be in thi minde, That he be saved in hys kind, &c There is something in the last fragment very suggestive of the rod. What would have been the fate of the unlucky grammarian, if in spite of this solemn THE HORNBOOK. Cotgrave has, "ia Croix depar Dieu, the Christ's-crosse-rowe, or Juyme-bodke, wherem a child learnes it; " and Florio, ed. 1611, p. 93, " Centuruola, a childes home-booke hanging at his girdle." HORNBOOK OF THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY. In the collection of Sir Thomas Phillipps, at Middlehill, are two genuine Hornbooks of the reigns of Charles I. and II. Locke, in his " Thoughts on Education," speaks of the "ordinary road of the Hornbook and Primer," and directs that "the Lord's Prayer, the Creed, and the Ten Commandments he should learn by heart, not by reading them himself in his Primer, but by some- body's repeating them before he can read." Shenstone, who was taught to read at a dame-school, near Halesowen, in Shropshire, in his delightfully quaint poem of the Schoolmistress, commemoratjiig his venerable preceptress, thus records the use of the Hornbook: — " Lo ; now with state she utters her command ; Eftsoons the uf chins to their tasks repair ; Their books of stature small they take in hand, Which with pellucid horn secured are To save from finger wet the letters fair." I OBJECT TEACHING -PRINCIPLES AND METHODS. [From the German of F. Busse, Principal of the Girls' High School of Berlin.*] 1. — AIMS AND PRINCIPLES. Pedagogical authorities have the most diverse views upon object- teaching, both in regard to its position and value in general, and to its principal and subsidiary objects in particular. The reason of this is, that no other discipline embraces the individuality of the child on its physical and spiritual sides to such a degree as this does. We speak of exercise in observation, object-teaching, practice in thinking, or practice in under- standing, practice in speaking or in language, just according as we are thinking more especially of the sense-organs and observation, the ability to think, the speaking a language. From the standpoint of an enlightened science of teaching, the averaging of these various views, and the uniting of these aims, is a necessity. Since object-teaching is the earliest teaching, and that which begins before the child is old enough to go to school (Pestalozzi, Froebel), since it takes hold of the child in the full, undifferentiated unity of his powers, it is of importance to presuppose that the child has an inborn individuality. That clumsy view which considers that what we call indi- viduality does not arise until it is produced by the influence of time and place, persons and circumstances, and, most of all, by education and instruction, — that view, I repeat, prevails amongst those who strive to dispiritualize nature everywhere, and especially human nature, and is unworthy of an enlightened science of teaching. Just as little as instruc- tion can form its empirical conditions — that is, mental capacity and organs of speech — in the child, but, instead of that, presupposes them, just so little can it dispense with the logical conditions ; namely, the /, endowed with powers of observation, discernment, feeling, and willing, — what Genesis calls " the living soul," what Solomon calls " the breath of the divine power." No investigator has yet succeeded in drawing the wonderful boundary- line between the spiritual and the physical in human nature ; but if we are trying to establish the meaning of the important idea, " intuition," we must keep the physical and spiritual sides of our being apart. Man, as a sensibly spiritual being, has, first of all, a receptivity for impressions of that which is about him and goes on before him. This receptivity is called sense. The activities, capacities, and powers of the soul which come first into consideration are, therefore, of a purely receptive kind. It is the decidedly preponderant activity of sense. While the im- pressions of the exterior world are in the act of being appropriated by the soul, the first soul-formations, the sensations and perceptions, arise. * From Diesterweg's Wcgweisser, edition of 1873. 27 417 418 OBJECT TEACHING. BUSSE. These are all matters of experience. We need only call to mind the popular expression, " The stupid quarter of a year," which ends with the child's first smile, that beam of consciousness which is greeted with infinite joy. The child has at this period the ordinary vicissitudes and excite- ments of its nervous life in pleasure and pain, as well as the wonderful modifications of them in its sense-organs. It hears a fondling voice, looks into a faithful eye, tastes the sweet milk, feels the mother's breast, the gentle lifting and carrying of the arms, and the swinging motion of the cradle. These are the sense-impressions, or sensations, which flow towards him daily during the short moments of wakefulness. With admirable wisdom, nature has so regulated the organism of the child that it passes these first days and weeks in the arms of sleep ; for could it immediately, like the young lambkin or colt, use its limbs, such an immeasurable, incomprehensible world of impressions would stream in upon its inner being, that self-consciousness, unable to master them, would be forever overcome and unable to develop itself. Do not we teachers have the corresponding experience daily in the dissipated and distracted youth of our great cities ? Do we not have it hourly when, in the presen- tation of a new subject, we give too much at once, and overstep the limits which lie in the power of self-consciousness ? But the child has not merely sense-impressions or sensations, which bear the token of individuality ; it has also sense-intuitions, that is, a multi- plicity of sensations which are united together into a unit by the syn- thesis of the interior sense, (named by Kant " the table of the inner sense," of which the five senses are only radiations.) The beast also shares in both the sense-impressions and the sense-intui- tions, and indeed, as we must confess, possesses these to a higher degree than does man, since it belongs entirely to the world of sense, and is endowed with sharper organs of sense, so that it may exist in that world. When, for instance, the ape is busy with an apple, he has, in the first place, the sense-impression of sight, by means of his eye ; in the second place, that o? feeling in his hand; in the third place, the impression of smell, if he holds it to his nose ; in the fourth place, that of taste upon his tongue ; and, finally, also that of hearing, if the fruit falls to the ground, or seeds rattle. But these five different impressions do not remain in him as one multitude, but are united upon the table -of his inner sense without his participation, and yet with infallible certainty, so that he has the unity comprehended within itself of the sense-impression of the apple. Let us look at the horse. He hears the crack and swing of the whip ; he has often enough felt the smarting impressions of it, and sees it imme- diately when the coachman has the instrument in his hand; but these three sense-impressions remain in him, not as any thing isolated, but blend into the unity of a sense-intuition. The (hild is similarly circumstanced in relation to the external world. As soon as longer pauses of wakefulness take place, the eye follows the movements of the mother, and the impressions of her friendly face, of her tender voice, of the nourishment she gives, of the lifting and carrying and OBJECT TEACHING. BUSSE. 419 other cares she bestows upon him, unite in a total picture, in a unity of the sense-intuition. The sense-impressions are the first, the sense-intuitions the second, and the latter mark ah-eady a step of the greater powerfulness of life in gen- eral, and of the development of sense in particular. But, while the animal rises up into the world of sense-impressions and sense-intuitions, the power of the inborn and now gently moving self- consciousness raises the sense-impressions into perceptions, and thereby raises also the sense-intuitions into intellectual intuitions. The perceiving is next becoming assured of something, and in itself is yet an undefined, general turning or application of the subjectivity to an object, a direction of the spirit to an outside thing, a consciousness of parts, character, and differences now becoming clear. But if a perception is internally grasped and worked up, and the perception takes place with a more decided consciousness, then the occurrence becomes a spiritual intuition. Intellectual intuition (or intuition absolutely) is each conscious, more distinct perception or unity of several perceptions, with an internal summary. Intuition is quite a significant word. To look (or to inspect) expresses subjective activity, not mere seeing, as the eye of the animal may be said to attach itself to the external object attracting the senses, but ex- presses the act of sounding it. Intuitten signifies such inspection as exalts the object to the contemplator's real objectivity. An intuition presupposes : 1. An immediately present object. 2. The influence of the same upon one or several sense-organs. 3. A spiritual activity, to bring this influence to the consciousness ; therefore the active directions of the spirit, and the grasping of the same.* The mind of the child now incessantly works on. He obtains mastery more and more swiftly, and more and more victoriously over the sense- impressions and sense-intuitions ; the wealth of perceptions and intellectual intuitions, and his self-certainty in them, becomes ever greater ; finally, the power of intuitive thinking becomes so great that single intellectual intui- tions become ideas. It is these which have always left behind in the child's soul the deepest traces, and they become ideas as soon as the mind has power to objectivate them ; that is, to dispose of them as of things owned, and, independently of the world of sense, to be able at will to call them forth out of itself, or to thrust them back. But here comes in the need of a sign ; that is, of a word, not as if the * Remark. Intuition, in the narrower, original sense, i8 a conscioua impression obtained tlirougli tlie sensation of sight. To intuit means, first of all, only the activity of the soul called forth by sight. But since the most distinct and the most surely defined impressions are called forth, and all other sense-perceptions are supported, perfected, and even corrected by the sight, the word intuition has, since the time of Kant, been extended to all sensuous perceptions. In the wider sense, every impression which is elevated by the sensibility (feeling) is an intuition j what is external thereby becomes internal. 420 OBJECT TEACHING. BUSSE. •word called forth the idea, not as if it were the creator of the idea, but it serves as the seal of the idea, as the signature of a mental possession. Long before the first attempts at speaking, a little hoard of ripening ideas has been formed, and a joy, a rapture accompanies the first efi"orts to speak, for the child has need of feeling itself and enjoying itself in its self- certainty. From the idea fixed in the word, man finally rises in maturer age to the conception, but let us add, only imperfectly. Few men who are accustomed to think, take the trouble so to shape the hoard of their ideas and unde- veloped conceptions that they become fixed according to their contents and scope. The great multitude allow themselves to be satisfied with ideas and conceptiqns as nature and life obtrude them, as it were, — and let us say just in this place : object-teaching cannot and will not give an understand- ing 'of the external world, which will be clearly conformable to its contents. Whoever should aim to sharpen the formal side of this instruction in such a way, would, in consideration of the mental immaturity of the child, com- mit the severest mistake, and would give into the hands of the opponents of this system the sharpest weapons. Also exclusively to accentuate the material or practical side of this instruction, the exercise of the senses and the enrichment of the intuitions and ideas, Avould be censurable, since this instruction is only of value when opposites are connected.* Where an extent of phenomena is given, an intent or content must also be sought. Where the external world is brought before the observation (too often, alas ! only by pictures), the way to the understanding of it must also be opened, and the later grasping of the conception in due proportion to its contents must be prepared for. Intuition without thinking would be blind, and thinking without intuition would be empty, dead, word-cram, trifling. Luther, with all the force of his German nature, was zealous in his oppo- Bition to that dead, abstract teaching and learning, and urged on the in- tuitive method. " Now," he said, " let us look directly upon the created things rather than upon popedom. For we are beginning, thank God, to recognize his glorious works and wonders in the little flower ; when we think how power- ful and beneficent God is, let us always praise and prize and thank him for it. In his creatures we recognize how powerful is his word, how prodigious it is." He also drew attention to the relation of the thing to the word, and considered the understanding of the word only possible by the under- standing of the thing. •' The art of grammar," he says, " points out and teaches what the words are called and what they mean, but we must first understand and know what the thing or the cause is. Whoever wishes to learn and preach, therefore, must first know both what the thing is and what it is called be- fore he speaks of it — recognition of two kinds, one of the word, the other of the thin?. Now to him who has not the knowledge of the thing or action, the knowledge of the word is no assistance. According to an » , * * In other words, when the organ of comparison is brought into play. ! OBJECT TEACHING. BUSSE. 421 old proverb, 'what one does not understand and know weH, he cannot speak of well.' " No creative transformation of the essence of education could, however, proceed from the school, which remained for centuries the serving-maid — less of the Church than of Churchdom. The British giant Bacon had first to give us his Novum Organum Scientiarum, that fiery token of a neyv time, which had its central point in the natural sciences, and to bring on the abso- lute break with the middle ages as well as with antiquity. As Luther came forth against a mass of human traditions by which the manifestations of God in the Holy Scriptures were disfigured, so Bacon appeared against the traditions of human institutions which darkened the manifestations of God in creation. Men were from that time forth no longer obliged to read the arbitrary and fanciful interpretations of both manifestations, but could read the manifestations themselves. He wished men to demand the imme- diate contemplation of creation. " Hence let us never turn the eyes of the mind," he says, " away from the things themselves, but take their images into us just as they are." He saw how in his time the physics of Aristotle vvere studied, but not Nature. Men read in books what the earth is, what their authors related about stones, plants, animals, &c. ; but with their own eyes to investigate these stones, plants, and animals, occurred to no one's mind. And thus men were obliged to surrender at discretion to the authority of those authors, since they ne%er thought of making a critical examination of their descrip- tions and stories by their own immediate experiments. But such a prov- ing was so much the more necessary because these authors themselves had their information at third or fourth hand. It is incredible now what a mass of untruth and fable has been heaped up everywhere in books of natural history, what monsters their geology created, what magic powers they gave to stones, &c. (See Raumer's Pad.) When Bacon summoned the world to turn their minds from the past and to look with open eyes into living nature, he not only gave to the experimental sciences (including also pedagogics) a new impulse in general, but he was also the father of realistic pedagogy. Ratichius and Comenius learnt from him, and the ' reaV school, the industrial school, the polytechnic institutions, down to the object-teaching of Father Pestalozzi, have in him their foundation. When Bacon's pupil, John Locke, set up " the healthy soul in the healthy body " as the chief maxim in education, is it not the same thing as when Pestalozzi and Froebel desired " the harmonious development of human nature," and preached conformity to nature in edu- cation and instruction ? In opposition to the empty, deadening word-teaching that grew rank in the schools, " the poisonous seed of scholasticism," Ratichius exclaimed : " Everything according to the ordering and course of nature, for all un- natural and arbitrary violent teaching is injurious and weakens nature. Let us have every thing without constraint and by inward necessity. First the thing itself, then the conception or meaning of the thing. No rule before we have the substance. Rules without substance lead the understanding astray. Every thing through experiment, minute investigation. 422 OBJECT TEACHING. BTJSSE. " No authority is good for anything, if there is not reason and a foundation for it. No rule and no system is to be allowed which is not radically ex- plored anew, and really founded upon proof." Truly when one hears such golden words, one is tempted to ask, " Why were those battles on the field of pedagogy necessary ? Why must a Franke, a Rousseau, a Basedow, a Pestalozzi, a Diesterweg, a Froebel come, if, as Jean Paul said in his Levana, ' merely to repeat that a hundred times, which is a hundred times forgotten ' ? " In the path which Ratichius had trodden, strode forward a sovereign, and with all the power and burning zeal of a reformer, Amos Comenius. the author of the first picture-book for children, the 07-bis pictus, in which every thing that can address the childish love of objects and representa- tions of objects, whether in heaven or on earth, in the human or the animal world, is illustrated and explained by description and comment. He is to be estimated, starting from a sound, compendious observation of human nature and its relations, as well as of pedagogic problems, as the spirited father of the so-called object-teaching as a special discipline. He says : " With real insight, not with verbal description, must the in- struction begin. Out of such insight develops certain knowledge. Not the shadows of things, but things themselves, which work upon the mind and the imaginative powers, are to lie ever near to the young. Place every thing before the mind. Insight is evidence. Only where the things* are actually absent, is one helped by the pictorial representation. " Men must be led, as far as possible, to create their wisdom, not out of books, but out of the contemplation of heaven and earth, oaks and beeches ; that is, they must learn to see and investigate the things themselves. Let the objects of physical instruction be solid, real, useful things, which affect the senses and the powers of the imagination. That happens when they are brought near to the senses, visible to the eyes, audible to the ears, fra- grant to the nose, agreeable to the taste, grateful to the touch. The begin- ning of knowledge should be from the senses. What man has an insight into with his senses, impresses itself deeply on the memory, never to be forgotten. *' Man first uses his senses, then his memory, next his understanding, and lastly his judgment. Let us teach not merely to understand, but to express what is understood. Speech and the knowledge of things must keep step. Teaching of things and of speech must go hand in hand. Words without the knowledge of things are empty words." This running parallel of the simultaneous learning of things and words was the deep secret of the method of Comenius. In the time of Hermann Franke, — who, as the noble friend of man, the father of the poor and the orphan, the great champion of the German peo- ple's-school, deserves to be called the forerunner of Pestalozzi, in organiz- ing talent so far superior to him, — the elevation of burger life had become so great, the relations of trade and commerce had been so widened, and the pedagogics of Comenius had created so much esteem and astonishment in the realists (physicists), that the ' Real '-School was able to blossom forth upon the ground of that truly practical piety which raised morality to a OBJECT TEACHING. BUSSE. 423 principle of education. The general law of the method was continual con- versation with the pupils ; catechism was the soul of the instruction. All subjects which had heretofore been taken for granted must be looked into and examined critically at the moment. Rare objects of nature were col- lected in a naturalist's cabinet. Especially were the children to become acquainted with the nature lying around them, with the occupations of hu- man life, with the workshops of the handicrafts. When such pedagogic wisdom as this did not bear the hoped-for fruits, — "when the schools, which had been added to life, as it were, by a beneficent piety, were estranged from it again by an ossified pietism — the blame lay, as always and chiefly, in the direction which has hitherto fettered the human mind whenever it has setybrm above essence. But as in the domain of statesmanship, so also in the domain of pedagogy, a revolution was preparing in France. It was Rousseau who, in " Emil," wrote a book for the literature of the world which Gothe called " the Gospel of human nature." Let us turn our eyes wholly away from the external and unsuccessful experiment, since " Emil " is indeed only the form for proclaiming the doctrine of the Pedagogy, the candlestick for these flames, the setting for these pearls ; this book was and is, especially for France, as well as for the world-wide development of Pedagogy generally, a fact. Only Pestalozzi has with equally imposing power fought for the means of education gained by listening to Nature itself, for the beginning of educa- tion at birth, for instruction gained by insight and self-activity, for self- formation through experience ; but Pestalozzi stands higher than Rousseau, for as the latter had not the conception of the mother, so was ^'anting in him the paternal power of the heart, with which he might, with his " Emil," have grasped and sustained a unique and fully authorized influence over that great whole — a nation. In the meantime, the flood of light which flowed from him over Pedagogy, was so potent that the power which block- heads opposed to the illumination could only be compared to the mist which softens the light of the sun. Under the influence of this spirit, which came to be dominant, the school of the philanthropists was formed, which earnestly prrrsued the ideas of Rousseau ; " Everything through and for the harmonious development of man." ' The founder and representative of this aim was the energetic Basedow. In his elementary work, accompanied with one hundi'ed ChodowieckiscJier copper-plates (the forerunner of our picture-plates), he gave out an arranged plan of all necessary knowledge for the instruction of youth from the begin- ning up to the academic age. This normal work was followed by the " Philantropin," at Dessau, as a nor- mal school. Distinguished men, Campe, Salzmann, Rochow, worked still further in the spirit of Basedow. The noble Von Rochow wrote: "Youth is the time to be taught. First in school comes the practice of the senses and the application of the souls in attention or watchfulness, particularly the habit of sight-seeing and hearing ; then practice in reflection upon every thing which happens, and in comparison and discrimination." In the Basedow-Rochow period there was a strong opposition to the care- 424 OBJECT TEACHING. BUSSE. less old school-ways. Instead of the one-sided training of the meraor)-, they wished for an awakening, soul-refreshing instruction and development of the thinking power in the pupil. In order to secure this, they proceeded to teach them to think, to speak, to observe, to investigate ; they recog- nized that above all things, correctly apprehending senses were a funda- mental condition for correct judgment. Now they insisted upon further material apparatus for culture, and upon a better method, upon enriching the pupils' minds with material knowledge and multiplied accomplishments. Ihe King in this kingdom, the genius of Christian-human pedagogy was Pestalozzi. In the midst of the wrecks of his life he still found, as a single costly pearl, the motto of education for all times : The develojyment of human nature on the ground of nature; education of the people on the firm ground of the people and the people^ s needs. In opposition to the petty and pernicious principle of utility he found in the eternal ideal of human life the welfare of man. Tlie development of human nature on the ground of nature is the grand thought to which Pestalozzi sought to give permanence to his method ("Book for Mothers "), which his truest pupil, Froebel, sought in the kin- dergarten, and their followers in the so-called object-teaching. " When I look back and ask myself," says Pestalozzi, " what I have offered peculiarly for the cause of human instruction, I find that I have established the highest, most advanced principles of instruction in the recognition of intuition as the absolute foundation of all knowledge ; and setting aside all single doctrines, have endeavored to find the essence of teaching itself and the ultimate form by which the culture of our race must be determined as by nature itself" All the pedagogues were agreed then, that for the first instruction visible material, lying within the sphere of the child and accessible to him, is to be chosen for observation, expression, and information, together with the first practice in reading, writing, and counting. An object-teaching conformable to nature, aiming to produce self-activity in the child, was the word of the new pedagogy. We will now pass on to the contemplation of the place, of the aim, and of the method of object-teaching. The foundation of instruction forever won by Pestalozzi in the principle of intuition, soon made an end to the so-called pure-thinking exercises of the Basedow school, which, executed with arbitrarily selected and most unmeaning material, occupied an isolated place in the instruction, and missed the living connection. It had been seen that these thinking exer- cises, ignoring the material worth of knowledge, led to an empty formalism ; that the one-sided enhghtening of the understanding must lead to poverty of mind in other fields. Now since Pestalozzi had demanded for each subject of instruction the power of intuition, the plunge into the material, its all-sided consumption and its organic relations, the isolated exercises in pui-e thinking were no longer needed, and they were struck out from the plan of the lessons, and the so-called object-teaching took their place. Pestalozzi, in his strivings OBJECT TEACHING. BUSSE. 425 to seize upon the truth, did homage to the thinking exei'cises, and once, it is said, passed six weeks with the children musing over a hole in the car- pet. Later, as the importance of nature as the best teacher disclosed itself to him, he set up (see " The Mother's Book ") the human body as, ac- cording to his view, the nearest and ever-present object-lesson to the child. The body is certainly the nearest material object to the child, but it is not the nearest material for object-teaching. Does not the child direct his eyes first to things around him, to furniture, plants, animals, &c., before he directs tliem to his own person ? to colors and forms rather than to his limbs aTul their movements ? Not merely tlie object in itself, but the appli- cation of it in pointing out and naming the different parts of the body, a mere mass of names, the situation of the different parts and exclamations of wonder about them, the connection and use of the limbs, &c., is not a lessen conformable to nature. If Pestalozzi's scholars repeated — the mouth is under the nose, the nose is over the mouth, and similar remarks, the material gain for the children must have been like that of the peasant when he threshes empty straw. The mistake of that experiment time and progress has swept away. Pestalozzi's scholars soon went on in a more natural manner, and struck out the following sequence : schoolroom, fam- ily, house, house-floor, the sitting-room, the kitchen, the ground, the cellar, the yard, the habitation, the city, the village, the garden, the field, the meadow, the wood, the water, the atmosphere, the sky, the season, the year and its festivals, man, body and soul — God. Others endeavored to add essentially similar material in the course of the year. This instruction in and from nature, which developed continually into thoughtful intuition and intuitive thinking, and unfolded the power of speech in every aspect, from the simplest forms up to poetical ones and to song, — in short, which took captive the whole child in his intuition, his thinking, feeling, and willing, and enticed him to self-activity, seemed to certain inspired pupils of Pestalozzi to be materially and formally so im- portant that they declared a special place for it in their plan of instruction to be quite insufficient, and that it was the all-important CENTKE and sup- port, with wholesale condemnation of the material aim of reading and writing in the first school-year. With object-teaching as the common foundation, drawing, writing, sounding the letters (lautiren), reading, de- claiming, singing, exercises in grammar and composition, geometry, arithmetic, domestic economy, natural science — up to religion, were to be developed in a natural way. The Vogel Schools in Leipzig have sought to realize these high ideas. It must indeed be confessed that these ideas can be realized in the hands of a teacher who is furnished with rich pedagogical experience, who has a profound understanding of his mother-tongue in grammatical and aesthetic relations, and who, above all other things, has preserved his childlike dis- position. Such a teacher will succeed in reaching this summit of educa- tional art founded on the great law of human development from unbroken unity up to tlie unfolding of principles into their reunion in a still higher unity ; and he will, in all probability, do more in the two first school-years to bring the children farther on, to lay a wise and correct foundation of 426 OBJECT TEACHING. BUSSE. culture, than if he began according 'to the old practice, with separate branches of instruction from the first hour. But whether it is possible to fix the central point in a series of normal words, which, planned on a one- sided principle, are yet expected to serve the most varied principles, is more than questionable. One of the most imjjortant testimonies to the place and value of object- teaching, is Grassmann, who, in his " Guide to Exercises in Speaking and Thinking," as the natural foundation for the sum-total of instruction, con- fesses himself friendly to this high culture. He says : " The first exei-cises in language must be in conversations, which are to make the children acquaint- ed with the things of the external world, their properties, their relations and connections, and lead them to receive this outward world correctly into themselves, to portray it again, to shape it, and to make an inward representative world of it which will exactly correspond to the outer ; also to guide them to readiness in speech, especially upon the objects of the senses." In later times, Richter (of Leipzig) has described this standpoint in the most striking manner in his prize treatise upon Object-Teaching. Testimonies have likewise been given to the opposite view. Based upon the predominating formal aim of object-teaching, together with the sug- gestion of postponing the material aim of reading and writing, and the duty and right to handle every subject and to strive at every step for the whole in the quite antiquated maxims of the word method and the culti- vation of the memory, they have not merely left out the object-teaching to this extent, but have stricken it especially and wholly from the progi-amme of lessons, and have tried to prepare the same fate for it as was decided upon for the abstract exercises in thinking. For two decades has resounded from that side the saying : no indepen- dent object-teaching but in connection with the Reader. Reasons : a. The object of observation {Anschauung) and conversation upon it is for the most part too prosaic to the child's circle of thinking and ideas to give any exciting elements of knowledge. 6. The artistic systematic treatment of objects, and the specialties to be sought out in every individual thing, (size, parts, situation, color, form, use,) is a torment to children and teachers. c. The desire that children should already speak upon whole proposi- tions is opposed to the way and manner in which backward-speaking chil- dren improve and enrich their speech. They need in the beginning more sinrjle words and expressions for things and actions which they perceive, rather than little propositions which they may repeat like parrots. d. If we wish to help the thinking and speaking of the young, we need no special objects lying around ; but the means of help and culture lie in instruction, in speech and reading, and in biblical history. e. Our object-teaching was only an hour of gabble, a training without any special value. The judgment of another voice is : "If it was meant that tlie object- teaching should belong specially or strikingly only to the earlier years of development, or should serve only for the elementary OBJECT TEACHING. BUSSE. 427 material of teaching, there lies at the foundation of this conception a false idea of the nature of man, as well as a false idea of what man has to appropriate for the development and nourishment of his morally spiritual nature. Insight belongs to thinking as warmth belongs to the sunliglit. Where it is wanting to the thinking, the pulse-beat of sjihitual life is wanting. The method of insight mfist show itself power- fully for the development and exercise of the mental activity during the whole period of teachtng. Object-teaching is to be brought into requisition in every stage of learning." Beauiiful and true as these words sound, they are yet one-sided. Do those, then, who wish to recommend independent object-teaching mis- understand and deny the necessity and worth of teaching by intuition ? By no means. Reading, writing, counting, memorizing, singing, biblical stories, are the departments of instruction of the elementary classes. It is not contradictory to unite and sprinkle in e.vercises in thinking, observing, and speaking, and above all to do this lovingly and with power. Yet how is it with the progressive ordering of this physical {realen) fundamental knowledge ? Does not our object-teaching bring Its order with it in the most natural manner, while the exercises in observation and in language, in this addition to the primer and the reader, have a great dispersive power, a want of design, an instability, and dissipating, of the mind ? What Volter says is scarcely more than an empty phrase : " What a pupil already knows, what is not new to him, what he learns without in- struction, is not the object of his curiosity, and consequently cannot be the means of awakening his mental power." But the object-teaching will reach several ends at once: It joins on its material to what is already known, adds something new and interesting to this material for culture, so that the mind is excited and awakened, called into activity, and its circle widened. It would be indeed a misconception and a fi.iilure if we should talk with the little ones about nothing but what they already know and have heard and felt. We would have no hold of them, it would be flat and uninteresting, and would only get them to sleep. No one would designate this as the object-teaching we so highly prize. The famous Prussian Regulation of October 3d, 1854, expresses itself plainly in regard to object-teaching : " Since all the instruction is to be based npon observation, and must be used as well for thinking as for speaking, abstract instruction in observation, thinking, and speaking, is not in place in the elementary school of a single class." Goltzsch, as the one interpreter of the Regulations, sees in object-instru.';- tion only " empty, unessential exercises in thinking and speaking, and puts in its place memory-cramming. The seizing, imitating, and appro- priating of worthy and rich thoughts presented in fit material, in excellent spoken expression, with which the child must busy himself long and re-i peatedly, according to the nature of the thing, leads him yet unpractised in thinking, and especially the child poor in words, farther on in his thought and speech-forming than the tedious and wearisome exercises in his own 428 OBJECT TEACHING. BUSSE, thinking upon all sorts of dry stuff which is adapted neither to work ex- citingly upon his thinking powers nor his feelings." The words sound sophistical, for they seem to be directed against the long rejected exercises in thinking, while they really mean object-teaching. The better interj)reter of the Regulation, Vormann, rich in experience, restores object-teaching through a back door, when he says, " It is abso- lutely necessary (that is, under all circumstances) to have conversations with children to a certain extent, and of a certain kind, as they usually can neither speak coherently themselves nor understand the coherent speech of the teacher. This is because they need to be made susceptible of further instruction, whether oral or from the book. But these conversations must not be about abstractions like space and number ; they must be about real objects in their immediate surroundings." " Some cultivation in thinking and speaking is one of the first and most indispensable requisitions," says Goltzsch, thus contradicting himself, if a real instruction in reading is to be possible, and if any instruction is to an- swer its aim. A methodical man. Otto, of Miihlhausen, {Allgem. Schulzeitung, Jultheft, 1842,) rather arrogantly allows himself to perceive that, " Intelli- gent exercises in observation have been organized into a certain teaching of objects, but the practical part of this is nothing else but domestic economy, natural science, geometry, counting, &c., in their elements. There is no reality in it as a particular subject. Now follow the evidence that we only see and look into, that which we have known and understood, and from that is inferred the strange assertion that it is not the observation, and consequently not the object-teaching, which helps to correct representa- tions and conceptions, but language, and especially book-language." We will let Mr. Otto take the second step before he has taken the first, and rather hold to the sayings of Gdthe, the master of language: — " I think also from out of the truth, but from out of the truth of the five senses." " Nature is the only book that ofi'ers great things of intrinsic worth on all its leaves." " I am the deadly enemy of empty words." " I must go so far, that every thing must be known from observation, and nothing by tradition or name." In gigantic proportions by the depth of his grasp above the afore- mentioned opponents of object-teaching stands the Bavarian school- counsellor, Kiethammer ; and we could make no reply to that^witty censur- ing voice, if we did not know that in spite of all, that there is an object-teaching which, imparted with vivacity on the part of the teacher, is suited in full measure to the nature of the child, and to the material, so far as the child has relation to it ; and if we had not a hundred times had living evidence how this instruction works when a skilful hand makes use of it, how the class are all eye and ear, how the children live in it, and how eagerly they look forward to these hours as their most delightful ones. On the contrary, it makes a sad impression wh'^n this contemporary of Pestalozzi confesses to the following views: OBJECT TEACHING. BUSSE. 429 " The only exercises in intuition, which are essential as an artistic direction of the mind in every kind of first instruction, are those on ohjects of the inner world, which are not like those of the outer world, indepen- dent of the mind itself, but must first be brought to view. These exercises must begin early, before the mind loses its pliability to them by the pre- ponderating influence of the outside world ; and it is, therefore, a double loss to fill up this season of formation with outside things which can off'er nothing to the mind so long as it is not ripe for profound contemplation, and yet, which take up, unavoidably, such a broad span of our lives. " Exercise of observation of spiritual subjects, as the earliest instruction, is nothing else but the exercise of memory. " For the independent observation of intellectual subjects, that is, for intellectual comprehension of the world of ideas, the youthful mind is not yet ripe ; it needs to be much more exercised first. But this exercise requires that, before all things else, it shall learn to fix intellectual objects, and bring them into view. For that, it is necessary that they become objective ; they will become so when stated in words, in the expressions in which they have received form by devout and spiritual-minded men. To accept ideas in this objective form, is called, bringing spiritual subjects to the intuition ; and in memorizing such expressions, the problem for the beginning of instruction is consequently solved." It is only astonishing to us that Piiethammer does not propose for this process of objectiving (of bringing spiritual subjects to the intuition) the language of the republic of letters, Latin, as was the custom a hundred years ago. A compromise is no longer possible here. The memory-cram is to solve the problem of a natural educational instruction. The " word method " is to be mind-forming ; mechanism and death are to be called life ! Ratichius, Comenius, Franke, Rousseau, Basedow, Rochow, Pestalozzi, have lived and striven in vain. " Hold fast what thou hast, that no man may take away thy crown," says Scripture ; and ol-ject-teaching is such a crown. But to take the medium between the extremes is our task. We cannot follow the idealist of object-teaching so far as to grant him, at once, the exclusiveness he desires for this foundation, because the pedagogic endowment, presupposed for its success, which extols the handling of the material to the point of art, is found only in the rarest cases; and also, because we must take into account the demands of parents and relatives upon the schools. For, in the very first school year they follow the development of the child with disproportioned interest, and base the measure of their judgment upon his progress in reading, writing, and arithmetic. Still less will we reject all object-teaching, but will demand for the sake of its personal aim, that it shall be made the underpinning, and retaining the principle of the intuitive method in all domains and with all kinds of material, and the handling of all the branches of instruction, as of an organic whole, that it shall be intrusted, at least three or four times a week, for two hours at least, not to the hands of the youngest, most inex- 430 OBJECT TEACHING. BUSSE. perienced teacher, man or woman, but to the most skilful, practical, and experienced. In this view of ours the majority of the schools in Germany, at this period, agree. The more the material for the exercises in observation and language in the first school years is selected in reference to the most childlike demands, and the more adapted to their minds, the more exciting to independent action are the exercises, the more will the child show earnestness in observ- ing, and the better judgment will he form about things, circumstances, ap- pearances ; the more likely will he be to judge correctly how and what they are in themselves, and what connection they have with life itself. The endeavor should not be to urge the children into all kinds of physical knowledge in a dry and meagre manner, but to enrich them with such knowledge whose ample material for the purpose of instruction leads to good strong fundamental principles. These should be wisely limited (the introduction into all possible physical knowledge being kept in view), as a check upon vague and confused wandei'ing. Instruction gains in contents and value when it handles in good order a worthy, comprehensive, and able material, and rises into independent ob- ject-teaching in the first school years. Different Kinds of Intuitions for Object Teaching* 1. Sensuous intuitions : not given merely mediately through the senses, but immediately ; outward objects. 2. Mathematical intuitions : representations of space, time, number, and motion ; also belonging to the outward world, not directly given by the senses, but mediately. 3. Moral intuitions, arising out of the phenomena of virtuous life in man. 4. Beligious intuitions, arising in the nature of man, whose sentiments relate him to God. 5. Esthetic intuitions, from the beautiful and sublime phenomena of nature and human life, (including artistic representations.) 6. Furehj human intuitions, which relate to the noble, mutual relations of man in love, fi\ith, friendship, &c. 7. Social intuitions, which comprise the unifying of men in the great whole ; in corporations, in community and state life. The school cannot offer all these subjects of intuition according to their different natures and their origin, for it will not take the place of life ; it only supposes them, connects itself with them, and refers to them, but it points them out in all their compass, occupies itself with them, and builds up with them on all sides the foundation of intelligence. The sensuous intuitions relate to the corporeal world and the changes in it. The pupil must see with his own eyes as much as possible, must hear * We here add a beautiful resume of the intuitions as they were given by our old master Diesterweg in answer to the questions: "What intuitions? What shall we awakfn? Out of what fields, whence, shall they be taken?" "Let us look at the different kinds," he says; " let us enumerate them," OBJECT TEACHING. BUSSE. 431 with his own ears, must use all his senses, seek out the sensuous tokens of things in their phenomena upon, under, and abov« the ground, in min- erals, plants, animals, men and their works, sun, moon, and stars, physical phenomena, &c. The mathematical intuitions are developed out of the sensuous by easy abstractions lying near at hand ; the representations of the expansion of space compared one with another ; the things of time one after another ; the representations of number — the how much; the representaUuns of change in space, and the progression of the same. The simplest of these representations are those of space ; the rest become objects of intuition by means of these, by points, lines, and surfaces ; in arithmetic, for ex- ample, points, lines, and their parts are the material of intuitions. The moral intuitions come to the pupils through their lives with their relatives, or in school through school-mates and teachers. These are natu- rally imcard intuitions, which are embodied in the expression of the coun- tenance, in the eye, and in the speech. The pupil's personal experience here, as everywhere, is the chief thing. Happy the child who is sur- rounded by thoroughly moral, pure men, whose manifestations lay in him the moral foundation of life. The moral facts of history are pointed out to him by the teacher in a living manner, by means of the living word of the eloquent lips and the feeling heart. To religious intuitions the child comes through the contemplation of nature, its phenomena and beneficent workings ; through the piety of his parents, the commands of the father and mother ; through the contempla- tion of the community in the house of worship; through religious songs in the school ; through religious instruction and confirmation in the school and church ; through religious-minded teachers and pastors ; through biblical stories, &c. JSsihetic intuitions are awakened by the sight of beautiful and sublime objects of nature (stars, crystals, sky and sea, rocky mountains, landscapes, storms, thunder-showers, flowers, trees, flowing rivers, &c.), and of objects of art (pictures and picture galleries, statues, gardens, products of the poet- ical art and of human speech). We can classify their specific diff'erences, calling them moral, aesthetic, &c., but I hold it better to place them in one category. The strong moral law, equally binding upon all men, is not included in this field, for its contents cannot be unconditionally required. That belongs to the/;-ee beautifully human development which is dependent upon conditions that are not attainable by every one. The so-called j>nre?(/ human intuitions are furnished by the nobly-formed humcai lives of individual men, whose characters proceed from the strong- est conceptions of morality and duty, from sympathetic afi"ections, friend- ship, love, compassion, and loving fellowship, and other shining phenomena of human life as they are met with in the more refined development and culture of lofty and pure men. Happy is the child who is in their sphere ! If ihe home has nothing to ofi"er in this respect, it is difficult to supply the want. Let the teacher do what is possible by the hold he has upon the school and by all his own manifestations. The social intuitions, that is, the social circumstances of men in a large 432 OBJECT TEACHING. BUSSE. sense, are determined for the child by the manifestations of the community in the schools, in the churches, in the assemblies of the people, in public festivals, and especially by the stories in which the living insight of the teacher into the life of states, peoples, and warlike communities defines to. the scholar the best living representations of great deeds. Our early state's life, which was domestic, not public, was an obstacle to the growth of these intuitions, so important to development. How can he who has experienced nothing, understand history ? How can he who has not observed the people, make a living picture of its life ? Small re- publics have a great advantage in respect to the observation of public life and patriotic sentiment. Words, even the most eloquent, give a very un- satisfactory compensation for observation. The year 1848 has in this re- spect brought most important steps of progress. Prominent above all other considerations is the importance of the life, the standpoint, the intelligence, the character of the teacher, for laying the foundation of living observation in the soul, in the mind, in the disposition of the pupil. What the teacher does not carry in his own bosom, he cannot awaken in the bosom of another. It can be compensated by nothing else, if there is failure in him. The teacher must himself have seen, observed, experienced, investigated, lived and thought as much as possible, and should set up a model in moral, religious, aesthetic, and purely human and social respects. So much as he is, so much is his instruction worth. He is to his pupils the most instructive, the most appreciable, the most striking object of observation. The Immediate Aims of Ohjed-teaching. Thus far we have considered object-teaching in its relations to teaching in general. Now we must turn our attention to its immediate aims. 1st. Object-teaching may be made the special means of training the senses. Such teaching would consist of exercises in observation, in order to develop the latent strength of each sense, that of the eye in particular. 2d. The chief aim of object-teaching may be to develop forms of observation and the laws of thought. These exercises we may call exercises in thinking. 3d. Object-teaching may have for its main purpose the development of lan- guage, and all the lessons therein may be exercises in speaking and writing. The proper thing to do is to unite sense-training, thinking, teaching, and language exercises, and work them together, — the great aim of object- teaching. The training of the senses lies at the foundation of all, and must be made the chief means of all teaching. But it must be conceded that an intelligent guidance to right seeing and hearing is a wonderful help. Thousands have eyes and see not ; ears, and hear not. Thousands go through a museum and come out none the wiser. They have in fact seen nothing, because they have not intelligence. Observation without repre- sentations and conceptions remain blind. Real exercises in observation without exercises in thinking are an impossibiHty. On the other side, exercises in thinking must work injuriously rather than usefully if they have not found in living observation a fountain of unconquerable interest. OBJECT TEACHING. BUSSE. 433 And since it is a striking fact that no representation, no conception exists without a word, since we cannot think except in language, thoughtful ob- serving and observing thoughtfulness, in connection with a continuous development of the mother-tongue, is the chief aim of object-teaching.* To this aim, as soon as a child is able to write down a proposition, also to confirm to some extent what is expressed, which must be reached to- ward the end of the first school year, two subordinate aims are allied : 1. Preliminary exercises in grammar in the systematic use of cases, of prepositions, and of adverbs of time and place, but above all of word-for- mations. 2. Exercises in composition by writing down little groups of proposi- tions connected according to the sense. II. THE METHOD. The chief laws of the method are : 1. Instruction by actual inspection. Life wakes up life. The real object is therefore to be shown before the picture of it, (if the secret of life does not work so attractively that thn in- struction becomes impossible; but in the cas:^ of living animals, a living stork or dog in the schoolroom abolishes the possibiHty of instruction, for the interest of the children is so powerful in the life itself that it does not objectivate the individual thing, which is thus forgotten.) Amons; pictures, the model takes the precedence of the drawing; among the drawings, the colored of the shaded; and the shaded again are to be. preferred to the linear drawing. Every object that is spoken of, and au their relations must stand out clear and defined before the outer sensuous and the inner mental observa- tion (or inspection) of the scholar, and on that account must be advanced from the real, sensuous, to the inner abstract inspection. There is nothing more aimless than object-teaching without actual obser- vation (inspection). The instruction can first bear justly and correctly the name of object-teaching and of the intuitive quality, when it is based upon the actual observation (inspection) of things or relations. What many words and long definitions will not efi'ect, will be effected by imme- diate observation (or inspection). Object-teaching, therefore, needs the begt use and application of the material of observation. The kindergarten justly uses little stafi's, sticks of various lengths, cubes of various kinds of wood, building boxes. The teachers of the lower classes in the elementary schools do right to show various objects, models made of wood or paper, plants in nature, or colored pictures of animals, plants, and human productions. Such apparatus for observation works in the most favorable manner upon the development of the children. In many ways the principle was good in the early object- teaching, but the observation defective ; they took care to impart knowl- * We turn wlioUy away from the little speaking-exercises which figure as a part of the first instructions in reading, and have only the outward aim of making clear and distinct, individual sounds, and cannot therefore argue with Luben, that otuect-teaching and the teaching of reading should form an undivided whole. 28 434 OBJECT TEACHING. BUSSE. edge, but made too many words, and neglected the apparatus. Since all recognition or unde.vstanding of things proceeds from observation, is founded upon incentives to it, upon perceptions and inspection, and in the mental work already proceeds from observations gained, it is above all things important that dear and correct observation be attained by means of real things. An object-teaching without apparatus for observation is like a house without a foundation. Instruct by means of observation while you are aiming at the waking up of the inner sense. As soon as you have attained a little whole, within an hour, convince yourself of the condition of the observation (or inspection) thus gained, before you put away the object or the picture of it, in order to let the child re-produce what he has gained. 2. Go from the easy to the difficult. a. Then, from the known to the unknown, from the near to the distant. Go on and add something to the observations which you know the child has made, and when you have united all these, widen the image as fast as the comprehensive power of the child will allow you to do so. It must not be a question here of setting up a special way as a generally desirable one. Whether one places the room in the foreground, and passes out from the schoolhouse, in ever wider circles up to the sky, with the sun, moon, and stars, or whether one looks upon the year, with its phenomena, as the nearest real thing, and adds to the changes of the seasons the material which nature and culture offer, it is all the same ; both may be excellent ; evjerything depends upon the handling. 6. Go from the simple to the complex ; then from single objects to two and several, that the acts of comparison and discrimination may come into play. Then let more objects come into the group. Groups form at last a collected image. Go also in language from the simple to the complex ; from naked pro- position to the widened, connected-compound, abbreviated propositions, &c. c. Go from the concrete to the abstract. Proceed from the contemplation of the sensuous signs, before you draw upon the higher laws of thought. Do not apply foundation and consequence, or even condition, if cause and effect have not previously been made clear. Go first from the reaZ, then from the possible and necessary; first the individual thing, then the j^articular thing, then the general thing. 3. Give in each hour, if possible, a little ichole in contents and form. Work out every lesson in writing, for only so can you satisfy this kind of instruction in which contents and form are equally important and must develop themselves symmetrically ; thus only can you know to be perfected what you have already given, what you are now giving, and what you wish to give next ; then this instruction, like no other, will show you its forma- tive reaction. But be cautious not to overstrain the child in your strivings to round off and complete his power. Instruct according to the nature of the material, but instruct also according to the nature of the child. 4. Use poetry in the service of this instruction. An infinite numjber of the most beautiful poems offer themselves as if spontaneously, as flowers of contemplation. You will in years have the OBJECT TEACHING. BUSSE. 435 richest variety ; and do not forget, when you lay this instruction before your- self and build it up as a lohole, that it is poetry which seizes and ennobles the man — the whole man. 5. Use conversation. As to the outer form of the method, no instruction offers so much scope for exciting richly compensating conversation as this. Obviously, as in every catechism (Socratic method), there is given back, from sentence to sentence, a clear group of well-arranged observations, in the most naturally connected principles possible. Thus the teacher has the richest opportunity to introduce in a living manner, from-time to time, little poems and stories. III. IMPORTANT A^RITINGS AND AIDS FOR OBJECT-TEACHING. 1. Easy Directions for Intelligent Instruction in the Oerman Language, including Speaking, Drawing, Reading and Writing, Observation by Inspection and Understanding. By W. Harnisch. Breslau, 1839. This pamphlet, which is specially a guide to the first instruction in lan- guage, belongs here, because it at the same time contains exercises in observation and speaking. The first section of the second part treats of them : — 1. The beginning of this instruction ; 2. To know and to name objects ; 3. The counting of things ; 4. The parts of things ; 5. Color ; 6. Form and situation ; 7. Size ; 8. Sound ; 9. Feehng, smell, and taste ; 10. Prime material of things, circumstance, and use ; 11. The arranging and order of things; 12. Cause and effect; 13. Necessity and arbitrari- ness, means and aims; 14. Representation and sign; 15. Surroundings and relations ; 16. Summary of the foregoing in one whole. The author's view of the value and place of this instruction may be seen in the following remarks : " The exercises in observation contain not merely many germs, which may develop into godliness (religion), but almost the beginnings of all other objects of instruction ; they form the roots of instruction. Think- ing especially cannot exist without them, and without thinking there is no instruction in language properly so called. The exercises in observation must there, as everywhere, take the precedence of exercises in thinking and understanding. " Exercises in thinking and understanding without exercises in observa- tion are plants without roots. We see this in common life. For the more man has seen and experienced, the more all-sided are his thinking-powers ; and all exercises in understanding which have proceeded only out of the forms of the understanding without insight or reality, we are accustomed to call by the contemptuous name of school-tvisdom." 2. Guide to Exercises in Thinking and Speaking as the Natural Founda- tion/or General Instruction; particularly for the First Instruction in Language in the People's Schools. By F. H. G. Grassjian. With three Copperplates. Second edition. Berlin, 1834 : by G. Ileimer. This is a desirable treatise " upon the natural treatment of instruction in language in the people's schools ; and upon its connection with the other subjects of instruction in these schools." We point out the chief thoughts as far as they touch upon our subject. 436 OBJECT TEACHING. BUSSE. Reading is not to be the first or beginning of instruction in the school. The objection to this beginning is based upon the aversion which children have to learning their letters. Natui'e has decreed that in the first years of hfe the child shall receive and picture to himself the outer sense-world, and that the inner spiritual life shall be awakened by occupation with sen- suous things, till the time comes when this inner spiritual life and impulse shall be itself the object of contemplation. This development by means of the outward world has not ended when the child enters the school. The inner world of representation needs an outer world in which it may embody itself — language or speech. The representation pictures itself outwardly by means of the word, and thereby becomes a communicable representation, and this representation first attains thereby its definite, perfected existence. By means of language, the child arrives at the intel- ligent recognition of the objects around him and of their relations to each other. Writing is a picture of speech, and by this (indirectly) a picture of the inner representative world of man.* So as man is to learn to know the pro- totype earlier than the image, especially if there does not exist between the two a natural and necessary, but an arbitrary connection (our letters are to be looked upon as signs arbitrarily chosen), the child must first learn to speak before it learns to read. If we connect this with what has gone before, it follows that : The first instruction in language must consist of conversations which make the children acquainted with the things of the outward world, their properties and mutual relations, and give them the opportunity to learn to speak of them correctly, intelligently, and significantly. These exercises in thinking and speaking are to be the common trunk from M-hich all other objects of instruction are to branch out as twigs. In regard to the material, it must contain the elements of all 'the single objects of the instruction ; in regard to form, it must be so arranged, as far as pos- sible, that the children shall learn not merely parts of speech, but all kinds of words, and these in their various forms, inflections, derivations, and combinations, and in an easy way. The language itself must not be an object of contemplation, but a collection of words must be made, out of which in future the general rules and laws of the language can be developed. In the arrangement of the material, the progress must be in regular steps from the nearer to the more distant ; from the known to the less known, and from this to the quite unknown ; from that which falls directly upon the senses to that which is first found by the help of the accompany- ing activity of the understanding. If the instruction in reading and writing goes side by side with this from the first entrance of the children into the school, one hour a day, or from three to four hours a week, should be devoted to this object-instruction. Contents : 1. Names of things ; 2. Whole, and parts of the whole ; 3. Number of things ; 4. Place, position, attitude ; 5. Light, color ; 6. Form ; 7. Size ; 8. Direction ; 9. Sound ; 10. Perceptions by feeling, smell, and taste; 11. Rest and motion ; 12. Connection of things ; 13. Time. The whole is brought out partly in a catechetical way, partly by prin- OBJECT TEACHING. BUSSE. 437 ciples, which are to be discovered by the developing conversation. This is a model work and a master-work, — actual head-work, the most advanced course of teaching-exercises in observation and experience to be found in our literature (of the present time). No teacher should be without it. But whether the whole can be carried out in the elementary school, as the majority of these schools now are, we doubt ; indeed, our verdict is against it. There must be rarely favorable circumstances secured, if a teacher, as the Professor hopes, shall be able to carry the child through this course by the end of the ninth year of his age. We must apply the wise view which the author makes apparent for the carrying out of his opinion upon instruction in language, and also upon these exercises in speaking and thinking. He says : " Many weighty and well-founded recol- lections and doubts recur to the mind, which, in view of the reality of exist- ing relations of life, and of prevailing and dominant customs, opinions, and judgments of the present generation, may easily be advanced, and are well known to every practical schoolman. No one can feel it more keenly than I do, or know it better than I do ; as it is on account of the well-founded existence of such recollections of long standing that I require, before the introduction of this plan, the condition that it shall be freed from all the limitations which arise out of the present condition of things." But with full conviction we agree with the following opinions : " In view of the plan which we introduce, it is of the highest importance that we carry in our souls an ideal of .every occupation which one has to execute, of every office which is to be filled, how it should be done, and how it would be done, if every hindrance and disturbance were out of the way, and if every power which is brought into play worked as perfectly as it can by virtue of its nature. To let such an ideal enter wholly into life as its guide, rarely ever happens, since the reality of life meets it at every step and on every side, limiting and destroying its influence ; yet the strivings of those who wish to better things must have their roots in the ideal, and must find in it the goal of their activity. For whoever carries it within his breast, and seeks to approach it more and more, as far as circumstances and relations permit him to do so, takes care so to arrange and form every individual influence that it may correspond to the image before him, and thus prepare for the future presentation of the whole, and he seizes every opportunity to form in others the correct view of this subject. He thus brings insight and skill into all his acts, while he who has not such a goal before his eyes cannot, with all his best efforts, and the most indefatigable industry, demand the best thing of himself, and often loses it." This course of instruction is to be contemplated as such an ideal for the elementary schools in general. Would that the teachers might comprehend it in its essence, and approach it in fact and truth ! The most earnest study of this work is just what is needed for the elementary method. But for those teachers who are obliged to limit themselves to a less thorough course of thinking and speaking exercises, we recommend the following works (certainly with a few exceptions) of Fuhr & Ortmann. On account of the necessary attention to the existing state of things every- where, with rare exceptions, we have placed the aim and the standard of 438 OBJECT TEACHING. BUSSE. these exercises lower, in order that the attempts made to realize them shall be really successful. 3. Instruction in the Little Children's School ; or, the Beginning of In- struction and Formation in the People's Schools. Fourth improved edi- tion. Bielefeld, 1843. Published by Belhagen & Klasing. This pamphlet proposes a course of instruction : (1) which is throughout practical and easily applied ; (2) which chooses its material out of the imme- diate surroundings of the school-children, and avoids all costly and foreign apparatus ; (3) it is worked out with the utmost clearness and perspicacity, so that it will easily enable every teacher to introduce the exercises in ob- servation and speaking into the school. Contents of the First Section. Knowledge of Objects in the School-Room. — 1st Exercise : Naming and describing these objects. 2d Ex. : Compar- ison and discrimination. 3d Ex. : Contemplation of definite bodies. Second Section. First Elements of Natural History and Domestic Econ- omy. — 1st Ex. : The human body. 2d Ex. : The plants of the home gar- den. 3d Ex. : Domestic animals. 4th Ex. : The house, oth Ex. : The dwelling. 6th Ex. : The elements. Third Section. Preliminary Exercise in Drawing and Writing. Fourth Section. Instruction in Reading. Fifth Section. Beginning of Arithmetic. Sixth Section. Beginning of Instruction in Singing. Seventh Section. Exercises in Memory or Tunes for Head and Heart. Eighth Section. Furthering Instruction, and School Aims in general. The individual exercises are offered not in the catechetical, but in a more familiar form; methodical remarks, hints, and views are given in them. In consonance with the above-mentioned didactic rules, the objects are not to be treated according to the common conceptions of size, form, color, number, &c., but every subject according to its own peculiarities, or elemen- tarily, or, as Herr Griibe says, organically. (See Griibe's Inst, in Arith.) 4. Methodical Gtiide for Exercises in the Cultivation of Language in the ' Lower Class of the Elementary School. By C. G. Ehrlich, Director of the Seminary of Soest, in Nassau. Second improved edition, 1839. Fr. Heischer, in Leipzig. The author shares with others the view that reflection and the art of speaking must be awakened and stimulated specially in the lower class of the elementary school, since the neglect of a deep, firm foundation for it during the whole school season, can never be made good afterwards ; but he difi'ers from other writers and teachers upon the subject in thinking that the exercises in speaking should be exercises in the language itself. Authors before mentioned give precedence to exercises in speaking, observation, and thinking, and postpone those in language, but employ the thinking and speaking powers upon the materials of the surrounding world. Herr Ehrlich also agrees in this when he adds his exercises upon the immediate experiences and observations of the child ; but he takes into consideration in this the knowledge of language, in what way will become clear wlien wo OBJECT TEACHING. BUSSE. 439 point out the chief contents of his treatise, and sketch the characteristic signs of this treatment of the material. The book is divided into two parts, the theoretical and practical. First Part. Aim and requisitions of the exercises in language in the lower class.. Second Part. Examples : (1) The elementary school is to rise up from below. (2) Exercises in language the special means. (3) Extent of the same. (4) Comparison between the conversation of the mother and the teacher. (5) Chief requisites of such exercises : a. Course of teaching, and of some material ; b, Preface to the conversation ; c. General choice of the material; d, Language of the teacher; e, Superintendence of the conversa- tion ; f, Means of exciting emulation ; g, Outward arrangements. The knowledge of the forms of speech (in a practical way) in which it is brought to the consciousness of the children, leads the author into the consideration of the contents and order. He gives his view in the following precepts, which are worth considering : First. " If you lead the child to thoughtful seeing, you do much more for him than if you bring him forward in reading and writing. His reading and wricing without thinking are worthless. Men make the least use of these arts " (is it not so?) " but a really seeing eye, a really hearing ear, and a thinking miiid, every one needs every moment of his life." (Does it injure thousands, nay, millions of men to read?) "1. Because they do not use this art very generally in life, or they unlearn it again even when they have once learned it in the regular way. 2. Because the books which are put into their hands contain much that is useless, much that is untrue, dis- torted ; obsolete views, superstitious opinions, &c. Hence there are re- gions in Germany where learning to read is of questionable advantage ; for it may be used for the planting and sustaining of superstition and similar perverseness." (Why not also for the destruction of the same ; and why does Catholicism strive against the common-school law?) "For it is not by reading that man cultivates himself. It depends upon what he reads, and his capability of reading with understanding." Second. " The effect upon the cultivation of the mind of learning to speak is very clear, for the following reasons : By knowing the names of things, and of their properties, the attention is often for the first time drawn to the things themselves. In the same manner, also by the varieties of the names to the varieties of the things ; for instance, the different kinds of the color of green — grass-green, mountain-green, apple-green, finch-green, bottle- green, bronze-green, sea-green, &c. Also, by means of language our atten- tion is drawn in early childhood from lower to higher conceptions, (for instance, ' The goose is a bird.') By naming these, we hold firmly in the mind representations and conceptions of things, and learn to think in lan- guage." Second Part. This portion of the book is the most important, viz. : The Examples. (1) Conversations with children from six to seven years of 440 OBJECT TEACHING. BUSSE. age : two conversations with new-comers ; the sunxtundings in the school- room ; handwork; the kitchen ; domestic aniffials ; words of endearment (diminutives) ; abstract conceptions ; single verbs. (2) Conversations with the whole lower class, or with children from seven to ten years. Preparation of the teacher for exercises in speakinsf. These conversations are rich in instruction : 1. Because they are so com- municated, not as if they were written out before the hour, but as if they were really held in the school of the seminary by the author. 2. Because they are to be looked upon as a model in a wide sense of the word (not like the asses-bridge, to be used slavishly). Herr Ehrlich is a master in conversation with children. Therefore this book is a gift to be thankful for. Having proceeded from the very soil of the school, in the strongest sense of the word, the teacher can learn from it how to make living and in- structive conversation with children, since an old master has done it before him. Remarks which join the single examples unite the second part of the book with the first, and the results follomng each talk given in a review show what should be reached in the single talks. The author .believes, as we do, in the use of signs. A wave of the right hand means that all the scJiolars shall speak ; a circular motion with the left hand (a zero) a full answer. To wink means repeat the whole. We hope the reader will not consider these as puerilities. We are sorry that want of space forbids us laying before the reader one of these instructive conversations, with all its outward and inward in- trospections ; but we recommend this thoroughly practical treatise. 6. Ouide to the Principles of Education and Instruction. By Denzel. Third Part, First Division, First Course : Object-Teaching for Children from 6 to 8 Years of Age. Stuttgart : Mezler, 1828. Third edition. The distinguishing or discriminating character of this course consists in the author's connecting the religious with the material and formal points of view, that is, the exercises in observation or introspection have the dis- tinct aim of undertaking to develop the religious consciousness. The author's caution and circumspection are well known. 6. ScHLOTTERBECK : TJieoretical and Practical Handbook for the Instruc- tion of the First School Year. For Teachers and Female Educators just hegiiining. 1. Domestic Science in the Fii-st School Year. 2, First In- struction in Language, Reading and Writing. 3. Exercises for the Cultivation of the Senses. — Wismar, Rostock, and Ludwigsluft. Pub- ,. lication house of the Hinstorff bookstore. 1868. We have here a work of great industry, arising out of a deep interest in the cause. Just on accoujit of its one-sidedness, it has an effect upon the present time. It follows Schlotterbeck in recommending " gymnastics of the senses " for the people's school, and at the end the " introduction of Froebel's kindergarten into the elementary classes." The views taken from Schlotterbeck are the following : 1. The chief aim of object-teaching is the cultivation of the senses and of formal nature. "What object- teaching has hitherto striven for is not to be reached by OBJECT TEACHING. BUSSE. 441 the means of the exercises proposed. It is only exercises of the senses, which are designed to give them a greater perfection for the correct com- prehension of the outward world, and to assist the mind of the child in its development through its perceptions. " The cultivation of the senses is to strengthen and support the whole instruction by giving efficiency to the organs of observation, and by the reception of new observations in the child's mind." 2. Object-teaching must move in the field of the -world of the senses, and adjust it. 3. For this aim the objects must be brought to the cliildren's view in their naked reality, and be treated objectively throughout. 4. The representation of the object observed must also have its rights. It gives the best proof of the correctness of the comprehension of it. 6. What has been observed can be represented by language. 6. What has been observed can also be represented in a plastic form. 7. By the cultivation of the organs of the senses, and by the plastic rep- resentation of the object, more is done for widening the child's circle of representation than by the most seai'ching exercises. 8. Therefore, we desire to have cultivation of the senses in the school, and for the elementary class in especial, first, a yearly course of from four to five hours a week, which we designate by the once common name of object- teaching. After that time let it cease, not because the cultivation of the senses is then looked upon as perfected, but because it can be carried on at home, and the further instruction in the school must undertake wider culture. 9. Object-teaching does not exclude exercises in language ; but these must not be the chief aim. 10. Object-teaching need not be looked upon as the foundation of in- struction in physics, 11. lleligious knowledge, so far as it allows itself to be mediated by ob- servation, does not belong to the domain of object-teaching. Object-teach- ing must be allowed to take the precedence of the religious element as little as of the instruction in language or natural science. It must move according to its nature on the domain of the sense-world, and fails wholly in its aim if the religious element is not the chief object. 12. Object-teaching must not aim at clothing the material in a poetic form. " This would stand in direct opposition to its aim. By object-teach- ing the comprehension of the world of sense is indirectly imparted, the correct relation between cause and efiect, foundation and superstructure, life and death, is established, therefore the objects must be brought before the child in their naked reality, and be treated objectively by the teacher throughout. The living sense of the child will lay in poetry of itself, and abundantly enough where the ripened understanding sees only dead and cold material. Ileal poetry lies in nature itself, and is therefore given out by it at the same time wiih the objective comprehension," The course of teaching planned on the above principles is divided into three sections : 1. Cultivation of the eye by the color, form and position, size and dis- tance, of bodies. 442 OBJECT TEACHING. BUSSE. 2. Cultivation of the ear by exercises in time and hearing. 3. Cultivation of feeling by direct exercises in the cultivation of the senses of touch and taste ; and by exercises for attaining a greater security and solidity of the body, namely, by strengthening the limbs. This treatise is in quite the spirit of Froebel. The author plans the exercises which Frcebel had chiefly intended for the kindergarten for the first school-year of the elementary class. They are as excellent for the kin- dergarten, where they have proved themselves so well adapted for the cul- tivation of the senses and the development of the mind, as they are out of place in the school. Here the ground-principle must be firmly estab- lished ; the culture of the senses must be aimed at with suitable material. To aim at merely formal culture lies outside of it. What cultivation of the senses is to be reached in the school must come out of the contemplation of the objects of the object-teaching, primarily out of the contemplation of nat- ural bodies. From them the child learns their " colors, forms, and varie- ties," and every intelligent teacher goes back from this to ground colors and ground forms. By the " quantities " the instruction in arithmetic makes known the theory of forms and the instruction in drawing. For "cultiva- tion of the eje " the instruction is given by writing, drawing, scientific, geo- graphical, and mathematical observation ; for " cultivation of the ear," in- struction in speaking, reading, and singing ; for " cultivation of the hand/' writing, drawing, and handwork. Hence it happens that a great part of these exercises in our full school classes are not practicable, as, for exam- ple, the coloring of pictures, the cutting of paper, the building with cubes, the plaiting with strips of paper, the folding of paper, the pricking of fig- ures, the clay work, whittling of wood, the observation of forms of things at different distances and in different positions, &c. It is impossible for a teacher to watch all these exercises, and prevent the dangerous use of col- ors, scissors, knives, pricking-needles, &c. Besides this, the author places little value upon the spoken statement, but would use the exercises in language chiefly for the instruction in reading. But if the object-teaching is to sharpen the senses, and thereby excite the attention, it must also assist the development of language. Observation enchains and quickens the thiiddng power, and brings the judgment to the tongue, which fastens the same in a word. When the children have been accustomed by the object-teaching to see sharply and pi*ecisely the things brought to their contemplation and description, and, where the opportunity offers, also to hear distinctly and feel strikingly, the school certainly offers all it can to satisfy just claims. But the author is of the opinion that salvation lies only in Froebel, whose play-school must go into the people's school. We can look upon this only as a pedagogic eiTor. For the gymnastics of the senses, life must do the best, not the school-room with its bare walls. Finally, why sha'l we not use the tongue and the nose as chemistry does ? At the Vienna Exposition we really saw a whole series of innocent, variously smelling, and tasting, apparatus for object-teaching, designed for the elementary school. We cannot recommend the work for the object-teaching we defend, how- ever dear it may be to Froebel's scholars, who will find much in it that is stimulating. OBJECT TEACHING. BUSSE. 443 7. Theoretical and Practical Handbook for Object-teaching, icith particU' lar reference to Elementary Instruction in Physics. Frederick Harder. Altona, 1867. Four editions. A book of such significant compass, which has lived through four edi- tions in twelve years, must have some value. This value lies in the correct and practical observations from which the author proceeds, and which he develops into a guide systematically executed, as well as rich and various in the material offered for the instruction. He gives the key to his work in the title. He is of the opinion that object-teaching, whose centre must be sought in physics, is not to be fin- ished in the elementary class, and on that account adds : 1. A course which shall give, after object-instruction proper, a second course, also designed for the underpinning, which works out the elements of physics with the scholars who have been mentally strengthened by object-teaching (in the space of another half-year). This course of instruction is essentially the well-known one. The author begins with the first conversation of tlie teacher with the fresh elementary scholars, then passes into the school with its contents, speaks of the same to the whole and to individuals, introduces comparisons of things in the Bchool-room, passes to the people in the school, then considers the school- house and teachers' dwelling-house, the occupants of the parental house, the dwelling-place, buildings, squares, streets, inhabitants. The sections, which make the specialty of the work, treat very practically of men, animals, and the plant world, and contain a preparation of instruction in geography and natural science. The work recommends itself by specially rich and richly- suggestive material, arranged in suitable sequence on methodical principles. The author is of the opinion that this instruction stands independently, and is to be stretched over the whole school life. 8. Principles and Course of Teaching for Instniction in SpeaJdng and Beading. August Luben, German}', Director in Bremen. Third im- proved edition. Leipzig, 1868. Luben's writings should be intelligently studied by every elementary teacher. The practice of the author to connect object-teaching with reading and ■writing is well known. Richter has energetically protested against this union, and we indorse the protest, while we think that the exercises in speaking, known to all, and v,'hich smooth the path to the sounding of the letters {lautircn), do not take the place of the object-teaching proper. Al- though the author does not consider merely the exercises in speaking, but also those in language, yet the object-teaching, which has its own aims and course, is not justly estimated. The aim of object-teaching Liiben also discusses briefly : 1. To practise the child in correct seeing and contemplation. 2. To enrich the powers of his understanding with worthy representations. 3. To cultivate his judgment. 4. To increase his readiness in language. 444 OBJECT TEACHING. BUSSE. Many good things are given in the examples, and the little treatise, which, on account of its authorship, is an authority in the domain of instruc- tion in the mother-tongue, is worth reading. 9. Ohjed-teacMng in the Elementary ScJwols. Represented according to its Aims, its Place, and its Means. By Gael Richter. Crowned prize- work. Leipzig, 1869. This treatise is a rich accession to the literature upon object-teaching. In a theoretic point of view it is the best Avork which exists upon that sub- ject. By the ideal which Richter would realize in object-teaching, he will gain many opponents without injury to the various opinions in practice. The work should be known to every elementary teacher, although it is only theoretical. Cultivation of the senses is one chief thing with the author. Schlotterbeck seems to have excited him much. It is now generally the laudable endeavor to enlarge the material of observation for the elementary classes as far as it is practicable, although on the other side the limit can easily be passed which protects it from extravagance. The rich contents of the book consist of a guide, three sections, and a review. The guide contains historical matter upon object-teaching, concep- tion of essence of observation, relation of observation to language, and importance of observation to the mental life. 1. The first section speaks of the task of object-teaching, and paragraphs have the following titles : Condition of the Child's Mind before the School Age ; the School and its First Task ; Cultivation of Observation in Gen- eral; Scientific (real) Culture ; Cultivation of the Senses; Cultivation of Language ; Moral and Religious Culture ; Choice and Arrangements of the Objects for Object-teaching. 2. The second section treats of the place of object-teaching, and is di- vided into four paragraphs: R.ejection of Object-teaching; Isolated Place of Object-teaching ; Connection of Object-teaching with Reading and Writ- ing ; the Vogel-Mcthod. 3. The third section speaks of the means of object-teaching, and treats of the position of Objects of Instruction in Nature, Models and Pictures, Drawing and Measuring. This work contains no finished programme of object-teaching, but is a work upon that subject which cannot be read without lively interest, and which treats with extraordinary clearness the question of object-teaching, its place in other courses, and the means requisite for carrying it out. It will be of lasting use, and is urgently recommended. 10. Object-teaching. Its History, its Place in the Elementary School, and its Methodical Treatment. By W. Ahmstrofj?. Langensalza, 1869. This is also a theoretical treatise of the same general character with that of Richter, but not so exhaustive. It recommends itself to the teacher by its simplicity and clearness. Object-teaching is, with this author, that instruction of the elementary classes in which single things are taken from the nearest sur- roundings of the pupils, observed by the senses, described, and thus brought to their comprehension. It must not be confounded with " instruction by OBJECT TEACHING. BUSSE. 445 obsentition." And it must not be considered identical with exercises in thinking and speaking, with domestic economy, cosmology, and useful com- mon knowledge. All these subjects are kindred, but not in congruity. In his statement of the historical development of this instruction upon topics, the author goes back to Luther's and Melancthon's efforts, and draws treasures from the labors — 1. Of Bacon: "Everything depends upon our never turning the eyes of the mind from things themselves and their images just as they are absorbed into us." 2. Of Comenius : " The first connection of the thing with the knowl- edge of language." 3. Of the Philanthropist : " The culture of the understanding must pro- ceed from actual inspection ; Physics {Realien) must be the chief objects of fundamental teaching." 4. From Pestalozzi : " Observation is the foundation of all knowledge." After discussing these historical points, treatises which exclusively pursue the formal aim of development, for which the material need not be too vari- ous, he goes on to the exercises in understanding and thinking of Zerrener, Krause, Grassman, and finishes with Oraser, Diestericeg, Wurst, Scholz, and Hardsell, who combated the connection between the formal and scien- tific principle. The mission of object-teaching is fully shown by the psychological devel- opment. It is designed to raise the observations and representations al- ready in hand with the children into clearness, order, and consciousness, so as to help the pupils to a wealth of intuitions at the same time that they are using their senses : to excite their self-activity, and accustom them to a habit of attention; and out of the intuitions gained to develop conceptions, judgments, &c., and thereby to sharpen the understanding, put them in possession of book languag:, cultivate their sensibilities, and prepare thera for instruction in science {real). As means of object-teaching the author designates, chiefly, nature, man, God. He urges original, direct observa- tion, and only where the means for this are not present, or in natura, does he recommend pictures. The treatise answers the following questions : 1. Where is the origin of object-teaching to be sought, and how has it developed itself in the course of time ? 2. Wherein consists the problem of object-teaching ? 3. What place in instruction shall it take ? 4. By Avhat means are the alms Avhich it pursues to be reached ? While Richter makes object-teaching the all-ruling centre in the pro- gramme, Armstroff confines himself to Liiben's point of view, with whom object-teaching, reading, and writing, are to be united into one whole. Ai'mstroffs work is worth reading next to Richter's. 11. Tlieoretico-practical Guide to Object-teaching for Elementary TeacJiers and Parents. By Carl Dambeck, School Director. Hamburg, 1869. A parallel treatise with Eichter's, but very valuable practically. It is divided into two parts, a theoretic, and a practical part. In the 446 OBJECT TEACHING. BUSSE, theoretic part the author speaks of the aim, the method, the teacher, and the apparatus for object-teaching, which is with him the fundamental and preparatory instruction for the other branches. The practical part treats of the collection, grouping, and distribution of the material. The author closes with a sketch of a methodical course of object- teaching for two years. The first course for children from six to eight years of age groups the material for the four years which are to be used as designated. The second course arranges the material for children between eight and nine, according to psychological development and the branches of instruc- tion ; it also serves as preparation for instruction in language, for mathe- matics, the natural sciences, geography, history, religion, with mucli refer- ence to the capability of the children. It is hence made a material which for the greater part can be used in the middle course. In conclusion, the author enumerates the material of the instruction •which is necessary for the success of this department; namely, models^ mathematical bodies, a collection of the most important coins, the measures and weights of the country, minerals, fresh or dried plants, the fruits and seeds of the most important plants, animals either stuffed or preserved in spirits, products of industry, large single pictures, black or colored, a col- lection of the leaves and twigs of the most important plants. The author assigns an independent place for the object-teaching, and lets reading and writing follow next. In his limitation of the subject he agrees with Richter and Armstroff ; with them he assigns the place for it in the two or three first school years. AVe cannot deny that the work has proceeded from a vital interest as well for the subject as for childhood, and also shows long practice. It is original in spite of the fact that the idea of spreading the use of the material over all the years given to instruction, and of holding the child in living connection with nature all that time, is not in itself new. The little work is cordially recommended. 12. Object-teaching for tlie Lower and Middle Classes of the People's School. By George Luz. Also Teaching and Blading Material for Ob- ject-teaching in the Loicer and Middle Classes. Wiesensteig, 1871. The first part of the book discusses the theory of object-teaching. In twelve sections the author treats the following rich contents : 1. The origin of object-tea,ching, and its introduction into the people's school. 2. Object-teaching as the first and preparatory instruction. 3. Conception of object-teaching. 4. Aims of object-teaching. o. Forms of object-teaching. 6. OpjKinents of object-teaching. 7. The working of independent object-teaching. 8. The annexation of object-teaching to the reading-book. 9. Characteristics of different readers for the middle class. 10. Review of the programme of instruction of the author. OBJECT TEACHING. BUSSE. 447 11. Treatment of object-teaching. 12. Some examples of conversation. The second part is to be the reader for the use of pupils. The work is by a pupil of Denzel, but is distinguished by its extraoi'di- nary simplicity from the one to be noticed next, by Wrage. Not merely skill in the catechetical treatment of material constitutes the good teacher (and from pages 82 to 90 we find masterly conversations), but also his command of the material. But only he has command over his material who under- stands how to select it in reference to the nature of childhood ; and from this author wc learn to know his conceptions of a teacher, and a better could not be wished for; " the enemy of all shams, allflunkery ; the friend of simplicity, of sound discretion — in short, one %cho really knotos the nature of childhood" Of this loving absorption into the nature of childhood, the material for reading and the inculcation of princi])les in the infant is eloquent testimony. It is a preparatory book for the teacher in behalf of object-teaching, and a copious reader for the lower classes. The problem of how object-teaching can stand in the closest connection with the reader, and yet be indepen- dently progressive, is here solved in the happiest manner. What the teacher has hitherto observed and described, the children read after him, and thus reach two things : progress in understanding what they read, reading and repeating with feeling, and comprehension of what they have heard. 13. Object-teaching in the People's School ; or, Observing, Tliinhing, SjjeaJc- ing, and Writing, as the Foundation for Physical Studies, for Style, and Grammar. By J. H. FuilK and J. il. Ortmann. In four double sheets. Four sheets of Object-teaching, interspersed with Sentences, Fables, and Stories, in Prose and Poetry, arranged according to the Four Sea- sons. Bound in with the Object-teaching, four sheets of Exercises, in all Styles, for all Classes, after the Preparatory Class in Grammar. Second enlarged and improved Edition. Dillenbui-g, 1873. According to this author, observation is the element and foundation of all knowledge ; and object-teaching, pursued according to its aim, is the only instruction that can be materially and formally truly preparatory and fundamental for the collected instruction of the people's schools, which can rest only upon the firm ground of observation. Object-teaching must strive for correct observation and attention, clear conceptions, correct expression of thoughts, acquisition of useful knowledge of practical things, and cul- tivation of feeling. A full supply of poetic material serves for the latter purpose and point of connection. Contents : In twenty conversations are, first, preparatory exercises oflered to the teacher, which aim at exciting the feelings of the child, so that it may be confiding and animated. Then the children are led on according to the principle, from the near to the remote, by the following cii'cles of ob- servation : School, house and yard, garden, meadow, field and wood. In order to give the best possible intuitive foundation for physical science, the animals in the family and yard are described, so that they are under- stood to be representati\'es, or types of the one, two and four-hoofed 448 OBJECT TEACHING. BUSSE. animals, the beasts of prey, the insect-eaters, the rodents, the fowls, doves, swimming-birds, swamp-birds, singing-birds, and birds of prey. Then follows the contemplation of trees, shrubs, and herbs. The second part may be regarded as a complete course of natural his- torj-, and used with much benefit. The third sheet is peculiarly of Object-teaching. The second part of this treats of the premonitions of Spring in the plant world. Walk in the garden, and naming of the things found in it. Plants ; growth ; (as specialties, the snowdrops, the garden violets, daisies.) Then follows a premonition of Spring in the animal world (field-larks, stork, cuckoo, the white wagtail). Then the Spring itself; (the usher of Spring is the com- mon primrose.) At last, the fruit-garden (gooseberries, currant-bushes, cherry-trees, and damson-trees). In every lesson, the cultivation of the senses, of language, and of feeling is aimed at. By interspersed speeches, sentences, riddles, fables, tales, in prose and verse, the instruction con- tains the right nourishment for the understanding, the heart, and the life. A little volume is soon to follow this part, which will contain the rest of the material, so far as concerns the domain of natural history and physics, (mineralogy, domestic economy, and natural science.) The catechetical treatment of many of the lessons, lend, by their numerous suggestions, a peculiar value to the whole work. As to the rest, the author is of the opinion that the material offered in the school should not be used in a slavish manner, as it lies before the view. These materials offer much for the teacher, because they will excite him to studies and contemplations in Nature herself. Of the first three parts of this splendid work, only the two first lie before us upon object-teaching, and the first of the exercises in style ; a defiuitg judgment of it is, therefore, not yet possible. The splendid fullness of the useful material surprises the reader, and he feels delighted with per- ceiving that he has to do with two teachers, who give nothing but what they have proved by long practice. Every lesson seems to be given as if the talk had been held in the class. The arrangement of the exercises in style are appropriate, so far as we have been able to look them over. If we dared to make one criticism (snap our fingers at the authors), it would be this : It seems as if by the parallel contents of the exercises in observation and style, a certain monotony would be unavoidable in the later propositions. The pupil will rarely go farther in this field than to descriptions and stories. Pictures overtax his powers. The real mine from whence he will draw his compositions, outside of the nature that forms his surroundings, is human life, fable, parable, proverbs, universal history, and, above all, literature, with its incomparable riches. But we trust to the pedagogic skill of the authors, that they will avoid monotony, and that they will draw from their excellent material with proper judgment. The whole work is so important, by the wealth of its contents and the abundance of its methodical directions, that every teacher ought to be acquainted with it. We are still so poor in proper apparatus for object- teaching, that we are glad to mention a book that has already found a place for itself in the world's literature. AIDS IN OBJECT-TEACHING. 14. Fifty Fables for Children. In Pictures. By Otto Spekter, Gotha: Fr. Perthes. Object Teaching and Instructions in Composition, and Pictures as an Aid to these. By SCHUMACHER, Seminary Teacher at Briihl, and Cup- per's Head Teacher at the Deaf-mute Institution at Briihl. Third unaltered edition. Bohn, 1874. An aid is here offered to teachers, which will remind them in many re- spects of what is already known. The size of the leaves corresponds to the earlier tablets of pictures by Wilke ; some of them have nearly the same contents. But they surpass Wilke's pictures in naturalness of repre- sentation ; some of them make almost an artistic impression. They are too small for class instruction, and in this respect are decidedly inferior to Striibing's pictures. The above-mentioned little treatise contains much that is good upon the treatment of picture tablets ; it is particularly to be observed that the authors' aim continuously at the education of the child, to cooperation in the instruction, and to his development in freedom and self-reliance ; they are both enemies to all wooden examinations and catechising. On the other side we must be careful to warn the teachers not to trust too much to their capability, of being able to begin something with the pictures by a sudden leap in reference to the material, without sufficient preparation. In the little labyrinth of these intuitions, and of the appropriate forms of speech, there is no course possible without a guiding thread, but only aim- less wandering. The following hints cover the chief contents of this treatise : 1 . The aim of instruction does not require that the pictures should be handled as a series. 2. Every picture contains a series of single scenes, which are united again in a determined point of view in another picture comprising the whole. "When a picture is used for the first time, let it lie near, so that the glance of the child, without dwelling long upon the details, may first sweep over the whole. To this natural want of the child let the teacher attend, and turn later to the description of the single groups, which are separated from each other in the picture. 3. To keep to one picture until all the groups have been treated, is hardly necessary to be suggested. In general, it will be well, when the teacher has become wearied, to put the object-teaching, with reference to the material, and with intervals of other instruction, in the closest possible con- nection with the daily life and its occurrences, with the seasons and their appropriate phenomena and occupations. 4. It is necessary that the teacher, before beginning upon his lesson, should determine for himself what picture and what group he will use, that he may thoroughly investigate the picture (and as far as possible from the children's standpoint), and bring to his own mind and make clear to his own consciousness the outer and inner connection of the details repre- sented, what is determined at the moment of going on by the picture, what was probably the action preceding, and what will follow it. 5. There will be no objection to the teachers noticing his previous study 450 AIDS IN OBJECT-TEACHING. of the picture in the closest connection with their conception of it, in con- versation with the children ; but he must be cautious not to make it a hindrance to the conversation. 6. In the conversation, the teacher should at first keep himself in the background as much as possible. He suggests the subject, sets the talk in motion, and leaves it to the children ( ?) to carry it on, guides their atten- tion to new points of view, deepens or generalizes the comprehension of the thing. Errors of fact or logic he corrects or leaves to their correction ; errors of language he must treat forbearingly, and never go so far with this as to turn the children's attention from the thing to the form. 7. With respect to the development of High German, it will speedily make itself manifest, if the teacher unites the pupils of the first and those of the second school year in the conversations upon the pictures. For the second class, a useful lesson in writing might be taken from it, after the conclusion of the conversation. 8. It is to be recommended generally, that the teacher at the close of the conversation shall make a repetition of what has been said ia reference to the things lying about, and the little digressions that have taken place, and make it in such a manner that he now will say more himself, while the children listen silently, or follow, and merely take part by answering ques- tions that may arise. 15. Instruction in Language in the Elementary School. A Guide /"or Teachers, by H. R. Ruegg, Professor in University. Berne, 1S72. This work is designed for a guide for instruction in language in elemen- tary classes. There are the three first-school classes, accordnig to the plan of the Berne schools. The author gives that direction to object-teaching which makes its difficulties lie rather in the cultivation of the senses than in language. Instruction in language is not with him dead, abstract exer- cise in thinking, but the greatest possible and most living conversations with it, and practice in it. In the lower class only the intuitive thinking and thinking intuition is considered, and everything must be kept at a distance which would lead to empty abstractions. So the elementary teach- ing of language is at the same time instruction in things, and all instruc- tion in things at that stage is instruction in language also. There is also a stage of the progress in which the two are intimately connected ; by which a root, as it were, is formed, out of which at a later stage, both subjects of instruction grow as independent stems. This intimate connec- tion and interpenetration of both sides is Object-teaching. The little work contains the first instruction in Reading and Writing ; Object-teaching, and E-Kercises in Grammar ; everything in the most inti- mate connection possible, although we could have wished it difierent, per- haps, in the arrangement of the Grammatical Exercises. The whole is an ingenious, wise work, and deserves a wide spread on account of the prin- ciples brought into use aad applied. MADAME HENEIETTA BEEYMANN SCHEADER. The principles of Froebel, as understood and applied in the Kindergarten at 16 Steinmetz Strasse, Berlin. INTRODUCTION. Madame Heniiietta Breymann Schrader, whose personal relations to Froebel as neice and pupil, gave her exceptionally good opportunities of knowing his peculiar views, as expounded in the family, and to young candraates and mothers at Keilhau and Dresden, and whose own experi- ence in Kindergarten work has been eminently successful, has under her personal superintendence an establishment in Berlin, which deserves special study. Of her peculiar fitness for the work, the Baroness Maren- holtz Billow speaks as follows in her "Reminiscences of Froebel," pub- lished in 1874 : Of the Kindergartners (Froebel's early scholars) who participated in the Teachers' Meeting in the Hall of the Liebenstein's Baths, on the 27th of September, 1851, I was specially interested in seeing Henrietta Brey- maim, one of Froebel's favorite pupils, who at that time had charge of a Kindergarten founded by the Sattler family in Schweinfurth. I had become acquainted with her at the time of my first knowledge of Froebel, and was delighted by her amiability, her talents, aud her zeal for the cause. More and more intimate as time went on, we often worked together, especially in Brussels, where I invited her during my residence there to undertake the instruction in Fi'oebel's method for a six months' course, arranged by the suggestion of a number of teachers, and at the same time to take part in a Kindergarten instituted there. Fraulein Breymann (now Frau Schnider in Berlin, wife of the railroad director) is one of those advocates of Froebel's education who hold fast to the method, and strive to overcome that which generally in its practice is merely mechanical ; and to keep up its true spirit. The institution founded by her and her sister.^ in Watzum, near Wolfen- buttel, was the first known to me which took up Froebel's method for part of its programme, as a necessary branch of instruction for general female culture, and carried it through successfully. Frau Schrader agreed with me in consideriug the training of the female sex for its educational calling in Froebel's method as the first condition of making it useful in the general reform of education. In this sense she works with her hus- band, who is a true follower and clear-sighted advocate of the cause, in our Universal Educational Union, which is striving specially to secure the chief end of the reform by tlie complete application of the method. She is also one of the decided opponents of the ever wider-spreading super- ficiality in the cultivation of Kindergartners, which is now thought to be a purely mechanical calling, with the time of learning the art reduced to a few months, while a year is scarcely long enough for the majority of the somewhat uncultivated young girls who study it. With these opportunities of knowing her uncle's views, and of seeing his own work with children, mothers, and kindergartners, tested also by her own successful experience, we naturally turn to the establishment which she has organized and conducts in Berlin, for as near an approach to Froebel's own views and method, as we can now have. The interesting 452 MADAME HENRIETTA BKEYMANN SCHRADER. account given by Mrs. Aldrich of her visit to this establishment, and the valuable contribution made by Miss Lyschinska, Superintendent of Method in Infant Schools under the School Board for London, in her volume on "the Educational Value and Chief Applications of the Kindergarten Principle," the outcome of the author's association virith Madame Schrader, for years as pupil and friend, induced us to address a note for further information, to which we received the following reply : LETTER TO EDITOR OF AMERICAN JOURNAL OF EDUCATION. Dear Sir: — In response to your inquiry I take great pleasure in send- ing you a few lines about our establishment. No. 16 Steinmetz Strasse, and explaining to you the principles upon which I have founded aiff^ now direct it. This is no easy task. First of all, my health is not strong; then, I am so much taken up by practical life that it is but seldom I can find the time and quiet necessary for writing; and last, it is, I think, very difficult to put the practice of child culture clearly and concisely into written words. These are but cold interpreters of the warm, living experiences of daily practice ; they cannot lay hold of what are often the most important points in the life of children. This essence of things, in its volatility, variety, and outward irregularity of form, cannot be analyzed and clearly expressed. It is only by living with children that we can be made to understand it, and you would learn more by an hour's visit to our Kinder- garten than by long written explanations, which, in regard to practice, are what a dried and preserved flower is to a fresh and blooming one. Kindergartens are generally conducted on too rigid principles of math- ematical regularity. People seem to believe that when there is a law, there must also be inflexible regularity, not understanding that law and method can be found in irregularity of appearance, and also that the children's life cannot bear this regularity, in the measure now given, as it makes too great a pressure upon their intellectual powers, changing thus the purpose of the Kindergartens, and making of them schools for little children. Froebel's intention, on the contrary, was just to work against such a precocious and one-sided intellectual development. He desired to give a good moral direction to the natural inclinations of children, to afford them opportunities of developing their feelings in union with intellectual culture and development, but so that the latter should not become the starting point in early education. He thought that the daily cares and business of the mother and the conditions of the child's own life were the best materials for education, by putting the child in a loving and active relation to the surrounding world, fastening him to it, producing love in him by giving him oppor- tunity of loving, developing the principle of action through the exertion itself, thus making the child gather a treasury of intuitions and experi- ences which are the only sensible basis for the later development of thought. In this way the whole of the mother's activity, of which the child is a partaker, and so far as it is kept in unison with the care and love due to others, becomes the central point out of which the child is guided to the culture and knowledge of nature and of the outer world, and adding to I MAPAME HENRIETTA BREYMANN SCHRADER. 453 it the occupations provided by Froebel, he is also initiated into the begin- nings of industry and art. Froebel's intention, wiien he provided mothers -with work and occupa- tions for their little children, was not onlj^ to prove the necessity of such \ occupations in the family, but also to transplant through his Kindergarten, into public education, a corner of family life, putting thus in practice Pestalozzi's demands, expressed as follows: "Whensoever the care and forethought of parents fail to the child, be it in regard to his material, intellectual, or moral welfare, this want must be attended to in order that he may attain to his dignity as a human being. When this is not done, you may open schools to him, provide him with as much food and clothing as you like; still the poor forlorn creature is not educated, for the basis for his development as a human being will be altogether wanting. "It must be seen that such cases often present themselves, and the neces- sary provisions must be made to supply through art the deficiency of nature. When I speak of the care and forethought of parents, of course I mean those parents whose superiority gives them a true insight into the neces- sarj^ condition of the children's life, those who know how to make cir- cumstances submit to the child and act as stimulants to his natural wants of love and activity, who derive from all the conditions of the outer world materials for the child's development, who never let any opportunity escape which may be of use and profit to him." These words were written by Pestalozzi in 1809. He wrote also : "Domestic life in itself, the relation between mother and child in their material sense, are neither moral nor immoral, but they offer the materials for the culture of morals. "Man is free either to lay hold of these moral means or to disregard them, but when man does not soar above his animal capabilities, there are, in my opinion, neither father nor mother, nor son nor daughter. They enjoy the conditions of domestic life in a mere animal way, not in accord- ance with the human dignity, and consequently the human being, the man, cannot in such conditions develop himself. Neither the work of hands, nor the profession, nor the situation, can in themselves cultivate the moral feeling; when these are morally used, then, and then only, they cultivate morals. "There is in man an inner force; a dignity quite independent of the above circumstances, as well as of all the physical conditions of domestic life, and it is this dignity that gives the moral stamp to the family life. Such as is the man, such is his home." The real value of Froebel's Kindergarten lies just in this transferrence of the family atmosphere into the public education, in the methodical training of feeling and inclinations, affording to the child material and opportunity to develop his productive force, not only for his own benefit, but for the good of others ; while the school occupies itself principally with the methodical development of thought. It is, however, necessary that the Kindergarten should receive a fuller development and a continuation in a garden for the young, and in an art and work establishment where the children may continue their garden occupations, as well as the elements of art and industry; such an estab- lishment as Froebel had in view when he founded Blankenburg ; for it is obvious that many families want a help towards the development of will and feeling, not only in the first years of childhood, but during all the time given to education. 454 MADAME HENRIETTA BREYMANN SCHRADilR. Considering Kindergartens under this point of view, we are necessarily led to infer that we must take quite a different direction in the training of Kindergartens than the one now in favor. They must be taught domes- tic duties and acquirements, their minds being made aware of the fact that in those occupations are found the best materials for the education of children. It is important to develop in them real motherly ways, such as the Germans express by the word " Mutterlichkeit " ; ways which no- abstract reasonings of the mind can give, but which are the product of a deep insight into the child's nature, wants, and necessities. This insight, which Froebel possessed to a very high degree, is wanting in a great many of his followers, I believe for the two following reasons: first, the too intellectual bias given to education, then the too narrow circle in which Froebel's followers move themselves. They go on study- ing Froebel in order to understand Froebel without taking into account that Froebel's ideas are not the miraculous product of a single individual mind, but the result of the accumulated work and experience of centuries. Froebel himself is but a link in a long chain of progression, and to com- prehend him fully it is necessary to walk in his steps, to study what may be called the groundwork of his ideas, nature as well as pedagogues and poets; we must enter deeply into the ideas of such men as Comenius, Rousseau, and above all, of Pestalozzi; we must read the great poets who have given us an insight of human nature, study the outer works of crea- tion to understand the relation in which we stand towards it, — and then return to Froebel himself, but freed from prejudice and no longer depend- ent upon his ways and peculiarities, which are only a part of his too marked and strong individuality. By all this you will easily understand that the most difficult part of my task lies in the training of young Kindergartners, a task rendered doubly difficult by the fact that in Germany the situation of Kindergartner is undervalued and but ill requited. Advanced as Germany is in all matters relating to instruction, remark- ,able as are many of our methods for the acquisition of knowledge and science, it has not yet fully recognized the importance of elementary edu- cation. The interest for instruction, the thirst for knowledge, are so great that they seem to draw a bamer across the still and quiet way which ought to lead us to insight into the child's nature and necessities. But I am obliged, for to-day, to cut short and leave the end of what I have still to say about the upper classes of my establishment for another time. Pray remember me kindly to Mrs. Aldrich, in which Madam Hony joins, as well as in the expressions of regard with which I remain. Yours truly, HENRIETTA B. SCHRADER. Beklin, October 15, 1880. Joined to this letter you will find the translation of a brief French essay, written by Mad. Hony, under my direction. It contains the prin- cipal ideas upon which my Kindergarten is conducted, and though not yet complete, it will, I think, give you an idea of the way in which I have tried to put into practice the Froebelian systena. IMADAME HENRIETTA BREYMANN SCHRADER. 455 Fi'oebelian Institution at 16 Steinmetz Strasse. ORGANIZATION. I. Kindergarten.— IN three divisions. (1) Third Division, subdivided in two pa>ls on account of number, age from 2i to 4. (2) Second Division, age from 4 to 5. (3) First Division, age from 5 to 6. II. Intermediate Class, age from 6 to 6}. Preparation for the element- ary class, to which a course for stitching and manual work is joined. ill. Elementary Class, age from 6i to 7^. The course of manual work is continued. IV. A class for young girls having left the Kindergarten to enter into the public primary schools, who come several times a week to be taught stitching and housework. V. A course for the training of young Kindergartners of the first and second degree. With this establishment is intimately associated the Union for Household Hygiene ( Verein far Hau sliche Oesundheit Pflege), which attends to the health department, as well in the establishment itself as in the families. PLAN OP ROOM8. 1. Ground floor, a few steps above the level of the ground: (1.) A kitchen on the left, used for the children's work and as a ward- robe; next to this a little room for the keeping of utensils, garden tools, etc. (2.) Large room in front of the kitchen, with two windows, and with free access, for the intermediate class. (3.) Little work-room next to this, for the Kindergartners who help ia the Kindergarten. _ \ (4.) Free independent room, on the same side, for the first division. (5.) Room at the end of the passage, with a large window looking on a large and well-aired court, for the second division. (6.) Little room next to this, overlooking the same court, and used for one subdivision of the third division. > (7.) Large play-room, entered through this little room, with three win- dows looking also on the court, and having a free and independent access by this same court-yard. (8.) Little room next to the play- room, serving for another subdivision of the third division. On the same floor, on the court-yard side, two rooms and one kitchen, used by the Union for household hygiene. 2. First Floor. On the right lives a family entrusted with the clean- ing, making fires, etc., in the establishment. (9.) A room in this apartment is used for the elementary class in the morning, and for the class of manual work in the afternoon. On the left lives a lady who has the charge of the depot for the "Union per Household Hygiene," and who gives the stitching lessons. 3. Court-yard and little garden. 456 MADAME HENRIETTA BREYMANN SCHRADER. SALARIED OFFICIALS. Principal and general overseer of the establishment, Fraulein A. SCHEFEL ; Principal of the Kindergarten, FrSulein Clara Hirsekorn; Assistants in the Kindergarten, Fraulein Rosa Hirsekorn and other young Kindergartners who are learning the practice ; Teachers: In the intermediate class, Fraulein Marie Fuchs; in the elementary class, Fraulein von Burse; stitching and manual work, Fraulein Standinger; depot and class to learn mending of clothes, etc., Fraulein Eisner. A visit to MADAME SCHRADER'S ESTABLISHMENT. On my arrival the children are all gathered in room No. 2. They are singing a morning hyrnn. After a few kind affectionate words from the principal, they separate, and the work of the day begins. Third, or Youngest Division. Follow a part of these divisions to the play-room, where the children set about enjoying themselves as they please. Some join in a round game, others play quite alone. They have at their disposal very plain and simple toys, such as dolls, little chairs, tables, tea services, etc. A teacher overlooks them without taking an active part in their game, unless they desire it particularly. From two to four years of age, play is the principal occupation of the child ; it is for him the power of giving a form to his ideas by the help of surrounding objects, and at the same time the means of giving vent to the full play of his activity. Pestalozzi says: "that no force can be developed unless by the play of its own power of action." We must then conclude that if we wish to see in the child the development of his most essential faculties, he is to be allowed the full play of his energies and faculties, and no restraint whatever to be put on the first working of his individuality in his relation with the outer world. At this pertod of his development the result of his efforts is less interesting to the child than the activity itself; for this reason the influence of elders must here be principally indirect. As the child draws the materials for his ideas out of the things about him, we must try to surround him with such an atmosphere as may create in him good, sound, healthy ideas; to attain this end, we must give him room and space enough to permit him to enjoy himself fully and freely, toys and things appropriate to his physical strength, which he may easily handle and transform without breaking or destroying them. But above all, he must be surrounded with sympathy and love ; he must feel that we are always ready to enter into his ideas, to be the partakers of his joy, taking at the same time due care that he should not feel any restraint nor any special direction forced upon him. This full liberty, of such an abso- lute necessity to the child, is also the best means offered to the educator of becoming acquainted with his true nature, as it shows itself through his tastes and inclinations freely manifested. The home is generally the best place for the education of the child, but MADAME HENRIETTA BREYMANN SCHRADER. 457 when the necessary conditions for his development are not to be found in the family, the Kindergartner must fill this void and create for the child what is waiiting to him. I leave this room and enter one where the other children of the third division are assembled. They are gathered round the teacher; she is showing to them a picture out of Froebel's book Mutter und Koselieder, the basket of flowers. She gives no explanations, her object not being to teach, but merely to create joyful impressions. The children look and make remarks, the teacher answers so as to encourage them, to draw them out, and awaken their attention more and more. The picture represents a garden, where a mother and a little girl are plucking flowers to take up to the father. They examine the picture, express their feelings about it, and when they have done it long enough, some pretty flowers are shown to them. The teacher asks whetlier they would not lilie to take some home with them? But for this, they must have baskets; baskets can be made out of the children's own fingers. She makes them all join their hands in the form of a basket, making them, at the same time, sing "Little child, let us make baskets" {Mutter und Koselieder). When the song is finished they receive little paper baskets, to carry home to their parents. The talk is at an end; the children seat themselves round the table; little wooden sticks are distributed among them, out of which they make different things — vases, baskets, etc. Froebel's book. Mutter und Koselieder, is the starting point for all the occupations of this division. These occupations are already a kind of work, for the child is no longer left to the full play of his imagination, but he is limited by a given space and materials, and he must bring him- self to execute an idea which has not spontaneously come into his mind, but has been suggested by others. Work, as well as play, has activity for its basis; but if, with the latter, activity in itself is the principal end, with work, on the contrarj^ the result has its importance; therefore the child cannot be left entirely free, he must be guided so as to employ his forces in a useful way. Activity in itself is so charming for the child that he does not, at first, make a great difference between play and work; it is only when the latter presents too great difllculties and puts too great a restraint upon his liberty that it becomes irksome and painful to him. By proportioning the work to the child's powers and strength, by awak- ening in him a desire of being useful, by taking care not to fatigue him, one may succeed in making him feel as much pleasure in work as in play. There are in the child, as in the man, two personalities: the individual, and the social being. Man lives not isolated, but moves in a society to wliich he owes his own share of profit and usefulness. Education must take this into account, and try to develop simultaneously in the child, the individual and the social being by giving a full play to the spontane- ous action of the child's powers, but at the same time giving such a direction to their powers that they may be productive of general good. Play and work are both necessary, and it is to their united and combined action that the child owes sound and normal development.. 458 MADAME HENRIETTA BREYMANN SCHRADER. Second Division. The children follow their teacher to the kitchen, where they are en- trusted with flower-pots, earth, plants, little rounds of paper, each of them carrying something. They return to the class-rcom, and gather round the table, where they place the things they have Lrought with them. A spoon in the hand; they, one after the other, half fill the flower-pots with earth; they then put the plants in and cover them with earth. They then water the plants and set them before the window, when the weather is too cold to set them out in the open air. And thus the children are, from the beginning, placed directly in contact with nature ; they are brought to understand the relation in which man and nature stand to each other, and the neces- sity of reciprocal action. In order that the flower may please our eyes and rejoice us with its perfume, we must, after having planted, water it; we must take every care of it, to give and to receive; everything goes on in this world by the law of reciprocation. Another day this same plant, the violet, furnishes the material for a new work. It is stitched on a piece of paper, marked, and afterwards drawn; it appears in different aspects, but it is always the violet that is presented to the child, in order that all the experiments he is making may leave deep and lasting impressions upon his mind. Almost all the occupations of this division relate to work, and the reality is the starting point, thus, always preceding by gradual steps; passing from the image to the reality. First, the picture, then the flower, and last the plant; the semblance of work, then the work itself. First Division. The same occupations are continued. The teacher tells a little story, in which the violet plays the first part; the children listen with pleased atten- tion, and ask that it should again be told to them. The tale finished, they are shown a pretty picture by Ludwig Rickbe, representing a family, enjoying the beauty of the spring. The mother has the child in her arms; she points out to him, over the wall, the green fields, the houses; she seems to say: "See, my child, the world which is offering itself to you." Then slates are distributed among them; they are allowed to draw whatever they please, but they endeavor, generally, to represent an episode of the story they have just heard. The children learn, also, by heart, a little poem on the violet, and this poem, expressing only feelings and ideas created by the thing itself, no explanations are required. The child follows unconsciously the same path taken by the poet, he goes through the same impressions that have created his poem, which becomes for him as a revelation, the half -veiled expression of feelings to which he is himself as yet unable to give a form. Berlin, Oct. 15, 1880. [In the absence of further direct information, we must refer our readers to Mrs. Aldrich's account of her visit to this institution, and to the extract* from Miss Lyschinska's little volume on the Kindergarten Principle, for glimpses of the work done in other divisions of Madame Schrader's estab- lishment. — Ed.] VISITS TO KINDEEGARTENS-BEKLIN. 459 A GERMAN KINDERGARTEN.* This institution consisted of two divisions of tlie Kindergarten proper, and of the Transition Class, altogether providing for children from three to six years of age. What struck me as especially worthy of notice was the unity of plan upon which the education during these three years was conducted. Each class represented a year of age. At three a child entered the lowest division. Here the work of the Kin- dergarten teacher was eminently that of a mother; yet with all the freedom of the nursery there was a thread of reason running through the day's proceedings. These were not desultory, but sustained by some central thought, which was generally taken from a conversational lesson over the picture-book, or else from the present circumstance, such as of some live pet which had to be cared for and fed. The first quarter of an hour was generally devoted to a chat; but as the children were many, and the family type was upheld, the teacher took the children, in relays of six or seven at a time, to look at one or two plates in Frobel's "Mother's Book"; the rest were meanwhile building or stick-laying, or playing in the garden under the direction of an assistant. For example, a small number of children are seated round the knee of their motherly friend, who encourages them to talk freely on the experiences of the morning. Who brought Mary to the Kindergarten this morning ? Who gave Annie that nice white pinafore ? The recol- lection of the loved ones at home is stirred up, and every child con- tributes some little fact of its family history ; each would like to tell that it lias a dear mother, a father, a sister, or brother at home. This idea is seized and worked out by the motherly teacher. She inquires, relates, and finally promises to show them a picture of a family sitting together in the parlor. The picture of a home interior is shown. The heightened pleasure of the children may be read in their eager faces as they peer into the book and recognize the different members of the family in turn. After which the designs all round the central pic- ture are looked at, and the children notice how there are father and mother hares in the long grass, accompanied by their" little ones ; how there is a pigeon family, a deer family, etc. The children return again to the central picture of the human family group, and finally, the dis- position having been created, the finger game is introduced: "Let us look at our fingers ; are they not like a little family too ? See how hap- pily they live together ; they always help one another. Shall we learn a little song about the family of fingers to-day ? " " Yes," the children •wish to do so ; and, imitating the action, they repeat the following words : — " This is our mother, dear and good, This is our father of merry mood, *16 Steinmetz-strasse. Berlin. This Kindergarten, when visited by Mrs. Aldrich, had expanded so as to embrace boys and girls somewhat older than six. 450 A GERMAN KINDERGARTEN— BERLIN. This our big brotlier so strong and tall, Tbis our dear sister beloved of all, ^is is the baby still tender and small ; And tbis the whole family we call. See, when together, how happy they be ! Loving and working, they ever agree." As the building lesson comes round, the same idea of the family is carried out, and the children build a " parlor " or a " house " in which the hapi^y family is to dwell. Then the " oven " is built, and sticks are required to light it, in order that the members of the household may enjoy the family meal. On another occasion the visit of a dog to the Kindergarten is the center of interest for many days, and every occu- pation is in turn brought into connection with it. A trough is built for the dog to drink out of, a kennel is laid in the stick-laying lesson, and so on. In every instance there is some center of living interest around which the little life of these children is made to revolve, and it is drawn from the occurrences of every day. Thus the aim in this division is to awaken interest in the nearest surroundings, and at the same time to enlist the active powers of children in the same direction as their im- pressions. Wheat Grown in their own Garden, Let us trace how this method of introducing the children to life around them was continued with those from four to six years of age. These were occupied once or twice a week in gardening a plot of ground belonging to them. Here many of the plants which were to furnish subject-matter for their observation were sown, and carefully tended throughout the spring and summer. They also became practically ac- quainted with a few industrial processes, such as they could take part in. For instance, when " wheat " was being especially considered, the children enjoyed the fun of actually reaping the wheat they had helped to sow in spring, in the plot of ground common to all. They bound it in sheaves, and carried it in triumph into their school-room, where each child received a stalk or two with the full ear ; and whilst sitting qui- etly round the table they held the stalks upright and close together, until the children could very nearly picture to themselves a corn-field which had taken root in-doors. The Kindergiirtnerin* then led them by a series of self-made experiences to an appreciation of such facts as — 1. The height of the stalk. (This was very simply and well brought out by a story being told of how the Kindergiirtnerin had played at hide-and-seek with a little boy in a corn-field during the summer hol- idays.) 2. The hoUowness of the stalk. (The children learned this by blow- ing soap bubbles through the straw.) 3. The presence of knots in the stalk. (This experience was like- wise gained while blowing soap bubbles ; some children having been *I keep the original word in the text. " Infant teacher " is but a cold translation of what is meant. A GERMAN KINDERGARTEN— BERLIN. 461 allowed to break the straws in the spaces between the knots, they found they could not use them.) 4. The ear of corn hangs its head. Why ? (This led to an examin- ation of an empty and a full ear.) 5. The ear is a great house in which there are many rooms. 6. In each room there lives a single little grain. 7. Of what use is the grain ? (They had sown it in the spring, they were now about to learn its use experimentally.) Another day the corn was threshed in the garden, the children using a small flail in turn. The grain was gathered and separated from the chaff by some others. Pai't of the grain was reserved for seed, and a small quantity was ground by the children between stones. Another day, flour was taken and pancakes were baked. The chil- dren, under the direction of an older person, had each something to do in the process, the older ones learning to beat the eggs and to stir the flour, whilst the younger ones ran on little errands. At last, the great moment having arrived, the company sat down to enjoy the feast. Meanwhile, the leading idea was carried through the various occupar tions somewhat in the following manner : — The elder children were " pricking " on paper the ear of corn or the mill which ground the corn ; the younger children only outlined the millstones. Again, a scythe was sewn in colored silk or wool. When stick and ring laying was the order of the day, then the cart which carried the sacks of corn was represented, etc. The appropriate games were the " Farmer," the " Miller," the " Mill," etc. Finally a story, or simple piece of poetry, summing up the children's experiences, was spoken or sung to the Kindergiirtnerin's accompani- ment on the piano. A picture representing the subject from an artistic point of view (the " Sower," by L. Richter) was shown, and enjoyed as a resume of the children's experiences during the past week or two. There was nothing in either the story or the poem which was foreign to their experience. LESSON ON THE COMMON IVY. The connection the object has with the lives of children and of hu- man beings ; these impressions are to be conveyed to the children by the course of events. When the trees stand stripped of their green dress, when the earth is wrapped in a white mantle of snow, when no flower is to be seen in the garden, then it is that the kind ivy delights us with the freshness of its green. It cannot bear to leave the old wall so ugly and gray ; it throws its long arms round the crumbling stones, and clothes them in a garment of living green. Even in-doors we like to see our ivy plant; it does not ask for a place where it can be seen in the light of the sun ; it is pleased with a shady corner, where it will cling to our pictures and encircle dear familiar faces with a framework of green leaves ; all it asks for is air, moderate daylight, and cleanliness. It gives its very 462 -A- GERMAN KINDERGARTEN— BERLIN. best to the poorest amongst us ; it will flourish in and adorn a garret "just as readily as a window in Mayfair. Would that the children of the poor learned through us to open their eyes to see the inexhaustible beauties which Nature spreads out before all her children, that they might learn to lay hold on such pleasures as are simple yet enduring. The Course pursued with Children. I. A walk to the Botanical Gardens, which happened to be in the neighborhood. The children are told to look for and to store any evergreens they find during their walk. With the permission of the gardener some box, fir twigs, ivy, moss, etc., are gathered, and are put into little baskets the children take for the purpose. II. The children decorate their respective class-rooms. Plates are filled with water and the moss, etc., is placed ou them. The pictures, walls, etc., are decorated. (This is once done in the upper and twice in the lower division.) III. A neglected pot of ivy was observed and bought. The children observe its state and remove the cobwebs, sponge the leaves, renew the earth. A place is chosen for it in the room. (Conditions of health for the plant are thus discussed. Its appearance.) IV. A story was told. Subjects : — 1. The apple-tree that had an ivy dress on in winter. 2. The neglected pot of ivy at the gardener's. This leads up to the piece of poetry spoken by the Kindergiirtnerin, and gradually remembered and recited by the children in both divi- sions : — When the wind sounds dreary, Long ago the summer When the dead leaves fall ; Left us all alone ; Then the ivy 's never weary Nothing fresh to look at Creeping up the wall. Save the cold gray stone. Shaking otf the snow-flakes, Living leaves of ivy Laughing as they fall ; Clinging to the wall, " You may bury dead leaves ! " Gladden with their green dress, Say those upon the wall. People big and small. V. Occupations in connection with the above : — Building : a wall with ivy and moss. Sand-work : a garden, evergreens planted. Pajyer-fokVmg : a basket to hold evergreens and moss. Pricking: the ivy leaf. Sewing : ditto (natural coloring). Drawing : model of the ivy leaf. Modeling : the ivy leaf. In these diversified occupations the constructive activity of the class, and of every member of a class, finds scope. A GERMAN KINDERGARTEN— BERLIN. 463 PREPARATION OP LESSONS. Each object, before being treated with children, was studied by the Kindergiirtnerin and her assistants, and for this purpose a meeting was arranged once a week for the consideration and preparation of the objects and their accessories. The following scheme was followed in gathering information upon a plant : — A. External Structure. 1. Size. 2. Covering. 3. Chief parts. 4. Subdivisions of parts and their relative position. B. Internal Structure and Development. 1. Structure of the seed. 2. Its composition. 3. Station. 4. Time of germination. 5. Process of germination (cells, structure and con- tents ; cellular tissue ; vascular tissue ; circulation of juices ; nutrition ; root absorption ; functions of leaves ; extraordinary vessels and fluids). 6. Duration of growth, from the germ to the complete plant. 7. Prop- agation. 8. Age of plant. C. Geographical Distrihution, D. Historical. E. Cultivation. 1. General. 2. Diseases to which the plant is subject. F. Its Place in Domestic Economy. G. Classification. (Natural orders.) In case of an animal the information was gathered under the follow- ing heads : — A. Description. 1. Size. 2. Covering. 3. Color. 4. Description of parts : head ; body; l^mbs. B. Apparatus of Animal Life. 1. Movement (anatomy, general view ; muscular system, general). 2. Sensation (nervous system, general ; organs of sense; expression). C. Apparatus of Organic Life. 1. Digestive system (habitat ; food). 2. Circulation. 3. Respi- ration. D. Reproduction. 1. Care of the young. 2. Support of the young. 3. Metamorpho- sis (insects). E. Miscellaneous. 1. Geographical distribution. 2. Age attained. 8. Relations in which the animal stands to individuals of the same species ; individuals of other species, or to other orders or classes; to plants; to man. 4. Means of defense against attack. F. Historical. G, Domestication, or Acclimatization. H. Classification. 1. Individual. 2. Species. 3. Family. 4. Order. 5. Class. 6. Sub-kingdom. 464 A GERMAN KINDERGARTEN— BEBLIST. In order to obtain a complete general knowledge of the object to be treated, each teacher gathered information on one or two points more especiallj', after which the teachers met together for the interchange of such information. Prof. Moseley [English Inspector of Schools] points out the danger of incomplete knowledge on the part of the teacher. " Had the teacher known more of the subject-matter of his lesson, it has been my constant observation that he would have been able to select from it things better adapted to the instruction of children and to place them in a simpler point of view. That he may be able to pre- sent his subject to the minds of the children in its most elementary forms, he must himself have gone to the root of it ; that he may ex- haust it of all that it is capable of yielding for the child's instruction, he must have compassed the whole of it. The cardinal defect of the oral lesson in elementary schools is an inadequate knowledge on the part of the teacher of that which he is teaching. If his knowledge of it had covered a larger surface, he would have selected matter better adapted to the instruction of the children. If he had comprehended it more fully, he would have made it plainer to them. If he had been more familiar with it, he would have spoken more to the point. I will endeavor to illustrate this by an example. A teacher proposing to give an oral lesson on coal, for instance, holds a piece of it up before his class, and, having secured their attention, he probably asks them to which kingdom it belongs — animal, vegetable, or mineral — a question in no case of much importance, and to be answered, in the case of coal, doubtfully. Having, however, extracted that answer which he intended to get from the children, he induces them, by many ingenious devices, much circumlocution, and an extravagant expenditure of the time of the school, to say that it is a solid, that it is heavy, that it is opaque, that it is black, that it is friable, and that it is combustible. In such a lesson the teacher affords evidence of no other knowledge of the par- ticular thing which is the subject of it than the children might be sup- posed to possess before the lesson began. He gives it easily because the form is the same for every lesson ; the blanks having only to be differently filled up every time it is repeated. All that it is adapted for is to teach them the meanings of some unusual words, words useless to them be- cause they apply to abstract ideas, and which, as the type of all such les- sons is the same, he has probably often taught them before. He has shown some knowledge of words, but none of things. Of the particular thing called coal, as distinguished from any other thing, he knows noth- ing more than the child, but only of certain properties common to it and almost everything else, and of certain words, useless to poor chil- dren, which describe these qualities This tendency, from igno- rance of things, to teach words only, runs in a notable manner through almost all the lessons on physical science which I have listened to." We shall be glad to enrich our pages with further extracts from this excellent treatise. NOTES OF VISITS TO KINDERGARTENS. INTRODUCTION. The following paper is by Mrs. A. Aldrich, the first Directress of the kindergarten in Florence, Mass., which was founded by Mr. Hill, who erected a beautifid building for the purpose in lovely grounds, and invited all the citizens of the place, rich and poor, to send their chil- dren, promising to pay all expenses which their voluntary contributions could not meet. The Institute now [1880] consists of four classes, with suitable teachers, aU under the able and genial direction of Miss Carrie T. Haven. The Florence kindergarten has acquired a peculiar reputation from the fact that its founder made it a point that there should be no direct religious teaching, which grew out of his disgust at the narrow ecclesiasticism which cannot see that little children should not be indoctrinated in dogmas. The extreme to which he carries his sentiments upon this point would be disastrous in its effects if he could find no one who knew how to excite the religious sentiment in children without formulas that involve dogmatism. Under the charge of Mrs. Aldrich there was no lack of religious culture of a vital nature, and when these children are old enough to hear the common religious ex- pressions, they will have a deep meaning to them. Her mantle has fallen upon one who is also doing a good work. Mrs. Aldrich has passed a year in Germany and sends an interesting account of her observations. She enjoyed much intercourse with the noble Baroness Marenholtz, who has done so much for the diffusion of kindergartens in Europe. — Editor. MRS. SCHRADER's KINDERGARTEN IN BERLIN. When visiting the Berlin kindergartens I found one which was doing an independent work, embodying the vital points of the kindergarten system in a little different way from the ordinary one, but with such remarkable results that I felt it deserved close study. It will be inter- esting to know that the directress of it is a relative of Friedrich Frdbel, known in the history of the institution at Keilhau as Henrietta Brey- mann. In her own account of how she came to take up the work, she says : " Friedrich Frobel's mother," Mrs. Schrader writes, " was my grand- father's sister. My grandfather, on the mother's side, was Consistorial Rath and Superintendent at Nette, near Hildesheim. His name was Hoffman. My mother married the clergyman of the place, Breymann. Frobel often visited my grandfather, and after his death he used to come 30 466 VISITS TO KINDERGARTENS -BEKLIN. to see us from time to time. He saw me first when I was quite a child, but I made his acquaintance at Keilhau, at the age of seventeen or eighteen, having been invited to spend the summer there. I had not then the least intention of becoming his pupil ; it was only a family visit to my relatives. But his conversations made such a deep impression upon me, that I asked permission of my parents to study under him. I was allowed to attend a com-se of lectures given by him at Dresden, and afterwards to follow hira to Liebenstein, where he founded an educa- tional establishment to prepare young women for his mission. I was deeply impressed by all he said and by his general principles, but from the first the way in which the kindergarten idea was put in practice did not satisfy my ideal. I could not say why, but I felt quite unwill- ing to take the direction of one, and returned home. The views of Frbbel were a revelation to me — a light shining in darkness. They ap- peared to me far in advance of the manners and doings of the kiuder- gartners who were at work. I required many years and much experience of life and home to understand why I did not like the kindergartens." In conversation, Mrs. Schrader told me that from childhood her chief amusement when left to play freely was school keeping. Her father, the clergyman Breymann, who thought it was a far nobler life to have some definite object in it, and was quite above the common German prejudice, that if a woman did anything for money she immediately degraded her- self, proposed to her and to an older sister and brother to open a school in their native place. They found suitable accommodations and opened a school, which continued for many years, was enlarged, and became a prominent institution. They were happy in it for many years, working out their own ideas of education, when Henrietta married to a govern- ment official who had profound sympathy for everything that interested his wife, and promoted any plans she might form. Her sister died, the school was discontinued, and the change from her former pursuits to that of a woman of society, which was inevitable, as she was obliged, of course, to preside at her husband's dinners and receptions, and to pay visits in return, was very irksome to her, until she thought to herself, why not use the opportunity to spread her interest and her views in regard to kindergartens, in this society which she was constantly meet- ing. She found a cordial response to what she no doubt did in a genial manner, for she did not make direct appeals for assistance. It was her taste and way to interest minds intelligently in the principles and leave the results to follow in due time. In 1872 Mrs. Schrader went to Berlin to live. This was two years after the Baroness Marenholtz had left it for Dresden. While in Berlin, Mad. M. had founded the Frdbel society, but soon retired from it, because of a difference among the members as to the policy to be pursued. Mad. Meyer was also a member at that time, and left subse- quently, for similar reasons. Mrs. Schrader accepted an invitation to join, but finding very soon that the leaders were more schoolmasters VISITS TO KINDERGARTENS— BERLIN. 467 than kindergartners, she, too, retired. " After this," Mrs. Schrader "writes, " I was one day asked to take interest in a kindergarten for the poor, founded by Madame Marenholtz and some of her friends, which ■was quite independent of the Frobel society, and at that time waa •without a head, and had its support from a few people who did not like to abandon it. With these my husband and I formed a new associa- tion, in which Mrs. Bertha Meyer and others became interested, because it was a work for the poor. Of the executive committee of this asso- ciation I became the president, and Mad. Meyer a member. " In the winter of 1874 I was asked to give to a small audience some lectures on the ideas of Frobel, which met with warm sympathy from many ladies, who became my best friends and supporters in my work. Witli Mad. Meyer I soon after became quite intimate, and her hus- band helped me a great deal in all matters of business connected with the kindergarten. Its support came in part from tlie subscriptions of the members of our association, in part from gifts and the help of people who had not any particular interest for the thing itself, but wished to please me and my husband. " The kindergartners whom I found at work could not execute my ideas, so I asked my friend and pupil, Fraulein Annette Scheffel, to take the direction of it in April, 1874. At the same time, we both be- gan to give private lessons, in order to train our own assistants. My work in this small circle of ladies of which I have spoken gives me great satisfaction, but I must say that outside of it I have encoun- tered many difficulties. The older Frohel society is widely spread, has money, an exterior organization, with a school director for president, which has converted kijidergartening into school-work, and trained kindergartners to become inferior and cheaper teachers. In our time, people are so fond of positive knowledge and of such methods as will employ the hands of children in making pretty little things for show. Besides, mothers like to have kindergartners take a great deal of work off their hands. Of course, those who like these ways did not like mine, as I can show very little in comparison, my opinion being that at the kindergarten age the work ought to be interior and preparatory. The kindergartners ought not to be trained to take the mothers' places, but only to help them. I have all those against me, also, who, disliking the kindergartens such as they ustxally are, and not knowing my ideas, think mine is founded on the same principle — condemning thus, with- out inquiry, every work that bears the name of kindergaiten. My work, therefore, proceeds slowly, but I believe, nevertheless, firmly and surely. "The Frobel society wanted tl:e state to take more interest in the kindergarten, and addressed the Minister of Public Instruction on the subject. He replied that he could not give any effectual help until he knew it was really useful, but that he would take steps to ascertain this. Accordingly, he requested all masters of public schools to record. 468 VISITS TO KINDEKGARTENS— BERLIN. and forwai-d their observations on the children that had come to them from kindergartens. These children, in general, were badly judged. The information thus acquired was often second-hand, being given by the head-master, while the under teachers alone had to do with these chil- dren, and because there was no mention made whether the children came from real, genuine kindergartens, or only from insignificant infant schools, of which we have a great number. Among the schools there were two into which I thought our children had gone, that gave very dif- ferent reports about them from any of the others. I knew the head- master of one of these schools. A year before, he had spoken to me of the children that had come to him from my kindergarten. He said some of them were the best children in the school, quite model pupils, and that others were remarkable for their moral conduct. Later, I saw his written report, which corroborated his personal statement to me. The report of the other school was bad. What does this prove ? "In my opinion, however, schools cannot be taken as the test by which to judge of the kindergarten. Some of these schools are very bad. Children going out of good kindergartens cannot endure them. Besides, it is not the only aim of the kindergarten to prepare children for public schools. To have a just idea of the results obtained, moth- ers and families should be asked to add their information." The Kindergarten. I will now endeavor to describe Mrs. Schrader's kindergarten. For a few years it increased very little, for Mrs. Schrader, having very decided ideas of her own as to what a kindergarten should be, was un- willing to increase the number of children until she had trained assist- ants who could do what she believed to be child-culture. Three or four years ago, after having hitherto been in uncomfortable quarters, the kindergarten was moved into an excellent room in Steinmitz street, with Mrs. Schrader's friend, Annette Scheffel, installed over it as direct- ress. Eight rooms are occupied by the different departments. Added to these are bath-room, dispensary and store-room. A close intimacy is kept up with the mothers, whose needs and wants are fully and judiciously supplied. The most important supply furnished is pure milk, for the infants of the poorer class are ordinarily fed on beer, and the death rate is large. So great a change has been produced by this alteration of their diet, that the families whose children attend the kindergarten seemed quite renewed physically as well as morally. At these rooms, bath-tubs of all sizes are kept, to be loaned to the mothers whenever wanted. This kindergarten may be said to be a combination of what are called, with us, Mrs. Shaw's day nurseries, and the kinder- gartens which these nurseries often contain under the same roof, with separate matrons. In Mrs. Schrader's kindergarten, an efficient and motherly matron is always in attendance, night and day, as she lives in furnished apartments, ready to give out supplies whenever needed. Cod-liver oil, wine and extract of beef are prominent articles. I also 3 VISITS TO KINDERGARTENS— BERLIN. 469 saw rolls of flannel, and linen bandages, and second-hand garments of every description. These are brought to the rooms, and mothers and the elder girls in the families are taught to repair and make them over to the best advantage. This is a very interesting part of the work. Children, and even grown people, feel a greater interest in preparing articles they want than in learning to mend and make with only the learning as an object. In the first room I entered were ten or twelve babies, under three ■ years old, drawing their dolls in little baby carriages, and one dressing his doll for the day. Balls, ninepins, reins and implements for work abounded. A quiet young girl, who seemed to be in full sympathy with them, was in charge. Twice during the morning these little things were allowed a pleasure they enjoyed greatly — going into the next room where children a little older than themselves were playing their games. On that day the game was washing, ironing and man- gling their dolls' clothes, and putting into wardrobes or bureaus, which they constructed with sticks, blocks and whatever other material they needed and asked for. The older children had cut out many paper garments for these children's dolls. One little dot of a girl was fold- ing pocket handkerchiefs and towels, and when she had done this she picked up some three-inch sticks and then, as if talking to herself, and wholly unconscious of anything else, said, " Now little sticks, you must be my wardrobe ; " at the same time her busy fingers made the ward- robe, and the handkerchiefs were placed in it with great care. An- other tiny little thing had done her washing very nicely, giving special attention to the rinsing; she was now ready to hang them up, and called for sticks, which she laid on the table to make her drying frame ; when fully dry, according to her baby judgment, she told the sticks they must now be a bureau, and into a bureau they were soon trans- formed, which received the clothes when they were properly ironed and folded. Before the children are given their work they are told to give their attention, for not more than a minute, to something the kinder- gartner has to show, and this one moment is the base of their study for the day. If asked to give their attention too long there would be a failure, for a very young child cannot keep its attention on one thing long at a time without a strain. The third gift was on the table in the next room (the divided cube). As it was the Emperor's birthday, some one child had built an arch through which he was to pass. All the rest of the children caught the idea and made arches for the procession — various arches and monu- ments in his honor. Finally a flag was thought of, and all wanted flags. These flags had been manufactured by the older children on some state occasion and were now lent, so that the jubilee was com- plete, and it would, perhaps, have suited the emperor far better than the celebration gotten up a few days later in his honor, for this was perfectly spontaneous, and given with a heartiness that went to my 470 VISITS TO KII«n)ERGAKTKNS— BERLIX. heart. In another room, children were weaving, but the difference be- tween tliis and other kindergartens consisted in some of the mats being real mats, woven from listing, which were to be carried home for use, and each one felt conscious that he was one of a little community that had something to do of which each could perform a part. The quiet simplicity and dignity of the children, as they worked, was past belief if it had not been seen. The next room was the play-room, where some impromptu play was going on — the dramatizing of something that had really happened, their imaginations filling up any lack of incidents. This was a true picture of Frobel's own doings. He seized upon the rugged mount- ain at Keilhau as soon as he and his pupils got there, to mould it to his purposes — digging out rocks and making a path up to a pretty opening that was to serve as a resort, for they scarcely had anything to live in there at first that could be called a house. Mrs. Schrader had caught his spirit truly. Our next visit was to the music-room where the elder children re- paired every day to have a real concert. Four drums and the same number of tambourines, cymbals and castanets were used by the chil- dren to accompany the piano. The time was not perfect, but almost incredible for such wee children, and they were very happy and self- possessed. Strongly accented tunes were played, and those who fully understand how children revel in such music, can perhaps faintly imagine how these rhythmical waves filled the little hearts with delight. This, like all the other occupations, was of short duration — about fifteen min- utes perhaps — as long as each one could do his part without weariness. As we crossed the hall we saw a little boy and girl washing dolls' clothes. The little boy was washing in a tiny tub on a bench just be- fore him. There stood a set kettle low enough for his use, scoured as bright as copper can be ; this work is all done by the children, each child leaving it as clean and bright as it is found. A line hung within reach upon which was a row of fairy stockings, drawers, skirts, dresses, aprons, etc., fastened with tiny clothes' pins. These clothes were air- ing after having been ironed, and I never saw nicer work done. The little flat-irons were just the right size. Indeed, it was a perfect laun- dry, and I now saw the charm of it. The dear dolls were waiting to be dressed, and when that was done, the night-gowns were to be washed. Here was a motive for work quite at the child's level. It brought puie delight because it had an immediate object which a dreary practice in laundry work would not have had. This year there are ten children who have been through the kinder- garten, and now form an advanced class. This will sound like a para- dox to those who know that in Germany all children are required to go to school at six years of age, and the kindergarten has not been ac- cepted as a part of public instruction. The influence of this particular kindergarten has been such, and so marked upon the children and their VISITS TO KINDERGARTENS-BERLIN. 471 families, that the law is not strictly enforced in this instance, though it was so in the early part of its existence. Indeed, this is the first year any have been allowed to remain any length of time after it is known or suspected that they are six or more. It is the complaint of all the kindergartners I meet here that the children are not allowed to remain long enough. The children of this advanced kindergarten, having had all their faculties so naturally cultivated, can tell little incidents in very pretty and concise language ; they are then asked to write down what they have said, which they readily do, and then it is examined as to its value ; anything that is wrong is nmde right, and then the children read it and spell the words. It can easily be seen how much ground this can be made to cover legitimately without an arbitrary direction. The pots in which the children cultivate plants have a tiny picture or arrangement of bright colors pasted on according to the taste of the child, who thus knows it for his own, having done it himself. The hooks for the coats and hats are marked in a similar way on frames they make themselves. Parents of the better classes sometimes come and ask to have their children admitted, and plead that they shall be put in a class of the better grade. The parents are told there is no difference, that all are good and clean, and are asked to go through the rooms and see for themselves if there is any one place they would choose over another. Without an excei^tion no choice is made. The decided liberality of Mrs. Schrader's views is apparent in this. She does not think it best to have many children in one class, because she wishes to have everything as nearly like family life as possible. The directress. Miss Scheffel, is a lady of the cultivated class. She takes no class herself, and is thus free to listen and to watch for the needs and opportunities of the children. This kindergarten has been work- ing quietly because Mrs. Schrader knew she coi\ld not accomplish much without the right helpers. Her first object is to train thoroughly such persons as would make sure the quality of the work for many years. The kindergartners of her own training are women who are not so set in school ideas that they are unable to accept the new education freely. The whole atmosphere is growth, the principal aim to secure spon- taneous ideas. Mi's. Schrader confines herself less to the kindergarten material proper than any kindergartner that I have known, but she knows how to take hold of ctl:.r tilings in the Frobelian spirit. If a box is wanted, boxes are the occupation of the day. The folding, cut- ing, pasting and ornamenting of the covers are done by the children, and they are not only for themselves but for the younger ones who are not able to do it. Whether it is beads, seeds, bits of wool, or a few pine needles that are picked up when walking, there is always an oppor- tunity to preserve them. From the beginning Mrs. Schrader has desired to have a work-school connected with her kindergarten, and last year it was established. Fancy work of various kinds, plain knit- ting, wood carving, basket-making, willow mat weaving, etc., I saw pur-. 472 VISITS TO KINDEBGAETENS-BERLIN. sued here. The school is open two hours in the afternoon. Here, as throughout the whole establishment, the natural needs are first attended to. An advanced school has also been opened, based on natural princi- ples, finding science and art and their uses in the needs of the moment. The varied world of enjoyment arising out of this movement fills the life here with a continual charm that is at first surprising, but when one sees it with heart as well as eyes, the wonder is that any kinder- garten should be kept on any other basis. I have not mentioned that the children are invited to come back in the afternoons if they wish to do so, to carry on any work in which they may be interested. The children, who have left the kindergartens and gone into other schools, are also invited, and they come regularly on Wednesday and Saturday afternoons. They go into the work rooms, or play with the young ladies who are being trained for kindergartners, who preside over these meet- ings without any superintendence by Miss Scheffel. This is the mode in which these young ladies become acquainted with the children. The tables in Mrs. Schrader's kindergarten are not lined. She thinks the lines draw the attention from the true artistic work, which needs training of the eyes, according to the opinion of the most suc- cessful German teacher of drawing, Peter Schmidt. The result in Mrs. Schrader's kindergarten is very fine. To this account of Mrs. Aldrich we add a few extracts from a very attractive and instructive volume by Miss Lyschinska, entitled *" The Kindergarten Principle — its Educational Value and Chief Applica- tions.^' Miss Lyschinska is superintendent of Method in Infant Schools under the School Board of London, and she credits to her association with one of Frbbel's family, Henrietta Schrader (nee Breyman) of Ber- lin, and her tuition, her knowledge of the Kindergarten Principles as developed in this volume. The opening chapter is devoted to " A Ger- man Kindergarten," the institution established by Mrs. Schrader, and in which Mrs. Aldrich sees so much to admire. •Published by W. Isbister, 56 Ludgate Hill, 1880. 180 pages with numerous illus- trations. CEITICISMS ON TEOEBEL'S SYSTEM AND ITS EXTENSION. BY MADAME A. DE POKTUGALL.* InspectreBs of Infant Schools in the Canton'of Geneva. I. CRITICISMS CONSIDERED. The views of Froebel, a man of original mercurial genius, working inde- pendently of all traditions, were sure to provoke criticism and opposition. The objections to their practical application may be grouped as follows : 1, Expense; 2, social disturbance; and 3, violations of pedagogic canons. 1. Objections on account of Expense. That the new education, covering several years of the child's life not befcTJ utilized for purposes of development, and requiring space, con- structions, equipment, and skilled personal attention, calls for expenditure of money, cannot be denied; but the results should, and we believe do, justify this expenditure. Spacious and well-ventilated premises, halls for work and for play, a yard and a garden, are indispensable. If we add the expenses of the management and the material, numerous and capable teachers, it will be seen that to establish and support Kindergartens imposes great sacrifices, and that the municipalities and governments must be entirely convinced of the excellence of these institutions before they can be expected to swell their budgets for the purpose of founding them. "We shall not insist upon the very imperative reasons which make us think that the expenses of construction and management will tend to increase rather than dimin- ish. Tlie quite practical solution which some Belgian cities, Liege, for example, and the Canton of Geneva, in Switzerland, have given to this question is the best answer to these criticisms. The Kindergartens of Liege are communal establishments, for which that city makes great sac- rifices. The large number of children on their list (3,200 children in 1876) proves that they are in high favor, and that the Froebelian institutions are highly appreciated by the population. In Geneva the Kindergartens still bear the name of Infant Schools, but the method of Froebel is applied in them. The law of October 19, 1872, while leaving the initiative to the communes, placed the schools under the surveillance of the Cantonal authorities. The law is as follows : Art. 17. One infant school at least is established by the Commune. The Department of public instruction approves the regulations of these schools and watches their progress. The Council of State grants a subsidy for the creation and maintenance of the infant schools. Art. 18. The infant schools are optional and gratuitous; they receive children until they are six years of age, and are directed by mistresses onH snh-mistresses. -xiv . 19. The salaries of the mistresses and sub-mistresses are fixed by the State. The premises are furnished by the commune. •Paper tn Proceedings of International Congress, 1880. Translated by Mrs. Mann. 474 CRITICISMS ON FROEBEL'S SYSTEM AND ITS EXTENSION. This law has taken full effect. There are scarcely five or six communes in the Canton of Geneva that are not already provided vrith Kindergartens. Every child who attends them costs the Commune and the Canton on an average twenty-four francs per year, or two francs per month. These grants are established by the budget of the Canton of Geneva for the years 1879 and 1880. In this moderate sum are comi^rised all the expenses of the Froebel material, the salaries of the mistresses, the courses of in- struction for the teachers, etc., etc. The construction of the buildings and the furniture are not included. These figures prove that the cost of the Kindergartens is not great. Whoever compares these expenses with those incurred by the old Salks cVAsyle, for which the maximum expense rose to fifty centimes per child per month, will feel that the establishment of the Kindergartens is an onerous charge. But if the governments and the contributors think that the system created by Froebel is the basis of a good public instruction and constitutes a progress in school institutions, we think they will not recoil from sacrifices which we have by no means exaggerated. 2. Kindergartens do not meet the wants of the Poor, 1. M. R. de Guimps, in his Philosophy and Practice of Education, re- marks: "The Kindergarten could not receive the great mass of the children of the poor;" and others go still further, and assert that the very excellences of the Kindergarten, — its regularity, order, neatness, and happiness, are incompatible with the harsh necessities of not a few families in all cities and villages. This is not a full statement of the case. The poor child in these institutions does enjoy comfort and happiness, but that is precisely what Froebel intended. The child is indeed happy there ; as its gaiety and contentment, its whole expression, prove it. Placed there under a motherly direction, surrounded by little companions, it enjoys a true family life, which the paternal home can rarely furnish. The father, and often the mother, obliged to work for the maintenance of their children, abandon their domestic hearth every day, leaving their children in the care of an aged or infirm grandmother, or perhaps of a neighbor who often has something else to do than to watch them. What dangers do not the poor little ones run! And these are the little deserted waifs whom the Kindergarten collects, to whom it offers a happy and busy life. But the taste for neatness and order which the Kindergarten inculcates on its little pupils, and which the latter carry home, is an inap- preciable gain to them instead of a cruelty. The child does not like to go to school improperly clothed, badly washed and badly combed. He knows that he will be spoken to by the teacher, and we shall find that lie insists upon his mother's giving him the most indispensable physical care. Thanks to his constant importunities and improved habits, order, and with order economy, penetrate many dwellings, and insensibly raise the moral code of the family. 2. It is further objected that the Kindergarten interferes with the rights of the family. This criticism, if well founded, would be an absolute con- demnation of the system of the great Thuringian pedagogue. But let us open his works ; let us open the Education of Man ; we find on every page the solicitude, the respect, which the sacred institution of the family % CKITICISMS ON PROEBEL'S SYSTEM AND ITS EXTENSION. 4*75 inspired in Froebel, an institution in which he saw the first elements of society. We are certain that those who make this reproach, have never read or linown either his thought or his system. Is not that which people attack most violently often that which they know least about ? Froebel was so preoccupied with the future of the family that all his aspirations tended to reform it, to re-edify it, to elevate it. And he confided this reform to the mother. How great and noble is the part which Froebel assigns to her, and how far we still are from realizing it. How many mothers are even the centers of the family life, or acquit themselves of their manifold duties, and without assistance? Uncultivated, ignorant governesses, these are the assistants they procured up to the day when Froebel offered them his Kindergarten. There parents can safely send their children every day, and know that they will find in it what their home cannot give them, a little world, where, under enlightened direction, they will learn to live. And the return home! How many things to recount after an absence of some hours! The Kindergarten is necessary to the child and to the family, to the rich and to the poor, to the well-to-do citizen and to the workman, for it is a humanitarian and a social work. It is necQssary for the wife, for the mother; it assists her and forms her for her educational mission. "In order to establish my work," said Froebel, at the inauguration of his Kindergarten at Blankenburg, in Thmingia, in 1840, "I need the cooperation of every one, especially of women. Yes, what is necessary for my success, is the concurrence of mothers, wives, sisters. I therefore make a serious appeal, not only to the female population of my country, of Germany, but to all the civilized world. I place my new institution in the hands of women; it is to their zeal and their tenderness that I confide this garden, that they may cultivate it and make it prosper by the care that they alone can and know how to give." 3. Pedagogical Objections. Some pedagogical critics, who value the school only for certain tradi- tional habits and acquisitions — keeping still, and the ability to read, write, and cipher, complain that pupils who pass into the school from the Kin- dergarten have little or no knowledge, and are often even turbulent and impatient of discipline. The mission of the Kindergarten is not to impart book knowledge, but its plays and occupations should give intelli- gence, and the power of adaptation. But even the friendly critics com- plain that this intelligence is often accompanied with a want of concentra- tion. But whenever we have met with it and sought out the cause, we have been sure that it proceeded from a defective application of the system. How many young teachers are not up to their task! how many go astray in the method, and take the means for the end, the letter for the spirit! Yet we do find some well-directed Kindergartens, although they are still too rare, and these furnish excellent pupils to the schools. We have verified the fact that the influence of a first rational education continues through years of study, and that this influence makes itself felt espec- ially when the instruction appeals to reason, logic, and good sense. Finally, we believe that the main criticisms made upon Froebel's sys- tem proceed from incomplete knowledge of it, from the imperfect appli- 476 CRITICISMS ON FROEBEL'S SYSTEM AND ITS EXTENSION. cation of it, as well as from a too literal interpretation of it. It is to the exaggerated zeal of certain disciples of Froebel, that many criticisms of his system are due. Those disciples admit of no changes or modifications in the application, and give a stereotyped form to the method; many even go so far as to pretend that it cannot be touched without injury. This leads us to the second division of our subject. II. FURTHER DEVELOPMENT AND ADAPTATIONS. The method produced by an original mind can be neither mechanically applied, nor servilely imitated. It is to be modified by the influence of circumstances, personalities, and national character. The character, the tendencies, even the aptitudes, vary in different countries ; the system can be modified in its form, while the spirit of it remains the same. And how many changes, not foreseen by the founder, have gradually been introduced, without ceasing to be faithful to this spirit. With Froe- bel, the Kindergarten was only the family enlarged, and was to contain but a comparatively small number of children. Now that the Salles d'Asyle and the infant schools have adopted Froebel's method, we have been forced to multiply the plays and occupations, especially for the little children who are received at the age of two and one-half years. It has been necessary to introduce a whole series of innovations too long to be enumerated. In the countries peopled by the Latin races, where the children are by temperament more lively and precocious, we must not think of imposing the method in all its rigor. It is necessary, besides, to admit a period of transition, to concede to the upper class in Kindergart- ens some of the branches of instruction of the primary school, particu- larly reading and writing. As M. Buisson said in his report upon the Vienna Exposition, "What should be absolutely condemned and pro- scribed, is not the teaching of reading and writing in the Kindergartens, but the preponderant role and abstract character given to these lessons." The details of the programme naturally depend upon the usages of each country, and even of each city. But it must not be concluded from certain concessions and variations needed by the conditions of things, that a Salle d'Asyle becomes a Kindergarten as soon as a little weaving and pricking are introduced into it. These superficial adaptations are neither desirable nor useful ; something more is necessary than the material and the manual application of it; the thought that presided over the organiza- tion of the method, the spirit of Froebel, these are what are necessary to animate and vivify the whole. As to new industrial adaptations, these are possible, but not before a certain age; they must not be thought of for little children. The braiding of straw, an easy transition from the weaving of paper, might be intro- duced in an upper class of the Kindergarten, together with many system- atic occupations ; folding and cutting may be transformed into box-mak- ing; and we should recommend to pupils from eight to ten years of age rattan basket-making, which we have seen more than once well executed by children who had been in Kindergartens. But we must not presume too far on the strength of the little pupils. As to the influence exercised by the embroidery work of Froebel upon needle-work, it is no longer contested. CRITICISMS ON FROEBEL'S SYSTEM AND ITS EXTENSION. 417 The fundamental principle of tlie modern school is the unity in educa- tion. But this unity does not exclude a graduated division. The great whole of school institutions is divided into several steps ; each step is a preparation for that which follows. The Kindergarten, being the first step, must be in intimate connection with the primary school, to which it serves as a basis. This connection will only be possible when, on one side, the Kindergart- ners shall receive good normal training, and on the other, every primary instructor, male or female, shall be initiated into Froebel's system. III. SPECIAL NORMAL TRAINING. We think a measure analogous to the decree of the 27th of June, 1872, by the Minister of Public Instruction in Austria, should be introduced in every country where there is compulsory instruction. The teachers of Kindergartens, as well as the primary-school teachers, should be com- pelled to submit to normal training, and to pass through examinations for their certificate of capacity. To a certain point the normal training given to teachers of every degree would be identical. It would be the same for the principles, the same for the method, but there would be special instruc- tion, according to the stage of teaching to which the candidate was going to consecrate himself. The theory and practice of the Kindergarten, including the study of psychology and general pedagogy, would be one of these specialties. In conclusion, we would say that the Kindergartner should be thor- oughly acquainted with the programme and organization of the primary grade of instruction, an 'indispensable condition if she wishes to prepare pupils for the primary school so that they can pursue its studies with profit. The primary-school teachers should study the Froebelian pedagogy, in order to understand the principles upon which their pupils have been prepared, for there are as many points of contact between the Kinder- garten and the primary school, as between different classes of the latter. Is it desirable to apply the principles of Froebel in primary instruction ? Better to answer this important question, let us examine to what degree of development the little pupil has arrived, who leaves the Kindergarten for the primary school at the age of six or seven years. If tie has attended a good Froebelian institution for three or four years, he will certainly have acquired the gift of seeing for himself, the gift of observation. Questioned upon objects that are daily striking his attention, he ought to be able to express what he sees and what he conceives in simple and precise language. He ought to be capable of designating each object which is familiar to him by its name; he ought to be able to give an account of the properties of things, of their practical use, to know their relations of size and number, to distinguish their colors, etc. Be- sides this general knowledge, he should be already developed in reference to individual and inventive work. At this period the character of the child should have been outlined; conscience, will, and moral sense should be already developed in him. He should have attained that degree of human development in which, 478 CRITICISMS ON PROEBEL'S SYSTEM AND ITS EXTENSION. without prejudice to the sentiment of personal dignity, he comprehends that he is to submit voluntarily and fully to the rule which is the law for the whole. He ought to know how to obey spontaneously, from a senti- ment of obedience ; that is, he ought to have learned to love what is good and detest what is evil. The love of his neighbor, the first germ of love to God, the germ of religious feeling, should have bloomed in his heart. As to the physical development we will not insist. Every day, every hour passed in the Kindergarten contributes to the development of strength, skill, and grace. , Is the child ready to begin study, properly so-called? Is the school ready to receive him? Has the school, as it is organized to-day, a programme, a system of dis- cipline and instruction adapted to continue the work of the Troebelian system? If we take everything into consideration in the public school which the child attends from his sixth to his fourteenth year, we say with- out hesitation, no. We recognize the progress that has been made, the immense path traversed, but for causes too numerous to be summed up here, from our own personal experience especially, we think there is room for a reform, the first step of which would be to provide a transition between the Kindergarten and the school. The founder of the Froebeliaa method, persuaded "that there is no leap in the human mind," that everything is coordinated, and that its development must also be coordi- nated, demanded this intermediate class between the Kindergarten and the school. This intermediate class, which he called the upper class of the Kindergarten, was the object of his solicitude, and we will study the hints which we meet upon the subject in his works, and the ways and means to realize its existence. Intermediate Class. According to Froebel, the plays, talks, exercises, and occupations of the system should be continued in this intermediate class. The occupa- tions are far from being exhausted in the Kindergarten proper; they are scarcely half disposed of; they should be continued, then, and a more preponderating part given to the instruction, of which they represent the intuitive element; the building-blocks, the sticks, the folding, the weav- ing, etc., help the processes of calculation and intuitive geometry. The folding into squares, rectangles, triangles, etc., will initiate the child into the knowledge of a great many plane figures, their different angles, the value of these angles in relation to their position, etc. In the same man- ner, the building, modeling, and box-making will initiate him into the knowledge of solids. These exercises, which are quite intuitive, are the point of departure for plane geometry and stereometry (or the measuring of solids), whose elements the child acquires witliout scientific definitions, or having recourse to abstraction. Not a lesson can pass without his being called upon to compare the relations of objects and their properties. The rings and the sticks, used separately or in combination, give an opportunity for invention, and the charming figures that can be made with them, and afterwards copied, give a great attraction and a powerful impulse to drawing, for the Kindergarten hardly exhausts the elements CRITICISMS ON PROEBEL'S SYSTEM AND ITS EXTENSION. 4T9 which prepare for the admirable method of linear drawing that Froebel composed. It is in the intermediate class and the primary school that the teaching of linear drawing will find its true place. It constitutes an excellent preparation for the study of penmanship, of which the pupil now gains his first notions. It is well known that the use of the little sticks in the Kindergarten is the preparation for arithmetic. The child counts there with these sticks as he counted with counters, cubes, etc., without going beyond twelve. In the intermediate class, he does not go beyond twenty, but restrained in these limits, he passes intuitively through all the .^different operations of arithmetic, progressing strictly from the known to the unknown, imitat- ing the little sticks upon the slate, then gradually replacing them by fig- ures. As to the talks and object lessons to which selected poems serve as illustrations, they take a more instructive character in the intermediate class, and serve (as well as in the lower classes of the primary school) as preparation for natural history and geography. But another advantage can be taken of them. At the end of every talk the teacher can sum up, in a few simple, clear, concise sentences, some elementary notions to which the little story or object-lesson has led. These short propositions, pronounced clearly and correctly, are the points of departure for the study of the mother-tongue, or rather of its first steps, reading. Then these propositions can be analyzed into words (five or six words), the words into syllables, the syllables into sounds. This first initiation into the constituent elements of language may occupy six months at least, and prepare for the reading lessons which the child will receive in the lower stage of the primary school. Then the symbol, the sign, the letter will be given him for the sound which he knows. This preparatory work abridges and facilitates the study of reading, takes from it all its dryness, and secures its results. This intermediate class for children six or seven years old is a very important one. We will even say that we think it indispensable, in order to secure, through the coming years of study, the advantages of Froebel's system; indispensable to the primary school, provided the primary school accepts the Kindergarten as its basis, and its points of departure, and consents to be the continuation, the natural con- sequence of it. The intermediate class opens the way; it alone can ren- der possible the introduction and application of the principles of Froebel to the primary school ; it is the necessary link which will one day make of the Kindergarten and the primary school an organized whole. Education by Doing. But the intermediate class is, as we have said, only the first step of the reform which Froebel looked forward to for the present primary school. This reform is to consist especially in the introduction of the Froebelian principle of work, of intelligent, naethodical work, which demands the concurrence of all the activities of the child, and which procures him the satisfaction that every effort brings which is crowned with success. To make work anything but a hard and inevitable law, to make it loved for the pure enjoyment of which it is the source, this is to be the result of the Kindergarten in the future. 480 CRITICISMS ON FROEBEL'6 SYSTEM AND ITS EXTENSION. A great point in this conception of work is that it alone permits the parallel development of the physical and intellectual forces. The thought of organizing classes of industrial labor does not date from the present time; and wherever the trial has been made, it has given excellent results.* The pupils prepared in the Kindergartens occupy a distinguished place in them, and prove their skill and intelligence. To introduce manual labor, we are told, is an impossible thing; the programmes are never executed. Where is the necessary time? We are among those who think that in the actual execution of the programmes there is much time lost, many forces frittered away. Before his tenth or eleventh year the child is still too young to be restrained'during several consecutive hours in a purely Intel- lectual labor, without injuring the development of his faculties. Besides, reading, writing, arithmetic, having been prepared for in a rational man- ner, the difficulties and delays against which the teacher has struggled, and which absorb much precious time, no longer existing, we should see the hours of study diminish of themselves. Three hours a day conse- crated to actual study would be sufficient, and would allow two hours devotion to manual labor. The progress of the pupils, far from suffering by it, would gain by it; for the child, always on the alert and well dis- posed, would beam with pleasure and eagerness. The occupations of the Froebel method, developed and adapted to the age of the pupils, would find their place here, and would do excellent service, especially in the first two or three classes of the primary school. The branches mentioned in the following list are those whose introduction into the programme of the primary school we think both desirable and possible. We join to the list of the occupations the number of hours that might be devoted to them: weaving, two hours a week; paper-cutting, one hour; folding, two hours; drawing, two hours; modeling, two hours; box-making, two hours. It results from what precedes, that the question of introducing the principles of Froebel into the primary school should be, according to us, answered in the affirmative, but that this introduction is only possible by the assistance of an intermediate class, annexed as an upper step to the Kindergarten, and forming the connection between this and the primary school, which, on its side, is to adopt the principles of the great philo- sophic pedagogue. To develop the instrument of labor, the hand, and also the intelligence, to make the body strong and supple, and the mind lucid and profound, to educate men and not scholars, would not this be a great step towards tlie solution of the social problem? We will not deny that this aim is an ideal one, but we think with our great compatriot, Emmanuel Kant, " that we ought to educate children not according to the present condition of the human race, but according to a better possible condition in the future, that is to say, according to the idea of humanity, and its completed destiny." * See BarnarfTs Journal of Education : Labor in Juvenile Ueform Schools, III., 13. 382, 393, 560, 821. Kindeiinimn and Schools of Bohemia, XXVII., 811. RcaliHiic Studios and Labor, XVII., :«, 151 ; XIX., 628; XXI., 202. .„ , , 1 .. 1 , 1. :.. T.> _.. /T. 11.. v\Tri •}•} . vvi iionn. v Technical Schools in Eu Labor Element in Sys Europe Generally. XVII., :»; XXL, il-SOO; XXVIII., 1014. tems of Pestalozzi, Pellenberg, and Wehrli, X., 81 ; XXX., 203. Lahor ililemenc in systems oi resmio/.zi, reiienueiy, uiiu »» Manual Labor in American Schools, XV., 231 ; XXVII., 257. Labor Element in Eufjlish Schools, X., 765; XXIL, 23-250. KINDERGARTEN AND CHILD CULTURE IN FRANCE. INFANT ASYLUMS— CRADLE SCHOOLS— KINDERQABTEN. Asylums for children form a subject of the greatest interest and ini])ortance, ))articiilarly in a country like France, where the custom of sending infants out to be nursed has been universally prevalent for a long time. The social posi- tion of the parents will of course determine the fate which awaits the tender infant during the first months of its existence. If the parents be wealthy, or even belong to the middle class, a healthy nurse is procured, according to the advice of an experienced physician ; nothing is left undone that tends to ameli- orate the condition of the infant, and all possible precautions are taken to meet successfully the many dangers incidental to its young life. Far different is the case with that vast majority of infants whose parents cither live; in abject poverty, or who, in order to earn a scanty livelihood, are both obliged to work from early morn till late at night away from homo. That which, with rich jyarents, is only a close aillierence to alon