\2B ^f-?^y^??-.'>-':'-'!-'r^"^^'^'~-""--'' iiiiititsii^^'^ns tTeacbere College Contributions to Ebucation mo. 4 / The Educational Theories of Herbaft and Froebel John Angus MacVannel, Ph.D. .'UBUSHSD fff KaisiwmS¥^S§ eOLUMSLA. UNJVERSiTY New- York BOUGHT WITH THE INCOME FROM THE SAGE ENDOWMENT FUND THE GIFT OF HentQ W, Sage 1S91 /?,.Z}SSSq id-.SJ4Ao7,.. 7673-2 v\ Cornell University Library LAI 28 .M17 The educational theories ,oI,,,U«[.''SIj5,,?I?,'f' olin 3 1924 032 698 650 The original of tinis book is in the Cornell University Library. There are no known copyright restrictions in the United States on the use of the text. http://archive.org/details/cu31924032698650 4 THE EDUCATIONAL THEORIES OF HERBART AND FROEBEL COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY, TEACHERS COLLEGE CONTRIBUTIONS TO EDUCATION NO. 4 THE EDUCATIONAL THEORIES OF HERBART AND FROEBEL BY JOHN ANGUS MacVANNEL, Ph.D. Professor of Philosophy of Education, Teachers College PUBLISHED BY Ueacbers College, Columbia XHniverstts NEW YORK "1906 :^ CONTENTS Introductory Note 7 I. — The Period and the Point of View 8 II. — Rousseau and the Problem of Civilization in THE Eighteenth Century 12 III. — The Transition Period 19 IV. — Romanticism . . ., 32 V. — From Kant to Hegel: The Idealistic Interpre- tation OF Nature and History .... 40 VI. — From Rousseau to Proebel: The Evolution of Educational Ideas 48 VII. — Realism in Philosophy and Education: Herbart 66 VIII. — ^The Educational Theories of Froebel ... 80 IX. — Retrospect and Conclusion 117 THE EDUCATIONAL THEORIES OF HERBART AND FROEBEL INTRODUCTION The rough notes and suggestions furnished in this Syllabus are an attempt (a) to outline the evolution of educational ideas from Rousseau to Froebel as an outcome of the more general movement in social theory, (b) to relate the educational theories of Herbart and Froebel to the wider intellectual movements of Romanticism, Realism, and Idealism. It is assumed that no theory, ethical, philosophical, educational, can be completely understood when isolated from the human conditions which produced it. The evolution of educational opinion is part of the entire intellectual and social movement of a period. The outline aims to trace in a genetic way the emergence of certain ideas within a particular period and the transformation of educational problems by these ideas. It does not, however, underrate the value of the study of the personalities of the men through whom these ideas foimd their first adequate expression. A syllabus is at best a provisional sketch, — ^part seen, imagined part. Brevity without injury to clearness is in a very real sense possible only after the most detailed exposition. The syllabus of a period so complex as the one here outlined can be nothing more than a plan of action, serving its purpose if it in some small way assist students in the organization of such means of communication as may render easier the transition from one branch of knowledge to another. In the course the attempt is made gradually to formu- late a methodology of the educational problein, and thus have it serve as an approach to a study of the Philosophy of Education. 7 8 Educational Theories The syllabus as a whole aims to indicate the nature of philosophic method in the study of the evolution of educational ideas rather than to increase the store of information concerning them. In the present outline the notes and references may prove suggestive in some directions: they are not intended to be exhaustive in any direction whatever. I THE PERIOD AND THE POINT OF VIEW 1. It is a matter of common knowledge that there cannot be any adequate appreciation of the educational theories of the present without some understanding of the foundations of such theories in the needs and aspirations, the intellectual and social tendencies of the past. To reach any definite conclusions in regard to fundamental tendencies in the present, a study is necessary of the previous conditions through which they passed in order to reach the present. For in any study involving per- sonal and social progress there may be recognized certain well- defined conceptions formerly maintained, which, compared with the present, wUl indicate with a fair degree of security the line of futttre advance. Education is a djmamic, growing process, a part of a changing social situation : its theory is in turn a function of the wider intellectual and spiritual life of the particular period. 2. Educational theory, even while having its especial and clearly limited object, is closely involved in the life of each civilization, and, indeed, in the life of every people. In each age it acts upon the spirit of the people, and is in ttim reacted upon by that spirit. In its development it is continuous with the development of other intellectual and social movements, of literature, art and science, of economics, politics and religion. In looking back over the history of the intellectual and social life of mankind it would appear to be true that transitional eras in scientific, ethical, political or religious thought were also eras of corresponding changes in educational theory and practice, e. g., as the present outline will attempt to show, the development of educational ideas from Rousseau to Froebel is continuous with the simultaneous transformation and development of philosoph- ical and social theories, the intellectual, moral and aesthetic products, of the period from Rousseau to Hegel. Herbart and Froebel g 3. It is still in many quarters an open question whether great educators should be thought of as heroes to be worshipped, as Carlyle would demand, or as representative men who are to be followed because they express what all are thinking, as Emerson would have us believe. Though, in many cases, not philosophers in any technical sense, the great educators inevitably became vehicles of philosophical ideas and of social tendencies. Indeed, their essential originality in most instances consists in the degree to which they were able to synthesize their educational beliefs with the dominant intellectual movements of their time. While, therefore, in the present outline, the emphasis is concerned with the evolution of ideas rather than the biography of writers, it would not underrate the necessity of maintaining a balance or proportion between persons and ideas. It is easy to over- emphasize either, and thus tend to give a very misleading view of a period such as the one under consideration. For in the thought and teachings of the great educational leaders, embody- ing, as we have seen, the philosophical and social tendencies of their period, is found a unique confirmation of the personal as well as the organic nature of human life: from the interdepend- ence, moreover, of many and varied tendencies in literature, phi- losophy, political theory, ethics, and theology, one is inevitably led to a deeper view of human thought and activity, and of the spiritual foundations of both. 4. The period 'From Rousseau to Froebel' lies between what may rightly be regarded as two great events in the evolu- tion of educational ideas, (a) the indictment of civilization and culture by Rousseau, and (b) the unique reconstruction of edu- cational theory attempted by Froebel. The development of educational ideas in this period may be regarded either (a) as the expression of intellectual and spiritual tendencies and of recognized practical needs, or (b) from the point of view of the actual definitive clearness with which the problems themselves were stated, and solutions offered by educational leaders. In the present outline the attempt is made to indicate the possibili- ties of the study of the period from the twofold point of view. 5. The purposes of the present outline may now be given a somewhat more formal statement as follows : (a) by the use pf the comparative and historical method, lo Educational Theories within a limited area, to indicate what were the more important problems with which the writers on education dealt, and what were the conditions, intellectual and social, which determined the various statements of the problems and the attempts at their solution. Since educational theory is an organic part of the wider history of culture, a syllabus can, at best, indicate in very schematic form the directions and interrelations of the in- tellectual and spiritual movements of a period to which its edu- cational ideas were organic. Its peculiar danger lies in depriving the period of its natural continuity of movement and life. (b) to outline the relation of the work of Herbart and of Froebel to its historical setting, and the dependence of their theories upon the philosophical movements of the period. This wUl necessitate some indication of the philosophical content of Idealism, Romanticism, and Realism. (c) to indicate the contributions of Herbart and Froebel to a philosophy of education. 6. Before passing on to the outline of the period it may be well for purposes of simplification to indicate in somewhat dog- matic form what are to be regarded as the more important phases of the social problem in the period as a whole : (a) The period is marked, first of all, by attempts at the reconciliation or adjustment of the two elemental human ten- dencies, that of individual freedom and collective organization. The worth of the individual and his right to self-realization came to fuller and fuller recognition. This movement at first took the form, for the most part, of reaction against all existing institu- tions; gradually, however, the lesson was learned that the indi- vidual life in itself is naught; only as a member of the great institutions of the race can the individual become truly human, spiritual and free. (&) The period is marked, in the second place, by a gradual change from mechanical and static to organic and developmental modes of viewing nature and human society. In the place of the atomistic view of things, in politics, philosophy, theology, and education, the organic view of society, of experience, of the entire cosmic process, came to prevail. The mental gaze was transferred from the categories of 'being' to those of 'becom- ing-' Herbart and Froebel 1 1 (c) In the period there may be noted a gradual transforma- tion of the deistic to the theistic view of God's relation to the world. The mechanical Deism gave way to the more imma- nental and spiritual view of Theism, a view, at times, closely approximating to Pantheism. {d) Closely connected with the preceding is the new concep- tion of the relation and significance of nature to the human spirit. In place of the view which held to the absolute dualism of nature and spirit came the view of nature as the manifestation of the Absolute and as a medium through which the human spirit attains to self-knowledge and self-realization. {e) As a final aspect of the social problem during this period may be noted the gradual change from an individualistic ethics to an ethics based upon the demands of the social whole. Closely connected with this, and contributing to it were those ideas and ideals of equality, humanitarianism, of an aristocracy of intel- ligence rather than birth, and of the new developments in psy- chological, historical, and physical science, in literature and art, in education and philanthropy. Corresponding to the new religious and ethical ideals there emerged in this transitional period new attitudes to nature, to humanity, to the responsibil- ities as well as the opportimities of life. References: The more important sources of material for the study of the period will be indicated in connection with the respective chapters. It is need- less to say that the important sottrces are the works of the writers them- selves. The study of the period is fundamentally a study of the influence and continuous action of ivorks on works. The various lists make no pre- tension to completeness. They aim to be suggestive merely, not in any sense exhaustive. There are certain books which it is necessary for the student to know if he is to be saved from making discoveries which later turn out to be not discoveries at all. A few of the more important books, which, in addition to the writings of Rousseau, Kant, Goethe, Fichte, Hegel, Pestalozzi, Herbart, and Froebel, naturally form the nucleus of source-material for the study of the period (for the reason that they in- evitably become incorporated sooner or later with our idea of the period) are the following: Boyesen, Essays on German Literature; Caird, The Critical Philosophy of Kant; Dewey, The Child and the Curriculum; Erd- mann, History of Philosophy, Vol. II; Falckenburg, History of Modern Philosophy; Francke, German Literature as Determined by Social Forces; Harris, Psychologic Foundations of Education (Part 12 Educational Theories III); Hoflfding, History of Modern Philosophy; Merz, History of European Thought in the Nineteenth Century; Robertson, A History of German U-terature; Rosenkranz, The Philosophy of Education; Royce, The Spirit of Modern Philosophy; Scherer, A History of German Literature; Taylor, Studies in German Literature; Ueber- weg. History of Philosophy, Vol. II; WiUmann, Didaktik; Windel- band. History of Philosophy; Wuiidt, Ethical Systems. n ROUSSEAU AND THE PROBLEM OF CIVILIZATION m THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY I. The dominant tendencies of the intellectual life of the eighteenth century may be indicated as follows: (a) A movement towards the emancipation of himian thought and activity, and the liberation of man from the influ- ence of past dogmas and traditions. The psychology of the ' Enlightenment ' contained two fundamental propositions, bor- rowed from Leibnitz (while omitting the deeper implications of his doctrine) : (i) ideas are the constituents of the mental life, and (2) the ftmdamental difference in mental life is the difference between dark and clear ideas. The 'Enlightenment' of the understanding became the watchword, and to the test of the ' understanding ' every belief, institution, creed, must submit or be rejected. (&) The ideal of Individualism which manifested itself in the prevailing theories of knowledge, of morality, and of human society. In addition to the notion borrowed from Leibnitz that ideas are the constituent elements of the mental life, a theory of the origin of these ideas had been derived from English Em- piricism. A psychology grounded on experience and regarded as the fundamental science became the basis of attack in political, assthetic, moral, and religious problems, (i) Locke declared, "All knowledge is from experience." Interpreting experience in terms of sensation, and materialistically, the Ency- clopaedists claimed that we have no knowledge of anything in- capable of being experienced by the senses. (2) Pleasure or happiness was regarded as the legitimate end of the individual's action and enlightened selfishness the only rule of conduct. Herbart and Froebel 13 (c) The prevailing Deism, or the tendency to so-called ' na- tural religion' of the period. In harmony with the dominant intellectualistic psychology noted above, it was at first argued that Christianity was not .mysterious but reasonable, and that the value of religion could not lie in any unintelligible element. Difficulties still remaining, revealed religion came to be ques- tioned and attacked as either superfluous or untrue or both. The outcome among many of the leaders of thought and opinion was either mere toleration of or thoroughgoing opposition to religious beliefs, both natural and revealed. (d) The belief in a state of nature as man's primitive condition, by some writers regarded as a state of human equality, goodness, and happiness. Coupled with this is the ideal of the so-called return to nature. (Concerning the notion of a "state of nature,' see Davidson's Rousseau, pp. 3-23.) {e) The conception of the state or society as the outcome of a social contract consciously and voluntarily entered into by individuals for their own good. From the preceding analysis it will be seen that the dominant characteristic of the eighteenth century was its individualism and its opposition to the accepted dogmas as well as the actual conditions in church and state : and the work of its representative thinkers and writers was directed chiefly towards the establish- ment of a new type of philosophy (theoretical and practical), based on the principles of individualism and naturalism. This tendency, indeed, had been gradually but steadily growing and formulating itself through the preceding three centuries. It came to clear consciousness in Rousseau as the problem of civili- zation. Since the Renaissance a new type of civilization and culture had been developing, and at length a voice was raised, as- serting the falsity of the whole thing. Rousseau in the modem, as the Sophist in ancient times, was the first clearly to raise the question of the worth of civilization to the life of the individual. In all his writings this fundamental question reappears in one form or another and again and again: What is the value and significance of human history and human civilization for the morality and happiness of the individual? Is it true, indeed, that the growth of human knowledge and the increasing com- plexity of human relationships, inseparably connected with 14 Educational Theories so-called civilization, has been for the good of man as man, and made for his true happiness? Does not civilization hinder rather than enhance the happiness as well as the morality of man? In whatever form this question had hitherto expressed itself, back of it all we find the individual coming to a conscious- ness of himself, of his rights and powers, as independent of what he conceived to be the arbitrary environment which surrounded him. This reaction against authority, now manifest in the Renaissance, now in the Reformation, now in the development of Rationalism, and ultimately in the Revolution, brought the individual into sharp relief. It shows the individual continu- ally becoming more conscious and more determined. The very meaning and significance of society came to be questioned. Is not society a merely artificial product ? Does it not merely impede the individual, hinder his development, and thwart his freedom? Is not the individual man, after all, the measure of all things, the criterion of what things are true, and what things are good? 2. When we think of the spirit of the eighteenth centtiry it is the name of Voltaire which almost inevitably comes to' mind. When we consider the centiuy by itself it is Voltaire who perhaps best of all embodies and represents the entire period. On the other hand, when we think of the eighteenth as preceding and conditioning in large measure the spiritual history of the nine- teenth, it is rather to Rousseau and his work that we must turn. While it is safe to consider Rousseau (17 12— 1778) as an epoch- maker in the history of thought, nevertheless to regard his work and that of his contemporaries as an absolute break with the past is to take an inadequate view of the entire movement which it is supposed to constitute. In the evolution of ideas it is difficult to determine just when a particular idea or tendency begins to operate. Failure to recognize the danger of selecting arbitrary starting-points for intellectual and spiritual move- ments is to lose sight of the essential continuity of human thought and experience. As a social phenomenon Rousseauism may be said to have been conditioned in its origin and in its cotirse by the character of the period which had preceded it. It arose, it is true, in what seems a distinctly conscious break with the past. It was intended, indeed, that the past should be sud- Herbart and Froebel 1 5 denly superseded, that the individual should be freed in thought and action. This very intention, however, had its own historic conditions, its own period of preparation in the past. The movements, therefore, connected with the name of Rousseau, were not altogether suddenly initiated, nor are they yet by any means finished processes. The principles which made them pos- sible were at work in the preceding' period, and even now those same principles are being carried to their fuller development. In estimating the character and influence of Rousseau it is necessary to keep in mind two things: (a) his own nature, (6) his relation to the thought of his times. He was at once original and impressionable — an exponent perhaps more than the origin- ator of ideas. However inconsistent at times his writings may appear, it is not a difficult matter to realize how completely they reveal the nature of the man as well as the character of the times in which he lived. 3. Rousseau's Writings. — ^As has been noted above, the one question fundamental to the thought of Rousseau is civilization. Partly owing to his own character and experience, and partly to the influences at work in the life about him, Rousseau became the interpreter or exponent of the tendencies and aspirations, and of the general temper of tinrest prevalent in his time, and his writings critiques of existing institutions, (i) Discourse on the Sciences and%\.rts, 1750. In 1749 the Academy of Dijon pro- posed as a theme for a prize-essay the topic, " Has the restora- tion of the sciences contributed to ptirify or corrupt manners?" Rousseau's essay won the prize. Henceforth his attitude towards civilization as making for morality and happiness was a negative one. (2) The Origin of Inequality, 1753. (3) The New Heloise, 1761. An attack on the feudal family: his chief work as an imaginative writer. "The novelty of the book lay," writes Brandes, "in the first instance, in the fact that it gave the death-blow to gallantry, and, consequently, to the theory of the French classical period on the subject of the emotions. This theory was that all noble, fine emotions, and chief among them love, were the products of civilization." Brandes goes on to note more fully the four characteristic features : (i) Love as a natural, not artificial or conventional mannerism, (ii) In- equality in station of the hero and heroine, (iii) The moral 1 6 Educational Theories conviction of the sanctity of marriage, (iv) Nature in its literal significance. "For the first time, out of England, we have the genuine feeling for nature in fiction, superseding love-making in drawing-rooms and gardens." {Main Currents of Literature in the Nineteenth Century, Vol. I. For the influence of Rousseau on Goethe, see p. 20 ff. of the same volume.) (4) The Social Contract, 1762. Devoted to the political problem — ^the sover- eignty of the people, the equality of men. "Man is bom free but is everywhere in chains." The 'Social Contract' was but a part of a much larger scheme, as projected, of entire social equality. (5) Emile, 1763. Devoted to the educational and religious problem. "While others were content with the mere enunciation of maxims and precepts, he breathed into them the spirit of life, and enforced them with a vividness of faith that clothed education with the augustness and unction of religiqa" (Morley). (6) Confessions, 1782. Published fotir years after his death. 4. The Social and Ethical Theories of Rousseau. — (i) The theory of the State of Nature. Since, according to Roiisseau,* all that is natural, all that is good, all that is fundamentally human, has disappeared with advancing civilization- and ctilture, the only relief for man from' such universal degefietacy is to be hoped for from a return to nature on the part of the indiridual and society alike. And this return is to be ^chie^d through a new type of education and the formation of a state conformed to nature. (2) The theory of the Social Contract. (3) The con- ception of the 'general will.' (4) Reaction against the Phi- losophy of the ' Enlightenment ' — ^in psychology, in . religion, in aesthetics, (s) Education as the fundamental form of social re- construction. (See Chap. VI.) (s) In an appreciation and criti- cism of the doctrines of Rousseau the following points might be noted: (a) Rousseau did well in forcing upon the reluctant mind of his generation the problem of civilization, its validity and its shortcomings. But the genius and temperament of Rousseau is destructive, rather than creative or reconstructive. While discerning what was transient in the civilization of his day, he was iinable to indicate within it that which was of permanent significance for humanity. Herbart and Froebel 1 7 (6) While he recalled his generation from a blind worship of the past, yet Rousseau's appreciation of the meaning and signifi- cance of history was .wholly inadequate. As was to be shown by later writers, the importance of the past lies in its lesson for the present and future. The survival of beliefs, institutions, customs, is an evidence of their significance to the human spirit, and this is to be estimated, — ^not abruptly denied. Rous- seau, however, had little, if any, appreciation of the continuity of history. (c) Rousseau's notion of a 'state of nature' in which are realized both liberty and equality (as he uses the conceptions) seems impossible for man as at present constituted. If you have the one you cannot have the other. In Rousseau's concep- tion of liberty the errors of individualism are set in clear relief. In failing to recognize that human life is essentially social and moral, he confounds mere natural spontaneity with that rational or spiritual freedom which is gained, as Kant maintains, through the limitation and control of mere natural spontaneity or desire in the presence of law. (See also Chaps. Ill and VI.) (d) Though not a psychologist in the strict sense of the term, 'nevertheless Rousseau maintained a psychological attitude towards life, with the result that his works contain the germs of several divergent lines of thought and experience in the succeed- ing generation. While he was influenced by both Rationalism and Empiricism, yet for him the element of feeling is the central, the fundamental, element in the human mind. In Rousseau, Romanticism in large measure took its rise. "The man who has lived most is not he who has numbered the most years, but he who has the keenest sense of life." It was this element of feeling or passion which made Rousseau's influence a power. He in- fused into the ideas he accepted from his time this element of passion, and at once they became vital, influential in the minds and hearts of his readers. By vindicating with impassioned eloquence the right of the whole personality of the individual to participate in the solution of its deepest problems, in opposi- tion to the one-sided 'understanding' of the 'Enlightenment,' Rousseau became a pre-Kantian defender of the faith of practi- cal reason. His words found their response in Herder, Goe- the, Schiller, Kant, Fichte, and Pestalozzi. His emotions were 1 8 Educational Theories moreover, extremely complex, — ^now self -centered and selfish, now, to all appearances, altogether altruistic. He felt keenly the burden of human life in the France of his day, yet he too often regarded it as merely his own. In this passionate exercise of feeling there was something which constantly tended to carry him beyond a purely individualistic view of man, and to a more adequate conception of his relation to nature, to other men and to God than had hitherto prevailed. Although, for example, his notion of religion is still, in the main, deistic, yet connected with it is an emotional element which is an anticipation of a newer conception which was soon to follow. "I believe in God . . . because a thousand motives of preference at- tract me to the side that is most consoling, and join the weight of hope to the equilibrium of reason." Further his sympathy towards man has within it the promise of better things to come. "It is the common people," he writes, "who compose the human race : what is not the people is so trivial that it is not worth tak- ing into account. Before one who reflects, all civU distinctions disappear; he sees the same passions, the same feelings in the clown as in the man of note and reputation; he only distin- guishes their language, and a varnish more or less elaborately laid on." Thus Rousseau's somewhat emotional 'return to na- ture' had important bearings upon (i) the reaction against mere rationalism in matters of belief, (2) the movement towards de- mocracy with its deeper and wider Humanism and its apprecia- tion of the worth and dignity of man as man, (3) the appreciation of the significance of nature for the human spirit, and of its power to respond and minister to human needs. Rousseau's work, though for the most part destructive, contained within it elements which, later on, inevitably made for social recon- struction. REFBRigNCBS: Bonar, Philosophy and Political Economy; Bosanquet, Philo- sophical Theory of the State; Bruneti^re, History of French Litera- ture; Davidson, Rousseau and Education according to Nature; Dieterich, Kant und Rousseau; Fester, Rousseau und Geschichtsphi- losophie; Hudson, Rousseau; Levy-Bruhl, History of Modern Phi- losophy in France; Macdonald, Studies in the France of Voltaire and Rousseau; Morley, Rousseau; Ritchie, Natural Rights; Win- delband. History of Philosophy; Wundt, Ethical Systems. Herbart and Froebel 19 Further problems for study: 1. Sources of the doctrine of Rousseau. 2. Rousseau's psychology. 3. The concept of 'equality' in the writings of Rousseau. 4. Rousseau's theory of society. 5. The conception of civilization in Rousseau. 6. The conception of the 'general will' in Rousseau. 7. Rousseau's doctrine of nature and culture. 8. Rousseau's relation to Romanticism. Q. Influence of Rousseau on Kant, Goethe, and Pestalozzi. m THE TRANSITION PERIOD 1. The eighteenth centtiry, though a period in which there existed a certain tendency to remain self-satisfied with the exist- ing condition of things, was nevertheless in Germany, France, and England fraught with immense possibilities in politics, in indus- try, in science, in literature, in philosophy, and religion. The age led out beyond itself in many directions. In Germany, during the last quarter of the century especially, it became an era of transition in which new aspirations, new ideas of life and conduct became formative in the minds and hearts of men. In philosophy, literature and theology is found during this period the most fruitful contribution of Germany, where the period of transition took the form of intellectual rather than political or industrial revolution. 2. Without any attempt at completeness the following characteristics may be noted as the more important for the present purpose: (i) Its struggle for truth and the strengthening of the critical insight. (2) Its opposition of the original force and simplicity of nature to the artificial forms of culture and society. (3) The gradual prevalence of organic over mechanical modes of thinking, leading to new conceptions of God's rela- tion to the world, of the interrelations of men and the relation and significance of nature to the spiritual life. (4) A tendency towards individualism and an emphasis of the subjective, per- sonal aspect of truth, and an tmceasing search for fresh spiritual life and light in art and literature, in philosophy and religion. (5) The struggle for freedom of conscience, the deepening of the 20 Educational Theories sense of the value of the individual, his right to self-realization, an ideal of human advancement through individual self-culture. Coupled with this is a new Humanism in literature, art, and moral theory. 3. (a) Lessing (1729-1781) as Pathfinder, "a man who, while combining in himself the enlightenment, the idealism, the universality of the best of his age, added to this an intellectual fearlessness and a constructive energy which have raade him the champion destroyer of despotism, and the master builder of lawful freedom" (Francke). The forerunner of classical German literature — Principal works — (i) Minna von Barnhelm, Emilia GaloUi, Nathan the Wise, and The Education of the Human Race; (2) Hamburg Dramaturgy, and Laocoon. Their political, agsthetic, ethical, and religious significance — Embodiments of those movements which were to make for human freedom, for social reconstruction and consolidation. (b) In Lessing may be noted (i) the influence of the transi- tional period in which he lived. Neither the orthodoxy, the pietism, nor the rationalism of his day completely satisfied him. No radical innovator, Lessing aimed at a gradual transformation of the existing state of things. Through his attempts at literary and artistic reform, his search for the true lines of social progress, his demand for religious freedom, he became in his century a unique representative of the movement, not merely of emancipa- tion but of reconstruction. (2) A passionate love of truth, a demand for freedom of thought and conscience and the concep- tion of eternal striving as the true duty of man. "Not the truth of which any one is, or supposes himself to be, possessed, but the upright endeavor he has made to arrive at truth, makes the worth of a man. For not by the possession, but by the in- vestigation, of truth are his powers expanded, wherein alone his ever-growing perfection consists. Possession makes us easy, in- dolent, proud. — If God held all truth shut in His right hand, and in His left hand nothing but the ever-restless instinct for truth, though with the condition of forever and ever erring, and should say to me,' Choose! ' — I should bow humbly to His left hand, and say, 'Father, give! pure truth is for Thee alone.' " (Compare the ideas of Goethe, Kant, and Fichte.) (3) Closely connected with the idea of eternal striving is his possession of the historical sense, Herbart and Froebel 2 1 his anticipation of the idea of organic growth and its resultant optimism. (4) A combination of cosmopolitan toleration and nationalism, an ideal of freedom whose foundations are laid in discipline, an individualism resting on habits of self-control and self-surrender. (5) The conception of feeling as the fundamental element of the psychical life. (6) The accordance of his views of God, the world and the human soul with those of Leibnitz. The idea of inner connection between nature and history. For Lessing, influenced by Spinoza, there exists an immanent rather than transcendent relation between God and the world, and reality as a whole is in a ceaseless process of becoming and de- velopment. God does not exist apart from the world: He is to be conceived, rather, as the soul of the world. (7) Influence of Lessing upon Herder and Goethe. (c) In The Education of the Human Race (1780), perhaps the most suggestive of his writings, which is closely connected in many ways with Nathan the Wise, which preceded it, Lessing formtilates his general ethical and philosophical position in the form of an ideal of religion, — of a new gospel. In this brief treatise is found an application of the Leibnitzian idea of de- velopment to the history of positive religions. The history of the various religions of the world is an education of the human race through divine revelation. In them we are not to find mere blind striving and error, but rather the only road by which the human mind in each instance has been able to develop, and along which it win develop still farther. What education is to the individual man, revelation is to the whole human race. By means of revelation the human race is raised from lower to higher stages. Every individual must traverse the same course as that by which the race attains its perfection ; and just as the education of the individual puts nothing foreign or extraneous into him, but merely puts him in possession more quickly of that which he could have reached for himself, so is human reason il- luminated by revelation concerning things to which it could have attained by its own unaided efforts, only that without the divine cooperation the process wotild have been infinitely more arduous and prolonged. 4. In Herder's interpretation of nature and history there may be noted: (a) Certain general characteristics of the mind and 22 Educational Theories work of Herder (i 744-1 803) which served to give him an influen- tial place in the movement of ideas in this era of transition: (i) Endowed with wonderful spiritual vitality, deep feeling, pro- found interpretative power, Herder was able to vitalize the in- tellectual life of his time as was perhaps no other writer of the period. Compared with that of Kant, his mind was of the syn- thetic, the formative, rather than of the analytic or critical type. " Life, Love, Light," the words written on his tomb and on the statue at Weimar, embody the spirit and the spiritual aspirations of Herder. (2) In his refinement of the philosophy of feeling, of its basal character in the personal life, against the demand of mere reason or understanding. Herder may be regarded as a forertinner of Romanticism in Germany, as was Rousseau in France. He resembled the Romanticists also in his inability to keep his poetic, his philosophic and his religious ideas apart. (3) Through his study of primitive poetry and, notably, by his essay on Ossian, Herder taught the value of the poetry of the people as contrasted with that of the cultured. (4) As one who had in early life received much inspiration from Rousseau, Herder was a strong defender of the claims of natiire, freedom, and the right of the individual to self-realization. From the point of view of ethics, he maintains against Kant, his former teacher, that the end of life must lie in the particular and indi- vidual rather than merely in the race. To each individual is allotted such development and perfection as is possible at the given stage. Yet Herder recognizes that this development is rendered possible only through (i) reciprocal action between individuals, and (ii) transmission of the acquired means of ciilture from generation to generation. It is this interrelation between individuals and generations which produces humanity and ren- ders a philosophy of history possible. In the work of Herder as a whole there are the seemingly contradictory tendencies, — ^to hold fast equally to individualism and to collectivism, and, in- deed, to pantheism. {b) Herder's Ideas for a Philosophy of History of Mankind was published between 1784-1 791. This work, with Kant's Critique of Pure Reason, gives utterance to the most important intellec- tual drift of the laSt century. In this book, says Pfieiderer, meet, as in a focus, the combined restdts of Herder's various phUo- Herbart and Froehel 23 sophical labors, labors which opened up new and magnificent points of view especially in those branches of study which were depreciated by Kant, viz., the emotional side of the life of the human soul and the development of mankind under the com- bined action of the natural and spiritual forces in history. In an analysis of Herder's Ideas the following points should be noted: (i) His aim is to explain human evolution as ulti- mately an outcome of man's physical environment. Man is to be viewed as a part of nature — ^nature's last child, her first freed- man — and his various forms of development as purely natural processes. In man is the meeting-point of the physical and ethical series. Kant, on the other hand, whom Herder opposed, viewed human evolution as the gradual manifestation of a growing factdty of rational free-will, and opposed it to the operations of physical nature. (2) He asserts the interconnec- tion according to law of all things in nature and history. This presupposes a ground of unity in existence. " God is everything in His works." (3) In his conception of development Herder is dominated by Spinoza, Rousseau and Leibnitz. To Spinoza he owed much of his monistic conception of things, the tmity of God and the world, of nature and spirit. With Rousseau, he lays stress on the earlier stages of human development, since because of their simpler and more spontaneous character {cf. Schiller) they appear to him the more real and valuable. His doctrine of organic forces is a transformation of Leibnitz's theory of monads. These forces, after the fashion of the active force in our thought, operate in different degrees and at various stages through all nature, which forms one vast organism. Even in unconscious nature, ideal forces unceasingly operate and organize in accordance with definite types. The lower forms of life prefigure man in unequal degrees of imperfection, (4) Since the development of man is to be explained in con- nection with his environment, his mental faculties are to be viewed in relation to his organization and as developed under the pressure of the necessities of life. The great law of nature is that everywhere on earth everything be realized that can be realized there: its end, — humanity and the development of human capacities. Preceding abstract thought there was the religious consciousness of the invisible forces in nature. 24 Educational Theories Reason is not innate: it is a product. Our thoughts have been acquired through tradition, speech, environmental influences. Man comes into the world to learn reason. This is nothing, Herder claims, other than something acquired, a proportion and direction of ideas and faculties which we must learn, and to which man, according to his organization and way of life, must be educated. The individual becomes man only through a process of education, and education proceeds through the par- ticipation of the individual in the life of the race. 5. (o) Kant (1724-1804) once declared that, after all, the greatest, and perhaps sole, use of philosophy is merely negative, and, instead of discovering truth, has only the more modest merit of preventing error. His own work resolves itself into a critical account of the nature, possibility and limits of hu- man experience. Starting from the accepted order of nature and the moral order acknowledged in. the conviction of duty, Kant seeks to answer the question. What do these imply ? His account is embodied in the three Critiques: (i) the Critique of Pure Reason (1781), presenting an epistemological view of ex- perience, (2) the Critique of the Practical Reason (1788), in which Kant develops an ethical interpretation of experience on the basis of resxilts reached in the epistemological, (3) the Critique of Judgment (1790), in which the attempt is made to develop an aesthetic and teleological interpretation of the world. (6) In attempting to give a reasonably adequate statement of important factors in the work of Kant it would be necessary to give an analysis of the following: (i) his relation to Em- piricism (Hume), to Rationalism (Leibnitz), to Dualism (Des- cartes), and to Naturalism (Rousseau); (2) the meaning of the mU'ca/ method ; (3) the significance of the problem of the pos- sibility of experience; (4) the distinction between the matter and form of knowledge; (5) the nature of the three fundamental forms, space, time, causation, as functions of human intelli- gence; (6) the doctrine of the categories; (7) the doctrine of freedom; (8) the categorical imperative; (9) the Kantian doc- trine of personality; (10) the interpretation of the adaptation of nature to intelligence. In this connection it is only possible to indicate very briefly the outcome of the Kantian theory of knowledge. ■; Herbart and Froebel 2 5 (c) Kant's Epistemology. Kant's question is, in brief, What is experience, what does it involve, and how do we get knowledge by means of it? The point of view of the common consciousness and of Empiricism is that whatever is known by experience exists full-formed and complete before it is ex- perienced, and that knowledge consists in the passive appre- hension of this pre-existent world of objects. On the other hand, Kant insists that knowledge and therefore experience is possible through the co-operation of two faculties, — sense and understanding. Both are absolutely essential. Through sense the objects — ^the matter — of knowledge, are given; through understanding they are thought, formed, or under- stood, i. e., become real objects of knowledge. As for Plato and Aristotle, so for Kant the "sensible" is, properly speaking, no "thing" at all, but capable of becoming something through the determining action of thought. Thus Kant attempts a reconciliation between Empiricism and Rationalism, admitting with the Empiricist that sense must ftimish the material or empirical element of knowledge, while with the Rationalist he contends that the understanding must furnish its necessary and \miversal form. Not that by sense an object is given as a de- termined object, for all determination comes from the under- standing. All that is meant is that the material, the chaos of sensations, is furnished by sense, to be deterrained through the categories of the understanding. Thus a knowledge of de- termined objects is gained through the joint operation of sense and tmderstanding. For Kant, therefore, the problem of philosophy resolves itself, first of all, into a theory of knowledge. The theory of knowledge developed in the Critique of Pure Reason is the ne- cessary basis and real presupposition of the views regarding ethics and the philosophy of religion which are developed in the Critique of Practical Reason and the Critique of Judgment. For Kant, as was implied in the preceding paragraph, the peculiar note of experience is the connectedness of perceptions, or the reference of individual presentations of sense to the unity of the object or thing known. The essential fact in knowledge is synthesis. Every judgment of experience contains synthesis This synthesis implies, according to Kant, four things: (i) a 26 Educational Theories manifold of sense which is combined; (2) the forms (space and time) in which this manifold is received; (3) the forms (the categories, whose supreme condition is the unity of appercep- tion) under which the manifold so received is cognized; (4) the unity of consciousness itself (the 'static and permanent ego'). The 'static and permanent ego' is the presupposition of all connected experience. The mind is something more than a passive thing, a mere creature of environment. For Kant, accordingly (and this is how he meets Hume), the modes of synthesis by which the given manifold of sense is reduced to the tmity of self-consciousness are at the same time the modes of objective existence. That is to say, self-consciousness is im- possible apart from its object, apart from the orderly, sys- tematic connection of phenomena which we call experience. Starting provisionally from the ordinary dualism of thought and things, by a gradual transformation of the theory Kant arrived at the conclusion that the only way of accoimting for the endless order of nature is that it is one which our own in- telligence forges; that, instead of our passively receiving or apprehending objects (which the Empiricists had maintained as the sole condition of our ordered experience), it is rather, says Kant, by our intelligence alone that known objects are consti- tuted. Our "experience" must forever remain tmaccotmted for and unexplained so long as we remain in the belief that thought and nature, the rational and the sensible, are abstract op- posites. The point of view, then, which Kant would have us take is this, that the science of being and the science of knowl- edge are organically one and inseparable. The question whether Kant consistently maintained himself in this position will be referred to in a subsequent section. On this basis the Kantian theory of knowledge wotild seem to imply that the relation between subject and object, mind and matter, is one of organic identity, and not of mechan- ical separation and opposition. The recognition that conscious- ness is a necessary element in all that is for it, and that existence is existence for a self, is at once the discovery that the object of knowledge is phenomenal, and at the same time it is the dis- covery of the noumenon of which it is the phenomenal: con- sciousness, in other words, in the very act of being conscious Herbart and Froebel 27 transcends the dualism between itself and its object. Just here is to be fotuid the starting-point of post-Kantian metaphysics, — a metaphysics based upon the generalization of the Kantian cognitive consciousness. For to admit with Kant that all existence is existence for a self is to admit a principle the com- plement of which became the fundamental doctrine of post- Kantian Idealism, namely, that all existence is the manifestation of a self, — ^that subject and object, spirit and nature, the self and the world, are not isolated, self-existent entities, but move and have their being in the persisting purpose of one immanent, absolute, spiritual life. (d) Kant's Ethical Theory. For analysis and criticism of Kant's ethical theory see Bradley, Ethical Sttidies (iv) ; Caird, The Critical Philosophy of Kant, Vol. II ; Dewey, The Study of Ethics, A Syllabus, sec. 36; Mackenzie, Manual of Ethics; Schurman, Kantian Ethics and the Ethics of Evolution; Sidgwick, Methods of Ethics, Book III. Note especially Kant's doctrine in relation to (i) the unconditional character of morality, (2) the autonomy of obligation, (3) antithesis of reason and feeling, of the 'noumenal' self, setting up the ideal of action and effort, and the 'phenomenal' self, made up of feelings and impulses which ftimish the materials of volition — ^man as 'natural' and as 'intelligible' being, (4) freedom as an endowment rather than, as with Fichte, a spiritual achievement through develop- ment and work, (5) self-consciousness as the source of moral responsibility, (6) 'the good will,' (7) society as a 'kingdom of ends^' (8) the duties of self-preservation and self-development, (9) the law of reason as the fiuidamental law of nature, *'. e., the rational and spiritual principle revealed in human nature, the constitutive principle of the reality of the world as a whole. {e) For our present purpose it will suffice to indicate in schematic form the more prominent restdts of Kant's inquiries: (i) The true critical method is the very opposite of that easy- going scepticism which regards a solution of the questionings of htmian reason as impossible. Reason must be credited with the power to answer the questions to which it has itself given rise. This critical method has permanent significance for the study of philosophy, art and literature, religion and human institutions. (2) Everything is derived from experience except the capacity 28 Educational Theories for experience. Herein lies the possibility of education and of the direction of personal development. (3) Personal experience, however, is not a stream of isolated sensations, but an organic unity, united by self -consciousness, and formally determined by the nature of the thinking subject. Each individual, by his own mental processes, builds up his own world of inner experience. (4) The individual is no mere knowing machine set in mechanical juxtaposition over against a world independent of intelligence: rather as an intelligent self he finds himself in the midst of an intelligible world, related and adapted to intelligence, bone of his bone, flesh of his flesh. For Kant objective consciousness becomes real only when it becomes subjective: self -conscious- ness, likewise, becomes real only when it finds an object through which it can realize itself. Thus the self and its object are equally the results of a process. Back of the distinction between the self and the object there is the experience process. The consciousness of the object and the consciousness of the self issue in their difference from a common so\iTce; and the con- sciousness of the object is an essential element in the conscious- ness of the self. Herein is Kant's interpretation of the place of nature (the objective world) in the evolution of intelligence, (s) In keeping with the results reached in his epistemological inquiry, in the ethical interpretation of experience, Kant finds the law for man's right action not in anything foreign or ex- ternal to him but ia man's innermost nature. This innermost essence of man is will. The fact of the existence of morality or duty is sufficient evidence for Kant that reason prescribes ends for itself. The realization of duty, moreover, would be impossible for a being who is not conceived of as free or capa- ble of self-determination. In obedience to the moral law, the fundamental fact in ethics and religion, man finds proof of his freedom and of his membership in a moral order of the world. Thus for Kant personality is central, — ^personality not in isola- tion as with Rousseau, but in a society of moral beings tmited by the law of duty. The end of life is not happiness but work in the service of humanity. (6) Intellectual development, be- cause of its evident limitations in relation to the deeper needs of the spiritual life, is less directly significant than the cultiva- tion of the feeling of reverence for the moral law and of a never- Herb art and Froebel 29 ending aspiration towards its realization. The moral law is the central truth in Kant's world and is for him the essential ele- ment in human education. 6. (a) Goethe (1749-1832), and Schiller {i'j^g-i8o^'X<^^o- gether with Kant, the heroic figures in German culture-^Rea- sons for not including the work of Goethe and Schiller in the Romantic Movement — Goethe's individuality — His lyrical poetry a sincere expression of his inner life and a faithful reflection of his intellectual and moral development — Influence of Rousseau, Lessing, Herder and Schiller — The romantic and the classical influences — His works as "fragments of a great confession" — Faust as autobiographical — ^The adjustment of the individual and collective ideals in Goethe's life and writings — Goethe as the apostle of self -culture — Arnold's judgment of Goethe, "the greatest poet of modem times . . . because he was by far our greatest modem man," compared with Richard Holt Hut- ton's, "Goethe was the wisest man of modem days, who ever lacked the wisdom of a child ; the deepest who never knew what it was to kneel in the dust with bowed head and a broken heart." — "I find a provision," says Emerson, "in the constitution of the world, for the writer or secretary, who is to report the do- ings of the miraculous spirit of life that everywhere throbs and works. His office is a reception of the facts into the mind, and then a selection of the eminent and characteristic experiences." (b) Schiller — "A hundred years may roll away, another and yet another, still from century to century his name shall be celebrated, and at last there shall come a festival when men will say: See! There was a truth in his ideal anticipations of freedom and civilization" — Three stages in Schiller's development, (i) eudaemonism, (2) pessimism, (3) altruism. In the two earlier stages Schiller was under the influence of Rousseau (see The Robbers, a protest against the social and political forces of the time ; also Ode to Rousseau, the six poems addressed to Laura, and Resignation) — Influence of Goethe and Kant — Opposition to Romanticism — -Bias for historical subjects — "His ever-aspiring genius" — The poem The Ideal an embodiment of Schiller's philosophical and artistic creed. (c) In the present outline only three of Goethe's works are considered, — Faust, Wilhelm Meister, The Elective Affinities. The 30 Educational Theories spiritual, i. e., educational, significance of these are indicated more fully in Chapter VI. For the present, attention may be called to several points to be noted: (i) The true significance and ethical import of Faust can be realized only when the two parts are regarded as integral elements of one organic whole; (2) The tendency to symbolism; (3) Goethe's conception of na- ture ; (4) Religious mysticism ; (5) The thirst for truth a divine impulse; "Ye shall not prevail"; (6) The fatalism of passion; (7) The community of human life; (8) The possibility of moral restoration. In these three works Goethe treats the problem of the individual. Faust is a glorification of individual culture consecrated to the service of humanity. Wilhelm- Meister is a record of the incidents in the development of a soul from imma- turity to a conscious recognition of a world order. The Elective Affinities deals with the conflict between human iastinct and the moral order of the world. Over against the destructive work of Rousseau, by which Goethe was so strongly influenced in his youth, stands the second part of Faust as a " triumphal song of civilization." Over against the Emile, with its glorification of education through isolation, is set the Wilhelm. Meister, in which every individual is called upon to cultivate himself in order that he may enter (indeed, only through entering) into his heritage of the wisdom of the race. "Wilhelm Meister," writes Dr. Harris, "utters the watchword of this epoch in which we find ourselves." (d) Schiller's early ethical ideas betray the influence of Rousseau. Soon through the study of Greek art and life the Rousseau idea of an unrestrained life according to nature gave place to the conception of an harmonious, self-determined de- velopment of the personal life. Later SchUler came under the influence of Kant, whose insistence upon the supremacy of the ideal over natural instincts made a lasting impression upon him. "The deep, fundamental ideas of the idealistic philos- ophy," so he wrote, "are an abiding treasure." He was now forced, however, to seek an adjustment of his ethical and his aesthetic creed. Schiller develops his ideas in close relation to the problem of culture in his Letters on the Aesthetic Education of Man (179s) — a development of the fundamental idea of the poem Die Kunstler. Antagonism between the moral and the sensuous is a sign of imperfect culture. Only through aesthetic Herbart and Froebel 31 education can the problem be solved. This perfect adjustment will one day be attained in play, — ^iti which man is truly man, self-active, self-determiaed, obedient to law, the sensuous na- ture not suppressed. Thus for Schiller artistic activity or the play impulse mediates between the sensuous impulse and the rational element in the ctiltured man, uniting the two in har- monious co-operation. Neither lust nor moral worth won through obedience to the stem law of duty is beautiful. Beauty and grace are not won through the triumph of one, nor in the suppression of the other. The perfect woman and children reveal the perfection, the original destiny of man. "Deep meaning oft lies hid in childish play." (In addition to the Letters on Aesthetic Education, see also, Die vier Weltalter, Der Pilgrim, Das Ideal und das Leben, Das Mddchen aus der Fremde, Der spielende Knabe, Das Eleusische Fest, Lied von der Glocke. Francke's interpretation of the spiritual significance of Schiller's ideals as embodied in his five great historical dramas should be noted.) References: In addition to the works of the writers mentioned, the follow- ing general references may be added: (i) Lessing and Herder: Erdmann, History of Philosophy; Francke, German Literature as Determined by Social Forces; Hoflfding, History of Modern Phi- losophy, Vol. II: Nevison, Herder and his Times; RoUeston, lAfe of Lessing (with bibliography) ; Scherer, History of German Litera- ture; Sime, Life and Writings of Lessing; Taylor, Studies in Ger- man Literature; Windelband, History of Philosophy. (2) Kant: In addition to various histories of modem philosophy, the treatises of Adamson, Caird, Kuno Fischer, Paulsen, Wallace and Watson may be consulted. (3) Goethe and Schiller: Blackie, The Wisdom of Goethe; Boyesen, Goethe and Schiller; Carlyle, Critical and Mis- cellaneous Essays; Davidson, Philosophy of Faust; Dowden, New Studies in Literature; English Goethe Society Publications; Fischer, Schiller-Schriften; Francke, German Literature; Harris, The Lesson of Goethe's Faust; Hillebrand, German Thought; Lewes, Life of Goethe; Nevison, Life of Schiller (with bibliography); Scherer, History of German Literature; Seeley, Goethe Reviewed after Sixty Years; Sime, Life of Goethe (with bibliography) ; Snider, Commen- tary on Faust; Taylor, Studies in German Literature; Thomas Life and Works of Friedrich Schiller; Ueberweg, Schiller als His- toriker und Phiiosoph. 32 Educational Theories Further problems for study: 1 . Lessing's reconciliation of freedom and discipline. 2. Lessing's principles of aesthetic criticism. 3. Influence of (a) Lessing on Herder, (b) Lessing and Herder on Goethe. 4. Comparison of Lessing's Education of the Human Race and Temples Education of the World (in Essays and Reviews'). 5. Kant's conception of a 'person.' 6. The autonomous nature of obligation in the Kantian Ethics. 7. The individual and social elements in Kant's ethical theory. 8. The development of psychological theory from Rousseau to Kant. 9. Goethe's conception of natjire. 10. Goethe's ideal of culture as illustrated in Faust and Wilhelm Meister. 11. Schiller's conception of «E5ucr:€s consists in the im-'fudizre conscAisness that all nnire things exist in and through the indr.ite: a" things temporal in and through the eternal. {6) Since religion is conceived as that which ancrds the highest point of view, ("giving to life its nttLsic'') or rather as the fundamental mode of our participa- tion in the spiritual life, it lohoTrs that intellecnial. mora! and aesthetic culture can attain their perfection, only when they lead back to living in the immediate feeling of the in finite as that which surrounds and supports all nnite iadividualities, all finite existence. It is not to be understood that this religious feeling is p-urely passive, or ss:'t:e::c religiousness: rather its true ferm is teUological religiousness whose highest form is labor for the advancement of the kingdom of God. v.7) I'i^s emphasis on the positive significance of the individual. Each man should express humanity in his own way and with a unique blending of its elements. (b) Sohleiermacher's f/itvrj' 7V»- mmft; Pfl kadcam. Dtudofmmt tf Tktologj simcm Kami; Royce^ Tht Spait of Madirm. PVlosopkf: Watsoo. 5<; nf KhMrnirnnninnririvijf^ p. 44. (See also. Science of Education, p. 62.) Herbart and Froebel 7 1 3 To Pestalozzi Herbart owed, in part, the doctrine of interest, but he elaborated and transformed it. He maintains that .Pes- talozzi's service t o education lay in his r ecognition of the ne ed of creating in the child a definite and clear ly ob served exper i- ence ; that we should not act as though the child had a body of ejqjerience, but see to it that he get one. In the doctri ne of interest pu t forward by Herbart and its emphasis on the claims ofjth e individual, tr aces may be found of the influence of Rous- seau working through the ideas of Pestalozzi. * (a) According to Herbart, "ideas_sprLng irom .t_wo rnain sources, — experience and, social interco urse. Knowledge of' nature — incomplete and crude — is derived from the former ; the latter furnishes the sentiments entertained towards our fellow- men, which, far from being praiseworthy, are on the contrary often very reprehensible. To improve these is the more urgent task; but neither ought we to neglect the knowledge of nature." Ideas gained from experience and social intercourse constitute the chil d's circle pj .though t, whic h is to be so form ed by.instruc- tjon_th at right ju dp pnent and right willing may ^row o ut_of it. "Man's w orth does not, it is true, lie in his.^ Q_wing.-but in his mlling. But there is no such thing as an independent faculty of will. V olition has its roots in thought ; notjjndeedjin the details^neJlmx)wSj^_ but__ce^^ and total effect githe_acqmTedAdeas.'';^--Outlines of Educational Doctrine, p. 40. (6) The aim of instruction is "so to form the pupil's circle of thought that right judgment and right willing may grow out of it." Its specific object is to stimulate and develop many-sided interests. The procedure of instruction with reference to the circle of thought of the pupil is either (i) analjrtic or (2) synthetic. (c) The circle of thought gained from (1) experience, (2) intercourse, lends itself to the development of two main forms of interest, (i) of cognition, (2) of participation. With refer- ence to the circle of thought educative instruction develops as (i) interests of cognition, the spirit of observation (empirical), of speculation (scientific), of taste (aesthetic); as (2) interests of participation, i.e., love and feeling of dependence upon others, sympathetic participation (sympathetic), public spirit (social), religiousness (religious). 72 Educational Theories (d) Interest as the specific object of instruction has four qualities. It is (i) far-reaching or continuous, (2) immediate, i.e., it must be its own reward. The activity of true interest must arise from a disinterested devotion to the subject in hand. (3) Many-sided. "Interest aris es from interesting objec ts; many-sided interests originate in the wealth of these, and to create an3 develop " if "ts" The tas^of i nstruction." — Science of Education, -p. 120. (4) Proportionate. There should be balance among the various classes of interest. {e) Methodical^ instruction involves (i) . clearness^- — ^in pre- sentation of specific facts, or the elements to be learned; (2) association, — of these facts with one another and with other related facts, forraerly acquired, in order that assimila tion and appercept ion maylje as complete as possible; (3) system, — ^the coherent ordering of wEatT? associatedT (4) method, — ^the ap- plication in exercises, involving the activity of the pupU, of the facts, rules, principles, and classification so obtained. (/) For Herbart, as has been noted, e xperience and inter- course a re the tw o constant teachers of men. These are the two original sources of the mental life! The idea s gained fror oilhese two_sources mus t form the apperceptive basis of t he instruction process in th e. schooL Starting, then, with this apperceptive basis, presentative instruction takes two main lines: (i) the naiicral-scientific, including geography, mathematics, and natural ' history, serve to supplement almost exclusively the experience of the pupil and hence supply the sources of interests of know- ledge or cognition; (2) the historical, including history, literature, language, and art, serve to supplement both the pupil's ex- perience and intercourse with others, and supply the sources of the interests of participation or association with others. 4 (a) Herbart, as was noted above, denied that the mind is possessed of certain innate powers or activities, (i) The doc- trine of faculties has its origin in the tendency to treat what were merely the prominent classes of mental states as real forces or activities producing particular effects. (2) Nor can we accept the Kantian notion of the Ego or Self as a synthetic activity formative in the upbuilding of the experience-process. '" (b) Presentations or ideas within the mind disturb and in- hibit one another, and the entire psychical life is to be explained Herb art and Froebel 73 as a reciprocal tension of ideas. This fact of tension causes ideas to lose in intensity, and those of lower degree of strength tend to be forced below the threshold of consciousness. Al- though an idea displaced by another of superior strength fades or sinks below the threshold of consciousness, it does not by any means disappear from the soul, but may presently rise again to clear and distinct consciousness. Every idea persists in the soul: its displacement in consciousness by another does not annihilate it: it but renders it latent. (c) . Herbart lays a particular stress upon the nature of the ^ process by which newly entering presentations or ideas are "assimilated, ordered, formed, and in part altered" by the ideas already present in the mind. The importance of his work in this connection should be fully recognized. He makes use of the term ' Apperception ' to designate the general process by which individual p erceptions,_ideas or complexes of ideas, are brought i nto relation to ot]j_jgreyigusl]L£xisting.._systercL of ideas, and, assimilating with them, are raised to greater clear- ness a nd distinctnes s. This is a central thought in the system of Herbart,! from which he proceeds and to which he continually returns. In his philosophical explanation he took as his start- ing-point certain thoughts of Leibnitz, while in its educational interpretation he was undoubtedly influenced by Pestalozzi. {d) For Herbart, then, it is possible to explain mental de- velopment by means of the one comprehensive process of Apper- ception. By it he seems to understand the interaction of two analogous presentations or ideas or groups of either, in such a way that the one is more or less transformed or reconstructed by the other, and ultimately fused with it. The process, there- fore, is one (i) of assimilation, in which the new is fused and incorporated with the old; (2) of reconstruction, through which previously existing ideas are raised to greater clearness and distinctness, and thus to a higher degree of consciousness. (e) Apperception as the essential process in mental develop- ment becomes, i^lerefore,^61f^;^ie]ffertartlan3llfi_£Ssi^ / of educationaTmethoa^ Without asking the question for the present wh^Rer Apperception is a complete explanation of mental development, it may at least be admitted (i)_tliai_our kno^l^dger^wbether as identification, comparison, or subsump- 74 Educational Theories tion, is a process of asso c iating the ne w with the o ld; (2) that in the interaction of the new and the old in the knowledge process, the new is assimilated according to the individual's previously existing system of ideas, and the old transformed or recqiistrurte33n_the Jight of the new; (sXThat, in order to the control of experience through instruction (i) all new knowl- edge must be the development and reconstruction of previous knowledge, (ii) on a level with the pupil's experience, neither too new nor too strange, (iii) the presented material must be given in organized groups or series. 5. (a) It would seem to be fair to su mmari ze Herbart's contri- bution to educational theory under the foUowmg headings: j^i) His c6ntentlSfrCEaE"Baii'B"nature and mind are characterized by conformity to law. (2) His statement of the educational foundations, psychology, and ethics. (3) His insistence on ''''^morality, or virtue, as the aim of education and upon the con- nection between intellectual and moral development. (4) His reconstruction of the doctrine of Apperception a s a fundamental •"principle in educative instruction. (5) His conce ption of intere st -^s a factor in instruction. (6) His analysis of the formal steps ' 1T .1 in the instructionT-pfocegg.i It is not, of cotirse, asserted that Herbart in any one ofThes£_ Jii],fi s wa swh oUy nH gina], b",t the definiteness with which he stated the problems and indicated theiFint enrelafions'Taas forced upon subsequent writers in educa- tional theory aT consciousness of the^ need . of their. still..plea£er .definition a^id'.fulli^J^eaastraictiQn. (6) Over against the doctrine of Pluralism as held by Her- bart we may, for purposes of comparison, set in outline the general position of Idealism against which Herbart strenuously contended. Idealism, iiT^a-j be said, maintains: (i) Each finite thing or being is part of a larger system. (2) Each finite thing or being is a positive self-affirmmg unity, possessing its own peculiar life and activity. (3) The impulse or endeavor of each finite thing or being (an expression of the Absolute in a definite and determinate way) to maintain itself in existence, to realize itself according to its own peculiar life and activity, is the actual essence of the thing or being. (4) In all things and beings this general principle of expression, manifestation, or real- Herbart and Froebel 75 ization is the same — ^but with the human being it is the same with a diflEerence. For man becomes conscious of his self-realizing impulse. Thus the life open to him is indefinitely richer in con- tent than that bestowed on any other creature — ^the life of intelligence, of social relationships, of religion. If Herbart had recognized the significance or the implications of certain of his own admissions, (i) that we cannot but conceive the Reals in analogy with our own inner states, (2) that there is no uncon- nected manifold in consciousness, his Realism would doubtless have been considerably more in harmony with Idealism than it is. "^ (c) Herbart contends that the science of the reality of things {metaphysic) must be kept entirely apart from the science of the estimation of worth {(Bsthetic). There is, he maintains against- the Id-ealists, no principle of knowledge which can unite in itself the explanation of reality and the proof of worth. Meta- physics ends with the assumption of Reals existing out of ^11 relations: Esthetics (j,.e., the science of the estimation of worth, aesthetic or ethical) is concerned not with realities, but with relations between realitiesj It will, therefore, be recognized^ that Herbart fails to establish any organic or ftmdamentall connection between his metaphysics and psychology on the onel side and his ethics, dealing with relations of worth among) volitions, on the other; between what is and what ought to be. rHis ethics, being fundamentally aesthetic in character, however much they may be said to center about the will and activity of an agent, do not have their ultimate foundation in the will nor in the concept of an end or ideal which ought to be striven for. •He does not, in other words, with his disciple Lotze, find in what ought to be the basis of that which is. Herbart 's ethics and theology are united in a manner quite as external as are those of Kant. {d) It must be acknowledged, moreover, that Herbart's ac- count of the formal simplicity of the soul's nature presents a rather serious menace to the acceptance of his psychology as a basis of educational method. In his accotmt of the nature of the soul he, apparently, at first abandons entirely the thought of activity. It is, to begin with, alien to all relations and needs them not, — does not need, indeed, to maintain itself against 76 Educational Theories them. In the exigencies of explanation Herbart endows the soul with a kind of activity, that of acting in self-defence. Just here, it may be asked, does not he unconsciously assume what he had to begin with consciously rejected, namely, self- activity ? The soul, endowed with the power of self -conservation, reacts and incorporates the antithetical " reals" as presenta- tions. But by introducing into the soul the power of self- maintenance against opposing "reals" Herbart is confronted with a dilemma: (i) either there is mere antagonism which would lead to nothing — ^not even presentation, or (2) the soul and that by which it is confronted are positive elements in a larger life or process from which the soul draws (under the guidance of an indwelling tinity) an outside element which it responds to, assimilates, and thus makes instrumental in its own development. By denying to the soul a synthetic prin- ciple, or neglecting the significance of the union of elements within consciousness, Herbart, it would appear, either fails to explain, or explains away, individuality. But for Herbart the soul's power of self -conservation is at best an endowment of only short duration. If the soul was ever active in its assertion against the stimyli, which came from without, it never was active but once. I As Lotze, Herbart's most distinguished disciple, remarks, "Everything further that happens in it, the formation of its conceptions, the development of the various faculties, the settlement of the principles on which it acts, are all mechanical results which, when once these primary self-preservations have been aroused, follow from their own reactions; and the soul, the arena on which all this takes place, never shows itself volcanic and irritable enough to inter- fere by new reactions with the play of its states and to give them such new directions as do not follow analytically from them according to the universal laws of their reciprocal actions." {e) Into Herbart's account of interest and attention, more- over, grave inconsistencies seem to enter, even though it be freely admitted that from the point of view of educational theory it has a considerable amoimt of suggestion. If we abide by psychology as an educational foundation, it is necessary to have a certain consistency between the foundation and the super- Herbart and Froebel 77 structure. If we should abide by Herbart's psychology, interest and attention would be the result of certain combinations of ideas — ^purely reflex things: e.g., the sentence, "I am attentive to something" wotild mean that the idea of this something rises into consciousness by its own strength. In his educational theory, however, Herbart comes to speak of both attention and interest as forms of self-activity. How, it may be asked, if the idea be primary and self-existent as at first decided, can we say that attention and interest are forms of self -activity ? In the one case it is the mere product of the action and reaction of ideas ; in the other it is psychical, or self-activity. (/) There have been three important historical conceptions in psychology: (i) the conception of the inner life as the ex- pression or manifestation of a ntmiber of distinct faculties or powers with which the subject is endowed; (2) the conception of which the Herbartian and-the-^nglishrAssociationigt" doc- trines are typical; (3) the conception which represents the mental life as a development, the varying forms of which are to be represented as stages of the development itself. Instead of giving a categorical denial to the Herbartian theory of interest and attention as mere products of the action and reaction of ideas, it may be well to place over against the Herbartian psychology an outline of a psychology of a different type which seems to afford a more secure foundation for both interest and attention, and, on the whole, one more conformable to the facts of experience. The outline, sufficient for our present purpose, may be given as follows: (i) The mental life presents itself as a teleological system or process, a series of means and ends, the outcome of a continuous co-ordination or functioning of two elements, self and environment, the unity of which is found in the general process of control over the conditions of life. The self is a concrete, specific activity, constantly directed to the accomplishment of something, — ^not only the bearer of the ex- perience process, but an efficient agent in its furtherance. The self is real only in so far as it continues to act, to become, to progress. (2) The fundamental and central element of the psychical life is not sensation or idea, but activity. From this point of view all phases of psychical activity may be grouped about two fundamental types — Habits and Accommodations. (3) 78 Educational Theories Ideas are not (as Herbart would appear to hold) things which stand apart from the subject, in mechanical juxtaposition to the self, but are instrumental in the furtherance of the life- process. They are (i) methods of registering past experiences, and (ii) plans of action, leading to the organization of future experience. Knowledge is teleological, functional. Sensations and ideas are instrumental. Herbart's atomic theory of ideas (as, ultimately, his theory of the individual self) is analogous to the political and social theories of Rotisseau. (g) If the third conception of mental life, outlined in the preceding section, be the one more conformable to the facts of experience, it would seem that interest and attention have their foundation not in the action and reaction of ideas, but in the adjustments and accomodations of the self in the process of its realization. They are fvmctions of the active subject, — a sub- ject whose very essence lies in its activity, its manifestation, its self-expression. It is in connection with the realization of ends that the phenomenon of interest manifests itself. In it are discovered (i) a cognitive, (2) a dynamic or imptdsive aspect, and (3) an inner or subjective feeling of the worth of the end to which the attention is directed. Interest is the emotional or subjective value which accompanies the self's identification with an end or object deemed nefcessary to its realization or ex- pression. (For a discussion of the psychology of interest, see articles by Professor Dewey and Dr. Harris noted in bibliography of this section.) _^J}i) May it not be contended that, if Herbart's accotmt of I the totally indifferent nature of the soul be correct, it is possible for the educator to make out of it what he desires? His psy- chology is rather the psychology of the ' learning ' process than of a human being. If it were strictly true that knowledge is primary, Herbart's theory of virtue or morality becomes simply the Socratic doctrine that knowledge is virtue, stated in terms of a mechanical psychology. To control the individual's action it would only be necessary to furnish the right presentation, and through correlation reinforce this one by allied and congruous ideas in such a way that the focus of consciousness could be maintained by the allied idea-forces. Teaching would thus become a mere matter of idea-instilling, and psychological iu- Herbart and Froebel 79 quiry a search for the mechanism of the process. Through presentation determine mental content; through mental con- tent determine desire; through desire determine activity. The monad soul is at first practically at the mercy of the ex- ternal world. By multiplying the individual's ideas in the right way you are determining what his desires and motives shall be, and thus his conduct. "I confess," Herbart says, "to have no conception of education without instruction." From what precedes, namely, (i) the dependence of will on ideas, (2) ideas as djgtingLfiatiJiea-PQSgessm g variou s degrees of force, (3) similar and congruous ideas tending to form allian ces among themselves, it will be recognized how necessary for a theory ^oT" instruction based upon a ps3yhology of jthisintel- lectualistic type is (ij the c(mtroLof_ideas,,_through^ orderly presentation (apperception), and through, reinforcement (corre- lation), (2) the enrichment of the circle of thought through concentration on ethical ideas, and through amplification of the educative materials. Throughout his account of the mental life, Herbart seems to over-emphasize the i ntellectual asp ect, and to under-estimate the significance of activitY;j.^jluig^ purpose, „ and .habit, and j theliaturarcorrelating power of the mind based on its original instinctive ' and " iriipulsive" equipineiit . \ ~~TES"~3SS^me"oi Pre- seiitationism has its' fouiidations in a dualistic theory of know- ledge (see account of Kant's theory of knowledge. Chap. Ill, sec. 5; also Chap. VI, sec. 4.) It undervalues, moreover, the significance of direct, personal experience, and knowledge gained through the exercise of the constructive activities on the part of the learner. Rbferences: In addition to Herbart's works, see Bibliographieslin Herbart Year Books, in Report of the Commissioner of Education, 1892-93, p. 393; in Rein's Outlines of Pedagogics (Van Liew), various articles in Neue Bahnen, and in Pddagogium; also, Histories of Philosophy of Windelband, Hoffding, Ueberweg, and Falckenberg; De Garmo, Herbart and the Herbartians; Dewey, Interest as Re- lated to Will (Second Supplement to the Herbart Year Book, 1895); Harris, Herbart's Doctrine of Interest, in Educational Review, Jime, 189s; Ribot, German Psychology of To-Day, pp. 24-49; Stout, Herbart's Psychology, in Mind, Vol. XIII; Tompkins, Herbart's Philosophy and Educational Theory, in Educational Review, Octo- ber, 1898; Ward, Herbart in Encyclopedia Britannica. // 8o Educational Theories Further problems for study: 1. Herbart's relatidn to (i) Kant, (ii) Fichte, (iii) Pestalozzi. 2. The bearings of the Intellectualistic and Voluntaristic psy- chologies on educational theory. 3. The relation of interest and purpose to apperception. 4. Herbart's doctrine of Interest. 5. How far is the Culture Epoch theory consistent with Her- bart's view of the nature of the soul? 6. Comparison of Hegel's and Herbart's views of mind. 7. The influence of Herbart's 'Plioralism' on his psychological- ethical, and educational theories. 8. The individual and the social in Herbart's ethics. 9. The relation between Herbart's A B C of Sense-Perception and Froebel's theory of the Gifts. vm THE EDUCATIONAL THEORIES OF FROEBEL I. While Froebel (1782— 1852) never succeeded in giving to his thought the rotmded completeness of scientific system which characterized the work of Herbart, nevertheless his educational theories presuppose a more or less definite philosophical creed, the dominant ideas of which were the common property of the romantic-ideaUstic movement to which he belonged. ^ It is therefore necessary, first of aU, to indicate the more important philosophic foundations of his educational doctrines : (a) The conception of Reality, or the world, as an grggtiif unity . — ^Throughout his work Froebel conceives of the manifold of existence as a single process. ' His position may be character- ized as a htmianized Ideahsm, or a spiritualized Naturalism, — Reality, conceived as a movement of Absolute Life. With Schleiermacher, it is true, he tends to regard the religious con- viction of the unity of things as the final guarantee of the truth postulated by philosophy. To any system of atomism which regards a unity or whole as a mere aggregate of its independent parts the thought of Froebel is absolutely opposed. 't The iini- verse in spite of its multiplicity is onej By itself the world is plurality : at best an aggregate : it is the totality of being, con- ceived in its differentiation. But it is a imiverse or cosmos be- cause it has its being in a spiritual principle, in God. ReaUty is thus for Froebel an organic unity; a vmity, i.e., whose diflEer- Herbart and Froebel 8i ences are its own determinations. Becaiise of their origin in a common world-ground, all things constitute a living unity; a unity, nevertheless, in which each thing is also an individual, distinct from all others. Accordingly, every element or member of any tmity, natural or human, m^ust be evidenced in a twofold way: from the side of its independence, self-sufficiency, andT exclusiveness, as weU as from the side of its dependence upon j the larger whole of which it forms a part. ^ (b) The corollary of the first, namely, deve lopment. — ^The two ideas reciprocally supplement each other. Into Froebel's con- ception of organic unity enters the thought of manifold ele- ments, individual existences, and activities. ' To admit such differentiation within tmity, implies a dynaimic^ not a static, view of reality. 'The reality of the world implies the continu- ous self-determination of a spiritual principle, and this veiy self-determination involves the process whereby the world is maintained as an organic whole. By development Froebel understands the tendency of any unity, absolute or finite, to differentiate itself into a mafiifola while still retaining its unity. This process is fovind in the plant, in the animal, in the indi- vidual and society. / Through this process of development the one passes into a manifold: in differentiating itself it individual- izes and also realizes itself. (c) The principle of activity. — ^The end or purpose of each individual life is to realize itself as an element of the larger system to which it belongs, ultimately of the larger organism of Reality. For man, the end is to come into harmonious re- lation with nature and humanity, and with God, the immanent life of both. This can be attained by him only through the exercise of his own activity or power of self-determination What the self is to be, it must become for itself. [For a fuller account of these principles as interpreted by Froe- bel, see Teachers College Record, November, 1903, pp. 16-36. For materials concerning the development of Froebel's thought and its relation to the philosophical and ethical tendencies in the Germany of his day, see translations by Michaelis and Moore of the Autobiography of Friedrich Froebel, of Froebel's Letters, and of Froebel's Letter to Krause; various papers translated in Barnard, Child Study Papers (articles by Fichte, Lange, and others) ; Blow, 82 Educational Theories Introduction to Mottoes and Commentaries of Froebel's Mother Play, Hanschmann, Friedrich Froebel (translated under the title, 'The Kindergarten System,' by Franks), also, P&dagogische Strdmungen: Bine Wilrdigung Pestalozzis, Frobels, Zillers; Harris, Introduc- tions to translations of Froebel's works; Von Marenholtz-Bulow, Reminiscences of Froebel; Articles in Erziekung der Gegenwart; Diesterweg's Jahrbuch; Rheinische Bl&tter fUr Erziekung und Un- terrichts; Kindergarten; Pddagogium (articles by Dittes and Morf) : Encyclopaedias of Pedagogy (with bibliographical references) of K. A. Schmid, Karl Schmidt, Sander, Rein, and Lindner; Seidel, Introductions to his edition of Froebel's works; StegUch, Ueber die padagogische Idee Friedrich Froebels in ihrer philosophischen Be- grUndung durch Frohschammer. For the work of Krause (1781-1832) Froebel seems to have had most Uking, and from him it would appear borrowed a consider- able amount of his technical phraseology. Krause sought to im- prove upon the pantheism of the system of Identity through his doctrine of Panentheism — a philosophy founded on the notion that all things are in God. Concerning the relation • between Krause and Froebel, see especially Krause, Das Urbild der Menschheit, also, Tagblatt des Menschheitslebens; also, Eucken, Zur Erinnerung an Krause; Hohlfeld, Ueber Krause und Froebel; Schhephake, Ueber Friedrich Froebels Erziehungslehre. The chief points in which a comparison between Krause and Froebel might be instituted are the following: their views concerning (i) the personality of God, (2) nature, (3) the relation of nature to the Absolute, (4) man, (5) the community and solidarity of humanity, (6) the aim of education, (7) the supremacy of will over intellect, (8) religion as the supreme mode of self-realization, (9) the "media- tion of opposites.' The idea underlying Froebel's conception of mediation, while a common possession of the period, was by him derived in part from Krause. In reading Froebel's Autobiography, note the significance of his contact with nature in his' personal life, and compare with the Prelude of Wordsworth and the Alastor of Shelley. For Froebel, as for the youth in Alastor: "Every sight And sound from the vast earth and ambient air Sent to his heart its choicest impulses." Concerning Froebel's attempts towards an interpretation of na- ture, materials will be found scattered throughout his works, especially the Education of Man. No wholly consistent interpre- tation will be discovered, though many exceedingly suggestive things are said, (i) In certain places an interpretation is given reminding one of the Wordsworthian. (2) But, as Dr. Harris has frequently pointed out, Froebel was not a poet so much as a re- Herbart and Froebel 83 ligiousmystic^.and freguently. perhaps most frequently, jre_find in his works the Romantic impidse uppermost, — ^to revel in o content of cdiisctdusriess by 'such as Froebel and Schleiermacher won through r eligious rather than ttsthetie in tuitions and symbols. (3) Sometimes Ee essays a mathematical construction of nature — apparently because the mathematical were the only sciences which had been given systematic form — as Herbart and others had at- tempted. (4) Again, he beheved that he found the morphological element in crystaUtBOtion as did Rosenkranz in his Hegel's Natur- phiiosophie. Froebel, it is true, recognized with Idealism that the law of thought is the law of the cosmos, but with the Romantic philosophers was, it would appear, unable critically to distinguish between consciousness and its content, and to reahze the necessity of an epistemological interpretation of the relation and adaptation of nature to mind. Froebel accepts nature as an immediately given reahty : Epistemology seeks an answer to the question. How can it be given to usf This constitutes a serious deficiency in his philosophy of education. See also section II. On the position of the sciences in the time of Froebel, as well as for an account of various philosophies of nature attempted at the time, see Merz, The History of European Thot^kt in the Nineteenth Century.] 2. (a) From what was said in the preceding section it will be apparent why Froebel should take as the basis of his psy- chology the notion of the self or person as an individualization of the Universal Life or Reason. /This indi^^dt^alit7 may be I modified and developed through education, but never com- pletely changed. From temperament, from introspective study, from the influences of Romanticism and of IdeaHsm which came to him in the spiritual environment of his day, Froebel had de- veloped a profound but somewhat mystical view of the inner depths of the human personality. He found it quite impossible to separate distinctly his psychology from his philosophy. For, him, as for Schleiermacher, within each indi\-idual there is the capacity of becoming a specific expression of the world, at once a compendium and a specific expression of the life of humanity, f a microcosmus of the enveloping macrocosmus. / The chUd is to s ' be regarded "as a struggUng expression of an inner, divine law," ! and therefore education in its most comprehensive sense con- sists in "leading man as a thinking, intelligent being, growing \ into self-consciousness to a ptu^e and unsuUied, conscious, and ' free representation of the inner law of divine Unity, and in 84 Educational Theories teaching him ways and means thereto." — Education of Man, sec. 2. ^ "^ (b)'^Iii every part of nature, life and growth appeared to Froebel as a progressive development from lower to higher grades of being. The e ssent ial feature of mind i s activity : the ego is not something which must^exiiF before it can put forth its activities. The mind is a process, not a mere succession of states.'' The development' of mind is the gradual manifestation iollnner purposes, not the gradual modif,cation of images and associations through the entrance of elements from without. [See Chap. VII, sec. i (d).] For him, from one point of view mental growth and development are the growth and development of 5e//-consciousness and through this development the individual becomes aware of his essencSi While this consciousness of self is possible only through and is continually dependent on the consciousness of the outer (nature and society), nevertheless Froebel does not regard the inner (or mind) as externally de- termined; rather he maintains that through consciousness, the individual may continually emancipate himself from the law of external influence, thereby making the material, or nature, from which his life seems to start, through whose very oppo- sitions and antagonisms he is lifted to a consciousness of him- self, and which he comes more and more to make instrumental to his purposes, the very medium for the attainment of spiritual freedom. Froebel, for the most part, insists^ uponjthe org^c relation betweennatuxe_and spirit. He does not say that man is merely "natural, nor will he admit that man can get along without the natural. As was said above, mental development is for him fundamentally an unfolding of a system of inner aims which, instead of merely representing, or conforming to en- vironment, more and more make environment the instrument of self-realization. ^ (c) " If we strive to grasp in a common unity this process of development we find an element which manifests itself in the following forms: (i) as a germinating and developing power, working from within outward; (2) as a receptive power, from without inward; (3) as an assimilative and formative energy, a synthesis of the preceding forms. Thus the pivot upon which all turns^is the recognition of life, of activity." Froebel, ac- Herbart and Froebel 85 cordingly, regards activity as the ultimate feature of thejnejXT- tal life. The soul isan activity, infl uenced ^xSOMES^S^^^g,,. and reacting upon them; thereby adjusting itself to an ever- rndBning^envifoimfeht. Intelligence, that is, perception, mem- ory, thought, is for Froebel (at least for the most part throughout his writings) instrumental to the life-process. With the Volun- tarist Froebel would maintain that the ultimate basis for the ac- tivity of cognition is furnished by the will. (See also section 12.) 3. Froebel never worked out with" any attempt at logical precision a theory of ethics or of society. Nevertheless, funda- mental to his thought are certain well-defined convictions con-„ cerning the nature of the self, the normal constitution of man, and therewith his relation to the social and moral order of which he < forms a part. Froebel's social and ethical theory is of course a part of his general philosophy of life. It is of the type .ot ethical ideaHsmthroughojtt. While having its foundations in religion (as withLeiBnitz, Lessing, Kant, and Schleiermacher) , yet the right and the good are as autonomous for Froebel as for Kant. "We weaken and degrade the human nature we should strengthen and raise, when we dangle before it a bait to good action, even though this bait be hung out from another world. In using an external stimulus, however seemingly spiritual, to call forth a better life, we leave undeveloped that active and independent inward force which is implanted within every man for the manifestation of ideal humanity." His ethical and social doc- trines have their religious foundations in the conception of evolution as the revelation of God. Only in such a conception can we understand the facts of the individual life from infancy to maturity: only on this basis can we appreciate the fact of har- mony and union between the individual and the processes of nature and human history. The individual soul, nature, and humanity, are interrelated elements in one spiritual process, to be under- stood only in relation to one another and in the light of the end towards which they seem all to be tending. In answer to the question, How to adjust the individual, who is always implicitly more than a mere individual, to the larger life in which he must move and have his being, Froebel would reply, that human life, and hence the educative process, is possible and intelligible only on the assumption that both the self and the world, mind and 86 Educational Theories nature, personality and environment, have their origin in the intelligent purpose of one universal, spiritual principle; and only on the basis of such kinship between the essential nature of the soul and of that wider life upon which the soul enters, is it pos- sible to render an account of the education of the human spirit. It was noted above that for Froebel the growth of personality is a process of increasing complexity of individuality through participation in a wider life. On the other hand, for him as for Kant and Fichte, the soul must build its own world, its own representation of the macrocosm. The soul is not a simple resting identity: it is not something which has activity: it is activity. For Froebel as for Fichte the life of the soul is a con- tinual process of activity through which it attains self-knowledge and self-realization. For both, moreover, as Froebel declares "the true origin of man's activity and creativeness Ues in his unceasing impulse to embody outside himself the divine and spiritual element within him." For Froebel, Schleiermacher, and Fichte, again, we may say in Froebel's words, "Religion without work is apt to degenerate into empty dreaming and purposeless emotion, while, on the other hand, work without religion tends to degrade man into a machine. . . . Work and religion are coeval, — as God, the Eternal, creates throughout all eternity." The soul is self-determining, moreover, in spite of, and yet by means of, opposition. The opposition of nature and society to the development of the intellectual and moral life of the individual is, however, only apparent. These, indeed, are the means by which this very development is rendered possible. For Froebel, as for Idealists generally, the life of the individual is the process whereby in knowing the objective world, he learns to know himself; and he realizes himself only as he be- comes a part of the life of nature and of humanity as embodied in the great forms of institutional life, — only as he becomes the agent of a divine purpose to which all things ultimately con- tribute. The course of the upward movement in the spiritual life, therefore, is one of self-estrangement and self-surrender. Only through a continual process of self-surrender to the life of nature and of humanity does man attain to a consciousness of the latent wealth of the inner life. 4. It will be apparent, then, why the life process of the Herbart and Froebel 87 individual, and therefore, the educational process, should be conceived by Froebel as essentially a social process with its complementary phases: (i) increasing individualization and self-realization through activity, and (2) increasing participation in the various forms of institutional life, home, school, society, state, and church, in which the mind of the race has manifested itself. For him each one of the various human institutions con- stitute at once a system of control, and a medium for the activity of the individual, specific in function yet rendering to the other complementary and necessary service. "Thus enriching his (the individual's) own life by the life of others, he solves the problem of development." According to Froebel, moreover, the values, habits, norms, or ideals which interpret, organize, and enrich the experience of the individual are socially mediated. They do not get to the individual save as they are mediated by social agencies. JTo put it briefly, the individual can be edu- cated only in the presence of other human beingsJ The con- ception of the educational process as one through which the spiritual possessions of humanity are mediated by the various social agencies, while not wholly original with Froebel, yet in him attained to clear consciousness and reasonably definite statement. While he was never able to work out completely this idea of the mediation of the spiritual possessions, yet he achieved it in a unique way so far as concerns the first six years of the child's life, through his conception of the home, with the mother as teacher, and of the kindergarten, which is through and through a social institution, — an agency for the mediation of experiences by means of the -child's characteristic activity in that particular period. It cannot be doubted that Froebel for the most part kept clearly in mind throughout his work this idea of the educational process as a process of interaction, a pro- cess by which the spiritual experience, the ideal values of human life, are mediated or communicated to the individual. There are places in his writings in which, as will be pointed out in a subsequent section, he seems to abandon this conception for the intellectualistic view, but this is certainly not in harmony with his general position. Here we must abide by the principle of Froebel' s thought, clearly separating it from the matter of detail or its imperfect application. 88 Educational Theories For example, in the Mother-Play, his ' most triumphant achievement,' it may be noted how Froebel works out the idea of education as a process of interaction between the two factors of the experience-process, society and the individual, repre- sented by the mother and child. On the one side you have the child with its impulses, tendencies-to-things, and tendencies- from-things ; to begin with for the most part at the mercy of his environment. The child contributes the impulse, the need, the unformed activity; the mother (who represents the social or normative side of the process) contributes the direction, the habitual form, the value or interpretation. As Miss Blow ex- presses it, Froebel sought for the point of contact between the manifested needs of the one and the instinctive effort of the other to meet such needs. The child and the mother (or what the mother through thinking love does for her child), for Froebel in his Mother-Play, therefore, are the terminal aspects of a unitary educational process. What Froebel would have the mother do, therefore, is so to correct, organize, and enrich the child's crude but very real experiences, that its experience at any moment may be full and rich and therefore preparatory to a still fuller and richer experience in the future. (a) In a fuller discussion than can be attempted in the present outline of Froebel's conception of education as a pro- cess of interaction between the two factors of the experience, and thus necessarily of the educational, process, (i) society (the corporate aspect, represented by the mother, teacher, studies, etc.) and (2) the individual (representing the differentiated, the individualizing phase) there should in justice to him be noted his treatment of at least the following points: (i) The nature of individuality; Froebel's conception of the 'self.' Compare with the views of Fichte and Schleiermacher. (2) Consciousness as belonging "to the nature of man and as one with it." Com- pare the general idealistic position as outlined in Chapter V. (3) The primitive unity of experience and its gradual differentia- tion and integration through the natural impulse to activity; the impulse to activity finding expression first of all through a system of natural instincts. Compare the method by which Fichte, Schleiermacher and Froebel effect the transition be- tween spirit and nature, the realization of a spiritual principle in Herbart and Froebel 89 a so-called empirical world. \For Froebel, as for FicHte, freedom depends on activity and reflection, and for both the ethical law is "each particular action should form part of a series which leads the individual to spiritual freedom.") (4) The relation of know- ledge to will. The tendency of Froebel's psychology is to regard the system of our ideas as dependent upon our impulses and our will. (5) The relation of the individual to institutions. (6) The conception of play as mediatory. (7) The significance of the imitative and play activities. (8) Studies as representing the typical human interests and activities, and the corporate side of human life. (9) The notion that educative intellectual activity is attained through the definition of contrasts or opposites demanding mediation and unification, thereby leading to the ultimate establishment of harmony. In the light of preceding chapters it is needless to say that the conception of conscious- ness upon which this theory of Froebel is based was, — ^through the application of the organic mode of interpretation consequent upon the failure of the mere logical principle of identity to afford an explanation of psychical life, — a commonplace in the idealistic and romantic philosophy of the period: the conception, namely, of consciousness as an organic unity, an indissoluble unity of opposites. Kant and Fichte had applied the conception in their interpretation of the structure of consciousness as such; Schelling and the Romanticists applied it in their interpretation of the content of consciousness; Hegel, combining the speculative temper with a realistic interest in nature and history, and at- tempting to unify consciousness and its content, applied the conception as an expression of the method of all spiritual achieve- ment. That Froebel did not completely grasp the conception in its philosophic implications is evidenced by the fact that at times (i) with Schelling {i.e., Schelling's later writings), he accepts the position, "the reality of object and subject is strictly coordinate," and at times (2) the Hegelian position, according to which in consciousness is a unity presupposed in and yet transcending the difference between subject and object, mind and matter. The former position leads directly to pantheism and agnosticism, as with Spinoza and Spencer: and it must be admitted that from the point of view of their philosophy, in idea if not in spirit, Froebel and Schelling did not escape the diffi- 9° Educational Theories culty of merging all difEerences in absolute oneness. The second point of view, that of the immanence and transcendence of con- sciousness, is the position of theistic idealism, — undoubtedly the position which Froebel strove to occupy. Becoming possessed of this conception, the reconciliation of opposites, and by tempera- ment and training inclining to an idea which might embrace the educational process in its totality, Froebel made it the con- stitutive and regulative principle of education. When, with Fichte, he emphasizes oppositions, antagonisms, or a system of limits, as the condition of activity, effort, work, and self-de- velopment, Froebel is surely on the right track: but when, with Schelling, he seems to emphasize and define disparates, oppo- sitions, and contrasts (without having afforded a consistent logic of the process of differentiation), apparently to give relief and color to his idea rather than to the reality, he is, to say the least, on dangerous ground. The validity of the philosophical principle which underlies Froebel's doctrine of the mediation or reconciliation of opposites is not here in question. (See Teachers College Record, Nov., 1903, pp. 22-23; ^-Iso compare modern interpretations of consciousness). The problem is rather one of interpretation of the principle, and the critical estimation of Froebel's use of it as a fundamental principle in educational theory. Krause made some approach to a logical or systematic deduction of the principle : it does not appear that Froebel recognized the necessity of any such deduction. (&) In a study of Froebel's interpretation of the educational significance of play and games, it would be necessary to note in some detail the following points: (i) His essential originality in his attempts to make play educationally significant. (2) His conception of play as the "self -active representation of the inner life from inner necessity and impulse." (3) Theories of the origin of play. (4) Play as self-expression and as revealing the nature of the child. (5) Types of the play-activity according to Froebel : the play -world of the child as symbol. (6) Play in relation to art and work: the so-called dialectic of play, work, and art. The transition from play to work. (7) The indi- vidual and social significance of imitation. The child's per- ception of relations, external first of all, then causal. The transition from imitation to originality through the appropria- Herbart and Froehel 91 tion of the principle of the thing or process imitated. (8) Organized play as educative: the individual and the generic self. Educa- tive significance found in (i) rendering the body the more adequate instrument and expression of the soul, (ii) . affording opportunity for the perception of relations, and tluj^'a means of self-control through the organization of intelligence, (iii) re- producing typical forms of human activity,- thereby affording a means of social preparation through the cultivation of social judgments, dispositions, and activities. (See Blow, Introduction to Mottoes and Commentaries of FroeheVs Mother-Play; also, Letters to a Mother. Compare also Froebel's treatment of play with that found in Baldwin, Mental Development: Social and Ethical Interpretations, pp. 139-147; Groos, The Play of Man, pp. 361-406; Sully, Studies in Childhood, jpp. 33-51.) {c) In Froebel's analysis and interpretation of the chief groups of subjects of instruction, note: (i) His conception of (i) the continuity of experience, (ii) the differentiation and integra- tion of experience, (iii) social experience as a spiritual organism. (2) Studies as modes of self-realization: processes rather than products educative. (3) Studies as forms of social experience. (4) His attempt to furnish a philosophy or psychology of the subject-matter of instruction; in other words, to indicate the "genesis of objects of study in order to discover the relation of such objects to the nourishment of mind." Science, art, number, language, occupations, plays and games, religion. The interests fundamental to his classification. (5) The course of study as the selected and organized environment of the indi- vidual. (6) His classification of studies in their relation to what Dr. Harris speaks of as Froebel's attempt to organize a system of education that will unfold the rational self and chain down the irrational. 5. In the consideration of one or two concrete illustrations of Froebel's theory of education it may be noted that first of all in the Mother-Play he appears to have had in mind three fairly well-defined ends: (i) to raise certain of the unconscious habits and activities, or the indefinite intuitions, of the mother into clear and reflective consciousness with a view to the control of the child's experience, and thereby his subsequent growth and development; (2) to indicate within the experience of the child an 92 Educational Theories element of rationality and the capacities and potencies of larger and richer relationships, and therewith a larger and richer ex- perience; (3) to indicate how through simple pictures, con- versations, songs, stories, and plays, the mother may present elements of an ideal to the feelings and imagination of the child and thus consciously assist in raising it, physically, intellectually, and morally, into harmony with that larger order of which its present experience is prophetic. 6. In the study of the kindergarten as a social institution consider: (i) Froebel's conception of human institutions, (i) the relation of the individual~and the" "soCi'ar,'(ii7 tlie nature of the social unity, (iii) society as a system of purposes, (iv) the social significance of nature, (v) social participation and increasing in- dividualization, (vi) the relation of social order to social pro- gress. Froebel's conception of the significance of the Family. "At present it is to the quiet and secluded sanctuary' of TSe family that we must look for a revival of the divine spirit among mankind." (2) The structure, the specific function, and the reality of the social life within the kindergarten society. The view of social organization as centering about activity. (3) The kindergarten as mediating through its preparatory work by means of play between home and school. Continuity in the mental life; between home and school, between education and life. (4) The function of institutions in the distribution and transmission of experience. Compare the conceptions of Fichte and Pestalozzi. (5) Froebel's conception that the educational starting-point lies in the interests, needs, activities of the dhild, and of education as a process of social interaction (see section 4) through which the interests, activities, experiences of the in- dividual are corrected, organized, amplified, and made significant thtough the reproduction in the kindergarten society of typical activities and experiences of the wider social Ufe : in other words, that the law which lives in social life, and the ideal worths towards which the wider social life is struggling, are to become the law and deal of the kindergarten society. (6) His notion that the best play-materials are the children themselves. (7) The principles iunderlying the selection of the materials of the kindergarten pro- gram. (8) Froebel's method in relation to the ideal of the kindergarten society. (9) Habituation, Imitation and Sug- Herbart and Froebel 93 gestion, and Instruction, and their respective functions. (10) The social significance of human labor. Compare the con- ceptions of Fichte and Schleiermacher. (11) The idea of the kindergarten and of democratic society. (12) The success of Froebel's adjustment of means to end in his system so far as he worked it out. (See Gilder, The Kindergarten: An Uplifting Social Influence in the Home and the District, in Proceedings N. E. A., 1903; Harris, The Kindergarten as a Preparation for the Highest Civilization, Proceedings of the International Kinder- garten Union, 1903.) 7. In the organization of the system of Gifts and Occupa- / tions Froebel seems to have had in view at least three fairly dis- tinct ends: (i) Through the knowledge of their form, size, and number, — according to Froebel the characteristic quaUties of all material objects, — to have the individual gain a compre- hension of, an intellectual mastery over, the objects of the physical world. As Miss Blow expresses it: "The material used by kindergarten children for their productions has a geometric basis and is organized to illustrate numerical ratios. Becoming familiar with spheres, cubes, cylinders, circles, squares, oblongs, triangles, indeed all geometric planes and many geometric solids, the child learns to recognize them in the objects around him, while by constantly applying he is prepared to observe numerical relations. Since all form rests upon geometric archetypes, and all inorganic processes are governed by mathe- matics, the child's experiences with form and number give him the clue to inorganic nature. . . ." Furthermore: "The total series of the kindergarten gifts must illustrate in the evo- lution of geometric forms the general law of advance from an undifferentiated unit to those highly complex wholes wherein the most perfect unity is achieved through infinite difEerentia- tion and integration. For this reason the kindergarten gifts move from the sphere conceived as excluding to the sphere con- ceived as including all possible faces, comers, and edges, and to this movement of solid from sphere to sphere corresponds the evolution of geometric planes wherein the circle is both the terminus ah. quo and the terminus ad quern of a generative process, and the movement of lines from the curve will return thereto through the intersection of straight lines of different 94 Educational Theories inclinations. Each solid, plane, and line is therefore appre- hended not in detached and solitary independence, but as an integral member of a related series. The exact place of each solid in the series is determined by its greater or less approxima- tion to the sphere, the exact place of each plane by its greater or less approximation to the circle. The primary purpose of this organization of the kindergarten gifts is to lead toward the ap- prehension of all single geometric forms as members of an ascending system." (Compare the attempts to indicate how a quantitative mastery may be gained over inorganic nature made by Pestalozzi and Herbart.) (2) As a symbol of the de- velopment of self-consciousness, the common method of which Froebel conceived, as was noted above, to be a progressive mediation of opposites. From the point of view of educational material this common principle of mental development demands according to him the presentation to the individual of contrasts or opposites in form and their gradual elimination by means of intermediate series. (3) Through the self -active representation of typical (a) life, (b) knowledge, and (c) beauty forms to have the child's experiences organized and enriched in such a way that they are given not merely a meaning or a value but also that they become more and more tmder control, and the child becomes less and less at their mercy. It is needless to say that Froebel's entire system of Gifts and Occupations is based upon a recognition of the motor character of consciousness. "Thought must clear itself in action and action resolve itself in thought." His aim was, undoubtedly, to maintain a balance between the intellectual and the practical. The child, he argues, makes or receives a plan, and then executes it ; has a thought and embodies it in concrete form. It is inter- esting also to note in many sections of his writings the degree to which Froebel recognized the reaction of physical conditions upon conscious states. (See, e.g., Mottoes and Commentaries of the Mother-Play, English translation, p. 167-171.) His purpose in the Gifts and Occupations, then, from one point of view, might be said to be to secure or maintain a balance between the cognitive or intellectual and the volitional or practical aspects of the experience of the individual. As experiences for the child it is fair to say that the Gifts and Occupations are, according to Herbart and Froehel 95 Froebel, primarily doings, activities, media for active, motor expressions through physical organs, eyes, hands, and the muscular system in general. But this very activity, Froebel claims, involves observation and attention, imagination, plan- ning, thought, in order to the successful realization of some end. The materials are flexible, easily provided, and afford a stimulus to the growth and interplay of ideas, their increasing control, and continual embodiment in some form of activity. In ad- dition to the argument concerning the value of the Gifts and Occupations, namely, that they aim to maintain a balance be- tween the cognitive or intellectual and the practical sides of the experiences of the child, it should be conceded .further that so far as Froebel in the Mother-Plays, and the Gifts, Occupations, and Games endeavored to have typical modes of human experi- ence reproduced in the school, he was certainly on the track of one of the most fundamental and fruitful ideas in the entire course of educational theory. Over the working out of the system of Gifts and Occupations Froebel spent fifteen years. What he was trying to discover was the relation of these materials to the nourishment of mind. The principle, not the matter of detail or imperfect application, is the element of permanent significance and value. It is in the light of his fundamental principles that justification is found for Davidson's contention that "all future education must be built upon the foundation laid by Froebel." (See also sec. 11.) 8. In the consideration of Froebel's conception of syTiibolic education, note (i) the natural tendency towards symbolism of Froebel's mind and of the period, (2) the new conception of the relations of the natural and the spiritual worlds, (3) the nature of the child's mental imagery, (4) the mental tendency to unify in a "world," by means of symbols, the manifold of sense, (5) the tendency to interpret one experience by another, (6) self-con- sciousness and objective consciousness, (7) the symbol as a self- projection, (8) the symbol as based upon analogy, (9) the symbol as an approximation to the universal or type, (10) the symbol as mediatory of social experience, (11) the symbol as mediatory of the technique of civilization, (12) cosmic symbolism: the microcosm and macrocosm. Nature as a divine sense-symbolism adapted to the use of man. 96 Educational Theories 9. In Froebel's conception of religion as affording the truest "world-view," and therefore, as the fundamental dispo- sition governing the individual's participation in the spiritual life of humanity, and modifying the development of that life, note (i) its relation to the view of Schleiermacher. The content of the religious consciousness. (2) Emphasis of creativity as the fundamental attribute. (3) Religious interpretation of nature. (4) Religion and morality. (5) The religious element in the child-consciousness. The feeling of community. (6) Stages in religious development. (7) The religious motive. (8) Con- firmation of philosophy in religion. 10. "The duty of each generation," Froebel once declared, "is to gather up the inheritance from the past, and thus to serve the present and prepare better things for the future." The essential question concerning any work is not. True or false? but rather. How much of truth has been brought to light, however inadequate at times its expression may be, and however im- perfect the attempt has been to render its assumptions in- telligible ? Criticism of such a nature should enable us to attain a more satisfying because a more discriminating adherence to the thought of Froebel and to do full justice to it without enslaving our own. In attempting to interpret the permanent significance of Froebel's thought and work it is necessary to keep in mind certain general considerations: (i) His thought does not ex- hibit a systematic or logical unity so much as a unity of ten- dency and endeavor. The most interesting and valuable things in the Ufe of an individual are his ideals. It is the motive, the informing purpose, that gives its consecration to Ufe. Froe- bel's thought was, in its movement, essentially experimental and ■ genetic. His theories were only gradually developed through his own life and writings. In many of his works, as he acknowledges, he was "breaking a path through unexplored regions of experience," and he recognized that his success "must necessarily be partial and imperfect." (2) In the study of his theories as developed by himself it is very often necessary to distinguish clearly between the principle and the matter of de- tail or particular appUcation. (3) Only those principles may be accepted as of permanent significance which receive their justi- fication in reason and experience. Methods of interpretation Herbart and Froehel 97 and criticism based upon the reconciling principle of develop- ment, a principle underlying the thought of Froebel as well as that of the period in which his life was passed, and which constitutes one of the permanent achievements of its intel- lectual life, should enable us in the present to do justice even to the errors of the past and furnish a standard whereby to separate the permanent from the transitory, the spirit and the principle from the matter of detail or imperfect ap- plication. Such a principle of development is as hostile to an unwise conservatism as it is to a dogmatic criticism or overhasty reaction. In an account of the permanent significance of Froebel's work for the theory of education there should, if space per- mitted, be emphasized the following points: (i) The conception of the theory of education as ultimately a philosophy of life. Education implies a theory of the proper conduct of life, and this, in ttim, implies a theory of life based upon an examination of the nature of man and his place in the system of reaUty. The subject-matter of education is therefore as much an integral part of reality as that of any other science. For Froebel the purpose of education is one with the supreme purpose of life. Our conception of becoming is determined by our idea of the reality which underlies the process. Froebel's general position is that spiritual monism which conceives material and mental evolution as continuous phases of one spiritual movement. From the level of inanimate nature to that of human history it is one spiritual reality which manifests itself. The law, therefore, which reigns in nature, and the purpose revealed in human life must be taken into the consciousness and made manifest in the'^ife of the individual. Education, accordingly, consists "in leading man, as a thinking, intelligent being, growing into self -consciousness, to a pure and unsullied, conscious and free representation of the inner law of divine unity, and in teaching him ways and means thereto." (. One cannot fail to be struck by the intensely moral tendency in all Froebel's thought. He regards all things, all processes, all materials, ultimately from the moral point of view. In this he is the disciple of Fichte and Schleiermacher rather than of Schelling. On the other hand, however, Froebel's interest is not ethical merely; it is every- 98 Educational Theories where and always deeply religious. In true religion he finds, with Schleiermacher, the foundation and final guarantee of the facts of the moral life. He maintains that in man, in virtue of the divine principle in him, the consciousness of God is bound up with the consciousness of himself: and if the Absolute be not manifest and revealed to us in the reality we know, it is for us nothing. It is questionable whether the true significance of Froebel's work can be understood until the reUgiotis motive fundamental to it all is fully recognized and appreciated. (2) A second point in Froebel's work which shotild be emphasized is his perception of the social bearings of the problems of educa- tional theory, his recognition that a rational theory of education is related in a fundamental way to the spiritual interests of society. Froebel was ever aUve to the need of keeping his theories close to practice, recognizing that ideas which have little or no relation to life, but stand apart from it, are self- condemned. However inconsistent at times Froebel's thought may appear, it must not be forgotten that it is insight rather than exactitude in thought that tells most powerfully on human life. (3) A third feature of Froebel's thought which should be noted is his emphasis upon individuality. . For him the ten- dency to individuation is the unconscious or conscious tendency of every finite thing. For Froebel an individual is essentially a creative entity: it is what it can do, and where there is no activity there is ho being, — ^no reaUty. In man, as in the things of nature, is a manifestation of the divine essence, a manifestation which necessarily attains to higher expression and fuller consciousness. Although dependent upon natuxe, upon humanity, upon God as much as the stone by the wayside or the beast of the field, yet man's dependence is of a diflEerent character. The divine life expresses itself in man not simply as existence, or nutrition, sensation and impulse, but in desire, in the knowledge of nature, in sympathy for things human, in the creation of the beautiful, in aspiration towards the good. By the presentation (Darstellung) or realization of the individual life, therefore, which Froebel identifies with the educational ideal, he means the evolution of the spiritual nature of the individual, the development of conscious self-determining ac- tivity in conformity with the law or purpose immanent in all Herbart and Froebel 99 things. In virtue of reason man can organize the objects and beings about him into systems, — nature, and humanity, — and gradually rise to the unity of essence and manifestation, of inner and outer, and the recognition of God as the immanent life of both. (4) While emphasizing the right of the individual to de- velopment, Froebel, with Hegel, clearly recognized that only in the spiritual community of human institutions, the home, the school, society,, the state, the church, does the individual attain true selfhood. The individual in any stage of his development is an organism in the larger organism of life. The center of Froebel's educational theory is the thought of the individual, but the individual regarded from the twofold point of view, as a partially independent unity, and as part of a larger whole. To keep these two aspects in view was one of the problems upon which his mind was most completely set in the working out of his educational ideas: to balance the notions of self- realization and of membership in a more inclusive unity. His thought is perhaps more adequately expressed by saying that the individual at any state of his existence is in a process of organization or unification. (See Butler, Status of Education at the Close of the Century, in N. E. A. Proceedings, 1900 ; Dewey, The School and Society; Harris, How the School Strengthens the Individuality of the Pupil, in Educational Review, October, 1902 , Howison, On the Correlation of Elementary Studies, in Report of Commissioner of Education, 1895-96.) Other conceptions which form integral elements in the thought of Froebel and which can here merely be named in briefest form are the following: (i) The conception of the unity and continuity of (i) mental development, (ii) educational factors, ^(iii) educative materials. (2) The demand that the doctrine of principles direct its attention not to cognition by itself, but to the activity of psychical life as a whole. The standard of attainment is not therefore intellectual, but spiritual. (3) The conception of the educational process as possible be- cause the self and the world are not mechanical disparates but rather elements in one organic spiritual process. (4) The at- tempt to work out a systematic plan for the upbuilding of. ex- perience in harmony with the idealistic view of consciousness as a self-active principle in the creation of an intellectual and moral loo Educational Theories "world. The conception of man not as mere knower but as worker. (5) Education as a process of social interaction. The work of the mother in the education of the child. Froebel planned for parents and teachers as well as for children. The kindergarten as a society of children, engaged in play and its various forms of self-expression, through which the child comes to learn something of the values and methods of social life, without as yet being burdened by too much of intellectual technique. The education of the individual conceived as growth in freedom (personality) through the organization of interests, purposes, activities into a system of life. Education is a process of mediation between the individual and the law or comprehensive order of things (natural and human) in such a way that the law lives in the individual not as constraint but as nature, and he only is truly a person whose impulses are con- formed to the law of all Ufe. (6) The idea of education through processes rather than through products. (7) The significance of the principle of imitation in the upbuilding of experience. (8) The conception that education by development demands the closest conformity of the education to the nature of the individual. For this reason it must closely follow the child-soul through all the successive stages. The primary aim is to awaken and to stimulate the innate principle of life in its de- velopment according to eternal laws. It is the mother upon whom, first of all, this duty devolves: the home thus becoming invested with a deep and far-reaching significance as the first seat of culture. (9) Psychology of educative materials. The educative significance of play. (10) The kindergarten as a social institution. (11) The educative significance of nature. For Froebel the phenomena of nature are not expressionless. They possess a language, visible and audible, which their mere reduction to law does not wholly exhaust, but is disclosed to the feeling, to the intuition, to the wise passiveness of the soul. (12) Religion as the fundamental disposition governing the in- dividual's participation in the spiritual life. (13) His insistence upon service as the goal of education. (14) His vindication of the sacredness and original soundness of human nature. (15) The conception of life in its entirety as one great educational opportunity, and of the various institutions, home, school. Herbart and Froebel loi society, the state, the church as instruments in the realization of this larger human culture. / II. In illustration of the difBculties which Froebel encoun- tered in attempting to formulate his educational ideas there may- he mentioned his strange terminology, in the use of which he was influenced by Krause; his lack of literary form; "his absurd etymologies; his lapses into artificial symbolism; his puerile analogies and formal allegories." There are, however, more serious difficulties in his thought, difficulties which seem to lie in the way of an indiscriminate acceptance of his as a thoroughly consistent and satisfactory theory of education. Certain of these difficulties should be briefly referred to : (a) It was admitted above that Froebel never succeeded in giving to his philosophy of education the rotmded completeness of scientific system. In Herbart we find the trained philosopher, thoroughly alive to the need as well as the nature of system, and anxious according to the custom of his day to show the educa- tional imphcations of his general philosophical theory. It is but natural, therefore, that Herbart 's educational doctrines should be given to us in a highly organized form. Froebel, however, resembles Herder, Schelling, and the Romanticists generally in his inability to keep his poetic, his philosophic, and his religious ideas apart. Logic, ethics, psychology, epistemology are all fused together by him, as so often by Plato, in a semi-religious synthesis. The philosophic spirit and a large measure of philosophic insight were his, but not the power of philosophic exposition or of selecting an adequate vehicle for the transmis- sion of his ideas. Much of his thinking is the outcome of the true Romantic impulse to revel in a content attained through intuition and symbolism rather than as a result of critical re- flection. The natural trend of his mind was rather in the direction of great symbolic intuitions than of the somewhat arid ways of critical analysis. (6) Permeating Froebel's conception of the educational pro- cess and the educative materials are lurking certain ideas which not only endanger, but which to all appearances are in flat con- tradiction to the monistic view of reaUty upon which his general philosophy is based. It was implied in preceding sections that the position of idealistic monism affords on the whole a more I02 Educational Theories satisfactory basis for a philosophy of education than does pluralistic realism, and chiefly because Realism while conceiving the Absolute not as one but as many independent realities asserts the possibility of their real communion with one another. Idealism (and this is in harmony with the doctrine of evolution) asserts that it is impossible to view man and nature, the social and the natural orders, as isolable in any other than an ideal way. In this, moreover, Idealism is supported by indubitable facts connected with the evolution of the religious and the aesthetic consciousness, of the sciences, and of the commercial and in- dustrial evolution of society. The question, then, to be asked concerning the thought of Froebel is this: Is the dualistic con- ception of the individual's environment, nature and humanity, presupposed throughout his interpretation of studies and in the gifts and occupations, consistent with the general philosophical position fundamental to Froebel's systera, and, if it is not con- sistent, does it furnish us a philosophical and unitary principle by which to determine educational materials? With Kant, Froebel seems still to accept a dualism between mind and nature (nature, as physical environment, or so-called objects in space apart from mind). According to the idealistic monism under- lying his thought nature is not something which merely encom.- passes or surrounds man or society in a mechanical way; it is something which enters organically into the very makeup of human life. Nature without man is blind: man without nature is an impossibility. Nature and man are not two en- tities, — a belief from which Kant never entirely freed himself , — but terminal aspects of one spiritual process. Nature, then, in the philosophical and ethical sense means for idealism the processes and materials, not which lie beyond or external to social life, but which essentially and organically condition it. In the educational sense, nature means the realization (as worths) and comprehension (as means) of these same processes and materials. To admit that in educational theory this separation of mind and nature is a matter of no importance is to deny the significance of Idealism for educational theory, and to forfeit the benefits to be gained from the attempts of Aristotle, Kant, Pichte, and Hegel to reconcile the apparent opposites, mind and nature, soul and body, freedom and law, natural inclination and moral Herbart and Froebel 103 effort, mechanism and teleology, nature and culture, as stages througli which the spiritual order is reaUzed. (See also the gen- eral discussion of the Kantian epistemology. Chap. VI, sec. 4.) (c) The results of the same dualistic tendency in Froebel 's thought may be noted in a slightly different form in seeking an answer to the question. Has Froebel adjusted in a satisfactory way his threefold conception of the Gifts (to take these as typical), first, as the medium through which the individual comes to an intellectual mastery of objects in space ; second, as divided into the life, knowledge, and beauty forms, a distinction at times approaching a separation analogous to the divisions of the faculty psychology; third, as mediating to the individual typical forms of social experience ? In seeking an answer to this question it is necessary to keep in mind several factors which are, in reality, implicit in Froebel's general philosophical posi- tion: (i) The continuity of development. (2) Froebel's demand that we are to "give to each stage that which the stage de- mands." (3) The need of educative as well as mere disciplinary activity. (4) Without the relation-giving action of mind there would be no objective-world. (5) This relation-giving function is not merely individual but social. (6) The fact that the con- scious distinction between man and nature is itself the result of a process, arising only through later reflection, and that the young child is not yet prepared for the specialization or isolation (of norms, ends, and values, on the one side, and of the processes or materials through which these norms, ends, and values are realized) demanded by the divisions between man and nature. (7) The fact that the child's life goes on in the medium or en- vironment of society. To a degree, then, in Froebel's interpretation of the Gifts and Occupations the old dualism of mind and nature still seems to persist. Alongside this dualistic conception is one more in harmony with the idealistic psychology of Fichte and of modern idealistic psychology generally, — a conception, however, which Froebel did not always consistently maintain. The more im- portant characteristics of this position may be indicated in some detail, in order that we may have a standard by which to es- timate Froebel's actual achievement: (a) The conception maintains a functional view of mind, i.e.. I04 Educational Theories in the wider sense, namely, that the mind is no isolated entity: it is not something which has activity; it is activity. We no longer speak of mind and its faculties, of functions and that which has functions. The mind is real only in its activity, or rather, its activity, its functioning, is its reality. The mind or self is activity operating in intrinsic relations to social situations, to a larger social order (i.e., social in the widest as well as the narrowest sense). The general position of the view of the soul as thus conceived is that in determining what consciousness is recourse must be had to an examination of what consciousness does. It attempts to escape the extreme positions of both (i) Empiricism, according to which the mind is conceived as a pro- duct rather than a principle, and of (2) Rationalism, which in one form or other conceives of the soul as a pre-existing spiritual entity, endowed with capacities or faculties, prior to the exercise of such faculties or capacities, existing behind these as a kind of (transcendental) substance or substratum, and before the ob- jective world has as yet disturbed the pure unity of its essence. The view of evolutionary -idealism is not that the mind is mere product or epiphenomenon, nor a mere transcendental spiritual substance which (so far as actual experience is concerned) is a pure abstraction, but that it is a concrete specific activity con- stantly directed to the accomplishment of something and not only the bearer of the experience process, but an efficient agent in its furtherance. From this general conception it follows (i) that in the mental life, as an organic unity, consciousness cannot (without a complete departure from reality) be abstracted from its relations. Prior to and apart from objective experience consciousness is an illusion. It will thus be apparent how necessary it is in the analysis of experience to keep in mind its organic unity: in other words, the organic relation between consciousness and its object, the agent and the situation or con- ditions in which the activity proceeds. (2) That just as the life elements, organism and environment (compare the act of breathing, which is a functional coordination of the lungs as organ and air as environment), so the mental life is a con- tinuous coordination or functioning of two elements, self and environment. Herein we see the difficulty in the Empirical and Rationalistic position. Just as some biologists would Herbart and Froebel 105 identify function with organ alone, making environment purely- external, or with environment alone, making the organ simply product, so the Empiricist would make the self a product and not a principle, while the Rationalist would make the soul a principle existing prior to its contact with the objective world, and, at most, maintaining only incidental relations with the latter. On the other hand, the evolutionary view of mind maintains that the relation of consciousness or self to objective experience or environment is absolute and intrinsic. An isolated consciousness is no consciousness at all: it is a self- contradiction. (3) Since the mental life is not the outcome of a predetermined self upon an external environment, or of the adjustment of the self to a predetermined environment, neither the self nor the environment are eternally fixed in themselves, but both change in the movement of the life-process. In the functional movement of the mental life both the self and the environment are modified and determined. Both are essen- tially transitional, in a continual process of becoming. The self is real in so far as it continues to act, to become, to progress. (4) Self-consciousness is not a subsequent or higher growth of consciousness, but in rudimentary form at least is a quality of all consciousness. It is consciousness with the emphasis on the subject rather than the object, the agent rather than the situation. (b) Sensations and ideas are not ends in themselves: they are, so to speak, clues or stimuli in directing activity. All knowledge involves both percepts and concepts, sensations and ideas and their combination. These may be discussed from the point of view of (i) origin, (ii) content, (i) Sensations: (i) The biologist maintains that the organs of sense had their origin in the problem of the life-process. Such variations as were of service in the Ufe-struggle were selected; others, offering no positive contribution, were discarded. The sense-organs were thus in their origin organs of adjustment, methods of economy; through natural selection their increasing perfection meant more perfect adjustment, i.e., increasing self-maintenance on the part of those possessing them. Thus, biologically, the knowledge mediated by the sense-organs had its origin in the needs of the life- process; it was an instrument of control, in securing food or io6 Educational Theories escaping danger, (ii) In the child again, activities in the form of inherited instincts and impulses precede sensations. His characteristic is impulsiveness; he is essentially a motor being. The child's curiosity is preparatory to some activity, a prelude to behavior. It is ever in the interest of some experiment on the part of some bodily organ, usually the hand or mouth. For him, the objects of his environment are the particular activities which they suggest and distinct sensations are the sensible news of his behavior, (iii) In the adult consciousness, likewise, the sensation is a sign, and has significance only as part of a larger whole. When do we have sensations? Examine such experi- ences as taking the car, looking at your watch, the clock's ceasing to tick, walking over an unaccustomed road, moving the ears, etc. It will be found in such experiences that sensa- tions either regulate activity, or are signs within the experience circuit, i.e., the retrospective reference; or, through their appeal to attention, they furnish the materials of a new problem, i.e., their prospective reference. (2) Ideas. Only a very brief out- line can be made in this connection. The concept or idea, as is true of sensation, has a retrospective as well as a prospective reference. It is (i) a register of past experience, a habit, a method of ordering sensations. On the other hand, an idea embodies (ii) a plan of action. Its function within experience is not only to organize experience, but to institute or furnish the method of future experience. Its function, therefore, is essen- tially mediatory, instrumental. Thus the definition of idea is in terms of its function, of its position in the movement of ex- perience. It is the instrument of the growth of experience from the less rich and less definite to the richer and more definite forms. To illustrate, take the judgment. The pencil is sharp. Sharp is an idea, but sharpness does not exist in reality; only as a quality, emphasized within, or abstracted from experience. Why, then, form the 'idea' or 'concept' of that which does not exist? Simply because the idea, so emphasized or ab- stracted, will furnish a sign, a plan, a method of future action. The idea 'sharp,' then, is ultimately instrumental to a larger experience process, e.g., that of writing. Ideas, then, in pro- viding a method or plan of action make for economy within ex- perience, enable us to anticipate and thereby control future Herbart and Froebel 107 experiences. They are thus constructions of the past and of the future. Herein is their kinship with science. Ideas are plans of action. Laws of science are constructions of the past and future behavior of those realities with which man has to deal. Ideas and sciences are thought-constructions for the registration and control of experience. Sensations, ideas, science, are thus seen to be regulative and mediatory in the conduct of life. (c) The child gets at nature through human life, through a human medium. Its approach to the world, its normal study of it, is teleological. This conclusion of philosophical idealism, namely, that nature and civilization, matter and mind, body and soul, are not self -subsisting, isolated entities (or at best only mechanically related), but are rather complementary phases of one spiritual movement, seems to be confirmed in a unique way when we turn to the interpretation of any one of the great lines of human interest and endeavor. Only the barest suggestion of such lines of possible inquiry and confirmation can be given here. It will be noted how in sympathy they are with the thought of Hegel and the spirit, if not always the letter, of Froebel. (i) The religious influence of external nature has in almost every age cooperated in producing in man the belief that within or behind so-called material things there is a spiritual reality. Idealism finds in the great, historical religions a striking con- firmation of its own central position that the universe of nature, though for purposes of description, distinguished as material, is fundamentally a manifestation of spirit. Through countless generations, then, nature, working in and through the religious consciousness, has exercised a unique influence in the education of the human soul. (2) Another striking confirmation of the idealist's contention of the ultimate kinship and, hence, possible community between man and nature, might be found in tracing the growth of man's esthetic interest in nature, in what is some- times called the poetic interpretation of nature. Just as through science nature is seen to be interpenetrated with rationality, so through art and poetry in their process of ideal- ization has it been shown to be suggestive of moral and aesthetic values. (3) Through the development of economic and in- dustrial life in modern times the dependence of man on nature in the realization of his purposes and the perpetuation of his io8 Educational Theories experience is being more and more acknowledged and under- stood. Industrial and commercial life are forcing upon the mind of man a newer and higher teleological interpretation of his natural environment, and proving to him how completely human life and progress are involved in the subjugation of nature. (4) Science, again, and Idealism meet on common ground. Science rests on the belief that there is a correspond- ence between the course of nature and the raind of man. This faith is its presupposition : the establishment of the correspond- ence is its goal. The sciences so far developed are an evidence of the afi&nity between the intelligence of man and the intelligible order of nature. It is only necessary to refer to its history to show in what manifold ways, though through a discipUne both severe and prolonged, the struggle for scientific knowledge has been fitted to discipline the intelligence and the moral nature of man. It was said above that the child gets at nature through human life, through a human medium. In the process the child contri- butes the activity (at first instinctive or impulsive) ; society (nature and humanity) contributes the situations, the norms, the system of purposes. (Compare the positions especially of Fichte, Schleier- macher, and Hegel.) A further illustration of the organic con- nection between what Froebel designates the inner and outer may be given in a consideration of the teleological relation of mind and body. With the idealism which Froebel strove to appropriate it is assumed that the essence of being is one in kind, and spiritual. Between mind and body there is no es- sential antagonism or opposition. The mind is no fixed entity separable from matter. If we are to trust our experience matter cannot be as foreign to consciousness as is ordinarily believed. If the analysis made above be true, mind and matter, soul and body, are terminal aspects of a unitary, living, spiritual ex- perience, organic throughout, and in which the so-called nervous system, body, or matter, is instrumental, the machinery of its growth, and of its expanding life. Many look upon the physical as something set over against the spiritual, something that restricts, confines, enslaves. According to the view expressed here the physical, with its senses and stimuli, is the very means whereby we gain freedom. The child, feeling the pain from Herbart and Froebel 109 the finger thrust into the flame, and thereby restraining itself afterwards, is not limited by its bodily senses or its nervous system. Rather is its nervous system the very instrument through which its freedom is gained. Moreover, just as the body, and nature itself, are instrumental to the self, and no mere hindrance, in like manner is the machinery of institutions no mere hindrance, but the very medium of escape for the individual from the domination of mere instinct and impulse to conscious self-determination. No adequate statement of free- dom as a ready-made faculty or power of mind can be given in a paragraph, if at all. Yet when we take the so-called physical and institutional life, not as mere external and antagonistic opposites, but rather from the teleological and instrumental point of view, we may realize more fully the significance of the most apparent and the most fundamental fact in experience, namely that the consciousness of self implies the consciousness of the not -self, and grows with it, and by means of it. Thus conceiving the self and the world as the terminal aspects of a living organic reality or experience and communicated to us (through con- sciousness) in inseparable correlation we can regard neither one as a resultant of the other. Together they constitute a functional manifestation of a unity which is their common and absolute ground. What, then, is enforced in this section is the im- possibility of conceiving a soul or mind in itself, a pre-existing entity, or of matter in itself, a self-contained existence. Keep- ing by experience we recognize that subject and object are never met by us apart. They are distinctions within a unity, but not different or antagonistic entities. And it scarcely need be re- marked in passing that the doctrine outlined above is neither materialism nor subjective idealism. It is an attempt to construe teleologically the relation of mind and matter, self and not-self, the individual and institutions, without obliterating their differences nor reducing one to the other; securing the reality of both in a Ufe whose variety is unity and whose essence is spiritual. The ultimate reality of the finite self lies in its meaning (its functional relation and activity) not for itself alone but as part of the entire system of Absolute experience (so-called physical, social, etc.). To begin with, the self is an organ that through its endowment of consciousness may erect itself into no Educational Theories membership in the organic, spiritual system of universal ex- perience or activity, which in turn is to be conceived as neces- sarily differentiating and expressing itself in the growing life of its /parts. If the Absolute is conscious life, it must also be social. But a "society" is not a mere aggregation of parts: to say that it is an organism is to assert something quite different. Accepting the view of reality as an organic and self -differentiat- ing unity, the finite self in its experience declares itself as a fundamental differentiation of this reality. Just as in the physical organism (only the imperfect approximation of a true organic unity) the various parts or differentiations, in a sense, have within them the content of the whole, so selves or persons, as fundamental differentiations growing into self-consciousness, have potentially within them the content of the entire organism of reality, though of course not in the same way that the organ- ism itself contains it. In himself the individual self is naught, in union with the whole of reality everything is potentially his. As a spiritual being, therefore, there is nothing which may be regarded as the individual's exclusive possession. He shares, participates in a common life. This is the community of the spiritual life. From first to last the life of the individual is a shared life, a life shared with nature, and human beings. But with these it is shared. They are not its origin. In the attempt to account for the origin of the individual, as a spiritual process of experience, we are ultimately forced to regard this process of individual life as a process of realizing the universal experience through itself. Human experience thus becomes a progressive acquaintance with and adjustment to Absolute Reality. {d) In viewing civilization as the progressive artictilation and realization of human nature which still persists in the spiritual experience, the intellectual interests, the habits of conduct of the present, it is assumed that (i) the most satisfactory psy- chology of race-development is a psychology of action: The ulti- mate social fact is "men acting together for the sake of interrelated ends." These ends may be protection, wealth, worship, what not; man's ever-increasing wants rising into desires and his perpetual efforts to satisfy those wants. But back of this notion of men in functional relation to one another and to their environment we cannot go. The history of civilization is the Herbart and Froebel 1 1 1 history of human achievement. (2) The conditions or materials of human activity are nature. Civilization is ultimately pos- sible because man and nature are not isolated entities, but rather phases of one spiritual movement. In a very real sense the direct influence of nature upon man is greatest when he is in the primitive stage of develop'ment. In the process of social evolution through institutions, the growth of knowledge, the increase of tools and inventions, there is developed a psychical m.edium through which the direct physical influence of nature is humanized and mediated. Nature, from the physiological point of view, does still influence the individual directly: but psychically or educationally nature's influence is mediated through the process of social life of which the individual through- out his career is a member. From the beginning man has been in some kind of functional relation to his environment. His Ufe has presented itself to him as a series of problems to be solved: and these problems are social as well as individual. Man's achievements are social achievements and have therefore been brought about by some form of social action and coopera- tion. It may be said, then, that civilization, or culture, repre- sents the values, norms, ideals ; nature is the processes, materials, the means of their realization. It is the methods discovered by man in the course of his experience for the registration, organi- zation, control, and perpetuation of his experience. It has thus a retrospective as well as a prospective aspect. In civilization, therefore, as the organization of human life thus far attained, there are certain fundamental methods or norms which are in- herent in its natural constitution and which reproduce them- selves in all its manifold forms. In the analysis of these normative elements. Science, Language, Art and Literature, Institutions, and Religion, these must be continually viewed as inter-related aspects of a common social experience or activity: they are the general elements of civilization, — elements which constitute the real existence of the concrete and organic unity of society. Each of these elements has its retrospective and pros- pective reference: each represents a fundamental habit and accommodation in the life of the race. All together they are functional elements within the social process, mediating agencies in the communication or transmission of experience, instrumental 112 Educational Theories to the spiritual life of man. The evolution in nature and in civilization has its goal in the elevation and expansion of the personal life. It will thus be recognized how necessary to any adequate statement of the "Course of Study" is a chart of civilization, — a morphological or psychological presentation of the great methods or norms according to which human experience has been organized, elevated, and expanded. Adequately to state what science, art, and religion mean in the movement of the in- dividual's experience, it is ultimately necessary to trace their significance in the movement of the spiritual experience of the race. 12. If the foregoing be a fair, though brief, statement of the position of evolutionary idealism it will be possible to discover just how far the position of Froebel coincides, and wherein his system tends here and there to diverge from or wholly abandon the conception which seems to the evolutionary idealist to be along the way where truth lies. The important questions, then, to ask concerning Froebel's treatment of studies, and perhaps especially of the gifts and occupations, are these: (i) Do they, in any way, force upon the child a distinction (between man and nature, or between man and social life) which is the result of later reflection and abstraction'^ (2) Does Froebel, and to what degree, divorce sense or thought training from the normal system of activities and purposes, — activities and purposes in which alone sensations and ideas gain their significance ? If such be the case, such training must ultimately become mechanical and valueless educationally, producing, indeed, what Dr. Harris speaks of as arrested development. What is to be our standard of sense and thought training? If we accept the voluntaristic, or evolutionary-idealistic position, it follows that for the child there must be a motive to activity, an outlet beyond itself, — a motive which forms part of a teleological system. Do the Gifts and Occupations (to take them as typical) always provide a motive sufficient to make the activity of the child significant? (Compare the criticisms which have been made on the formalism of the Kantian Ethics, and his complete separation between reason and desire.) Does Froebel in the Gifts and Occupations, to any degree, return to the intellectualistic position from which he was attempting to get away? Does Froebel introduce pre- Herbart and Froebel 113 maturely the technique of certain activities apart from their relation to or significance or function within the child's ex- perience? Is his analysis of the Gift, for the most part, a logical or psychological one ? Is it made from the educator's or from the learner's point of view? The psychology of a gift, occupation, or study, impUes the interpretation of the experience, for which the gift or study stands, from the genetic point of view, i.e., from the point of view of the one who is realizing the experience; whereas the logic of a study is an analysis of the experience for which it stands, from the point of view of the one who has passed through the experience. (3) Does Froebel consistently make the child, as an active social being, with needs, impulses, purposes which receive their interpretation or fulfilment through social life, the center for correlation, or does he at times approach the intellectualistic position of Herbart, and make not activities but ideas, not processes but products, the educative centers? (4) Is Froebel's treatment of the relations of the natural, supernatural, and spiritual worlds consistent with his general monistic and immanental point of view? Has he adjusted in a consistent manner one to the other, the so- called life, knowledge, and beauty forms of the gifts ? The difficulties inherent in Froebel's treatment of the sub- ject-matter of instruction may now be briefly summarized: (i) His failure to work out a theory of knowledge which would be consistent with his general philosophical position. (2) His fre- quent lapse from a voluntaristic psychology to a psychology of the intellectualistic type of Herbart. (3) His failure to keep always in mind the implications of his own doctrine of the social nature of consciousness. (4) His failure to distinguish in every case between the logic of studies and their psychological aspect, in other words, between studies as organized social ex- perience and as modes of self-realization. 13. A further difficulty remains to be mentioned, the diffi- culty arising from what Dr. Harris speaks of as the biological analogy. It is by no means clear that Froebel's thought is free from the error due to the analogous application of the categories from one level of existence to the phenomena of a different order. This tendency, unfortunately, led him into all sorts of diffi- culties. "This tendency at the present time," says Professor 114 Educational Theories Baldwin, "is the bane of contemporary science other than physical. The theory of evolution is responsible for much of this cheap apology for science — ^biology used in sociology, physics in psychology, the concept of energy in history, etc. Evolution has been mistaken for reduction, the highest genetic modes being 'explained' in terms of the lowest, and much of the explaining done by 'explaining away' most that is char- acteristic of the highest. And biological or organic evolution itself is a storehouse of mistaken analogies brought over into the moral sciences." — (Development and Evolution, p. 334. See also the article of Dr. Harris, The Danger of Using Biological Analogies in Reasoning on Educational Subjects, Proceedings N. E. A., 1902.) The fact must not be overlooked in educa- tional theory that the analogous application of principles from one order of being does not suffice to explain the phenomena of a higher order of being. The standard must be reversed before final interpretations may be made. The biological analogy may be used as preliminary to the analysis of such categories as organism, adaptation, development, environment, etc., because it is helpful, not because it is final. The fundamental category of self -consciousness, the working hypothesis of philosophic in- quiry, can be understood, as Descartes long since pointed out, only through its own light. The key to its understanding is within itself. » The difficulty in the biological analogy as it affected the thought of Froebel is seen in his attempt to reconcile, (i) the conception of education as a natural development, the outcome of the silently operative laws of nature (in certain statements, it must be admitted, that Froebel approaches dangerously near the position of Rousseau, according to whose theory education must be subordinated to nature and at most consists in the re- moval of obstructions); and (2) the Fichtean conception of education which views it as essentially a self -determining- activity in the face of oppositions and in the light of ever worthier ideals; in other words, the conception which demands that activity be educative. Though Froebel has furnished the general schema, and has perhaps done more than any other man to work out in its principles a system in which the two conceptions (from one point of view they are the conceptions, on the one hand of Leibnitz, Herbart and Froebel 115 and of Hegel on the other) are adjusted, it is not clear that! their reconciliation is wholly satisfactory. The attainment of such a goal presupposes a long period of social cooperation as well as a body of organized knowledge obtained through an adherence to the criteria and methods of a strictly scientific and philoS sophic procedure. /^ 14. It is always a difficult task to separate what is per- manent from what is transitory in our inheritance from the past: it is one, however, which each generation has to under- take for itself. There is an especial reason why we should bring to the study of Froebel a truly critical and yet sympa- thetic attitude. His ,system presents a type of educational \ organization more in harmony with the spirit of democrat]^ society than any other hitherto proposed. He himself de- clared, indeed, that the spirit of the American nationality was the only one in the world with which his method Was in com- i plete harmony and to which its legitimate institutions would/ present no barriers. On the other hand, it is asserted at the present time that the democratic institutions of America are on trial. Some there are who declare that the school has been tm- able to fulfil its part as the bulwark of democracy. The question, therefore, comes to us. What have the ideas of Froebel accom- plished and what more can they accomplish in meeting the needs of American civilization ? The spread of his ideas during the last twenty years is perhaps the most significant fact in the educational life of America during that period. Froebel saw in a unique way the restorative function of the child and child-nature in the spiritual life of men and women, and came to regard it as the deepest source of human welfare and improvement. With singular clearness he recognized that out of the education of the spiritual nature alone can issue that life and force and spirit which makes for democratic civilization in the highest sense. As is well known, Froebel worked back in his thought from a survey of education in general to the education of a particular period. Had time and opportunity been vouchsafed to him, he would doubtless have framed a scheme of development in which he would have insisted on the same fundamental principles found in his formulation of the educative process in the kinder- garten period. In this country at the present time the watch- ii6 Educational Theories word is 'educational reconstruction' all along the Une, in the elementary, secondary, and higher stages. It is, therefore, but natural to ask, // Froebel's principles are operative (in the main) in one stage, are they not also valid in the other stages as wellf How far do the present methods and processes of the kinder- garten relate themselves to the home life and experiences of the child, and to what extent do the same methods prepare the way to his subsequent development? Just here is the opportunity once more for those who will lay to heart and live by the spirit and truth, and not the mere letter, of Froebel's thought. The burden of criticism, of unceasing study, pursued in a spirit of openness to the light and fidelity to the truth, must not be shirked. If Froebel's thought is to assist in the educational reconstruction, if it is to shape the new education as it should, it must itself be criticised and freed from certain imperfect forms in which it has become embodied. It must he modified or transformed in the light of truths brought forward by science and by the changed conditions of the Western world, — truths which it cannot afford to neglect. We live spiritually, says Professor Royce, by out-living our formulas and by thus enriching our sense of their deeper meaning, p^he thought of Froebel, or the thought to which the thought of Froebel has given birth, must show itself capable of adaptation to the varied conditions, the novel social environment, the needs and aspirations of American life: it must be inclusive not exclusive: it must show itself capable of reconciling its adherents with themselves and of lifting their minds above the level of controversy ; it must be self-assertive, and yet self-critical, disowning the unquestioning attitude of the partisan. Then and then only can it win the triumphs for which Froebel hoped and labored, and for which his true dis- ciples hope and labor in turn. ] References : In addition to the works of Froebel, and the references noted in the text, the following may be consulted: Angell, The Relations of Psychology to Philosophy; Blow, What is Froebel's Generative Thought, The Kindergarten Ideal of Nurture, International Kinder- garten Union, Boston, 1900, Letters to a Mother, also Symbolic Education; Bowen, Froebel; Butler, Some Criticism of the Kinder- garten, in Educational Review, October, 1899; Dewey, School and Society, The Child and the Curriculum, Psychology and Social Herbart and Froebel 117 Practice, The Edttcational Situation, The Significance of the Problem of Knowledge, Principles of mental development as illustrated in early infancy, Logical conditions of a scientific treatment of morality. The Interpretation Side of Child Study, also Elementary School Record; Eby, The Reconstruction of the Kindergarten, in The Peda- gogical Seminary, July, 1900; Francke, History of German Litera- ture; Harris, Psychologic Foundations of Education, Kindergarten Psychology, Social Culture in the Form, of Education and Religion, in Educational Review, January, 1905; also various articles in Educational Review and Proceedings N. E. A.; Hayward, The Educational Ideas of Pestalozzi and Froebel; Hughes, Froebel's Educational Laws; Mackenzie, Outlines of Metaphysics; Paulsen, Evolution of the Educational Ideal, in Forum, 1897 ; Roberts (Ed.), Education in the Nineteenth Century; Royce, The Spirit of Modern Philosophy; Russell, German Higher Schools; Snider, Social In- stitutions; Spalding, Development of Educational Ideas in the Nine- teenth Century, in Educational Review, November, 1904; Early History of the Kindergarten in St. Louis, Mo., in the St. Louis Annual Report, 1878-79; Vandewalker, The Kindergarten and Higher Education, in Educational Review, November, 1898; Wel- ton, A Synthesis of Herbart and Froebel, in Educational Review, Vol. XX ; Young, Isolation in the School, also, Scientific Method in Education. Further problems for study: 1. Literary and philosophic influences in the life of Froebel. 2. Froebel's indebtedness to Pestalozzi. 3. Points of similarity between Froebel's and Leibnitz's view of knowledge. 4. The genesis of the ethical motive underlying the Kinder- garten. 5. The conception of the individual in Rousseau and Froebel. 6. Froebel's solution of the equation between the individual and the social. 7. Play and work. 8. The child-study of Froebel. 9. The psychology of Occupations. 10. Bases of the Kindergarten program. 11. Froebel's conception of education in relation to the problem of democracy. 12. The adjustment of the Kindergarten to contemporary needs. IX RETROSPECT AND CONCLUSION In concluding the present outline attention may be directed in a brief manner to certain truths which have tended to re- ii8 Educational Theories appear constantly in the consideration of the period under review: (a) Educational ideas are not artificially produced; they obey the laws of living organisms, are transmitted from genera- tion to generation, and bear the impress of each succeeding age. The educational ideas of the period from Lessing and Herder to Hegel and Froebel were the outcome of the life and spirit of the German people during that era of transition, of aspiration, and of reconstruction. The work of the great educators of the period formed one of the most potential influences in a period of national humiliation in kindling in the German people an aspiration towards a worthier national life. Through their in- fluence education becarae one of the vital movements of the time. (b) The entire period, from one point of view it may be said, was one in which the true nature of the individual was made known. Rousseau, Kant, Lessing, Goethe, Pestalozzi, Schleier- macher, Fichte, Herbart, Hegel, and Froebel, all pleaded, each in his way, for the rights of the individual. The period was one of struggle for completeness of individuality. But the lesson was learned that the ideal of a perfect personality is to embrace the ideal of a perfect society, that system of life in and through human institutions in which are garnered the spiritual experience of the human race. Individual culture, in its true sense, can proceed only in the midst of a well-organized community. (c) Closely connected with the new doctrine of personality which emerged in the movement from Rousseau to Froebel, is the achievement of the Idealistic movement from Kant to Hegel, which is in essential agreement with another great achieve- ment in philosophy, namely, that of Greece. While representing different epochs and interpreting different types of human ex- perience, the import of both is essentially the same. Each is an expression of that idealism which finds the interpretation of existence in mind as the ideal and real presupposition of the world. This idealism of Plato and Aristotle, of Kant and Hegel, discovers a spiritual principle in the orderly processes of nature, in the beauty of the world, in the consciousness of man, and in the unity and continuity of the spiritual life of humanity. But the idealism of the second period is more than a mere re- Herbart and Froebel 119 affirmation of the truth arrived at in the first. It furnished a new and fuller demonstration, rendered possible by reason of the completer experience, an experience which humanity was forced to undergo in its advance to finer issues. (d) The movement towards democracy which gave to the^ nineteenth century its most distinctive feature had its origin in the increasing sense of the worth of the individual, his spiritual and social significance, his rights and duties, an appreciation which in turn had its origin in the new movements in philosophy, in ethics, in religion, in science, and the new ideals of social amelioration and reconstruction. (e) During the period a new appreciation of the meaning and significance of civilization, as embodied in art, science, phil- osophy, literature, and religion, as the means of development and liberation for the individual. Instead of being a hindrance, as Rousseau supposed, it came to be recognized that civilization represents the methods so far organized of the true life of man. For the individual, at birth, this civilization, this system of norms and of methods, is his spiritual inheritance. It becomes his spiritual possession in a large and fruitful way only through education. From the ethical and therefore from the educa- tional point of view, civilization is the vicarious offering of the race to the individual, to be used, if he will but appropriate it, >• for the perfecting of his nature, for the rich and varied ex- pression of the personal life. (j) The study of the writers of this period makes it apparent that ultimately the end by which our desires are determined rests not merely on the process of psychological development, but in the very nature of reality. It may have its individual or psychological history or genesis: being from this point of view the last phase of the development of desire : but ultimately or metaphysically, the desire is intelligible only when it is recognized as conditioned by or implied in the very nature of things. (g) The thought of the period was, moreover, intensely human, when for man was disclosed the soul in sense, the mys- tical beauty of nature, the divine effluence in the human soul, the spiritual sanctions of sympathy as well as of duty, the spirit of the little child long waiting for recognition, yet the interpreter 120 Educational Theories of the past as well as the hope of all the coming years. The literature of a later time may interpret man and human life more subtly and with greater exactness: not perhaps with greater earnestness or nobility. The period won for human thought the fact that the permanent reality in experience is per- sonality — ^not any longer the isolated individual of Rousseau, but the person of Froebel and Hegel entering into the wealth of the world's life, or, in Shelley's words: "Man, one harmonious soul of many a soul, Whose nature is its own divine control, Where all things flow to all as rivers to the sea."