i: f ■-.S:iil ,; : 
 
 
Cornell University Library 
 LB1162.B65 
 
 Letters to a mother on the philosophy of 
 
 3 1924 013 392 901 
 
The original of this book is in 
 the Cornell University Library. 
 
 There are no known copyright restrictions in 
 the United States on the use of the text. 
 
 http://www.archive.org/details/cu31924013392901 
 
Itrtaraiiottal €imtutxan %zxxt% 
 
 EDITED BY 
 
 WILLIAM T. HARRIS, A.M., LL.D. 
 
 Volume XLV 
 
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INTERNATIONAL EDUCATION SERIES 
 
 LETTERS TO A MOTHER 
 
 ON THE PHILOSOPHY OF FKOEBEL 
 
 SUSAN E. BLOW 
 
 AUTHOR OF SYMBOLIC EDUCATION, MOTTOES AND COMMENTARIES 
 OF FROEBEL'S MOTHER FLAY, ETC. 
 
 NEW YORK 
 
 D. APPLETON AND COMPANY 
 
 1899 
 
Copyright, 1899, 
 By D. APPLETON AND COMPANY. 
 
 Electrotyped and Printed 
 at the appleton press, u. s. a. 
 
TO MY SISTER 
 
 LIZZIE CHAKLESS 
 
 AND MY NIECE 
 
 ATHENA FEODOKOVNA, 
 
 THROUGH WHOSE BRIEF BUT BEAUTIFUL LIVES 
 I LEARNED TO REVERE IDEAL CHILDHOOD, 
 
 THIS BOOK 
 IS TENDERLY DEDICATED. 
 
EDITOR'S PREFACE. 
 
 Feoebel seizes the rudimentary activities in the 
 child's mind and discovers means of exercising them 
 so as to educate them by development. He makes 
 a systematic series of plays and games which point 
 prophetically forward to the civilization which re- 
 veals itself in adult occupations. 
 
 The theory of evolution explains each faculty 
 and habit of man by pointing back to some violence 
 or danger against which the animal aroused all its 
 energies to protect itself. The faculty or habit 
 is a survival of that struggle. Modern educational 
 theory sometimes borrows evolution to explain men- 
 tal activities, and sometimes it supposes that it has 
 thrown light upon methods of instruction when it 
 has shown an activity to be the heir of a supersti- 
 tion which arose through some physical evil in a 
 remote epoch — for example, when it has shown 
 
viii LETTEES TO A MOTHER. 
 
 that some religious doctrine is likewise a reminis- 
 cence of some ancient fear of Nature or some ordi- 
 nance of the patriarchal stage of society. This evo- 
 lution theory in education has one great defect — 
 namely, that it does not discriminate between that 
 class of present activities which are survivals and 
 slowly becoming dormant through non-exercise, 
 and on the other hand those activities which had 
 rude beginnings and imperfectly realized their pur- 
 pose, but have been perfecting themselves more and 
 more with the progress of human civilization. Ac- 
 cording to the former diagnosis the belief in a God 
 would be the survival of an ancient superstition, of 
 the patriarchal family ordinance, or ancestor wor- 
 ship, while according to the latter it would be the 
 result of the growth of man's insight into the pur- 
 pose of Nature and man and the necessity of presup- 
 posing an Absolute Reason to explain the world of 
 evolution in which we live. 
 
 To show that something is a survival is to dis- 
 credit it. To show that it had a rude beginning, 
 but has progressed onward to a divine realization is 
 to make it precious. 
 
 Human life points forward as well as backward 
 in evolution. There is not only the vanishing pro- 
 
EDITOR'S PREFACE. i x 
 
 cess which appertains to crude conditions which 
 have been outlived, but also a process of develop- 
 ment by which " good is educed from evil, and 
 good is made better yet in infinite progression." 
 This latter view is the guiding insight for educa- 
 tion; it looks upon the child as the father of the 
 man. Love of life and freedom is not a survival of 
 a crude and violent life experience in prehistoric 
 times, but it is the primordial instinct that has cre- 
 ated the long succession of progressive human con- 
 ditions, crowning the whole with a Christian civili- 
 zation : 
 
 Striving to be man, the worm 
 Mounts through all the spires of form. 
 
 The object of the present book is to explain in 
 language addressed to the general public the phi- 
 losophy of Froebel. Its author finds it necessary 
 for this purpose to take up the most important doc- 
 trines one after the other as they were developed in 
 the Mutter und Kose Lieder, and show their equiva- 
 lents in the different systems of thought that pre- 
 vail. In some cases these systems are in harmony 
 with Froebel, and in other cases there is profound 
 disagreement. It is well for all students of the kin- 
 dergarten to deepen their knowledge of his prin- 
 
x LETTERS TO A MOTHEE. 
 
 ciples by seeing their ultimate consequences and 
 understanding how they apply to practical ques- 
 tions in the instruction of the young. The teacher 
 ought to he able to understand things in their causes 
 and reasons, and not rely too much upon mere au- 
 thority. The importance of this will be readily 
 understood by those who have seen in recent years 
 the unprofitable experiments made by kindergart- 
 ners who have only partially understood Froebel, 
 and who have been easily caught by some plausible 
 doctrine brought forward as an improvement, but 
 which is really at variance with the true theory of 
 the kindergarten as well as with that of all sound 
 pedagogy. 
 
 The readers of the discussions in this book will 
 readily concede that the exposition of the results of 
 the theory of the kindergarten, and also the defense 
 of its practice as against systems that conflict with 
 it, are presented with a clearness and force new in 
 the literature of the subject. In this respect as well 
 as in many others this book is most timely. 
 
 Froebel's doctrine of the kindergarten stands or 
 falls with that theory of symbolism which teaches 
 that truth can be presented in other ways than in 
 the scientific form. It holds that the first stages 
 
EDITOR'S PREFACE. x j 
 
 of cognition deal largely with symbols, and that 
 only with the increasing power of analysis does the 
 mind become able to discriminate differences as well 
 as perceive identities. A vague perception of same- 
 ness or identity is all that the child can attain to. 
 But when the object is brought accurately into the 
 focus of the mind the definition grows toward com- 
 pleteness. The first stage of the development of 
 the soul, therefore, is that in which feeling pre- 
 dominates over intellect and will. 
 
 In order to make clear how the earlier stage of 
 the mind differs from the later I have often found 
 it convenient to illustrate it by explaining the dif- 
 ference between mere facts, typical facts, and prin- 
 ciples. Each fact depends on other facts. Every- 
 thing depends on its environment. If we come to 
 investigate what a fact really is, therefore, we see 
 extending on all sides of it long series of relations 
 and dependencies. A fact taken out of its relations 
 would be no fact at all, or at least only an empty 
 form of a fact. It is not sufficient to place us before 
 the reality and expect that we shall know it ade- 
 quately and without effort. That is the mistake of 
 those who believe in perception rather than in ap- 
 perception. Perception sees only what is externally 
 
xii LETTERS TO A MOTHER. 
 
 presented in the object before it. Apperception not 
 only sees the object, but explains it by thinking it 
 in the light of its past history and in its dependency 
 upon distant objects not in the field of perception, 
 thus re-enforcing the experience of the present mo- 
 ment by placing it in relation to all past experience. 
 In seizing a fact, everything depends on how 
 large a portion of its entire compass is reached. 
 The illustration of Isaac Newton and the apple has 
 been often used to make this clear. Newton's per- 
 ception may have been the same as that of the do- 
 mestic animal who ran to devour the apple when 
 it fell. But his apperception was altogether differ- 
 ent. The animal saw only the practical and useful 
 fact that the apple was good to eat and had come 
 within his reach. Newton saw in the fall of the 
 apple the cause acting as the law of gravity, which 
 impelled the apple to the earth and also caused the 
 movement of the moon which he noticed in the sky 
 as he looked up through the branches of the apple 
 tree. The animal had a practical, useful common 
 sense, but it did not give him true knowledge. For 
 the fact of the fall of the apple was not the whole 
 fact. The true fact was much larger than the ani- 
 mal saw, for the fact included this great law of 
 
EDITOR'S PREFACE. x iii 
 
 gravity and the movements taking place according 
 to it in the starry heavens. Without other attract- 
 ing bodies than the apple there would have been no 
 gravitation to cause any movement of falling. 
 
 A fact as usually observed is only a partial 
 truth — it is a little glimpse of the true reality, it 
 is a symbolic object of knowledge. Such a fact be- 
 comes truth only when it is seen in its scientific 
 principle. Then we see the great whole of which 
 the fact is only a partial manifestation. The animal 
 senses alone do not see the truth, but only a small 
 phase of it, as inadequate as the particular grass 
 blade under our feet would be if it were offered to 
 us as the reality of the whole vegetable world. The 
 law of the fact states what is true under all circum- 
 stances. 
 
 Midway between facts and principles are typical 
 facts. These are what art and poetry use. The 
 natural symbolism of the mind uses such facts to 
 best advantage. The typical fact is one so complete 
 that it illustrates almost all of the phases of the law 
 or principle. Each fact gives some phases of the 
 law but not all, and is therefore defective. The 
 typical fact should contain all phases. 
 
 Art and poetry in giving to facts the form of 
 
xiv LETTERS TO A MOTHER. 
 
 types make for us a series of permanent facts. 
 These facts of poetry do not have such historic 
 reality as particular events or individuals have, but 
 a deeper one, inasmuch as they present for us a 
 more correct general impression. Shakespeare's his- 
 torical plays give us an account of the development 
 and growth of the English nation from a mere de- 
 pendency of France and Rome to a mighty nation 
 with a national church and a powerful House of 
 Commons. No history yet written shows us the 
 essentials — the typical facts — like these historical 
 plays of Shakespeare. So, too, a novel of Charles 
 Kingsley or of Walter Scott, of Felix Dahn or 
 Sienkiewicz, may give us the true picture of an 
 historic epoch, while the historian's account may be 
 far from adequate, through its failure to seize the 
 motives of the actors. 
 
 The mythical epoch of a nation's history fur- 
 nishes symbols of theoretical and moral truths. 
 The Prose Edda in recounting the events of Thor's 
 journey to Utgard presents in an interesting way 
 the doctrine above discussed of the inadequacy of 
 facts merely perceived and not apperceived. 
 
 Thor was told to lift a cat which he saw in the 
 corner of the room. As he lifted the animal it 
 
EDITOR'S PREFACE. xv 
 
 arched its back and he could not reach high enough 
 to raise all the feet clear of the floor. It was later 
 explained to him by the giant that this cat was a 
 coil of the world serpent which holds the world to- 
 gether. At one time Thor had succeeded in lift- 
 ing one of the feet from the floor. Had he lifted 
 all the feet the world serpent would have lost his 
 grip and the world would have gone to pieces. 
 Thor was told to drink a beaker of mead, but with 
 all his efforts (and Thor was a famous drinker) he 
 could not drain the cup. The explanation subse- 
 quently made to him was that the beaker which ap- 
 peared to him as only a small cup was so connected 
 with the sea that had he emptied it he would have 
 emptied the sea. Every fact is like the world ser- 
 pent in that in its entire compass it involves all the 
 other facts of the world, and without a connecting 
 principle all these facts go to pieces in chaotic con- 
 fusion. Every fact is, like the beaker of mead, con- 
 nected with a sea of facts, all of which must be com- 
 prehended if we truly comprehend the single fact. 
 
 "W. T. Harris. 
 Washington, D. C, January 12, 1899. 
 
 2 
 
AUTHOR'S PREFACE. 
 
 The preface to Symbolic Education contains a 
 promise of which the present volume is a partial 
 fulfillment, although upon further reflection I have 
 abandoned my original plan of publication. All 
 kindergartners who love and appreciate the Mother- 
 Play will realize that it needs more extended com- 
 ment than that plan provided for, and will, I hope, 
 accept this book as an attempt to show how each 
 motto, song, and commentary should be studied. 
 
 As these letters may fall into the hands of some 
 readers not familiar with the Mother-Play, it seems 
 well to mention that they deal with comparatively 
 few of the subjects discussed in that remarkable 
 book. They will do most good to those in whom 
 they quicken a resolution to master not only the 
 Mother-Play, but all the works of Froebel. 
 
 There is an old superstition that no arrow goes 
 
 straight to its mark unless it has been dipped in the 
 
 xvii 
 
Xtiii LETTERS TO A MOTHER. 
 
 marksman's blood. The study of the Mother-Play 
 has taught me truths through which, had I known 
 them when I most needed them, I might have 
 avoided many errors and been spared much sorrow. 
 With the hope that my book may help others to 
 avoid my own mistakes, I commit it to the generous 
 judgment of readers, many of whom are already 
 my friends. 
 
 Susan E. Blow. 
 Avon, December 21, 1898. 
 
CONTENTS. 
 
 LETTER PAGE 
 
 I. — Heart insight 1 
 
 II. — Self-making 35 
 
 III. — Prom wind to spirit 67 
 
 IV. — Making by unmaking 91 
 
 V. — Heaven's first law 127 
 
 VI. — The revelation of sense ..... 167 
 
 VII. — The soul of the flower 209 
 
 VIII. — The discovery of life . . ... 243 
 
 IX. — A prophecy of freedom 281 
 
 six 
 
LETTERS TO A MOTHER. 
 
 LETTER I. 
 
 HEABT INSIGHT. 
 FALLING! FALLING! 
 
 MOTTO. 
 A game to strengthen the whole body. 
 All a mother does or says 
 
 Is inspired by thoughtful love. 
 "Falling! felling!" she is playing, 
 But her hand the fall is staying, 
 So her love to prove. 
 
 To her child her life is given, 
 
 Thought, and word, and deed, and prayer ; 
 And her hold, an instant broken, 
 To his mind is but a token 
 
 Of her constant care. 
 
 Soon her arms must loose their hold, 
 
 Not, as now, in pretty play — 
 Keeping still their circle round him, 
 That no jar or fright may wound him — 
 
 But for all the day. 
 
 And for this, her thought and love 
 
 Must his little life prepare ; 
 
 Teaching first how she is needed, 
 
 That through her fond cautions heeded 
 
 He may learn self-care. 
 
 Henrietta E. Eliot. 
 
2 LETTERS TO A MOTHER. 
 
 SONG. • 
 Down goes baby, 
 Mother's pet ; 
 Up comes baby, 
 Laughing yet. 
 Baby well may laugh at harm, 
 While beneath is mother's arm. 
 
 Down goes baby, 
 Without fear ; 
 Up comes baby, 
 Gayly here. 
 All is joy for baby while 
 In the light of mother's smile. 
 
 Emilie Poulbson. 
 
 Your letter, dear old friend, is in the impera- 
 tive mood. You set my duty so clearly before me 
 that I dare neither evade nor postpone it. So here 
 begins the first of a series of letters upon the 
 Mother-Play. Others shall follow as fast as I have 
 time and strength to write them. I hope they may 
 aid you to bring up my godson in the way he should 
 go, and I shall also try to make them helpful to 
 your sister Helen in her work with the children in 
 her kindergarten. 
 
 As I write, I seem to see you and your dear 
 little Harold before me, and recollections of my 
 last long visit to you crowd upon my mind. Do 
 you remember the morning you made your first ex- 
 periment with the Falling Game, and how happy 
 
HEART INSIGHT. 3 
 
 you were when, after a few repetitions of the play, 
 your boy's look of fear and anxiety changed to one 
 of delight? Do you remember for how many weeks 
 the minutes devoted to this game were the live- 
 liest of our day; how after a time Master Harold 
 found the Falling Play tame, and reserved his crows 
 of delight for the Tossing Game, and how, without 
 a sign of fear, he would let his papa toss him high 
 in the air? Do you remember his advance from 
 the Tossing Game to the Jumping Game, and with 
 what confidence he sprang from the high mantle 
 into your outstretched arms? If these pictures 
 stand out in your memory as they do in mine, they 
 will interpret the first scene in Iroebel's drama of 
 infancy far better than it can be interpreted by 
 any words. Indeed, all that Froebel ever asks of 
 mothers is to watch their own instinctive play, and 
 define to themselves its latent motives.* 
 
 Ask yourself, therefore, what impulse incited 
 you to play the Falling Game. Was it not a long- 
 
 * The reader must not understand that I am recommend- 
 ing mothers to play the Jumping and Tossing games, both of 
 which are dangerous for babies. I refer to them in order to 
 show that maternal instinct has always played upon the 
 strings which Froebel touches in the Falling Game. He has 
 selected the one play of this type which is free from danger. 
 
4 LETTERS TO A MOTHER. 
 
 ing to speed the moment when Harold should look 
 into your face with recognizing eyes, when faith 
 should spring up in his heart to meet the love in 
 yours, and when the physical union between you 
 and your baby should be transfigured into a union 
 of hearts? Answer these questions, and then read 
 in Froebel's song the lines: 
 
 " Baby well may laugh at harm 
 While beneath is mother's arm," 
 
 and you will hold in your thought the key to the 
 Falling Game. Some of the many doors this key 
 unlocks I shall try to show you in this letter. 
 
 It has interested me to observe that, differing 
 in this respect from every other game in the book, 
 Falling-Tailing implies no manifestation of the 
 child as its point of departure, but springs unso- 
 licited from the mother's heart. Love working 
 from above downward is the condition of faith 
 striving from below upward, and Froebel is hint- 
 ing at rich depths of thought and experience 
 when he begins his book with the picture of ma- 
 ternal devotion outrunning all appeal and seeking 
 to call forth an answer to itself. 
 
 Understood as a typical experience, the lesson of 
 
HEART INSIGHT. 5 
 
 the Falling Game is that the nurture of childhood 
 must be rooted and grounded in faith. If this truth 
 seem to you so self-evident that you doubt the ne- 
 cessity of stating it, look within and around you, 
 and you will find that every day and every hour 
 force upon you instances of its violation. Do you 
 know no parents who attempt to guide their chil- 
 dren by explaining and justifying their own com- 
 mands? Do you not know others who rule by mere 
 brute force? Can you deny that you are yourself 
 constantly betrayed into adopting one or the other 
 of these false and futile methods? Are you clearly 
 conscious that the method of force means to its vic- 
 tims a life oscillating between slavery and anarchy, 
 while the method of explanation fosters irreverence 
 and conceit, and is practically an appeal to the igno- 
 rant and inexperienced child to sit in judgment 
 upon the actions of his parents? 
 
 According to Kousseau, the method of appeal 
 to childish reason was the one upheld by Locke. 
 It may be questioned whether in this matter he did 
 justice to the English reformer, but his strictures 
 upon the method itself are admirable. "Mr. 
 Locke's maxim," he writes, " was to educate chil- 
 dren by reasoning with them, and it is that which 
 
6 LETTERS TO A MOTHER. 
 
 is now most in vogue. The success of it, however, 
 doth not appear to recommend it, and, for my own 
 part, I meet with no children so silly and ridiculous 
 as those with whom much argument hath been held. 
 Of all the faculties of man, that of reason, which is, 
 in fact, only a compound of all the rest, unfolds it- 
 self the latest, and with the greatest difficulty; and 
 yet this is what we would make use of to develop 
 the first and easiest of them. The great end of a 
 good education is to form a reasonable man, and 
 we pretend to educate a child by the means of 
 reason! This is beginning where we should leave 
 off, and making an implement of the work we are 
 about." 
 
 The antithesis to government by argument and 
 explanation is government by force, and, as I have 
 said, parents who avoid the former error are often 
 betrayed into the latter. In like manner Rousseau, 
 reacting against Locke, announces as the first prin- 
 ciple of control that the child " be made sensible 
 that he is weak and you are strong, and that from 
 your situation and his he lies necessarily at your 
 mercy. Let him know this fact, and early feel on 
 his aspiring crest the hard yoke Nature hath im- 
 posed on man. By this method you will render his 
 
HEART INSIGHT. 7 
 
 disposition patient, equable, resigned, and peace- 
 able." 
 
 From the ninety degraded children whom he 
 mothered at Stanz the gentle Pestalozzi learned that 
 not in force and not in appeals to reason, but in 
 quickening faith must be sought the point of con- 
 tact between the nurturing and the nurtured 
 life. His experience is a classic one in the history 
 of educational reform, and from its theoretical 
 outcome, as given in his most important book, How 
 Gertrude Teaches her Children, I have often 
 thought Froebel may have received the impulse 
 which flowered into the Mother-Play. But be this 
 as it may, the Palling Game condenses into one re- 
 vealing example the whole range of experience de- 
 scribed by Pestalozzi, and defining to the mother 
 her own elemental impulse enables her to discover 
 consciously the true point of departure for the nur- 
 ture of childhood. 
 
 Faith presupposes experience. Baby is fright- 
 ened when he begins to play the Falling Game; he 
 learns to trust the mother's arm because he finds it 
 strong. In like manner he must learn to trust her 
 wisdom and her love. He can not believe in them 
 if they do not exist; he can only half believe them 
 
8 LBTTEES TO A MOTHER. 
 
 if they are inconsistent and vacillating. Hence 
 Froebel's insistence upon the need of a mother's be- 
 ing all she would have her children believe her to 
 be, and the solemn warnings which he introduces 
 into his commentaries on Beckoning the Pigeons, 
 and the Knights and the Bad Child. We fail to 
 inspire faith because we fail to deserve it, and a 
 regenerate motherhood is the one indispensable con- 
 dition of a regenerate childhood. 
 
 If you can win and hold Harold's faith, you will 
 find that you have practically solved the problem 
 of nurture. For if he trusts you he will obey you; 
 he will hide nothing from you; he will not resent 
 your punishments, and when he asks you questions 
 whose true answers are beyond his comprehension 
 he will humbly accept your simple statement that 
 they can not be explained to him until he is older. 
 The conversation between mother and child iu 
 Froebel's commentary on the Weathervane is con- 
 ceived in this spirit, and presupposes a firmly teth- 
 ered cord of faith. 
 
 While the Falling Song accentuates trust in the 
 mother, the motto and commentary expressly state 
 that the object of the game is the nurture and devel- 
 opment of force. Is there then a contradiction be- 
 
HEART INSIGHT. 9 
 
 tween the song and the commentary, and if not, 
 what is the tie which binds together the seemingly 
 contradictory statements? Look again into your 
 own heart, and observe if it be not always faith 
 which inspires the effort through which strength is 
 won. If the answer is not conclusive, seek the ver- 
 dict of that larger experience of which your own 
 is but a fragment. Kecall those heart-inspired 
 words, " Frederick, is God dead? " with which old 
 Sojourner Truth revived the dying courage of Fred 
 Douglass. Remind yourself of the noblest motto 
 which has sprung from our national system of uni- 
 versal suffrage : " One with God is a majority." 
 Send your imagination backward through the cen- 
 turies and call forth the image of the great de- 
 fender of Christian truth defying triumphant 
 heresy with the words " Athanasius against the 
 world! " Remember how hordes of faithless Chris- 
 tians fled before Saracen armies inspired by the 
 words of the Koran: " O true believers, if ye assist 
 God in fighting for his religion he will assist you 
 against your enemies." Picture Luther summoned 
 to the Diet of Worms, warned by anxious friends 
 to disobey the summons, declaring stoutly, " "Were 
 there as many devils in "Worms as there are roof 
 
10 LETTERS TO A MOTHER. 
 
 tiles I would on," and revealing the secret of his 
 courage in his paraphrase of the 46th Psalm. 
 Listen to the Huguenots singing as they march into 
 battle, " The truth of the Lord endureth forever," 
 and hear the same words shouted by Cromwell and 
 his soldiers at Dunbar. Ask yourself why the an- 
 cient Israelites and the English Puritans are the 
 most resolute and unyielding personalities known 
 to history, and read the answer written in their 
 every word and deed that it was because they be- 
 lieved themselves to be fighting with and for the 
 eternal and unconquerable Power "which makes 
 for righteousness." The secret of strength is always 
 the same, and the very words of our Falling Song, 
 
 " Baby well may laugh at harm 
 While beneath is mother's arm," 
 
 are but one feeble echo of the faith which has 
 nerved the heroes of all ages: "The eternal God 
 is thy refuge, and underneath are the everlasting 
 arms." V 
 
 Froebel had insight into the " fine secret that' 
 little explains large and large little." Hence he 
 discerned how the child out of weakness is made 
 strong. The Falling, Jumping, Tossing Games 
 
HEART INSIGHT. n 
 
 are baby's first acts of faith. Waxing faith nerves 
 him to totter toward his mother's outstretched arms. 
 Later it is again faith which inspires him to attempt 
 the task she believes he can do, and attack the prob- 
 lem she believes he can solve. Trusting her trust 
 in him he puts forth all his strength, and through 
 faith-inspired effort wins strength and self-reliance. 
 It is one of the happy paradoxes of spirit that 
 without dependence there can be no independence, 
 and that precisely in proportion to our faith will 
 be our intellectual and moral activity. All indi- 
 vidual relationships and all corporate life rest upon 
 pillars of faith. Children must trust parents, the 
 husband must trust his wife, friend must trust 
 friend, we must all trust the tradesman with whom 
 we deal, the corporations and officials upon whose 
 care depends our safety in travel, the physician to 
 whose integrity, skill, and devotion we appeal in 
 illness, the lawyer to whom we submit vexed ques- 
 tions of justice; the economic system upon which 
 depends the fair participation of each man in the 
 labor of all men; the government which orders and 
 protects other institutions; the church, which dis- 
 cerns, declares, and develops in individual con- 
 sciousness the ideals which have created our special 
 
12 LETTERS TO A MOTHER. 
 
 type of family life, our forms of civil society, and 
 our republican state. 
 
 You need only recall our studies of Dante to re- 
 vive your realizing sense of the truth that faith is 
 the beating heart of the body corporate. What a 
 revelation it was to us when we understood why the 
 circles of fraud were placed lower in the Inferno 
 than the circles of violence ! Were robbery, tyran- 
 ny, murder, suicide really less heinous offences than 
 flattery, hypocrisy, thieving, simony, and political 
 prostitution? Was fraud so hateful to God because 
 it "dissevers the bond of love which Nature makes," 
 and striking at combination breaks the tie that 
 unites the world? Was treachery the blackest of 
 sins because it not only loosed the tie of universal 
 brotherhood, but sundered the closer and more 
 spiritual cords woven by free choices of the will? 
 Was all sin in essence the attack of will upon will, 
 and was violence a sin of less degree than fraud be- 
 cause its attack was merely external? Was fraud 
 the slaughter of will by will, the murder of spirit 
 by spirit? Conversely, if faith were the living cord 
 which bound all individuals into one great human- 
 ity, and made possible the hierarchy of human insti- 
 tutions, was not the nurture of faith the beginning 
 
HEART INSIGHT. 13 
 
 of all true education, and was it not tlie prime duty 
 of the educator to win faith by deserving it? 
 
 You will remember how with whole hearts we 
 learned to affirm these truths as we studied the great 
 poet who has painted every deed of man in the 
 perspective of its consequences, but I think you 
 will agree with me that we did not in those old days 
 fully realize that faith in fellowmen is as necessary 
 to our intellectual as it is to our ethical life. How 
 very few of the myriad objects in the world does 
 any one individual have the opportunity to per- 
 ceive! How misleading must be his perceptions 
 even of these numerically insignificant objects un- 
 less by comparing his own results with those of 
 others he learns to subtract the errors and exaggera- 
 tions he has unwittingly contributed. A child's un- 
 guided examination of the simplest object will al- 
 most invariably center about non-essential quali- 
 ties, and leading him to search for essential qualities 
 simply means that you are helping him to correct 
 his own perceptions, by the perceptions and re- 
 flections of others. We depend upon reports of 
 our fellowmen for by far the greater part of our 
 knowledge of sensible objects, and it is also through 
 our fellows that we learn to perceive aright even 
 
14 LETTERS TO A MOTHER. 
 
 the few with which we come into immediate con- 
 tact. Unless we believed their reports we should 
 not try to verify them. So rising to higher planes 
 of mental activity it is because we believe that men 
 are able to draw from experience valid inferences, 
 and to discover beneath experience valid presup- 
 positions, that we exert our powers of understand- 
 ing and strive to recreate their insights. In their 
 light we see light, and through seeing our intel- 
 lectual eye grows strong. Evidently, therefore, 
 faith is both the condition of mental enlargement 
 and the source of mental activity.* 
 
 The dialectic of faith forces us to higher planes 
 of thought, and I want you now to consider that 
 the active pursuit of knowledge has a root deeper 
 even than trust in f ellowmen. Have you ever won- 
 dered why Asia has no science? or connected this 
 defect with the fact that to the Oriental mind Na- 
 ture is Maia or illusion — a phenomenon without a 
 noumenon, a manifestation without any essence 
 which it manifests? The apparent universe is only 
 an evil dream. Why, then, give oneself the 
 trouble to learn anything aboiit it. Rather let the 
 
 * Psychologic Foundations of Education, by W. T. Harris, 
 Int. Edu. Series, pp. 74, 75. 
 
HEAET INSIGHT. 15 
 
 devout mind waken from its nightmare and learn 
 the restful truths that Brahma is nothingness and 
 Nirvana extinction. 
 
 We owe to Professor Huxley a candid admis- 
 sion of the fact that all science presupposes belief 
 in the reality and intelligibility of Nature. In his 
 view, " the one act of faith in the convert to science 
 is confession of the universality of order, and the 
 absolute validity in all times and under all circum- 
 stances of the law of causation." Differently 
 stated, we search for law and order in Nature be- 
 cause we believe they will be found there, and to 
 believe that law and order exist in Nature is im- 
 plicitly to affirm that Nature is the product of an 
 ordering intelligence. Sir John Herschel once said, 
 " It is but reasonable to regard the force of gravita- 
 tion as the direct or indirect result of a conscious- 
 ness or will existing somewhere." His remark ap- 
 plies not only to all forces, but to all laws which 
 are really only the forms under which forces 
 act, and unless we are ready to admit that scienec 
 is merely a " lucid madness occupied in tabulating 
 its own necessary hallucinations," we must recog- 
 nize in the outer world the expression of an outer 
 mind. All poetry, art, and philosophy imply the 
 
16 LETTERS TO A MOTHER. 
 
 same truth, and it was because Greece attained first 
 to the faith and later to the insight that there is 
 a personal core to the universe, that she became the 
 fountain head of these highest forms of spiritual 
 activity. 
 
 I have said nothing about faith as the prompt- 
 ing motive of religion, both because in this sphere 
 its paramount importance is generally admitted, 
 and because I believe that by recognizing its power 
 in other domains of life we shall the more readily 
 understand why without faith it is impossible to 
 please God. Is there a keener stab than distrust, 
 and if we who merit only partial faith are so hurt 
 by doubt what must He feel who alone is worthy of 
 absolute confidence? God has been called "the 
 great Misunderstood," and we begin to comprehend 
 His eternal cross and passion when we reflect that 
 every doubt is a mortal thrust at the heart of love. 
 
 I said in the beginning of this letter that faith 
 presupposes experience. I must now add that it is a 
 generous venture of the soul beyond experience. 
 It is the divination of a secret of which all ex- 
 perience is but a partial disclosure. It is the active 
 instinct of sonship and brotherhood. It is heart 
 insight, an impulsive leap of the individual toward 
 
HEART INSIGHT. 17 
 
 the universal spirit, and by its very nature it points 
 toward the perfect communion of man with man 
 and of humanity with God. It is the afferent and 
 efferent nerve of the soul — the electric line over 
 which spiritual life is both communicated and dis- 
 charged. Waxing faith means a heightened recep- 
 tivity to inflowing divinity — waning faith means 
 the rupture of the individual from his own abysmal 
 self, and hence the shrinkage of his powers and the 
 shriveling of his life. 
 
 Do you see whither my letter is tending? If 
 faith is the miracle by which the soul invades the 
 realm of miracles, if it is the core of love and 
 friendship, if it incites activity, develops force, 
 and creates heroes, if it originates "and sustains in- 
 stitutions and is the antecedent condition of litera- 
 ture, science, art, and religion, if, finally, it seeks 
 and justifies its own presuppositions in philosophy, 
 then may it not be because the little child possesses 
 in larger measure than the man that ardor of trust 
 which overleaps the strict bounds of evidence 
 that we are enjoined to learn from him how to enter 
 the kingdom of heaven, and conversely, must not 
 the terminus ah quo of child nurture be sought in 
 that primordial impulse of motherhood which seeks 
 
18 LETTERS TO A MOTHER. 
 
 to awaken faith? It seems to me Pestalozzi and 
 Froebel have given no higher proof of their wisdom 
 than in their recognition of this impulse as the 
 point of departure for education, and if you will 
 bear with a very long letter I should like to give you 
 Pestalozzi's insight in his own touching words: 
 
 " I am unwilling to bring these letters to an end 
 without touching on what I may call the keystone 
 of my whole system. Is the love of God encour- 
 aged by these principles, which I hold to be the 
 only sound basis for the development of humanity? 
 
 " Once again I look into my own heart for an 
 answer to my question, and ask myself: ' How 
 does the idea of God take root in my soul? Whence 
 comes it that I believe in God, that I abandon my- 
 self to Him, and feel happy when I love Him and 
 trust Him, thank Him and obey Him? ' 
 
 " Then I soon see that the sentiments of love^ 
 trust, gratitude, and obedience must first exist in 
 my heart before I can feel them for God. I must 
 love men, trust them, thank them, and obey them, 
 before I can rise to loving, thanking, trusting, and 
 obeying God. ' For he who loveth not his brother 
 whom he hath seen, how shall he love his Father in 
 heaven, whom he hath not seen? ' 
 
HEART INSIGHT. 19 
 
 " I next ask myself, ' How is it that I come to 
 love men, to trust them, to thank them, and obey 
 them? How do these sentiments take root in my 
 heart? ' And I find that it is principally through 
 the relations which exist between a mother and her 
 infant child. 
 
 " The mother must care for her child, feed it, 
 protect it, amuse it. She can not do otherwise; 
 her strongest instincts impel her to this course. 
 And so she provides for its needs, and in every pos- 
 sible way makes up for its powerlessness. Thus the 
 child is cared for and made happy, and the first seed 
 of love is sown within him. 
 
 " Presently the child's eyes fall on something 
 he has never yet seen; seized with wonder and fear, 
 he utters a cry; his mother presses him to her 
 bosom, plays with him, diverts his attention, and 
 his tears cease, though his eyes long remain wet. 
 Should the unfamiliar object be seen again, the 
 mother shelters the child in her arms, and smiles 
 at him as before. This time, instead of crying, he 
 answers his mother's smile by smiling himself, and 
 the first seed of trust is sown. 
 
 " His mother runs to his cradle at his least sign; 
 if he is hungry, she is there; if thirsty, she satisfies 
 
20 LETTERS TO A MOTHER. 
 
 him; when he hears her step, he is content; when 
 he sees her, he stretches out his hand and fastens 
 his eyes upon her bosom; to him his mother' and 
 the satisfaction of his hunger are one and the same 
 thing; he is grateful. 
 
 " These germs of love, trust, and gratitude soon 
 develop. The child knows his mother's step; he 
 smiles at her shadow; he loves whatever is like 
 her; a creature of the same appearance as his 
 mother is, in his eyes, a good creature. Those 
 whom his mother loves, he loves; those whom she 
 kisses, he kisses. This smile at the likeness of his 
 mother is a smile at humanity, and the seed of 
 brotherly love, the love of his fellowmen, is sown. 
 
 " Such are the first elements of moral develop- 
 ment awakened by a mother's relations with her 
 infant. They are also the elements of religious de- 
 velopment, and it is by faith in its mother that the 
 child rises to faith in God." 
 
 Credo ut intelligam, wrote St. Anselm, and his 
 confession not only suggests the process by which 
 religious truth is apprehended, but has a range of 
 meaning coextensive with our entire spiritual activ- 
 ity. Again applying the fine secret that little ex- 
 
HEART INSIGHT. 21 
 
 plains large and large little, we realize that out of 
 the child's faith in his mother must spring aspira- 
 tion for companionship with her, while on her side 
 the yearning for her baby's trust deepens into 
 yearning for her child's comprehension. You 
 know that you can not be content with a blind 
 obedience even though it be a loving obedience. 
 As the physical union between you and Harold has 
 been transfigured into emotional union, so you de- 
 mand that this unity of feeling shall deepen into 
 unity of thought, and heart insight ripen into the 
 insight of intellect. Tour earlier effort was di- 
 rected toward making your baby physically self- 
 reliant in order that you might win the higher de- 
 pendence of faith; now your effort must be directed 
 toward making your boy intellectually and morally 
 self-reliant in order that you may realize in him 
 that highest dependence of comprehending sym- 
 pathy which is the goal of spiritual intercourse. 
 
 That Froebel has well understood you he proves 
 by showing you, in the concluding paragraph of his 
 Commentary, how you may aid your boy to become 
 master of himself. Notice with what precision he 
 attacks the defects which must be overcome before 
 the child can be safely committed to his own care. 
 
22 LETTERS TO A MOTHER. 
 
 The skater tumbles because be is beedless; tbe 
 cbild falls from bis sledge because bis eye is not 
 sure, bis band not strong; tbe boy and girl drop 
 goblet and plate because tbey are overanxious. In 
 inattention, untrained powers, and anxiety mated 
 with weakness, lie tbe sources of inability to rule 
 oneself. Tbe tie between these several defects is 
 obvious. Strength implies training, training im- 
 plies attention, and whoso lacks strength must 
 alternate between presumption and over-anxiety. 
 Not only for tbe children, but for ourselves there 
 is a mine of wisdom in these suggestions. Why are 
 so many mothers and so many kindergartners 
 wavering and inconsistent in conduct? Is it not 
 because they are doubtful what they ought to do? 
 Why are they thus doubtful? Because they lack 
 insight? Why do tbey lack insight? Evidently 
 because they have undertaken tbe most solemn and 
 responsible duties with insufficient preparation. « 
 One word more. Harold can not develop with- 
 out trust in you, but neither can he develop as he 
 ought unless you trust him. I do not mean that 
 you should ignore his faults or exaggerate his 
 merits, for this would only destroy his confidence 
 in you. But I do mean that you should be alert to 
 
HEART INSIGHT. 2 3 
 
 recognize the utmost limit of his power and attain- 
 ment, that you should let no cowardly fear deter 
 you from granting him freedom to do and dare, 
 and when you are forced to reprove and pun- 
 ish him you should never fail to appeal from his 
 actual to his ideal self. " Could there be," asks 
 Thoreau, " an accident so sad as to be respected for 
 something better than we are? " As applied to the 
 actual self this question admits of only one answer, 
 but it needs the supplementary question, " Could 
 there be a greater incentive to effort than the gen- 
 erous faith which expects of us to become better 
 than we are? " This kind of trust the heavenly 
 Father has in all his erring children; this kind of 
 trust you must never fail to feel in your boy. 
 
 When we understand that faith is the thrill of 
 fellowship we are ready to pass from the aim of 
 Froebel's first play to its method, and to observe by 
 what process the mother wakens the slumbering 
 feeling of trust. Remember we are studying a 
 Falling Game. Notice in Froebel's Commentary 
 the twice repeated statement that the child shall 
 fall with sufficient force to experience a slight 
 shock. He must feel his fall and have some vague 
 instinct that he is slipping away from his mother's 
 
24 LETTERS TO A MOTHER. 
 
 care. Out of the fear born of this sense of with- 
 drawn protection rises his joy in the assurance that 
 a loving power watches over his fall and makes it 
 safe. 
 
 Life is a series of falls, and if it be regenerate life 
 a series of rises out of falls. Eirst come the physical 
 tumbles which must be suffered by each child as he 
 learns to walk, run, climb, swim. Next in order 
 are emotional falls into anger, greediness, and other 
 sins of childish incontinence. With youth begin the 
 intellectual falls into doubt of inherited creeds and 
 defiance of traditional customs. Last of all come the 
 dangerous falls of will, consciously and deliberately 
 denying in act the truths accepted by thqught. Be- 
 neath each height of attainment yawns a deeper and 
 blacker chasm. Upon each loftier summit man is 
 exposed to the danger of a more fatal fall. 
 
 " The true glory of life," writes Goldsmith, 
 " consists not in never falling, but in rising every 
 time we fall." " Jump up," you say to Harold when 
 he has had a tumble, and laughingly kissing the 
 spot that hurts, you divert him from the impulse to 
 cry. When excessive excitement has betrayed him 
 into bad temper, you help the little victim who is 
 not able to help himself by attracting his attention 
 
HEART INSIGHT. 25 
 
 to some object — a flower, a star, a flying bird. 
 When your boy reaches the age of arrogant self- 
 assertion you will, if you are wise, be patient and 
 forbear to meet challenge with authority. " Who 
 never doubted never half believed," and just be- 
 cause man is born to be self -limiting he must break 
 down all made limits. By interpreting to Harold 
 in childhood the falls of weakness, incontinence, and 
 inattention, and in youth the falls born of presump- 
 tion and of doubt, you will have done what lay in 
 your power to save him from the final and fatal 
 fall of those who refuse obedience to acknowledged 
 obligation. And if at last (which God forbid) there 
 come to you that bitterest of mortal pangs — the 
 pang of knowing that one you have borne and nur- 
 tured is deliberately false to the truth he can not 
 deny — then in your own need recall the words with 
 which you reassured your falling baby, and sit 
 still in the inmost stronghold of the soul — the 
 stronghold of confidence in that Infinite Power and 
 Love which 
 
 " Forges through swart arms of offence 
 The silver seat of innocence." 
 
 /To fall and to rise from his fall, such is in brief 
 the history of man, and, since man must learn to 
 
26 LETTERS TO A MOTHER. 
 
 know himself, such is the ever-recurrent theme of 
 literature. "What is the one story repeated in myri- 
 ad forms in those mythic tales which are the first 
 fruits of man's literary activity? Is it not the story 
 of a princess carried off by a dragon, imprisoned, 
 disfigured, despairing, but rescued at last by the 
 all-conquering hero ? What is the Iliad but the fall 
 and rise of Achilles? "What is the Odyssey but the 
 fall and rise of Ulysses? "What creates the Inferno 
 and Purgatorio but the fall of Lucifer? "Who fill 
 the pit but sinners that have made all kinds of falls? 
 "Who climb the mountain but sinners rising out of 
 all kinds of falls? "What is portrayed in the dramas 
 of iEschylus, Sophocles, Shakespeare, but the cir- 
 cular sweep of the deed? "What is the new word of 
 the last world-poet in his Faust? Is it not once 
 again the fall and the rise, the deepest of all falls, 
 that of the conscious spirit from itself, the closest of 
 all reunions, the reunion of spirit with itself? " I 
 know," says thought-weary Faust in bitterness of 
 soul, " I know that nothing can be known." Wliat, 
 then, is left but the pact with Mephistopheles ? But 
 denial must in the end deny itself, and a pact with 
 the denying spirit can end only in its own undoing. 
 Hence the last world-poem must perforce repeat the 
 
HEART INSIGHT. 
 
 27 
 
 one great cycle of human experience, and urged 
 by his genius its author has portrayed the cycle 
 both in its earliest and its latest form. In the story 
 of Margaret he draws with firm but tender hand 
 the circle which sweeps from innocence, through 
 sin and repentance, to holiness. In the career of 
 Faust he paints with words that flame and burn 
 the cycle of doubt, denial, aspiration, insight. 
 
 Shall we try to understand why men forever re- 
 peat the fact and the story of fall and rise? Shall 
 we ask what power generates the spiritual curve, 
 always sweeping away from, always returning to 
 itself? "We hold in ourselves the clew to the mys- 
 tery, and we shall find hereafter that it is the clew 
 not only to this mystery but to all mysteries. The 
 mark of man is reason; the mark of reason is self- 
 consciousness; the nature of self -consciousness is to 
 be subject-object, or, in other words, the subject 
 knowing is the object known; the eternal history of 
 consciousness is the oscillation from subject to ob- 
 ject, and from object back to subject. " This," says 
 Hegel, " is the soul of the world, the universal 
 blood," which " pulsates within itself without mov- 
 ing itself, and which vibrates within itself without 
 
 ruffling its repose." Source of all conflicts, it is 
 4 
 
28 LETTERS TO A MOTHER. 
 
 forever at peace; author of all discords, it is the 
 master musician by whom alone all discords are re- 
 solved. 
 
 Do you remember the description of infancy in 
 Tennyson's In Memoriam? 
 
 The baby new to earth and sky, 
 What time his tender palm is prest 
 Against the circle of the breast, 
 
 Has never thought that " This is I." 
 
 But as he grows he gathers much, 
 
 And' learns the use of "I," and " me," 
 And finds " I am not what I see, 
 
 And other than the things I touch." 
 
 So rounds he to a separate mind 
 Prom whence clear memory may begin, 
 As thro' the frame that binds him in 
 
 His isolation grows defined. 
 
 I have quoted these stanzas because they por- 
 tray beautifully that incipient phase of life which 
 Froebel calls the slumber period. It is the slum- 
 ber of spirit because as yet the child lacks self-con- 
 sciousness. He is one with all things because he has 
 not learned to distinguish himself from them. As 
 all physical life begins with a germ alike in tex- 
 ture and in chemical composition, so spiritual life 
 begins in an unconscious unity with self and the 
 world. Physical growth is a process of continuous 
 
HEART INSIGHT. 29 
 
 differentiation and integration; spiritual life is a 
 process of self-diremption and the re-integration 
 of these self-produced differences into the unity 
 of consciousness. In other words, the movement of 
 spiritual life is from a unity which excludes dis- 
 tinctions to a unity which includes and harmonizes 
 all distinctions. Between these extremes is the 
 storm and stress of life when distinctions are per- 
 ceived but not harmonized, and when the self 
 whose ideal nature is to be a unity in manifoldness 
 wages with itself perpetual war. Within the heart 
 are colliding impulses, within the intellect collid- 
 ing ideas, within the will colliding aims and mo- 
 tives. Prototype of heroes, this self knows no peace 
 not won by fighting, neither may it ever lay down 
 its arms, for each new victory is but the prelude to 
 a more strenuous conflict. Scientists tell us of a 
 struggle for life and a survival of the fittest. Ver- 
 ily Nature is but the visible spectacle of the soul, 
 and the keen and never-ending battle of life a 
 masquerade of the eternal conflict of spirit. 
 
 As man reveals and beholds himself in litera- 
 ture and art, the child reveals and beholds himself 
 in play. Strange, therefore, would it be, if in in- 
 fantile games we should not find the short and 
 
30 LETTERS TO A MOTHER. 
 
 feeble oscillations of that pendulum of conscious- 
 ness which sweeps at last beyond the infinite reaches 
 of space and time. If our insight be a true one, 
 children should play the fall and rise, the estrange- 
 ment and return, nor should mother love fail to 
 outrun the children and begin the revelation of the 
 great human experience with the beginning of life. 
 Conversely, if mothers and children fulfill this an- 
 ticipation we should accept the fact as a fresh con- 
 firmation of our thesis. Therefore once again 
 search your own experience, and see if the Falling 
 Game be not the first of a series of plays which 
 sweep through infinitesimal circles of separation and 
 reunion.* Kemember how the baby loves to hide 
 
 * The following note from Miss Blanche Boardman suggests 
 that in the thought underlying the Falling Game, we may find 
 the explanation of a curious tendency often observed in chil- 
 dren to inflict pain on some especially loved person or object : 
 
 " Of all the many children in little Mary S.'s family ' An- 
 nie Rooney,' a most dilapidated specimen of rag doll, is the 
 most beloved. 
 
 " The others, more respectable and dainty, are enjoyed as 
 dolls, but upon Annie the little three-year-old mother pours 
 out a wealth of love. 
 
 " However, after a few moments of fondling and protesta- 
 tions of ' mother's love,' the doll is often thrown violently on 
 the floor, and apparently only to furnish an opportunity for 
 renewed expressions and more earnest devotion on the child's 
 part, as she takes the fallen baby in her arms again. 
 
HEART INSIGHT. 31 
 
 and to hear his mother wonder over and lament his 
 absence, how, when somewhat older, he delights in 
 the Cuckoo Game, which through the voice unites 
 the hiding child with the seeking mother, and how 
 
 " A family friend who is much interested in ' child -study ' 
 has repeatedly watched this play and questioned its meaning. 
 
 " For a student of the Mother-Play has it not a connection 
 with the instinctive play of the mother, which gave rise to the 
 Falling Game ? " 
 
 I know a little boy, between two and three years of age, 
 who treats his favorite doll precisely as Annie Eooney was 
 treated by her child-mother. When I myself was a little girl, 
 I used to enjoy keenly plays in which a younger child, to 
 whom I was greatly attracted, was subjected to all kinds of ill 
 treatment, and in which my role was that of deliverer and 
 comforter. Even then I wondered why these plays gave me 
 pleasure, but not until long afterward did I understand that I 
 was enjoying both my own quickened sense of sympathy and 
 protection and the faith with which the little sufferer turned 
 to me as her deliverer. As I grew older I ceased inflicting 
 pain or permitting its infliction for the sake of the pleasure 
 felt in relieving it, but I was continually imagining those I 
 loved as attacked by all kinds of dangers and sorrows, and 
 myself as saving them from the former and comforting them 
 in the latter. I refer to these experiences because they illus- 
 trate one of the many perversions of an impulse which in its 
 normal exercise is essential to our life as social beings. Do 
 they not also in a measure explain why healthy happy chil- 
 dren love to read, and sometimes to write, those morbid sto- 
 ries in which the youthful hero or heroine is conducted through 
 illness, orphanage, and cruel treatment to final joy ? When 
 we have learned to make a wise appeal to the feelings which 
 such stories arouse, we shall have done much to solve the 
 problem of good literature for children. 
 
32 LETTERS TO A MOTHER. 
 
 countless are the traditional games from whose re- 
 current theme of a beleaguered castle and a stolen 
 bride Froebel caught the idea which he transfigured 
 in The Knights and The Mother. Remember 
 how anxiously Harold grasped his ear when you 
 tugged at it and then professed to show it to him 
 between your fingers; how his eye followed the 
 ball which you playfully jerked by its string from 
 his hand; how eagerly he hunted for a hidden but- 
 ton; how tirelessly he took apart and put together 
 the blocks you had shown him how to build into a 
 cube. Then ponder your memories, and you will 
 soon begin to realize that these infantile games are 
 cast in the one mold of all spiritual activity. What, 
 indeed, is self-consciousness but the play of the 
 spirit with itself — the deliberate scattering of the 
 wealth of thought for the purpose of rewinning it — 
 the voluntary self-exile through which the soul 
 makes itself everywhere at home. 
 
 Speech, says George Eliot, is but broken light 
 upon the depths of the unspoken. My aim in this 
 letter has been to quicken in your mind a thought 
 which must be created anew by each new thinker. 
 "We can not paint physical motion either with pig- 
 ments or with words, much less dare we hope to 
 
HEART INSIGHT. 33 
 
 paint the ceaseless motion of spirit. You must feel 
 it, will it, know it in yourself. Then, and not till 
 then, can you really understand why both the 
 drama of history and the drama of infancy begin 
 with the fall. 
 
LETTEK II. 
 
 SELF-MAKING. 
 PLAY WITH THE LIMBS. 
 
 MOTTO. 
 
 Watch a mother's answering play, 
 
 When her happy baby kicks ! 
 She will brace her hands to please him, 
 Or in loving sort she'll tease him 
 
 With her playful tricks. 
 
 This is not mere fond caprice — 
 
 God inspires the pretty strife ; 
 She is leading a beginner 
 Through the outer to the inner 
 
 Of his groping life. 
 
 Henrietta B. Eliot, 
 song. 
 
 Up and down, and in and out, 
 Toss the little limbs about ; 
 Kick the pretty dimpled feet — 
 That's the way to grow, my sweet ! 
 
 This way and that, 
 
 With a pat-a-pat-pat, 
 
 With one, two, three, 
 
 For each little knee. 
 
 By-and-by, in work and play, 
 
 They'll be busy all the day ; 
 
 Wading in the water clear, 
 
 Running swift for mother dear. 
 
 35 
 
36 LETTERS TO A MOTHER. 
 
 So this way and that, 
 With a pat-a-pat-pat, 
 And one, two, three, 
 For each little knee. 
 
 Emily Huntington Milleb. 
 
 Deak : Have you ever wondered at the 
 
 helplessness of babies as contrasted with the pre- 
 cocious independence of young animals? Have you 
 ever asked why baby chickens can see, hear, run, 
 scratch, scrape, and peck, and why, on the contrary, 
 the human infant is born practically blind and deaf, 
 is unable to balance his own head, and can neither 
 grasp, hold, walk, stand, creep, nor sit? Knowing 
 you, I am sure you have not only asked these ques- 
 tions, but have read carefully the. answers given to 
 them by Mr. Fiske in his many and lucid explana- 
 tions of the meaning of infancy. You have learned 
 from him the connection between the helplessness 
 of babyhood and man's capacity for progress. You 
 know that the mental life of animals is restricted to 
 a few simple acts which, being repeated through- 
 out the careers of individuals and of species, come 
 to be performed easily and unconsciously. You un- 
 derstand that because animals do very few things 
 and do them often the nervous connections neces- 
 sary for their performance are perfected and trans- 
 
SELF-MAKING. 37 
 
 mitted, and that consequently throughout the ani- 
 mal world heredity is dominant and education im- 
 possible. Finally, you know that the intellectual 
 chasm which separates the lowest man from the 
 highest animal is marked physically by increase of 
 cerebral surface and by prolongation of the period 
 of infancy, or, in other words, that increasing intel- 
 ligence, increasing brain surface, and a lengthening 
 infancy always go hand in hand. The reciprocal 
 relation of these facts is obvious. With increase 
 of cerebral surface comes increase in the amount of 
 cerebral organization to be completed after birth, 
 and hence an extension of the period of infancy. 
 The extension of infancy in turn brings about 
 increased versatility and plasticity, and produces a 
 further enlargement of the cerebral area. Hence 
 the lengthened and still lengthening period of 
 human adolescence is the guaranty of a boundless 
 capacity for progress. 
 
 Another and not less important outcome of a 
 long and feeble infancy is the birth of the moral 
 sentiments. The helplessness of childhood calls 
 forth in father and mother protective and self- 
 denying impulses, while conversely the love and 
 care of parents wakens in the heart of the child 
 
38 LETTERS TO A MOTHER. 
 
 responsive feelings of dependence and affection. 
 Out of the rudimentary sympathies of infancy are 
 developed later the sense of obligation and the idea 
 of duty. The significance of this genetic evolution 
 becomes apparent when we reflect that the ascent of 
 humanity from the savage to the civilized state is 
 marked on the one hand by increasing complexity 
 of social organization, and on the other by a pro- 
 gressive extension of the sense of moral obligation 
 until it finally includes the whole brotherhood of 
 man. 
 
 The accounts of children who have become im- 
 bruted by growing up among animals and apart 
 from human beings illustrate the fact that the iso- 
 lated individual does not become man. These chil- 
 dren are said to have possessed great acuteness of 
 sense, and to have shown cunning, skill, and en- 
 durance in their search for food, but they ran on 
 all fours, and were entirely without speech. One 
 bleated like a sheep; another had a voice like a 
 bear's; a third acted in all respects like a beast of 
 prey. In all of them the brain was not only unde- 
 veloped, but had so far lost its plasticity as to make 
 any high grade of development impossible. The 
 narratives of such forest and mountain children 
 
SELF-MAKING. 39 
 
 help us to realize that the infant achieves human- 
 ity through his recoil against and assimilation of 
 his spiritual environment. 
 
 Pondering the facts to which I have briefly re- 
 ferred, we begin to understand what deep meaning 
 lurks in the contrast between the young animal and 
 the young child. It means that the former is a 
 made being, the latter a self-making being. It 
 means that the animal is an isolated being, the 
 child a social being. It means that the animal is 
 imprisoned in hereditary tendencies and aptitudes, 
 and that his whole life consists of reflex and in- 
 stinctive actions monotonously repeated. It means 
 that the infant is plastic and versatile, and hence 
 that he is not the prisoner of the past, but the 
 prophet of the future. It means that man is a 
 teachable and improvable being, that evolution 
 is apotheosized into education, that each indi- 
 vidual must learn from all other individuals, 
 and must in turn contribute his quota to the 
 common store of human experience. Finally, 
 it means that while the brute is irresponsible 
 and mortal, man is responsible and immortal, 
 for all perishable beings perish through defect, 
 and the characteristic quality of humanity is pre- 
 
40 LETTERS TO A MOTHER. 
 
 cisely the ability to overcome defect. Hence the 
 helplessness of the infant is the pledge of his 
 dignity and the promise of his unlimited develop- 
 ment.* 
 
 Now for the relationship of these facts to nur- 
 sery education. Since man is a social being he de- 
 mands from the beginning of life the nurture of his 
 sympathies. Since he is a self-making being he 
 demands from the beginning of life the discipline 
 of his energies. 
 
 In our study of the Tailing Song we traced 
 the genesis of faith, which is one of the primitive 
 expressions of sympathy. In the Play with the 
 Limbs, which is to be the subject of this letter, we 
 shall find a disclosure of the process by which ener- 
 gy is incited and disciplined. The former play sug- 
 gests the general type of all efforts to nurture sym- 
 pathy, the latter, the general type of all efforts to 
 foster activity. These two games are, therefore, 
 prototypes of all the Mother-Plays whose general 
 aim is to set in balanced motion the centripetal and 
 
 * Readers interested in the Meaning of Infancy are referred 
 
 . for fuller statement to Professor John Piske's books, Cosmic 
 
 Philosophy, The Destiny of Man, and the Excursions of an 
 
 Evolutionist, to Mr. Drummond's Ascent of Man, and to the 
 
 Meaning of Education, by Prof. Nicholas Murray Butler. 
 
SELF-MAKING. 41 
 
 centrifugal forces of the soul, and thus to determine 
 its circular orbit. 
 
 Scene second in the drama of infancy shows us 
 the baby striking out vigorously with arms and 
 legs, while in response to the indicated need the 
 mother offers her opposing hands as an incentive to 
 effort and a guide to force. The clew to the game 
 is given clearly in Froebel's Commentary, wherein 
 he explains that nothing gives the mother such joy 
 as her child's overflowing life, and that her deepest 
 longing is to nurture life. This statement puzzled 
 me for many years because I was not able to decide 
 just what meaning Froebel attached to the word 
 life. Gradually, however, as I studied his different 
 books I became aware of a number of verbal triads 
 through which he seemed to be struggling to ex- 
 press kindred thoughts. Among them were life, 
 love, light; act, feeling, thought; presentiment, 
 perception, recognition; identity, contrast, media- 
 tion of contrast; child of Nature, child of man, 
 child of God; whole, member, member- whole; uni- 
 versality, particularity, singularity; unity, mani- 
 foldness, individuality. Collecting and comparing 
 these several triads I began to understand them and 
 to recognize that their common key was that in- 
 
42 LETTERS TO A MOTHER. 
 
 sight into the nature of reason or self -consciousness 
 which I tried to explain to you in my last letter. 
 The self is an " identity pervading its own distinc- 
 tions." The true self in each man is identical with 
 the true self in all other men, and this universal 
 self is the divine self, " the Christ in inan which is 
 the hope of glory." The divine self, however, is 
 transcendent as well as immanent, or, to borrow the 
 apostolic statement, the God who is in all and 
 through all is also over all. Spiritual development 
 is increasing participation in His eternal thought 
 and will. Spiritual death is separation from Him. 
 Activity is the initial manifestation of the indwell- 
 ing divinity, just as faith is the initial form of 
 union between the immanent and the transcendent 
 selfhood. 
 
 In the light of this truth the first term of each 
 triad becomes transparent. Life is the unconscious 
 totality of being; activity its germinal manifesta- 
 tion; presentiment the witness of its presence; 
 identity the statement of its undifferentiated sim- 
 plicity; unity the disclosure of its oneness with the 
 all; wholeness or universality the definition of its 
 ideal nature; child of Nature the expression of its 
 limitation and its affiliation with those lower orders 
 
SELF-MAKING. 43 
 
 of being wherein the universal reason sleeps and 
 dreams. With these solutions of the first term of 
 each triad you can easily unfold the other terms 
 yourself, and I will only ask you now to keep 
 clearly in mind the thought of life as that ener- 
 getic wholeness and fullness of being which never 
 during the term of our mortal existence rises into 
 complete consciousness. We are more than we 
 know, and we know more than we do. " The soul is 
 essentially active; the activity of which we are con- 
 scious is but a part of our total activity, and volun- 
 tary activity is but a part of our conscious activity." 
 Our conscious and voluntary lives are therefore 
 merely island peaks rising out of the depths of 
 an unconscious ocean of being. Life is deeper, 
 richer, fuller than conscious thought and will — it 
 is the infinite obscure which eternity must illumi- 
 nate. 
 
 According to Emerson, the Chinese sage Men- 
 cius perceived that man's chief duty was " to nour- 
 ish well his vast flowing vigor." " I beg to ask 
 what you call vast flowing vigor? " said his com- 
 panion. " The explanation," replied Mencius, " is 
 difficult. This vigor is supremely great and in the 
 highest degree unbending. Nourish it correctly 
 
44 LETTERS TO A MOTHER. 
 
 and do it no injury, and it will fill up the vacancy 
 between heaven and earth." * 
 
 The greatest achievement of science has been 
 the reduction of Nature to a torrent of force. In 
 the inorganic world this force appears variously as 
 light, heat, magnetism, and electricity. In the or- 
 ganic world it manifests itself as life. Philosophy 
 resolves this torrent of force into a torrent of will. 
 Energy of life means that the individual soul is 
 flooded with this mysterious torrent, fed with 
 abundant supplies from the inexhaustible fountain 
 of originality and power. Love is energy of life in 
 the form of feeling; genius is energy of life in the 
 form of intellect; heroism is energy of life in the 
 form of will. No wonder, therefore, that each 
 mother's heart throbs with joy as she beholds in her 
 infant that ceaseless movement which is the primal 
 revelation of an unconscious fullness of life; no 
 wonder that her deepest impulse is to nourish well 
 this " vast flowing vigor." " In the beginning is 
 the act." From the act proceed feeling and 
 thought. To the act they return and with deeds 
 fired by feeling^and illuminated by thought the 
 circle of development becomes complete. 
 * Emerson's Essays, second series, p. 75. 
 
SELF-MAKING. 45 
 
 Strangely enough, while the nurture of life is 
 a deep maternal impulse, the average mother is too 
 often faithless to its promptings, and many of the 
 worst mistakes in nursery education can only be 
 avoided by lifting into consciousness the ideal latent 
 in instinct and revealed by Froebel in his Play with 
 the Limbs. The child is restless and fretful be- 
 cause he is idle. Instantly the mother or nurse be- 
 gins to divert and amuse him. She tells a story, 
 sings a song, acts a pantomime, builds a block house, 
 sets in orderly procession the animals belonging to 
 a Noah's ark. Instead of leading the child to do, 
 she does for him, and thus fosters idleness, exact- 
 ingness, and the craving for passive amusement. 
 Since all passive pleasures create a keener appetite, 
 and since they themselves can only sate and cloy 
 but never satisfy, it is evident that in making the 
 child dependent upon them the mother is sowing 
 seeds of misery for him and for herself. Universal 
 laws can never be broken with impunity, and the 
 universal and inexorable law of habit is that all 
 sensations pall with repetition, while all activities 
 augment their joy. 
 
 There are two forms of sloth. One is the inertia 
 of a phlegmatic nature; the other is the instabil- 
 
46 LETTERS TO A MOTHER. 
 
 ity of a frivolous nature. The outcome of the 
 former is that sullenness of character which repels 
 affection; the outcome of the latter is that selfish 
 e^actingness which wears out affection. Dante 
 has branded both types of sluggishness in his 
 Inferno, showing us on the one hand the sullen 
 souls immersed in mire, and on the other the caitiff 
 train of the pleasure seekers chasing forever the 
 whirling banner of change, goaded forever by the 
 hornets and gadflies of capricious impulse and petty 
 vexation. 
 
 In the beginning of life inertia and frivolity are 
 mere tendencies with which it is comparatively easy 
 to cope. They are enemies whom the soul may 
 meet and vanquish in an open field. Grant them 
 time and they intrench themselves in the strong- 
 hold of habit, and make the soul .their captive. I 
 do not say that for this captive there is no escape. 
 I say only that by failure to incite the child to 
 battle the mother exposes him to a weary siege, and 
 since his power diminishes as his chains are forged, 
 her feeble indulgence must indefinitely increase the 
 stress of his conflict and postpone in exact propor- 
 tion the hour of victory. 
 
 As I write I hear your protest. It is easy to 
 
SELF-MAKING. 47 
 
 say what ought to be done, but can I or any other 
 theorist realize how many stumbling stones are 
 strewn along the path of all general principles? I 
 think I can. I know that the science of education 
 is one thing, and the art of education another. I 
 know how different is the insight which merely rec- 
 ognizes a general truth from the prompt and unper- 
 plexed tact which solves problems in the concrete. 
 I simply claim that to know what we must do, helps 
 us to find out how to do it. 
 
 " Consider," says Froebel, " either the seed or 
 the egg; watch the development alike of feeling 
 and of thought. Out of the indefinite the definite 
 is born." Foster the child's activity, and it will rise 
 to productive energy; exercise productive energy, 
 and it will blossom into original creation. Let the 
 nurture of sympathy go hand-in-hand with the in- 
 citement to activity, and from the union of the two 
 will spring humility and helpfulness. Divorce sym- 
 pathy from activity and it collapses into that in- 
 ordinate craving for approbation which has been de- 
 fined as the " love of love by sin defiled." Divorce 
 activity from sympathy and it will give rise to the 
 lust of power. Refuse nurture to both these ele- 
 mentary impiilses, and from the union of their 
 
48 LETTERS TO A MOTHER. 
 
 opposites, sloth and selfishness, will spring in the 
 first generation, self-indulgence and presumption; 
 in the second, parasitism and cowardice; in the 
 third, fatalism; and in the fourth, the family line 
 of these ancestral ills will end with defiance and 
 despair. 
 
 Do I seem to be exaggerating the dangers of 
 sloth? Is it not true that " Idleness standing in the 
 midst of unattempted tasks is always proud," and 
 that he who has done nothing is most ready to be- 
 lieve in his own ability to do everything? Is it not 
 true that when with untried strength he is forced to 
 confront the tasks of life he either falls into the 
 ranks of those who through cowardice " make great 
 refusals," or by reckless scheming involves himself 
 in practical ruin? Is it not true that he who can 
 not lean upon himself must lean upon others, and 
 that he who is himself will-less must fall into the 
 worship of blind chance or inexorable fate? What, 
 indeed, are chance and fate but the projection of 
 his own wayward caprice, and his own blind and 
 hence unregulated passions? 
 
 Man is only what he makes himself to be. Man 
 can make himself only that which ideally he is. 
 Through activity he creates himself. In activity he 
 
SELF-MAKING. 49 
 
 reveals himself. Recognizing these truths you will 
 begin to question yourself anxiously as to the meth- 
 ods by which energy may be incited, guided, re- 
 strained, and developed. With this problem in 
 mind turn to the picture which illustrates Froebel's 
 Play with the Limbs. Against the baby's kicking 
 feet the mother presses her hands. The stream has 
 jbeen dammed that its force may turn the mill 
 wheel. Below the dam a little boy has set his toy 
 mill in the stream. His thoughtful brother watches 
 the turning toy, trying to understand how and 
 why the water keeps it going so merrily. The gen- 
 eral thought of the picture is that, lacking con- 
 straint, force diffuses and wastes itself. To be effec- 
 tive it must be pent up. The old myth makes Her- 
 cules begin his career by strangling in his cradle 
 the serpents that attack his life. We must create a 
 tension in order to guide the force of the child in 
 definite directions, and by inciting him to resist- 
 ance fortify in him the love of exertion, and waken 
 in him the sense of power. Applied to the force of 
 will this insight explains the significance of inhibi- 
 tion as the method of specific choice and action. 
 We do one thing by virtue of not doing other 
 things. We give vent to one impulse by inhibiting 
 
50 LETTERS TO A MOTHER. 
 
 a number of other impulses; we concentrate atten- 
 tion upon one object by repelling the seductions of 
 other objects. To the facts that our minds are be- 
 sieged by colliding sensations, and that our souls 
 are the battleground of colliding impulses, we owe 
 our ascent from involuntary to voluntary activity. 
 After voluntary activity has been attained it 
 is by freely choosing among different and op- 
 posing possibilities that will is exercised and 
 character formed, and it is also by a series of in- 
 tellectual exclusions that we rise from attention 
 to analysis, and from analysis to still higher orders 
 of knowing. The practical application of this 
 insight to early education creates a procedure 
 admirably defined by Miss Garland as the meth- 
 od of restricted freedom. It consists in so far 
 limiting the range of choice as to give a specific 
 trend to activity, and it avoids both the extreme 
 of formalism and that yet more dangerous ex- 
 treme of license which is the hideous caricature of 
 liberty. 
 
 The evolution of energy through antagonism is 
 a general law. But the particular form which 
 energy will assume must be determined by indi- 
 vidual bent and aptitude. Hence Froebel's picture 
 
SELF-MAKING. 5 J 
 
 shows also the limitations of its principle. Each 
 child in the picture is fascinated by the mysterious 
 force of the swift-rushing stream, but each is incited 
 to a different activity, and in this activity reveals 
 his or her individuality. 
 
 In a letter to his cousin, Madame Schmidt, 
 Froebel urges her to consider that " wherever 
 healthy life buds forth, there new life only un- 
 folds itself to meet and overcome various obstacles; 
 nay, further, that these obstacles in a certain sense 
 are actually necessary for strengthening and for- 
 tifying the young life." " Let us," he adds, " look 
 closely at the buds of our trees, and see how 
 thick and close are the coverings which lock 
 them up, and how slowly and with what resist- 
 ance these coverings are burst open before the 
 tender little leaves appear; or let us look at 
 the kernel, or the seed-corn, which a still stronger 
 chain holds fettered, till the feeble germinat- 
 ing point can shake itself free; or, finally, let 
 -us look at the helpless infant and its birth. 
 Obstacles," he concludes, " are not appointed 
 by providence with the design of repelling newly 
 uprising life, but with the purpose of strength- 
 ening it at once upon its first appearance, and 
 
52 LETTERS TO A MOTHER. 
 
 of making evident the meaning of that appear- 
 ance." * 
 
 That children who are brought up " simply and 
 naturally never evade but rather seek obstacles " 
 has been noticed by Froebel in the Education of 
 Man. 
 
 " Let it lie," the vigorous youngster exclaims to 
 his father, who is about to roll a piece of wood out 
 of the boy's way; "let it lie; I can get over 
 it." "With difficulty, indeed, the boy gets - over 
 it the first time, but he has accomplished the feat 
 by his own strength. Strength and courage have 
 grown in him. He returns, gets over the ob- 
 stacle a second time, and soon he learns to clear 
 it easily. If activity brought joy to the child, work 
 now gives delight to the boy. Hence, the dar- 
 ing and venturesome feats of boyhood, the ex- 
 ploration of caves and ravines, the climbing 
 of trees and mountains, the searching of the 
 heights and depths, the roaming through fields 
 and forests. 
 
 The most difficult thing seems easy, the most 
 daring thing seems without danger to him, for his 
 
 * Froebel's Letters. Translated by E. Miohaelis and H. 
 Keatley Moore, p. 60. 
 
SELF-MAKING. 53 
 
 promptings come from his innermost heart and 
 will." * 
 
 I well know how hard it is to resist the fear 
 which deters us from giving children occasion to 
 cope with difficulties, conquer obstacles, confront 
 reasonable perils. Yet I also know that if you wish 
 to develop Harold's strength and manliness you 
 must be ready to let him do and dare. Nor is it 
 less true that if, as he grows older, you wish to 
 develop his intellect you must avoid making the 
 path of knowledge too smooth, broad, and easy, and 
 if you wish to develop his moral energy you must 
 permit him to grapple with moral problems. 
 
 The parents of a bright child are often victims 
 to senseless exaggerations of his ability and sense- 
 less fears for his health. He is so clever he does 
 not need to study, and so nervous and high-strung 
 that he should not study. So when he is sent to 
 school the teacher is enjoined not to push him, and 
 he is kept in a class where he has nothing to do. 
 Ey the time he is ten years old he has fallen in 
 actual attainment behind the average child, has be- 
 come so idle that it is impossible to make him work, 
 and so conceited that he is an offense to all rational 
 * Education of Man. 'Kallmann's Translation, p. 102. 
 
54 LETTERS TO A MOTHER. 
 
 persons. His intellectual and moral debauchery is 
 completed by borne indulgence and tbe excuses 
 woven by maternal vanity. As less and less is ex- 
 acted of bim he naturally exacts more and more of 
 others, until at last his petty tyrannies become in- 
 supportable, and the regime of foolish indulgence 
 is superseded by a regime of futile scoldings, 
 threats, and punishments. 
 
 I should not express myself so strongly on this 
 point were I not sure that hundreds of children are 
 ruined because enough is not expected of them. 
 The keener your realization of this peril, the more 
 earnestly will you incite your infant Hercules to 
 strangle, while still in his cradle, the twin serpents 
 of sloth and selfishness. In your efforts to incite 
 and discipline his energies you must, however, be 
 careful to keep a just balance between his strength 
 and the obstacles you ask him to overcome. Will 
 may be paralyzed as well as dissipated, and through 
 the failures born of attempts to grapple with over- 
 whelming difficulties the child may be made moody 
 and cowardly. Moreover, his affections are re- 
 pelled from the mother or teacher who asks of him 
 what even with his best effort he can not do, while 
 conversely the impetuous currents of his love flow 
 
SELF-MAKING. 55 
 
 freely toward all those who procure for him that 
 elation of spirit which is the fine flower of success- 
 ful achievement. Finally, it is from many small 
 successes that he wins courage and modesty. Be- 
 coming accustomed to strife and victory, he learns 
 just what he may venture to attempt, and in the 
 end grows capable of that " reasoned rashness " 
 which all great emergencies demand and all great 
 successes imply. 
 
 By many persons Froebel is supposed to be the 
 avowed champion of two very popular, very plausi- 
 ble, but very dangerous educational heresies, 
 against which his whole system is a protest. One 
 of these heresies has been called sugar-plum educa- 
 tion, the other has been fitly baptized flower-pot 
 education. Sugar-plum education in its moral 
 aspect means coaxing, cajolery, and bribery; in its 
 intellectual aspect it is the parent of that specious 
 and misleading maxim that the chief aim of the 
 educator is to interest the child. Like the theory 
 which wrecks happiness by making it the aim of 
 life, the effort to win interest results in methods 
 which kill interest. The end of life is not happi- 
 ness, but goodness; the aim of education is not to 
 interest the child, but to incite and guide his self- 
 
56 LETTERS TO A MOTHER. 
 
 activity. Seeking goodness we win happiness; in- 
 citing self -activity we quicken interest. Please say 
 to Helen that unless she wishes her kindergarten 
 to be a wretched parody of Froebel's ideal she will 
 say to herself, not " I must interest the children," 
 but " I must get and hold their attention." The 
 kindergartner who lashes herself into a dramatic 
 frenzy when playing the games, and talks herself 
 hoarse in vain attempts to interest her children in 
 their gifts, too often remains serenely complacent in 
 face of their phlegmatic indifference to her well- 
 meant endeavors. Has. she not done everything 
 to interest them? They must, she thinks, be pecul- 
 iarly unresponsive children; or perhaps they have 
 been spoiled at home ! If she would propose to her- 
 self the objective test", and frankly admit that unless 
 she can hold attention she is a failure, she would 
 hit upon devices appealing more to the self-activity 
 of the pupils. Striving for attention she would 
 win interest. For true interest can neither be se- 
 duced nor compelled; it must be, incited. 
 
 These hints will help you to understand sugar- 
 plum education. Wow for the flower-pot. Flower- 
 pot education means the effort to make the child 
 wise and good through the influence of an arti- 
 
SELF-MAKING. 57 
 
 ficially perfect environment. You will take your 
 tender plant out of the common ground and away 
 from the common air and keep it safe by setting it 
 in a sunny window of your own room. The strug- 
 gle for life may mean something for other plants, 
 but you will improve on the divine method in rear- 
 ing your choice rose. Two false assumptions are 
 latent in your procedure: first, the assumption that 
 character may be formed without effort; and sec- 
 ond, the assumption that evil is only outside your 
 child, and not at all in him. 
 
 Both flower-pot and sugar-plum education are 
 attacks upon freedom. The former holds that the 
 child may be molded by environment, the latter 
 that his blind impulses may be played upon by the 
 educator. Froebel holds that he is a free being, and 
 therefore must be a self-making being. Hence, 
 while sugar-plum education appeals to the activity 
 of the educator, and flower-pot education to the 
 activity of environment, Froebel appeals first, last, 
 and always to the self-activity of the child. 
 
 Contemporary students of childhood claim such 
 a monopoly of the insight into motor activity as the 
 point of departure for a wise nurture of infancy 
 that it sometimes seems as if they really believed 
 
58 LETTERS TO A MOTHER. 
 
 that before the rise of the new psychology no one 
 had ever noticed how babies love to kick. The 
 kindergartner, however, may proudly point to the 
 Play with the Limbs in proof of the fact that 
 Froebel at least anticipated the wisdom of our later- 
 day prophets, and if she is courageous she may even 
 insist that in his description of the ascending stages, 
 through which motor activity is transfigured into 
 creative self-revelation, the founder of the kinder- 
 garten and author of the Mother-Play has far sur- 
 passed any recent child student. Froebel's great 
 insight is that the human being is a self -expressing 
 being. As a baby he expresses his abounding full- 
 ness of life in incessant movement. Through move- 
 ment his inner force strengthens and unfolds, and 
 he becomes an imitative being. Making himself 
 into dog, cat, flower, bird, father, mother, brother, 
 sister, tradesman, soldier, preacher, he makes over 
 these objects and persons into himself. Prom imi- 
 tation he rises to transforming and productive activ- 
 ity, and strives to stamp himself upon the little 
 world which through imitation he had stamped 
 upon himself. Finally, he establishes within his 
 soul the two contrasting yet complementary activi- 
 ties of self-revelation and investigation, and while 
 
SELF-MAKING. 59 
 
 on the one hand he expresses his own ideals in plas- 
 tic, pictorial, verbal, or musical form, he strives, on 
 the other, to discover by ceaseless search the mean- 
 ing of the world in which he finds himself. The 
 duty of education is to utilize the ascending modes 
 of self-activity so as to help them realize their own 
 unconscious aim. The Mother-Play songs and the 
 kindergarten gifts are Froebel's carefully chosen 
 means to this end. The Play with the Limbs and 
 the Falling Song are the terminus ab quo of the 
 whole process of development because they seize 
 upon the primordial manifestations of generic self- 
 hood. Abounding vitality expressed in movement 
 is the primal revelation of the God in the soul; 
 faith is the primal outreaching of the God in the 
 soul toward the God in the world. 
 
 One more question must be touched upon be- 
 fore we say good-bye to the Play with the Limbs. 
 Why does the instinctive mother love to talk and 
 sing to her child long before he is able to under- 
 stand words or catch melodies? Why does Froebel 
 insist that each of his little games shall be accom- 
 panied by word and song? It is only necessary to 
 put these questions to begin to suspect their an- 
 swers. It is through the frequent association of 
 
60 LETTERS TO A MOTHER. 
 
 words with objects and acts that the child comes to 
 connect sounds with ideas, and it is through imitat- 
 ing these sounds that he becomes a language i using 
 being. Hence he should hear much speaking, and 
 the connections between words and the objects and 
 acts for which they stand should be often and 
 clearly pointed out. Maternal instinct has met the 
 first of these needs, but has not adequately re- 
 sponded to the second. One great merit of Froe- 
 bel's games is that they associate elementary sensa- 
 tions with the words through which they are desig- 
 nated, and throw into relief the connection between 
 word and sensation by means of gesture. 
 
 In addition to its intellectual incitement the 
 mother's prattle has a moral influence, and this is 
 augmented when song is added to word. For 
 through prattle and song the child learns to know 
 his mother's voice, and this voice soothes, calms, 
 attracts him though he understands not a word of 
 what is said. Love for his mother's voice renders 
 him at a later stage of development more obedi- 
 ent to its commands, more susceptible to its 
 appeals. "Who shall say how far maternal influence 
 may be increased or diminished by the presence 
 or absence of fibers of experience connecting 
 
SELF-MAKING. 61 
 
 the conscious with the unconscious periods of 
 life? 
 
 In Froebel's opinion song has a still deeper im- 
 port, for he recognizes in music the natural lan- 
 guage of emotion, and believes that love, the mel- 
 ody of the heart, is revealed in the melody of the 
 voice. Hence in his commentary on the Kicking 
 Song he explains that the mother's song is born of 
 her longing to nourish her baby's feeling. He shall 
 not only learn through her opposing hands to 
 know her strength and his own: in some slight 
 degree he must feel the tenderness that inspires 
 her act. Hence in song she seeks to reveal 
 herself as love, just as through pressure she reveals 
 herself as power. / Since the presentiments of in- 
 fancy help to determine the thought of maturity, 
 and since in the relationship of the child to its 
 mother is foreshadowed the relationship of the soul 
 to God, I think you can not too seriously consider 
 the suggestion that you should never oppose your 
 boy without revealing love as the motive of your 
 opposition. Love shining through your prohibi : 
 tions and penalties will help him to believe in the 
 love which hides under all the contradictions of 
 life. The rebellious Titan chained to the rock and 
 
62 LETTERS TO A MOTHER. 
 
 gnawed by the vulture, images the inevitable out- 
 come of finite struggle against omnipotence con- 
 ceived as divorced from love. Job, bereft of prop- 
 erty, health, friends, family, declaring in his ashes 
 and desolation, " Though He slay me, yet will I 
 trust in Him," is the immortal type of strength de- 
 veloped through trial when trial is recognized as 
 coming from God. To conquer an unshaking faith 
 in love as the moving principle of the universe is 
 to win the victory of life. 
 
 From movement to the life force back of move- 
 ment; from single force to the complex of forces; 
 from the complex of forces to the educational im- 
 port of restrictions and obstacles; from the mean- 
 ing of obstacles to the love which provides them — 
 such has been the path over which this letter has 
 traveled. I hope that from the point we have now 
 reached you clearly perceive that the general aim of 
 a wise nurture is to help the child wear deep chan- 
 nels and rear confining banks for the impetuous cur- 
 rents of life. Diffused force is wasted force, and 
 mere instinctive activity must be transformed into 
 conscious voluntary and specific deeds. 
 
 You will best follow the evolution of Froebel's 
 ideal by constantly recurring to the definition of 
 
SELF-MAKING. 63 
 
 life as unconscious participation in universal ener- 
 gy, and to the definition of infant education as the 
 nurture of this hidden yet impetuous force. These 
 insights will teach you what Froebel means by fol- 
 lowing the child. They will explain the crownless 
 tree in the Grass Mowing picture, and declare to you 
 why it was that blighted by the destruction of its 
 life impulse it could yield neither flowers nor fruit. 
 They will help you to understand why so many 
 children hide their real selves from their parents, 
 and in lieu of frank and tender companionship give 
 back to them parrot repetitions of their own max- 
 ims and monkey imitations of their mannerisms. 
 They will teach you why many shallow persons 
 remain throughout life mere dotards of custom or 
 blind slaves of fashion, and do not even give a sign - 
 that somewhere behind this mask there is at least an 
 infinitesimal selfhood. Perhaps they may awaken 
 you to a realization of the sad fact that the origin- 
 ality of sensitive and conscientious children is often 
 sapped and their integrity threatened by the effort 
 to be all they are Ifcught they ought to be, and last 
 but not least, they will make it impossible for you 
 to withhold your pity from souls who have sought 
 in lawlessness the freedom they should have found 
 
64 LETTERS TO A MOTHER. 
 
 in wisely directed energies. Then npon you as upon 
 me will grow the conviction that Froebel never 
 spoke wiser word than when he declared that the 
 
 ' aim of true motherhood is the " nurture of life," 
 and that the one unpardonable sin is to quench the 
 mysterious energy in which lies hidden all we are 
 and all we hope to become. 
 
 We shall not study Froebel's book in Froe- 
 bel's spirit unless before dismissing the Play with 
 the Limbs we seek to win from it help for our- 
 selves as well as for the children. I shall, therefore, 
 bring this letter to a close by suggesting a few of 
 the thoughts which have stirred my mind while I 
 have been writing it. 
 
 Since man is only that which he makes himself 
 
 - to be, the vainest of all vain glorying is glory in 
 what he calls his potentialities. The potential is 
 that which is not. There are no deedless Alexan- 
 ders. There are no inarticulate Shakespeares. 
 Deeds made the one, dramas created the other. 
 Ideally each man is all men, actually each man is 
 what he achieves, and the histoA/ of a man, so says 
 Goethe, is his character. 
 
 Neither is it sufficient to have achieved. Man 
 may never lay back upon his oars. The happy 
 
SELF-MAKING. 65 
 
 warrior goes from " well to better," and is " daily 
 self -surpassed." Each attained degree of conscious- 
 ness must spur us to invade new realms of the un- 
 conscious. Each attained degree of character is 
 kept only by being outgrown. Sulking in his tent, 
 Achilles is no hero; dallying in Calypso's Isle, 
 Odysseus ceases to be the man of wisdom. 
 
 But weak as is the man who glories in his pos- 
 sibilities, he who casts the blame of his defeat upon 
 circumstances is weaker still. There are no circum- 
 stances over which man may not triumph by con- 
 quest or by that endurance which is " all the pas- 
 sion of great souls." " I count life," says Brown- 
 ing, "just a stuff to try the soul's strength on." 
 " God," writes the devout Thomas a, Kempis, 
 " grants us occasions of contest in order to bless us 
 with opportunities of victory." Increase in the 
 number and strength of the obstacles which beset 
 the soul, is the pledge of ascent to a higher class in 
 the great school of life. " Then welcome each re- 
 buff that turns earth's smoothness rough " ; wel- 
 come the frost that stings, the. flame that consumes, 
 the rack of pain, the flood of sorrow, the two-edged 
 sword of spiritual conflict, the tragic mystery 
 which concentrates life by limiting its term — the 
 
66 LETTERS TO A MOTHER. 
 
 whole blessed world-order which clashing with 
 man's ignorant self-will makes possible his ascent 
 into the heavenly realm of freedom. 
 
 Yet even sloth, and selfishness, and cowardice 
 can not destroy the nature of the soul, and for the 
 free spirit it is never too late. Vainly does material- 
 ism teach the extinction of the will. For will a3 
 for thought and love there is no extinction. They 
 partake of the eternal. We owe much to the doc- 
 trine of hell for keeping before us its solemn asser- 
 tion of this pregnant truth. Man can not be pun- 
 ished unless he is responsible, neither can he be 
 responsible unless he is free, and therefore capable 
 of amendment. Should he lose his freedom even 
 through his own sin, he could no longer be pun- 
 ished for sinning. Implicit in the doctrine of hell 
 is the insight which triumphs over hell. It was a 
 daring saying of Eovalis that " God wills gods." 
 His will must prevail. Therefore neither should 
 any individual despair for himself, nor parents 
 suffer heartbreak over their erring children, nor 
 teachers lose hope of the most recalcitrant pupil. 
 
 "For I have seen all winter long the thorn 
 First show itself intractable and fierce, 
 And after bear the rose upon its top." 
 
LETTER III. 
 
 FROM WIND TO SPIRIT. 
 
 Watch as your baby grows, and you will see 
 That his whole life, wherever he may be, 
 Is a perpetual mimicry. 
 
 An engine now, he puffs with all his might ; 
 Anon, with brows perplexed, he feigns to write — 
 Or strides his chair, a mounted knight. 
 
 Brimming with life, but knowing not as yet 
 Even the letters of his alphabet, 
 He imitates each pattern set. 
 
 And watching him, perchance you question why 
 Each new activity that meets his eye 
 Excites him his own skill to try. 
 
 His is an instinct ignorantly wise ! 
 
 Only in doing can he realize 
 
 The thing that's done beneath his eyes. 
 
 A stranger 'midst the surging life of men, 
 He to his own life-stature shall attain 
 By taking — to give back again. 
 
 Henrietta E. Eliot. 
 
 THE WEATHEEVANE. 
 
 This way, that way, 
 
 Turns the weather-vane ; 
 This way, that way, 
 Turns and turns again. 
 Turning, pointing, ever showing, 
 How the merry wind is blowing. 
 
 Emilie Poulsson. 
 67 
 
03 
 
FROM WIND TO SPIRIT. 69 
 
 Dear : The session of our mothers' class 
 
 yesterday was an unusually animated one. At the 
 previous meeting I had asked the mothers to notice 
 their children carefully and to report all the imita- 
 tive actions which might occur during the week. 
 The response was general and the results of observa- 
 tion very interesting. A baby fifteen weeks old had 
 tried to purse his lips when his mother went 
 through with this movement close in front of him. 
 A boy of seven months had successfully imitated 
 movements of the head. Several babies aged ten 
 months had noticed and repeated the act of beckon- 
 ing with the forefinger. A little girl of nine 
 months had given her doll a bath, had kissed it as 
 she herself was kissed, and had tried to sing it to 
 sleep. A fifteen-months-old boy had gone through 
 with the movements of shaving his chin. Another 
 of the same age had pretended to read aloud, mov- 
 ing his finger along the lines of a book and modulat- 
 ing his voice. A little girl of twenty months had 
 seen some flying pigeons, and had quickly and re- 
 peatedly opened and shut her fingers in imitation of 
 their movement. A boy three years and a half old 
 had happened to see a butcher kill some pigs, and in 
 a spirit of imitation had arranged pieces of wood 
 
70 LETTERS TO A MOTHER. 
 
 and prepared to do the same. A somewhat older 
 child had fastened feathers from an old duster to his 
 little coat and hopped about the yard, scratching 
 the ground as he had seen chickens do. A little 
 girl had given herself a bad hurt by spreading her 
 arms for wings and trying to fly from a high porch. 
 Had this effort succeeded she intended her next 
 flight to be from the roof of this same porch, which 
 she could easily reach by climbing through her 
 nursery window. _This child, if I remember aright, 
 was about six years old. Many other observations 
 were reported, but as those already given are 
 amply sufficient to illustrate the subject of this 
 letter I spare you any further examples of the 
 fact of imitation, and hasten to suggest its mean- 
 ing.* 
 
 It was amusingto watch the change which stole 
 over the spirit of the maternal dream as the reports 
 accumulated. The complacency and pride which 
 were evident in the tones and expressions of the 
 mothers who made the earlier reports contrasted 
 
 * "Wishing my illustrations to be reliable, particularly as 
 to the ages of children, I have borrowed freely from Pro- 
 fessor Preyer. See The Senses and the Will, pp. 282-292. 
 The imitation of the butcher is reeorded^jy Pestalozzi of his 
 son. 
 
FROM WIND TO SPIRIT. 71 
 
 amusingly with the matter-of-fact rehearsals of 
 those who followed them. A two-horned dilemma 
 seemed gradually to define itself. Either each of 
 the fifty mothers present was the possessor of a re- 
 markable child, or imitativeness was no mark of 
 unusual mental power. The question was brought 
 to a climax by a spinster of scientific proclivities, 
 whose latest hobby is the Simian intellect, and who 
 followed up the reports of the mothers with a 
 series of anecdotes illustrating the imitativeness 
 of monkeys. A general and hearty laugh fol- 
 lowing her remarks showed which horn of the 
 dilemma had been seized by the collective mind of 
 the class. 
 
 Surrendering imitation as a mark of individ- 
 ual distinction we win it as the characteristic of 
 an essential stage in the process of psychogenesis. 
 The act of imitation proves that the infant has be- 
 come conscious of his own power to originate move- 
 ments, and that he voluntarily exercises this power. 
 Hence, as Professor Preyer has pointed out, it is the 
 first sure sign of the birth of will. Pondering this 
 fact we begin to understand the psychologic instinct 
 which led Froebel to follow the Kicking Game, 
 whose motive is the solicitation of force, with the 
 
72 LETTERS TO A MOTHER. 
 
 Weathervane, which is an initial attempt to influ- 
 ence the activity of imitation. 
 
 Coeval with the nascent consciousness of his 
 own causal power is the child's recognition of 
 causal energy as the source of the movements he 
 repeats. Mr. Howells relates that when his little 
 daughter was puzzled by the attitudes of certain 
 figures in the great pictures which she ambitiously 
 attempted to copy, she took the poses herself and 
 explained that " she. then saw how they felt." This 
 little girl had become conscious of the latent motive 
 which incites to imitation and which is nothing else 
 than an attempt to interpret alien activity by repro- 
 ducing it. As Froebel explains: " What the child 
 imitates he is trying to understand," and his act im- 
 plies an unconscious process of introspection 
 through which he comes to the conclusion that just 
 as he originates his movements, so the movements 
 he perceives are originated by causal energies 
 analogous to his own. 
 
 If you have followed this analysis of the act 
 of imitation you will understand the delight with 
 which you greeted Harold's first attempt to repeat 
 the activities of persons and things about him. In 
 my last letter I tried to show you that man is a 
 
PROM WIND TO SPIRIT. 73 
 
 self-making being and hence a free being. My 
 chief aim in this correspondence will be to call your 
 attention to those phenomena of child life which 
 mark ascending degrees in the concrete realization 
 of freedom. Imitation is interesting and important 
 because it is one of the crises in the battle for lib- 
 erty. The child who imitates has formed an ideal, 
 and energizes to realize it. This is the beginning 
 of moral freedom. He has inferred a causal energy 
 as the begetter of a perceptible effect. This is the 
 beginning of intellectual freedom. All higher de- 
 grees of moral freedom will be attained by the gen- 
 eration of loftier ideals and through the self-disci- 
 pline involved in their realization. All higher de- 
 grees of intellectual freedom will be achieved 
 through wider applications of the idea of causality. 
 " A cause," says Dr. Harris, " is worth a whole 
 series of effects. The hen in the nursery tale that 
 laid the golden eggs was a living causal process, 
 while the eggs were mere dead results or effects." 
 Looking back of phenomena to the energies which 
 produce them the mind throws off the tyranny of 
 sense. 
 
 It is important to add that while imitation re- 
 veals the first stirring of cause, the impulsion of this 
 
ij± LETTERS TO A MOTHER. 
 
 idea is presupposed by all experience. Lacking the 
 thought of cause we could not recognize something 
 objectively existent as the source of a sense im- 
 pression, and lacking such recognition we could 
 never lift sensation into perception.* This insight 
 forces us to startling conclusions. For if the idea 
 of cause is the necessary condition of experience it 
 can of course not be furnished by experience, and 
 those psychologists who attempt to derive it from 
 experience are engaged in the impossible task of 
 proving that an ancestor can be begotten of its own 
 offspring. Again, if it be not derived from ex- 
 perience it must be given in the constitution of the 
 mind, or, differently stated, its source must be the 
 mind's own self-activity. Since, as we have already 
 seen, the ascending degrees of thought are marked 
 by the rise first from things to causes, and next from 
 narrower to wider circles of causal energy, it is evi- 
 dent that mental progress consists in getting farther 
 and farther away from the data of sense, and in 
 more and more consciously directing attention to 
 the energy of mind. Strangest of all is the fact that 
 it is precisely by this withdrawal from sense that 
 
 * See Psychologic Foundations of Education, vol. xxxvi, 
 International Education Series, p. 53. 
 
FROM WIND TO SPIRIT. 75 
 
 we arrive at the underlying reality of the sensible 
 world, or, in other words, that we learn to know 
 the material cosmos not by an influx of things but 
 by an efflux of the soul. 
 
 Being a lover of Browning, you may remember 
 a passage in his Paracelsus which states this pivotal 
 psychologic truth. I always find poetic statements 
 of great help. They illuminate my mind, and the 
 association of a spiritual truth with a visible image 
 seems to give it added authority. A symbol is Na- 
 ture's vote in favor of an idea. I wonder if Nature 
 could clothe a falsehood, and if the very fact 
 that she consents to weave for a thought its visi- 
 ble garment is not a proof of its substantial truth. 
 However this may be, here is my passage 
 from Browning: 
 
 " Truth is within ourselves : it takes no rise 
 From outward things, whate'er you may believe. 
 There is an inmost center in us all 
 Where truth abides in fullness; and around, 
 Wall upon wall, the gross flesh hems it in. 
 This perfect, clear perception which is truth 
 A baffling and perverting carnal mesh 
 Blinds it and makes all error ; and to ' know ' 
 Rather consists in opening out a way 
 Whence the imprisoned splendor may escape 
 Than in effecting entry for a light 
 Supposed to be without." 
 7 
 
76 LETTERS TO A MOTHER. 
 
 If imitation means all that I have said it means 
 why do we feel such a contempt for formalists and 
 pedants? Simply because imitation is interesting as 
 a rudimentary but unsatisfying as a vestigial form 
 of thought and will. It is a mark of progressive de- 
 velopment in the infant, but of arrested develop- 
 ment in the man. Still, it is important that our 
 impatience with the imitators should not go too far. 
 Strong individuals, especially in youth, are often 
 insurgents against social forms, and despisers of the 
 stored-up heritage of wisdom. Duller natures are a 
 kind of balance wheel in the complex machinery of 
 life and should be duly appreciated. 
 
 Since education is a series of responses to indi- 
 cated needs, how shall the mother meet the new 
 demand imposed by the arrival of her child at 
 the imitative stage of development? I answer: 
 First, by protecting him so far as possible from 
 seeing or hearing what she would not wish him 
 to reproduce. For since each activity in its re- 
 coil contributes its quota to the shaping of char- 
 acter it is obvious that what the child imitates he 
 will tend to become. Next, each mother should 
 notice what special actions attract her child, and in- 
 spire him to most frequent repetition. In this way 
 
FROM WIND TO SPIRIT. 77 
 
 she will learn something of his specific individual- 
 ity. Finally, there are certain activities whose re- 
 production will have an educative value for all chil- 
 dren. To indicate the most essential of these typ- 
 ical acts is one purpose of the Mother-Play. 
 
 Before we proceed to the study of these typical 
 imitations a few words of caution are necessary. 
 No imitative play should be taught the child until 
 he is able to associate with it some definite though 
 not necessarily adequate idea. He should not be 
 called on to go through such games for the amuse- 
 ment of older people, neither should he ever be 
 praised for playing them well. They are the seri- 
 ous business of infancy, and should be treated with 
 gravity and respect. Finally, such plays must not 
 be so numerous as to interfere with the develop- 
 ment of independent thought, or to confuse the 
 mind with too many suggestions. Please say to 
 Helen in this connection that a very few additions 
 to the games suggested by Froebel will give her all 
 the plays she can possibly teach the children with 
 advantage to their development, and one of the most 
 disastrous results of the present tendency to mul- 
 tiply song books is that the individual kinder- 
 gartner either overloads the minds of her pupils 
 
V8 LETTERS TO A MOTHER. 
 
 and gives them spiritual indigestion, or that, be- 
 wildered by variety, she sacrifices essential and typ- 
 ical plays to those which have no educative value. 
 
 Recognizing the fact that imitation is a search 
 for causes we are ready to begin our study of the 
 Weathervane. Remember that the first school of 
 the soul is the " school of astonishment," and that, 
 as Plato long since pointed out, tthe beginning of 
 knowledge is in wonder. Since wonder expresses 
 the tension of subject and object, it is evident that 
 experiences lose their stimulus when they lose their 
 novelty, and we justly esteem it a mark of high in- 
 tellect to be piqued by the still unintelligible com- 
 monplace. Upon thought as upon will custom 
 presses "with a weight heavy as frost and deep 
 almost as life," while conversely objects which are 
 remote, and activities which are infrequent, stimu- 
 late mental energy, and alike for the individual and 
 the race the path to paradise is upon the ascending 
 rounds of "the stairway of surprise." 
 
 Dream yourself back into childhood, and try to 
 realize the wonder with which the unaccustomed 
 soul must confront the phenomena of wind, storm, 
 lightning, and thunder. You will readily perceive 
 that in presence of the latter phenomena fear 
 
FROM WIND TO SPIRIT. 79 
 
 blends with amazement, and that the immediate 
 outcome of this complex emotion will probably 
 be superstition and its recoil skepticism. Goethe 
 relates that in very early childhood he began 
 to settle into a serious disbelief in the benignity 
 of Providence, incited thereto first by the shock 
 of the Lisbon earthquake and later by the fool- 
 ish conduct of those around him, " who on the 
 occasion of a terrible thunderstorm dragged the 
 boy and his sister into a dark passage, where the 
 whole household, distracted with fear, tried to con- 
 ciliate the angry deity by frightful groans and 
 prayers.," * Few persons nowadays act quite so 
 insanely as this; still fear spreads by contagion 
 from many a mother to many a child, and you must 
 guard yourself from all unreasoning apprehension, 
 and from all starts, outcries, and nervous frights if 
 you wish Harold to be manly and courageous. 
 
 The phenomena of wind as distinct from storm 
 inspire no fear, but pure and simple wonder. 
 Hence they stimulate the keenest search for their 
 cause. Himself incarnate motion, the child finds 
 himself in presence of a world in movement. At 
 the same time he feels the breath of the wind and 
 
 * Lewes, Life of Goethe. 
 
80 LETTERS TO A MOTHER. 
 
 hears its voices. The first explanation which occurs 
 to him is not that the wind moves objects, but that 
 moving objects cause wind. The only movement 
 of which he knows anything is self-movement, or 
 movement which he easily traces back to self -move- 
 ment. He moves himself; hence the weathervane, 
 the windmill, the trees move themselves. He 
 can cause wind by running, or by waving a fan, 
 or rustling a newspaper. Hence the windmill, the 
 trees, and other moving objects may make the 
 strong wind he feels. So reasons the child. So 
 reason to-day the Arizona Indians. 
 
 It marks an intellectual crisis when the sus- 
 picion arises that this primitive theory is false, and 
 that the wind is not the product, but the producer, 
 of the varied movements perceived. Historically, 
 this crisis may be traced in many barbaric myths. 
 As an experience of childhood it is doubtless pre- 
 cipitated by intercourse with grown people. With 
 this presentiment thought mounts, from the con- 
 ception of different causal energies behind dif- 
 ferent movements, to the thought of a single 
 causal energy behind many movements. More- 
 over, in ascribing many effects to a single 
 cause the mind learns to separate as well as 
 
FROM WIND TO SPIRIT. 81 
 
 connect cause and effect, and to conceive cause 
 as an invisible power. Speculations with regard 
 to the nature of this unseen energy next begin to 
 occupy the mind, and by a process of unconscious 
 analogizing the wind is invested with human or 
 quasi-human attributes. Last of all, doubting his 
 qwn solutions, the child carries the burning ques- 
 tion to his elders, whom he besets with eager in- 
 quiries as to what the wind is, and what makes the 
 wind? 
 
 If you will study carefully Froebel's commen- 
 tary on the Play of the Weathervane you will see 
 that he points out how you may come to the aid of 
 the infant mind, both in the earlier and the later 
 stages of this process of spiritual evolution. Let 
 it be stated at once that you are not limited to 
 any particular imitation, but that the Weather- 
 vane merely stands for the wind-blown object, 
 whatever it may be, which most allures the child's 
 interest. He is incited to repeat its movement, and 
 led gradually to imitate the activity of other objects 
 set in motion by the same unseen force. This is, 
 of course, a process involving time, but it must be 
 remembered that no one of Froebel's plays repre- 
 sents a detached experience, but rather the moving 
 
82 LETTERS TO A MOTHER. 
 
 principle of many experiences. Each game must 
 be conceived on the one hand as a center from 
 which influence radiates in all directions, and on 
 the other as the vital germ of a particular thought 
 which is to be developed by other experiences and 
 by recurrence to the play itself at different in- 
 tervals throughout the whole of early childhood. 
 Thus the power of the implicit thought is made 
 cumulative, and the watchful mother is able to trace 
 its deepening and widening influence. 
 
 Emerson has said that language is fossil 
 poetry. Max Miiller has called it petrified phi- 
 losophy. As poetry it preserves those corre- 
 spondences between Nature and the soul which 
 seized upon the imagination of primitive men. As 
 philosophy or psychology it reveals the wings 
 upon which the soul soars into the upper air of 
 thought. Tracing the pedigree of words we learn 
 the ancestral forms of all spiritual ideas. And, 
 since the process of spiritual evolution is alike 
 in the individual and the race, a study of the 
 words under which men originally strove to ex- 
 press spiritual ideas gives us many a valuable hint 
 with regard to the true method of developing such 
 ideas in the mind of the child. It is, therefore, in- 
 
FROM WIND TO SPIRIT. g3 
 
 teresting in connection with our Song of the "Wind 
 to recall the fact that by savages the soul is often 
 described as " the air or breeze which passes in and 
 out through the nostrils and the mouth," and that 
 the breath has furnished the chief name for the 
 soul not only to the Hebrew, Sanskrit, Latin, 
 Greek, German, and English tongues, but also to 
 many barbaric languages.* " The Latin word 
 anima meant originally blowing or breathing, and 
 was derived from a root an to blow, which gives 
 anila, wind in Sanscrit, and anemos, wind in Greek. 
 In Greek the root thyein, to rush, gave the name 
 thyella to the storm wind, and the name thymos to 
 the soul as the seat of the passions! " f " Spirit, 
 Latin spiritus, is derived from a verb spirare, which 
 means to draw breath. The German Geist, the 
 English ghost, has also the meaning of breath, while 
 the lineage of the word soul shows clearly that our 
 Teutonic ancestors conceived the principle of spirit- 
 ual life as an inward sea, heaving up and down with 
 every breath, like the ocean waves which swell and 
 rise when the wind blows." X 
 
 * Myths and Myth Makers, John Piske, p. 225. 
 f Science of Language, Max Miiller, Eng. Ed., vol. ii, p. 
 436. 
 
 X Science of Language, Max MttHer, Eng. Ed., vol. i, p. 523. 
 
84 LETTERS TO A MOTHER. 
 
 The recoil of imagination against the mystery 
 of the wind may also be traced in myth. Wind 
 gods and -wind-conquering heroes appear in all 
 mythologies. The mysterious Mani of New Zea- 
 land legend holds all the winds but the west in 
 his hands, or imprisons them with great stones 
 rolled to the mouths of their caves. In American 
 folklore the four winds are personal divinities, each 
 having his distinctive character, and Longfellow 
 has made us familiar with Mudjekeewis the west 
 wind, and his children: Wabun, the morning- 
 bringer, Shawondasee, the lazy south wind, and 
 the fierce Kabibonokka. Classic myth gives us 
 ^Eolus as wind imprisoner; Boreas, born of the 
 Starry Heaven and the Dawn. Finally, our own 
 Teutonic race contributes the beautiful legends of 
 the Erl King and the Lorelei, the conception of 
 " Runic Odin howling his war-song to the gale," 
 and the image of that fierce Hrasvelg, who " sits at 
 the end of heaven, a giant in eagle's disguise, and 
 from whose wings the wind doth come over all 
 mankind." 
 
 In the effort to repeat these interesting chapters 
 of race experience we must be careful not to carica- 
 ture them. The steep and narrow path of true edu- 
 
FliOM WIND TO SPIRIT. 85 
 
 cation hugs the dangerous edge of a precipice. 
 Yawning beneath it are the pits of sentimentalism 
 and formalism. We fall into sentimentalism when- 
 ever we forget that the progress of thought is from 
 object to subject, and that the young child lacks all 
 conscious introspection. He knows many things 
 before he begins to know himself. He must know 
 all things before he can completely know himself. 
 Hence we contradict all sound psychology when 
 we attempt to divert his attention from visible and 
 audible phenomena and direct it to the emotions 
 which we imagine these phenomena ought to in- 
 spire. Such effort to develop a premature subjec- 
 tivity is the parent of hypocrisy and self-deception. 
 Add to this sentimentalism the pedantry born of 
 answering unasked questions, and you will have 
 done all you can to destroy integrity and vigor of 
 mind. It has been said that every premature defini- 
 tion of virtue is the seed of a vice. It is equally 
 true that every premature definition, or conscious 
 statement of feeling is the seed of a sham, and that 
 every premature question nips or kills some living 
 seed of thought. 
 
 Never, therefore, ask Harold such foolish ques- 
 tions as " How does the wind make you feel? " or 
 
86 LETTERS TO A MOTHER. 
 
 " What does the wind make you think? " Let him 
 wonder without contemplating his wonder. Let 
 him think without thinking of his thought. Rend 
 not with profane hands the veil which shrouds that 
 holy of holies, a human soul. Remember that in 
 reality symbols are the " safeguards of mystery," 
 and that their value lies in the fact that in them 
 there is both " concealment and revelation." Avoid 
 also all questions as to what makes the wind, and 
 above all, shun those crude and easy explanations 
 which extinguish wonder without kindling thought, 
 and whose only effect is to make the child feel that 
 there can be no great mystery in the object so glibly 
 talked about. The object of Froebel's "Wind Song 
 is to abet the unconscious dialectic through which 
 the mind comes eventually to refer a variety of 
 visible phenomena to the agency of a single invisi- 
 ble force. It is a parody of his procedure to ask 
 the question which it is the aim of the organic ex- 
 periences suggested to evolve, and the fact that this 
 and similar questions are asked again and again is 
 one chief reason why his symbolic method is mis- 
 understood and denounced. Observe in Froebel's 
 commentary that even when the child questions 
 about the wind he is not answered, but pointed to 
 
FROM WIKD TO SPIRIT. 87 
 
 another mystery. "My child," says the mother, 
 " you can see your little hand move, but you can not 
 see the force that moves it." There is but one mys- 
 tery and one miracle, the miracle of free self -activ- 
 ity. " Were it not miraculous," asks Carlyle, 
 " could I stretch forth my hand and clutch the sun? 
 Yet thou seest me daily stretch forth my hand and 
 therewith clutch many a thing, and swing it hither 
 and thither. Art thou a grown baby, then, to 
 fancy that the miracle lies in miles of distance, or 
 in pounds avoirdupois of weight, and not to see 
 that the true inexplicable God-revealing miracle 
 lies in this, that I can stretch forth my hand at 
 all; that I have free force to clutch aught there- 
 with? " 
 
 Does it seem that in denying the right of ques- 
 tion and explanation I leave but little for you to 
 do? If so, try to realize the influence of music, 
 poetry, gesture, and picture, and, what is still more 
 important, understand that all truth must be rooted 
 in, watered by, and brought to blossom through 
 experiences which, beginning in infancy, recur 
 throughout the whole of life. The Weathervane 
 will mean little either to you or to Harold unless it 
 incites you to give him plenty of outdoor life. Let 
 
88 LETTERS TO A MOTHER. 
 
 the zephyrs fan his cheek. Let him battle with the 
 
 storm wind. As he grows older do not fear to let 
 
 him measure his strength against the wind on water 
 
 as well as on land. Enrich him with the joys of 
 
 Emerson's wild-eyed boy, 
 
 Whom the rain and the wind purgeth, 
 Whom the dawn and the day star urgeth. 
 
 Open his ears to the psean which sounds through 
 the forest when " the grand old harper smites his 
 thunder harp of pines." Open his soul not only to 
 the influence of Nature, but also to the influence of 
 Nature's interpreters, the poets. Read to him, from 
 the Odyssey, of iEolus holding the winds in his 
 cave; from the Iliad, of the great battle between 
 the Fire-God and the Rivers, wherein the help of 
 the wind gave victory to his ally; from the Vedic 
 hymns of the fierce Maruts, "who toss the clouds 
 across the singing sea, who shake the rocks and tear 
 asunder the trees of the forest " ; and when at last 
 his soul is ready for the message turn his thought 
 both to the transcendent God who " clothes Himself 
 with light as with a garment, and walks upon the 
 wings of the wind," and to that immanent spirit 
 which, like the wind, " bloweth where it listeth." 
 Then shall he understand the presentiments which 
 
PROM WIND TO SPIRIT. 39 
 
 now haunt his dreaming soul, and wide awake look 
 into the open eyes of Truth.* 
 
 If I have succeeded in suggesting to your mind 
 the thoughts which Eroebel's Wind Song wakens 
 in my own you will now be ready to recognize the 
 truth that " the union of the one and the many is 
 an everlasting quality in thought itself which never 
 grows old in us." Eeason is itself a unity in mani- 
 foldness, hence it can never be satisfied save as it 
 reduces the manifold to unity. The wonder of the 
 child over the many objects moved by the wind is 
 but an adumbration of the wrestling of mature 
 thought with all forms of the manifold. It was be- 
 cause it proved that each thing in the universe is 
 relative to every other, and hence that the universe 
 
 * I do not know whether I have made myself clear, but my 
 general thought is that with little children we should limit 
 our effort to bringing them in contact with the actual expe- 
 riences out of which the race through analogy evolved its in- 
 sights. Froebel suggests in his picture that they should 
 notice the different things the wind does. As they grow 
 older they should be led to notice the differences between still 
 air, the gentle breeze, the brisk wind, the gust, the tornado. 
 They should also distinguish the different sounds made by the 
 wind — its whispers, songs, sighs, moans, whistles, shrieks, roars. 
 In a word, they should be impressed with all its actual activi- 
 ties, and left to themselves to make out its spiritual analogies. 
 To give them the spiritual meaning is simply to thwart the 
 whole natural process of development. 
 
90 LETTBES TO A MOTHER. 
 
 is one, that Newton's thought of gravitation was 
 epoch-making in science. It was because it pic- 
 tured the world " as a whole, moved and animated 
 by internal forces," that Humboldt's Cosmos mer- 
 ited and won its great celebrity. It was the convic- 
 tion that every creature is " a note in the great har- 
 mony which must be studied in the whole," which 
 inspired Goethe's search for the intermaxillary 
 bone. It was his poetic and philosophic craving to 
 reduce diversities to unity which impelled him to 
 botanical research, and led to the discovery of the 
 metamorphosis of plants. It is because it endows 
 all objects in time with the unity which gravitation 
 gives to all objects in space, that the theory of evo- 
 lution has achieved its unparalleled triumph. To 
 solve the problem of the many and the one is the 
 sole passion of thought, and in its ever-widening 
 syntheses we recognize the gathering force of that 
 finally resistless current with which the mind 
 sweeps out upon the world. 
 
LETTEK IV. 
 
 MAKING BY UNMAKING. 
 
 Oh, have yon thought out all it means 
 
 When baby comes to know 
 Just this — " My bowl is empty now ; 
 
 'Twas full a while ago 1 " 
 
 Only to soul life is it given 
 
 To own the hour that's fled, 
 Blest token that we most shall live 
 
 When men shall call us dead. 
 
 Henrietta R. Eliot. 
 
 ALL GONE! 
 
 All gone ! the supper's gone ! 
 White bread and milk so sweet, 
 For baby dear to eat. 
 
 All gone ! the supper's gone ! 
 Where did baby's supper go 1 
 Tongue, you had a share, I know. 
 Little mouth, with open lips, 
 Through your rosy gate it slips. 
 Little throat, you know full well 
 Where it went, if you would tell. 
 Little hands, grow strong ; 
 Little legs, grow long ; 
 Little cheeks, grow red : 
 You have all been fed. 
 
 Emily Huntington Milleb. 
 91 
 
MAKING BY UNMAKING. 93 
 
 Dear : "Within the past week I have been 
 
 reading Professor Preyer's book, The Mind of the 
 Child, and, perhaps because my thought has also 
 been dwelling much on the All-Gone Song I have 
 been forcibly struck by the many observations prov- 
 ing that the first general concept attained by his boy 
 was that of change in its two forms of ceasing to 
 be and coming to be. It has also interested me 
 to notice that the recognition of ceasing or vanish- 
 ing preceded by nine months that of beginning or 
 appearing. While still unable to articulate any 
 words other than the primitive syllables ma-ma, 
 pa-pa, at-ta, little Axel formed the habit of saying 
 atta when carried from the house for his daily out- 
 ing. In his eleventh month he uttered the same 
 word when the light of a lamp was dimmed. Later 
 he whispered atta when a face was hidden, a fan 
 closed, and a glass emptied of its contents. From 
 these examples of its use it is evident that the word 
 meant to him " gone, all gone," while from the fact 
 that it was generally whispered it seems fair to infer 
 that some sense of mystery, and some feeling of 
 awe, attended this recognition of disappearance. 
 Finally, the feeling of awe was heightened into 
 visible terror during a railway journey, and the 
 
94 LETTERS TO A MOTHER. 
 
 child repeated atta again and again as he gazed 
 from the car window upon the ever-vanishing land- 
 scape.* 
 
 Doubtless every thoughtful mother can recall 
 experiences verifying the observations of Professor 
 Preyer.f Doubtless, too, every mother tries to put 
 into words and action something of what she feels 
 
 * " The only word that is unquestionably used to denote a 
 class of perceptions is still atta, ha-atta, which during the fol- 
 lowing month also is uttered softly, for the most part on go- 
 ing out, and which signifies away or gone. Beyond this no 
 syllable can be named that marked the dawn of mental in- 
 dependence, none that testified to the voluntary use of 
 articulate sounds for the purpose of announcing perceptions." 
 — Development of the Intellect, p. 122. Record of fifteenth 
 month. 
 
 "No second concept is proved with certainty to be asso- 
 ciated with a definite sound until the twentieth month, when 
 da or nda was frequently uttered in » lively manner and with 
 a peculiarly demonstrative accent on the sudden appearance 
 of a new object in the field of vision." — Development of the 
 Intellect, p. 138. 
 
 f The little girl I studied used as her first word All-gone 
 in a highly generalized sense. She said it when an object was 
 put out of sight ; when one was denied her ; when she saw an 
 object that had been denied her ; when she swallowed a mouth- 
 ful of food ; when she slipped back, failing to climb a step ; 
 when she had tried to attract some one's attention and failed ; 
 when a person left the room ; when a door blew to ; when a 
 wagon drove away; when a person passed by, or a wagon ap- 
 proached ; when she wished to go out herself (First Two Tears 
 of the Child). — Millicent W. Shinn. 
 
MAKING BY UNMAKING. 95 
 
 to be struggling in her child's mind. " All gone," 
 she exclaims, smiling and throwing out her arms in 
 explanatory gesture as baby gazes perplexed into 
 his empty cup. " All-gone, light," she repeats, when 
 the candle is borne out of sight. " Bye-bye, papa," 
 she calls, throwing a kiss as the father disap- 
 pears from the nursery, and " bye-bye, pussie, 
 bye-bye, birdie, bye-bye, ball," she says, and 
 teaches her baby to say as one of these well- 
 known objects runs, flies, or rolls out of the field 
 of his vision. 
 
 It must, however, be confessed that in this 
 case the deed of the mother is hardly an adequate 
 response to the hint thrown out by the child. Con- 
 fronted by vanishing objects he shows perplexity, 
 wonder, and fear. Evidently his mind is grappling 
 with a problem. Something has gone! Where has 
 it gone? Why has it gone? Will it come back? 
 Such are the questions stirring darkly within him, 
 and we only need to put them into words to realize 
 that the infant soul is having its first wrestle with 
 an enigma which has allured and tortured the 
 mind of man upon every plane of historic develop- 
 ment. 
 
 Were it not that familiarity with change dead- 
 
96 LETTERS TO A MOTHER. 
 
 ens our sense of its mystery, we should meet the 
 child's wonder with a more comprehending sym- 
 pathy. Think of fleeting days, of changing seasons, 
 of passing years! Behold in the heavens the set- 
 ting sun, the waning moon, the vanishing stars! 
 Let your imagination wander over the face of the 
 earth until you feel the meaning of rushing rivers 
 and ebbing tides, of fading flowers and falling 
 leaves, of withering plants and dying animals. 
 Consider how the mother vanishes from her child, 
 the child from its mother, husband from wife, and 
 friend from friend. When your heart has dwelt 
 upon these things until you begin to realize what it 
 means to be the denizen of a world which is forever 
 fleeing from itself, and whose air is full of " fare- 
 wells to the dying and mournings for the dead," 
 stretch your thought, and from these commonplaces 
 of change pass to its wider workings. Remind 
 yourself that the earth was once a ball of vapor 
 and afterward a fiery sun, while now she hastens 
 toward the time when, like the moon, she will be 
 cold and dead. Recall her geologic changes, her 
 sunken continents, her vanished oceans, her extinct 
 fauna and flora, the primitive men who roved 
 through her ancient forests and died leaving no 
 
MAKING BY UNMAKING. 97 
 
 sign. Remember the great historic nations which 
 have been and are not. Then once more expand 
 your thought and try to realize that our planet is 
 but one of an infinite number of worlds whose life 
 process is presumably the same, and that, as a 
 whole, the history of the universe is that of matter 
 diffused through space and aggregated into revolv- 
 ing spheres only to be after some brief span of life 
 again diffused. 
 
 Why is Turner the greatest painter of Nature? 
 Is it not because he paints a dissolving appearance? 
 " Even while you look at the landscape," say his 
 great pictures, " it is passing away." Piety and 
 poetry speak in similar strain. " The heavens wax 
 old as a garment, and as a vesture shall they be 
 changed." " The great globe shall dissolve, and 
 like an insubstantial pageant faded, leave not a 
 wrack behind." " Nature is giddy with motion, 
 and sun, moon, man undulate and stream." In the 
 alembic of thought all " things that be " melt to 
 " things that seem," and solid Nature dissolves into 
 " one fast-flowing energy," " one rushing meta- 
 morphosis." 
 
 When you begin to feel as little Axel felt in 
 presence of the flying landscape, consider with what 
 
98 LETTERS TO A MOTHER. 
 
 thoughts you seek to reassure your quaking heart. 
 Do you not remind yourself that the sinking lights 
 in the heaven will rise again, that the stream which 
 rushes to the sea is but returning to its source, that 
 the fading flower carries in its heart the seed whence 
 new flowers shall be born, that though individual 
 plants and animals die, their species persist? Ris- 
 ing to higher levels of thought, do you not declare 
 that extinct fauna and flora are explained when we 
 contemplate Nature as a whole and read her evolu- 
 tionary history; that no great nation perishes un- 
 less the World-Spirit transcends the idea it em- 
 bodies; that death is in reality the true birth of the 
 spirit, and that though our earth shall one day re- 
 turn to star dust it will not be until she has fulfilled 
 her destiny, and nurtured countless millions of im- 
 mortal souls. Summing up these separate reassur- 
 ances, is it not clear that you explain to yourself the 
 phenomena of change by declaring that they imply 
 unrealized possibility, and that in all seemingly 
 destructive activities you recognize the segments 
 and arcs of great circular, spiral, and vortical pro- 
 cesses? 
 
 Now, just as you explain change to yourself, 
 you must explain it to your boy if you would help 
 
MAKING BY UNMAKING. 99 
 
 him to conquer and keep his poise of mind. Your 
 explanations must, however, be limited to those 
 infinitesimal circles of change which fall within the 
 range of his minute experience. Froebel's All- 
 Gone Play shows you the ideal mother fulfilling 
 this double requirement. Baby's supper is all gone ! 
 "Where did it go? Little lips, little tongue, little 
 throat, you can tell. Will it come back? Yes, for 
 see, baby's legs are getting long, and his cheeks 
 rosy. Vaguely at first, but with ever-increasing 
 clearness the child learns to connect his food with 
 his bodily health and growth, and with this syn- 
 thesis makes perhaps his first solution of the enigma 
 of change. 
 
 In the account of her girlhood days at Keilhau, 
 Frau Schrader confesses that some of Froebel's 
 plays seemed to her ridiculous, and that she found 
 his idea that men might be made noble by playing 
 such games narrow, limited, and unnatural. Every 
 thoughtful kindergartner has probably been forced 
 to combat a similar doubt both in herself and others. 
 JSTo one can get rid of it without the insight that 
 each little play is merely the concrete example of a 
 general method of procedure, and the point of de- 
 parture for a cumulative series of experiences. The 
 
100 LETTERS TO A MOTHER. 
 
 really wonderful thing about Froebel is his acumen 
 in discerning the nuclei of development, and his 
 power of connecting them with the ideals which 
 are at once their impulsion and their goal. What 
 he says to the mother in each of his little plays is: 
 Learn from what you do in this given instance 
 how to act in all similar instances. What he says 
 in the All-Gone Song is: Learn from the synthesis 
 we have made between baby's vanishing supper and 
 his rosy cheeks how to explain all seemingly de- 
 structive processes. 
 
 If, therefore, we aspire to be intelligent dis- 
 ciples of the prophet of childhood, we shall seize 
 upon every opportunity of calling attention to the 
 rhythmic movement through which change negates 
 itself. We shall connect the sunset with the sunrise, 
 point out the recurrent phases of the moon, teach 
 children to recognize the brightest stars and the 
 most striking constellations, and to watch for their 
 disappearance and return. We shall call attention 
 to the flight of migratory birds, and to their joyous 
 reappearance. We shall show the links which bind 
 the separate seasons into a circular chain of activity. 
 We shall suggest that all the metamorphoses of 
 plant life find their consummation in reproducing 
 
MAKING BY UNMAKING. 101 
 
 the seed from which they started. We shall stir 
 childish imagination with the mysterious transfor- 
 mations of the caterpillar into chrysalis and butter- 
 fly. We shall make much of family birthdays and 
 national anniversaries, and avail ourselves of the 
 sweet influence of our great church festivals upon 
 the development of religious emotion and aspiration. 
 In a word, let the idea of the All-Gone Song be- 
 come really alive in our minds, and it will impel us 
 daily to some sympathetic suggestion or interpreta- 
 tion of which otherwise we might never have 
 dreamed. 
 
 The choice of baby's vanishing supper as a typ- 
 ical illustration of the fact of change is a happy one, 
 because in it the child is himself the change pro- 
 ducer. He unmakes his food in order to make his 
 body. Emerson has described the process of assimi- 
 lation as a physical effort to make over the world 
 into the image of the self. " The snake converts 
 whatever food the meadow yields into snake, the 
 fox into fox, and Peter and John are busy working 
 up all existence into Peter and John." The ideal 
 which this effort implies can, however, not be real- 
 ized upon the physical plane, and the act of assimi- 
 lation points upward to man's spiritual activity in 
 
102 LETTERS TO A MOTHER. 
 
 subduing, transforming, and idealizing Nature. 
 Realizing this fact do you not begin to see tlie 
 destructiveness of little children in a new light? 
 Why do they empty drawers, tear paper, break their 
 toys? Are they, too, trying to stamp themselves 
 upon their environment? Must they, too, unmake 
 in order to remake? And above all, is it your duty 
 to see to it that the effort of the self to produce its 
 image be not thwarted by the lack of material sim- 
 ple enough to lend itself readily to the transforming 
 and creative impulse? 
 
 You must often have watched little children at 
 play on the seashore, and you know that for a time 
 they are content simply to fill little pails with sand, 
 which they immediately pour out. Later, they 
 make huts, dig wells, excavate tunnels, lay out 
 gardens, and when several of them play together, 
 whole villages spring up under their combined 
 effort. Change making without aim is transfigured 
 into creation, and individual creativeness increased 
 by social combination. From hints like these Froe- 
 bel was led to the production of the kindergar- 
 ten gifts, and to use them so that they may abet 
 the activity of the child in these several stages of 
 development is to use them in his spirit. 
 
MAKING BY UNMAKING. 103 
 
 So rrrach for the All-Gone Song. Now for the 
 picture. You will notice that it is divided into two 
 parts. In the foreground of the lower division 
 mother and child sit at a table on which stands a 
 cup from which the child has just been fed. In 
 front of the table a dog who has greedily devoured 
 his food looks in his dish for more. Back of the 
 mother a thirsty boy asks water of his sister, who 
 for an answer holds up an empty glass. As he 
 looks at the glass sly puss creeps up behind him 
 and steals his slice of buttered bread. When 
 he shall turn to get his bread he will find it " all 
 gone." 
 
 Suspended from the ceiling hangs a cage, and 
 on tiptoe beside it a little girl stands ready to give 
 her canary fresh seed. As she opens the door she 
 turns her head just for a second to see what her 
 sister is doing, and lo! when she looks again at the 
 cage she will find her bird flown. Her little brother 
 tries to comfort her. " Come with me, sister," he 
 says, " for out in the field I know a tree in which 
 there is a nest full of birds." 
 
 The upper part of the picture shows us the chil- 
 dren arrived at the field. The older boy has 
 climbed the tree to get the nest. The other children 
 
104 LETTERS TO A MOTHER. 
 
 are so absorbed in watching him that not one of 
 them notices the dog who has followed them to the 
 field, and now stands quietly eating the bread the 
 younger boy holds in his hand. When the little 
 fellow turns round he too will find his bread — all 
 gone. The elder brother has reached the nest. But 
 what does he see? The nest is empty;- the birds 
 have all flown away. One little bird, however, 
 flutters to the ground. " I shall have you, at any 
 rate," says the younger boy, throwing his hat over 
 it. " How glad I shall be to give you to my sister. 
 Wait here, little bird, under my hat, until I pick 
 the beautiful raspberries growing on this bush. 
 How good they will taste ! " But a frolicsome breeze 
 blows over the hat, away flies the bird, and the boy 
 when he returns from the raspberry bush will find 
 his bird flown. 
 
 Froebel's explanation of this picture shows that 
 by typical illustrations of inattention, inconsiderate- 
 ness, want of forethought, and lack of self-restraint 
 he is seeking to awaken the ideals which these ten- 
 dencies contradict. In other words, he is beginning 
 the moral education of the child by attacking the 
 faults into which all children are betrayed. He 
 knows that higher virtues imply lower ones, and 
 
MAKING BY UNMAKING. 105 
 
 that the attempt to develop the higher before the 
 lower is the parent of sham and hypocrisy. He 
 knows that until we win inner collectedness there is 
 no possibility of any real spiritual development, 
 that all good is conquered evil, and all character 
 formed by a process of overcoming. Therefore he 
 escapes the too common error of trying to build 
 character by beginning with the roof instead of the 
 foundations. 
 
 For a long time I was puzzled by the excursion 
 to the field and the attempt to rob the bird's nest, 
 and it seemed to me that the condemnation of this 
 proceeding was by no means sufficiently stringent. 
 The following passage from the Education of Man 
 cleared my vision, and showed me that it was be- 
 cause Froebel understood the child that he did not 
 exaggerate his offense: 
 
 " Another source of many boyish faults lies in 
 precipitation, carelessness, frivolity, and thought- 
 lessness. The boy is apt to act in obedience to a 
 possibly praiseworthy impulse that holds captive 
 his mind and body; but he has not yet experienced 
 in his life the consequences of gratifying this par- 
 ticular impulse, and it has, indeed, not even occurred 
 to him to consider the consequences of the action. 
 
106 LETTERS TO A MOTHER. 
 
 ... A boy throws stones for a long time at the 
 small window of a house near by, trying very hard 
 to hit it. He has no idea, nor does he realize that, 
 if a stone strikes the window, the latter must neces- 
 sarily break. At last a stone hits the window, the 
 'window breaks, and the amazed boy stands rooted 
 to the spot. 
 
 " Again, another boy, by no means malicious, 
 but, on the contrary, very good natured and fond of 
 pigeons, aimed at his neighbor's beautiful pigeon 
 on the roof, with perfect delight and an intense de- 
 sire to hit his mark. He did not consider that if 
 the bullet should hit the mark the pigeon would 
 be killed, and still less that this pigeon might be 
 the mother of young ones needing her care. He 
 fired, the bullet struck, the pigeon fell, a beautiful 
 pair of pigeons were separated, and a number of un- 
 fledged young ones lost the mother who had fed 
 and warmed them. 
 
 " It is certainly a very great truth — and failure 
 to appreciate it does daily great harm — that it gen- 
 erally is some other human being, not unfrequently 
 the educator himself, that first makes the child or 
 the boy bad. This is accomplished by attributing 
 evil — or at least wrong — motives to all that the 
 
MAKING BY UNMAKING. 107 
 
 child or boy does from ignorance, precipitation, or 
 even from a keen and praiseworthy sense of right 
 or wrong." * 
 
 Interpreting the attempt to rob the bird's nest 
 in the light of these illustrations, is it not clear that 
 Froebel recognized as its inspiration the boy's kind- 
 ly impulse to make good to his sister the loss of 
 her canary, while, on the other hand, by saving 
 the nestlings and suggesting their right to their 
 home and their freedom, he attacks the heedless-, 
 ness which might so easily harden into wanton 
 cruelty? 
 
 Test this interpretation the next time you show 
 Harold the All-Gone picture. Say to him: "It 
 was kind of the little brother to want to give his 
 sister another bird, but he should have thought how, 
 the poor little bird would miss its home and its 
 mother, and how the mother would grieve for her 
 nestling." On the other hand, learn from this illu- 
 minating example how important it is to overcome 
 the tendency to give pleasure at no cost to one's 
 self, and without considering the cost to others. 
 Train Harold to recognize that before he permits 
 himself to give he must consider whether what he 
 
 * Education of Man, Hailmann's translation, pp. 123, 124. 
 9 
 
108 LETTERS TO A MOTHER. 
 
 is giving is his own. Otherwise he may fall into 
 the habit of preying upon the time, strength, and 
 possessions of others in order to gratify alike his 
 selfish and his generous whims, and in the latter 
 case even plume himself on his exceptional kindli- 
 ness. 
 
 Buddha felt so sorry for the hungry tiger that 
 he offered himself as its supper. This was the 
 reductio ad absurdum of self-sacrifice. But it is 
 worse to gratify your momentary sympathy with 
 the tiger by throwing him your neighbor or your 
 friend. 
 
 Are you asking what possible connection there 
 can be between these moral lessons and baby's van- 
 ishing supper? Some tie must bind them together, 
 ,or our picture is no picture at all. A true picture 
 is a unity in the manifold. Some one idea is ex- 
 pressed in all of its different objects, and each ob- 
 ject or group of objects presents this idea from a 
 different point of view. Obviously the All-Gone 
 picture presents the general fact of disappearance. 
 The supper, the canary, the nestlings, the slice of 
 bread all vanish away. This merely superficial con- 
 nection, however, leaves us dissatisfied, and we 
 seek a deeper unity in the thought of return or re- 
 
MAKING BY UNMAKING. 109 
 
 action. The child's supper returns, and so does his 
 deed. The return of the one has a positive, the re- 
 turn of the other a negative, outcome. Baby's bread 
 and milk is transmuted into rosy cheeks and sturdy 
 limbs. Heedlessness and want of consideration de- 
 stroy the continuity of experience, and cause each 
 new moment of time to eat up its predecessor. The 
 ability to recognize change enables the child to 
 observe the recoil of his deeds, and thus makes pos- 
 sible a process of self-changing through which a 
 merely animal type of existence is transfigured into 
 truly human living. The child unmakes his food 
 to make his tody. He unmakes in order to remake 
 his environment. He must unmake in order to 
 make himself. 
 
 The activities of sense, the power of motion, 
 the rudimentary impulses of sympathy, the faculty 
 of imitation, the young child shares with young 
 animals. With the recognition of change he parts 
 company from the brute, and enters upon his dis- 
 tinctive career as a human being. The conscious- 
 ness of change presupposes an act of comparison. 
 Something-which was is contrasted with something 
 that is. Such comparison implies that a past mo- 
 ment is held in mind, and such holding of a van- 
 
110 LETTERS TO A MOTHER. 
 
 ished moment shows that the child is no longer a 
 creature of mere sensation, who, heedless of his 
 ceaseless transit, is whirled along the rushing stream 
 of Time. He has climbed the banks of the Time 
 river and, stationary himself, watches its ever-flow- 
 ing currents. Thenceforward he need never fear 
 being drowned in its waves. 
 
 But though the consciousness of change assures 
 its possessor of endless life, it does not free him 
 from temporal life. Shakespeare has described ap- 
 petite, or merely natural impulse, as a universal wolf, 
 which, making, perforce, a universal prey, at last 
 eats up itself. When each successive moment de- 
 vours the deed of the preceding moment life is for- 
 ever vanishing and beginning anew, and though it 
 should persist forever it would remain forever 
 finite and temporal. It is only as we learn to do 
 deeds, each of which re-enforces all the others and 
 is in turn re-enforced by them that mere endlessness 
 is transfigured into eternal life. The recognition of 
 change gives the point of departure for the con- 
 version of endlessness into eternity. For from con- 
 trast between what was and what is, the mind, under 
 the impetus of the idea of cause, advances to their 
 connection, and thus becomes conscious of the cir- 
 
MAKING BY UNMAKING. m 
 
 cular sweep of its own energies. Observing the re- 
 sults of his deeds, the child begins to define their 
 nature. Defining their nature, he discriminates 
 good from evil and generates ideals. Generating 
 ideals he becomes morally self-directing, and thus 
 frees his soul from external seduction, and fortifies 
 it against external attack. 
 
 There are three kinds of change. The first is 
 . that which is wholly produced by outside influence. 
 Rocks are worn away by water; iron is corroded by 
 air; forests are destroyed by fire; water is frozen 
 by cold and converted into vapor by heat. In the 
 second form of change there is both outside influ- 
 ence and self-determination. To this type belong 
 the vital processes of nutrition, respiration, and 
 reproduction, the adaptive modification to environ- 
 ment, by which all existing species of plants 
 and animals have been produced, and that progres- 
 sive transformation of Nature through which it be- 
 comes the image and revelation of human selfhood. 
 In the third form of change external influence van- 
 ishes, and the process is self-produced and self-sus- 
 tained. The self -changing being creates its own en-'' 
 vironment, furnishes its own stimulations, acts 1 
 upon itself as object, and transforms itself as result. 
 
112 LETTERS TO A MOTHER. 
 
 This type of change is realized through the ascent 
 of thought to the contemplation of causal energies, 
 and in the self-determination of the will through 
 altruistic ideals. To attain the stadium of self- 
 change is to become free and immortal — free be- 
 cause emancipated from external coercion and se- 
 duction, immortal because possessing the power of 
 realizing all potentialities and transcending all de- 
 fects. 
 
 We are becoming familiar with the idea that 
 the condition of the young child presents many 
 analogies to that of the hypnotic patient, and that 
 as the latter responds to the suggestions of the 
 operator, so the former responds to the suggestions 
 of his environment. Professor Baldwin tested the 
 regularity of the operation of suggestion by arrang- 
 ing attractive objects about a room in such a way 
 that only after reaching one could his little daugh- 
 ter see the next. He found her, of course, the vic- 
 tim of this device, and she rushed with avidity from 
 one object to another.* It is, however, important 
 to remember that all children do not respond in the 
 same manner to the same suggestion. Approach 
 your face to one baby and you get a scratch, ap- 
 
 * Mental Development, James Mark Baldwin, p. 385. 
 
MAKING BY UNMAKING. 113 
 
 proach it to another and you receive a caress.* 
 Hold up before one child a number of attractive 
 objects, and his mind is paralyzed by colliding de- 
 sires. Hold the same objects before a different 
 child and he immediately seizes one and neglects 
 all the rest. The individuality of each child influ- 
 ences the form of his reaction to external stimuli, 
 or, differently stated, the native bias of tempera- 
 ment acts as an unconscious motive in determining 
 the choice. Moral life begins when conscious mo- 
 tives take the place of blind impulsion. "Where 
 these are lacking there is self-determination in the 
 forms of impulse and desire. Where they are pres- 
 ent there is self-determination in its highest potency 
 as free will. 
 
 Even while the child is still borne along by the 
 current of mere natural impulse the mother may do 
 much to help or hinder his moral development. By 
 appealing to activity, sympathy, kindness, generos- 
 ity she may increase the energy of these elemental 
 forces; by appealing to selfishness and vanity she 
 may augment the power of these despotic passions. 
 
 * " Caligula recognized the legitimacy of his daughter be- 
 cause of the early brutality with which she attacked the eyes 
 and cheeks of other infants who were presented to her as play- 
 fellows." — De Quincy's Csesars, p. 86. 
 
114 LETTERS TO A MOTHER. 
 
 But the highest privilege of motherhood is to aid 
 the child to generate conscious ideals and win him 
 to obey them. The means of realizing this double 
 purpose are worthy examples, well-considered ap- 
 proval, reproof, and punishment; the direction of 
 the child's observation to the recoil of his deeds; 
 stories, songs, poems, and pictures, portraying 
 right and wrong actions belonging to the level of 
 consciousness he has attained. 
 
 Several cautions are necessary. The first is that 
 in judging the actions of children we must be care- 
 ful to study their motives, and avoid the too com- 
 mon error of reading into them our own stronger and 
 more conscious feelings. Little children are neither 
 so bad nor so good as we think them when we ex- 
 plain them by ourselves. Much of the injustice 
 done them arises from imputing to them deliber- 
 ately evil intentions impossible in a stage of devel- 
 opment whose characteristic mark is simple inconti- 
 nence, while conversely our undue praise of their 
 virtue arises from transferring to them by analogy 
 our own spiritual struggles and victories. The sec- 
 ond caution is that since the child can appreciate 
 only the consequences which follow close upon the 
 heels of action he must be incited to effort and self- 
 
MAKING BY UNMAKING. 115 
 
 control, not by the remote but by the immediate 
 fruits of his deeds. Our moral appeals are often 
 fruitless just because we are blind to this truth, and 
 instead of calling attention to near results threaten 
 the child with that distant and to him indifferent 
 future when he shall be a man, or appeal to him by 
 motives borrowed from the more remote and hence 
 less potent hereafter of death. Finally, since good 
 is conquered evil, and we learn what is right by 
 finding out what is wrong, it is of prime importance 
 to hold up to imagination examples of deeds to be 
 shunned, and this is the reason why Froebel in the 
 All-Gone picture shows the outcome of those impul- 
 sive errors into which little children are most prone 
 to fall. In the commentary on Falling Falling, in 
 the pictures and commentaries relating to the 
 Fishes and the Light Bird, in the Broken Window, 
 the Shadow Songs, the Knights and the Bad Child, 
 he likewise portrays negative deeds, and shows their 
 results. That in many songs and pictures he pre- 
 sents actions to be emulated goes without saying. 
 Like our traditional tales where the virtues of the 
 hero or heroine are thrown into relief by contrast 
 with a bad brother or sister, like the Bible stories 
 of Cain and Abel, Noah and the wicked world, 
 
116 LETTERS TO A MOTHER. 
 
 Esau and Jacob, Joseph and his brethren, David 
 and Saul; like the revelation of good in Dante's 
 Purgatory through positive and negative examples, 
 the Mother-Play allures the heart by the beauty 
 of the ideal, and defines this ideal by picturing the 
 outcome of deeds which contradict it. 
 
 One of the commonest mistakes in education is 
 the presentation of ideals for which the mind is 
 not prepared. Whenever this is done it either con- 
 fuses the child's intellect, leaves him indifferent, 
 arouses his antagonism, or betrays him into hypoc- 
 risy. Kousseau tells a good story of a little boy 
 whom he heard glibly relating the celebrated anec- 
 dote of Alexander the Great and his trusted physi- 
 cian. The latter had prescribed for the king a 
 medicinal draught. Alexander was told that it was 
 poisoned. But he had reason to trust the character 
 of his physician, so he quietly told the latter what 
 he had heard, and then drank the medicine. To 
 understand the point of this story it is necessary to 
 know how many dangers beset one who wears a 
 crown; how discerning must be the mind of him 
 who, surrounded by false and faithless men, clearly 
 recognizes those who may be trusted; and how 
 heroic is the heart which dares to stake life rathet 
 
MAKING BY UNMAKING. H7 
 
 than to doubt a proven character. Naturally a 
 young child can appreciate neither such dangers, 
 such discernment, nor such heroism; and there- 
 fore when Rousseau, who suspected that he had 
 been listening to a parrot recitation, questioned 
 the narrator he found that the boy, who had 
 himself recently been forced to take a nauseous 
 draught, was simply admiring Alexander for drink- 
 ing with calmness what must have had a very 
 bad taste. 
 
 Why is Hamlet the Sphinx * of literature? Is 
 it not because so few people know the morbid in- 
 trospection, the too curious consideration which 
 paralyzes the will? Literature is purgatorial when 
 it reveals both the motive and the outcome of deed. 
 We understand the revelation only in so far as we 
 find something analogous to it in our own con- 
 sciousness. I am sure that many stories we tell 
 children are not only valueless but pernicious, be- 
 cause the deeds portrayed remain opaque to imag- 
 ination, and I am no less sure that one reason we 
 tell such stories is because we do not consider that 
 good is conquered evil, and that the only ideals 
 the young child can understand are those which 
 * See Mr. D. J. Snider's Shakespearean Drama. 
 
118 LETTERS TO A MOTHER. 
 
 point to conquest of the faults into which he is 
 constantly betrayed. If you will remember this 
 you will know how to save Harold from staggering 
 about in garments of thought which fit his mind 
 about as the trousers and coats of his long-legged, 
 broad-chested father would fit his little body. 
 
 The Chinese are said to have the golden rule in 
 a negative form. The Hindoo knows there is a 
 contradiction between his natural and ideal self, 
 but has never been able to make a positive solution 
 of the problem which such a contradiction involves. 
 The ten commandments are specific and prohibitory; 
 the Christian law of love is universal and affirma- 
 tory. The educational discipline of many centuries 
 was required to bridge the gulf between the two 
 revelations. Genetically " Thou shalt not " ante- 
 dates " Thou shalt," and though evil can only be 
 defined as the negative of good, it is none the less 
 true that good arises by the process of overcoming 
 evil. Looking at evil " under the form of eternity," 
 we may confidently repeat the affirmation of St. 
 Augustine: "I inquired what iniquity was and 
 found it no substance, but perversion of the will 
 from the best and highest good." Looking at good 
 under the form of time we are forced to admit its 
 
MAKING BY UNMAKING. 119 
 
 evolution from evil, and to realize that both for the 
 individual and the race the making of the ideal in- 
 volves the unmaking of the natural self. 
 
 We have ceased to talk of original sin, but we 
 reaffirm the thought which inspired that formula 
 in the statement that " man must throw off his 
 brute inheritance." Froebel's wording of this in- 
 sight is that man is born the child of Nature, but is 
 destined to become the child of God. Goethe has 
 rekindled its light in many minds by his declara- 
 tion that "it is only with renunciation that life, 
 properly speaking, can be said to begin." The mys- 
 tic teaches the same truth when he bids us remem- 
 ber that we must " die to live," and philosophy 
 defines its complete implication in the profound 
 paradox that the negative must negate itself. 
 Under all forms of statement the one great 
 idea is that self-making is self-changing, and 
 that it is only by annihilating self that we 
 achieve selfhood. 
 
 I wonder if, when as a child you listened to the 
 story of Jacob and Esau, you felt as I did. How I 
 despised Jacob for his timidity, his bargaining, his 
 deceit! How my heart went out to the gener- 
 ous, impulsive, affectionate Esau! How unjust it 
 
120 LETTERS TO A MOTHER. 
 
 seemed to me that his crafty supplanter should be 
 preferred as father of the people of God. It has 
 taken long years of experience to reconcile me to 
 Jacob. Slowly I came to see that from the begin- 
 ning he showed a susceptibility to the ideal which 
 Esau wholly lacked. I began to appreciate his rev- 
 erence for the despised birthright. I admitted 
 that a man who could serve fourteen years to gain 
 the woman he loved deserved respect. I recognized 
 in all the details of his life the merit of resolute 
 and unbending purpose. I beheld the gradual up- 
 lifting of his aims, the gradual ennobling of his en- 
 deavor. I entered into the meaning of that night 
 of agony wherein he wrestled with an adversary 
 whose name he knew not, and won his own new 
 name of Israel, the prince of God. I confessed that 
 his was the triumph of one who overcomes, and re- 
 luctantly admitted that his more attractive brother 
 remained forever the child of impulse, one "who 
 did eat and drink, rose up and went his way." 
 Finally I recognized in history the vindication of 
 the divine choice. In the wrathful monarch who 
 slew the babes of Bethlehem and in the heartless 
 voluptuary who as the reward of a seductive dance 
 gave the head of a prophet, I learned to condemn 
 
MAKING BY UNMAKING. 121 
 
 their wavering, fickle, and unruly progenitor, while 
 my heart did tardy justice to the wrestling and pre- 
 vailing Jacob as I realized that from the race who 
 were called by his name, and who perpetuated his 
 character, there sprang in the fullness of time that 
 mighty One who, having overcome the world and 
 the flesh, death and the grave, shall reign forever 
 king of kings and lord of lords. 
 
 Have I wandered far from the All-Gone pic- 
 ture? To me it does not seem so, for in its gentle 
 incitement to consideration and self-restraint I rec- 
 ognize that Froebel is guiding the child's first 
 feeble steps upon the steep and narrow path which 
 mounts toward the ideal I have been describing. 
 Our " sugar-plum " and " flower-pot " education, 
 on the contrary, beguiles him to self-indulgence, 
 and creates in him the vicious expectation of success 
 without effort, love without merit, and character 
 without conquest. 
 
 Every thoughtful mother must consciously ask 
 two questions: What is the universal law of de- 
 velopment, and what is its goal? To these ques- 
 tions the answers are written in characters which 
 he who runs may read. "What mean the " struggle 
 for life," and the "survival of the fittest"? 
 
122 LETTERS TO A MOTHER. 
 
 What means that nobler struggle for the life 
 of others shown in the care of the plant for its 
 seed, the bird for her nestlings, the mammalian 
 mother for her suckling? What mean the lov- 
 ing sacrifices of human, parents, the devotion 
 of patriots, the self-surrender of heroes, the 
 voluntary martyrdom of saints? Dare we hesi- 
 tate to draw the inevitable conclusion that crea- 
 tion is a via dolorosa upon whose summit 
 stands the cross? " If thou be the son of God 
 save thyself and come down from the cross! " 
 Ah, if we but knew it, could we but realize 
 it, that is just the one thing the son of God may 
 never do. 
 
 And now, dear mother of my little godson, do 
 you trust me enough, do you love me enough 
 to accept at my hands the wounds of a friend? 
 May I say to you with perfect frankness that 
 in the education of your older children you 
 seem to me to have violated the principle sug- 
 gested in the All-Gone picture and commentary. 
 I have often wondered why you who have 
 so strenuously wrought, so triumphantly over- 
 come, should fail to incite your children to noble 
 warfare. Does your too sanguine love blind you to 
 
MAKING BY UNMAKING. 123 
 
 the dangers which beset their gifted, sympathetic, 
 attractive, yet wayward and pleasure-loving na- 
 tures? Is it that you have thought it sufficient to 
 hold up general ideals of conduct and trust to the 
 " spontaneous spring of the soul toward truth " for 
 the reaction of such ideals upon the formation of 
 character? May it be that your over-sensitive feel- 
 ing of personal accountability betrays you into 
 assuming responsibilities not your own, that there- 
 fore you seek to shield your children rather than to 
 arm them, and that in your fear of arousing antag- 
 onism you fall at times into an unworthy ac- 
 quiescence? Or, is it possible that you feel the 
 allurement of the higher life, but not its compul- 
 sion; that you actually do not know that sun and 
 moon are set in array against wayward caprice; 
 that the stars in their courses fight against self-in- 
 dulgence, that a militant cosmos defends its own 
 ideal of rational freedom? I ask these questions, 
 but I can not answer them. I only know that 
 while you have chosen for yourself the life of con- 
 quest you have not seemed to expect it of your chil- 
 dren. Begin to do so, and with your Benjamin 
 begin so early that you may avoid for him the 
 
 tragic crises from which it may be you can not 
 10 
 
124 LETTERS TO A MOTHER. 
 
 now save his older brothers and sisters. Do not 
 be discouraged by past mistakes, but set your- 
 self the valiant task of undoing their results. 
 Claim for your loved ones as for yourself the 
 ceaseless strife and the two-edged sword, the 
 noble failure which transcends all petty successes, 
 the " divine discontent " sweeter far than all fi- 
 nite joys. 
 
 The goal of all spiritual activity is its return 
 upon a higher plane to its point of departure. The 
 infant lives only in the vanishing moment. Win- 
 ning the final triumph of character he lives again in 
 the moment, but he freights the moment with eter- 
 nity. 
 
 The madness which mortgages the whole of life 
 to its fleeting moments, and scoffs at inevitable con- 
 sequences in the violence and recklessness of its de- 
 sires is portrayed in the legend of Faust. But a 
 world-poet has transfigured the myth by giving it 
 a different ending. Itself immortal and divine, the 
 soul of man can never find satisfaction in the finite 
 and ephemeral. Goaded by aspiration it must dis- 
 dain all petty joys, and the only moment to which 
 it can say, Ah, still delay, thou art so fair, is the 
 moment of love, of service, and of sacrifice, into 
 
MAKING BY UNMAKING. 125 
 
 which is compressed eternal life. Over such a soul 
 the spirit of evil, which is the spirit of finitude, 
 can have no lasting power, and in its noble un- 
 rest we read the blessed promise of its final per- 
 fection. 
 
LETTER V. 
 heaven's fihst law. 
 
 Oh, teach your child that Order's law 
 
 Is ever truly kind, 
 And will his life to music set ; 
 While those who this same law forget 
 
 No rhythmic sweetness find. 
 
 The clock is not a master hard, 
 
 Euling with iron hand ; 
 It is a happy household sprite, 
 Helping all things to move aright, 
 
 With gentle guiding wand. 
 
 Its quiet tick still seems to say, 
 
 " Though time pass velvet shod, 
 It guides the universal round 
 Of worlds and souls — for it is found 
 
 Deep in the thought of God ! " 
 
 Henrietta E. Eliot. 
 
 TICK! TACK! 
 
 Swing, swong ! this is the way 
 Goes the pendulum night and day. 
 "Tick! tock! tick! tock!" 
 Never resting, says the clock. 
 
 " Time for work and time for fun, 
 
 Time to sleep when day is done. 
 Tick ! tock ! " Hear the clock ! 
 "Time to rest each little head ; 
 Time the children were in bed." 
 
 127 
 
12S LETTERS TO A MOTHER. 
 
 Swing, swong ! sure and slow 
 Goes the pendulum to and fro. 
 "Tick! took! tick! tock! 
 In the morning says the clock. 
 
 " Time to wake from slumber sweet, 
 
 Time to wash and time to eat. 
 Tick ! tock." Hear the clock, 
 "Tick, tack, tock ! " it cries, 
 "Children, it is time to rise ! " 
 
 Emily Huntington Milleb. 
 
 It was in the Eads kindergarten, one bright 
 morning many years ago, that there came to me my 
 first genuine insight into Froebel's Play of the 
 Clock. At that time Mrs. Hubbard was director of 
 the kindergarten, and her manner of playing Froe- 
 bel's games always helped me to interpret them. I 
 used to watch her very closely, for it occurred to 
 me that from her intuitions might be deduced gen- 
 eral principles which would be helpful to all kin- 
 dergarteners. She had so disciplined her body by 
 suitable exercises that it was the pliant instrument 
 of her will. Her voice and manner were quiet, and 
 her whole personality suggested repose in the midst 
 of energy. Her gestures were never vague and un- 
 meaning, but really definitions of thought through 
 movement. She never allowed a number of chil- 
 dren to stand idle on the circle while a few played 
 in the center, but invariably found some way of en- 
 
HEAVEN'S FIRST LAW. 129 
 
 listing the activity of all in each game. Thus, if 
 five or six children were flying birds, those on the 
 circle became trees; if the few were butterflies, the 
 many were flowers; if the few were fishes, the 
 many became a flowing stream or an undulating 
 lake. But the feature, of what for want of a better 
 term I must call her method, which most impressed 
 me was her complete identification of the little 
 players with the persons or objects whose activities 
 they imitated. Were the children, for example, 
 playing carpenters and playing carelessly, she 
 would never say to them " You are not planing or 
 sawing as the carpenter does," but " I am afraid 
 I shall have to get better carpenters to build my 
 house." Children who failed in the rhythmic 
 swing of the arms and legs which represented the 
 pendulums were clocks out of order and needing 
 repair. Tiny tots who found the flying movement 
 /difficult were consoled by the suggestion that of 
 course baby birds couldn't fly so fast or so far as 
 the mamma bird, but they mustn't mind, for their 
 wings would soon be stronger. All who have 
 watched the spontaneous play of little children 
 know that its characteristic mark is precisely this 
 merging of their own identity in the being of the 
 
130 LETTERS TO A MOTHER. 
 
 object represented. Thus a little girl who was 
 playing the part of a robin mother and tenderly 
 feeding imaginary nestlings with imaginary worms 
 became not only pale, but breathless and palpita- 
 ting with terror at her own mother's rather 
 thoughtless suggestion of an approaching cat. Nor 
 was her equanimity restored until she had trans- 
 formed the robin into a farmer who, as she eagerly 
 explained, was not afraid of cats. 
 
 But to return to the Clock Play. \ I had gone 
 bright and early to the Eads kindergarten, for I 
 wished to see the opening exercises, of which Froe- 
 bel's game of the Tick-Tack was a daily feature. 
 As I entered the room the children were rising to 
 play it. A moment later a little girl followed me, 
 and seemed about to greet the director and children 
 when the opening strains of the Tick-Tack melody 
 transformed her into a clock. I looked around; 
 there were no children in the room, nothing but 
 animated clocks — arms, legs, bodies swaying to the 
 rhythm of the song. They were children again 
 when the game was finished, but the spontaneous 
 punctuality and exactness of all their work proved 
 that they were children who had developed a clock 
 consciousness. Then I said to myself, Froebel is 
 
HEAVEN'S FIRST LAW. 131 
 
 right, and to imitate the activity of any object is 
 to become yourself the object you imitate/) 
 
 In my letter on the "Weathervane I tried to 
 show you that imitation is the child's first way of 
 getting back of phenomena to their causes, or, dif- 
 ferently stated, his first way of explaining the world 
 in which he finds himself. But this interpretation 
 of environment is only one aspect of the function 
 of imitation, and I want you now to consider its 
 other aspect and to realize that it is by and through 
 imitation that the child begins to create himself. 
 
 Have you ever thought how strange it is that 
 the baby knows himself first as an object like any 
 other, calling himself as he calls other things by a 
 particular name, tugging to pull off his leg as he 
 pulls off his stocking? Have you realized that it is 
 only in contrast with a plurality of objects that he 
 discriminates himself as I, or universal subject, and 
 " rounds into a separate mind? " Have you ever 
 pondered the fact that each new experience teaches 
 us something about ourselves we did not know, that 
 every natural scene, every human relationship, 
 every book we read, every picture we see, every 
 song we hear, reveals to us some power or some de- 
 fect in ourselves? In a story whose name I have 
 
132 LETTERS TO A MOTHER. 
 
 entirely forgotten, the heroine gives as her reason 
 for wanting to travel that until she has seen the 
 whole world there will be something about herself 
 she does not know. This remark has mingled itself 
 in my consciousness with Whitman's poem of the 
 child who became the objects he looked upon,* 
 with Mr. Alcott's orphic saying that man is omni- 
 present and lies all about himself, and with the 
 puzzling metaphysical statement that the world is 
 mind turned inside out. The precipitate I get from 
 this compound solution is that the contents of mind 
 
 * There was a child went forth one day, 
 
 And the first object that he looked upon, that object he be- 
 came, 
 
 And that object became part of him for the day or a certain 
 part of the day, 
 
 Or for many years or stretching cycles of years. 
 
 The early lilacs became part of this child, 
 
 And grass, and white and red morning glories, and white 
 and red clover, and the song of the phoabe bird, 
 
 And the apple trees covered with blossoms, and the fruit af- 
 terward ; and woodberries and the commonest weeds 
 by the road, 
 
 And the schoolmistress that passed on her way to the school 
 And the friendly boys that passed, and the quarrelsome boys, 
 And the tidy and fresh-cheeked girls, and the barefoot ne- 
 gro boy and girl, 
 And all the changes of city and country wherever he went. 
 
 Walt Whitman. 
 
HEAVEN'S FIRST LAW. 133 
 
 are ideas, and that could we turn mind inside out 
 and, as it were, spill its contents without destroying 
 their order, the result would be the display of all 
 possible ideas as separate objects in an articulated 
 system. Such an outpouring of the divine mind is 
 the universe; only as he becomes its mirror does 
 man have ideas of his own, and only as he possesses 
 ideas does he achieve concrete individuality or true 
 personality. Opposed to this true personality is the 
 natural or abstract self which is simply a plastic 
 energy molding experiences into a specific form. 
 Obviously, therefore, the concrete individuality 
 will be rich or poor in proportion to the range of 
 experience, and it is literally true that until we 
 know the universe we can neither be nor know our 
 real selves. 
 
 "With insight into the truth that the progress 
 of mind is from object to subject, from the world 
 to the self, we get new light on the significance of 
 imitation. The child makes himself into a weath- 
 ervane, a clock, a bird. This means that he makes 
 over these objects into himself. Notice, moreover, 
 that since he imitates the activities of these objects 
 he defines and assimilates not their outer semblance, 
 but their informing idea. Through imitation he 
 
134: LETTERS TO A MOTHER. 
 
 penetrates from the sensuous fact to its producing 
 energy, and produces in himself a reflection of this 
 energy. Thus it is that by imitating the rhythmic 
 utterance of the clock, and the rhythmic swing 
 of the pendulum, he begins on the one hand to 
 understand the nature of the clock as a measurer 
 of time, and on the other to develop in himself 
 those ideals of order and punctuality which are 
 the soul's practical responses to time measure- 
 ment. 
 
 You must be getting tired of iny repeated insist- 
 ence upon the fact that the Mother-Play singles out 
 for imitation objects and actions which have both 
 an allurement for all children and a general edu- 
 cative value. It is superfluous to give illustrations 
 of the fascination of the clock, but you will learn 
 much of the nature of mind by considering its 
 source. This source is a life veiled in mystery, and 
 expressing itself in rhythm. All mystery quickens 
 the imagination; a rhythmic mystery stirs it pro- 
 foundly because of " a certain remote kinship with 
 the form of our soul activity." To define the tie 
 between rhythm and spiritual activity will be to 
 understand the allurement of the clock, but be- 
 fore attempting such a definition I want to sug- 
 
HEAVEN'S FIRST LAW. 135 
 
 gest to you a sufficient number of related facts 
 to awaken a premonition of the reason imbedded 
 in all. 
 
 Why do children love rhythmic games? Why 
 do youths and maidens delight in dance and song? 
 Why " does the sailor work better for his yo-heave- 
 o," and the " soldier march better and fight better 
 for the trumpet and drum? " Why were the first 
 dances regularly repeated leaps, the first poetry 
 metrical chants, the first musical instruments those 
 which marked off or measured sound? Why can 
 we speak of a scale of color and define architecture 
 as frozen music? Why do we feel that in a very 
 deep and true sense music is the soul of all the arts? 
 Why do we cherish Job's thought of morning stars 
 singing together for joy, and cling to the Pytha- 
 gorean conception of the music of the spheres? 
 These questions are answered by reflecting that art 
 is the self-revelation of spirit, and hence that all 
 its products must bear the image of consciousness 
 which is the distinctive characteristic of spirit. 
 Consciousness is " the knowing of the self by the 
 self." This implies an annulled distinction be- 
 tween subject and object. Such an annulled dis- 
 tinction is identity, and the ever-repeated move- 
 
136 LETTERS TO A MOTHER. 
 
 merit from distinction to identification can be de- 
 scribed by no better word tban rhythm. Hence all 
 rhythmic movements and all rhythmic sounds may 
 be translated into the tireless affirmation I am I. 
 What rhythm is to the arts of movement and sound, 
 proportion or visible rhythm is to architecture, 
 sculpture, and painting. Finally, since the world 
 is the self-revelation of the divine mind, it too is 
 a work of art into which the supreme Artist has 
 breathed his own life. Quickened by this insight, 
 I remember with strange pleasure that the very 
 word rhythm points by its derivation to the un- 
 dulating stream. The swaying grass, the waving 
 wheat, the rhythmic flight of the bird, the accord- 
 ant colors of flowers, touch me with new emotion. 
 I find deeper meaning in " the primal chimes of sun 
 and shade, of sound and echo." I picture to myself 
 the mazy courses of the stars and their harmoni- 
 ously proportioned periods. I behold the " dance 
 of Nature forward and far," and hear the very 
 " atoms marching to tune." At last I learn from 
 science that " the flux of power is eternally the 
 same, that it rolls in music through the ages, and 
 that all terrestrial energy, the manifestations of 
 life as well as the display of phenomena, are but 
 
HEAVEN'S FIRST LAW. 137 
 
 the modulations of its rhythm." * Then my soul is 
 filled with mystic awe, and in the ceaseless pulsa- 
 tions of persistent energy I read the cosmic procla- 
 mation of that great name by which God revealed 
 himself to his ancient people — Jehovah — the ab- 
 solute and eternal I Am. 
 
 And so the infant, a rhythmic soul in a rhyth- 
 mic body, is born into a rhythmic universe. 
 Strange indeed would it be if he gave no signs of 
 the universal impulse, or if simple mother-wit had 
 failed to detect and respond to his intimations. 
 That there has been no such failure is proved by 
 nursery games like Pat-a-cake and Shoe the Mare, 
 by the gentle pats and strokes which soothe the rest- 
 less baby, by the song which lulls him to sleep, 
 by the dancing and dandling to which he responds 
 with gleeful laugh. Almost equally strange would 
 it be had Froebel omitted to notice either the hint 
 of the child or the response of the mother, or had he 
 failed to elicit and apply the educational principle 
 latent in their joint suggestion. He vindicates our 
 reasonable demand upon his insight by calling at- 
 tention in the Education of Man to the maternal 
 procedure, by explaining that through rhythmic 
 * The Idea of God, John Fiske, p. 146. 
 
138 LETTERS TO A MOTHER. 
 
 movements the child is made to feel his own inner 
 life, and by insisting that the development of such 
 movements increases harmony of character, dimin- 
 ishes wilfulness and coarseness, fosters firmness and 
 moderation, and awakens appreciation of Nature 
 and art.* He vindicates our demand upon him as 
 a practical educator by creating his Mother-Plays 
 and his kindergarten games with their threefold 
 rhythm, f 
 
 In this connection it seems to me important to 
 ask Helen if she has consciously faced a question 
 upon whose answer depends the direction in which 
 kindergarten games shall hereafter develop. Some 
 kindergartners are beginning to feel that no game 
 should have a fixed form, and a few even question 
 whether there should be any fixed games. It is 
 suggested that each day should evolve its own plays, 
 and that these should be the joint product of kin- 
 dergartner and children. Under this hypothesis the 
 rhythmic form of the games tends to disappear, as 
 does also their association with definite poems and 
 
 * Education of Man, Hailmann's translation, pp. 69, 70, 
 218, 219. 
 
 f See Pedagogics of the Kindergarten, Miss Jarvis's trans- 
 lation, pp. 336-285. 
 
HEAVEN'S FIRST LAW. 139 
 
 melodies. Thus far the movement in this direction 
 is a vague and shifting one; indeed, it is rather a 
 tendency than a movement. It seems to me a dan- 
 gerous tendency. I believe that the prototype of 
 the kindergarten game is not the capricious play 
 of the individual child, but the traditional ring, 
 dance, and representative game of which King Wil- 
 liam, Oats, Peas, Beans, and the Mulberry Bush 
 are familiar illustrations; and the original games 
 of analogous type produced by a group of playing 
 children as described by Froebel in the Pedagogics 
 of the Kindergarten. I believe that it is dangerous 
 to invade the realm of the spontaneity of the child 
 by introducing into the kindergarten the type of 
 play ordinarily determined by the free self-impul- 
 sion of individual children. The value of such plays 
 depends upon their very caprice and arbitrariness. 
 It is because in them the child exercises his powers 
 according to his natural proclivities that they de- 
 velop his individuality. Mothers and kindergart- 
 ners should carefully observe such plays in order 
 that they may understand the children committed 
 to their care. They should refuse to tamper with 
 them because all mature interference tends to de- 
 stroy their spontaneity. They belong not to the 
 11 
 
140 LETTEES TO A MOTHER. 
 
 kindergarten, but to the nursery and the play- 
 ground. Their introduction into the kindergarten, 
 and above all their guidance by the kindergartner, 
 is not an extension of the child's freedom, but a 
 dangerous attack upon it. The traditional game, 
 on the contrary, is an expression not of the par- 
 ticular child, but of universal childhood. Its sub- 
 ject-matter is generally suggestive, sometimes ques- 
 tionable, occasionally pernicious. Its poetic form 
 is nearly always bad. Froebel seized upon the 
 traditional game, caught the hint suggested by its 
 recurrent subjects, eliminated its objectionable 
 features, recognized the charm of music, poetry, 
 and measured movement, and thus created the kin- 
 dergarten plays. Ask Helen to give these thoughts 
 her serious consideration. Then, if she allows her- 
 self to be borne along upon the stream of present 
 tendency she will at least know whither she is 
 going. 
 
 From these byways of thought I return to the 
 clock, the secret of whose fascination I hope you 
 now clearly understand. Its swinging pendulum 
 is the visible image of our oscillating consciousness, 
 its monotonous tick-tack-tick an audible symbol of 
 our self-repelling, self-attracting ego. No wonder 
 
HEAVEN'S FIRST LAW. 141 
 
 the child wants to know what it says. No wonder 
 that Froebel translates its rhythmic utterance into 
 the call to lead a rhythmic life. A time to wash, 
 and a time to eat; a time to play, and a time to 
 sleep! Out of the chaos of the infant conscious- 
 ness the four great events of his daily life emerge 
 as points of light, and with their dimmest recogni- 
 tion he begins inwardly to order his thought, and 
 outwardly to order his doings. 
 
 My sensitive consciousness of the adverse critic 
 makes me anticipate a protest even from you. 
 What need of Froebel or his song of the clock? 
 Everybody knows that " order is heaven's first 
 law," and every sensible mother tries with all her 
 might to make her children orderly. Ear be it 
 from me to question either assertion. Were order 
 not a universal law Froebel would not have con- 
 cerned himself with it. Did sensible mothers not 
 try to make their children orderly he would scarce- 
 ly have endeavored to rouse all mothers to the 
 same effort. Perhaps, however, he may have no- 
 ticed a tendency to force order upon the child in- 
 stead of developing it from him; perhaps he may 
 have recognized that while no good habit is formed 
 without struggle, struggle itself should be the spon- 
 
142 LETTERS TO A MOTHER. 
 
 taneous answer of the soul to spiritual allurement; 
 perhaps, therefore, he may have imagined that the 
 charm of the clock might be consciously used as a 
 means of wakening the ideal of order, and through 
 this ideal inciting the effort necessary to form 
 habits of order. 
 
 A rigidly enforced order tends to produce an 
 inward recoil of the soul against order. Froebel's 
 ideal is to stir the child's soul with premonitions 
 of the importance of order, and of the beauty of 
 order, and through these premonitions nerve him 
 to the conflict with indolence and wayward im- 
 pulse which the habit of order implies. 
 
 The conversation between mother and child in 
 the commentary is a further appeal to the sympa- 
 thies stirred by the play. The child wants mamma 
 to show him a picture, but it is his time for the 
 afternoon bath. So the mother points him to his 
 kitten, who is smoothing her fur as if expecting 
 welcome visitors, reminds him that papa will soon 
 be home and will want to find his darling neat 
 and clean. The child must deny himself the 
 picture-book, but if the self-denial is to have 
 any educative value it must be voluntary. More- 
 over, the motive of giving pleasure to papa lifts 
 
HEAVEN'S FIRST LAW. 143 
 
 mere punctuality into an act of loving considera- 
 tion. 
 
 After this conversation Froebel makes what 
 seems at first sight a digression from the subject of 
 punctuality to that of cleanliness. A little reflec- 
 tion, however, shows us that there is an intimate 
 tie between the two virtues. Punctuality is order 
 in time. The unpunctual man is always where he 
 should not be. Cleanliness is order in space. Un- 
 cleanliness puts matter out of place. It belongs to 
 the ground, not to the human body. From the 
 thought of physical cleanliness the commentary 
 rises to that of a clean heart. In the Tick-Tack 
 Song also, Froebel suggests a connection between 
 orderly activity and spiritual purity. It is easy to 
 develop his idea. You should have risen at half -past 
 six, and you indolently lie in bed until seven. You 
 hurry to be ready for breakfast. In your haste you 
 tear a garment, burst off an important button, or 
 produce some other irritating catastrophe. Al- 
 ready nervous, you enter the breakfast room ten 
 minutes behind time, to find the other members of 
 the household disarranged by your tardiness. 
 Your husband mentions that he will be late for an 
 important business engagement. The children are 
 
144 LETTERS TO A MOTHER. 
 
 hurried off to school, and are fretful in conse- 
 quence. There is no time for the pleasant ameni- 
 ties of a family breakfast. During the morning 
 household work is indifferently performed, and 
 your servants are quick to blame the late break- 
 fast. You begin to feel it is hard that you can't 
 once in a while take a morning nap without so 
 much direct and indirect reproach. You are get- 
 ting into a bad temper. Then comes the unex- 
 pected strain and you are betrayed into some act 
 of passion, self-love meantime asserting stoutly 
 that you are ill used. Evidently your inner cosmos 
 is falling into' primeval chaos; there is no light or 
 order in your spiritual world — nothing but a tu- 
 mult of colliding emotions. 
 
 It is well, however, to remember that procras- 
 tination is not the only, perhaps not even the 
 worst, thief of time. To overcrowd time is as dis- 
 astrous as to empty it. To steal for one purpose 
 time which rightly belongs to another is to defeat 
 all true purposes. How many men steal the break- 
 fast hour to read the newspaper! How many men 
 and women steal for work the hours which belong 
 to sleep, and then to avoid physical bankruptcy 
 steal for sleep the hours which belong to recrea- 
 
HEAVEN'S FIRST LAW. 145 
 
 tion ! In how many families are the cords of affec- 
 tion strained and broken because there is no time 
 for participation in simple joys or for kindly sym- 
 pathy in petty woes! How many men by persist- 
 ent thefts from the hours which belong to sleep, to 
 meals, and to recreation, steal years from their 
 allotted period of life! Reminding yourself of 
 these commonplace facts, you will realize that we 
 never outgrow the need of the clock's call to a 
 rhythmic life, and that not only for your children, 
 but for their busy mother it is important to have 
 " a time to wash and a time to eat, a time to sleep 
 and a time to play. Ordered time means serenity, 
 power, self-command, liberty. Slothfulness, pro- 
 crastination, and overwork recoil upon some na- 
 tures by periods of morbid depression, and expose 
 others to the danger of being tossed about by gusts 
 of passion as the rudderless ship is tossed on the 
 stormy sea. 
 
 A quick-witted maiden of my acquaintance de- 
 fends her boredom in the society of a dull admirer 
 by remarking, with a yawn, that his thought has 
 only chronological connections. Her remark has 
 a general application, for there is no surer test of 
 either a stupid or an uncultivated person than the 
 
146 LETTERS TO A MOTHER. 
 
 absence from consciousness of all relations save 
 those of time and place. Coleridge calls our atten- 
 tion to Shakespeare's humorous portrayal of this 
 characteristic in the narratives of illiterate persons, 
 and gives as an illustration " the easy yielding Mrs. 
 Quickly's relation of the circumstances of Sir John 
 Falstaff's debt to her." 
 
 " Falstaff. What is the gross sum that I owe 
 thee? " 
 
 "Host. Marry, if thou wert an honest man, 
 thyself and the money, too. Thou didst swear to 
 me upon a parcel-gilt goblet, sitting in my Dol- 
 phin chamber, at a round table, by a sea-coal fire, 
 upon Wednesday in Whitsun week, when the 
 prince broke thy head for liking his father to a 
 singing man of Windsor; thou didst swear to me 
 then, as I was washing, thy wound, to marry me 
 and make me my lady thy wife. Canst thou deny 
 it? Did not goodwife Keech, the butcher's wife, 
 come in then and call me Gossip Quickly? — coming 
 in to borrow a mess of vinegar; telling us she had 
 a good dish of prawns; whereby thou didst de- 
 sire to eat some; whereby I told thee they were 
 ill for a green wound, etc." 
 
 While it indicates a lack of culture to empha- 
 
HEAVEN'S FIRST LAW. 147 
 
 size merely local and temporal connections, the fact 
 that objects and events recur in memory united 
 with their original accompaniments in time and 
 space suggests that the reaction of order upon intel- 
 lect is no less important and beneficial than its re- 
 action upon emotion, and that to have a time and 
 place for everything, and everything in its time 
 and place, is to begin the preparation of the mind 
 for logical thinking. Hence Froebel only realizes 
 our expectations when to the Clock Song, which 
 deals with the organization of time, he adds the 
 plays of the Bird's Nest, the Pigeon House, and 
 Numbering the Fingers, illustrating in the two 
 former the order or relativity of objects in space, 
 and pointing in the latter to the organization of 
 space through the mastery of number. From these 
 initial forms of order he rises to the order of 
 rhythmic games and regulated productive activity. 
 In the use of his gifts he insists upon obedience to 
 two fundamental rules, the first of which is that in 
 each exercise the child shall recognize and respect 
 the relationship of whole and parts; the second 
 that he shall develop each new form from its pred- 
 ecessor. Obviously, the one rule rests upon the 
 principle of unity or relativity in space, the other 
 
148 ' LETTERS TO A MOTHER. 
 
 upon the principle of evolution or connectedness in 
 time. The so-called Froebelian law of the Media- 
 tion of Opposites in its most frequent application 
 ' is simply a recognition of aesthetic order and unity 
 as illustrated upon the plane of development which 
 has advanced beyond simple repetition to the rec- 
 ognition of correspondence. Just as peoples in a 
 low stage of assthetic culture insist upon making 
 the human form symmetrical by matching the face 
 on the front side of the head with a face at the 
 back, and the arms directed forward with arms 
 directed backward, so the young child constructs 
 " forms of beauty " by consciously applying with- 
 in proper limits the principles of symmetry.* 
 Finally, alike through intercourse with kinder- 
 gartner and comrades, and through games symboliz- 
 ing the family, civil society, state, and church, the 
 young soul is stirred with premonitions of social 
 order and its correlative idea, social responsibility. 
 
 * It is, I hope, needless to explain that no intelligent dis- 
 ciple of Froebel claims for such symmetrical figures any great 
 aesthetic merit. The claim urged in their behalf is the psy- 
 chologic one that they represent the stage of iesthetic devel- 
 opment reached alike by little children and primitive peoples, 
 and that the mind must climb through symmetry in order to 
 reach the higher plane of culture 'which creates and enjoys 
 harmony. 
 
HEAVEN'S FIRST LAW. 149 
 
 In connection with the thought of social order 
 it is interesting to remember that it is really the 
 parent both of punctuality and the clock. The 
 savage lives a detached and timeless life. Mr. 
 Drummond relates that when he went to Africa 
 he " was innocent enough to include a watch among 
 the presents which he took with him to propitiate 
 the native chiefs." He adds that he "might as 
 well have taken a grand piano, for the idea of time 
 has scarcely penetrated the African intellect, and 
 forms no element whatever in its calculations. In 
 the morning the native rises suddenly from the 
 ground where he has lain like a log all night. 
 Often he neither washes nor eats. His sole indus- 
 try is to grow millet, and apart from the little time 
 given to this rough tillage his only occupation is to 
 talk." With this timeless existence contrast the 
 measured days of civilized man, and you will not 
 only realize the relationship between social organi- 
 zation and the clock, but will be more than ever 
 anxious to cultivate in Harold a prompt and sympa- 
 thetic obedience to its call, as well as to the sum- 
 mons of the musical gong, which by announcing 
 meals regulates the order of family duties, to the 
 school bell, the church bell, and all the other sig- 
 
150 LETTERS TO A MOTHER. 
 
 nals whereby our complex corporate life is meas- 
 ured and harmonized. 
 
 Punctuality is essentially a social virtue. To 
 be tardy is to be selfish and inconsiderate. By 
 awakening in children a recognition of this 
 truth we dignify the effort to be punctual and 
 make it one means of forming an unselfish char- 
 acter. 
 
 Another message for Helen! One of the great- 
 est needs of the kindergarten is a well-balanced 
 division of time. Many questions will have to be 
 settled before it can be made. What amount of 
 time should be given to general opening exercises, 
 to stories, to talks? How long may little children 
 be expected to concentrate their attention on pro- 
 ductive exercises? How long may they safely use 
 their eyes for sewing, weaving, folding? How 
 long is it well to stand on the circle? How long 
 may they sing without strain to their voices? What 
 is the relative value of the different kindergarten 
 exercises? How many times during the morning 
 do the children need entire relaxation? These are 
 only a few of the problems which suggest them- 
 selves for careful consideration. Upon success in 
 solving them will depend in great measure the edu- 
 
HEAVEN'S FIRST LAW. 151 
 
 cational outcome of the child's experience in the 
 kindergarten. 
 
 Unless I am much mistaken only one question 
 remains to be touched upon before we dismiss the 
 Clock Song, considered in its first aspect as a point 
 of departure for child nurture. You must have no- 
 ticed in Froebel's commentary that he seems not 
 fully satisfied with the several explanations of the 
 clock's allurement given in his third paragraph, 
 and expresses his conviction that the delight of chil- 
 dren in watching, imitating, and making time- 
 pieces springs from a dim presentiment of the im- 
 portance of time itself. In my own judgment the 
 different explanations apply to different periods of 
 development. The mysterious life in the clock, its 
 rhythmic utterance, its oscillating pendulum, at- 
 tract the young child. A dawning sense of the im- 
 portance of time, explains the boy's love of making 
 time-pieces. There are three ascending stages of 
 interest in the clock. The baby watches it, the 
 young child imitates it, the boy tries to make it. 
 In other words, the baby feels the allurement of 
 rhythm; the child through imitation develops a 
 rhythmic consciousness; the boy aspires to create 
 the instrument which makes possible a rhythmic 
 
152 LETTERS TO A MOTHER. 
 
 life. In the picture accompanying the Tick-Tack 
 Song, several children are shown setting up a clock 
 of their own manufacture. It would seem natural 
 that the soul which begins early to assert its mas- 
 tery over Nature should strive to subdue and order 
 time. These moments always coming, always go- 
 ing, how shall the boy catch them, count them, 
 measure them? The clock accomplishes these feats* 
 Could he then make the clock he would be master- 
 ing and ordering time, and so mastering and order- 
 ing his own life. 
 
 Since both you and I believe that child nurture 
 implies self -culture, and since we recognize that the 
 intimations of child life waken in the souls of de- 
 vout mothers problems whose solution taxes the 
 power of the deepest thinkers, I dare not bring this 
 letter to a close without putting into words a ques- 
 tion which has been ringing through my mind all 
 the time I have been writing it. We have recog- 
 nized as the source of the clock's allurement the 
 correspondence of rhythmic sound and vibratory 
 motion with the perpetual oscillation of thought 
 between subject and object. I must now ask you to 
 reflect that time itself is this same pulsation. We 
 talk of infinite time; we picture time as a never- 
 
HEAVEN'S FIRST LAW. 153 
 
 ending line. In truth, however, time is a series of 
 points; a succession of moments, only one of which 
 is ever real; an actual now, trembling between a 
 past and a future, both of which are not. What 
 is this strange thing we call time, this ever-vanish- 
 ing, ever-reappearing point; this ever-dying, ever- 
 living moment; this self -repelling, self -attracting 
 unit; this " eternal flight from the alone to the 
 alone? " 
 
 I think our wrestle with the paradox of time be- 
 gins earlier than most of us imagine, and that the 
 reason we ignore the prescient anticipations of 
 childhood and youth is because in maturity we in- 
 continently dismiss the enigma without solving it. 
 Whoever finds its solution will become aware of its 
 haunting presence from the dawn of his conscious 
 thought. Have you forgotten your perplexity over 
 Grimm's story of the king who questioned how 
 many seconds there were in eternity, and your dis- 
 satisfaction with the answer of the sage little shep- 
 herd boy? Did you never grapple with the paradox 
 of the tortoise and the swift-footed Achilles? Did 
 you feel no strange thrill when you first learned 
 that looking up at the nightly heavens we behold 
 the distant stars, not as they are, but as they were 
 
154 LETTERS TO A MOTHEE. 
 
 long ages ago? Have you never read with baffled 
 amazement sayings like that of the Cherubmic Pil- 
 grim: 
 
 " The rose which here thine eye externally doth see 
 Hath blossomed thus in God from all eternity." 
 
 And when in your ardent youth you pored over 
 Sartor Resartus, did nothing in your inmost self 
 respond to its challenge to " sweep away the Illu- 
 sion of Time," to its assurance that so doing " you 
 should know this fair universe, were it in the mean- 
 est province thereof to be in very deed the star- 
 domed city of God," should realize that " through 
 every star, through every grass blade, and most 
 through every living soul, the glory of a present 
 God still beams? " 
 
 Knowing you, I am sure that these memories 
 of my soul will stir echoes in yours, and I shall 
 therefore not forbear the effort to show you the 
 insights in which they seem to me to find their vin- 
 dication and their solution. 
 
 The maxim of science that objects must be 
 studied in their history applies no less to things of 
 thought than to things of sense. To trace the 
 original evolution of any great insight is to begin 
 
HEAVEN'S FIRST LAW. 155 
 
 to understand it. In a minor degree it is helpful to 
 know how any individual learns to rethink an al- 
 ready known truth. So I intend to be biographical, 
 and my hope is that by retracing the broken and 
 winding path by which I plodded toward insight 
 into the true nature of time I may help you to see 
 what I see. Since, moreover, time and space are 
 but different phases of a single mental act, I shall 
 not attempt to separate them in relating my rem- 
 iniscences. 
 
 My first genuine insight "was into the revolu- 
 tionary truth which, as everybody knows, is the 
 burden of Kant's message to the world. Experience 
 is partial and contingent. Therefore, no ideas pos- 
 sessing the marks of universality and necessity can 
 have been thence derived. Space and time are 
 both universal and necessary ideas; universal or 
 infinite, because they can be bounded only by them- 
 selves; necessary, because they are the pre-supposi- 
 tions of all experience. Since they are not deriv- 
 able from experience, they must be given in the 
 constitution of the mind itself. There is no other 
 alternative. 
 
 Never shall I forget the afternoon when this in- 
 sight first broke upon me, but I will not imitate 
 12 
 
156 LETTERS TO A MOTHER. 
 
 Mrs. Quickly and expand this already long letter by 
 relating the external setting of an intensive experi- 
 ence. I will only say that I was listening to a lec- 
 ture, and that I had heard the very same lecture 
 just a week before without perceiving in it any 
 real meaning. The light seemed to flash upon me 
 all at once, though I now feel sure it had been 
 slowly dawning during the days which elapsed be- 
 tween the two lectures. My first consciousness was 
 that I stood upon a new plane of thought, and that 
 henceforth my entire mental landscape must take 
 on a changed aspect. My next thought was that 
 I had found an anchor of the soul sure and stead- 
 fast. Up to this time I had held myself to faith in 
 spiritual realities by an effort of will, but I knew 
 that in its inmost citadel my soul was without se- 
 cure defenses. Again and again I had said to my- 
 self: " Things seem to me to be thus or so, but 
 how can I be sure they will not seem quite differ- 
 ent to-morrow? " My thought, chameleon-Hke, 
 changed its color with every book I read, every 
 sermon I heard, every discussion in which I bore 
 a part, above all with every deep experience either 
 of sorrow or joy. In a word, " dream delivered me 
 to dream, and there was no end to illusion." But 
 
HEAVEN'S FIRST LAW. 157 
 
 from the moment I really understood that there 
 were universal and necessary ideas, and that they 
 were indigenous to the soul, I knew once for all 
 that there was a land of pure delight, a realm of 
 thought wherein all was light, peace, assurance, and 
 permanence. 
 
 There is a new birth of the intellect as well as a 
 new birth of the heart, and it gives one feelings 
 very like those of a religious convert. Whoever 
 has experienced this mental regeneration knows 
 that no matter how many thinkers have possessed 
 and described the insight which transforms his 
 mind, and no matter how often he may have read or 
 heard such descriptions, the vision when it comes is 
 as new as if no spiritual eye had ever gazed upon 
 it. The visible world is created afresh for each 
 newborn child, the spiritual world is a " fresh divine 
 improvisation " to every regenerate thinker. His 
 solitary bliss is, however, soon enhanced by the 
 consciousness that he is admitted as member into 
 the church invisible. He pictures to himself the 
 victorious thinkers who across the ages have flashed 
 to each other electric messages from the mountain 
 peaks of thought. He is inwardly aware that if 
 he will forsake the easy plain and climb the peak, 
 
158 LETTERS TO A MOTHER. 
 
 he too may behold the unrolling panorama of the 
 universe. 
 
 For some years I was more interested in the 
 general fact that all universal and necessary truths 
 were constitutive forms of mind than in the rela- 
 tionship of this fact to the ideas of space and time. 
 Of course, if time and space were forms of 
 thought, then idealism was true, and we were deni- 
 zens of a spiritual cosmos. I admitted this truth, 
 but my recognition of it was lifeless and inert. 
 Meantime I was thinking much about self -activity. 
 All Froebelians talked about it. Few of them 
 seemed to know just what they meant by it. I per- 
 ceived that it was exhibited in ascending degrees 
 by plant, animal, man. I became aware of the 
 fact that these ascending degrees were character- 
 ized by a progressive diminution in the power of 
 environment. I comprehended that in its highest 
 potency as pure thought self-activity was also self- 
 environment; that it originated, impelled, sus- 
 tained, and developed its own processes, and that 
 in so doing it was forever realizing and fulfilling it- 
 self. Finally, it became clear to me on the one 
 hand that being the highest, thought must also be 
 the parent form of all self-active processes, and on 
 
HEAVEN'S FIRST LAW. 159 
 
 the other that the so-called " forms of thought " 
 must not be conceived as static molds into which 
 sense-impressions were somehow poured, but as 
 greater or small cycles of organizing energy. 
 
 The several insights I have described were re- 
 inforced by a gradual recognition of the process 
 through which the mind ascends from perception 
 to conception. It is commonly said that language 
 is the criterion of the human as distinguished from 
 the animal soul. It is also generally recognized 
 that language deals not with particular but with 
 general objects, actions, and relations. The noun 
 man includes men of all races, colors, and condi- 
 tions; the verb to love is used to express all varie- 
 ties of this universal passion; the prepositions 
 above, below, refer to all particular examples of 
 these general relationships. We call our recogni- 
 tion of such general classes of objects, acts, and re- 
 lations concepts, in contradistinction to percepts 
 which are identifications of particulars as belonging 
 to these classes. "What I now came to see was that 
 our knowledge of concepts or general classes arises 
 through an act of introspection wherein the mind 
 contemplates its own activity in recalling a sense- 
 perception. We know that we can mentally revive 
 
160 LETTERS TO A MOTHER. 
 
 any given perception, that we can repeat this pro- 
 cess at will, and thus produce an indefinite series of 
 images each of which resembles all the others. 
 Projecting this mental experience we infer that back 
 of the particular objects perceived by sense must 
 be generic activities which are their causes or cre- 
 ators, and recognize each object as one product of 
 an ancestral energy whose possible offspring are in- 
 finite in number but similar in kind. Hence the 
 word rose means really rose-producing energy; the 
 words plant and animal mean plant- and animal- 
 producing energies; the word man means man- 
 producing energy; the common noun in each case 
 referring to an active cause which generates par- 
 ticular images of its own ideal. Smaller circles 
 of causal energy are differentiations of larger ones, 
 the rose-producing energy, for example, being a 
 specification of the more general plant-producing 
 energy. Finally, just as particular objects are 
 mere manifestations of causal energy, and lesser 
 causal energies differentiations of greater ones, so 
 all causal energies are specifications of one inclu- 
 sive and transcendant energy, and the movement 
 of thought from objects to classes, from smaller to 
 larger classes, from all particular classes to the gen- 
 
HEAVEN'S FIRST LAW. iqi 
 
 eral cpncept of force, and from the concept of force 
 to its definition as creative thought is simply a 
 vortical descent into the abyss of its own being, 
 or, better, its vortical ascent into the divine 
 mind.* 
 
 This new insight began to associate itself with 
 an image. I pictured the moon revolving on her 
 axis, while at the same time performing her circuit 
 around the earth; the earth in turn making her 
 diurnal revolution, while, bearing along the 
 tethered moon, she circled around the sun; the 
 sun, sweeping through space, while with him jour- 
 neyed his whole retinue of planets and their at- 
 tendant satellites, innumerable solar systems mov- 
 ing in complex curves around some unknown cen- 
 ter of the universe. Surely these "circles of the 
 heavens correspond to the circles of intellect," are 
 indeed the visible symbols of divine thought which 
 at once transcends and includes all smaller cycles 
 of causation in its infinite sweep. Surely, too, the 
 human mind through retracing these ascending 
 and widening circles frees itself from the thrall- 
 dom of sense, and learns to rethink the thought 
 of God. 
 
 * See Psychologic Foundations of Education, pp. 190-197. 
 
162 LETTERS TO A MOTHER. 
 
 If you have followed the narrative of my men- 
 tal experiences you will be ready for the synthesis 
 I shall now try to make. I had learned that the 
 mind possessed universal and necessary ideas, that 
 such ideas were really plastic energies, and that in 
 proportion to their recognition was our discovery of 
 the truth of the external world. It seemed to me 
 very wonderful that only by withdrawal from sense 
 could sensible phenomena be explained, and that 
 in the " abysmal depths of our own personality " we 
 should discover the secret of objective processes. I 
 began to understand that mind was one and indi- 
 visible; that in so far as we possessed it we were 
 partakers of divine activity; that universal and 
 necessary ideas were the ideas of God, and that our 
 discovery of them was his revelation. Caird's Phi- 
 losophy of Eeligion fell into my hands, and I read 
 that " thought is the blank form of an infinite 
 content." The blank form of thought could mean 
 nothing but the energy of thought apart from its 
 specific contents. The characteristic of this energy 
 was consciousness, and consciousness was the distinc- 
 tion of the self from the self, the recognition of the 
 self by the self. This self-distinction and self- 
 identification must, therefore, be the infinite cycle 
 
HEAVEN'S FIRST LAW. 153 
 
 within which all lesser cycles revolved. The state- 
 ment that space and time were forms of thought 
 began to mean something to me. Amiel's Journal 
 helped me by the suggestion that " space and time 
 were dispersion, mind concentration, that in the 
 state of thought the universe occupies but a single 
 point, while in the state of dispersion and analysis 
 this thought requires the heaven of heavens for its 
 expansion." " God," it was added, " is outside time 
 because he thinks all thought at once. Nature is 
 within time, because she is only speech, the discur- 
 sive unfolding of each thought contained within 
 the divine thought." The resemblance of space to 
 that phase of consciousness which distinguishes the 
 self from the self dawned upon me, and just when 
 I was ready for the message I read in Dr. Harris's 
 Logic of Hegel the statement that " everywhere 
 in space the point is outside of every other point, 
 but each point is unreal. Only the separation of 
 points is real, the points themselves are unreal in 
 space." * What were these unreal points with 
 their real separation but an affirmation of the 
 form of consciousness without its content? the 
 " self perfectly empty outside the self as per- 
 * See Dr. Harris, Hegel's Logic, p. 265. 
 
164 LETTEES TO A MOTHER. 
 
 f ectly empty " ? And, again, what was that " self- 
 repulsion of the point," which we call time, if 
 not the other phase of personality, the " identi- 
 fication of the self by the self which completes 
 the act of consciousness " ? Infinite space, infinite 
 time, were they anything but the ceaseless swing 
 of the pendulum of divine thought, the primal 
 revolution of " the wheel on which all beings 
 ride"? 
 
 Empty space and time of their contents and 
 you have the blank mold of divine consciousness. 
 Fill both with the infinite universe and you have 
 that consciousness in its concrete realization. View 
 the universe under the form of space and it appears 
 as an articulated whole, a living organism, " which 
 is all symmetry, full of proportions," and wherein 
 " each part may call the farthest brother." View 
 it under the form of time, and it becomes a great 
 musical drama, enacting in swift rushing scenes the 
 ascent from chaos through matter, motion, star 
 dust, revolving spheres, organic life, and human 
 institutions, to the blessedness of the archetypal 
 church. View it under the form of eternity, 1 
 which is the form of thought, and it shines forth 
 a structural system of divine ideas, a perpetual 
 
HEAVEN'S FIRST LAW. 165 
 
 revelation of divine love. Always complete, al- 
 ways renewed, it merges past and future in one 
 concrete eternal moment. All that has been 
 persists, all that shall be is. The first second 
 of eternity never passes. The archetypal rose 
 blossoms forever. 
 
 " There past, present, future shoot 
 Triple blossoms from one root. 
 Substances at base divided 
 In their summits are united. 
 There the holy essence rolls, 
 One, through separated souls ; 
 And the sunny ajon sleeps, 
 Folding Nature in its deeps.'' 
 
 Dear friend, I have seen something, and I have 
 tried to tell you what I saw, but I can not make the 
 vision stand out in words as it stands out in my 
 mind. If, however, you have caught my hints, you 
 know at least that Jehovah is not the true name of 
 God. His higher name is Father. His highest 
 name is Love. The rhythmic undulations of per- 
 sistent force are his lowest self-revelation. His 
 higher revelation is the concrete universe, his high- 
 est revelation the being made in his own image, 
 his perfect image one who said : " He that hath seen 
 me hath seen the Father." Supply with your 
 
166 LETTERS TO A MOTHER. 
 
 thought the defects in mine. Confirm my vision 
 by beholding it, heighten my joy by sharing it, 
 fortify by your mental regeneration my hope of a 
 time when all men shall seek that piety of the in- 
 tellect which is no less essential to true living than 
 piety of the heart and will. 
 
LETTER VI. 
 
 THE EEVELATION TO SENSE. 
 
 TASTE SONG. 
 
 As each new life is given to the world, 
 The senses — like a door that swings Wo ways — 
 Stand ever 'twixt its inner, waiting self 
 And that environment with which its lot 
 Awhile is cast. 
 
 A door that swings two ways : 
 Inward at first it turns, while Nature speaks, 
 To greet her guest and bid him to her feast, 
 And tell him of all things in her domain, 
 The good or ill of each, and how to use ; 
 Then outward, to set free an answering thought. 
 And so, swift messages fly back and forth 
 Without surcease — until, behold ! she, who 
 Like gracious host received a timid guest, 
 Owns in that guest at length her rightful lord, 
 And gladly serves him, asking no reward ! 
 
 This parable, dear mother, is for you, 
 Whom God has made his steward for your child. 
 All Nature is a unit in herself, 
 Yet but a part of a far greater whole. 
 Little by little you may teach your child 
 To know her ways, and live in harmony 
 With her ; and then, in turn, help him through her 
 To find those verities within himself, 
 Of which all outward things are but the type. 
 So when he passes from your sheltering care 
 
 167 
 
168 LETTERS TO A MOTHER. 
 
 To walk the ways of men, his soul shall he 
 Knit to all things that are, and still most free ! 
 And of him shall be writ at last this word, 
 "At peace with Nature, with himself, and God." 
 
 Heneietta E. Eliot. 
 
 TASTE SONG. 
 
 Here's a berry ripe and sweet 
 Taste, my darling, taste and eat. 
 
 Now this sour fruit instead, — 
 Ah ! my baby shakes his head. 
 
 Here's an almond, taste it, pet, 
 Bitter things we sometimes get. 
 
 Bitter, sour, sweet, he tries, 
 Tasting makes my baby wise ! 
 
 Sweets we must not always choose 
 Sour, bitter, too, we use. 
 
 Fruits unripe we'll let alone 
 Till they fully ripe have grown. 
 
 Emilie Potjlsson. 
 
 Deae : Nowhere in the Mother-Play does 
 
 the connection between revealing example and 
 principle revealed seem at first sight so obscure as 
 in the Song of Taste. On the one hand we are 
 shown the mother playfully inciting her baby to 
 distinguish between the sweet, the sour, and the bit- 
 ter; on the other our thought is impetuously hurled 
 toward that eminence from which all material ob- 
 jects are seen to be afire with spirit, and the sensible 
 world is revealed as a bodily and visible gospel. 
 Our inward eyes are too weak to gaze undazzled 
 
THE REVELATION TO SENSE. 169 
 
 upon the view which expands before them, so we 
 shut them tight and declare there is nothing to be 
 seen. 
 
 Forget for a while, dear friend, the baffling 
 vision, and sit down humbly and patiently at the 
 feet of your own maternal memories. You have 
 sent me notes affirming that on the fourth day of 
 his life Harold stoutly refused cow's milk diluted 
 with water until a few grains of sugar had made 
 it acceptable to his taste,* and that aged seven 
 weeks he made a wry face and a gesture of refusal 
 at the mere sight of a bitter medicine, f a single 
 dose of which had previously been given him. 
 You remember your terror at the way he used to 
 pick up pins and carry them into his mouth, and 
 the many devices by which you tried to break up 
 this habit. You know that even when he was 
 seventeen months old he insisted upon tasting the 
 hyacinth you had given him to smell, £ and you 
 will recall your own delight when, a month later, 
 he began to put the sweet-smelling flower to his 
 
 * The Senses and the Will. Preyer, p. 124. 
 \ Perez, the Pirst Three Tears of Childhood, translated 
 by Alice M. Christie. 
 
 % The Senses and the Will, Preyer, p. 135. 
 
170 LETTERS TO A MOTHER. 
 
 nose, keeping his mouth meantime tightly shut. 
 You are inwardly aware of the fact that, impelled 
 by instinct, you did all the things which Froebel 
 pictures you as doing, and since I, the mere on- 
 looker, remember, you, the mother, can not have 
 forgotten with what joy you assured yourself by 
 repeated experiments that Harold associated with 
 the words sweet, sour, bitter, the sensations to 
 which they refer. 
 
 To interpret your pleasure recall what Froebel 
 says in his commentary on Play with the Limbs, 
 that " developing activity is the oil which feeds the 
 sacred flame of mother love." When Harold re- 
 fused unsweetened milk it was a sure sign to you 
 that he was sensitive to differences of taste. His 
 wry face at sight of bitter medicine showed that he 
 remembered an earlier sensation of taste; while the 
 habit of carrying all things to his month told you 
 that he had begun to use it as a " test organ by 
 which to ascertain the qualities of objects." When 
 he ceased to put sweet-smelling flowers into his 
 mouth you knew that he had learned to distinguish 
 between sensations of smell and sensations of taste, 
 and to refer each to its appropriate organ. Finally, 
 when he responded intelligently to the words sweet, 
 
THE REVELATION TO SENSE. l<ft 
 
 sour, bitter, he showed you that he had not only 
 discriminated between sensations of taste but also 
 between sensations of sound, and, furthermore, that 
 he had been able to perform the complex mental 
 act of uniting specific sounds with specific tastes. 
 
 The outcome of these and kindred experiences 
 must be a suspicion that the sense of taste plays an 
 important part in both mental and moral develop- 
 ment, and such a suspicion is abundantly confirmed 
 by the experiments of physiological psychology. 
 According to Professor Preyer, taste is universally 
 the first sense to become discriminative; according 
 to Sigismund it is the first to yield clear percep- 
 tions to which memory is attached. Professor 
 Tracy tells us that the pleasures and pains of taste 
 play a large part in the natural education of in- 
 fancy, and Dr. Hall affirms that the mouth is the 
 first center of psychic life.* 
 
 These statements must not be taken to mean too 
 much. All truly psychic activity implies a conscious 
 exercise of comparison, whereas the infant's reac- 
 tions to gustatory stimuli are only mimetic reflex 
 movements. On the other hand, since all activity 
 gives a bias to the actor, these reflex movements are 
 
 * See Tracy, The Psychology of Childhood, pp. 21-23. 
 
 13 i 
 
1Y2 LETTERS TO A MOTHER. 
 
 of importance in fixing tendencies of thought, feel- 
 ing, and will. It has been well said that " every 
 mental phenomenon passes through a graduated 
 ascending series of development. At first the 
 physiological preponderates, consciousness is at its 
 minimum, and the so-called mental phenomenon 
 would be more accurately defined as the reaction of 
 the nervous system to external stimuli or organic 
 conditions. . . ■. When intellect and will have be- 
 come sufficiently developed, the child directs his 
 attention to the act, makes it his own, and performs 
 it voluntarily. The process, perhaps, has not 
 changed at all to outward appearance, but when 
 viewed from the inner side it is seen to have been 
 completely transformed in character." * It is the 
 fact that the higher activity is a transformation, 
 and not an isolated, detached, and aboriginal begin- 
 ning which gives importance to the impulses, re- 
 flexes, and instincts of infancy and early child- 
 hood. 
 
 From failure to realize the significance of these 
 facts arise some of the most fatal mistakes of nur- 
 sery education. By making food a sensual pleasure 
 we betray children into epicurism and gluttony, 
 * Tracy, The Psychology of Childhood, p. 6. 
 
THE REVELATION TO SENSE. 173 
 
 and through these create a tendency toward more 
 fatal forms of self-indulgence. False feeding en- 
 genders false appetite, and from false appetite 
 springs the habit of intemperate drinking. 
 
 Froebel's suggestions with regard to the child's 
 food are as simple as they are radical, and are drawn 
 out of his conception of man as ideally a creative 
 being. Whatever interferes with the realization 
 of this ideal is wrong, what assists it is right. The 
 test of both the quality and quantity of food is: 
 Does it make the child inert or active? If it in- 
 duces sloth it is setting appetite above energy, and 
 creating a tendency toward vice. "We do the child 
 great wrong when we give him too highly seasoned 
 and too delicately seductive food, and when we not 
 only permit but encourage excess in eating. "We 
 commit a crime against his soul when by allow- 
 ing him to be idle we make him the victim of ennui, 
 and when the little victim becomes a restless tor- 
 ment seek selfish deliverance from his exactions by 
 giving him something dainty to eat. Above all, we 
 abase his ideal by our bad example, and we shall 
 have to be temperate ourselves before we can hope 
 to form the habit of temperance in children. For 
 the outcome of restricting them while indulging 
 
174 LETTERS TO A MOTHER. 
 
 ourselves is to beget the hope of future sensual en- 
 joyment as a reward of present privation. "What 
 we say in effect is: Little children must not eat 
 too much, nor take too sweet or too rich food, but 
 grown people may eat what they choose and as 
 much as they choose. In other words, we hold up 
 to imagination a Mohammedan Paradise where 
 " desire shall be sated with flesh, where fruits grow 
 low so as to be easily gathered, and where heads 
 do not ache from drinking the ever-flowing wine." 
 I suspect that such abasement of the ideal is a more 
 heinous offense than giving the child the dainties 
 which by example we teach him to crave. 
 
 In the suggestions thus far considered, aud 
 which are given in the Education of Man, there 
 is nothing new. They simply embody truths which 
 we all confess with our lips and deny in our acts. 
 With the Taste Song, however, Froebel becomes 
 original, and as the real import of motto, song, and 
 commentary unfolds in our minds, we shall become 
 aware that they give the point of departure for a 
 true aesthetic culture, just as the All-Gone Song 
 gave the point of departure for a true moral culture. 
 
 The play itself is a very simple one. The 
 mother puts into the child's mouth in succession a 
 
THE REVELATION TO SENSE. 175 
 
 * 
 plum, a piece of apple, and a bitter almond, and 
 
 leads him to discriminate their several savors. 
 Later it may be varied by calling on him to guess 
 and name the fruit from its sweet, sour, or bitter 
 taste, and also to name other objects having these 
 savors. When he can quickly recognize the qual- 
 ity, the mother helps him interpret it. What 
 should sweetness tell the child about the sweet 
 object? This: that he must not eat too much of 
 it. What does sourness tell him? That in many 
 cases it is unripe and should not be eaten. What 
 does bitterness tell him? That though it puckers 
 the mouth it is good for the health. The educa- 
 tional points of the game (as you doubtless already 
 perceive) are, first, the conscious exercise of the 
 power of comparison, and, second, the suggestion 
 that all objects have their own language, and in 
 their qualities tell us truly what they are. 
 
 It would be folly to suppose that merely from 
 detached and occasional plays any lasting influence 
 could be expected. But you understand, do you 
 not, that each of Eroebel's plays initiates a process 
 which you are to continue ? The idea in this play is 
 to make the sense of taste your ally in forming the 
 habit of temperance. The Flower Song is another 
 
176 LETTERS TO A MOTHER. 
 
 outcome of the same idea, and the two commen- 
 taries must be studied together to get Froebel's full 
 thought. We err in speaking of our inferior senses 
 as enemies to our higher life. Insectivorous plants 
 have no senses, yet they often give themselves in- 
 digestion and sometimes kill themselves by over- 
 feeding. The truth is that in their original and un- 
 perverted state taste and smell warn man against the 
 very excesses into which superficial thought assumes 
 that they betray him. " Taste is an outpost of the 
 whole system, for enabling it to assimilate the bene- 
 ficial and reject the harmful," and of smell it has 
 been well said that " it is placed at the entrance to 
 the respiratory organs like a watchman." * How 
 many boys would avoid the vice of smoking if they 
 interpreted and obeyed the warning given in 
 nausea? How many sensuous excesses of all kinds 
 would be impossible if men and women heeded the 
 deterrent suggestions of languor and faintness? 
 Plow helpful to the child's development might we 
 make bis senses if we could only teach him in the 
 beginning of life to understand their speech and 
 hearken to their precepts! 
 
 Be alert, therefore, to notice all Harold's child- 
 * Dewey's Psychology, pp. 60-62. 
 
THE REVELATION TO SENSE. 177 
 
 ish incontinencies, and to show him that you are 
 repelled by them. Make him aware and ashamed 
 of the indolence which follows upon gluttony. 
 Teach him that certain savors are saying to him 
 " Eat not," and certain odors " Smell not." Show 
 him that the warnings of smell and taste are rein- 
 forced by warnings to other senses. Thus the 
 apple's greenness and hardness tell the same story 
 as its sourness, and the melancholy hues of many 
 poisonous plants confirm the suggestion of their 
 repellent odors. Impress upon your boy that he 
 should consciously use his senses to find out the real 
 nature of objects. Quicken in him the assurance 
 that no object can be internally different from what 
 it shows itself to be in the totality of its attributes, 
 and that specific qualities always mean a specific 
 type of character. Above all, make him ashamed 
 of needing the recurrent experience of bad effects 
 to convince him of the evils of indulgence. Hav- 
 ing really learned, for example, that sweetness says 
 " enjoy moderately," he should never permit him- 
 self an immoderate indulgence in sweets. 
 
 You have doubtless noticed that while the Taste 
 Song is limited to distinctions of savor, the motto 
 suggests the ideal function of all sensation, and 
 
178 LETTERS TO A MOTHER. 
 
 the commentary proposes a general plan for train- 
 ing the senses. This plan is further illustrated in 
 the commentary on the Flower Song, and the two 
 commentaries taken together are a frank confession 
 of Froebel's idealistic creed, a candid statement of 
 its educational implications, and a striking illustra- 
 tion of his fidelity to the truths of self -activity and 
 freedom. His aim is to make the child master of 
 himself. He can not be satisfied with merely giving 
 children simple food, but will have them choose it. 
 It is not enough for him to restrain children. He 
 will have them self -restraining. He is not content 
 with even voluntary self-restraint when its motive 
 is blind faith in mother or kindergartner, but 
 craves for the free soul the self-coercion of an in- 
 wardly impelling ideal. Therefore, he will spare no 
 pains in teaching the child to compare, discriminate, 
 and select, and will daily seek to free him from the 
 seductions of appetite by putting in his hands a 
 clew to the revelations of sense. 
 
 The training begun by conscious distinctions 
 between savors and deliberate refusals to follow ap- 
 petite when warned by sense is continued by Froe- 
 bel in an attempt to develop a clear consciousness of 
 the several sensuous spheres and of the elementary 
 
THE REVELATION TO SENSE. 179 
 
 sensations within each sphere. As in the Taste 
 Song he incites the baby to distinguish the sweet 
 from the sour and both from the bitter, so in the 
 Flower Song he directs attention to the odors of 
 flowers, and seeks to make the child conscious of 
 their hortatory and deterrent suggestions. In the 
 Finger Piano he teaches us how we may abet the 
 natural effort to distinguish sensations of sound, 
 while through countless exercises with the kinder- 
 garten gifts he stimulates the senses of touch and 
 sight by contrasts of pressure, color, form, dimen- 
 sion, and position. As soon as there is recognition of 
 contrasting extremes, the child is led to notice the 
 transitions by which they are connected, and the 
 development of his aesthetic sense is begun by 
 leading him to choose from among a number of 
 forms, colors, and sounds those which he prefers. 
 Later he is encouraged to make original combina- 
 tions. 
 
 That you may not accuse me of indulging in 
 vague generalities let me remind you of Froebel's 
 suggestions with regard to the development of the 
 color sense. Professor Preyer tells us that most 
 color blindness is the result not of organic defect in 
 the child, but of neglect on the part of parents. 
 
180 LETTERS TO A MOTHER. 
 
 Froebel, as you know, planned to begin education 
 in color with the balls of his first gift. The child 
 learns, for example, to know blue as that in his sec- 
 ond ball which differs from his first, and yellow as 
 the something in a third ball which differs from the 
 other two. Supplementing this comparison of ob- 
 jects alike in all respects save color, should be 
 exercises comparing objects different in all respects 
 save color. As soon as colors are readily distin- 
 guished they are made a basis for classification — 
 e. g., the rose is red, the forget-me-not blue, the 
 lemon yellow, the grass green. Evidently the 
 mother should not classify objects herself, but lead 
 the child to classify by asking him to find objects 
 like his differently colored balls. When he readily 
 recognizes standard colors he may advance to dis- 
 crimination of their shades and tints, and from 
 this to the formation of color scales. 
 
 Hand in hand with this training in color recog- 
 nition goes the use of color in sewing, weaving, in- 
 tertwining, coloring pictures of natural objects — 
 particularly leaves and flowers, and the employ- 
 ment of color in original design, while complement- 
 ing the double series of discriminative and produc- 
 tive exercises should be the cultivation of taste 
 
THE REVELATION TO SENSE. 181 
 
 through beautifully colored natural objects and 
 pictures. 
 
 How far we still are from carrying out Froe- 
 bel's suggestions I know full well; indeed, I am 
 reminding you of them with the hope that both you 
 and Helen may be aroused to help in realizing 
 his ideal. That something has been achieved, 
 however, I realize when I compare the work done 
 now with that of twenty years ago. In those early 
 days of the kindergarten movement we were told 
 that the child should always choose his own colors 
 for weaving, sewing, etc., and should combine them 
 in any way he wished, and few persons ever thought 
 of restricting the range of choice by limiting it to 
 permissible combinations. Experience soon showed 
 that with such unrestricted freedom the children re- 
 mained aesthetic savages, and in a period of reaction 
 caused by this discovery many kindergartners tried 
 to improve the taste of their pupils by making se- 
 lections for them. After the latter plan had been 
 for some time in operation, its results were tested 
 by a well-known supervisor who, visiting a large 
 number of kindergartens, took with her colors of 
 all kinds and asked the children to select and com- 
 bine those they liked best. The test proved that the 
 
182 LETTEKS TO A MOTHER. 
 
 real preferences of the pupils had not been affected 
 by the artistic combinations selected for them. At 
 present, therefore, the working plan is to offer a 
 number of color combinations, all of which are 
 good, and allow the children to choose from among 
 them. When this plan shall have been perfected 
 by the elimination of colors which young children 
 can not discriminate, by a proportionate use of the 
 several different colors, and by graded exercises in 
 combination which shall always hold up to the 
 child not some remote perfection, but the near next 
 step which he ought to take, this one small phase 
 of the problem of aesthetic education will be ap- 
 proximately solved. 
 
 You have doubtless noticed in the commentary 
 to the Flower Song Froebel's statement that in sen- 
 sation the vital, intellectual, and moral melt into 
 each other, and that it would be difficult to say 
 where the purely physical influence of objects 
 ends, and where their spiritual influence begins. 
 This is no haphazard expression of a fleeting fancy 
 but the deliberate record of a conviction. In the 
 Education of Man, speaking particularly of colors, 
 he affirms that it is by no means their external 
 variety which allures the child, but a deep though 
 
THE REVELATION TO SENSE. 183 
 
 subconscious desire to enter into the character of 
 each, color, to understand the relationship between 
 different colors, and to obtain with the aid of colors 
 an insight into the nature of light. Color and light, 
 he adds, are again most intimately connected with 
 all that elevates life, because physical light points 
 to the heavenly light to which it owes its being and 
 existence. 
 
 Vague and dangerous mysticism, says the critic 
 of Froebel. Vague it may be, dangerous it can not 
 be, since Froebel asks us to do nothing but give the 
 child a careful training in the recognition and use 
 of color. He surely does not mean us to talk about 
 the symbolism of color. If color has any psychic 
 influence it will make itself felt without our aid. 
 Indeed, our speaking of it or of any other symbol 
 would be a profanation of that self-revealing mys- 
 tery in which the nature of a symbol consists. So 
 those who accept and those who reject symbolism 
 may peacefully pursue the same practical path. 
 
 If, however, you will recall the part played by 
 the symbolism of color in sacred and legendary art 
 you will, I think, admit that notwithstanding its 
 artificiality it points to an obscure presentiment of 
 the truth that each color has its spiritual corre- 
 
184 LETTERS TO A MOTHER. 
 
 spondence, and exercises some psychic influence. 
 So while putting far away from you all conven- 
 tional symbols, ask yourself if you do not recognize 
 in different colors the fit expression of different 
 feelings, ideas, and types of character. When you 
 read of Mary, Queen of Scots, preparing for execu- 
 tion by attiring herself in a dress of gleaming red, 
 does it predispose you to believe that her church 
 has been wise in her canonization? Can you pic- 
 ture the scarlet woman of Revelation clad in white? 
 Can you disrobe Raphael's Madonnas of their ceru- 
 lean garments, or imagine any background which 
 would so enhance their spiritual beauty as the 
 golden light he chooses? Do you find no signifi- 
 cance in the fact that Nature meets our uplifted 
 gaze with blue sky and golden sun, while she 
 spreads beneath us expanses of aspiring green and 
 work-a-day brown, and uses her passionate reds only 
 in the occasional flower and the rare jewel, in the 
 vanishing pomps of autumn and the dissolving 
 splendors of sunset and sunrise? 
 
 The theory of color which best explains these 
 spiritual intuitions is that of Goethe. He suggests 
 that all color arises through the reciprocal relation 
 of light and darkness. "White light seen through a 
 
THE REVELATION TO SENSE. 185 
 
 medium that slightly dims it appears yellow. 
 Darker or denser mediums cause it to appear or- 
 ange or red. Conversely, darkness seen through a 
 strongly illuminated medium becomes light blue 
 in color, while seen through less illuminated me- 
 diums it appears indigo or violet. The remaining 
 color, green, is produced by a process which 
 mingles light blue with light yellow, the former 
 being seen throxigh the latter. According to this 
 theory yellow and light blue are the most noble 
 colors, the one being the nearest approximation in 
 color to pure light, the other being the highest 
 illumination of darkness. The former would there- 
 fore correspond with the revelation of eternal truth 
 and beauty, the latter with the illumination of all 
 the mysteries of ignorance, sin, and sorrow. Red 
 would suggest the premonitions of truth and beauty 
 in feeling, which just because it is obscure is often 
 passionate and evil. Yiolet would be the color of 
 mystery, while the origin of green hints that it is 
 the symbolic equivalent of hope and aspiration. As 
 a whole this theory confirms our faith that each sen- 
 suous incitement has its spiritual correspondence, 
 justifies the procedure of great artists, and awakens 
 in our minds a suspicion that through her wisely 
 
186 
 
 LETTERS TO A MOTHER. 
 
 distributed colors loving Nature is seeking to stir 
 our souls in proportionate measure with passion, 
 aspiration, and faith.* 
 
 While color is a universal quality of material 
 things it is not a quality effective of distinction. 
 Classification upon the basis of color is necessarily 
 arbitrary. By it we can neither determine classes 
 
 * In his Larger Psychology (vol. ii, pp. 379, 380), Professor 
 James writes as follows: " The dynamogenic value of colored 
 
 No. 1. 
 
 is varies with the color. In a 
 subject whose normal strength was 
 expressed by 23, it became 24 when 
 a blue light was thrown upon the 
 eyes, 28 for green, 30 for yellow, 35 
 for orange, and 42 for red. Red is 
 thus the most exciting color.'' 
 
 Of the accompanying cuts which I 
 borrow from Professor James, No. 1 
 " shows the way in which the pulse 
 of one subject was modified by the 
 exhibition of a red light lasting from 
 the moment marked a to that marked 
 b," No. 2 " shows the effects of light 
 upon the breathing of two hysteric 
 patients." 
 
 No. 2. 
 
 Respiratory curve of 
 No. 2 : a, with yellow 
 light ; 6, with green 
 light ; c, with red 
 light. The red has 
 the strongest effect. 
 
THE REVELATION TO SENSE. 187 
 
 nor satisfactorily distinguish different objects, for 
 objects of the same class may have different colors, 
 objects of different classes may have the same colors, 
 and objects may change their color without los- 
 ing their identity. ^ ■ 
 
 The distinctive characteristic of material objects 
 is form. We may have a red sphere and a red cube, 
 but the sphere can not lose its curve nor the cube 
 its angles without ceasing to be itself. " An oak," 
 says Ruskin, " is an oak whether green with spring 
 or red with winter; a dahlia is a dahlia whether it 
 be yellow or crimson, and if some monster-hunting 
 botanist should ever frighten the flower blue still it 
 will be a dahlia; but let one curve of the petals, 
 one groove of the stamens, be wanting, and the 
 flower ceases to be the same." Since form is the 
 mark of specific variety it was natural that Froebel 
 should emphasize this quality in his gifts, and since 
 geometrical figures are the archetypes of form it 
 was inevitable that he should use them as the clew 
 to all other forms. Yet it is precisely in this feature 
 of his method that his critics are finding his worst 
 mistakes. Their attack reduces itself upon inves- 
 tigation to two points : first, that it is a psychologic 
 
 error to " divert the tendency of the child to com- 
 14 
 
188 LETTERS TO A MOTHER. 
 
 pare concrete objects with each other and prompt 
 rather the comparison of type forms with indi- 
 viduals; " * second, that geometric forms are not 
 beautiful, and that occupation with them gives no 
 aesthetic culture. In reply to the first objection 
 may be urged the fact that the very first valid com- 
 parison beween two concrete objects must elicit the 
 type form which underlies each, and that it is easier 
 for the mind to make such comparison if the type 
 form be known. The second objection loses much 
 of its weight when we reflect that standards of 
 beauty must vary for the child and the man, and 
 that aesthetic education must seek the level on 
 which the pupil stands, and allure him gradually 
 to higher planes. In Nature crystallization pre- 
 cedes organic life; in history architecture precedes 
 all other arts; in childhood the passion for building 
 is lively and strong. Again, man's first aesthetic 
 preferences were for simple regularity of form and 
 the early monuments of architecture tended to 
 assume crystalline shapes, as is shown in Egyptian 
 pyramids and obelisks. Winckelmann relates that 
 among the remains of primitive sculpture are three 
 
 * Relation of the Kindergarten to the Primary School, C. 
 C. Van Liew, Educational Review, February, 1895, p. 180. 
 
THE REVELATION TO SENSE. 189 
 
 large cubes inscribed with, the names of the three 
 Graces, and Froebel's allusion to this statement of 
 the great Greek born out of due time shows that 
 it was to him a pregnant suggestion of educational 
 method. In like manner artistic design began with 
 regularly repeated lines and figures, and only gradu- 
 ally advanced to reproduction of the freer beauty 
 of natural forms. Add to these suggestions the 
 fact that the gifts, as we have them, omit the divided 
 spheres, cylinders, and cones which are integral 
 members of Froebel's ideal series of typical play- 
 things, and which correct the undue accent upon 
 rectangular planes and solids, and it seems to me 
 most of the objections against his plan are satisfac- 
 torily disposed of, especially if due recognition is 
 accorded his tireless urgency in recommending the 
 collection of simple and beautiful natural objects, 
 and their reproduction in modelling, drawing, and 
 painting exercises. 
 
 Of Froebel's faith in the spiritual analogies of 
 form there can be no doubt, but it is the grossest 
 caricature of his method to affirm that he thrusts 
 these analogies upon the child. Correspondences 
 make themselves felt, and all that Froebel or any 
 one of his rational disciples claims is that the soul of 
 
190 LETTERS TO A MOTHER. 
 
 man rejoices in the lower analogues of its own activi- 
 ties, though it has no understanding whatever of 
 the secret of its joy. The sequence of the kinder- 
 garten gifts is determined by Froebel's perception 
 that force is an energy which tends to act equally in 
 all directions and that the material resultant of this 
 tendency is the sphere. Crystal forms show a pro- 
 gressive approximation to the spherical type, or, in 
 other words, move toward concrete realization of 
 the original spherical tendency of force. In like 
 manner, human development makes explicit what is 
 always implicit in mind. All development is self- 
 duplication, and the series of crystal forms is an 
 inorganic analogue of mind just as the process of 
 plant life moving from seed to seed is its organic 
 analogue. It is easy to scoff at Froebel's insight 
 and to ridicule the educational claim he bases upon 
 it, but when one remembers how primitive men 
 sought revelations of their own spiritual nature in 
 the alternations of day and night, in the phases of 
 the moon and the seasons of the year, in generative 
 processes, planetary orbits and stellar revolutions, 
 one is inclined to suspect that the final victory will 
 be with the founder of the kindergarten and not 
 with the scoffers who lightly sneer at his mysticism. 
 
THE KEVELATION TO SENSE. 191 
 
 To explain in a single letter how the forms of 
 the kindergarten may be used to stimulate and 
 develop the sense of touch is obviously impossible. 
 For you, moreover, it is unnecessary, as you have 
 had two years of kindergarten training and my ob- 
 ject is simply to remind you of the general prin- 
 ciples involved in Iroebelian exercises. I shall 
 therefore leave you to expand the recommendations 
 I have made with regard to exercises in form and 
 hasten to suggest how you may help Harold to 
 notice and discriminate sensations of sound. In the 
 view of experimental psychologists no child whose 
 organ of hearing is normally developed is born 
 absolutely unmusical. The inability of many chil- 
 dren to distinguish musical tones is, therefore, 
 probably due to lack of exercise. You will remem- 
 ber that Froebel urges mothers to sing much them- 
 selves; to encourage children to sing; to call their 
 attention to differences of rhythm; to incite them to 
 distinguish between musical tones, and encourage 
 them to originate little melodies. It is, however, 
 important that the discrimination of musical tones 
 and the composition of melodies should not be be- 
 gun too early or carried too far, and I think Froe- 
 bel's most valuable suggestions with regard to the 
 
192 LETTEES TO A MOTHER. 
 
 training of the auditory sense are contained in the 
 commentary to the Finger Piano, whose central 
 thought is that the best way to cultivate the hearing 
 of little children is by directing attention to the 
 sounds of Nature. Jenny Lind began her own 
 training as a singer by imitating the songs of birds. 
 Think of the pleasure you may give Harold by 
 leading him to notice and imitate the crowing of 
 roosters, the quacking of ducks, the bleating of 
 lambs, the chirping of crickets, the humming of 
 bees. Think of the joy which will come to him as 
 he learns to distinguish the notes of the robin, the 
 oriole, the meadow lark, the song sparrow. Think 
 of the spiritual presentiments you may awaken by 
 teaching him to hearken to the voices of the wind, 
 and distinguish its whispers, sighs, and moans, its 
 whistles, songs, and trumpet blasts; and, once 
 again, forget not the poetic analogies which will 
 rise unbidden in his soul as he listens to the almost 
 articulate babble of playful brooks, to the gentle 
 plash of waves, to the solemn music of the sea. 
 
 In the kindergarten the musical education be- 
 gun by Nature is continued by song and the adap- 
 tation of movement to different rhythms. The 
 careful selection of melodies is of the highest im- 
 
THE REVELATION TO SENSE. 193 
 
 portance, for whatever view may be finally adopted 
 with regard to the spiritual incitement of form and 
 color, few persons question the truth that there 
 is a direct relation between music and emotion, and 
 that base or noble feelings may be aroused by cor- 
 respondent melodies and rhythms. Plato banished 
 from his ideal Republic all strains " save the strain 
 of necessity and the strain of freedom, the strain 
 of the unfortunate and the strain of the fortunate, 
 the strain of courage and the strain of temperance." 
 Our ideal for the child is that he should learn only 
 those melodies and rhythms which express freedom, 
 joy, and that serene possession of the total self 
 which Froebel expresses in the phrase inner col- 
 lectedness. I do not claim that this ideal is realized, 
 but its assertion and definition insure its embodi- 
 ment. 
 
 Comparing Froebel's suggestions with regard 
 to sense training with those of more recent writers, 
 we are struck by the fact that while he was the 
 first educator who sought to give a heightened 
 energy to the earliest motions of consciousness by 
 isolating, contrasting, and thus accentuating ele- 
 mentary sensations, he was also keenly alive to the 
 dangers of exaggerating such training, and thereby 
 
194 LETTERS TO A MOTHER. 
 
 impeding the development of higher mental activi- 
 ties.* Thus, within the sphere of taste Froebel is 
 content to have the child distinguish sweet, sour, 
 and bitter, while in a recent popular psychology we 
 find a list of forty-six edibles between which we are 
 told the blindfold pupil should learn to discrimi- 
 nate, f Froebel limits his training of the sense of 
 
 * Education of the Central Nervous System, Halleck, p. 
 143. 
 
 f It may be said that the priority I claim for Froebel be- 
 longs of right to Pestalozzi. Those who incline to this opin- 
 ion may profitably consider the suggestions of the latter edu- 
 cator as given in How Gertrude Teaches her Children. 
 
 " In reference to such objects as we recognize immediately 
 by the five senses, and in reference to which it is necessary to 
 teach the child to express himself with precision, I take from 
 a dictionary substances whose most prominent qualities we 
 can distinguish by the five senses, and put down with them 
 the adjectives which describe those qualities, e. g., 
 
 " Eel — slippery, worm-shaped, tough-skinned. 
 
 " Carcass — dead, offensive. 
 
 " Evening — quiet, cheerful, cool, rainy. 
 
 "Axle — strong, weak, greasy. 
 
 "Field — sandy, clayey, sowed, manured, fertile, profitable, 
 unprofitable. 
 
 " Then I reverse this proceeding and in the same way select 
 from the dictionary adjectives expressing distinguishing quali- 
 ties of objects recognized by the five senses, and set down 
 after them the names of objects possessing them, e. g., 
 
 " Round — ball, hat, moon, sun. 
 
 " Light — feather, down, air. 
 
 " Heavy — gold, lead, oak, wood. 
 
 " Hot — oven, summer day, fire. 
 
THE REVELATION TO SENSE. 195 
 
 smell to a recognition of the odors of common 
 flowers, while his predecessor, Pestalozzi, and his 
 successors among the physiological psychologists 
 assail the nostrils of infancy with a bewildering 
 variety of perfumes and stenches. Finally, Froebel 
 
 "High — tower, mountain, giants, trees. 
 
 "Deep — oceans, seas, cellars, graves. 
 
 " Soft — flesh, wax, butter. 
 
 " Elastic — steel springs, whalebone. 
 
 " I do not endeavor by completing these explanatory suffixes 
 to diminish the field of the child's independent intellectual 
 activity, but only give a few terms calculated to appeal di- 
 rectly to his senses, and then inquire in continuation, What 
 else can you mention of the same sort ? " 
 
 The most cursory examination of the procedure suggested 
 in this extract shows that Pestalozzi's object lessons are not 
 exercises in the discrimination of elementary sensations. The 
 defects of his plan are many and grave. It makes no selec- 
 tion of objects, but allows the child to consider indifferently 
 an eel or a carcass. It applies to these non-selective objects 
 adjectives with which the child is unfamiliar, and hence bur- 
 dens his mind with unintelligible predicates. When, reversing 
 its procedure, it gives qualities and calls upon the child to name 
 objects possessing them, it fails to prepare him for so doing 
 by first acquainting him with the qualities under which ob- 
 jects are to be subsumed. Again, it does not select element- 
 ary qualities, and it fails entirely to call for a conscious dis- 
 crimination between the several sensuous spheres. Above all, 
 it is oblivious of the hortatory and deterrent aspects of sen- 
 sation, and therefore suggests no deed as the outcome of its 
 distinctions. Hence it has no moral or aesthetic quality, and, 
 furthermore, by " burdening memory with unintelligible epi- 
 thets, it really obscures the intellect and plunges the pupil 
 into the chaos from which it claims to deliver him." 
 
196 LETTERS TO A MOTHER. 
 
 asks the young child to discriminate a few typical 
 forms, a few elementary colors, a few simple musi- 
 cal tones, and reserves all more delicate distinctions 
 for a maturer age. How different is his practice 
 from that now recommended you will realize when 
 you read the following passage, which I cite be- 
 cause it states explicitly a plan often less frankly 
 advocated: 
 
 "In the first stage of brain-building — the sen- 
 sation stage — the child should as early in life as 
 possible be caused to discriminate between each rec- 
 ognizable difference of color — pitch, hue, tint, and 
 shade — and all the other color pitches, hues, tints, 
 and shades; and to discriminate between each recog- 
 nizable difference of sound pitch, amplitude, tone- 
 quality, cadence, melodic succession, and chordal 
 synthesis, and every other sound pitch, amplitude, 
 tone-quality, etc. ; and to discriminate between each 
 recognizable difference of pleasurable and healthful 
 taste, and every other one; and to discriminate be- 
 tween each recognizable difference of healthful 
 smells, and each other smell; to discriminate in a 
 similar manner between touches; in their recogniz- 
 able differences of intensity and locality and com- 
 parative closeness; and the same for warm-tem- 
 
THE REVELATION TO SENSE. 197 
 
 perature sensations, and for cold-temperature sen- 
 sations; and the same for muscular sensations, until 
 each muscle has been felt to move with different 
 degrees of energy and speed and in different direc- 
 tions. Briefly, give to the child every sensation- 
 memory-structure that it can get from each of the 
 eight classes of sensory nerves, omitting not one 
 recognizable sensation-difference in any of the 
 senses." * 
 
 The greater temperance of Froebel is due to 
 his clearer recognition of the nature and signifi- 
 cance of the higher mental activities. The training 
 of sense is urged upon the ground that the brain 
 structures are the products of mental activity, and 
 that, therefore, in order to build up the different 
 sense areas the child must exercise the functions 
 of which those areas are the embodied expression. 
 But if this be true of the structures resulting from 
 the exercise of sense perception it is obviously no 
 less true of the cells and fibers in which are regis- 
 tered the results of higher activities; and to exag- 
 gerate sense training is to keep the soul the thrall" 
 of environment instead of abetting the struggle for 
 
 * Psychology, Psychurgy, and the Kindergarten. By 
 Elmer Gates, M. D., Pratt Institute Monthly, May, 1897. 
 
198 LETTERS TO A MOTHER. 
 
 liberty it makes in its search for causes. Since 
 causes belong to a higher order than the objects 
 of sense-perception, the soul emancipates itself 
 from those dead results and achieves freedom by 
 becoming self-environing. Might it not be pos- 
 sible, by too many exercises in seeing, hearing, 
 touching, tasting, and smelling to bind the child's 
 soul throughout life to his eyes, ears, hands, mouthy 
 and nose? And if such exercises were continued 
 for a sufficient number of generations might they 
 not threaten the human race with reversion to 
 the animal brain as a result of the exercise of 
 animal activities? Laugh, dear friend, if you 
 will, but learn the trend of certain educational 
 suggestions from the absurdity of their logical out- 
 come. 
 
 Have I made clear to you what you ought prac- 
 tically to do in order to begin Harold's aesthetic 
 education? Have I helped you to realize that all 
 Nature is speech, and that the universal qualities 
 of objects are the alphabet through whose countless 
 combinations we spell out her meaning? Have I 
 shown you that discriminative and productive exer- 
 cises must go hand in hand, and that we can only 
 learn to love the beautiful by creating the beauti- 
 
THE REVELATION TO SENSE. 199 
 
 ful? Have I convinced you that standards of 
 beauty must vary for the adult and the child, and 
 that any effort to make the latter appreciate the 
 higher forms of beauty must be self-defeating? If 
 so, you now realize that the rounds on the ladder of 
 aesthetic development are permanent, but that they 
 may be climbed more or less rapidly; and that our 
 wisdom consists in seeing where the child stands 
 and then pointing him, not to the distant height to 
 which he must mount, but to the near next step 
 which he must take and perhaps already begins to 
 feel he would like to take. Historically, as Goethe 
 hints to us in his portrayal of the relationship be- 
 tween Phorkyas and Helen, the beautiful arose by 
 a progressive transformation of the ugly, and the 
 love of beauty must be cultivated in the same way. 
 Learning to like the less ugly means learning to 
 like the more beautiful, and as we achieve virtue 
 by overcoming moral defect, so we achieve good 
 taste by overcoming bad taste. How many persons 
 blandly unconscious of their own lack of relish for 
 the highest art go through life formally professing 
 admiration for all that custom has sanctioned as 
 admirable! Plow many vital but uncouth natures 
 defiantly assert their own savage predilections! 
 
200 LETTERS TO A MOTHER. 
 
 How many fawning hypocrites praise the heautiful 
 while inwardly gloating over the ugly. Would 
 you save Harold from becoming an aesthetic for- 
 malist, scoffer, or hypocrite? Then see to it that you 
 respect the ratio between production and discrim- 
 ination! 
 
 In addition to the positive training of discrim- 
 ination and production, we must be mindful of the 
 influence of environment, and careful not to pervert 
 the child's aesthetic sense by ugly pictures and ugly 
 toys. The taste of little girls is often corrupted by 
 expressionless dolls, badly painted and badly 
 dressed. The musical taste of boys is coarsened by 
 tin trumpets and poor drums. Many children are 
 allowed to bang on the piano. Many are injured by 
 all kinds of ugly and tawdry playthings, and by 
 badly drawn and crudely colored pictures. Last, 
 but not least, we forget that all true beauty im- 
 plies strength and simplicity, and warp the taste of 
 children by the excessive luxury of our homes. 
 
 As the kindergarten gifts seek the original point 
 of contact between the mind of the child and the 
 beauties of Nature and art, so the songs of the 
 Mother-Play nourish the germs of literary activity 
 and literary taste. Always alert to discover the 
 
THE KEVELATION TO SENSE. 201 
 
 terminus ah quo of an educational process, Froebel 
 perceived that latent in our traditional nursery 
 rhymes were the ideals which have created higher 
 literature, and considered as a child's book the 
 Mother-Play is an attempt to elicit these ideals, and 
 by means of dramatic action, poetry, music, picture, 
 and story, to win for them a controlling power over 
 the imagination. In these plays the child is both 
 receptive and self -expressive, but as he grows older 
 the development of literary activity and the cul- 
 tivation of literary taste must be pursued by dis- 
 tinct but parallel paths. Children should be en- 
 couraged to relate their experiences, and thus begin 
 to grasp them as wholes. They should be taught 
 to give accurate descriptions of simple and beautiful 
 objects, to make rhymes and relate original stories, 
 and as they grow older written expression should 
 supplement oral expression. On the other hand, 
 literary taste should be cultivated by hearing and 
 reading carefully selected poems and stories, and 
 simple poems, whose rhythm is as perfect as pos- 
 sible, and which embody pure and inspiring ideals, 
 should be committed to memory. 
 
 In selecting stories for little children we should 
 be careful to keep a just proportion between the 
 
202 LETTEBS TO A MOTHER. 
 
 several types into which they naturally divide them- 
 selves. The child needs stories reflecting accu- 
 rately his own experiences, and thus acting as a 
 looking-glass for his mind. He needs those narra- 
 tives of animal and plant life and those narrative 
 descriptions of inorganic phenomena which open for 
 him the doorway of natural science. He needs 
 stories interpreting human nature as he begins to 
 know it — stories which depict in strong and simple 
 outline the elemental emotions, the primary mo- 
 tives, and the original moral conflicts of the soul. 
 Above all, he needs those mythic tales which " sport 
 with the fixed conditions of the actual world and 
 present to him a picture of free power over Nature 
 and circumstances." For tales such as these liberate 
 the soul because they celebrate its ideal freedom 
 and prophesy its triumphant career of conquest 
 over itself and the world. 
 
 For American children stories of this kind are 
 especially important because as a people we are 
 prosaic, and as Matthew Arnold has frankly told us, 
 " not interesting." The tendency of much so-called 
 education is to kill what little ideality we have. 
 The thoroughness with which we study mathemat- 
 ics and natural science, while neglecting literature, 
 
THE REVELATION TO SENSE. 203 
 
 history, art, and philosophy, tends to enthrall rather 
 than to emancipate our minds, and I honestly be- 
 lieve that not only our individual characters, but 
 our perpetuity as a representative nation depends 
 upon the uplifting of our ideals through the cul- 
 tivation of imagination. So " give us once again 
 the wishing cup of Fortunatus and the invisible coat 
 of Jack the Giant-Killer," and do you contribute 
 your share toward the evolution of a nation of ideal- 
 ists by telling Harold over and over again the fairy 
 tales you may be sure he will never tire of hearing. 
 Casting a backward glance over the course of 
 this letter you will become aware that it has un- 
 folded from the simple point made by Froebel that 
 through their savor, odor, sound, form, and color the 
 things of Nature speak to us and tell us what they 
 are. This insight explains our analogical use of 
 the words originally expressive of elementary sensa- 
 tions. Sweet dispositions, sour faces, bitter ex- 
 periences, fragrant memories, angular character, the 
 circular sweep of deeds, the spirals of thought, the 
 ring of truth, the pitch and scale of feeling, the 
 many words borrowed from the vocabulary of color 
 to suggest emotion are all intimations that we have 
 
 been blindly aware that in sensation is revealed the 
 15 
 
204 LETTERS TO A MOTHER. 
 
 true being of the sensuous object. Still more sug- 
 gestive is our discernment of spiritual analogues to 
 the different sensuous spheres, and particularly' our 
 wide reaching analogical use of the word taste. We 
 speak of taste in dress, manner, life, art, and litera- 
 ture; we praise the man of correct and refined 
 taste, we shrink from him whose tastes are low. 
 The several uses of the word have this in common, 
 that they all imply the act of comparison. Cultiva- 
 tion in any sphere is characterized by the sensitive 
 apprehension of subtle differences. The musician 
 hears sounds not discernible by the untrained ear, 
 the sculptor perceives gradations of form, the 
 painted gradations of color invisible to the unedu- 
 cated eye; all three recognize in the several forms 
 of expression a soul hidden from or vaguely appre- 
 hended by dimmer eyes and duller ears. Such rec- 
 ognition implies an identity of the essence or 
 soul of the object with the soul of the percipient. 
 Physically we taste only that which we are begin- 
 ning to assimilate or make over into our own or- 
 ganism, and the same is true spiritually. Our tastes 
 therefore indicate our spiritual affiliations, and our 
 souls are becoming noble or base, fair or foul, as we 
 prefer the noble or base, the fair or foul in life, 
 
THE REVELATION TO SENSE. 205 
 
 manners, literature, and art. "We grow into the 
 likeness of the things we love, and our genuine at- 
 tractions and repulsions define our characters. 
 Eealize this truth and you will understand that the 
 cultivation of taste is one important phase of edu- 
 cation, and will inquire for suggestions as to the 
 ways and means of leading children to love the 
 sweet, the beautiful, and the reasonable. 
 
 If it be true that through their qualities the 
 things of Nature reveal their essence, then Nature 
 is a revelation to sense of the invisible realities of 
 spirit. Of all delusions the most fatal is that which 
 holds to the contradiction of inner and outer, and 
 imagines that the essence of things can be different 
 in character from their manifestation. How often 
 are being and seeming set in sharp contrast! how 
 fondly do we hug the conceit that we are something 
 better, nobler, purer than we appear! Once for all 
 sweep that illusion away. What we act we are, and 
 our lives are the revelation of our souls. So is it 
 also with Nature. She is that which she appears to 
 be, and as we study history we find that to men of 
 all ages and races she has told the truth about her- 
 self. It was she who by her setting suns, her fading 
 flowers, her dying animals wakened in the soul a 
 
206 LETTERS TO A MOTHER. 
 
 consciousness of the transitoriness of all finite things 
 and stirred the longing for something which would 
 not pass away. It was she who held up before man 
 his own image as conquering hero and returning 
 wanderer. It is she who in these later days is tell- 
 ing to all who have ears to hear that she is mind 
 manifest. The revelation is clear, but the eyes of 
 men have waxed gross and their ears are dull of 
 hearing. Therefore the great revelation needs its 
 interpreters. Best of these are the poets and artists, 
 and the shortest definition of aesthetic education is 
 that it is the process by which the intuitions and 
 affections of elect souls are made the intuitions and 
 affections of all souls. 
 
 It is universally conceded that Greece, is the 
 fatherland of literature and art, but many of us do 
 not connect this distinction with the fact that in 
 fair Hellas men first began to inquire in the depths 
 of their own souls for the hidden meaning of Na- 
 ture. " The Greek spirit," says Hegel, " regards 
 Nature as something foreign to itself, in which, 
 however, there is something friendly to itself. Its 
 attitude toward Nature is one of wonder and pre- 
 sentiment, of curious surmise and eager attention. 
 It looks upon Nature as incitement, and in the emo- 
 
THE REVELATION TO SENSE. 207 
 
 tions and ideals incited discovers the spiritual real- 
 ity behind appearance. The Greek Pan is not the 
 objective whole of Nature, but the subjective thrill 
 in the presence of Nature. Naiads and muses are 
 not fountains, but the exaltation of spirit awakened 
 by the murmur of fountains. The oracles of sacred 
 oaks are not their rustling leaves, but the impulses 
 and dreams they stir in the susceptible soul. In a 
 word, in the recoil of spirit against the incitement 
 of Nature is revealed the character of the incite- 
 ment itself." * 
 
 And now, dear friend, if Nature be indeed 
 speech, who is the speaker? Since we can interpret 
 her must we not resemble her? Since we can only 
 interpret her by looking within our own souls must 
 there be a spirit in her like the spirit in us? May 
 it really be as the Schoolmen taught, that in every 
 object of sensitive experience God himself lies hid? 
 And as His revelation to sense was first in the his- 
 tory of the world must it not be the first to appeal 
 to the individual? Since literature, art, and religion 
 are the fair issue of a marriage between Nature and 
 the human mind, should not the sacramental union 
 be formed anew by each fresh soul? You read my 
 * Hegel's Philosophy of History, Eng. tr., pp. 344-346. 
 
208 LETTERS TO A MOTHER. 
 
 meaning? Teach Harold to love Nature, to enjoy 
 her beauty, wonder at her mystery, feel her living 
 companionship. So shall the pulsations of his 
 thought move in rhythm with the eternal stream of 
 spiritual energy; so shall his soul become inwardly 
 one with the Infinite spirit who " from the shining 
 fount of life pours the deluge of creation." 
 
LETTEK VII. 
 
 THE SOUL OF THE FLOWEB. 
 
 FLOWER SONG. 
 
 The Life Supreme, that lives in all, 
 
 Gives everything its own ; • 
 A soul remains itself despite 
 Life's ceaseless shift — Death's sure, cold might 
 
 Itself— though changed or grown. 
 
 And something to a soul akin 
 
 Looks out from every flower ; 
 A lily is a lily still, 
 On mountain bleak, by meadow rill, 
 
 In sunshine or in shower. 
 
 Ten thousand roses June may boast, 
 
 All differing each from each ; 
 And still the rose-soul in each one 
 Glows fervent, as if there alone 
 
 Its silence had found speech. 
 
 Henrietta E. Eliot. 
 
 FEAGEANT FLOWEES. 
 
 Oh ! the pretty flowers ! 
 
 Well their names we know, 
 When we see their colors 
 
 That so brightly glow. 
 
 All these pretty flowers 
 
 Have their own sweet smell. 
 Often without seeing 
 
 We their names can tell. 
 
 209 
 
210 LETTERS TO A MOTHER. 
 
 So out eyes we cover 
 
 That we may not see ; 
 While the fragrance tells us 
 
 What the flower must be.*' 
 
 Hilda's eyes we cover 
 
 That she may not see ; 
 While the fragrance tells her 
 
 What the flower must be. 
 
 Emilie Potjxsson. 
 
 Deab : For years I have watched with 
 
 anxiety the increasing number of books whose ob- 
 ject is to kindle in the heart of childhood a passion 
 for natural science. For years I have realized with 
 dismay that in order to make time for exercises in 
 botany, natural history, and elementary physics kin- 
 dergartners were sacrificing the ideal of creative 
 self -activity, and quietly ignoring those distinctive- 
 ly Froebelian games which stir presentiments of 
 social solidarity and spiritual freedom. In the mind 
 of any one who recognizes that the realm of Nature 
 is a realm of fate, and that the exclusive or prepon- 
 derant study of natural science must create an intel- 
 lectual bias toward fatalism, the undue emphasis so 
 often placed upon science can not fail to rouse a pro- 
 test. The teaching of science is that Nature is an 
 
 * After singing three stanzas to introduce the play, the 
 last stanza only is repeated, as different children try to distin- 
 guish the flowers. Each child's name may be used. 
 
THE SOUL OF THE FLOWER. 211 
 
 unbroken chain of phenomena in which every link 
 is determined by that which preceded it. The su- 
 preme and exhilarating fact about man is that his 
 soul is a fathomless spring of creative energy. We 
 are told that each grain of sand on the seashore lies 
 where it does because the whole past history of the 
 world and the totality of present conditions have 
 conspired to place and keep it there. But here 
 comes the baby just two years old and, scouting and 
 flouting all past and present causality, insists that 
 he is himself an original causal energy. No sum 
 total of antecedent or present influences shall con- 
 strain him. He has discerned in Nature an ideal pos- 
 sibility, and, victor that he is, plants his foot upon 
 her neck. He wants a hollow where now is a level, or 
 a sand mountain where now is a hollow. And what 
 he wants he makes, thereby asserting his transcen- 
 dental freedom and enacting on his Lilliputian scale 
 one scene in the splendid drama of human conquest. 
 Because man is free and nature unfree the 
 young mind should not be warped by too early or 
 too exclusive stress upon the study of natural sci- 
 ence. So beware of the temptation to make 
 Harold a prodigy of informations with regard to 
 plants and animals, and warn Helen against com- 
 
212 LETTERS TO A MOTHER. 
 
 mitting a like wrong against the children in her 
 kindergarten. 
 
 I am well aware that of late years science has 
 sought in plants and animals for the embryonic 
 forms of mental activity, and that many of her 
 leaders are beginning to recognize in the ascent of 
 life a struggle toward freedom. Next to their too 
 great frequency the most serious criticism to be 
 made upon the talks about plants and animals given 
 to little children is that they generally show no 
 knowledge of the significant results at which recent 
 science has arrived. So, having warned you against 
 too much flower study, my object in this letter will 
 be to suggest to you how you may help Harold to 
 discover the soul of the flower. 
 
 You wrote me some time ago that you were 
 reading The Naturalist on the River Amazon, and 
 I am sure you can not have forgotten the descrip- 
 tion of a parasitic tree which grows in the neighbor- 
 hood of Para, and which is called the matador or 
 murderer. "It belongs to the fig order. The 
 base of its stem would be unable to bear the weight 
 of the upper growth; it is obliged, therefore, to 
 support itself on a tree of another species. In this 
 it is not essentially different from other climbing 
 
THE SOUL OF THE PLOWEE. 213 
 
 plants and trees, but the way the matador sets about 
 it is peculiar, and produces certainly a disagreeable 
 impression. It springs up close to the tree on which 
 it intends to fix itself, and the wood of its stem 
 grows by spreading itself like a plastic mold over 
 one side of the trunk of its supporter. It then puts 
 forth from each side an arm-like branch, which 
 grows rapidly, and looks as though a stream of sap 
 were flowing and hardening as it went. This ad- 
 heres closely to the trunk of the victim, and the 
 two arms meet on the opposite side and blend to- 
 gether. These arms are put forth at somewhat regu- 
 lar intervals in mounting upward, and the victim, 
 when the strangler is full grown, becomes tightly 
 clasped by a number of inflexible rings. These rings 
 gradually grow larger as the murderer flourishes, 
 rearing its crown of foliage to the sky mingled with 
 that of its neighbor, and in course of time they kill it 
 by stopping the flow of its sap. The strange spec- 
 tacle then remains of the selfish parasite clasping in 
 its arms the lifeless and decaying body of its victim, 
 which had been a help to its own growth! " * 
 
 With this striking example of vegetable crime 
 
 * The Naturalist on the River Amazon, H. W. Bates ; 
 cited in Sagacity and Morality of Plants, J. E. Taylor, p. 229. 
 
214 LETTERS TO A MOTHER. 
 
 compare the following touching illustration of 
 vegetable suffering and resignation, and that you 
 may appreciate its significance remember that there 
 is a direct relation between the adequacy of food 
 supply and the production of leaves. 
 
 " No genuine botanist," writes Mr. J. E. Tay- 
 lor, " can regard that remarkable and unique Brit- 
 ish plant, the butcher's broom, with other than 
 intense interest. It is the only species of woody 
 monocotyledonous plant we have in England — the 
 only representative of the woody-stemmed palms, 
 etc., of the tropics submissively growing beneath 
 the shade of trees which came into existence ages 
 after its own family had occupied the proud posi- 
 tion of aristocrats in the vegetable world. What a 
 story of quiet suffering and struggling with these 
 plutocratic newcomers does the fact that the butch- 
 er's broom has no leaves, but only cladodes, tell 
 us! Leaves with it have long since disappeared. 
 Profitable as they usually are, the plant could not 
 make ends meet, and so the branches flattened them- 
 selves, became covered with stomata (or carbon- 
 feeding mouths), and performed, and do still per- 
 form, all the functions of true leaves." * 
 * Sagacity and Morality of Plants, J. E. Taylor, p. 42, 43. 
 
THE SOUL OF THE FLOWER. 215 
 
 Were we considering human conduct instead 
 of plant conduct, I think you would admit that the 
 matador and the butcher's broom have very differ- 
 ent characters, and should I give a thousand illustra- 
 tions instead of two you would be convinced that 
 all human virtues and vices have their counterparts 
 in the actions of the vegetable kingdom. Contrast 
 the characters of trees and vines as shown in the 
 methods they have adopted to get heat, light, and 
 food. I am writing this letter out of doors. Just 
 in front of my porch stands a giant oak. I think 
 of the strength and patience which built up its 
 huge trunk, spread its branches high in air, and 
 hung its leaves in the sunshine and breeze. Then I 
 look at the clematis and wisteria clambering over 
 rails, twining around pillars, and realize that wit 
 and cunning have stood them in the stead of 
 strength. Consider the varying types of individu- 
 ality manifested in the devices originated by plants 
 to secure cross fertilization; in the differing and 
 often contradictory plans adopted for the disper- 
 sion of seed; in the honesty with which some plants 
 requite the services rendered by birds and insects; 
 in the selfishness and cruelty with which others turn 
 upon their benefactors. Kemember the cunning and 
 
216 LBTTEES TO A MOTHER. 
 
 treachery with which insectivorous plants tempt, 
 deceive, betray, and destroy their victims. Com- 
 pare the species of plants that live by parasitism and 
 robbery with the nobler and wiser species that have 
 learned to apply the principle of co-operation, and 
 which by civilization have made- themselves victors 
 in the fierce and never-ending battle for life. Pon- 
 der the hint conveyed in Mr. Darwin's admission 
 that we do not know " why a touch, slight pressure, 
 or any other irritant such as electricity, heat, or the 
 absorption of animal matter should modify the tur- 
 gescence of the affected cells in such a manner as 
 to cause movement," and in his far-reaching sug- 
 gestion that "the tip of the radicle acts like the brain 
 of one of the lower animals." * Finally, ask your- 
 self what it means when competent botanists can 
 speak of the likes and dislikes of plants, their ten- 
 dencies and habits, and of floral sagacity, morality, 
 
 * Power of Movement in Plants. " The course pursued 
 by the radicle in penetrating the ground must be determined 
 by the tip, hence it has acquired such diverse kinds of sensi- 
 tiveness. It is hardly an exaggeration to say that the tip of 
 the radicle thus endowed, and having the power of directing 
 the movements of the adjoining parts, acts like the brain of 
 one of the lower animals, the brain being seated within the 
 anterior end of the body, receiving impressions from the sense 
 organs, and directing the several movements.'' 
 
THE SOUL OF THE FLOWER. 217 
 
 and diplomacy. All these facts point in one direc- 
 tion and suggest one truth. Wherever there is life 
 there is self-determination, and where there is self- 
 determination there is mind or soul. 
 
 When the facts of science force us to confront 
 this possibility we become suddenly aware that it 
 has long hovered before poetic and philosophic 
 minds. "It is my faith," confesses Wordsworth, 
 " that every flower enjoys the air it breathes." 
 Lowell knows of an instinct in the clod which " feels 
 a stir of might and climbs to a soul in grass and 
 flowers." To Longfellow " Flowers teach by most 
 persuasive reasons how akin they are to human 
 things." Emerson hears " The poor grass plot 
 and plan what it will do when it is man; " 
 George Eliot feels that " There is a soul beyond 
 utterance, half nymph, half child, in the delicate 
 petals which glow and breathe about the centers 
 of deep color; " and Spencer has insight into the 
 truth that all bodies are the product of souls. 
 
 "For of the soule the bodxe forme doth take, 
 For soule is forme and doth the bodie make.'' 
 
 It may be claimed that poets suggest thoughts 
 they themselves do not fully apprehend. If so I 
 appeal from poetry to philosophy, and remind you 
 
218 LETTERS TO A MOTHER. 
 
 of Aristotle's celebrated discrimination between 
 vegetative, sensitive, and rational souls. We empty 
 his discrimination of all meaning by practically 
 denying any soul to plants and animals. Great 
 thoughts imply great thinkers, and they undergo 
 a sad shrinkage when they enter little minds. 
 We should be wiser if we recognized that in 
 proportion as a thinker is great he means exactly 
 what he says, and if, instead of dwarfing his 
 thoughts to our mental dimensions, we should seek 
 to expand our dimensions to the measure of his 
 thought. 
 
 What, then, in its lowest definition is a soul? 
 There can be but one answer. It is a self-active 
 energy. What is meant by self -activity? The 
 power of originating deeds and giving shape or 
 form. Is there anything in plant life which proves 
 the presence of such an energy? Yes, for it reacts 
 against its environment. It is not constrained by 
 external influence to build this or that body, but it 
 uses material borrowed from its surroundings to 
 create a body conforming to the model of its species. 
 This model is the unconscious ideal which controls 
 its recoil against environment. The plant is, there- 
 fore, a creative energy building a body according 
 
THE SOUL OF THE FLO WEE. 219 
 
 to a plan, and with Mr. Buskin we may confidently 
 declare that " the power which catches out of chaos 
 charcoal, water, lime, and whatnot, and fastens 
 them down into a given form is properly called 
 spirit or soul." * 
 
 In the light of the doctrine of evolution we have 
 learned to see that the plant is not only an archi- 
 tectonic power, building a body according to an 
 ideal, but that it actually modifies this ideal itself to 
 suit changing conditions. Thus rushes, sedges, and 
 grasses rank by descent as degraded lilies, the 
 strawberry has developed from the little three- 
 leaved white potentilla, and tracing the pedigrees 
 of such widely different flowers as the daisy, the 
 rose, and the buttercup, we find that they are the 
 remote offspring of a common ancestor. In the 
 succinct statement of Dr. Harris, the living being, 
 plant, animal, or man, is a self-active energy, per- 
 sisting under various environments, and manifest- 
 ing his power by modifying his environment and 
 by modifying also his own organising in order to 
 accomplish his work better. Every new step he 
 makes is transmitted to his progeny as so much 
 inherited power. He builds himself in the process 
 
 * The Queen of the Air, Ruskin, p. 73. f Italics mine. 
 
 16 
 
220 LETTERS TO A MOTHER. 
 
 of modifying his environment and adapting it to 
 himself.* 
 
 The theory of evolution points to the idea that 
 functions precede and produce organs. We used 
 to think that birds could fly because they were 
 originally endowed with wings. We now begin to 
 suspect they may have produced wings by efforts 
 to fly. This revolutionary insight means the recog- 
 nition of energy as the ground of being, and when 
 really accepted it reveals the universe not as an 
 assemblage of material bodies, but as a manifesta- 
 tion of the activities of souls in all stages of de- 
 velopment. 
 
 And now I think we have arrived at a point of 
 view from which the motto to Froebel's Flower 
 Song will interpret itself. " Early give your child 
 experience of the fact that in all living things there 
 is revealed an essence (or spirit) which is struggling 
 toward existence (or manifestation). Thus in each 
 flower one distinctive type of life is expressed alike 
 in form, color, and fragrance, because one energy 
 brought into existence these several qualities." Dif- 
 ferently stated, in the totality of its attributes the 
 plant reveals its soul. This soul is the one thing 
 * Hegel's Logic, p. 287. 
 
THE SOUL OF THE FLOWEE. 221 
 
 about the plant which is worth knowing. We learn 
 to know it by rightly reading its revelation just 
 as rightly reading a man's life we grow to under- 
 stand his character. Therefore, early help your 
 child to seek the soul of the plant by studying 
 its actions as registered in their outcome. And 
 finally, since the flower is at once the highest ex- 
 pression of vegetable self-activity, and the one 
 which most sympathetically appeals to the young 
 mind, let the search for plant souls begin by lov- 
 ing flowers, proceed by nurturing them, and end 
 by studying them. 
 
 That men have instinctively recognized the 
 blossom as the most perfect expression of the plant- 
 soul is shown in the universal adoption of the 
 flower as type of fulfilment. Man's highest deed is 
 called the flower of his life, the great man is said 
 to be the flower of his race, the great ages of his- 
 tory are described as periods of national inflores- 
 cence, and when Dante wishes to reveal the eternal, 
 immortal, and invisible church as the consumma- 
 tion toward which the universe moves, he paints 
 that most wonderful of metamorphoses by which 
 the ever-flowing stream of creation is transformed 
 into the Great "White Kose of Paradise. 
 
222 LETTERS TO A MOTHER. 
 
 The revelation of the plant soul in its flower 
 has been most beautifully interpreted by Mr. Rus- 
 kin: " The spirit in the plant," he writes, " that is 
 to say, its power of gathering dead matter out of 
 the wreck round it, and shaping it into its own 
 chosen shape, is, of course, strongest at the moment 
 of its flowering, for it then not only gathers, but 
 forms, with the greatest energy. 
 
 " And where this life is in it at full power, its 
 form becomes invested with aspects that are chiefly 
 delightful to our own human passions — namely, 
 first, with the loveliest outlines of shape; and, sec- 
 ondly, with the most brilliant phases of the primary 
 colors — blue, yellow, and red or white, the unison 
 of all; and, to make it all more strange, this time of 
 peculiar and perfect glory is associated with rela- 
 tions of the plants or blossoms to each other, corre- 
 spondent to the joy of love in human creatures, 
 and having the same object in the continuance of 
 the race. Only, with' respect to plants, as animals, 
 we are wrong in speaking as if the object of this 
 strong life were only the bequeathing of itself. 
 The flower is the end or proper object of the seed, 
 not the seed of the flower. The reason for seeds is 
 that flowers may be, not the reason for flowers 
 
THE SOUL OF THE FLOWER. 223 
 
 that seeds may be. The flower itself is the creature 
 which the spirit makes; only, in connection with its 
 perfectness is placed the giving birth to its suc- 
 cessor." * 
 
 If, therefore, during Harold's early childhood 
 you will consciously restrict yourself to fostering 
 his love for flowers, teaching him their common 
 names, giving him the joy of seeking them in their 
 native haunts, and the deeper joy of cultivating 
 them in his own little garden, you will avoid many 
 mistakes into which intelligent mothers and 
 teachers are prone to fall. A few days ago a friend 
 of mine called on an acquaintance of botanical 
 proclivities. During her visit the latter received 
 a basket of spring flowers, whereupon her three 
 children fell at once to dissecting and describing 
 them. Greatly impressed by what she had seen and 
 heard, my friend procured similar flowers on her 
 way home, and, feeling that she had criminally 
 neglected the education of her own boy, began at 
 once to remedy her sin by pulling them to pieces to 
 show him their several parts. But the little fellow 
 only buried his nose in the fragrant blossoms and 
 stanchly declared that all he wanted to know was 
 * Tho Queen of the Air, Buskin. 
 
224 LETTERS TO A MOTHER. 
 
 that the pretty flowers smelled sweet. I know a 
 little girl who will never accept a gift of flowers 
 because she fears being made to analyze them; and 
 long experience in the kindergarten has convinced 
 me of the great wrong done children by attempting 
 to force upon them prematurely the habit of sci- 
 entific observation. 
 
 Some years ago a most interesting educational 
 experiment was made by Dr. Mary Putnam Jacobi, 
 with the avowed aim of forming in a child between 
 the ages of four and seven, the " scientific cast of 
 mind." In the course of the volume describing 
 this experiment Dr. Jacobi takes issue with Miss 
 Youmans on the question whether the child's study 
 of plants should begin with the leaf or the flower. 
 Miss Youmans had decided in favor of the leaf, on 
 the ground that the simple should always precede 
 the complex. But it is dangerous to make a single 
 maxim bear the whole weight of a practical method, 
 and Dr. Jacobi did a great service to primary edu- 
 cation by pointing out that Miss Youmans had 
 ignored the still more important maxim that intel- 
 lectual education should begin with vivid sense im- 
 pressions. The flower by its attractiveness appeals 
 more strongly to the senses than the leaf, and hence 
 
THE SOUL OF THE FLOWER. 225 
 
 is to be preferred for first study. Dr. Jacobi her- 
 self was, however, betrayed into a psychologic error 
 through the aim she set herself, as the following 
 description, given by the child, of some growing 
 beans will testify : " The episperm on the under 
 surface is all black and has split, leaving a space the 
 shape of an equilateral triangle with the apex point- 
 ing to the convex edge of the cotyledons." The 
 conscious observation and the mastery of technical 
 terms displayed in this description imply a cultiva- 
 tion of the understanding which should not be given 
 during either the perceptive or imaginative epochs 
 of intellectual development. 
 
 By this time it is doubtless clear to you that 
 Froebel always seeks the original point of contact 
 between the mind of the child and the truth toward 
 which his feeling and imagination is to be directed. 
 You remember, too, that " the nursery was his uni- 
 versity," and you will, therefore, not be surprised 
 that in the Education of Man he thought it worth 
 while to call attention to the way in which the sim- 
 ple-hearted mother tries to make her baby dis- 
 tinguish the difference between sweet-smelling 
 and bad-smelling flowers: "How good the rose 
 smells! Does baby want to smell too?" she ex- 
 
226 LETTERS TO A MOTHER. 
 
 claims, making at the same time a little snuffing 
 noise, or " How bad this smells," she says, turning 
 with an expression of repugnance from the flower, 
 which she puts out of the child's reach. This ma- 
 ternal action gives the psychologic or subjective 
 point of departure for the Flower Song, which, as 
 you know, is called the Smell Song in the original 
 Mother-Play. Its objective point of departure is 
 suggested in the following passage, which is also 
 from the Education of Man: " The distinct funda- 
 mental law of vegetable life is that each successive 
 stage of development is a higher growth of the pre- 
 ceding one — e. g., the petals are transformed ordi- 
 nary leaves, the stamens and pistils transformed 
 petals. Each successive formation presents the 
 essential nature of the plant in a more subtile garb, 
 until at last it seems clothed only in a delicate per- 
 fume* You need only remind yourself that it is 
 easier for little children to consciously discriminate 
 the odors of flowers than their structure or color; 
 that hence they love sweet smelling flowers more 
 than any others; that the plants preferred by sav- 
 ages and rustics are likewise those which appeal to 
 
 * Italics mine. Education of Man, Hailmann's transla- 
 lation, p. 194. 
 
THE SOUL OP THE FLOWER. 227 
 
 the senses of taste and smell, and that in old- 
 fashioned gardens fragrant flowers preponderated 
 over all others, to be sure that in this as in so many- 
 other cases Froebel has found the root experience 
 from which interest in plant life may be developed. 
 Whether he is right in the assertion that the spirit 
 of the flower exhales in its perfume is another ques- 
 tion. Yet if the essence of the plant is revealed in 
 the totality of its qualities it must of necessity be 
 suggested in each one of them, and that we in- 
 stinctively seek it alike in color, form, and perfume 
 is proved by our perplexity when one of these 
 qualities seems to contradict the others. 
 
 And so, sneers the scoffer of the Mother-Play, 
 we are to teach botany by letting babies smell 
 plenty of flowers. It seems trivial to write these 
 words, but their justification is the fact that con- 
 sciously or unconsciously ignoring the difference 
 between a terminus ab quo and a terminus ad quern, 
 Froebel's critics are continually holding him up to 
 ridicule and contempt. Froebel believes that no 
 study should float in the air without cords binding 
 it to the solid ground of personal experience. He 
 is the evolutionist among educators. He will not 
 try to plant a full grown oak of thought. He will 
 
228 LETTEBS TO A MOTHER. 
 
 not even plant a sapling. He insists upon the acorn, 
 and even this shall only be planted in a mental soil 
 which has been prepared for its reception by fer- 
 tilizing experiences. Therefore, he wishes the baby 
 to see and smell flowers, the young child to seek 
 them in garden, field, and meadow, the boy and 
 girl to cultivate them. 
 
 That every child may remember an Eden, every 
 home should have a garden. You have blessed all 
 your children with this vision of Paradise, and 
 flooded them with sensations sweet. The ardor of 
 the rose, the purity of the lily, the joy of the bird, 
 and the aspiration of all living growing things have 
 passed into their souls. This wealth of early ex- 
 perience will enrich their whole lives. For Harold 
 I want you to do one thing more, and as he grows 
 older help him to " mingle his mind with Nature " 
 by making a garden of his own. Partnership with 
 flowers will teach him to recognize and respect their 
 differing individualities. Digging and planting, 
 watering and pruning, protecting and cherishing, 
 he will learn the high privilege of nurture. Need I 
 add that waiting and watching for the appearance 
 of the plant whose seed he has himself hidden in 
 the ground his soul will be stirred as it can be in 
 
THE SOUL OF THE FLOWER. 229 
 
 no other way by premonitions of the perpetual 
 miracle of life? 
 
 Second only to the privilege of nurture is the 
 joy of seeking flowers in field and meadow, forest, 
 and upland. Few things will bind so closely the 
 cords of sympathy between you and Harold as go- 
 ing out with him into the great garden of Nature 
 and helping him to make acquaintance with the 
 flowers in their native haunts. When he is older 
 you must turn him over to Mother Nature herself; 
 give him the joy of rambling alone through her 
 sweet solitudes, and learning at first hand her 
 strange secrets. Let him know the happiness of 
 finding year after year violets on the same moist 
 bank, daisies in the same field, clumps of mandrakes 
 under the same trees, and of feeling with a thrill of 
 wonder the permanency of the so transient seeming 
 flowers. When he brings you the blossoms he has 
 gathered, the wreath he has woven, understand that 
 the love in his heart is seeking expression and be 
 thankful. Be ready to name the flowers he finds, 
 knowing that to name objects is really in a sense to 
 discover them, and that when Harold has learned 
 the common names of a few flowers he will be eager 
 to search both for them and for others still un- 
 
230 LETTERS TO A MOTHER. 
 
 named. " The first conscious thought about wild 
 flowers," writes Richard Jeffries, " was to find out 
 their names — the first conscious pleasure — and then 
 I began to see many that I had not previously 
 noticed. Once you wish to identify them there is 
 nothing that escapes notice, down to the little white 
 chickweed of the path and the moss on the wall." 
 
 So long as Harold is satisfied with seeking and 
 naming flowers be satisfied yourself, knowing that 
 "beauty is its own excuse for being," and that 
 through flowers his love for the beautiful is being 
 stirred into conscious life. Watch, however, for the 
 moment when he shall seek to reproduce the lovely 
 ness he has learned to feel; make it your part to dis- 
 cover through what material his spirit finds readiest 
 utterance, and encourage him as the case may be to 
 write flower poems, to draw and paint flowers, or to 
 model them in clay. Remember the Egyptian 
 lotus, the annunciation lily, the fleur-de-lys of 
 chivalry, the general influence of flowers in poetry, 
 sculpture, painting, and decorative design. Re- 
 member, too, that the watchword of a true educa- 
 tion is development through self-expression, and 
 that the ideal which Goethe pictured in his Peda- 
 gogic Province is clamoring in all prophetic souls 
 
THE SOUL OF THE FLOWER. 231 
 
 for its practical realization in the school, the col- 
 lege, and the university. 
 
 If you will patiently follow where your boy 
 leads, and not interfere with his development by 
 forcing him to follow you, in good time you will be 
 beset with curious questions. Then will come your 
 great opportunity for directing his attention to 
 those typical characteristics in which the soul of 
 the plant manifests its individuality. The defect 
 of untrained observation — a defect clearly shown 
 in our common names for flowers — is that it notes 
 merely the characteristics which obtrude themselves 
 upon sense. Thus the pink is named from its 
 pinked or jagged edges, the geranium (crane's bill) 
 from the long projecting beak of its seed capsule, 
 the buttercup from its cup-shaped flowers and yel- 
 low color, the dandelion (French dent-de-lion) in 
 allusion to the shape of its leaves. The many books 
 which have been written on the language of 
 flowers show the gap between an instinctive feel- 
 ing that each flower has its peculiar individuality, 
 and the scientific knowledge which makes recogni- 
 tion of individuality possible. Since fame, for ex- 
 ample, blows a trumpet, the trumpet flower shall 
 represent fame; since mortification flushes the 
 
232 LETTERS TO A MOTHER. 
 
 cheek, the crimson peony shall mean shame; since 
 adders, being serpents, are presumably treacherous, 
 the bell-shaped flower called adder's tongue, " from 
 a lance-like spike on which its seeds are produced," 
 becomes the floral expression for deceit. Even the 
 poet is often content with finding in the " beautiful 
 hieroglyphics of Nature " a meaning " suited to his 
 mind," or, differently stated, poems are products of 
 fancy which "forsaking the intent of Nature, 
 adopts ends of its own," instead of products of 
 imagination which "follows the lines of Nature," 
 brings to light "what is hidden in Nature, and 
 shows what she is striving to accomplish." When 
 we learn to read Nature aright we cease to invent 
 metaphors, and discover that every natural object 
 is in itself metaphorical. A true symbol is the 
 lower analogue of the reality to which it corre- 
 sponds, the reality and the symbol being indeed 
 the same divine thought expressed on the one hand 
 in spiritual, on the other in material speech. Sci- 
 ence, therefore, is pioneer of the poet that is to be, 
 one who shall reveal the universe as a vast palimp- 
 sest written over again and again with ever-clearer 
 revelations of the spirit. 
 
 By calling Harold's attention to a few striking 
 
THE SOUL OF THE' FLOWER. 233 
 
 illustrations of the characteristic facts about flowers 
 you may easily develop his curiosity into intelligent 
 research. Explain to him the importance of insect 
 visitors, and then show him the relationship be- 
 tween the shapes of such flowers as the carnation 
 and the morning-glory, and the sucking mouths or 
 probosces of butterflies and moths. Interest him 
 in cymes, panicles, and corymbs by telling him that 
 small flowers. have learned to group themselves in 
 these different masses in order to attract insect 
 attention. Give him his first lesson in political 
 economy by teaching him that sunflowers, dahlias, 
 chrysanthemums, daisies, are not single flowers, 
 but floral communities in which the altruistic ray 
 florets live entirely for the benefit of the disk florets. 
 Open his eyes to the meaning of different colors 
 by showing him that they correspond to" differ- 
 ences of structure, and hence act as advertisements 
 to bees and butterflies. Teach him to recognize the 
 law of compensation in the fact that brilliant 
 flowers are often scentless, while inconspicuous 
 blossoms, like the mignonette, wage their modest 
 struggle for existence by help of their fragrance. 
 Point out to him that " the acrid leaves of the but- 
 tercup, the stinging cells of the nettle, the prickles 
 
234 LETTERS TO A MOTHER. 
 
 of the gooseberry, the thorns of the rose, the poison 
 of the wolfsbane," are weapons used by these 
 plants to defend themselves from animal attack. 
 Soak and open some typical seed and show him how 
 the mother-flower has wrapped her baby in blankets 
 and provided it with food. Incite him to observe 
 the various devices adopted to disseminate seed — 
 the feathery tufts of the dandelion, the silky sails of 
 the milkweed, the prickly heads of the burdock, 
 the snapping capsules of the jewel-weed. Above 
 all, make him realize that forms, colors, structures, 
 perfumes, weapons, maternal devices, being all the 
 results of different methods of fighting the battle 
 of life, are the outward and visible signs of different 
 individualities, and the world of flowers is, there- 
 fore, a visible revelation of moral good and evil. 
 
 " In our conviction," writes Victor Hugo, " if 
 souls were visible we should distinctly see the 
 strange fact that every individual of the human 
 species corresponds to some one of the species of 
 animal creation; and we might easily recognize the 
 truth which has as yet scarce occurred to the 
 thinker, that from the oyster to the eagle, from the 
 hog to the tiger, all animals are in man." In view 
 of the revelations of botany may we not say that 
 
THE SOUL OF THE FLOWER. 235 
 
 plants are likewise " the figures of our virtues and 
 our vices, the visible phantoms of our souls?" 
 May we not even question whether it be not liter- 
 ally true that in the vegetable and animal worlds 
 we survey individuality in the process of formation, 
 blind will shaping all possible types of character, 
 and preparing all possible occasions for moral con- 
 flict? 
 
 My letter is drawing to its close. Its purpose 
 will be fulfilled if it helps you to realize the wide 
 reach of Froebel's suggestion of the angel or fairy 
 in the flower.* That many children believe in the 
 flower fairy who is really their incarnation of 
 the flower soul, we all know, but it would be most 
 interesting to determine by sympathetic questions 
 to large numbers of children how general this faith 
 may be, and what differing forms it assumes. It is 
 matter of familiar knowledge that primitive men 
 expressed in kindred fashion their recognition of a 
 spiritual principle of life in plants. Even to-day 
 the "Wallachian peasant believes that " every 
 flower has a soul, and that the water lily, the pure 
 
 * This suggestion occurs in the Flower or Smell Song. 
 That Froebel understood its implication he proves in the 
 
 motto. 
 
 17 
 
236 LETTERS TO A MOTHER. 
 
 and scentless flower of the lake, shall stand at the 
 gate of Paradise to judge the rest." * The faith 
 that at death the souls of men enter into plants is 
 common to many primitive peoples, and its vestiges 
 may be traced both in mediaeval legend and in 
 popular superstition. Thus, in the story of Tris- 
 tram and Isolde there springs from the grave of 
 the former an eglantine which twines about the 
 statue of his beloved, and in German folklore the 
 soul " is supposed to take the form of a lily or a 
 white rose, one of these flowers appearing on the 
 chairs of those about to die." f In Scandinavian 
 mythology all mankind are descended from the ash 
 and the elm. Buddhist books prove that in the 
 early days of this religion " it was matter of con- 
 troversy whether trees had souls, and, therefore, 
 whether they might lawfully be injured. Ortho- 
 dox Buddhism decided against tree souls, but in- 
 sisted that certain devas or tree spirits reside in 
 the bodies of trees and speak from within them." 
 " Buddha himself was such a tree genius forty-three 
 
 * The Folklore of Plants, T. F. Thistleton Dyer, p. 4. (The 
 water lily of New England is very sweet scented (Nymphiea 
 odorata), that of the Mississippi valley and that of England 
 nearly scentless.) 
 
 t The Folklore of Plants, p. 12. 
 
THE SOUL OF THE FLOWER. 237 
 
 times in the course of his various transmigra- 
 tions." * In Greek mythology " the life of the 
 hamadryad is bound to her tree; she is hurt when it 
 is wounded, she cries when the axe threatens, she 
 dies with the fallen trunk." f Greece has also her 
 transformation myths wherein human beings are 
 changed to trees and flowers, but in this gifted 
 people the conception of free individuality has be- 
 come so strong that the metamorphosis of man into 
 either plant or animal is considered a degradation. 
 And as Greek imagination is the first to feel the 
 transcendence of the human soul, so Greek philoso- 
 phy is the first to discover and refute the presup- 
 positions of metempsychosis. " According to Pytha- 
 gorean myths," writes Aristotle, " any soul may 
 inhabit any body. This conception is about as 
 reasonable as would be that of architecture mak- 
 ing tools of flutes. Each art must have its own 
 tools. Each soul must have its own body." 
 " Bodies," adds Hegel, commenting on this pas- 
 sage, " are not arbitrarily and accidentally re- 
 lated to souls, nor are souls arbitrarily and acci- 
 dentally related to bodies. Metempsychosis im- 
 
 * Primitive Culture, E. B. Tylor, vol. i, p. 476 ; vol. ii, p. 217. 
 f Primitive Culture, E. B. Tylor, vol. ii, p. 219. 
 
238 LETTERS TO A MOTHER. 
 
 plies arbitrary relationship. Aristotle's refutation 
 is conclusive." * 
 
 In an age which claims that even human psy- 
 chology may be taught without a Psyche, it seems 
 to me well that we should strengthen our sense of 
 the reality of spiritual energy by recognizing its 
 presence in forms of life inferior to our own. No 
 less important is it, on the other hand, to dis- 
 criminate between the nutritive, the sensitive, and 
 the rational soul, or between spiritual activity 
 as manifested respectively in plant, animal, and 
 man. We have seen that (by the plastic energy of 
 an indwelling ideal) the plant shapes material ap- 
 propriated from its surroundings into a body con- 
 forming to the model of its species. The animal 
 soul does more than this, for it adds to the power 
 of assimilation the activities of sensation and loco- 
 motion. Through sensation it makes an ideal repro- 
 duction of its surroundings; through locomotion it 
 is able to change its environment and thus to mod- 
 ify the influences against which it reacts. More- 
 over, the animal begins to discern possibilities in 
 the material of Nature, and hence to adapt it to 
 new purposes. From the pollen of flowers the bee 
 * Geschichte der Philosophic, vol. i, p. 272. 
 
THE SOUL OF THE FLOWER. 239 
 
 makes wax and forms cells; from mud and leaves, 
 from twigs and hairs, birds build their differing 
 nests. Beavers construct lodges, dams, and canals. 
 The elephant makes himself a fan by breaking off 
 the branch of a tree and stripping it of all foliage 
 except a bunch of twigs and leaves at the top; 
 monkeys use stones as hammers, levers, and pro- 
 jectiles; and a cebus observed by Mr. Romanes 
 actually discovered for himself the mechanical prin- 
 ciple of the screw. The great defect of both plant 
 and animal souls is that all their activity is incited 
 by unconscious ideals, and hence that there is an 
 unbridged and bridgeless chasm between the indi- 
 vidual and the species. Looking abroad upon the 
 world of Nature as distinct from the world of man 
 we behold the tragic spectacle of ideal energies for- 
 ever seeking, yet forever debarred from finding 
 their adequate embodiment. In man, however, 
 the generic ideal becomes the conscious self of the 
 individual. Eecognizing in himself the presence 
 of this generic energy, the human being is able to 
 discover the generic selves of plants and animals; 
 to understand that all natural objects and forces are 
 mere points and arcs on great circles of possibility; 
 to modify and adapt Nature to his own purposes; 
 
240 LETTERS TO A MOTHER. 
 
 to enter by participation into the total achievement 
 of his own race, and to apprehend and interpret 
 the one great ideal under whose impulsion the 
 whole universe wrestles and strives, works and wills. 
 
 Science has reduced all the phenomena of Na- 
 ture to a series of motions, explained these motions 
 by a correlated system of forces, and assumed as the 
 unity of this correlated system a persistent force 
 which is " the energy of each particular force with- 
 out its quality." * This insight means the recogni- 
 tion of self-activity as the source and origin of all 
 activity, and of all static phenomena. "Upon the 
 plane of life the one persistent force or creative 
 energy dirempts itself into countless specific ener- 
 gies which manifest self-activity in ascending de- 
 grees. Upon the plane of human life it comes to 
 self-knowledge in the consciousness of rational indi- 
 viduals to whom it has communicated its fullness 
 and who reflect its image. 
 
 It was a deep saying of Froebel that "as the 
 age of Jesus demanded faith, so the present age 
 demands insight." The truth which to-day is 
 flashing out into luminous consciousness is that the 
 world-order is not material but spiritual, and that 
 * Introduction to the Study of Philosophy, Dr. Harris, p. 86. 
 
THE. SOUL OF THE FLOWER. 241 
 
 its only realities are God and the souls upon whom 
 in proportion to their plasticity he stamps his image, 
 to whom in the measure of their capacity he reveals 
 his thought and communicates his blessedness. 
 From this insight stream the spiritual rays which, 
 penetrating the opaque body of the cosmos, photo- 
 graph for us its invisible structure. 
 
 " And what if all of animated Nature 
 Be but organic harps divinely framed 
 And trembling into thought, as o'er them sweeps 
 Plastic and vast one universal breeze 
 At onee the soul of each and God of all." 
 
LETTEE Vm. 
 
 THE DISCOVERY OF LIFE. 
 
 BECKONING THE CHICKENS. 
 
 Because he lives himself, the child 
 
 Oft thinks that all things live, 
 And pours his little heart upon 
 
 That which no love can give. 
 
 But when his life, outreaching, meets 
 
 With answering life around, 
 His wistful eyes are lit with joy 
 
 That comrades he has found. 
 
 Henbtetta B. Eliot. 
 
 BECKONING THE CHICKENS. 
 
 Tiny fingers in a row, 
 
 Beckon to the chickens — so. 
 
 Downy little chickens dear, 
 
 Fingers say, " Come here ! come here ! " 
 
 Chick ! chick ! chick ! chick ! 
 Fingers say, " Come here ! come here ! " 
 Pretty chickens, soft and small, 
 Do not fear — we love you all ! 
 
 Emily Huntington Miller. 
 
 Deab : In his Descent of Man Mr. Dar- 
 win relates a story which seems to indicate that 
 
 germs of the animism characteristic both of chil- 
 
 243 
 
244 LETTBBS TO A MOTHER. 
 
 dren and savages may exist even in animals. " My 
 dog," he writes, " a full-grown and very sensible 
 animal, was lying on the ground during a hot and 
 still day, but at a little distance a slight breeze 
 occasionally moved an open parasol which would 
 have been wholly disregarded by the dog had any 
 one stood near it. As it was, every time that the 
 parasol slightly moved the dog growled fiercely 
 and barked. He must, I think, have reasoned to 
 himself in a rapid and unconscious manner that 
 movement without any apparent cause indicated 
 the presence of some strange living agent, and no 
 stranger had a right to be on his territory." * 
 
 An even more remarkable example of canine in- 
 telligence is given by Mr. Eiske in Myths and 
 Myth Makers. A skye terrier accustomed to obtain 
 favors from his master by sitting on his haunches 
 sat repeatedly before his pet India-rubber ball 
 placed on the chimney-piece, evidently beseeching 
 it to jump down and play with him. Can we ex- 
 plain his action without assuming that he believed 
 his ball to be amenable to the same sort of appeal 
 as his master? 
 
 I have referred to these stories because in some 
 * Cited in Myths and Myth Makers, p. 223. 
 
THE DISCOVERY OP LIFE. 245 
 
 studies of childhood the habit of imputing life to 
 inanimate objects is invested with a significance to 
 which it has no valid claim. We are prone to 
 credit animism with the conscious recognition of 
 soul, but it is evident that the dogs in these stories 
 neither imputed souls to the ball and umbrella nor 
 suspected souls in themselves. They simply lacked 
 ability to discriminate between living, self-moving 
 objects and objects not alive. Animism is a realm 
 of confusions, a morning twilight of intelligence 
 in whose obscurity all objects lose clear outline. 
 The soul in the animistic stage of development is 
 not awake, but on the verge of awakening. It is 
 a dreamer knowing not that it dreams; a somnam- 
 bulist, living, moving, thinking, in its sleep. 
 
 It is a momentous crisis when the soul makes 
 the discovery of life, when emerging, as it were, 
 from its trance, it recognizes a difference between 
 moving and sentient creatures, and objects that are 
 inert and devoid of feeling. Until we understand 
 the marvel of this revelation we can never explain 
 that most singular phenomenon of history — the 
 worship of animals by nations in a relatively high 
 state of culture. Of all peoples prior to the Greeks 
 the Egyptians were the most advanced intellectually, 
 
246 LETTERS TO A MOTHER. 
 
 yet, in contrast with the Persians, who worshiped 
 light, their religion was zoolatry. " To us," says 
 Hegel, " zoolatry is repulsive. We may reconcile 
 ourselves to the adoration of the material heaven, 
 but the worship of brutes is alien to us. Yet it is 
 certain that the nations who worshiped the sun and 
 stars by no means occupy a higher grade than those 
 who adored brutes. Quite the contrary is the truth, 
 for in the brute world the Egyptians adored a hid- 
 den and incomprehensible principle. We also, 
 when we contemplate the life and actions of brutes, 
 are astonished at their instinct, the adaptation of 
 their movements to the objects intended, their rest- 
 lessness, excitability, and liveliness, for they are 
 exceedingly quick and discerning in pursuing the 
 ends of their existence, while they are at the same 
 time silent and shut up within themselves. We can 
 not make out what possesses these creatures. A 
 black cat, with its glowing eyes and its now gliding, 
 now quick and darting movement, has been deemed 
 the presence of a malignant being, a mysterious re- 
 served specter; the dog, the canary bird, on the 
 contrary, appear friendly and sympathizing. The 
 lower animals are the truly incomprehensible." 
 The worship of animals means that men have 
 
THE DISCOVERY 01" LIFE. 247 
 
 made the discovery of life, but not the discovery of 
 spirit. They have felt how far sentient existence 
 surpasses all inanimate being, and understood that 
 the living worm is a higher creation than the life- 
 less star. Realizing the mystery of sentient exist- 
 ence, but not attaining to solution of the mystery in 
 free spirit, they worship animals in whom the soul 
 is still shut up and dulled by the physical organiza- 
 tion. This obtuse life is the counterpart of their 
 obtuse consciousness. 
 
 Retracing the rise of thought from mere ani- 
 mism to animal worship, we begin to appreciate that 
 epoch-making transition in the child's life disclosed 
 by his distinction of living objects from objects not 
 alive, and his identification of the former as belong- 
 ing to the same class with himself. His ball is mo- 
 tionless save as he gives it movement. It is his own 
 trot or gallop which transforms a mere stick into a 
 horse. Even the doll's eyes open and shut only at 
 his will. But the bird flies high in the air, the 
 fish darts gayly through the water, the kitten laps 
 her milk and purrs, the caged canary hops and 
 sings, the dog runs and leaps, barks in his joy, 
 growls when angry, whines when hurt. Here is 
 movement, here is feeling, here is life answering to 
 
248 LETTERS TO A MOTHER. 
 
 life, and with eyes from which the scales have 
 fallen the living child looks out upon all " singing, 
 humming, whistling, buzzing, croaking, flying, 
 creeping, crawling, climbing, burrowing, splashing, 
 diving things," and knows that he has found com- 
 rades. Is it strange that his countenance is lighted 
 with joy? Is it wonderful that all the doings of 
 these new-found comrades have for him an irresis- 
 tible charm? 
 
 Watching a mother who was teaching her baby 
 to beckon with tiny finger to some little chickens, 
 Froebel recognized the expression of " life's living 
 feeling that it is not alone in life," and under the 
 inspiration of this experience wrote the first in 
 order of time of the Mother-Play Songs. In the 
 picture which accompanies it he seeks to open our 
 ears, so that we too may hear the call of life to 
 life. He shows us a baby who, loving himself to 
 coo and chatter, listens with delight to the gob- 
 bling turkey, the clucking hen, the peeping chick- 
 ens. A little girl in whom stir incipient motherly 
 impulses of watchfulness and care beckons the hen 
 to come to her chickens. Her younger sister cares 
 not for the mother-hen, but, crouched on the 
 ground, watches intently the tiny chickens, to 
 
THE DISCOVERY OF LIFE. 249 
 
 whom she feels strangely akin. Each child sees in 
 the " looking-glass of Nature " the energy that 
 throbs in his own pulses. Life calls to life ; life looks 
 at life; life recognizes life; life experiences the joy 
 of life. Therefore, whatever the little ones feel in 
 their own hearts they confidently seek in the actions 
 of their newly discovered comrades, and the lesson 
 of our play is simply to reveal to children their 
 own mysterious life through its reflection in the 
 sentient creatures who have not yet risen above life 
 into consciousness. 
 
 As Beckoning the Chickens sounds the call of 
 life to life, so Beckoning the Pigeons repeats the 
 answer of life to life. One reason why the child 
 loves animals is because they can respond to him. 
 His dog knows his voice, his goat obeys bridle and 
 whip, his kitten enjoys caresses, and pigeons and 
 sparrows fly to get the food he scatters for them. 
 His' experience is like that of Donatello, who 
 " spoke in a dialect broad as the sympathies of Na- 
 ture to the inarticulate brotherhood that prowl the 
 woods or soar upon the wing " ; or, if you prefer 
 historic to imaginary examples, like the relation- 
 ship of St. Francis to his brethren the birds, and 
 like the experience of Thoreau, in whose hands fish 
 
THE DISCOVERY OF LIFE. 
 
 251 
 
 would lie quietly, as if knowing the touch of a 
 friend.* 
 
 At an age when true companionship with ma- 
 ture human beings is impossible and the compan- 
 ionship of child with child somewhat marred by 
 mutual defect, the companionship of the child with 
 the mute creatures to whom he already feels himself 
 strangely superior, and therefore strangely bound, 
 is of the utmost importance. It discloses ele- 
 mentary traits and elementary relationships, and 
 thus accelerates the progress of self -discovery; it 
 reveals in naked hideousness propensities of anger, 
 vanity, and greed, which in the human being early 
 seek masks and disguises; and, most important of 
 all, it calls forth the impulses of care and nurture. 
 
 Since the activities of animals are preponder- 
 antly reflex and instinctive they have a stability 
 which is not to be looked for in the actions of hu- 
 man beings. We can predict with tolerable cer- 
 tainty what a dog will do under all circumstances, 
 but we can utter no confident prophecy with regard 
 
 * Miss Cody, of Toronto, tells me she knows a little boy 
 
 whose companionship with birds is so sympathetic that many 
 
 of them gather round him in response to a cooing sound which 
 
 he makes. 
 
 18 
 
252 LETTERS TO A MOTHER. 
 
 to the actions of growing and unfolding men and 
 women. The little child soon learns that his gen- 
 erally patient nurse will sometimes be cross, his 
 tender mother will sometimes be stern, his yielding 
 playmates will sometimes become aggressive. His 
 first experience of human nature, therefore, is that 
 it is not to be relied upon. His perplexity is in- 
 creased by the fact that persons sometimes say one 
 thing when they mean another, and the very exig- 
 ence of ideal standards to which the most conscien- 
 tious effort is not always able to square conduct in- 
 troduces another element of uncertainty into his 
 judgments. Recognizing our human instability, 
 we appreciate the questions with which Froebel 
 closes his commentary on Beckoning the Pigeons: 
 "Mother, did not your children respond more 
 quickly to your words when they were too young 
 to understand the meaning of words than they do 
 now when tfiis meaning is clear to them? "Why is 
 this? Must the animals teach us? In their lan- 
 guage, word and fact, fact and word, word and 
 deed, deed and word, are always one and the 
 same! " 
 
 Since Helen is interested in the child-study 
 movement I suppose she has considered the sugges- 
 
THE DISCOVERY OF LIFE. 253 
 
 tion that fables of animals should be told in the 
 kindergarten, and I hope she feels as I do, that 
 most fables are open to objection, because they 
 deal with motives beyond the range of child- 
 ish experience. Rousseau made an analysis of the 
 fable of La Fontaine which relates how the fox by 
 nattering the raven induced her to sing, and then 
 ran away with the meat she dropped in opening her 
 mouth. Do we wish to inoculate children with 
 suspicion and distrust? The snake which the 
 farmer warmed in his bosom only to be stung, the 
 fox calling the grapes he could not reach sour, are 
 other examples of meanings we would not willingly 
 make accessible to childish imagination. A second 
 objection to most fables is that their symbolism is 
 artificial and the animals they portray are not true 
 brutes but human beings in brute disguise. Dis- 
 carding such artificial symbols, we discover the real 
 life of animals to be symbolic because it presents 
 analogies to human emotions, relationships, and ex- 
 periences. Actual contact with animal life and 
 actual care of animal pets are better for little chil- 
 dren than stories about animals, although the latter 
 are valuable as interpreters of experience. It seems 
 to me the Animal Songs of the Mother-Play, with 
 
254 LETTERS TO A MOTHER. 
 
 their accompanying pictures, meet quite adequately 
 the needs of children under six years of age. 
 
 Having recognized his kinship with bird and 
 beast, the child begins to imitate both. I need not 
 expand this theme, for you have written me how 
 Harold turns himself into every animal he sees, 
 and how almost impossible it is to follow his rapidly 
 shifting incarnations. One sentence in your letter 
 suggests the reflection that this tendency to imitate 
 animals should be carefully watched and guided. 
 For if Harold can care so much to be a chicken that 
 he actually climbs the perch to roost with his feath- 
 ered friends, and if in his ambition to be a mother- 
 hen he has crouched for an hour over an egg, he 
 might be .betrayed into repeating actions injurious 
 to his moral development. Troebel has been sin- 
 gularly wise in the animal activities he has selected 
 for imitation. It is well to spring with the squirrel, 
 gallop with the horse, fly with the bird, swim with 
 the fish. It is well to win from the far-flying, home- 
 coming pigeons the prescient joy of a broadening 
 experience, and the prophecy of that luminous and 
 illuminating love which sanctifies experience. It 
 is well to learn from the Grass-Mowing Game how 
 man has bent the brute to service, from the Knights 
 
THE DISCOVERT OP LIFE. 255 
 
 the mastery of life by spirit, from the Barnyard 
 the care and kindness we owe to the creatures upon 
 whom we have set our yoke. The more we study 
 these plays the greater will be our respect for the 
 unerring judgment which enabled Froebel to omit 
 nothing in animal life which could nourish ideal 
 impulse and to avoid everything which might debase 
 the human soul. 
 
 The Fish in the Brook is an illustration of that 
 higher symbolism which pierces to the soul of a 
 natural object. The joyous motion of the fish in 
 clear water, the ease with which in its strong flight 
 the bird cleaves the air, are true physical counter- 
 parts of spiritual activity in a pure element, and 
 therefore thrill the soul with their prophecy of 
 freedom. " True hope," says Shakespeare, " is 
 swift, and flies with swallow's wings." The poet 
 in Timon of Athens declares that his poem shall 
 "fly an eagle flight bold, and forth on, leav- 
 ing no track behind," and Bichard Lovelace 
 exactly interprets the prophecy of Froebel's play 
 
 when he writes: 
 
 If I have freedom in my love, 
 
 And in my soul am free, 
 Angels alone that soar above 
 
 Enjoy such liberty. 
 
256 
 
THE DISCOVERY OF LIFE. 257 
 
 In proportion to his recognition of that mys- 
 tery of sentient existence which is the tie between 
 him and his brethren of the forest and the field 
 will be the child's desire to seek in animal relation- 
 ships the counterpart of his own. Perhaps it would 
 be more nearly true to say that in their relation- 
 ships he discovers his own. Some degree of separa- 
 tion is presupposed in all recognition, and the 
 child's life with his parents and in his home is so 
 intimate that it forbids acquaintance. Hence, just 
 as in the first three of his animal games, Froebel 
 reveals life and free activity in the next two, the 
 Bird's Nest and the Pigeon House, he holds up a 
 looking-glass wherein the young heart may discover 
 its mother and its home. 
 
 Is it necessary for me to say that while the Bird's 
 ISTest offers the most touching example of mother 
 love and filial response, you should search through 
 animal life for different versions of the one sweet 
 story? Froebel gives you one typical play. You 
 are to elicit its ideal and from this ideal create new 
 plays and stories as life furnishes the occasion. 
 
 The commentary to the Bird's Nest rises from 
 mother love to the motherly love of God. A story 
 related by Eckermann in his Conversations with 
 
258 LETTERS TO A MOTHER. 
 
 Goethe has so helped me to enter intimately' into 
 Froebel's thought that I can not forbear copying 
 it for you: 
 
 " A nest of young hedge sparrows with one of 
 the old birds which had been caught with birdlime 
 had lately been brought me. I saw with admiration 
 that the bird not only continued to feed its young 
 in my chamber, but even when set free through the 
 window returned to them again. Such parental 
 love, superior to danger and imprisonment, moved 
 me deeply, and I expressed my surprise to Goethe. 
 
 "'Foolish man! ' he replied, with a meaning 
 smile; ' if you believed in God you would not 
 wonder. Did not God inspire the bird with this 
 all-powerful love for its young, and did not simi- 
 lar impulses pervade all animate Nature, the world 
 could not subsist. But thus is the divine energy 
 everywhere diffused, and divine love everywhere 
 active.' " 
 
 " Goethe made a similar remark," adds his biog- 
 rapher, " a short time ago, when a copy of My- 
 ron's cow with the suckling calf was sent him by 
 a young sculptor. 
 
 " ' Here,' said he, ' we have a subject of the 
 highest sort — the nourishing principle which up- 
 
THE DISCOVERY OF LIFE. 259 
 
 holds the world and pervades all Nature is here 
 brought before our eyes by a beautiful symbol. 
 This and similar images I call the true symbols of 
 the omnipresence of God.' " 
 
 The persistent attempt of Nature to develop 
 any ideal implies the realization of this ideal in the 
 author of Nature. Hence, from the tendency of 
 Nature to evolve life we infer life in her source; 
 from her tendency to evolve consciousness we con- 
 clude that a conscious personality incites her blind 
 effort; from the favor she shows to animals, who 
 through nurture of their young begin what Mr. 
 Drummond has called " the struggle for the life of 
 others," our faith leaps upward toward an altru- 
 istic God and our hope bounds forward toward an 
 altruistic humanity. 
 
 The more truly we understand symbolism the 
 more clearly do we comprehend that all things are 
 symbolic. Moreover, there is an ascent of sym- 
 bols. The care of the flower for its seed points 
 upward to the care of the bird for its egg, care for 
 the egg points to care for the young; the brute 
 mother prophesies the human mother; the human 
 mother predicts universal nurture of the weak by 
 the strong; whether the strong be men or women; 
 
260 
 
THE DISCOVERT OP LIFE. 261 
 
 universal nurture of weak humanity by strong 
 humanity points upward to God, whose whole life 
 is a nurture of feeble souls into the strength and 
 beauty of his divine image. Each lower stage of 
 this cosmic process fulfills the next inferior and 
 prophesies the next higher, so that the ascent of 
 life is always from the symbol to a reality which 
 becomes at once the prophecy of a higher revela- 
 tion. 
 
 As the Bird's Nest suggests ascending forms of 
 nurturing love, so the Pigeon House interprets the 
 ever-deepening meanings of home. The snail has 
 his shell, the serpent his hole, the wild bird its 
 nest, the domestic pigeon its house. From animal 
 homes Froebel's picture rises to the home of man, 
 and thence to the Church, the earthly home of the 
 soul and of God. But no creature stays forever 
 in its home, for that were to lose home. So our 
 picture shows us pigeons flying from and to the 
 pigeon house, a mother and children taking their 
 walk abroad, two little girls returning from an 
 outing and absorbed in what they are saying to 
 each other about the afternoon's experiences, and a 
 mother who seems to be teaching her child to repro- 
 duce in play all this outgoing, incoming life. In 
 
262 LETTERS TO A MOTHER. 
 
 the motto and commentary Froebel apprizes us that 
 the mother should teach her child to weave into a 
 whole the fragments of his experience, and thus, 
 alternating the excursive with the collected state 
 of the soul, live at home with himself. Finally, 
 since the state of inner collectedness is the state of 
 devotion, and all feeling of the wholeness of life 
 rises into communion with the source of life, the 
 soul at home in itself is at home with God. In 
 such wise do our song, picture and commentary re- 
 peat the prophecy of Nature, " The foxes have 
 holes and the birds of the air have nests," and dis- 
 close to us its fulfillment in the promise of a final 
 home for the soul, "In my Father's house are 
 many mansions. I go to prepare a place for you." 
 Were I writing to any one but you I should 
 expect an answering letter which would remind 
 me that thoughts such as these are for grown peo- 
 ple and not for little children. To such a letter I 
 should in turn reply that the Mother-Play is a 
 mother's, or, better still, a parent's book. That it 
 is also a child's book, and the sweetest of all books 
 for children, I devoutly believe, and, as I have said 
 again and again, its chief merit is that it finds in 
 typical concrete experiences points of contact for 
 
THE DISCOVERY OP LIFE. 263 
 
 the evolution of ideals in the young child, in his 
 older brothers and sisters, in his father and mother. 
 May not Harold see himself in the forth-flying, 
 home-coming pigeons, and as he listens to their 
 cooing may not the suggestion that they are telling 
 each other where they have been stir in his little 
 heart the desire to tell you what he has seen and 
 done while absent from you? May not Eobert and 
 James, Edith and Mary, watching you win Harold 
 to confidence by the example of the pigeons, feel in 
 themselves a stronger impulse to open to you their 
 hearts and minds? Would not your eldest born 
 write you with greater frankness of his college life 
 and his vacation journeys had he at Harold's age 
 formed that habit of tender intimacy which through 
 Froebel you are learning to create in your baby? 
 Is not your own study of the Pigeon House helping 
 you to be at once more courageous and more sym- 
 pathetic; teaching you that " to make room for 
 wandering is it that the world was made so wide " ; 
 convincing you that you must restrict your chil- 
 dren to no temporal or provincial life, and yet that 
 while educating them for the citizenship of the 
 world and the inheritance of the ages, you must 
 keep them true to the " kindred points of heaven and 
 
264 LETTERS TO A MOTHER. 
 
 home "I Are you not growing to understand that 
 the human soul can dwell permanently in no spiritual 
 home save one of its own building? Are you not 
 making it your conscious aim to so illuminate the 
 minds of your sons and daughters with the eternal 
 principles of spiritual architecture that you may 
 securely hope they will hereafter fit the separate 
 stones of experience they quarry from life into 
 noble temples of the soul? And — one question 
 more — are you not realizing with an ever-increas- 
 ing clearness that just because of that eternal pro- 
 cession of the divine thought we call the universe 
 God himself dwells in an eternal home? Answer- 
 ing these questions to your own heart you will com- 
 prehend how a really typical fact appeals to minds 
 in all stages of development and will recognize with 
 fresh amazement Froebel's daringly original con- 
 ception of ministering to what is deepest in the 
 mature soul through that which appeals most 
 sympathetically to the childish heart and imagina- 
 tion. 
 
 If you carry out the plan mentioned in your 
 last letter, and really organize a mother's club for 
 the study of Eroebel's mottoes, songs, and commen- 
 taries, I hope that your very first meeting may be 
 
THE DISCOVERT OP LIFE. 265 
 
 devoted to the Pigeon House, and that you will 
 strive to stir in the mind of every mother present 
 the conscious ideal of seeking heart intimacy with 
 her children. Your letters show that you mourn 
 the lack of that unabashed and yearning confidence 
 which is the pledge of filial dependence. Your ex- 
 perience is, unfortunately, not an exceptional one. 
 The ordinary American family is not a family in 
 any true sense of the word, but a mere assem- 
 blage of isolated and independent units under the 
 shelter of a single roof. Parents do not know their 
 children, children do not know their parents, and 
 brothers and sisters are strangers to each other's 
 tastes, pleasures, hopes, and disappointments. This 
 crying defect in our domestic life can be overcome 
 only by a clearer conception of the affections, sym- 
 pathies, and duties arising out of parental, filial, 
 and fraternal relationships. Surely the solitary are 
 not set in families in order that they may remain in 
 solitude ! 
 
 From the animal as revealer of life and its rela- 
 tionships Froebel passes first to the mastery of the 
 animal by force, and second to its mastery through 
 domestication. "Whatever we may think of the 
 Shadow Songs, we must recognize that they deal 
 
266 
 
THE DISCOVERY OP LIFE. 267 
 
 with a phase of man's relationship to the brute crea- 
 tion which historically has been a most important 
 one, and which is destined to continue until all ani- 
 mals are extirpated except those which can be do- 
 mesticated or which in their natural state do not 
 hinder the extension of civilization. The Egyp- 
 tians would allow human beings to perish by famine 
 rather than kill one of their sacred animals, and 
 once, when a Roman in Alexandria killed a cat, 
 an insurrection ensued in which the infuriated 
 populace murdered the aggressor.* Buddhism to- 
 day declares it a sin to take animal life, so no 
 Buddhist could consistently celebrate a hunter or 
 show children Froebel's shadow pictures. But we 
 eat food and wear furs which the hunter provides, 
 and each one of us wages unrelenting war against 
 mice, spiders, flies, and mosquitoes. Either we are 
 wrong in hunting and trapping these living crea- 
 tures, in eating animal food, and wearing animal 
 raiment, or we can not sit in judgment on the 
 hunter. Moreover, unless wild beasts are exter- 
 minated civilization can not extend, and if we 
 honor St. Patrick for purging Ireland of serpents, 
 how may we refuse honor to the huntsman who in 
 
 * Hegel's Philosophy of History. 
 19 
 
268 
 
THE DISCOVERY OP LIFE. 269 
 
 his attack upon tigers, panthers, and boars is really 
 the pioneer of progress. 
 
 Whether young children may be shown pictures 
 of a hunter or told stories celebrating his deeds is 
 another question. In my judgment it is one of 
 many whose general purport is how far the shadow 
 side of life should be presented to immature minds, 
 and all of which must be met as their occasion 
 arises. 
 
 It must be conceded that Froebel has presented 
 this delicate subject in its least objectionable light. 
 The story implied in the picture of the hare is iden- 
 tical with our traditional nursery rhyme Bye-baby 
 Bunting. The hunter is a father who through the 
 chase provides for the needs of his children, and 
 who with thoughtful affection brings home a living 
 pet for his little daughter. Two other Shadow 
 Songs relate to the destruction of the wolf and 
 wild boar, both of which are fierce and dangerous 
 animals. Finally, in a suggestive picture Froebel 
 shows us that the wolves have been busy in the 
 6heepfold, and have carried off and devoured a 
 lamb. 
 
 Every natural fact, says Emerson, has a higher 
 value as a symbol. Froebel's commentaries on the 
 
270 LETTERS TO A MOTHER. 
 
 Shadow Songs indicate that he was thinking of the 
 beast in man as well as the beast in the world. The 
 wolf and boar must become extinct in man, and 
 each human being must be a hunter who in the 
 tangled forest of the soul meets and slays the beasts 
 that skulk there. Failing in his duty as spiritual 
 huntsman, he becomes a demon. This unconquered 
 bestiality which sinks reasonable man lower than 
 the irrational brute is strikingly imaged by Dante 
 in the man-wolf, the man-bull, and the man-serpent 
 of his Inferno, and by Goethe in his evolution of 
 Mephistopheles from the dog. 
 
 It was doubtless with intention that Froebel 
 illustrated the outer and inner mastery of the brute 
 by shadow pictures. For as shadows are produced 
 by intercepting light, so the dense body of our ig- 
 norance, barring the passage of that universal rea- 
 son which is the light of spirit, gives rise to all 
 the problems which torment our minds. Among 
 these problems few are more serious than those con- 
 nected with the brute creation. No less to us than 
 to the ancients is animal life one of the chief of 
 mysteries, but the mystery has changed its form. 
 To the Egyptian, as we have seen, the animal soul, 
 shut up within its physical organization and dulled 
 
THE DISCOVERY OF LIFE. 271 
 
 thereby, seemed divine. " Spirit had," says Hegel, 
 " a band around its forehead." Itself imprisoned, 
 it worshiped the imprisoned spirit of animals. To 
 the modern world, which has torn the band from its 
 forehead, the problem changes its nature. Our- 
 selves conscious and conscious of consciousness, we 
 look with dismay upon creatures who, lacking rea- 
 son, share with us the mystery of sentient existence. 
 In a sermon entitled Mysteries of Nature and of 
 Grace, Cardinal Newman has put this problem be- 
 fore us in all its force. " We behold," he writes, 
 " the spectacle of brute nature, of impulses, feel- 
 ings, propensities, passions, which in us are ruled 
 or repressed by a superintending reason, but from 
 which when ungovernable we shrink as fearful 
 and hateful because in us they would be sin. Mil- 
 lions of irrational creatures surround us, and it 
 would seem as though the Creator had left part of 
 his work in its original chaos, so monstrous are these 
 beings which move and feel and act without reflec- 
 tion and without principle. To matter he has given 
 laws. He has divided the moist and the dry, the 
 heavy and the rare, the light and the dark. He has 
 placed the land as a boundary for the sea, a per- 
 petual precept which it shall not pass. He has 
 
272 LETTERS TO A MOTHER. 
 
 tamed the elements and made them servants of the 
 universal good, but the brute beasts pass to and fro 
 in their wildness and their isolation, no yoke on 
 their neck or bit in their lips, the enemies of all 
 they meet, yet without the capacity of self-love. 
 They live on each other's flesh; their eyes, their 
 teeth, their claws, their muscles, their voices, their 
 walk, their structure within, all speak of violence 
 and blood. They seem made to inflict pain; they 
 rush on their prey with fierceness and devour it 
 with greediness. There is scarce a passion or a feel- 
 ing which is sin in man but is found brute and 
 irresponsible in them. Rage, wanton cruelty, 
 hatred, sullenness, jealousy, revenge, cunning, 
 malice, lust, envy, vainglory, gluttony — each has 
 its representative. Is it not marvelous that the 
 All- Wise and All-Good should have poured over 
 the face of his fair creation these rude existences, 
 that they should divide the earth with man, and 
 should be actual lords of a great portion of its 
 surface? " * 
 
 It is a half-hearted faith which blinks at prob- 
 lems. To really trust God is to dare to look every 
 mystery straight in the face, and when we so dare 
 * Sermons to Mixed Congregations. 
 
THE DISCOVERY" OF LIFE. 273 
 
 and so look we begin to find our answer. To the 
 mystery of animal life the answer seems to me clear 
 and decisive. We are told that in our whole vast 
 universe a single atom of matter is never destroyed. 
 That which has once had being never ceases to be. 
 But life is more than mere being: it is a luminous 
 spark which may flame into spirit. Can God suffer 
 this luminous spark to go out in utter darkness, or 
 must the divine breath blow it into flame? 
 
 The cumulative evidence of all facts known to 
 us points to idealism for their adequate interpreta- 
 tion, and as I suggested to you in my last letter, 
 idealism means that the only realities in the 
 world are God and the souls in whom he progres- 
 sively creates his image. Evolution is not material, 
 but spiritual, and the series and procession of vege- 
 table and animal forms is only the semblance of a 
 series and procession of souls. No soul perishes; 
 all ascend through " the spires of form " to human- 
 ity. The human form is final and permanent be- 
 cause it is the form of consciousness which is all- 
 inclusive. Below man individuality is in process of 
 making. But you will be you and I shall be I 
 forever, because we can include all wisdom, all 
 goodness, and all love in our individual conscious- 
 
274 LETTERS TO A MOTHER. 
 
 ness. Accepting this truth, we can survey with 
 untroubled minds that world display of mutual 
 carnage which is the method of developing energy, 
 courage, and all the traits which, when redeemed 
 from selfishness, become the mainstays of selfhood.* 
 Am I allowing myself to be betrayed into writ- 
 ing you of questions which, while they may have 
 a speculative interest for you and me, are without 
 
 * In his Psychologic Foundations of Education, p. 233, Dr. 
 Harris confesses his faith that " permanent individuality may 
 exist as low as the animals — indeed, it is probable that it does 
 so exist, for the world seems to be a sort of cradle for the nur- 
 ture of independent individuality." 
 
 Referring to animals, one of the authors of Lux Mundi 
 (p. 91) writes as follows: 
 
 " "What are they ? Had they a past ? May they not have 
 a future ? What is the relation of their consciousness to the 
 mighty life which pulses within the universe ? May not East- 
 ern speculation about these things be nearer the truth than 
 Western science ? " Evidently the writer of these questions 
 was inwardly convinced of their answer. 
 
 In the Christ of To-Day Dr. Gordon thus boldly avows his 
 conviction : 
 
 " The ultimate center of all the force that shapes from 
 within and all the energy that stimulates from without is 
 the personal being of God. This is the eternal reality of the 
 universe. "What we call things are but the various and tran- 
 sient processions of the infinite personal soul; what we call 
 animal life is but the divine differentiated into temporary, 
 semi-independent existence; what we call man is but the 
 primal personality uttered in terms of its own highest being, 
 the finite lifted into the image of the Infinite and ordained to 
 perpetual fellowship with him." 
 
THE DISCOVERY OF LIFE. 275 
 
 practical bearing on the subject of nursery educa- 
 tion? If this doubt bas flitted tbrougb your mind, 
 remember that your very last letter contained a 
 pitiful account of your vain effort to console little 
 Edith when her pet canary was killed by her kitten. 
 She understood that she must forgive her kitten 
 because "it knew no better," but she wanted to 
 know what had become of her bird, and you could 
 not tell her. Had you really believed that no life 
 perishes and no attained degree of individuality is 
 ever lost, might you not have found true and simple 
 words with which to soothe the real anguish of her 
 loving heart? 
 
 Many minor questions are suggested in Froe- 
 bel's Shadow Songs, but as both your patience and 
 my time have limits I forbear to touch them, and 
 hasten to indicate as briefly as possible the lesson of 
 the Barnyard. Mastery by force is only the sem- 
 blance of mastery. All true mastery is mastery of 
 love. The triumphant march of the Mother-Play 
 is from the child as a mere object of nurture to the 
 child with nascent consciousness of becoming him- 
 self a nurturer. "Answer me," says Froebel, 
 "but one question. What is the supreme gift 
 you would bestow on the children who are the life 
 
276 LETTERS TO A MOTHER. 
 
 of your life, the soul of your soul? Would you 
 not above all other things render them capable of 
 giving nurture? Would you not endow them with 
 the courage and constancy which the ability to give 
 nurture implies? Mother, father, has not our com- 
 mon effort been directed toward just this end? . . . 
 Has not our inmost longing been to capacitate our 
 children for this inexpressible privilege? " 
 
 Our educational practice is halting and vacillat- 
 ing because we look toward no sure goal of our 
 endeavor. Froebel is steadfast and consistent be- 
 cause he knows exactly what he wishes to do. De- 
 fining education as the nurture of nurturers, he 
 treads with unhesitating feet the path which climbs 
 toward his accepted goal. His educational aim is 
 determined by his world view. Accepting with re- 
 generate intellect that doctrine of incarnation which 
 is the kernel of Christianity, he recognizes that it 
 lies in the nature of God to communicate his own 
 perfection to his creatures. Such a God is a God 
 of self-imparting love, who can never be satisfied 
 with giving until he has given all he has and all 
 he is. Hence he is the supreme nurturer, and the 
 goal of creation is a community of souls in whom he 
 has perfected his own image. Conversely, if God 
 
THE DISCOVERY OF LIFE. 277 
 
 can incarnate himself, then humanity can be the 
 receptacle of the divine. Finally, as each man 
 ascends into the divine image he becomes a sharer 
 in divine activity, and from an object of nurture is 
 transformed into a nurturer. 
 
 Least things are explained by greatest, and only 
 as you sympathize with Froebel's final aim can you 
 realize the importance of actual care for plants and 
 animals and understand the significance of the 
 Barnyard Play as a means of quickening the sense 
 of responsibility and granting to childhood some 
 prescience of the joy which springs from the exer- 
 cise of nurturing love. 
 
 When we study the past history of our earth we 
 become aware that Nature has been undergoing a 
 gradual pacification. Cyclones, earthquakes, vol- 
 canic eruptions, the wild fury of the sea, are but 
 faint echoes of the convulsions of long-vanished 
 days. There was an age when vegetable life ran 
 riot and no animal could cope with its resistless 
 strength. There was a time when great mastodons 
 and ichthyosauri were masters of the earth. There 
 will come a time when man shall be not only theo- 
 retically but practically lord of creation, when he 
 shall have drained the swamp, fertilized the desert, 
 
THE DISCOVERT OP LIFE. 279 
 
 subdued the riotous vegetable life of South Amer- 
 ica, extirpated the irredeemable brute, domesti- 
 cated all animals capable of moral and mental im- 
 provement, and when, himself regenerate, he shall 
 rule a regenerate earth. Symbol and prophecy of 
 that happy time is the little child in the Barnyard, 
 a new Adam in a new paradise, to whom God 
 giveth the beasts of the field for a heritage and the 
 fowls of the air for a possession. 
 
 The discovery of life, the response of life to life, 
 the prophecy of freedom, the disclosure of human 
 and divine love, the revelation of human and di- 
 vine homes, the extinction of the savage beast in 
 the world and in the soul, the vision of nurtured 
 and nurturing life — such are the truths Eroebel 
 holds up to the imagination of the child and the 
 thought of the mother in his Animal Songs. What 
 aspect of animal life has he ignored? To what 
 worthy analogy has he been blind? 
 
LETTEK IX. 
 
 A PROPHECY OF FREEDOM. 
 
 THE FISH IN THE BEOOK. 
 
 A child regards with new delight 
 Each living thing that meets his sight ; 
 But when within the limpid stream 
 He sees the fishes dart and gleam, 
 Or when, through pure transparent space 
 The bird's swift flight he tries to trace, 
 Their freer motion fills his heart 
 With joy that seems of it a part — 
 A joy that speaks diviner birth, 
 While yet he treads the ways of earth. 
 
 Henrietta E. Eliot. 
 
 THE FISH IN THE BEOOK. 
 
 Merry little fishes, 
 
 In the brook at play, 
 Floating in the shallows, 
 Darting swift away. 
 " Happy little fishes, come and play with me ! " 
 " No, Ono!" the fishes say, "that can never be ! " 
 
 Pretty bodies curving, 
 Bending like a bow, 
 Through the clear, bright water, 
 See them swiftly go. 
 " Happy little fishes, may we play with you ? " 
 " No, O no ! " the fishes say, "that would never do ! " 
 Emily Huntington Millee. 
 281 
 
282 LETTERS TO A MOTHER. 
 
 Deae : In that great city of "Weissnichtwo, 
 
 which Carlyle has made so famous and which, as all 
 students of spiritual geography know, is situated 
 just within the borders of modern Utopia, there 
 lives and works a kindergarten trainer who has suc- 
 ceeded in approximately realizing the ideals toward 
 which all training schools are striving. Just as I 
 was beginning to collect my thoughts on the Fish 
 in the Brook I received from her a letter which 
 said all I wanted to say, and which I have there- 
 fore decided to copy and send to you instead of 
 writing you myself. 
 
 How I wish, dear friend [so begins her letter], 
 that you could have attended our conference yester- 
 day. I came home from the meeting the happiest 
 of women. The reason of my happiness? That is 
 what I am going to tell you just as fast as I can. 
 
 It was a stormy afternoon, and I knew in ad- 
 vance that we should have an inspiring meeting, 
 because only those who were most earnest would 
 brave the tempest. Those who came to object and 
 criticise; those who came because it might help 
 their chances of promotion; those who came because 
 others came; those who came from mechanical 
 
A PROPHECY OP FREEDOM. 283 
 
 habit, carried to the place of meeting, as it were, by 
 a series of automatic leg reflexes, would all be ab- 
 sent, and we should not feel the weight of their 
 leaden atmosphere. As I entered the room I looked 
 around, and my spiritual temperature began to rise. 
 For there they were, all my bravest, dearest, best, 
 and their kindling eyes told me they felt as I felt. 
 Were we very wicked to be so glad we were alone? 
 As you know, the meetings are informal, and 
 each one speaks as the spirit moves her. The sub- 
 ject is chosen in advance, and printed slips are given 
 the students suggesting the questions to be dis- 
 cussed. The subject for this afternoon was the play 
 of the Fish in the Brook, and the questions given 
 the preceding week were as follows: 
 
 1. Why does Froebel call this play The Fish in 
 the Brook? 
 
 2. Why does the child try to seize the fish? 
 
 3. What experience comes to him through 
 catching the fish? 
 
 4. What general truths are illustrated in his 
 desire for the fish, his seizure, and its results? 
 
 5. Can self-activity be perfect so long as it is in 
 any degree dependent upon an external environ- 
 ment? 
 
 20 
 
284 LETTERS. TO A MOTHER. 
 
 6. In the higher forms of self -activity is the 
 mind more and more self -environing? 
 
 7. Is it equally true to say that it is only by 
 ascent into the divine life that man realizes his free- 
 dom? 
 
 8. Can you harmonize these two statements? 
 You do not need to be told that the questions 
 
 are only intended to incite thought, nor yet that, 
 far from insisting upon following their order, I 
 myself always try to follow the order in which the 
 class develops the idea of the play. Even if you 
 were not already familiar with our kindergarten 
 method it would, I think, reveal itself in the course 
 of this letter. 
 
 The discussion this afternoon was opened by 
 
 Miss . You remember her, do you not, the 
 
 dear little kindergartner with the New England 
 conscience, whom we used to call our categorical 
 imperative? She had been reading Professor 
 James's Psychology, and was very unhappy over 
 the following statements: 
 
 " If evolution and the survival of the fittest be 
 true at all, the destruction of prey and of human 
 rivals must have been among the most important of 
 man's primitive functions; the fighting and the 
 
A PROPHECY OF FREEDOM. 285 
 
 chasing instincts must have become ingrained. 
 Certain perceptions must immediately, and with- 
 out the intervention of inferences and ideas, have 
 prompted emotions and motor discharges; and both 
 the latter must, from the nature of the case, have 
 been very violent, and therefore, when unchecked, 
 of an intensely pleasurable kind. It is just be- 
 cause human bloodthirstiness is such a primitive 
 part of us that it is so hard to eradicate, especially 
 where a fight or a hunt is promised as part of the 
 fun." * 
 
 " In illustration of this thesis," said Miss , 
 
 " Mr. James quotes from Fowler the statement that 
 ' every one knows what pleasure a boy takes in 
 the sight of a butterfly, fish, crab, or other animal, 
 or of a bird's nest; . . . how he delights in pulling 
 out the wings and legs of flies, and tormenting one 
 animal or another; . . . with what irresistible 
 strength the plundering of birds' nests attracts him 
 without his having the least intention of eating the 
 eggs or the young birds, f . . . Our ferocity,' con- 
 cludes Mr. James, ' is blind, and can only be ex- 
 plained from lelow. Could we trace it back 
 
 * Principles of Psychology, vol. ii, p. 412. 
 f Ibid., p. 411. 
 
286 LETTERS TO A MOTHER. 
 
 through our line of descent we should see it taking 
 more and more the form of a fatal reflex response, 
 and at the same time becoming more and more the 
 pure and direct emotion that it is.' " * 
 
 Having read these extracts, Miss confessed 
 
 that they had greatly troubled her. She had seen 
 her little nephew when only a year old stamp on 
 the ants which were running along the stone walk, 
 and a few months later amuse himself -for more 
 than an hour by striking at the lake flies which 
 thickened the air. Could it be, as Mr. James sug- 
 gested, that " all living creatures tempt children's 
 hands to a fascinating occupation to which they 
 have to yield? " and " that it is with them as with 
 the boy fiend Jesse Pomeroy, who cut a little 
 girl's throat 'just to see how she would act'?" 
 Must we admit that this was why the child tried to 
 catch the fish, and was it possible that the sight of 
 a bird's nest only incited him to plunder it? If so, 
 what became of Froebel's suggestion that the 
 source of the child's delight in the fish was its free 
 movement in a pure element, and that what his 
 heart sought in the bird's nest was a revelation of 
 mother love? 
 
 * Principles of Psychology, vol. ii, p. 414. 
 
A PROPHECY OF FREEDOM. 287 
 There was a thoughtful pause as Miss 
 
 took her seat, but I was glad to see that while some 
 of the class looked startled no one seemed dis- 
 mayed. The witness of the spirit within them was 
 evidently strong. I remained quiet, knowing that 
 before long this spirit would find utterance, and I 
 was delighted that the first person who rose should 
 be our best practical kindergartner and dearest 
 lover of little children. She began by saying that 
 while Mr. James's explanation of the impulse to 
 seize and catch was quite new to her, she had been 
 contrasting other explanations of the physiological 
 psychologists and child students with those of Froe- 
 bel, and it had occurred to her that while the latter 
 sought the rudimentary forms of all higher human 
 activities the former were interested in the vestiges 
 of our savage and brute inheritance. " Such a dif- 
 ference of interest must result both in concentrating 
 attention upon different manifestations of child- 
 hood and in different explanations of the same 
 manifestations. Froebel had studied the favorite 
 occupations and amusements of little children be- 
 cause he discovered in them parallels to each of the 
 typical forms of adult activity. In the love of pet 
 animals and the desire to plant gardens he recog- 
 
288 LETTERS TO A MOTHER. 
 
 nized the impulses of the herdsman and the agricul- 
 turist. He found sewing, weaving, building, 
 molding, drawing, painting, dancing, singing, all 
 practiced by Kttle children and encouraged by wise 
 parents. He observed that in their spontaneous 
 games children imitated family and social life, 
 founded states, and reproduced in their own way 
 the ideals of religion. In a word, he discovered in 
 the spontaneous self-revelations of childhood the 
 embryonic forms of all truly human activities, and 
 by simply explaining what children were trying to 
 do and creating instrumentalities through which 
 their efforts might be wisely abetted he trans- 
 formed play into education. 
 
 " The physiological child students set them- 
 selves a different problem. Their interest was in 
 survivals. The distention of the nostrils in anger, 
 for example, had challenged the attention of Mr. 
 Spencer, and was interpreted by him as ' an echo 
 of the way in which our ancestors had to breathe 
 when during combat their mouth was filled up by 
 a part of an antagonist's body which had been seized.' 
 In similar vein Dr. Hall had interpreted both the 
 charm and fear of water as a soul vestige of the 
 ' volume of life that had been lived aquatically,' 
 
A PROPHECY OF FREEDOM. 289 
 
 ' the fear of big eyes and teeth as ancestral rever- 
 berations from the long ages of struggle with savage 
 beasts and savage men, and fears of wind and thun- 
 der to telluric and cosmic conditions now modified 
 or extinct.' Dr. Hall had, moreover, emphatically 
 claimed, as the chief value of the movement with 
 which he was identified, that it ' introduced evolu- 
 tion into the study of the soul, and had thus begun 
 a movement bigger than Darwinism, and destined 
 to shelve our cross-section adult psychology beside 
 the old biological literature on fixed species.' " 
 
 In illustration of different possible explanations 
 
 of the same activity Miss suggested that boys 
 
 liked to climb trees, and one might accentuate in 
 interpretation of this propensity either that the 
 love of climbing was an inheritance from a monkey 
 ancestry, that it was an expression of the desire to 
 exert force and conquer difficulties, or, finally, that 
 an ideal motive was stirred by the vision of the 
 whole landscape as seen from the top of the tree. 
 
 " Doubtless," added the speaker, " there is an 
 element of truth in each of these explanations, but 
 the point to be observed is that as the hereditary 
 impulses wane the ideal impulse waxes. The lat- 
 ter is therefore the one with which education is 
 
290 LETTERS TO A MOTHER. 
 
 chiefly concerned, and is that which is emphasized 
 by Froebel." She then read the following extract 
 from The Education of Man: 
 
 " It is not alone the desire to use his power that 
 prompts the boy to seek adventure high and low, 
 far and wide; it is the desire to control the diversity 
 of things; to see individual things in their connec- 
 tion with a whole, especially to bring near that 
 which is remote; to comprehend the outer world 
 in its extent, its diversity, its integrity; it is the de- 
 desire to extend his scope step by step. 
 
 " To climb a new tree means to the boy the dis- 
 covery of a new world. The outlook from above 
 shows everything so different from the ordinary 
 cramped and distorted side view. How clear and 
 distinct everything lies beneath him! Could we 
 but recall the feelings that filled our hearts and 
 souls in boyhood, when the narrow limits of our 
 surroundings sank before our extended view we 
 should not cry out to the boy: ' Come down! you 
 might fall!'"* 
 
 Miss then repeated with great simplicity 
 
 Stevenson's poem Foreign Lands. " Stevenson and 
 
 Froebel," she said in conclusion, " have truly de- 
 
 * Education of Man. Hailmann's Translation, pp. 102-103. 
 
A PROPHECY OF FREEDOM. 291 
 
 ciphered the hieroglyphic of childish feeling. 
 Their explanation is poetic and educational. The 
 explanation by simian descent is of value chiefly to 
 the scientist. Is not the truth, as Emerson tells us, 
 that we stand on a stairway with steps below and 
 steps above us? We have come from below, we are 
 mounting toward the height, and the step on which 
 we stand is related both to those below and those 
 above us. But it is more important to know 
 whither we are going than whence we have come, 
 and just because Froebel sought for prophecies 
 rather than vestiges he is thus far the greatest of 
 child students." 
 
 No pause followed the conclusion of Miss 's 
 
 remarks. She had touched the chords to which 
 all Iroebelian sympathies respond, and her last 
 words had scarcely died upon the air when one 
 whom our students call the elect thinker was open- 
 ing to us new vistas of truth. " Miss ," she 
 
 began, " has shown us very clearly that the genesis 
 of an activity is not a revelation of its nature, and 
 that metamorphosis is implied in all spiritual as well 
 as in all physical evolution. It remains for us to 
 seek the tie which binds together the separate 
 stages of our evolutionary process, or, in other 
 
292 LETTERS TO A MOTHER. 
 
 words, to discover the inner impulsion which unifies 
 all the metamorphoses of life and thought. Grant- 
 ing, therefore, that the child's seizure of the fish is 
 originally an automatic response to external chal- • 
 lenge; admitting that his pugnacious instinct is the 
 survival of an ancestral series of violent and hence 
 pleasurable emotions; and agreeing with Mr. James 
 that the point of departure for the whole series was 
 the destruction of prey and of human rivals, let us 
 ask ourselves the simple question, Why does the 
 savage pursue prey and attack competitors? Is not 
 the answer self-evident? He pursues prey in order 
 to satisfy his hunger, and he attacks human rivals 
 because they diminish his chances of obtaining this 
 satisfaction. In hunger, therefore, we discover his 
 aboriginal motive of action, and an analysis of the 
 feeling of hunger shows that in common with other 
 primitive appetites and desires it implies the dis- 
 crimination of a possible as opposed to an existing 
 state of the self. Strike a stone and it remains mo- 
 tionless. Strike a worm and the shrinkage of its or- 
 ganism and its hurried retreat declare both its living 
 unity and its sense of a pain for which it seeks re- 
 lief. Elongating itself in the sunshine, the pro- 
 tozobn affirms its discrimination between a state of 
 
A PROPHECY OP FREEDOM. 293 
 
 greater and one of less warmth and its decided 
 preference for the former. In like manner, 
 through the struggle for food animals and primi- 
 tive men assert their consciousness of a possible 
 state of satisfaction as contrasted with a state of dis- 
 comfort. 
 
 " Recognizing that coiled up in feeling is dis- 
 crimination between actual and possible states of 
 the self, we celebrate with joy the birth of the ideal 
 in the soul. Twin born with the ideal is purpose 
 or design. Through a progressive ascent of ideals 
 are produced all the metamorphoses of spiritual 
 evolution. Finally, the ascent of ideals takes place 
 both in feeling and in thought, and children may 
 become unselfish in their emotions long before they 
 comprehend altruistic imperatives. It is in this way 
 that an ideal born of sympathy with free activity 
 supersedes the pugnacious instinct which rises to 
 meet the challenge of living creatures, and it is pre- 
 cisely the object of Froebel's Fish in the Brook so to 
 strengthen the spiritual tie as finally to overcome 
 the predatory reaction." 
 
 There was a rustle of approval throughout the 
 class, and all seemed to feel that light had been 
 thrown on our problem. A bright young girl sit- 
 
294 LETTERS TO A MOTHER. 
 
 ting near me whispered " Miss has what might 
 
 be called a prehensile mind. She can twist her 
 thought tighter around an idea and hold on longer 
 to it than any one I ever knew." The little 
 kindergartner with the New England conscience 
 heaved a sigh of relief and said she could now ac- 
 cept without scruple the theory of an imperative 
 motor response to the defiance of life and move- 
 ment, and, indeed, since the problem of spiritual 
 evolution, as we had learned from the All-Gone 
 Song, was to make by unmaking, she was begin- 
 ning to discern in fatality the condition of freedom. 
 The conversation now became general, and I 
 can not remember who suggested the different 
 points. Many experiences with children were re- 
 lated, and memories of childhood were recalled. 
 Several mothers had taken their little children to the 
 country, shown them fishes swimming in a brook, 
 and verified all Froebel says of their desire to catch 
 the lively creatures, and their dismay when the 
 motionless fish lies gasping on the grass.* One 
 
 * " Brother, catch me one of the fishes swimming so mer- 
 rily in the brook. Look at this little one — now it is here, now 
 it is there. Sometimes it is straight, sometimes it is bent; it 
 is so pretty whatever it does. Oh, if I could only swim and 
 glide and dip ! If I could wriggle and slip, how I would tease 
 
A PROPHECY OF FREEDOM. 295 
 
 mother told of the delight of her four-year-old boy 
 when he discovered that by making a scoop of his 
 hands and dipping them in the stream he could 
 bring up water and minnows together, and thus 
 hold the living, twisting, wriggling creatures. 
 Many kindergartners had tried to break up the 
 habit of snatching at different objects by getting 
 the children to notice and name things they could 
 catch with their eyes and ears. Several related 
 simple stories illustrating the idea of spiritual pos- 
 session. All agreed that by imitating the activity 
 of fish and bird the child satisfied the impulse which 
 prompted their seizure. 
 
 An attempt was made to connect the motto, 
 song, and commentary of the Fish in the Brook 
 with its predecessors. Omitting the Tailing Song, 
 which was recognized as the unsolicited effort of 
 mother love to call forth responding trust and affec- 
 
 you, brother, if you tried to catch me ! Please, brother, catch 
 me a fish." 
 
 " Here is a fish for you, little sister, but hold it tight or it 
 will slip away." 
 
 "But, brother, it doesn't move any more; it only lies 
 stretched out straight. But it is alive, for it gasps. I will 
 lay it on the grass; then it will begin moving again. Oh, it 
 does not move even in the grass ; it lies quite straight and 
 still Why won't it move ? " See Mottoes and Commentaries 
 of Froebel's Mother-Play, I. E. S., vol. xxxi, p. 117. 
 
296 LETTERS TO A MOTHER. * 
 
 tion, it was said that all the songs thus far consid- 
 ered had shown advancing degrees of self-activity 
 in the child and increasing recognition of self- 
 activity in his environment. The Play with the 
 Limbs had claimed the child's own motor activity as 
 the point of departure for his development. The 
 Weather Vane had shown him interpreting move- 
 ment not his own by a process of unconscious intro- 
 spection. The All-Gone commentary had indi- 
 cated the transition from a blind response to ex- 
 ternal seduction to the impulsion of conscious ideals. 
 The Tick-Tack had found in the allurement of the 
 clock the point of departure for a rhythmic or cir- 
 cular activity. The Taste Song had noted the 
 dawning consciousness that qualities are the deposit 
 of activities. The Flower Song and commentary 
 had interpreted the child's faith in the flower fairy 
 as a presentiment of the truth that wherever there 
 is self-activity there is a self or soul. The songs of 
 Beckoning the Chickens and Pigeons had signalized 
 the discovery of life or the ascent of the child's con- 
 sciousness beyond the stage of mere animism. The 
 Fish in the Brook declared the craving of life for 
 life. Always the living soul panted for more and 
 fuller life, and it was because of their abounding 
 
A PROPHECY OF FREEDOM. 297 
 
 vitality and incessant movement that fishes and 
 birds appealed so irresistibly to the child's imagina- 
 tion. There was perfect unanimity with regard to 
 this connection between the several songs, but some 
 one said it had always been a puzzle to her why 
 Froebel had preferred the fish to the bird as an 
 illustration of the magnetic charm of free life and 
 movement. The fish was pent in the brook. The 
 bird had the freedom of all space. Fairy heroes 
 possessed flying horses, flying saddles, flying boots, 
 or flying ships. "Was there any physical freedom 
 like the freedom of wings? Was not the flight of 
 the bird always the favorite poetic symbol of the 
 flight of the spirit? 
 
 " Wings that flutter in sunny air, 
 Wings that dive and dip and dare, 
 Wings of the humming bird flashing by, 
 Wings of the lark in the purple sky, 
 Wings of the eagle aloft, aloof, 
 Wings of the pigeon upon the roof, 
 Wings of the storm bird swift and free 
 With wild winds sweeping across the sea — 
 Often and often a voice in me sings, 
 Oh, for the freedom, the freedom of wings ! " * 
 
 One of our brightest neophytes thought she 
 could answer this question. She had been reading 
 * From The Child Garden. 
 
298 LETTERS TO A MOTHER. 
 
 Froebel's life, and believed that the seed thought of 
 the Fish in the Brook had germinated in his mind at 
 the time he became a teacher. He had been a for- 
 ester, clerk in a revenue office, twice private secre- 
 tary to wealthy agriculturists, and, dissatisfied with 
 all these vocations, had finally decided to become an 
 architect. Then the destiny that shapes our ends led 
 him to Frankfurt, and brought him in contact with 
 Gruner and his school. Gruner, a man of keen dis- 
 cernment, soon became convinced that Froebel was 
 a born educator, and offered him a position as 
 teacher. Long reflection is never necessary when 
 native impulse throws its whole weight upon one 
 side of a question, and on the very day after 
 Gruner's proposition was made Froebel found him- 
 self standing among his scholars, and feeling, as in 
 his astonishment he wrote to his brother, " like a 
 fish in water, like a bird in the air." He had found 
 his element. "If," continued the speaker, "we 
 interpret our play in the light of this personal ex- 
 perience, we can understand Froebel's preference 
 for the fish. The element in which the fish moves 
 can be seen; the element in which the bird moves 
 is invisible. Child and bird live in the same ele- 
 ment, whereas the fish requires a different element. 
 
A PROPHECY OP FREEDOM. 299 
 
 The bird can still live though caught and caged, 
 but the fish dies when taken out of the water, and is 
 therefore a better illustration of the dependence of 
 free activity upon its ideal environment, and a 
 more emphatic warning against that direct seizure 
 which defeats its own aim. Finally, as Froebel's 
 motto makes very clear, the crystal stream suggests 
 the spiritual purity which is the condition of all 
 joyous spiritual activity. 'Where active life is 
 found, thither turns the child's eye. When such 
 active life is in a clear, transparent element the 
 child's heart swells with waves of joy.' " * 
 
 At this moment some one who happened to 
 glance at her slip of questions exclaimed, " I had 
 forgotten all about our questions, but three of them 
 are answered." A lively member declared that by 
 change of emphasis we had managed to spend an 
 hour over four words. She would review and sum 
 up our discussion. 
 
 « Why seize the fish? " 
 
 " Why seize the fish? " 
 
 "Why seize the fish?" 
 
 Attention was thus consciously directed to the 
 fourth question, and a generalizing activity seized 
 
 * Mottoes and Commentaries, p. 295. 
 21 
 
300 LETTERS TO A MOTHER. 
 
 ■ upon the collective mind of the class. Generalizer 
 number one thought that we did not sufficiently 
 consider the relationship of individuality to its do- 
 mestic, economic, and social environment. She had 
 been reading Wilhelm Meister, and had found in 
 it a wonderful study of different typical individuals 
 and of the necessity laid upon each to find his own 
 domestic and social affinities and his specific voca- 
 tion. Wilhelm, hating the merchant class into 
 which he was born, thought himself intended for 
 an artist, but at last discovered his true vocation in 
 surgery. He imagined himself successively in love 
 with the affectionate but misguided Philina, the 
 romantic countess, the practical and efficient 
 Theresa, until at last his heart discovered its true 
 ideal in the noble IsTatalia. Finally, he ascended 
 from the commercial class, through the artistic class, 
 into the nobility, acquiring gradually the free per- 
 sonality and graceful bearing of the aristocrat. To 
 his old merchant friend Werner he seemed after 
 long separation to have grown taller, stronger, 
 straighter, and in surprise the latter cried: "Thou 
 hast spent thy time badly and I suppose gained 
 nothing, but it must be owned thou art grown a 
 piece of manhood which can not fail to turn to 
 
A PROPHECY OF FREEDOM. 301 
 
 somewhat." Willielm's history was that of an in- 
 dividuality disclosed to itself through the discovery 
 of its ideal environment. This process of finding 
 the self through finding the world in which it could 
 live and act without constraint was shown not only 
 in the career of the hero, but in the lives of many of 
 the subordinate characters, each of whom Goethe 
 conducted to his elect mate and his elect vocation. 
 Even Philina had one useful talent: she could 
 cut out wonderfully well-fitting garments. Fool- 
 ish Lydia was a dextrous needlewoman; the mad- 
 cap Friedrich had a rare memory, and was a born 
 reporter. Hence these seemingly worthless indi- 
 viduals became useful members of the industrial 
 and educational society whose foundation was the 
 work of the master spirits of the book. Under the 
 control of this society, finally, was a pedagogic 
 province in which children were reared in accord- 
 ance with their differing individualities, so that they 
 might the sooner learn to know themselves and the 
 vocation to which Nature had predestined them. 
 
 The buzz and hum which followed this sum- 
 mary of Goethe's great educational romance sank 
 into silence as the widowed mother of a large and 
 happy family rose to speak. "We had all begged her 
 
302 LETTERS TO A MOTHER. 
 
 to join our society, because we knew what treasures 
 of wisdom must be laid up in the storehouse of 
 her rich experience. She had drawn a different 
 lesson from the crystal stream and the pure air. 
 Instead of emphasizing the special element neces- 
 sary for each individual, she had thought of the 
 need of all individuals to live in a clear and in- 
 vigorating spiritual atmosphere. She had with her 
 Froebel's Education of Man, from which she read 
 the following passage: " It is highly important for 
 man that in the period of infancy he absorb nothing 
 morbid, low, mean; nothing ambiguous, nothing 
 bad. The looks, the countenances, of attendants 
 should therefore be pure; indeed, every phase of 
 the surroundings should be firm and sure, arousing 
 and stimulating confidence, pure and clear; pure 
 air, clear light, a clean room, however needy it 
 may be in other respects. For, alas, often the 
 whole life of man is not sufficient to efface what he 
 has absorbed in childhood, the impressions of early 
 youth, simply because his whole being, like a large 
 eye, as it were, was opened to them and wholly 
 given up to them. Often the hardest struggles of 
 man with himself, and even the later most adverse 
 and oppressive events in his life, have their origin 
 
A PROPHECY OF FREEDOM. 303 
 
 in this stage of development; for this reason the care 
 of the infant is so important." * " The conscious 
 effort of my life," continued our kind and helpful 
 friend, " has been to create for my children what 
 the French call a milieu, the English and Ameri- 
 cans an atmosphere, and the Germans a Stimmung. 
 The German word is best because it clearly accen- 
 tuates an internal as opposed to an external en- 
 vironment. I had an early premonition of the 
 truths to which Professor Baldwin has recently 
 called attention, and though I could not have put 
 my feeling into words I realized that the ' child's 
 soul reflects the whole system of influences which 
 combine to stir its sensibilities; that in so far as his 
 sensibilities are stirred he imitates, that by imitat- 
 ing he forms habits, and that habits are character.' f 
 I have, therefore, never allowed my children to 
 have a coarse or even an ignorant nurse. I have 
 not kept them away from other children, because 
 I was sure that isolation would exaggerate indi- 
 vidual and family idiosyncrasies. I have preferred 
 kindergartens and schools to governesses and tutors, 
 
 * Education of Man, Kallmann's Translation, p. 24. 
 + See Mental Development in the Child and the Race, 
 James Mark Baldwin, p. 358. 
 
304 LETTERS TO A MOTHER. 
 
 and I have checked all exclusive friendships be- 
 cause aside from other dangers they are confining 
 and give no room for growth. I talk much with 
 my children and keep a shaping hold on their ideals 
 by throwing in their way invigorating literature, 
 and I try to make amends for my own shortcomings 
 by drawing to our home friends of differing tastes, 
 sympathies, and interests. We have artistic friends, 
 literary friends, musical, scientific, and philosophic 
 friends, and their influence upon my boys and girls 
 has proved how much better it is to inspire than to 
 exhort. But far above all other aid and succor I 
 count the beneficent presence in our home of a 
 saintly grandmother, the influence of a happy 
 church life, and the guidance of a rarely wise 
 pastor. For all ideals have their root in the re- 
 ligious ideal, and if this be not firmly planted in 
 the soil of the heart, I see not how we can expect the 
 fruitage of a useful and happy life. So my prayer, 
 like Froebel's, is ' that it may be given me to edu- 
 cate men and women who shall stand with their 
 feet on God's earth while their minds penetrate 
 God's heaven, who shall be rooted like the tree 
 in the one, that like the tree they may aspire 
 toward the other; whose hearts shall unite earth 
 
A PROPHECY OP FREEDOM. 305 
 
 and heaven, being fed by the rich and varied 
 life of the world, and filled with the blessed peace 
 of God.' " 
 
 My letter threatens to be of formidable length, 
 so I must omit the conversation which followed 
 these remarks, and hasten to epitomize the sug-r 
 gestions of the next speaker. Eeverting to the 
 child's attempt to catch the fish and the bird, she 
 asked if throughout life we were not like him, con- 
 founding physical with spiritual possession. How 
 we longed to own some favorite book; how often 
 after we had made it purs we forgot to reread it! 
 How many a bride lost in her busy husband the 
 happy interchange of thought and feeling she had 
 had with her betrothed ! How many parents, satis^ 
 fied with their children's caresses, failed to win their 
 confidence! How many souls stilled with creeds 
 and ritual the aspiration for union with a living 
 God ! Should we think it very far-fetched if she con-: 
 fessed that some great historic movements seemed 
 to her explained by this same confusion of spiritual 
 with physical possession? Men had needed the 
 Crusades to teach them that it was folly to seek 
 the living Christ in a sepulchre. Christendom 
 found no satisfaction in conquering the Holy Land 
 
306 LETTERS TO A MOTHER. 
 
 and literally walking in the footsteps of the Saviour. 
 Its inner craving was not appeased by shiploads of 
 holy earth brought from Palestine to Europe. The 
 living soul needed a living Christ, and the heart 
 hunger which inspired the Crusades was satisfied in 
 the Reformation.* 
 
 It was growing late, and I was beginning to 
 feel I must close the conference when at last up rose 
 our sweet saint, one clear as the sun, fair as the 
 moon, and who in face of what is untrue and ig- 
 noble can be terrible as an army with banners. No 
 saint of fiction is she, with an unconquered and 
 unreal perfection, but one of the true saints, like 
 Moses, whose meekness was a throttled anger; like 
 Job, whose sublime faith was a slain and trampled 
 doubt; like the whole host of ransomed spirits, who 
 in the holy city receive the reward of them that 
 overcome. I knew that she would be silent so long 
 as there were any willing to speak, for upon her 
 lowly mind has never dawned the thought that she 
 can be as helpful as others. Yet which one of all 
 the members of our society does not realize that no 
 
 * See Hegel's Philosophy of History, English Translation, 
 pp. 405, 410, 431, 432. See also Mother-Play Songs, a Com- 
 mentary by Denton J. Snider. 
 
A PROPHECY OF FREEDOM. 30? 
 
 meeting is truly consecrate until our sweet saint 
 speaks the hallowing word. She had written what 
 she wished to say, for she is shy withal and can not 
 depend on readiness of speech. I borrowed her 
 paper at the end of the meeting, and copy it now 
 for you. 
 
 " The last four questions given to guide our 
 study have been very helpful to me, and I am won- 
 dering if I can put into words the thoughts they 
 have stirred. The clew to their meaning is Froe- 
 bel's suggestion that while the magnet which at- 
 tracts the child to bird and fish is free activity in a 
 pure element, the yearning which this attraction 
 implies can be satisfied only as the soul itself 
 achieves perfect self-activity. But perfect self- 
 activity implies self-environment, for so long as 
 thought or will depend upon an environment differ- 
 ent from themselves for their incitement they are 
 neither self-originated nor self-sustained. We are 
 not free in sense-perception, for the activities of 
 touch, taste, smell, hearing, and sight are dependent 
 upon presented objects. We are not free when we 
 recall past perceptions, for we can only recall what 
 has' been presented, and thus, while delivered from 
 a spatial, are enthralled by a temporal environment. 
 
308 LETTERS TO A MOTHEB. 
 
 But we are free when we think of causal energies, 
 because we are then translating into consciousness 
 our own causal power. Furthermore, since all men 
 are causative beings, all individuals can compre- 
 hend causal processes, and therefore through causal 
 explanation we achieve intellectual community. 
 
 " As thought is not free in sense-perception, so 
 will is not free when prompted to action either by 
 environment or by that blind impulse wherein 
 mind is external to itself. Will begins to be free 
 when by thinking a possible state of things in place 
 of one that actually exists it originates conscious 
 motives. Testing its self-originated motives by 
 action, it learns to discriminate those which con- 
 tradict from those which coincide with its own ideal 
 nature, and in obedience to the latter achieves abso- 
 lute self -activity or perfect liberty. 
 
 " Thus far I had journeyed in my search for a 
 self-originating and hence self-environing activity, 
 when an illuminating flash of thought revealed to 
 me the true meaning of Kant's moral imperative: 
 ' So act that thy deed will not contradict itself if 
 made the universal act of all intelligent beings.' 
 As men achieved intellectual solidarity through 
 thinking causal energies, so they achieved moral 
 
A PROPHECY OF FREEDOM. 309 
 
 solidarity through obeying altruistic ideals. Here 
 indeed was thought environed by thought, will en- 
 vironed by will. And self-environing or universal 
 thought and will, what. could they be other than 
 the thought and will of God! 
 
 " Lost in meditation, I had forgotten all about 
 our song and play when, as the identity of the ideal 
 human with the divine defined itself in my con- 
 sciousness, my thought suddenly reverted to its 
 point of departure. I remembered the fish in the 
 water, the bird in the air, and as I connected the 
 joyful activity of each with its appropriate element 
 the mists still clinging to my mental horizon rolled 
 away, and there dawned upon me the sunrise of a 
 new heaven and a new earth. "Was the final truth 
 not a God immanent in the world, but rather a 
 world immanent in God? "Were we living in God 
 as the fish lives in the water and the bird in the air? 
 Was the divine life the element in which alone our 
 souls could exercise a free activity, and yet, since 
 we were in the image of God, were we self -environ- 
 ing because God environed? Was all spiritual life 
 interpenetrating and interpenetrable, and was each 
 spirit therefore not limited, but extended by the 
 boundary of other spirits? I remembered that the 
 
310 LETTERS TO A MOTHER. 
 
 physical universe was spread out iu infinite or self- 
 limiting space, and that through this including yet 
 isolating environment each object received the 
 guarantee of individuality. Were all spirits thus 
 included in God, who through this very inclusion 
 assured 'the eternal form which shall still divide 
 the eternal soul from all beside ' 2 And, last of 
 all, might it be because all souls were at home in 
 God that searching for him we wandered from him? 
 
 " ' Oh, where is the sea ?' the fishes cried 
 
 As they swam the crystal clearness through; 
 
 ' We've heard from of old of the ocean's tide 
 And we long to look on the waters blue. 
 
 The wise ones speak of an infinite sea; 
 
 Oh, who can tell us if such there be ? ' 
 
 " The lark flew up in the morning bright 
 
 And sang and balanced on sunny wings, 
 
 And this was its song: ' I see the light; 
 
 I look on a world of beautiful things ; 
 
 And flying and singing everywhere 
 
 In vain I have sought to find the air.' " 
 
 Do you wonder that I • was happy as I 
 walked home under the starlit sky? Those with 
 whom I had held communion were all my friends, 
 some of them dear pupils and children of my soul. 
 They were trying to learn all they could, he all 
 they could, do all they could. I was sure that each 
 
A PROPHECY OP FREEDOM. 311 
 
 truth, intellectually discerned would be "wrought 
 into character, and I knew that in the home and in 
 the kindergarten they would live with and for the 
 children. In them the eager craving for self -cul- 
 ture was mated with the consecrated impulse of 
 child nurture. I had seen of the travail of my soul, 
 and was satisfied. 
 
 THE END. 
 
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