///^ 
 
LB 1162 
 
 .B5 
 
 Copy 1 
 
 
LIBRARY OF CONGRESS. 
 
 
 UNITED STATES OF AMERICA. 
 
EDITED BY 
 
 WILLIAM T. HARRIS, A. M., LL. D. 
 
 VoLmii: XXVI. 
 
INTERNATIONAL BDVOATION SERIES 
 
 SYMBOLIC EDUCATION 
 
 A COMMENTARY ON 
 
 FROEBEL'S "MOTHER PLAY" 
 
 BY ,/ 
 
 SUSAN E. BLOW 
 
 f^^ 
 
 >Fr28l894^ 
 
 NEW YORK 
 D. APPLETON AND COMPANY 
 
 1894 
 
 i 
 
.55 
 
 Copyright, 1894, 
 
 By d. appleton and company. 
 
 Electrotyped and Printed 
 AT THE Appleton Press, U. S. A. 
 
TO 
 
 THE SISTER 
 
 WHO HAS TAUGHT ME TO UNDERSTAND A MOTHER'S LOVE 
 
 AND BLESSED ME WITH A DAUGHTER'S CONFIDENCE 
 
 I DEDICATE THIS BOOK 
 
Dasz sie die Kinder erziehen Konnten 
 Muszten die Miitter seyn wie Enten: 
 Sie schwliramcn rait ihrer Brut in Ruh; 
 Da geliort aber freilich Wasser dazu. 
 
 Goethe. 
 
EDITOR'S PREFACE. 
 
 The kindergarten constantly gains ground 
 in the United States as well as in Europe. In 
 1892 an inquiry sent out from the Bureau of 
 Education obtained information of the existence 
 of 2,000 private kindergartens and 459 public 
 kindergartens. Of the former, 1,148 failed to re- 
 spond to the inquiry sent them. The 852 private 
 kindergartens that reported had 1,602 teachers 
 and 33,637 pupils. The 459 public kindergartens 
 reported 933 teachers and 31,659 pupils enrolled 
 during the year. The returns showed a total of 
 nearly 2,500 kindergartens, with an enrollment 
 of 65,296 pupils in the 1,311 that reported. 
 
 According to the reports from year to year 
 there were in 1873, so far as could be learned, 42 
 kindergartens, 73 teachers, 1,252 pupils. 
 
 Five years later (1878) these had increased to 
 159 kindergartens, 376 teachers, 4,797 pupils. 
 
 In 1882 there were reported 348 kindergar- 
 tens, 814 teachers, 16,916 pupils. 
 
viii EDITOR'S PREFACE. 
 
 In 1888, 521 kindergartens, 1,302 teachers, 31,- 
 227 pupils. 
 
 In 1892, as above stated, reports were received 
 from 1,311 kindergartens having 2,535 teachers 
 and 65,296 pupils, and the addresses of nearly as 
 many more were obtained which failed to make 
 reports when asked.* It may be safe to estimate 
 the number of kindergartens at 3,000, the teach- 
 ers at 5,000, the pupils at 100,000. 
 
 The advent of the kindergarten in the educa- 
 tional system of this country has more signifi- 
 cance than the above statistics would indicate; 
 for the kindergarten brings with it a new leaven, 
 so to speak, that is destined to leaven the whole 
 lump. It inspires its teachers with the true mis- 
 sionary spirit, to devote themselves to the work 
 of unfolding the self -activity of humanity in its 
 feeblest and most rudimentary stage of growth. 
 In proportion to the maturity of the human be- 
 ing, he manifests the power of self-help. The 
 teacher of advanced pupils does not stand in 
 need of such refinements of method to secure 
 profitable industry in his classes ; it is the teach- 
 er of feeble-minded adults or of very young chil- 
 dren that must have what the Germans call a 
 " developing method " (entwicJcelnde Methode). 
 
 * See Annual Report of Bureau of Education for 1890-'91, 
 pp. 676-783. 
 
EDITOR'S PREFACE. ix 
 
 A correct method is very important even in 
 higher education ; it is indispensable in primary 
 education. 
 
 It happens, therefore, that the kindergarten 
 gives great attention to the sequence of studies, 
 the educational value of each exercise, and to 
 the correct method of directing the pupil's own 
 efforts without stunting them by officious help. 
 In all these things she, the good kindergartner, 
 continually follows the lead of Froebel, and ever 
 finds new significance in his profound thoughts, 
 expressed, as they often are by him, in the form 
 of obscure hints or inadequate expositions. 
 
 The existence in every community of a coterie 
 of zealous students of Froebel, composed of teach- 
 ers and mothers of young children, will tend to 
 draw large numbers of the instructors of older 
 children and youth into the study of the mental 
 evolution of children. Then will follow an edu- 
 cational era of good methods in all grades of 
 schools. We shall not find then, as we do now, a 
 teacher permitted to overdo one branch of study 
 to such an extent as to arrest development on 
 some elementary plane, and destroy aspiration 
 for more perfect instruments of knowledge and 
 for deeper depths of thought. 
 
 The mechanic who has learned with great 
 thoroughness a knack of the hand, is not as eager 
 
X EDITOR'S PREFACE. 
 
 to learn how to manage a machine that can do 
 more and better work as is the workman who 
 lacks perfection in the lower form of manual 
 skill. Thoroughness, carried to mechanical per- 
 fection in the studies of the primary school, often 
 produces this arrest of development. Over-culti- 
 vation of verbal memory cripples alike the power 
 of original thinking and the power of accurate 
 observation. Too much practice on elementary 
 arithmetic, for the purpose of securing rapid and 
 accurate addition of columns of numbers, is 
 known to dull the capacity to learn grammar, 
 and history, and literature. 
 
 If the methods in use in the elementary and 
 secondary schools were founded on a knowl- 
 edge of the evolution of the mental faculties, 
 would not a far greater number of our youth 
 manifest an intense desire to continue work in 
 the secondary school, and from thence resort to 
 the college and university ? As it is, ninety- 
 four pupils out of every one hundred are study- 
 ing only elementary branches. While nearly all 
 the children under fourteen years of age get some 
 elementary instruction, only one in seven of those 
 between fourteen and eighteen get secondary in- 
 struction, and only one in thirty of those between 
 eighteen and twenty-two attend colleges and 
 universities. Even if the secondary and higher 
 
EDITOR'S PREFACE. xi 
 
 schools were not better filled than now, would 
 not the enkindled aspiration in our youth pro- 
 duce a people that would carry on their educa- 
 tion throughout life ? 
 
 I have already pointed out, in my preface to 
 the translation of Froebel's Education of Man, 
 published in this series, that the philosopher of 
 education is Froebel, and not Pestalozzi, who is 
 only the prophet or herald of its philosophy. 
 "Inner connection" is Froebel's chief category, 
 and he seeks unweariedly all his life to find inner 
 connection between the steps of growth in the 
 child and inner connection between the realms of 
 Nature. Pursuing this line of inquiry, he comes 
 finally to seek the correspondence between the 
 inner connection of the unfolding faculties of 
 the child and the inner connection that exists in 
 Nature. And inasmuch as correspondence itself 
 is inner connection, we see that Froebel's philoso- 
 phy of education is an inner connection of the 
 third degree : 
 
 1. Inner connection between the objects of 
 Nature : evolution. 
 
 2. Inner connection between the faculties of 
 the mind : mental development, or education. 
 
 3. Inner connection between the subjective 
 and objective, the mind and Nature : the philos- 
 ophy of education. 
 
xii EDITOR'S PREFACE. 
 
 The first self-revelation of the child is through 
 play. He learns by it what he can do : what he 
 can do easily at first trial, and what he can do by 
 perseverance and contrivance. Thus he learns 
 through play to recognize the potency of those 
 " lords of life " (as Emerson calls them) that 
 weave the tissue of human experience — volition, 
 making and unmaking, obstinacy of material, the 
 magic of contrivance, the lordly might of perse- 
 verance that can re-enforce the moment by the 
 hours (and time by eternity). The child in his 
 games represents to himself his kinship to the 
 human race — his identity, as little self, with the 
 social whole as his greater self. 
 
 In the nature of things the child is always 
 outgrowing his playthings — always exhausting 
 the possibilities of a given object to represent or 
 symbolize the occupations and deeds of grown- 
 up humanity in the world about him. Were the 
 child to arrest his development and linger con- 
 tented over a doll or a hobby-horse, the result 
 would be lamentable. Hence unmahing is as 
 important as making to the child. His destruc- 
 tive energy is as essential to him as his power 
 of construction — a point often missed by kin- 
 dergartners who have not penetrated Froebel's 
 doctrine of inner connection in its third degree. 
 
 True inner development or education should 
 
EDITOR'S PREFACE. xiii 
 
 proceed from the symbolic to the aesthetic or 
 artistic, from art to science, and from science to 
 philosophy ; for true art (including also poetry) 
 is a higher form of "inner connection" than 
 the merely symbolic, which constitutes the spir- 
 itual side of play. Again, science and philoso- 
 phy are more advanced than art in the fact that 
 they seize the inner connection directly and sim- 
 ply, while the symbolic form is only a suspicion 
 or intimation of an inner connection, and art is 
 only a personification or an illustration of it. 
 
 Miss Blow, in the last chapter of the book 
 before us, has characterized in a happy manner 
 this transcendental feature in human life — de- 
 scribing it as "vortical education"; as if sym- 
 bolic corresponded to the line, art to the surface, 
 and science to the solid, having within itself all 
 the three dimensions. She has done a great 
 service to the philosophy of Froebel by expound- 
 ing as his chief thought the idea of Gliedganzes, 
 or whole that is at the same time a member of 
 a larger whole — as man is a self-determined in- 
 dividual, and at the same time is a constituent 
 of a social whole — as, for example, the family, 
 the city corporation, the nation (see Chapters II 
 and III). 
 
 This idea of " member- whole " is undoubtedly 
 the deepest and most fruitful in the philosophy 
 
xiv EDITOR'S PREFACE, 
 
 of education, and it is well that its consideration 
 is introduced in the first chapter of this book by 
 a criticism of its opposite idea, that of atomism, 
 which is preached by Rousseau and his dis- 
 ciples. 
 
 It is interesting to note here that Hegel found 
 this thought in the famous seventh chapter of the 
 eleventh book of Aristotle's Metaphysics, where 
 he speaks of the intelligible as being the " other 
 co-element" {(rva-TOLxta) of the thinking activity 
 or reason (voSs). He exclaims, on quoting this 
 passage, "One can scarce believe his eyes," at 
 finding this thought in Aristotle ; and proceeds 
 to explain the word (rva-roixLa (which is often 
 translated series) as sometimes signifying "an 
 element which is itself its own element, and is 
 always self-determined " — that is to say, it is a 
 member of itself, and thus a whole and a part at 
 the same time. The reach of this thought is note- 
 worthy as explaining the constitution of mind or 
 consciousness (which is subject and object — co- 
 elements — and at the same time a whole including 
 both ; the subject and object are likewise wholes 
 as well as co-elements). Here we have a Glied- 
 ganzes. But what man is as personality, he is 
 also in his institutions ; he is a citizen of a state ; 
 the parent or the child of the family ; a member 
 of any co-operative community. This, too, is ex- 
 
EDITOR'S PREFACE. XV 
 
 pressed in the highest thought man has reached, 
 that of the invisible Church celebrated in St. 
 John's Revelation, wherein each person, inspired 
 by the missionary spirit of self-sacrifice for oth- 
 ers, becomes a member of an infinite choir or 
 congregation, and at the same time he is an in- 
 dividual self -active whole in himself. Indeed, is 
 not the mystery of the Holy Trinity the supreme 
 exemplar of this independence in the midst of 
 perfect unity with others ? 
 
 The Mother's Songs and Games (Mutter-Spiel 
 und Koselieder) * was published fifteen years 
 after The Education of Man, and gives the 
 fruitage of Froebel's long thinking and experi- 
 menting. 
 
 The publishers of this series have pleasure in 
 offering this valuable commentary on the most 
 
 * Kose may be translated baby-talk — the mother's prattling 
 in imitation of the imperfect articulation and ungrammatical 
 speech of infants. The derivation of this word seems uncertain, 
 but probably, as Grimm suggests, it came from the Latin caii- 
 sari, to plead in court — like the French causer, to talk or chat — 
 in the very earliest period of intercourse between Germans and 
 Romans, inasmuch as the chief feature of a Roman court of law 
 would impress strangers like Celts or Germans so strongly as to 
 lead them to borrow the Latin word to describe it with. Later 
 the word was used to describe altercation ; and then ordinary 
 conversation ; and finally familiar chat (French, causerie ; also 
 English colloquial coze for chat, see Murray's Dictionary ; and 
 cousie, a gossip ; see also Dietz, Et. Worth, Rom. Spr., sub 
 cosa). 
 
xvi EDITOK'S PREFACE. 
 
 important of all Froebel's works, and trust that 
 it may be kindly received by the large and in- 
 creasing class of persons interested in tlie kin- 
 dergarten. 
 
 W. T. Harris. 
 
 Washington, D. C, January 31, 1894. 
 
AUTHOE'S PKEFACE. 
 
 Readers of this book will at once perceive 
 its incompleteness. Lines of thought are indi- 
 cated in the earlier chapters which are not sub- 
 sequently developed. The Mutter- und Kose- 
 lieder is treated under only one of its varied 
 aspects. The gifts and occupations receive mere- 
 ly incidental mention. The explanation of these 
 facts is that only half of the book is written. As, 
 however, many kindergartners express a need of 
 help in the study of the Mutter- und Koselieder, 
 it seems well to me to publish the finished chap- 
 ters. The rest of the work shall follow so soon 
 as I have time and strength to write it. 
 
 Those of my readers who are familiar with 
 the writings of Dr. Harris will recognize my 
 indebtedness to him. The extent of this indebt- 
 edness no one can realize so fully as myself. I 
 
xviii AUTHOR'S PREFACE. 
 
 count it one of the great privileges of my life 
 that my practical work in the kindergarten was 
 begun and continued for seven years under his 
 searching yet kindly criticism ; nor am I less 
 grateful for the insights which have come to 
 me from his books, his lectures, and his many 
 monographs on philosophy and education. 
 
 Susan E. Blow. 
 
 Avon, N. Y., January SO, 1894. 
 
CONTENTS, 
 
 CHAPTER 
 
 I. — Atomism 
 
 II. — Development .... 
 III. — The Childhood of the Race 
 IV — The Symbolism of Childhood 
 v.— The Meaning of Play . 
 VI. — Old Lady Gairfowl . , 
 VII. — Pattern Experiences . 
 VIII.— Vortical Education 
 
 3 
 
 19 
 
 51 
 
 81 
 
 111 
 
 149 
 
 167 
 
 213 
 
I. 
 
 ATOxMISM. 
 
" Let us, then, I said, 
 Leave this unknit republic to the scourge 
 Of her own passions, and to regions haste 
 Whose shades have never felt the encroaching axe, 
 Or soil endured a transfer in the mart 
 Of dire rapacity. There man abides, 
 Primeval Nature's child. A creature weak 
 In combination (wherefore else driven buck 
 So far, and of his old inheritance 
 So easily deprived ? ), but, for that cause, 
 More dignified, and stronger in himself. 
 Whether to act, judge, suffer, or enjoy. 
 True, the intelligence of social ait 
 Hath overpowered his forefathers, and soon 
 Will sweep the remnant of his line away ; 
 But contemplations, worthier, nobler far 
 Than her destructive energies, attend 
 His independence, when along the side 
 Of Mississippi, or that northern stream 
 That spreads into successive seas, he walks ; 
 Pleased to perceive his own unshackled life, 
 And his innate capacities of soul, 
 There imaged : or when, having gained the top 
 Of some commanding eminence, which yet 
 Intruder ne'er beheld, he thence surveys 
 Kegions of wood and wide savanna, vast 
 Expanse of unappropriated earth. 
 With mind that sheds a light on what he sees ; 
 Free as the sun, and lonely as the sun. 
 Pouring above his head its radiance down 
 Upon a living and rejoicing world ! 
 So, westward, tow'rd the unviolated woods 
 I bent my way ; and roaming far and wide, 
 Failed not to greet the merry mocking-bird ; 
 
 But that pure archetype of human greatness, 
 I found him not. There in his stead appeared 
 A creature squalid, vengeful, and impure ; 
 Eemorseless, and submissive to no law 
 But superstitious fear and abject sloth." 
 
 Wordsworth, The Excursion. 
 
CHAPTER I. 
 
 ATOMISM. 
 
 It has often been observed that the dominant 
 idea of an age gives form alike to its science, its 
 politics, its philosophy, its theology, and its edu- 
 cation. Thus the age of scientific atomism was 
 also an age of political atomism, reaching its cli- 
 max in the French Revolution; of philosophic 
 atomism as illustrated in the sense theory of 
 knowledge, and carried to its logical consequences 
 by Hume in the denial of causality and true self- 
 hood ; of theological atomism, shown in the crude 
 deism which excluded a kind of atomic divinity 
 from that aggregate of atoms which could only 
 by courtesy be called the universe ; and of edu- 
 cational atomism, as set forth in the Emile of 
 Rousseau. So, to-day, the reigning idea in all 
 departments of thought is development, and we 
 tirelessly repeat the evolutionary dictum, that 
 " to know what a thing really is we must exam- 
 ine how it came to be," 
 
 As a theory of human nature, atomism was a 
 
4 SYMBOLIC EDUCATION. 
 
 creed witli two main articles. Of tliese, the first 
 affirmed man to be by nature good ; the second 
 declared arts, sciences, institutions — in short, 
 eveTything produced by man — to be wholly bad. 
 The only salvation for humanity lay in return to 
 the primitive state of savagism ; and so soon as 
 men realized their deplorable condition they 
 would exclaim in bitterness of heart, "Thou, 
 who disposest of our understandings, deliver us 
 not up to the fatal arts and sciences of our fore- 
 fathers, but restore us to ignorance, innocence, 
 and indigence, which alone can make us happy 
 and which are precious in thy sight." * 
 
 Rousseau's attack upon civilization is whole- 
 hearted, as may be seen in the following extracts 
 from Emile : " All our wisdom consists in servile 
 prejudices ; all our customs are only subjection, 
 bondage, and restraint. Civilized man is born, 
 lives, and dies in slavery ; at his birth he is con- 
 fined in swaddling clothes ; at death he is nailed 
 in a coffin. So long as he retains the human form 
 he is fettered by our institutions."! Through 
 this slavery character is debauched and courage 
 destroyed; and man, unfit to live, is, "by the 
 prescriptions of the physicians, the precepts of 
 
 * Rousseau's Inquiry into tlie Effects of the Arts and Sci- 
 ences. 
 
 f Emile, (Gamier Freres), Paris, p. 31. 
 
ATOMISM. 5 
 
 the philosopliers, and the prayers and exhorta- 
 tions of the priest, made ignorant how to die." 
 The only remedy for this state of things is isola- 
 tion. " Men were not made to be crammed to- 
 gether like ants in ant-hills, but to be scattered 
 over the earth which it is their duty to cultivate. 
 The more they collect together the more they 
 corrupt each other. Infirmities of body and vices 
 of the heart are the infallible effects of their too 
 numerous concourse. Of all animals men are 
 least adapted to live in herds. If they were 
 crowded together as sheep are they would all 
 perish in a short time. The breath of man is 
 fatal to his fellows, nor is this less true in a 
 figurative than in a literal sense." * 
 
 In view of the corruption incident to human 
 intercourse, Rousseau's first educational require- 
 ment is the isolation of the pupil. As the soli- 
 tary man Robinson Crusoe is the ideal human 
 being, so the solitary education is the true educa- 
 tion. Such persons as the pupil is forced to see 
 must be so entirely dominated by the father or 
 governor that he can calculate in advance their 
 every word and act. In the ideal family life, as 
 depicted in the New Hdloise, every servant in the 
 house is represented as entering into the designs 
 of the master for the education of his sons. In 
 
 * ^fimile, Book I, p. 34. 
 
6 SYMBOLIC EDUCATION. 
 
 Emile the same conditions are insisted upon. 
 " You will never," says Rousseau, " be master of 
 your pupil unless you are master of all those 
 about him " ; * and though he admits that such 
 domination is difficult, perhaps impossible, he 
 insists that it must be the end aimed at, and that 
 he who most nearly approaches it will be the 
 most successful educator. 
 
 Having secured the pupil so far as possible 
 from the contamination of human intercourse, 
 the ideal atomistic education may be safely begun 
 by leaving him to the exercise of what Rousseau 
 calls his " natural liberty." Here our author is 
 in his element. " Let us," he says, " lay it down 
 as an incontestable maxim that the first impulses 
 of Nature are always right ; there is no original 
 perversity in the human heart; there is not a 
 single vice of which one may not discover how 
 and whence it enters the soul." f The only thing 
 necessary to make the pupil perfectly good is to 
 leave him entirely free to do as he chooses. " A 
 really free man wills only what he is able to do, 
 and does what he pleases. This is a fundamental 
 truth. Apply it to the state of childhood, and 
 all the rules of education will flow from it." | 
 
 "There is only one science," continues our 
 author, " which should be taught children, and 
 
 * fimile, p. 78. f ^bid., p. 7^ , t Ibid., p. 04. 
 
ATOMISM. 7 
 
 that is the science of human duties." * This sci- 
 ence is taught by carefully preserving the child 
 from any sense of moral obligation. " The words 
 command and obey should be ruled out of his 
 dictionary, still more so, those of duty and ob- 
 ligation." f 
 
 "Never command the child to do the least 
 thing. Do not let him even imagine that you 
 claim to have any authority over him." | " Give 
 him no kind of verbal lesson ; he should receive 
 no lessons save from experience. Inflict upon 
 him no kind of punishment, for he knows not 
 what it is to be in fault. Never require him to 
 ask pardon, for he is incapable of offending you. 
 Lacking all sense of right and wrong, he can do 
 nothing which is morally evil, or which merits 
 either punishment or reproof." * 
 
 Rousseau is not blind to the practical difficul- 
 ties involved in allowing the child to do as he 
 pleases. He avoids them to his own satisfaction 
 by granting an apparent rather than a real free- 
 dom. The pupil is constant!)^ watched, con- 
 stantly duped, and, by a series of theatrical de- 
 nouments, taught the nature of his acts. The 
 artificiality and insincerity of the method are its 
 sufficient condemnation. 
 
 As Emile is made virtuous through insensi- 
 
 * Emile, p. 24. f Ibid., p. 70. X Ibid., p. 73. # Ibid., p. 74. 
 
8 SYMBOLIC EDUCATION. 
 
 bility to moral obligation, so his mind is pre- 
 pared for rational faith by being kept empty of 
 all religious ideas. At fifteen years of age he 
 hardly knows whether " he has or has not a soul," 
 and is not yet " capacitated to believe in God." 
 When, finally, the progress of his understanding 
 leads him to religious inquiry, the " right use of 
 his own reason will conduct him to the natural 
 and true faith." This religion of reason, as Rous- 
 seau proceeds to show, is that deism which, while 
 professing to worship a transcendent divinity, 
 really denies God altogether. The Savoyard 
 vicar, into whose mouth Rousseau puts his own 
 confession of faith, knows that the Deity exists, 
 and that his existence is independent of any of 
 his creatures ; but, adds he, " I no sooner inquire 
 where he is, and what is his substance, than he 
 eludes my thought, and my troubled spirit ceases 
 to know anything." * This inscrutable Divinity 
 is the Designer and Orderer of the world, but it 
 is by no means sure that he is its creator. The 
 vicar is doubtful whether there be one or two 
 self-existent principles, and the idea of creation 
 *' confounds his understanding." With regard to 
 the soul, his view is equally vague. " I feel," he 
 confesses, " that I have a soul ; I know this both 
 from sentiment and from thought ; I know that 
 
 * fimile, p. 309. 
 
ATOMISM. 9 
 
 my soul is, but I know nothing of its essence, and 
 I can not reason with regard to ideas which I do 
 not possess." * One thing, however, incenses this 
 rationalizing ecclesiastic, who knows nothing of 
 the essence of God, or of the essence of the soul, 
 and that is, to be told that God is a spirit and his 
 soul likewise spiritual. "To conceive God and 
 the soul as having the same nature " is the " de- 
 basement of the divine essence." f Such is the 
 theological atomism to which the right use of 
 reason shall conduct Emile. It requires little 
 mental acumen to perceive that this so-called de- 
 ism is really atheism in disguise. 
 
 As political atomism leads Rousseau to insist 
 upon the isolation of the pupil, and theological 
 atomism inspires his aversion to all religious 
 teaching, so the taint of philosophic atomism 
 may be recognized in the exaggerated emphasis 
 he places upon the cultivation of the senses. 
 Declaring sensation to be the source of thought, 
 and affirming that in sensation the mind is wholly 
 passive and receptive, he urges that, by control- 
 ling the order of the child's sense-impressions, we 
 may determine the future order of his ideas. 
 Moreover, since no art can be practiced without 
 the proper implements, and since the senses are 
 the implements through which knowledge is ac- 
 
 * feraile, I, p. 317. f Ibid., p. 319. 
 
10 SYMBOLIC EDUCATION. 
 
 quired, to exercise the child in seeing, hearing, 
 touching, tasting, and smelling is to make him 
 capable of thinking and of learning. It is need- 
 less to expand these suggestions, for all readers 
 familiar with the history of education will recog- 
 nize in them the germ of the " object-lesson " which 
 became so prominent a feature in the system of 
 Pestalozzi. It may, however, be not unimportant 
 to call attention to the fact that Pestalozzi's en- 
 tire system was vitiated by his acceptance of the 
 principle (fallen, since the time of Kant, into 
 philosophic discredit), " Nothing in the intellect 
 that was not previously in sense-perception." * 
 
 * In opposition to the suggestion of Rousseau with regard to 
 exercising the senses and restraining the activity of the mind 
 may be urged the following considerations : 
 
 1. In sensation itself the mind is not passive but active. To 
 have a sensation is to " discriminate between an existing state 
 of the self and other possible states." In deciding whether he 
 is sleepy or hungry, whether he sees or hears, the infant exer- 
 cises an activity of comparison. 
 
 2. Sensations must be distinguished from perceptions, which 
 arise only " when the mind brings to the aid of sense-impression 
 the ideas of causality, space, and time, which are furnished by 
 its own activity," Through the idea of causality the mind 
 recognizes something " objectively existent as the producer of 
 its sense-impressions." Through the idea of space it recognizes 
 this objectively existent somewhat as having boundaries, and 
 through the idea of time is enabled to perceive its changes. In 
 perception, therefore, the mind exercises a higher degree of self- 
 activity than in mere sensation. 
 
 3. " Every act of perception is an act of recognition." This 
 implies knowledge of the objects or attributes recognized. 
 
ATOMISM. 11 
 
 To the exercise of the senses Rousseau adds 
 that of the bodily powers, hut insists that the 
 mind should be kept passive, and that during the 
 period of childhood the aim of the teacher should 
 be " to lose time " and to " train his pupil in the 
 art of being ignorant." "If," concludes this 
 lover of paradoxes, " you could do nothing and 
 could prevent anything from being done ; if you 
 
 " First the mind recognizes a sense-impression, and through 
 that impression an object ; then the nature of the object ; its 
 identities with well-known kinds of objects ; its individual dif- 
 ferences from those well-known kinds of objects. But the dif. 
 ferences are recognized as identical with well-known kinds of 
 differences. It is the combination of different classes or kinds 
 of attributes that enables the mind to recognize the individuality 
 of the new object. It is like all others and different from all 
 others." 
 
 4. From these considerations it follows that the more the 
 observer knows of the class of objects represented by the speci- 
 men present to his senses, the more rapid will be the perceptive 
 process. Knowing what to look for, he loses no time in des- 
 ultory and futile observation. Knowledge of the ideal arche- 
 types of objects incites the mind to observation and verification. 
 Hence, to develop powers of quick perception, it is necessary 
 not only to exercise the senses but to increase the pupil's stock 
 of general ideas, and thus illuminate the mind that uses the 
 senses. 
 
 Readers interested in the philosophy of sense-perception are 
 earnestly recommended to study carefully Dr. Harris's Thoughts 
 on Educational Psychology, from which I have quoted freely in 
 the foregoing remarks. Chapter VI, on "Time, Space, and 
 Causality — Three Ideas that make Experience possible" — and 
 Chapters IX, X, XI, on the Logic of Sense- Perception, will be 
 found especially helpful. 
 3 
 
12 SYMBOLIC EDUCATION. 
 
 could conduct your pupil healthy and strong to 
 the age of twelve years without his being able to 
 distinguish his right hand from his left, the eyes 
 of his understanding would be open to reason 
 from your first lesson. Without prejudices and 
 without habits, there would be nothing in him 
 to thwart your efforts. Soon he would become 
 under your hands the wisest of men, and by be- 
 ginning with doing nothing you would have 
 made a prodigy of education." * 
 
 A final mark of the influence of atomism over 
 the mind of Rousseau may be traced in his at- 
 tack upon books. " I hate books," he says, " for 
 they only teach people to talk about what they 
 do not understand." It is curious to hear Pesta- 
 lozzi echoing these ideas, and inveighing against 
 the art of printing, through which " eyes have 
 become mere book-eyes, men book-men." It is 
 more curious still to recall the number of books 
 written by each of these enemies of books. 
 
 When the age for instruction arrives, Rous- 
 seau suggests that, in lieu of literary and lin- 
 guistic studies, the pupil be taught a trade and 
 be made to " invent the sciences." " No other 
 book than the world, no other instruction than 
 facts," t is the final dictum of this restless inno- 
 
 * fimile, p. 76. 
 
 t Barnard's Peslalozzi and Pestalozzianism, p. 73. 
 
ATOMISM. 13 
 
 vator, who seems never to have reflected that 
 facts are not fixed but expansive, and that only 
 through the study of books wherein are garnered 
 the fruits of all human observation and thought 
 can the individual interpret aright his own 
 partial and fragmentary experience. A pot of 
 ferns is a fact, yet how different its import to 
 the botanist and the child who, striving to in- 
 terpret the unknown by the known, describes it 
 as a pot of green feathers " ! * The earthworm is 
 a fact, yet between the meaning of this fact to 
 the boy who sees in it only bait for fishes and its 
 meaning to Darwin the difference is incommen- 
 surable. And not even to botanist and natu- 
 ralist do plant and worm tell all their secrets. 
 The fact which is opaque to the ignorant man 
 and translucent to the specialist is transparent 
 only to the thinker who has learned to see " by 
 wholes," and who from star and stone, from 
 flower and feeling, has broken a pathway to the 
 Absolute Mind : 
 
 " Flower in the crannied wall, 
 I pluck you out of the crannies — 
 Hold you here, root and all, in my hand. 
 Little flower ; but if I could understand 
 What you are, root and all, and all in all, 
 I should know what God and man is." 
 
 * See a short monograph entitled A Pot of Green Feathers, 
 by T. G. Roopcr, M. A., published by C. W. Bardeen. Syracuse, 
 N. Y. 
 
14: SYMBOLIC EDUCATION. 
 
 Rousseau's merit is that of the tornado and 
 the conflagration, and we must always remem- 
 ber with gratitude his burning attack upon that 
 formalism which, by teaching signs instead of 
 the things they signify, fortifies ignorance in the 
 stronghold of self-satisfaction. He cleared the 
 rubbish of centuries from the field of educational 
 theory, and thus made it ready for fresh plow- 
 ing and sowing. Moreover, in his insistence 
 upon the study of the child he pointed out the 
 indispensable condition of educational reform. 
 The results of his own observation are sum- 
 marized in the following striking passage from 
 La Nouvelle H^loise * — a passage upon which its 
 author stamps his approval by repeating it word 
 for word in Emile : " Nature wishes children to 
 be children before they are men. If we pervert 
 this order we shall produce precocious fruits — 
 fruits which have neither maturity nor savor, 
 and are soon corrupted. "We shall have young 
 sages and old children. Childhood has its pe- 
 culiar manner of seeing, feeling, and thinking; 
 nothing is less rational than the attempt to sub- 
 stitute our own, and I should as soon think of 
 requiring a child to be five feet high as to have 
 judgment at ten years of age." 
 
 * La Nouvelle Ileloise, Gamier Freres, Paris. fimile, 
 p. 72. 
 
ATOMISM. 15 
 
 This cursory survey of tlie educational prin- 
 ciples of Rousseau lias been inspired by the fact 
 that current opinion tends to exaggerate the cor- 
 respondences and minimize the differences be- 
 tween his views and those of Pestalozzi and 
 Froebel. There are undoubtedly many points of 
 resemblance between Pestalozzi and Rousseau, 
 and likewise many points of resemblance be- 
 tween Pestalozzi and Froebel, but the points 
 wherein Pestalozzi agrees with Froebel are pre- 
 cisely those wherein he differs from Rousseau. 
 Between the views of Rousseau and those of 
 Froebel there are in my judgment no affinities 
 whatsoever. 
 
11. 
 
 DEVELOPxMENT. 
 
" Because are thither pointed your desires 
 Where by companionship eacli share is lessened 
 Envy doth ply the bellows to your sighs. 
 But if the love of the supernal sphere 
 Should upwardly direct your aspiration, 
 There would not be that fear within your breast ; 
 For there, as much the more as one says Our, 
 So much the more of good each one possesses, 
 And more of charity in that cloister burns." 
 " I am more hungering to be satisfied," 
 I said, " than if I had before been silent. 
 And more of doubt within my mind I gather. 
 How can it be, that boon distributed 
 The more possessors can more wealthy make 
 Therein, than if by few it be possessed ? " 
 And he to me : " Because thou flxest still 
 Thy mind entirely upon earthly things. 
 Thou pluckest darkness from the very light. 
 That goodness infinite and ineffable 
 Which is above there, runneth unto love, 
 As to a lucid body comes the sunbeam. 
 So much it gives itself as it finds ardor. 
 So that as far as charity extends. 
 O'er it increases the eternal valor. 
 And the more people thitherward aspire. 
 More are there to love well, and more they love there, 
 And as a mirror, one rellects the other." 
 
 Dante's Purgatory^ XV, Longfelloiv's Translation. 
 
CHAPTER II. 
 
 DEVELOPMENT. 
 
 The theory that the line of progress is not 
 straight but spiral has never received more strik- 
 ing confirmation than in the revolution which de- 
 throned atomism and crowned the idea of devel- 
 opment autocrat of the wide realms of thought. 
 Atomism was the denial of unity and the nega- 
 tion of process. It saw in the physical world a 
 mere assemblage of independent " things " ; in 
 *' things" mere congeries of atoms; in humanity 
 an external aggregate of differing individuals ; 
 and in knowledge nothing but sense-impressions, 
 and the " faint images of these impressions called 
 up in memory and thinking." In its view, more- 
 over, the immediate phase of things was their 
 reality, and the atom, the "noble" savage, and 
 the sensation were respectively the truth of the 
 physical world, of humanity, and of thought. 
 Finally, it may be remarked that these assumed 
 originals were themselves mere abstractions of 
 the understanding, for atoms are the hypothetical 
 
20 SYMBOLIC EDUCATION. 
 
 results of analysis ; the " noble savage " has never 
 existed save in the minds of Rousseau and his dis- 
 ciples, and the sensations so loudly declared to be 
 the source of thought are themselves only known 
 by isolating them from the totality of experience. 
 The idea of development, on the contrary, has in- 
 cited thought to an ever-widening synthetic ac- 
 tivity. It has detached our gaze from objects to 
 fasten it upon the energies which produce ob- 
 jects. It has impelled science to the conclusion 
 that the laws of Nature, as well as the objects of 
 Nature, have arisen through a process of evolu- 
 tion, and has inspired the corresponding psycho- 
 logic doctrine that both the ideas and the so- 
 called faculties of mind are the products of its 
 own self-activity. It has shed fresh light upon 
 the spiritual unity of mankind, and made it im- 
 possible for any new Rousseau to resuscitate the 
 atomic individual. It has convinced us that the 
 original state of man was not his ideal state, and 
 that the golden age is yet to come. Nay, more : 
 it has shown that, in truth, human nature exists 
 only as it is created by self -activity, and that it 
 is realized in the individual only through his par- 
 ticipation in the results achieved by the race. In 
 a word, it has pointed out, in every sphere, the 
 priority of energy over being, revealed the active 
 and universal as the originating source of the 
 
DEVELOPMENT. 21 
 
 static and particular, and thus, while satisfying 
 the craving of the mind for unity, thrilled the 
 heart with the beauty of process. 
 
 This rapid extension of the idea of develop- 
 ment into all provinces of thought recalls the 
 Hindu story of " the tiny Brahman who, to hum- 
 ble the pride of King Bali, begs of him as much 
 sand as he can measure in three steps. When 
 the boon is granted, the tiny dwarf expands into 
 the gigantic form of Vishnu, and, striding with 
 one step across the earth, another across the air, 
 and a third across the sky, drives Bali down into 
 the infernal regions." * This story, usually in- 
 terpreted as a myth of the sunrise, illustrates 
 equally the sunrise of a new idea. Thus devel- 
 opment, with one step across the earth has taken 
 possession of our science, with another step across 
 the sky has appropriated our theology, and strid- 
 ing across the air has made psychology and edu- 
 cation its own forever. 
 
 The application of the idea of development to 
 education has been in large measure the work of 
 Pestalozzi and Froebel. To the former we owe 
 the ideal of education as the harmonious devel- 
 opment of inherent powers ; to the latter must be 
 accorded the honor of having first clearly per- 
 ceived the manifold implications of this ideal. 
 
 * Anthropology, E. B. Tylor, p. 397. 
 
22 SYMBOLIC EDUCATION. 
 
 The mind of Pestalozzi was a battle-ground be- 
 tween the idea of development and the atomism 
 he had inherited from Rousseau. Over the mind 
 of Froebel the new ideal held sole and supremo 
 sway, and so clear to him was its paramount sig- 
 nificance that he could boldly afErm he would 
 rather win from a tiny sand grain the history of 
 its development than learn from God himself 
 the structure of the universe. 
 
 The tendency of mind to make a symbol of 
 Nature is illustrated afresh in every period of sci- 
 entific advance. Thus, no sooner does Newton 
 formulate the law of universal gravitation, than 
 Swedenborg perceives therein " a mere external 
 of the irresistible attractions of affection and 
 faith." In like manner, Schelling recognizes in 
 the opposing poles of the magnet a symbol of 
 human consciousness, and Pestalozzi and Froebel 
 discover myriad analogies between the evolution 
 of physical organisms and the development of 
 mind. 
 
 It should, however, always be remembered 
 that an analogy is not a definition. It is as false 
 and misleading to call the child an organism as 
 it is stimulating to discover correspondences be- 
 tween the unfolding of his self -activity and the 
 growth of plants and animals. The child's body 
 is an organism in the true sense of the word, for 
 
DEVELOPMENT. 23 
 
 it is "a whole composed of parts which are re- 
 ciprocally means and ends " ; his mind is not an 
 organism, for it is not composed of parts, neither 
 is it separable into distinct faculties. It is a self- 
 active energy, having different phases of mani- 
 festation, but present wholly in each phase. It 
 expresses itself in feeling, thought, and will, but 
 there is no feeling in which thought and will are 
 not latent — no true thought which does not incite 
 a corresponding feeling and issue in an act — no 
 genuine deed which is not the embodiment alike 
 of feeling and of thought. "Living (feeling), 
 acting, conceiving," said Froebel, " form a triple 
 chord within each child of man, though the 
 sound, now of this string, now of that, and then 
 again of two together, may often preponderate." * 
 
 Keeping carefully in mind their merely sym- 
 bolic character, physical correspondences may be 
 found helpful in the study of spiritual growth. 
 Availing myself of this help, I shall endeavor in 
 the following pages to point out the conditions 
 of development, its successive stages, its essential 
 characteristics, and its conformity to ideal types. 
 
 The most obvious correspondence between the 
 unfolding of the mind and the growth of organ- 
 isms is that in both the condition of development 
 is exercise of power. Use and disuse, long since 
 
 * Aus Froebel's Leben, p. 143. 
 
24 SYMBOLIC EDUCATION. 
 
 recognized in the parable of the talents as the 
 sources of spiritual gain and loss, have in our 
 day come to be insisted upon as the sources of all 
 gain and all loss. Use gives the blacksmith his 
 brawny arm, the musician his nimble and flexible 
 fingers, and the thinker his power of marshaling 
 at will the battalions of his ideas. Disuse takes 
 from the caged bird the power of flight, from the 
 sedentary student the vigor of his limbs, from 
 the man who indolently refuses to think and act 
 the power of thought and action. Pestalozzi 
 struck the keynote of educational reform when 
 he wrote, in the Evening Hour of a Hermit : 
 " Nature develops all the powers of humanity by 
 exercising them ; they increase with use." 
 
 But though exercise is the indispensable con- 
 dition of development, not all exercise is devel- 
 oping. The bird that flies too soon cripples its 
 wings ; the child who walks too soon deforms his 
 legs. Only that exercise which is proportioned 
 to strength increases strength. All other is pro- 
 ductive of harm. 
 
 Again, as an organism has many members, it 
 is very easy through the undue exercise of one 
 member to dwarf and even destroy others. In 
 like manner mind may be deformed by the exag- 
 geration of single phases of its activity. The 
 undue exercise of thought dulls feeling and weak- 
 
DEVELOPMENT. 25 
 
 ens will. The undue exercise of will contracts 
 thought and so centralizes feeling as to impair 
 social sympathy. The undue exercise of feeling 
 dissolves thought into dreams and sinks will 
 into vain desire. Nor is this all : for the abstract 
 exercise of a single power, by weakening others, 
 finally destroys itself. Isolated from feeling and 
 will, thought congeals into formulas ; isolated 
 from thought and will, feeling relapses into mere 
 sensation; isolated from thought and thought- 
 illumined feeling, will petrifies into mechanical 
 habit, or loses itself in the delirium of caprice. 
 The harmonious development of mind implies, 
 therefore, the equipoise of its several phases of 
 activity. 
 
 To these generally recognized conditions of 
 development must be added one upon which 
 Froebel placed great stress. A physical organ- 
 ism develops by converting material appropri- 
 ated from its environment into vegetable cells 
 or animal tissues. In other words, it assimilates 
 foreign material, and by assimilation impresses 
 upon this material its own image. In the for- 
 mative instinct of childhood Froebel discerned 
 an analogous attempt of mind to stamp itself 
 upon its environment. The child is constantly 
 trying either to change something or to make 
 something. This persistent effort hints to us 
 
26 SYMBOLIC EDUCATION. 
 
 that mind is somothing more than an intellectual 
 stomach. Knowledge is food, but creation is life, 
 and we do not live to eat, but eat to live. 
 
 Even as I write, I am conscious of stating 
 a half truth. For if it be true that the end of 
 knowledge is creation, it is at least equally true 
 that the end of creation is knowledge. In the 
 products of his activity man beholds himself 
 as in a mirror. Creation, therefore, culminates 
 in revelation. Froebel never loses sight of these 
 two aspects of mind ; and if he tells us that 
 " man made in the image of God must from the 
 beginning of life be conceived and treated as a 
 creative being," he insists with equal force that 
 " to become conscious of self is the first business 
 of the child and the whole business of man." 
 
 A second correspondence between physical 
 and mental growth may be found in the fact 
 that, while each stage of development has its own 
 marked and characteristic features, it always de- 
 ponds upon that which precedes and foreshadows 
 that which follows it. " The fundamental law of 
 vegetable life," says Froebel, " is that each suc- 
 cessive stage of development is a higher growth 
 of the preceding one — e. g., the petals are trans- 
 formed ordinary leaves, the stamens and pistils 
 transformed petals. Each successive formation 
 presents the essential nature of the plant in a 
 
 y 
 
DEVELOPJMENT. 27 
 
 more subtile garb, until at last it seems clotbed 
 only in a delicate perfume." * In like manner 
 we may say of the mind, that its so-called " facul- 
 ties " are not separate and independent powers, 
 but manifestations of ascending degrees of con- 
 sciousness. It is interesting in this connection to 
 note that Goethe — whose novel Wilhelm Meister 
 is the greatest book on education ever written — 
 was also one of the discoverers of plant metamor- 
 phosis. Possibly he may have been thinking of 
 the parallel between the two orders of develop- 
 ment when he called flowers " the beautiful hie- 
 roglyphics of Nature." 
 
 The greatest mistakes in education are rooted 
 in the failure to recognize and conform to the 
 different stages of natural development. Educa- 
 tional theorists are constantly pointing out this 
 error ; educational practice is constantly repeat- 
 ing it. Notwithstanding all that has been said 
 and written, we still make knowledge our idol, 
 and continue to fill the child's mind with foreign 
 material, under the gratuitous assumption that 
 at a later age he will be able, through some 
 magic transubstantiation, to make it a vital part 
 of his own thought. This is like loading his 
 stomach with food which ho can not digest, 
 under the delusive hope that he may be able to 
 
 * Education of Man, Ilailmann's translation, p. 194. 
 4 
 
28 SYMBOLIC EDUCATION. 
 
 digest it when lie is a man. It is forcing the 
 mind to move painfully forward under a heavy 
 weight, instead of running, leaping, and flying 
 under the incitement of its own energy and the 
 allurement of its own perceived ideal. 
 
 Thus to load the young mind is a grievous sin ; 
 but we commit a yet more heinous offense when 
 we insist upon the exercise of faculties whose 
 normal development belongs to a later age. The 
 child is sympathetic, perceptive, and imaginative, 
 but he is incapable of sustained observation and 
 repelled by analysis and logical inference. The 
 very flowers he loves so dearly become mere in- 
 struments of mental torture when we constantly 
 insist upon his analyzing and classifying them. 
 The attempt to force a premature activity of rea- 
 son can result only in the repulsion of his sym- 
 pathies and the stultification of his mind.* 
 
 But glaring as are our sins of commission, 
 they pale before our sins of omission ; for, while 
 we are forcing upon the child's mind knowledge 
 
 * It may be well to point out the distinction between con- 
 scious and unconscious reasoning. Doubtless a great deal of 
 unconscious reasoning goes on in the mind of the child. Rea- 
 son is also immanent in feeling and instinct. Dr. Harris has 
 shown that sense-perception is an unconscious syllogistic 
 process. (See his Thoughts on Educational Psychology.) Edu- 
 cation, however, should deal with powers only as they become 
 explicit. 
 
DEVELOPMENT. 29 
 
 wliich has no roots in his experience, or calling 
 on him to exercise still dormant powers, we 
 refuse any aid to his spontaneous struggle to 
 do and learn and be that which his stage of de- 
 velopment demands. We paralyze the spirit 
 of investigation by indifference to the child's 
 questions, clip the wings of imagination by not 
 responding to his poetic fancies, kill artistic 
 effort by scorning its crude results, and freeze 
 sympathy by coldness to its appeal. Thus re- 
 maining an alien to the child's life and forcing 
 upon the child a life that is foreign to him, we 
 sow in weak natures the seeds of formalism and 
 hypocrisy, and so antagonize the strong natures 
 that we tempt them to become intellectual and 
 moral outlaws. 
 
 In all attempts to conform to the different 
 stages of natural development we must, however, 
 be careful to recognize the fact that they pass 
 into each other by insensible gradations. One of 
 the clearest marks of Rousseau's atomism is that 
 he so completely isolates the different periods of 
 life as to lose the identity of his imaginary pupil ; 
 and it has been well said that the Emile of the 
 last three books is an entirely different person 
 from the Emile of the first two. Froebel, on the 
 contrary, perceived clearly that "differences in 
 kind result from the graduall accumulation of 
 
30 SYMBOLIC EDUCATION. 
 
 differences in degree/' and tlie idea of continuity 
 in education is scarcely less dear to him than 
 that of creative self-activity. " Sharp limits and 
 definite subdivisions within the continuous series 
 of the years of development " are, he declares, 
 " highly pernicious and even destructive in their 
 influence " ; and he is perpetually seeking for the 
 transitions through which the lower faculties of 
 the mind are merged in the higher, as well as 
 for the transitions through which the different 
 objects of experience may be connected into a 
 living whole. His insight into the truth that 
 evolution " proceeds by numerous, successive, and 
 slight modifications" makes him the pedagogic 
 exponent of the Zeitgeist of our age; and all 
 teachers who are interested in the "developing 
 method " should study his writings and acquaint 
 themselves practically with his games, gifts, and 
 occupations. 
 
 To Froebel the most interesting correspond- 
 ence between the unfolding of thought and the 
 growth of plants and animals lay in the char- 
 acteristics which constitute the very idea of de- 
 velopment. Comparing the mind of the young 
 child with that of the mature and educated man, 
 we find that the former has few ideas, and that 
 such as he has are abstract, indefinite, and held 
 in isolation the one from the other; while the 
 
DEVELOPMENT. 31 
 
 latter not only possesses an Infinitude of partic- 
 ular thoughts, but has articulated these thoughts 
 into a systematized unity. In like manner, or- 
 ganisms develop by an advance in structure from 
 the homogeneous to the heterogeneous, their 
 growth beginning in the differentiation of an 
 originally uniform germ, and through a continu- 
 ous repetition of this process completing itself in 
 the production of a membered totality in whose 
 maintenance an almost countless number of or- 
 gans find their own fulfillment. In other words, 
 as thought unfolds by dissolving an ever-increas- 
 ing multiplicity of differences into a higher unity 
 of self-consciousness, so an organism develops by 
 "working out diversities of member, form, and 
 function, and at the same time in the very act of 
 differentiating, reintegrating its diversities into 
 the common unity." * To this correspondence 
 Froebel is perpetually recurring, and occasion- 
 ally his manner of stating it gives color to the 
 idea that he borrowed the law of development 
 from Nature, and, making the " tree his tutor," 
 learned from physical organisms how to aid the 
 mind in its struggle to become actually what it 
 is ideally. But the careful study of Froebel's 
 works revolutionizes this opinion. He was not 
 one of those who love to find " natural law in the 
 
 * See Caird's Philosophy of Religion, p. 108. 
 
32 SYMBOLIC EDUCATION. 
 
 spiritual world/' but rather one who only cared 
 for Nature because lie had penetrated her dis- 
 guise and beheld in all her varying forms the 
 shining lineaments of mind. " There exists no 
 other energy/^ he once said, " but that of thought. 
 The law of thought is the law of the Cosmos." * 
 And, again, he wrote to Krause, the philosopher, 
 " I consider the movement from analysis to syn- 
 thesis, which I find in pure thought, as the type 
 and law of all development." f 
 
 The practical bearing of the thoughts just 
 considered is obvious. If education is to con- 
 form to the natural process of development it 
 must seek in childhood to quicken sympathy and 
 enlarge the range of perception. It must aid the 
 boy to find the relations between observed facts, 
 while to the youth it should reveal the unity 
 underlying these relations, and gradually lead 
 him in each department of study to " see the 
 whole in the part." Finally, as the youth ma- 
 tures, it should discover to him the implications 
 of all knowledge, and through philosophy — " the 
 science of sciences" — teach him to combine all 
 partial wholes into one great totality. Other- 
 wise his thought will resemble " not a connected 
 
 * Wichard Lange's Darlegung der Gnindidee Froebel's, 
 p. 13. 
 
 f Alls Froebel's Leben, p. 140. 
 
DEVELOPMENT. 33 
 
 structure, but an aggregate of chambers, from 
 none of which he can enter the others — a build- 
 ing wherein he must always get lost and can 
 never feel himself at home." * 
 
 Though the correspondences thus far con- 
 sidered shed some light upon the nature, the con- 
 ditions, and the stages of mental evolution, our 
 ideal of education as the harmonious develop- 
 ment of inherent powers remains very vague ; 
 for without a standard by which development 
 may be tested, how can we know whether it is or 
 is not harmonious ? A new analogy may shed 
 light upon our difficulty. Returning to the 
 plant, we observe that in its growth it always 
 conforms to the model of its species. Its roots 
 and stalk, its branches and leaves, its flowers and 
 fruit express in various forms the compulsion of 
 an ideal type. Pondering this fact, we seem to 
 catch from Nature a hint that the harmonious 
 development of man must mean the gradual pro- 
 duction in the individual of the image of the race. 
 That this hint may not mislead us, we must how- 
 ever qualify it by considering the vast differ- 
 ence between the relationship of a particular 
 plant to its species and the relationship between 
 individual man and the human race. Through- 
 
 * Fichte's Science of Knowledge. 
 
34 SYMBOLIC EDUCATION. 
 
 out the physical realm the particular illustrates 
 the universal, but is never coextensive with it, 
 and just on this account Nature shows us no true 
 and abiding individuals. As a merely natural 
 being, man is subject to the same limitation, and 
 the human species falls apart into races, these 
 into tribes, and tribes into mutually excluding 
 individuals, each one of whom is a more or less 
 defective specimen of the general type. In mind, 
 on the contrary, the generic energy is one with 
 its product, and hence the ideal self in each man 
 is identical with the ideal self in every other 
 man. Spiritual humanity is not a whole com- 
 posed of parts, but a whole composed of wholes ; 
 a totality wherein each individual is also total. 
 Therefore, white men, red men, and black men — 
 men of the tropics and men of the poles — may 
 learn to think the same thoughts and to obey the 
 same ideals. Instinctive faith in this spiritual 
 unity of mankind inflames missionary zeal and 
 carries to cannibal savages the message of 
 " peace and good will." Animated by the same 
 faith, each one of us claims his portion in the 
 vision of the poet, the triumph of the hero, and 
 the prayer of the saint : 
 
 " I am the owner of the sphere, 
 Of the seven stars and the solar year, 
 Of Caesar's hand and Plato's brain, 
 Of Lord Christ's heart and Shakespeare's strain." 
 
DEVELOPMENT. 35 
 
 Froebel expresses this relationship of man to 
 mankind by the somewhat untranslatable word 
 Gliedganzes (member-whole) — a word we shall 
 probably have to adopt from the German, as we 
 have already adopted the word Kindergarten. 
 Imaging humanity as an organic whole, he con- 
 ceives the individual, on the one hand, as a 
 member of this organism, and on the other as 
 the organism itself in its ideal totality. Individ- 
 ual man is but a leaf upon the tree Yggdrasill, 
 yet potentially he is himself that great world- 
 ash. He is, however, the whole only in virtue of 
 the fact that he is also the member; or, stated 
 differently, he realizes his ideal nature through 
 participation in the life of mankind. Moreover, 
 since physical evolution culminates in man, the 
 reproduction of the race within the individual 
 makes actual the ideal under whose blind im- 
 pulsion Nature mounts the ascending spires of 
 being. And as generic humanity fulfills and in- 
 terprets Nature, Nature must be the prophecy 
 and symbol of mind. Therefore, man may find 
 intimations of his own being in the course of the 
 stars and the fall of the stone, in the shining 
 world of crystals and the circular process of or- 
 ganic life. 
 
 The longer we reflect upon Froebel's defini- 
 tion of man as Gliedganzes the more sugges- 
 
36 SYMBOLIC EDUCATION. 
 
 tive it becomes. Concentrating attention first 
 upon that pliase of the definition which afiirms 
 that each man is ideally mankind, there dawns 
 slowly upon us the vision of mind as a generic 
 and therefore self -creative energy. Wo picture 
 to ourselves a musician, who is also the instru- 
 ment he uses and the symphony he plays; a 
 sulptor, who is himself the clay he models and the 
 statue ho produces ; a master-builder, who is also 
 the quarry whence comes his marble and the 
 temple he rears. Then, as our thought grows 
 clearer, we throw away our pictures of the un- 
 picturable, and, gazing directly upon the miracle 
 of mind, behold an energy which, acting upon 
 itself as material, realizes itself as result; an 
 energy self -impelling, self-fulfilling, and self- 
 revealing ; an energy which starting from itself 
 returns to itself only to be incited to fresh wan- 
 derings which culminate in deeper returns ; in a 
 word, an energy which, in the most literal sense, 
 " is what it makes itself to be " — a self-product. 
 
 Very wonderful is this vision of mind, but we 
 may not dwell upon it, for the Gliedganzes has 
 other secrets to reveal. It is the paradox of mind, 
 that while free and self-creative it yet imj)lies re- 
 lationship. It is independent but not solitary. 
 To be social is its nature, and a mind existing 
 apart from and out of relation to other minds is 
 
DEVELOPMENT. 37 
 
 a logical impossibility. Indeed, mind is in no 
 sense a possession of the individual, but a uni- 
 versal energy in which all individuals partici- 
 pate. As Dante teaches us in the Purgatory, 
 spiritual energies grow by giving, by spending 
 are increased, and in the distribution of spiritual 
 food the miracle of the loaves and the fishes is 
 perpetually renewed. The more thought com- 
 municates itself, the more truly it possesses it- 
 self ; the more completely love loses itself in its 
 object, the more surely does it find its own fulfill- 
 ment. Only through membership and the com- 
 munion which membership implies does man 
 make actual his ideal nature ; only in so far as 
 he becomes universal is he in any true sense 
 individual. 
 
 " Man," says Plato, in the Timseus, " is a plant 
 not of an earthly but of a heavenly growth ; . . . 
 and the divine power suspended the head and 
 root of him from that place where the genera- 
 tion of the soul first began, . . . There is only one 
 way," he adds, " in which one being can attend 
 on another, and this is by giving him his natural 
 food and motion. And the motions which are 
 naturally akin to the divine principle within us 
 are the thoughts and revolutions of the uni- 
 verse." Can we find anywhere a truer descrip- 
 tion of man, a higher definition of education ? 
 
38 SYMBOLIC EDUCATION. 
 
 Man is a tree, whose roots are in the sky. He 
 must be nourished by ideals. These ideals are 
 revealed to him in " the thoughts and revolutions 
 of the universe." They also constitute his own 
 inmost selfhood. In the symbols of Nature, the 
 institutions of society, the achievement of his- 
 tory, and the products of literature and art, man 
 is confronted by his own ideal self. Wandering 
 away from himself into these seemingly foreign 
 realms, the individual for the first time finds 
 himself at home. 
 
 As man receives from mankind the ideals 
 through which he realizes his own implicit na- 
 ture, it is evident that he is creative only in so 
 far as he is receptive. He produces himself by 
 reproducing humanity within himself. We must, 
 therefore, qualify the illustrations above given 
 by saying that he is a true musician only if, like 
 St. Cecilia, he has first heard the heavenly mu- 
 sic ; a true sculptor only if his statue conforms 
 to " the measure of a man " ; a true builder only 
 in so far as the temple he rears is like unto " the 
 pattern shown in the mount." 
 
 It may be urged that, since the cosmic ideal 
 can not be made actual in the individual in any 
 finite time, our definition of education is not a 
 practical one. The question, however, is not one 
 of reaching a goal, but of moving toward it. 
 
DEVELOPMENT. 39 
 
 When Margaret Fuller somewliat condescend- 
 ingly remarked to Carlyle that " she accepted the 
 universe," he answered grimly, " It was as well 
 she did." There is a mine of wisdom in this curt 
 rejoinder. We can make no headway against 
 the stream of universal tendency ; or, more de- 
 voutly stated, unless we conspire with Provi- 
 dence all our educational effort must prove futile. 
 " It is a sufi&cient account," says Emerson, " of 
 that appearance we call the world that God will 
 teach a human mind." The true educator is he 
 who clearly discerns the divine ideal and shapes 
 his own effort in accordance therewith. It needs, 
 moreover, only a moment's reflection to assure us 
 that no matter how we define education, it is a 
 process which implies eternity for its realization. 
 In the fact that man is susceptible of education 
 lies the assurance of his immortality. On the 
 other hand, in that man has a sense of imperfec- 
 tion, he shows that there is in him even now a 
 standard of perfection. He knows himself as 
 ignorant because he has an ideal of knowledge, 
 and as evil because he has an ideal of holiness. 
 This perception of his limit proves that he has 
 already annulled it. Hence, while in one sense 
 he has infinite realms to conquer, in another 
 sense these realms are already his. The process 
 of education, therefore, is one wherein the peace 
 
40 SYMBOLIC EDUCATION. 
 
 of possession is combined with the ardor of pur- 
 suit, and through all the struggle of the passing 
 years man may enjoy the " holy carelessness of 
 the everlasting now." 
 
 But the individual is not only total humanity 
 in embryo ; he is also a particular man, a being 
 with sentiments, caprices, and opinions peculiar 
 to himself. Though ideally the world-ash Ygg- 
 drasill, he is also one of its countless leaves — has 
 the leaf nature as well as the tree nature, and is 
 thus actually partial while potentially universal. 
 His nature is inherently a self-contradiction, and 
 education, in its deepest sense, is the process 
 through which this contradiction is canceled. 
 
 Arrived at this point in the study of man's 
 complex being, we begin to suspect that develop- 
 ment is something more than the mere unfolding 
 of inherent powers, and that the process by which 
 man ascends into the species (or, in other words, 
 makes actual his own ideal) is not adequately 
 described even by the word self-production, but 
 involves also the idea of self-annihilation. Again 
 recurring to the musician and artist, we must 
 now insist that man becomes musical by over- 
 coming discord and achieves beauty through the 
 slow transformation of original ugliness. It is 
 by slaying caprice that he attains rational will, 
 by renouncing opinion that he gains truth, by 
 

 DEVELOPMENT. 41 
 
 crucifying selfishness tliat lie conquers selfhood. 
 The countless fox princes and frog princes of 
 fairyland who go about seeking for a benevolent 
 murderer, because only by dying as animals can 
 they regain their royal state, are true types of 
 the particular man who, like them, must die that 
 the universal man may live. 
 
 Renunciation, self -surrender, self-abnegation 
 — how familiar the words, yet how they dilate 
 with ever- widening meaning ! To the Hindu 
 devotee, renunciation means the slaying not only 
 of selfishness but of self-consciousness : when he 
 has so paralyzed his body that he feels no sensa- 
 tion, and so paralyzed his mind that he has no 
 thought, then, and not till then, has he attained 
 Nirvana. To the monkish ascetic, renunciation 
 means the sacrifice of this world for the pos- 
 session of the world to come. To the man of 
 science, it means the surrender of his most dar- 
 ling theory to the stern reality of facts ; to the 
 hero, the merging of self in his cause; to the 
 patriot, the sacrifice of life upon the altar of his 
 country. To the humble saint, it means the sur- 
 render of his will to his Saviour, and of his life 
 to the service of his brother ; to the mystic, the 
 sinking of himself in God, that he may find God 
 in himself. Finally, to the Christian philoso- 
 pher, renunciation is a phase in the process of 
 
42 SYMBOLIC EDUCATION. 
 
 self-realization, the ascent of the individual into 
 the species by the way of the cross. Further- 
 more, the philosopher recognizes in such ascent 
 the incarnation of the divine in the human, and 
 with this insight interprets the " dramatic tend- 
 ency" of Nature, as the striving of Nature to 
 become man, and knows that the " lifting of the 
 manhood into God " shall be the goal of history ; 
 is, indeed, the " far-off divine event to which the 
 whole creation moves." 
 
 One aspect of the Oliedganzes remains to be 
 considered. We have seen that individual de- 
 velopment means a progressive conformity to the 
 generic type. It is evident, however, that even 
 in the race this type is very imperfectly realized, 
 and that humanity, as a whole, is itself in a pro- 
 cess of evolution. This fact suggests another 
 implication in the idea of membership. The in- 
 dividual who reaps the rich result of mankind's 
 vicarious struggle is in duty bound to augment 
 his inheritance. As he has freely received, he 
 must freely give, and, by adding to the store of 
 human experience some mite of knowledge or 
 some atom of achievement, swell the treasure 
 which is to be lavished upon coming men. 
 
 Perhaps the most touching passage in all lit- 
 erature is that in which the hero of Troy prays 
 for a son more heroic than himself. Gladly will 
 
DEVELOPMENT. 43 
 
 Hector die in battle with the Greeks if the gods 
 grant that his son may rule nobly in Ilium. The 
 glory of living is to transmit a higher life. The 
 dying flame burns on in the brighter flame which 
 it has kindled. 
 
 The prayer of the hero utters the craving 
 of all human hearts. Everywhere man strives 
 and toils to make his children better than him- 
 self. Ignorance is ambitious that its children 
 shall be wise, and Sin rarely so sinful as not 
 to pray that its babes may be unstained. And 
 what father and mother crave for their chil- 
 dren, each generation as a whole craves for the 
 generations that are to follow it. It looks to 
 the young life which it has borne and cradled 
 to make facts of its aspirations and realities of 
 its dreams. For the young it crowns again the 
 discrowned illusions of youth and sets up once 
 more the broken altars of its faith. Humanity 
 declares its unity by living forever in the future. 
 Only man plants that posterity may reap, suffers 
 that posterity may enjoy, dies that posterity may 
 live, and ever the highest hero goes out into the 
 battle of the age, praying, as he looks upon the 
 young. " May they say these men are nobler than 
 their fathers were ! " 
 
 It is in the conception of man as Qliedganzes 
 that Froebel advances beyond Pestalozzi. Domi- 
 
4:4 SYMBOLIC EDUCATION. 
 
 nated by the atomistic view of man, Pestalozzi 
 was never able to grasp the significance of social 
 institutions. In his Inquiry into the Course of 
 Nature in the Development of the Human Race 
 he assumes three states of man — an original state 
 of nature, a transitional social state, a final moral 
 state. The moral state is reached, however, not 
 by a reaction of the social state upon the indi- 
 vidual but by the individual's self-emancipation 
 from its influence. " The moral man is not the 
 work of society." " The kindliness and straight- 
 forwardness of the animal man are replaced in 
 the social man by ill will and cunning.'' " The 
 social state, bringing with it on the one hand a 
 spirit of dominion, and on the other hand a state 
 of subjection, indefinitely increases men's natural 
 inequalities as well as their pride and ambition." 
 Finally, " while the religion of the natural man 
 is idolatry, that of the social man is deceit." 
 "True religion exists for the moral man alone, 
 for man can only find God by the searchings of 
 his own heart, and in so far as he still preserves 
 God's image in himself." * 
 
 Very evidently with such views it was impos- 
 sible for Pestalozzi to see in institutions the 
 revelation of man's larger selfhood, and, failing 
 
 * See the summing up of the Inquiry in the excellent biog- 
 raphy of Pestalozzi by Roger de Guimps, pp. 113-115. 
 
DEVELOPMENT. 45 
 
 this vision, it was impossible for him to define 
 the ** harmonious development" which was his 
 ideal of education. Therefore his educational 
 experiments, while suggestive, were always felt 
 by competent observers to be disappointing, and 
 his methods merited the criticism of crudeness 
 and empiricism which Froebel made upon them. 
 Pestalozzi lets us into the secret of his life 
 and work when he says, " Through my heart I 
 am what I am." He was an educator because he 
 was a philanthropist. He pleaded for universal 
 education because he saw therein the only effect- 
 ive means of lessening human misery. As he 
 tells us in the Song of the Swan, he " desired at 
 first nothing else than to render the ordinary 
 means of instruction so simple as to permit of 
 their being employed in every family." Search- 
 ing for the elements of particular branches of 
 instruction, he was led to ask what were the 
 prime elements of all knowledge. Finding in 
 number, form, and words the " alphabet of know- 
 ing," he sought to supplement it by an " alphabet 
 of doing," but in the attempt to find the elements 
 of technical skill he was confessedly a failure. 
 From the search for the elements of knowledge 
 and skill there was an easy transition to the 
 thought of the germinal activities of mind and to 
 the definition of education as the " development 
 
46 SYMBOLIC EDUCATION. 
 
 of inherent powers." Finally, enlightened by the 
 endeavor " to psychologize education/' Pestalozzi 
 perceived that "the forces of the heart, faith 
 and love, do for immortal man what the root 
 does for the tree," and that "the center and 
 essential principle of education is not teaching, 
 but love." With these recognitions his system 
 attained all the completeness possible without 
 that insight into the relationship between the 
 race and the individual which discloses the sig- 
 nificance of institutions and unveils the meaning 
 of history. 
 
 The reverence and affection which all men 
 feel for Pestalozzi is accorded neither to his 
 theoretical insight nor his practical achievement. 
 Because "he lived as a pauper with paupers to 
 teach paupers to live like men," we love him. 
 Because he first dared to claim for all men the 
 right to be educated, we revere him. Upon the 
 strong foundation of this generous claim his 
 fame is "builded far from accident," and, frankly 
 admitting that his psychology is false and his 
 method defective, we nevertheless recognize in 
 him the noblest example the world has yet shown 
 of the hero as educator. 
 
 The doctrine of the GUedganzes has been a 
 stumbling stone and rock of offense to many of 
 Froebel's interpreters and critics. By some he 
 
DEVELOPMENT. 47 
 
 has been reproached with wasting much time in 
 unprofitable speculations about parts and wholes. 
 By others it is loudly hinted that educational 
 theories are of slight value, and that our sole 
 practical concern is with methods and instru- 
 mentalities.* Such views are rooted in that fa- 
 vorite fallacy of half -fledged minds which divorces 
 practice from theory, character from creed, will 
 from intellect. The true disciple of Froebel, on 
 the contrary, will recognize in the doctrine of 
 the Gliedganzes the ripest fruit of the master's 
 thinking, the key to his practical endeavor, and 
 the source of that symbolism which is his most 
 original contribution to educational science. 
 
 Finally, the conception of man as Gliedganzes f 
 of humanity supplies a standard by which all 
 systems of education may be tested. See man as 
 a whole and not as also a member, and you have 
 Rousseau's atomic Emile, who at the climax, or 
 rather, anticlimax, of an atomistic education re- 
 marks to his atomic tutor that for such a su- 
 
 * Is not the decrier of theories himself simply a theorist, 
 whose theory is that there should be no theory ? 
 
 f For Froebel's own statements of the doctrine of the Glied- 
 ganzes, see Aus Froebel's Leben, edited by Dr. Wichard Lange, 
 p. 489 ; Die Mensehen Erziehuiif^ und Aufsiitze verschiedenen 
 Inhalts, edited by Dr. Wichard Lange, p. 499 et seq. Padagogik 
 dcs Kindergartens, Wichard Lange, pp. 2, 6, 87, 133, 153, 234, 
 323, 324, 346. 
 
48 SYMBOLIC EDUCATION. 
 
 premely independent atom as himself the world 
 of organized society is no fit place. See man as 
 member and not also as whole, and you lapse 
 into the Orientalism of education ; for, granting 
 validity to institutions without perceiving that 
 they exist both in and for the individual, you see 
 in your pupil not an end but a means, and strive 
 not to develop him but to mold him by ex- 
 ternal pressure into a prescribed form. See man 
 as both member and whole, without perceiving 
 the contradiction therein implied, and you fall 
 into the indolent sentimentalism whose motto is 
 laissez-faire, and which expects development 
 without that strife of opposing forces which is 
 its inevitable condition. See man as he is — actu- 
 ally a member, ideally the whole of humanity — 
 the incarnate opposition of particular and uni- 
 versal, and you define truly both the substance 
 and the method of education. For its substance 
 is the experience of that total humanity which is 
 the ideal self of the pupil ; its method such in- 
 citement of his self-activity as shall impel him 
 to renounce indolence, caprice, and vanity, and 
 to reproduce spontaneously that total experience 
 within himself. 
 
in. 
 
 THE CHILDHOOD OF THE RACE. 
 
II WiTHotJT the spiritual, observe, 
 The natural's impossible, no form, 
 No motion ; without sensuous, spiritual 
 Is inappreciable, no beauty or power ; 
 And in this twofold sphere, the twofold man 
 (For still the artist is intensely a man) 
 Holds firmly by the natural to reach 
 The spiritual beyond it, fixes still 
 The type with mortal vision to j^ierce tlirough 
 With eyes immortal to the antetypo 
 Some call the ideal, better called the real ; 
 And certain to be called so presently 
 When things shall have their names." 
 
 " Every natural flower which grows on earth 
 Implies a flower upon the spiritual side, 
 Substantial, archetypal, all aglow 
 With blossoming causes, not so far away, 
 But wo whoso spirit sense is somewhat cleared 
 May catch at something of the bloom and breath, 
 Too vaguely apprehended, though, indeed, 
 Still apprehended, consciously or not. 
 And still transferred to picture, music, verse, 
 For thrilling audient and beholding souls." 
 
 Aurora Leigh, Mrs. Bkowninq. 
 
CHAPTER III. 
 
 THE CHILDHOOD OF THE RACE. 
 
 The conception of man as Gliedganzes quick- 
 ens our sense of the significance of history. If 
 humanity is neither a mere aggregate of atomic 
 individuals, nor a mere organism whose mem- 
 bers, while participating in the life of the whole, 
 remain forever different from that whole and 
 from each other ; if, indeed, it is a spiritual 
 unity whose essence, " communicable but not 
 divisible," exists whole and entire in each par- 
 ticular man, then obviously in history the indi- 
 vidual may find a revelation of his nature and 
 an intimation of his destiny. History paints 
 life on a wide canvas and in a true perspective. 
 Through its study man separates what in him- 
 self is essential and permanent from that which 
 is accidental and transitory; from its drift ho 
 learns the direction in which he is tending and 
 the ends he blindly seeks ; in its achievement he 
 finds the solution of his contradictions, the an- 
 
52 SYMBOLIC EDUCATION. 
 
 swers to his enigmas, and the vindication of his 
 hopes. 
 
 As the general trend of history suggests the 
 meaning of each particular life, so its successive 
 periods offer illuminating correspondences to 
 the ascending stages of individual development. 
 Humanity has its inarticulate infancy ; its child- 
 hood of dreams and premonitions; its self-as- 
 sertive, joyous, aspiring, and speculative youth ; 
 its manhood of sober reflection and disciplined 
 activity. For the educator, therefore, the study 
 of history, and particularly the study of its 
 earlier phases, is of prime importance. In the 
 childhood of humanity he beholds the magnified 
 image of the child with whom he has to deal — an 
 image, moreover, which, like a composite photo- 
 graph, throws into relief a general type or ideal, 
 and thus becomes a standard by which all of its 
 individual examples may be measured. The 
 manifestations of a particular child may reveal 
 an essential truth of human nature, but they 
 may also spring from individual defect or per- 
 version. To be truly interpreted, they must be 
 compared with the revelation of childhood as it 
 is writ large upon the pages of history. Only 
 very shallow thought ever sets up as a standard 
 the individual consciousness, while insight into 
 the universal is the kernel of all true philosophy 
 
THE CHILDHOOD OF THE RACE. 53 
 
 and the practical application of this insight the 
 kernel of all wise education. 
 
 All students of Froebel's writings must be 
 struck by his repeated allusions to the parallel 
 between the development of the individual and 
 that of the race. The practical outcome of this 
 insight is to be found in that symbolism which, 
 though it has long been recognized as the most 
 original and most fruitful of his pedagogic inno- 
 vations, is, even to-day, the least understood fea- 
 ture of the kindergarten games and gifts. Its 
 significance will be appreciated only as the sym- 
 bolic acts and speech of the child are interpreted 
 by the naive symbolism which is the distinctive 
 characteristic of thought during the long child- 
 hood of mankind. 
 
 While we may hesitate to accept Emerson's 
 dictum that "all thinking is analogizing," no 
 one can doubt that analogy is the key to the 
 mental processes of primitive man. To its in- 
 fluence must be ascribed the universal belief of 
 savages in the animation of all natural objects. 
 Interpreting the world around them through the 
 medium of their own sensations, they endow all 
 objects with life, feeling, and volition. In their 
 conception, sun and moon, clouds and winds, sea 
 and mountains are animate beings, whose lives 
 may be interpreted by human analogies. The 
 
5i SYMBOLIC EDUCATION. 
 
 rainbow is a monster which devours man; the 
 waterspout, a cruel giant ; fire, a serpent which 
 will sting those who touch it. When a savage is 
 wounded by an arrow he punishes it with a fero- 
 cious bite ; the fetich which has failed to bring 
 him rain he binds, beats, or destroys ; and upon 
 the tree from which a relative has fallen he 
 revenges himself by cutting it to the ground and 
 scattering its chips.* If, reasoning from the 
 phenomena of dreams, he concludes that each 
 man has a phantom or other self, he believes, for 
 the same reason, in the other selves of beasts and 
 trees, hatchets and arrows. Therefore, when he 
 dies, weapons, food, ornaments, and money are 
 buried with him, in order that his phantom self 
 may lack none of the things upon which the 
 actual self had depended during its earthly life. 
 
 In analogy must be recognized also the power 
 which has presided over the development of lan- 
 guage. Through analogy, our forefathers, look- 
 ing up to the great source of light and heat, 
 named it the Sun, or begetter. Through analogy, 
 the savage describes his face as moon and his 
 cake as sugar cane. Through analogy, names for 
 the most various objects have been derived from 
 common roots — e. g., " from roots meaning to go 
 were formed names for clouds, ivy, serpents, cat- 
 
 * Primitive Culture, E. B. Tylor, p. 286 et seq. 
 
THE CniLDHOOD OF THE RACE. 55 
 
 tie, and chattel, for movable and immovable prop- 
 erty." * Through analogy, all words expressive 
 of spiritual ideas have been derived from roots 
 which originally had a material meaning. Thus 
 the New Guinea savage expresses the idea of 
 pity through a word whose primary meaning 
 was " to have a stomach-ache " ; f and our own 
 word tribulation comes from the tribulum or 
 sledge used by the Romans for separating the 
 chaff from the wheat. Finally, through analogy, 
 primitive men described the phenomena of Na- 
 ture in words borrowed from the vocabulary 
 of human actions and sentiments, and their 
 common speech was largely made up of poetic 
 metaphor. Thus, the sun was said to love the 
 dawn because he hastens after her, and to kill 
 the dawn because the dawn disappears when the 
 sun has risen ; clouds were conceived as maidens 
 with swans' plumage, and the moon was pictured 
 as the sister or bride of the sun, or, again, as a 
 rival cleft in twain by the sun because of his 
 jealous love for the morning star. Without met- 
 aphor, as Professor Max Miiller has pointed out, 
 language could not have progressed beyond the 
 simplest rudiments, neither could there have 
 been any advance in the intellectual life of man. 
 
 * Max Miiller, Science of Language, vol. ii., p. 450. 
 f Ibid., p. 438. 
 
66 SYMBOLIC EDUCATION. 
 
 In the ascription of life and will to all natural 
 objects, and in the metaphorical speech of primi- 
 tive peoples, many writers claim to have found a 
 sufficient explanation of that most characteristic 
 phenomenon of the great human childhood, the 
 origin and development of myth. By far the 
 greater number of myths, moreover, have been 
 traced back to anthropomorphic conceptions of 
 Day and Night, the Dawn and the Gloaming, 
 and to descriptions of their doings, " which ap- 
 plied so well to the deeds of human or quasi- 
 human beings that in course of time their primi- 
 tive purport faded from recollection." * " Let 
 but the key be recovered to this mythic dialect," 
 and we are promised that " all its complex and 
 shifting terms will translate themselves into real- 
 ity, and show how far legend in its sympathetic 
 fictions of war, love, crime, adventure, fate, is 
 only telling the perennial story of the world's 
 daily life." f Even assuming this explanation to 
 be a satisfactory one, the development of myth 
 offers another striking illustration of the ana- 
 logical reasoning of primitive men. But the 
 more deeply we penetrate into the soul of myth 
 the stronger becomes our conviction that neither 
 animism nor verbal metaphor are adequate to 
 
 * Myths and Mythmakers, John Fiske, p. 134. 
 f E. B. Tylor, Primitive Culture, p. 316. 
 
THE CHILDHOOD OP THE RACE. 57 
 
 account for its origin, but that, on the contrary, 
 the impetus which shaped it was man's longing 
 for self-knowledge, and that its roots must be 
 sought in his premonition of the strange and 
 wonderful correspondences which exist between 
 the life of Nature and the life of the soul. These 
 opposing theories may be tested by a considera- 
 tion of the two myths which have been most 
 prolific, and, among Aryan peoples at least, have 
 become most widely diffused — the myth of the all- 
 conquering hero and the myth of the wanderer 
 who, through farthest space and beset by deadly 
 perils, seeks for a bride whom he has loved and 
 lost, or for a treasure of which he has been robbed. 
 According to the popular view of mythology, 
 the prototype of the countless gods, heroes, and 
 knights who overcame monsters of all kinds 
 is none other than the mighty Sun, who slays 
 the demons of night, storm, winter, and eclipse. 
 Back to sun-battles must be traced the conflicts 
 of Apollo and the Python, CEdipus and the 
 Sphinx, Bellerophon and the Chimsera, Sigurd 
 and Fafnir, St. George and the Dragon. The 
 rays of the sun are the unerring darts and in- 
 vincible weapons with which legend has armed 
 its heroes, the originals of Gram, Durandal, and 
 Excalibur, of the spear of Achilles, the shafts 
 of Odysseus, and the poisoned arrows given by 
 
58 SYMBOLIC EDUCATION. 
 
 Hercules to Philoctetes, and without which Troy 
 could not be taken. The flaming eyes and 
 streaming golden locks of mythic heroes are but 
 a dim reflection of the noonday splendor of their 
 heavenly ancestor, and when they come to die it 
 is always from causes which point directly to his 
 descent into darkness, or his defeat by his great 
 enemy, the winter cold. Thus Hercules is con- 
 sumed upon a blazing funeral pyre (sunset), 
 Sigurd is slain by a thorn (frost), while Arthur 
 is received by black-hooded queens into a barge 
 "dark as a funeral scarf from stem to stern." 
 In like manner mythic descriptions of the love, 
 estrangement, and reunion of the Sun and Dawn 
 are said to be the creative source of those touch- 
 ing legends whose theme is the separation of he- 
 roes from the brides whom they wed only to lose. 
 The stories of Odysseus journeying homeward 
 under grievous perils, and of Orpheus seeking 
 Eurydice in Hades, are transfigured accounts of 
 the search of the Sun for the Dawn, while the 
 beautiful allegory of Psyche is a flower whose 
 mythic seed was the search of the Dawn for the 
 Sun. Finally, stories like that of the theft and 
 recovery of the Golden Fleece are born of poetic 
 descriptions of clouds lit up by solar rays, stolen 
 by storm fiends or night fiends, and recovered by 
 the all-conquering Sun. 
 
THE CHILDHOOD OP THE RACE. 59 
 
 The solar substrate of the myths we have 
 been considering is beyond dispute, for their 
 lineage has been traced back to primitive stories 
 wherein the names of the heroes and heroines 
 prove them children of the Sun or the Dawn, 
 while the names of their foes betray an ancestry 
 of night, cold, and storm. But what of the sun 
 myth itself ? Was it nothing more than a poetic 
 description of the exploits, the loves, and the suf- 
 ferings of the great god of day ? Was there no 
 response in man to the conflict between light 
 and darkness ? Was there no hero asleep in the 
 human soul who started into waking life when 
 confronted by his own symbolic image ? — no 
 wanderer whose impulse to seek an ideal good 
 was stirred by the search of the Sun for the 
 Dawn, and the Dawn for the Sun ? In a word, 
 was not the sun myth the symbolic expression of 
 man's own nature and the prophecy of his his- 
 toric career ? 
 
 The current explanation of the solar myth 
 fails to account for its vitality and persistence 
 after the sun has been transfigured into a human 
 hero, whose heavenly ancestry has faded from 
 the minds of men. Why do these tales of con- 
 quering heroes continue to be told among all 
 peoples ? Why do men never tire of the story 
 of alienation and return ? Why do literature 
 
60 SYMBOLIC EDUCATION. 
 
 and art circle forever around these primitive 
 themes ? Why do children, the world over, de- 
 light in the household tales which repeat under 
 countless variations the legends of the hero and 
 the wanderer ? These are questions which must 
 occur to any thoughtful mind. Their answer is 
 to be found in the nature of man as revealed in 
 history. To history, therefore, let us turn, dis- 
 covering therein, if we may, the originals of the 
 hero and the dragon, and the image of that tire- 
 less wanderer who always compels our deepest 
 sympathy. 
 
 In a cave in France, supposed by geologists to 
 be a hundred thousand years old, may be seen the 
 oldest extant picture of a man. It represents a 
 very small man, naked and defenseless, fleeing in 
 terror from an enormous serpent. It is the true 
 image of primitive man in his relationship to Na- 
 ture, and touches the heart with its vivid expres- 
 sion of feebleness and fear. Chased by wild 
 beasts, pelted by storms, fevered by tropic suns, 
 benumbed by polar frosts, famished with hunger, 
 hemmed in by mountains, isolated by seas, shut 
 up for companionship to his own tribe, and 
 bounded in his experience by the pitiful term of 
 his individual life, savage man is the slave of Na- 
 ture, which crushes him with its resistless might. 
 
 But in this slave of Nature beats the heart of 
 
THE CHILDHOOD OP THE RACE. 61 
 
 a hero, and he soon turns upon his oppressor. He 
 invents the how and arrow, and becomes a terror 
 to the wild beasts who had terrified him. He 
 erects rude huts to protect himself from cold and 
 storm. He domesticates the dog, sheep, horse, 
 and cow, and through cultivation transforms 
 mere edible grasses into wheat, barley, and rye. 
 He drains the marsh, levels the mountain, fer- 
 tilizes the desert, and makes the ocean his high- 
 way. He spiritualizes the material of Nature in 
 the forms of art, and in the light of science sees 
 the world not in the isolation of objects but in 
 the continuity of process. With the help of steam 
 and electricity he conquers space, while with the 
 printed page he annihilates time, and thus, roam- 
 ing at will over the broad earth and through the 
 centuries, he bursts the limits of individuality, 
 family, tribe, race, and generation, and expands 
 to the measure of the universal life. 
 
 Parallel with man's conquest of Nature is his 
 conquest of political and social freedom. Hegel 
 has epitomized the teaching of history in the 
 pregnant sentence : " The Orient knew, and to the 
 present day knows, only that one is free; the Greek 
 and Roman world knew that some are free ; the 
 German world knows that all are free."* The 
 
 * Hegel's Philosophy of History (Bohn's Philosophical Li- 
 brary), p. 110, "German World "'= Modern World. 
 
62 SYMBOLIC EDUCATION. 
 
 first book of history records the struggle "between 
 the despotism of Persia and the newborn spirit 
 of freedom in Greece. Subsequent ages have but 
 repeated the struggle in fresh and deeper forms, 
 with the victory always on the side of freedom. 
 The triumph of the Athenians at Marathon, and 
 their defeat at Syracuse ; the victory of German 
 Hermann over the Roman legions under Varus ; 
 the crushing of Attila at Chalons ; the repulse of 
 the Saracens at Tours ; the victories of Lutzen, 
 Lepanto, Blenheim, Saratoga, "Waterloo, what are 
 these but crises in the one great battle of free- 
 dom ? — a battle whose roar we may still hear 
 around us, and which must go on until the poet's 
 dream is realized and 
 
 " battle-flags are furled 
 In the Parliament of man, the federation of the world." 
 
 The conquest of Nature and the overthrow of 
 political despotisms are but the lesser victories 
 of heroic humanity. The wild beast that rages 
 within man is more terrible than all those that 
 rove the earth ; the chains of ignorance, the 
 shackles of sin, are stronger than those of out- 
 ward despots ; and fiercer is the battle in the soul 
 than any ever fought on land or sea. The true 
 hero is he who, within himself as battle-ground, 
 meets and slays himself as foo ; and history re- 
 ceives its profoundest significance from the fact 
 
THE CHILDHOOD OF THE RACE. (53 
 
 that it reveals the ever-deepening ideals by which 
 this spiritual conflict has been incited and main- 
 tained. The savage knows no law but his own 
 caprice, and believes the universe to be capricious. 
 Hence his religion is fetichism, and the unformu- 
 lated rule of his life to do as he may please. Fol- 
 lowing fetichism come the great pantheistic re- 
 ligions, which define the infinite as negation of 
 the finite, and discipline the uncontrolled natural 
 will with the law of self-renunciation. Persia 
 advances to the positive thought of a conflict be- 
 tween the powers of light and darkness, and chal- 
 lenges each man to the help of Ormuzd against 
 Ahriman. Judaism declares a just God, who 
 loves righteousness and hates iniquity, and in 
 the ten commandments defines for all ages the 
 binding moral law. Christianity attains the final 
 insight that justice can not itself be just unless 
 it capacitates for the perfection it requires, re- 
 veals a God of grace, and declares the fulfillment 
 of all separate commandments in the perfect law 
 of love. Thus through the struggle of the ages 
 is the arbitrary caprice of the savage transfigured 
 into the rational liberty of the man whom the 
 truth makes free. 
 
 And now, since the burden of history is man's 
 conquest over foes without and foes within, can 
 we doubt that the hero in the soul is the proto- 
 
64: SYMBOLIC EDUCATION. 
 
 type of all tlie heroes of myth and poetry, and 
 that it was his own ideal image which man hailed 
 with such fervor in the " Orient conqueror of 
 gloomy night " ? This insight explains the per- 
 sistence and development of myth after its phys- 
 ical substrate has been forgotten. Springing from 
 the depths of the spirit, it grew with the growth 
 of the soul and unfolded with her unfolding. It 
 was, therefore, no "disease of language," but a 
 necessary phase of a spiritual process, that phys- 
 ical light and darkness should fade into the back- 
 ground just in proportion as the morning flush 
 of consciousness brightened toward its perfect 
 day. 
 
 Myth has been well defined "as an uncon- 
 scious act of the popular mind at an early stage 
 of society." It is the product not of an individual 
 but of a people, and it springs from a source above 
 the will and beyond the consciousness of its crea- 
 tors. It is, in a word, the dreaming of the generic 
 spirit, and therefore prophetic of the career of 
 humanity, while, conversely, it can be truly in- 
 terpreted only in the light of its historic fulfill- 
 ment. Man has defined himself in language as 
 "him who thinks" and "him who dies"; in my- 
 thology and heroic legend he has defined himself 
 as " him who overcomes." 
 
 And not only does man express in myth the 
 
THE CniLDHOOD OF THE RACE. 65 
 
 ideal which is striving to attain the light of 
 consciousness, but the myth, once created, reacts 
 upon thought and will, and thus tends to pro- 
 duce the hero it portrays. Who shall say how 
 far the legends of Hercules and Achilles con- 
 tributed to produce heroic Greece ? Who can 
 measure the influence of the mythic Thor upon 
 the hardy Norseman ? Who shall determine 
 how much of practical invention and spiritual 
 achievement is still prompted by Boots, Diimm- 
 ling, and Jack the Giant-Killer, the nursery he- 
 roes of the Norseman, the Teuton, and the Anglo- 
 Saxon ? 
 
 As the myth of the hero foreshadows the con- 
 quests of the will, so the touching legends of sep- 
 aration and reunion adumbrate the history of 
 the soul in its spiral ascent to ever higher grades 
 of consciousness. The old story-tellers have im- 
 agined countless variations of this favor its theme, 
 introducing into their tales many complex mo- 
 tives and many strange incidents. Of tenest, how- 
 ever, the maiden is either forsaken by her lover, 
 as in the legends of Ariadne, CEnone, lole, or as 
 in the old Hindu myth of Urvasi, and the Greek 
 tale of Psyche, the separation is brought about 
 by failure to comply with the conditions upon 
 which depend the permanence of the union. 
 Psyche, a king's daughter, is wedded to Eros, 
 
66 SYMBOLIC EDUCATION. 
 
 god of love. She may, however, not look upon 
 him, but must find her happiness in union with 
 the invisible divinity. Enticed by curiosity, she 
 gets a lamp and gazes upon the sleeping god, 
 who instantly vanishes. The remainder of the 
 story relates the weary search of Psyche for her 
 lost love, the cruel tasks imposed upon her, her 
 misery in estrangement, her reconciliation with 
 Eros, her heavenly marriage, and the gift of im- 
 mortality which is conferred upon her. 
 
 These stories of separation and reunion state 
 in mythic form the most universal fact of human 
 experience. For what is life but a process where- 
 in the child's happy sense of oneness with Nature, 
 man, and God, vanishes in the questions and 
 antagonisms of youth, to be found again when 
 reason reafl&rms the truths handed down by tra- 
 dition, and when duties, which had seemed mere 
 arbitrary impositions, are recognized as express- 
 ing the inmost being and need of the soul ? And 
 again, what is this individual experience but a 
 repetition in brief of the historic development of 
 consciousness — a movement always conceived as 
 pointing backward to a lost Eden or a vanished 
 age of gold, while in reality pressing forward 
 toward the true paradise which waits for man at 
 the goal of aspiration and achievement ? 
 
 While the whole of life may be thus conceived 
 
THE CHILDHOOD OF THE RACE. 67 
 
 as a circular process, the same movement is mani- 
 fested in countless smaller circles recurring upon 
 each, higher plane of experience. Thus the infant 
 plays at estrangement and reunion in his favor- 
 ite game of hide and seek. " Why is it, dear 
 mother/' asks Froebel, " that your baby loves to- 
 hide his face behind your handkerchief ? He 
 might lie unhidden in your arms, on your knee, 
 close to your heart, and lying thus see ever your 
 eyes looking back into his own. Does he wish 
 to conceal himself from you, to be separated from 
 you ? God forbid ! He hides himself for the 
 happiness of being found, and seeks through 
 momentary separation to quicken his feeling of 
 union with you." In like manner young chil- 
 dren love, themselves, to seek for hidden objects, 
 and their delight when search has been rewarded 
 by discovery justifies Lord Bacon's saying that 
 " according to the innocent play of children the 
 divine Majesty took delight to hide his works, to 
 the end to have them found out." As childhood 
 passes into boyhood, the longing for estrange- 
 ment manifests itself in new and deeper forms. 
 Familiar surroundings lose their charm, and the 
 desire for wandering and adventure is born. A 
 longing for the " far off, the strange and the won- 
 derful," seizes upon the mind, and the boy plays 
 at being a bandit or pirate, an explorer of un- 
 
68 SYMBOLIC EDUCATION. 
 
 known lands or a hunter in far-away forests. In 
 spiritual correspondence with these more exter- 
 nal manifestations he asserts his own will against 
 that of parents and teachers, and begins to ques- 
 tion the wisdom of his elders. Finally, the youth 
 attacks the whole existing order of things, and 
 thought, intoxicated by a premonition of its own 
 absoluteness, insists upon making itself the meas- 
 ure of the world. "What signify to the ardent 
 youth our social conventions, political dogmas, 
 and religious creeds ? Is he not also free ? Does 
 he not feel within him a higher law ? Has he 
 not in his own reason a criterion of truth ? Away 
 with the superstitions of the past, and let rea- 
 son create purer manners, a freer government, a 
 higher creed ! Thus dreams the young iconoclast, 
 and knows not that he is himself the supreme 
 idolater. 
 
 To all the circles of individual experience his- 
 tory offers recurrent correspondences. Hints of 
 the deeper meaning of the youthful longing for 
 travel and adventure are given in the restless 
 migrations of primitive tribes, in that " urging of 
 the spirit outward " manifested in the maritime 
 heroes of Spain and Portugal, and resulting in 
 the discovery of a new world — in the heroic im- 
 pulses which have driven Englishmen across the 
 seas and created new Englands in America and 
 
THE CHILDHOOD OF THE RACE. C9 
 
 Australia. These external migrations and coloni- 
 zations, again, are but types and symbols of the 
 dauntless sallies of the soul into its own undis- 
 covered realms ; of new continents of the mind 
 dawning upon the gaze of the tireless explorer'; 
 of spiritual settlement in these fair lands of de- 
 sire; of wars between ancestral creeds and the 
 deeper impulses stirred by fresh influxes of the 
 spirit ; of joy and peace, when in the strange 
 beauty of the new revelation is recognized the 
 glorified image of loved and familiar truth. The 
 age of Socrates in Greece, the age which wit- 
 nessed the introduction of Christianity into all 
 parts of the Roman Empire, the age of the Ref- 
 ormation — are historic examples of the descent 
 of Reason into its own depths, and its ascent 
 therefrom into a higher consciousness. But the 
 world-historic period of estrangement w^as the 
 age of the French Revolution, when thought at- 
 tacked not this or that political or religious dog- 
 ma, but armed itself against the whole content of 
 consciousness ; and when man, in the very mo- 
 ment of enthroning Reason as mistress of the 
 world, threw away the rich heritage she had 
 painfully accumulated through the toil of centu- 
 ries. By this terrible object lesson the modern 
 world has been taught that man is not made, but 
 in process of making — that, indeed, human nature 
 
70 SYMBOLIC EDUCATION. 
 
 exists only as it is created by self -activity, and 
 by the participation of each man in the expe- 
 rience of all men, and therefore that no political 
 folly can be greater than the atomism which de- 
 taches the individual from the social whole, and 
 breaks the continuity of history by severing the 
 links which bind the present to the past. 
 
 These rhythmic undulations, occurring alike 
 in the little stream of individual life and the 
 mighty river of history, are explained by insight 
 into the nature of mind as self-activity. The 
 thought of self -activity is the thought of a self- 
 producing energy, and mind exists actually only 
 in so far as it makes itself to be. On the other 
 hand, it always possesses ideally the possibilities 
 which it makes actual in the course of its de- 
 velopment, and its history is the conversion of 
 abstract universality into concrete universality 
 by descent into and ascent out of externality 
 and manifoldness. All thought presupposes that 
 things are thinkable, and latent in this piesuppo- 
 sition is the idea of a common reason in the think- 
 ing subject and the object of thought. Hence 
 thought is both objective and subjective, or, dif- 
 ferently stated, thought and thinking, object and 
 subject, are one and the same. The movement 
 of mind is therefore circular, and its going out 
 from itself is at the same time a coming to itself. 
 
THE CHILDHOOD OP THE RACE. 71 
 
 It may help us to follow out tliis rather ob- 
 scure lino of thought to consider for a moment 
 what is involved in the idea of self-consciousness. 
 Self-consciousness is the knowing of the self by 
 the self, and this implies both the distinction of 
 subject and object and the recognition of their 
 identity. He who says " I," separates himself as 
 subject thinking from himself as object thought, 
 and yet declares that subject and object are one 
 and the same. Seen partially, this spiritual pro- 
 cess appears to be one of alienation or estrange- 
 ment, but when followed throughout its entire 
 sweep it is recognized as a circular or rhythmic 
 movement, beginning from and returning to it- 
 self. 
 
 The circular form of spiritual activity is im- 
 plicitly recognized by all world-poets and ex- 
 plicitly declared by the greatest philosophers. 
 Plato speaks of the soul "turning in herself,'* 
 and describes mind as the " sphere of the self- 
 moved in voiceless silence turning." Hegel char- 
 acterizes the activity of reason as a process of 
 " return upon itself." Dante pictures ascending 
 degrees of spiritual life by the increasing ve- 
 locity of concentric circles of flame. Shake- 
 speare portrays the deed as a self-evolving circle 
 which returns upon the doer. Goethe shows us 
 in the career of Mephistopheles the circular pro- 
 
72 SYMBOLIC EDUCATION. 
 
 cess througli which the power that always wills 
 the bad is made to work the good. Emerson 
 calls the circle the highest emblem in the cipher 
 of the world, and in several of his mystic poems 
 suggests what he elsewhere distinctly states, that 
 " the circles of intellect relate to those of the 
 heavens " : 
 
 " Nature centers into balls 
 And her proud ephemerals, 
 Fast to surface and outside, 
 
 Scan the profile of the sphere ; 
 Knew they what that signified, 
 A new Genesis were here." 
 
 With this insight into the nature of reason 
 we are able to explain fully the origin of sun 
 myths. I have tried to show that the many 
 legends of heroes and wanderers adumbrate the 
 historic career of humanity, and have their source 
 in the soul's prophetic anticipation of its own 
 nature and destiny. But long before men were 
 able to create such tales as these their wonder 
 was excited by those alternations of light and 
 darkness which correspond to the pulsations of 
 consciousness. Hence, sun myths, when studied 
 historically, show clear traces of spiritual ascent. 
 In their primitive stage of development, as Mr. 
 Fiske has pointed out, " they are little more than 
 direct copies of natural phenomena, just as imita- 
 tive words are direct copies of natural sounds." 
 
THE CHILDHOOD OP THE RACE. 73 
 
 Tlius savage mythology lias mucli to tell of sun- 
 devouring jaguars, dogs, fishes, and serpents, and 
 European folk-lore preserves reminiscences of 
 such archaic myths in the stories of Little Red 
 Riding-hood, of Tom Thumb who emerges un- 
 harmed from the stomach of a cow, and of the 
 seven little kids so ingeniously released from the 
 body of a sleeping wolf. Tales such as these, 
 while they point clearly to the sun who is swal- 
 lowed and again disgorged by night, storm, and 
 eclipse, show little of the transforming power 
 of imagination. But in the myths of hero and 
 wanderer, as well as in legends like that of Sisy- 
 phus with his recoiling stone, and Ixion bound 
 for his sin upon a revolving wheel of flame, it is 
 clear that brute fact has been freighted with 
 spirit, and that Reason has learned to recognize 
 her own image in the symbols of Nature.* 
 
 * Those of my readers who are familiar with the writings of 
 Dr. Harris will recognize that I have repeated very imperfectly 
 his explanation of the origin of sun myths. For the benefit of 
 those who may not have seen this explanation I herewith give 
 it in full, hoping it may prove as great a revelation to them as 
 it has been to me : 
 
 " Consciousness is the knowing of the self by the self. There 
 is subject and object and the activity of recognition. From 
 subject to object there is distinction and difference, but with 
 recognition sameness or identity is perceived, and the distinc- 
 tion or difference is retracted. What is this simple rhythm but 
 regularity ? It is, we answer, regularity, but it is mucli more 
 than this. But the child or savage delights in monotonous 
 
Y4 SYMBOLIC EDUCATION. 
 
 I have dwelt at sucli length upon sun myths 
 and their spiritual interpretation because the 
 study of these myths has made me realize, as I 
 never did before, that through the exercise of 
 
 repetition, not possessing the slightest insight into the cause of 
 his delight. His delight is, however, explicable through this 
 fact of the identity in form between the rhythm of his soul- 
 activity and the sense-perception by which he perceives regu- 
 larity. 
 
 " The sun myth arises through the same feeling. Wherever 
 there is repetition, especially in the form of return to itself, 
 there comes this conscious or unconscious satisfaction at behold- 
 ing it. Hence, especially circular movement, or movement in 
 cycles, is the most wonderful of all the phenomena beheld by 
 primitive man. Nature presents to his observation infinite dif- 
 ferences. Out of the confused mass he traces some forms of 
 recurrence — day and night, the phases of the moon, the seasons 
 of the year, genus and species in animals and plants, the ap- 
 parent revolutions of the fixed stars, and the orbits of planets. 
 These phenomena furnish him symbols or types in which to 
 express his ideas concerning the divine principle that he feels 
 to be First Cause. To the materialistic student of sociology all- 
 religions are merely transfigured sun myths. But to the deeper 
 student of psychology it becomes clear that the sun myth itself 
 rests on the perception of identity between regular cycles and 
 the rhythm which characterizes the activity of self-conscious- 
 ness. And self-consciousness is felt and seen to be a form of 
 being not on a par with mere transient individual existence, 
 but the essential attribute of the Divine Being, Author of all." 
 — Introduction to the Study of Philosophy, pp. 190, 191. 
 
 In connection with Dr. Harris's explanation of the sun myth, 
 it is interesting to recall Eckermann's account of Goethe's feel- 
 ing for the sun : 
 
 " Sunday, December 21, 1823. Goethe's good humor was again 
 brilliant to-day. We have reached the shortest day ; and the 
 hope that with each succeeding week wo shall see a consider- 
 
THE CHILDHOOD OF THE RACE. 75 
 
 phantasy the soul begins its emancipation from 
 the thralldom of sense. Just as " truth embodied 
 in a tale shall enter in at lowly doors," so from 
 the opening doors of the soul issued that long 
 train of myths, legends, fables, and parables 
 which prepared the way for the poetry of Homer 
 and the philosophy of Plato. If, however, other 
 proof is needed of the fact that through symbolic 
 expression the mind rises above symbols, it may 
 be found abundantly in the history of art. What 
 are the earliest musical instruments ? Gongs, 
 triangles, cymbals, jawbones, rattles, and other 
 percussive instruments, whose sole purpose is to 
 accentuate rhythmic intervals of time. What 
 are man's first ornaments ? Strings of beads 
 around the neck, rows of fringes on the garments, 
 and regular figures tattooed upon the face and 
 body. What are the first products of architec- 
 ture ? Vast monotonous monuments, which sug- 
 gest nothing but the ceaseless piling of stone 
 
 able increase in the days, appears to have exerted a favorable 
 effect on his spirits, ' To-day we celebrate the regeneration of 
 the sun ! ' exclaimed he, joyfully as I entered his room this 
 morning. I hear that it is his custom every year to pass the 
 weeks before the shortest day in a most melancholy frame of 
 mind— to sigh them away, in fact."— (xoethes Conversations \vith 
 Ecliermann, Bohn's Standard Library, p. 46- 
 
 What the regeneration of the sun meant to Goethe may be 
 learned from the Easterday in Faust. (See Bayard Taylor's 
 translation, pp. 27-35.) 
 7 
 
76 SYMBOLIC EDUCATION. 
 
 upon stone. How does poetry make its first ap- 
 pearance among men ? In the form of mere 
 metrical chants and refrains. How do savages 
 and barbarians express love, hate, joy, and sor- 
 row ? By rude dances or regularly repeated 
 leaps and yells. What do these several phenom- 
 ena indicate ? Surely the naive effort of Rea- 
 son to express its own form of return, and thus 
 interpret itself to itself. 
 
 With advancing consciousness art rises into 
 a higher symbolism and produces monuments 
 which still excite the wonder of the world. This 
 higher symbolism finds its most complete expres- 
 sion in Egypt, where, under the concrete form of 
 life, death, and resurrection, the idea of aliena- 
 tion and return becomes the basis of religion. 
 This idea builds the pyramids, gives birth to the 
 phcenix eternally consuming itself yet forever 
 rising again out of its ashes, carves the statue of 
 Memnon, and creates the Sphinx. In the Sphinx, 
 symbolic art, properly so called, reaches its high- 
 est expression. " The human head looking out 
 from the brute body," says Hegel, "exhibits spirit 
 as it begins to emerge from the merely natural, 
 to tear itself loose therefrom and already to look 
 more freely around it." The soul has begun to 
 question itself with regard to its own origin, na- 
 ture, and destiny. These questions, once pro- 
 
THE CHILDHOOD OF THE KACE. 77- 
 
 pounded, the business of all subsequent ages is 
 to find their answer. Hence, in the Classical 
 Walpurgis Night, Goethe makes the Sphinxes 
 say of themselves : 
 
 " We sit beside the Pyramids 
 
 For the judgment of the races. 
 Inundation, war, and peace, 
 With eternal changless faces." 
 
 We have glanced at the naive symbolism 
 through which primitive man projected his own 
 life and feeling into inanimate objects ; at the 
 symbolism of language, the symbolism of myth, 
 and the symbolism of art. In the next chapter 
 we shall consider the animism of little children, 
 their love of analogy, their symbolic play, their 
 response to the symbolism of Nature, and their 
 delight in those household tales wherein are en- 
 shrined the mythic conceptions of childlike men. 
 If it shall finally appear that alike in the indi- 
 vidual and the race childhood is wrapped about 
 with the atmosphere of poetic symbolism, we 
 shall, I hope, be prepared to recognize the sig- 
 nificance of Froebel's " most original innovation 
 in education," and to study with open minds the 
 symbolism of the kindergarten games and gifts. 
 
IV. 
 
 THE SYMBOLISM OF CKILDHOOD. 
 
" My heart leaps up when I behold 
 
 A rainbow in the sky ; 
 So was it when my life began; 
 So is it now I am a man ; 
 So be it when 1 shall grow old, 
 
 Or let me die ! 
 The child is father of the man ; 
 And I could wish my days to bo 
 Bound each to each by natural piety." 
 
 / — WoKDSWOBTH, 
 
 " Oh ! give us once again the wishing cap 
 Of Fortunatus, and the invisible coat 
 Of Jack the Giant-Killer, Robin Hood, 
 And Sabra in the forest with St. George 1 
 The child whose love is here, at least, doth reap 
 One precious gain, that he forgets himself." 
 
 — The Prelude, Wordsworth. 
 
CHAPTER IV. 
 
 THE SYMBOLISM OF CHILDHOOD. 
 
 Whoever has observed tlie manner in wliich 
 little children use words will be ready to admit 
 that the young human being begins to analo- 
 gize almost as soon as he begins to be. Prof. 
 Preyer records of his boy that before he was able 
 to articulate any words other than the primitive 
 syllables mamma, papa, atfa, etc., he had formed 
 the habit of saying atta when carried from the 
 house for his daily outing. In his eleventh 
 month, when the bright light of a lamp was soft- 
 ened by putting a shade over it, he broke into the 
 same exclamation, thus showing that he had dis- 
 covered similarity in the very different phenom- 
 ena of leaving the house and dimming a light. 
 Later, the same word atta was used to denote the 
 closing of a fan and the emptying of a glass, and 
 was repeatedly uttered with an expression of ter- 
 ror during a railway journey, when the child's 
 fears were probably excited by the rapidity with 
 which objects vanished from view. By the twen- 
 
82 SYMBOLIC EDUCATION. 
 
 tieth montli aita had acquired the general sense 
 of going or gone, while in contrast with this con- 
 cept the ideas of coming, shooting forth, emerg- 
 ing, were expressed by the monosyllable da or 
 ta. Thus, if the father covered his head and let 
 the child uncover it, the little one would laugh 
 loudly and say " Da " ; while if his father left the 
 room he would utter softly the word atta, modi- 
 fying it into hata if he wished to be taken out 
 himself. 
 
 Here are other examples of infant analogizing : 
 " A child saw and heard a duck on the water, and 
 said quack. Thereafter he called, on the one 
 hand, all birds and insects, on the other hand, all 
 liquids quack. Finally he called all coins quack, 
 after having seen an eagle on a French sou. . . . 
 Another child, a boy twenty-one months old, 
 applied the joyous outcry ei, modifying it into 
 eiz, into aze, and then into ass, to his wooden 
 goat on wheels and covered with a rough hide; 
 eiz, then became exclusively a cry of joy; ass, the 
 name for everything that moved along — e. g., for 
 animals, for his own sister, for a wagon ; then for 
 everything that moved at all ; finally, for every- 
 thing that had a rough surface." * Illustrations 
 of this kind might be indefinitely multiplied. Say 
 to the child one day that you wish to unbutton 
 
 * The Developmeut of the Intellect, W. Preyer, p. 93. 
 
THE SYMBOLISM OF CHILDHOOD. 83 
 
 his coat, and on the next he asks you to unbutton 
 a nut. Speak before him of the roof of the house, 
 and soon after he surprises you by saying that 
 his teeth-roof aches, when he has a pain in his 
 palate.* Teach him that the blue arch overhead 
 is called the sky, and he calls the ceiling and the 
 top of the piano, sky also. Let him learn the word 
 door, and soon you find him extending it to boxes 
 and books, coffee-pots and umbrellas. After some 
 "wonder, and perhaps a little misgiving, you dis- 
 cover that the tie which binds together these va- 
 rious objects in his mind is the simple fact that 
 they all open and shut. The lesson of these facts 
 is that the infant mind is transparent to resem- 
 blance but opaque to difference. The child seizes 
 each object of perception in some single aspect, 
 and his thought of it is partial and fragmentary. 
 But the veriest fragment of thought is implicitly 
 recognized as universal, and hence the word de- 
 noting it is unhesitatingly applied to all objects 
 in which the child recognizes the mark or attri- 
 bute which had originally attracted his attention. 
 The greatest errors in teaching arise from the 
 neglect of this psychological fact, and the en- 
 deavor to force the young mind away from the 
 similitudes in which it delights by exciting a pre- 
 mature activity of distinction. 
 
 * The Development of the Intellect, W. Preyer, p. 95. 
 
84 SYMBOLIC EDUCATION. 
 
 It may not be irrelevant, as showing the power 
 of analogy over the mind of children, to call at- 
 tention to their tendency to find in similarities of 
 sound indication of similarity of sense. The fol- 
 lowing examples are cited from an article by Dr. 
 G. Stanley Hall : " Children hear fancied words 
 in noises and sounds of nature and animals, and 
 are persistent punners — as butterflies make but- 
 ter, or eat it, or give it by squeezing, so grasshop- 
 pers give grass, bees give beads and beans, kittens 
 grow on the pussy-willow, all honey is made from 
 honeysuckles, and even a poplin dress is made of 
 poplar trees. When the cow lows, it somehow 
 blows its own horn ; crows and scarecrows are 
 confounded ; ant has some subtle relationship to 
 aunt ; angleworm suggests angle, or triangle, or 
 ankle ; Martie eats " tomarties " ; a holiday is a 
 day to " holler " on ; Harry O'Neil is nicknamed 
 Harry Oatmeal; isosceles is somehow related 
 to sausages ; October suggests knocked-over." * 
 Doubtless in many of these expressions the chil- 
 dren were merely " playing with words," but oth- 
 ers seem to indicate mental confusion, and it is 
 undeniable that the reaction of fantastic analo- 
 gies between the sounds of words often produces 
 distortion of thought. A little attention on the 
 part of kindergartners to the sense in which 
 
 * Contents of Children's Minds, G. Stanley Hall. 
 
THE SYMBOLISM OF CHILDHOOD. 85 
 
 their young charges use words would be of incal- 
 culable benefit to the children themselves, and 
 would throw much light on the workings of their 
 minds. 
 
 In his play no less than in his speech the 
 child reveals the analogical activity of his mind. 
 It has often been observed that little girls will 
 turn with indifference from dolls which are 
 triumphs of the toyman's art to lavish caresses 
 upon a towel rolled into the shape of a cylinder, 
 or even, as in the case narrated by Richter, upon 
 a shabby bootjack. So the boy finds more 
 charm in his father's cane than in his own hob- 
 by-horse. These preferences are explained by 
 the fact that a toy is only a symbol, whereas it is 
 the spiritual reality which the symbol suggests 
 that allures the imagination. What the girl de- 
 mands of her doll is the quickening of maternal 
 love in her heart. What the boy craves of his 
 horse is that it shall waken a presentiment of his 
 own power over nature. The too perfect toy 
 chills the imagination, and hence the child turns 
 from it to objects which by remotely suggesting 
 an ideal heighten the activity of fantasy. The 
 true plaything is only "a distaff of flax from 
 which the soul spins a many-colored coat." It 
 must be indefinite, capable of many transforma- 
 tions and able to act many parts. Only thus can 
 
86 SYMBOLIC EDUCATION. 
 
 it fulfill its twofold mission — to stimulate crea- 
 tive activity and satisfy tlie hunger of the soul 
 for the ideal. 
 
 " It is a matter of surprise to some," writes 
 Mme. de Saussure, "that children are satisfied 
 with the rudest imitations. They are looked 
 down upon for their want of feeling for art, 
 while they should ratlier be admired for the force 
 of imagination which renders such illusion pos- 
 sible. Mold a lump of wax into a figure or cut 
 one out of paper, and, provided it has something 
 like legs and arms and a rounded piece for a 
 head, it will be a man in the eyes of the child. 
 This man will last for weeks ; the loss of a limb 
 or two will make no difference ; and he will fill 
 every part you choose to make him play. The 
 child does not see the imperfect copy, but only 
 the model in his own mind. The wax figure is to 
 him only a symbol on which he does not dwell. 
 No matter though the symbol be ill chosen and 
 insignificant ; the young spirit penetrates the 
 veil, arrives at the thing itself, and contemplates 
 it in its true aspect. Too exact imitations of 
 things undergo the fate of the things themselves, 
 of which the child soon tires. He admires them, 
 is delighted with them, but his imagination is 
 impeded by the exactness of their forms, which 
 represent one thing only ; and how is he to be 
 
THE SYMBOLISM OF CHILDHOOD. 87 
 
 contented with one amusement ? A toy soldier 
 fully equipped is only a soldier ; it can not repre- 
 sent his father or any other personage. It would 
 seem as if the young mind felt its originality 
 more strongly when, under the inspiration of the 
 moment, it puts all things in requisition, and 
 sees, in everything around, the instruments of its 
 pleasure. A stool turned over is a boat, a car- 
 riage ; set on its legs it becomes a horse or a 
 table ; a bandbox becomes a house, a cupboard, a 
 wagon — anything. You should enter into his 
 ideas, and, even before the time for useful toys, 
 should provide the child with the means of con- 
 structing for himself, rather than with things 
 ready made." * It is superfluous to suggest to 
 any one familiar with the kindergarten how per- 
 fectly this ideal of play material is realized in 
 the Froebel gifts. 
 
 As analogy rules the child's speech and con- 
 trols his play, so it determines his views of the 
 world. Like primitive man, he imputes what- 
 ever he feels within him to the objects around 
 him, and in his thought all things live, move, 
 feel, hear, and speak. Tiedemann, the first sci- 
 entific student of infancy, relates that when a 
 watch was held close to the ear of his baby son, 
 
 * Mine. Necker de Saussure, cited in Rosmini's Method in 
 Education (Grey), pp. 3-10, 341. 
 
88 SYMBOLIC EDUCATION. 
 
 the child, noticing its ticking, exclaimed that 
 Fripon, a little dog, was shut up in it. So when 
 the boy did not see the sun in the sky, he said : 
 " It has gone to bed ; to-morrow it will get up 
 and drink tea and eat a piece of bread and 
 butter." * Professor Preyer records of his boy, 
 that when dolls were cut out of paper in his 
 presence, the child would weep violently for fear 
 that in the cutting a head might be taken off 
 also ; that if a biscuit were divided before him 
 he would exclaim with a look of pity, " Poor 
 biscuit ! " while the words " poor wood " were 
 uttered sorrowfully whenever he saw a stick of 
 wood thrown in the stove, f " The child," says 
 Richter, "finds nothing lifeless without any 
 more than within himself ; he si^reads his soul 
 as a universal soul over everything." Hence he 
 says: "The lights have covered themselves up 
 and gone to bed. The spring has dressed itself. 
 The wind dances. I kiss my hand to the spring. 
 Is the moon good ? and does it never cry ? " J 
 
 It is important in this connection to remem- 
 ber that the feeling that all things are animated 
 
 * Tiedemann's Record of Infant Life, English version of the 
 French translation and Commentary by Bernard Perez, with 
 notes by F. Louis Soldan. 
 
 f Development of the Intellect, p. 161. 
 
 X Levana, Bohn's Standard Library, pp. 154, 339. 
 
.THE SYMBOLISM OF CHILDHOOD. 89 
 
 by personal will and consciousness maintains 
 itself long after the belief in universal vitality 
 has vanished. Thus a little girl thirteen years 
 old confides to me that though she has known 
 for a long time that stones and trees and flowers 
 are not like people, yet she always feels as if they 
 were ; therefore she never leaves a single flower 
 on a bush, for fear it may be lonesome; if she 
 gathers autumn leaves from the maple, she makes 
 it a point to take some also from the neigh- 
 boring oak lest she should arouse envy and in- 
 spire a quarrel ; and when she has thoughtlessly 
 kicked a stone out of its place in the road, her 
 conscience pricks her, and she can not keep down 
 the feeling that she ought to put it back so that 
 it may not be homesick. Victor Hugo's little 
 Cosette picturing to herself " that something is 
 somebody " is the type of childhood the world 
 over. 
 
 The child's belief that all objects have life 
 and feeling condemns the practice of those who 
 seek to please and comfort him by beating the 
 stool over which he has stumbled, and saying 
 " Naughty fire ! " to the flame in which he has 
 burned his hand. Children are all too ready to 
 blame something or somebody for what is the 
 result of their own ignorance or carelessness, and 
 we can not begin too early to cultivate the op- 
 
90 SYMBOLIC EDUCATION. 
 
 posite habit of fair and kindly judgment. No 
 mother, therefore, should allow her child to treat 
 even a chair or stick in a way she would be un- 
 willing to have him treat a human being. He 
 believes in universal life; hence he should be 
 taught to show universal kindness. 
 
 In ascribing to inanimate objects the life he 
 feels within himself the child takes the first step 
 in mythology. The second follows when by 
 analogical inference from the relationship be- 
 tween his own inner and outer life he explains 
 the course and change of nature as the work 
 of active though invisible spirits. Some years 
 ago, under the direction of Dr. G. Stanley Hall, 
 an attempt was made in Boston to obtain, 
 through a carefully chosen list of questions, an 
 inventory of the contents of the minds of chil- 
 dren of average intelligence on entering the 
 primary schools of that city.* One of the most 
 interesting results of this investigation was the 
 light cast upon the animism of little children ; 
 another was the abundant proof yielded of the 
 fact that their imagination, like that of primi- 
 tive men, receives its most powerful impetus 
 irom the phenomena of the heavens. Out of the 
 large number of children questioned, fortj^-eight 
 
 * Children are admitted to the primary schools of Boston at 
 five years of age. 
 
THE SYMBOLISM OP CHILDHOOD. 91 
 
 per cent thought that at night "the sun goes, 
 rolls or flies, or is blown or walks, or that God 
 pulls it up higher out of sight. He takes it into 
 heaven, and perhaps puts it to bed, and even talces 
 off its clothes, and puts them on in the morning ; 
 or, again, it lies under the trees, where the an- 
 gels mind it. ... So the moon [still italicizing 
 where the exact words of the children are given] 
 comes around when it is a bright night and peo- 
 ple want to walk or forget to light some lamps, 
 it follows us about, and has nose and eyes, while 
 it calls the stars into or under or behind it at 
 night, and they may be made of bits of it. . . . 
 Thunder, which some anthropologists tell us is 
 or represents the highest God to most savage 
 races, was apperceived as God groaning, or kick- 
 ing, or rolling barrels about, grinding snow, walk- 
 ing loud, breaking something, hitting the clouds," 
 etc. Lightning was explained as " God putting 
 out his finger, or opening a door, turning a gas 
 quick, or [very common] striking many matches 
 at once, throwing stones and iron for sparks, 
 setting paper afire, or light going inside and out- 
 side the sky, or stars falling ! . . . Finally, God 
 himself was conceived as a big, perhaps a blue 
 man very often seen in the sky or in clouds, 
 in the church, and even in the street ; was said 
 to live in a big palace, or in a big brick or stone 
 
92 SYMBOLIC EDUCATION. 
 
 house in the sky, to look like the priest, Froebel, 
 papa ; to make lamps, babies, dogs, trees, money, 
 etc., and to have the angels work for him." * 
 
 Fancies such as these result, no doubt, from a 
 blending of the child's spontaneity with impres- 
 sions received from external sources. It must, 
 however, be remembered that the mind's own 
 attractive and repellent power determines the in- 
 fluence it receives from without, and hence the 
 impressions voluntarily entertained by little chil- 
 dren show to what ideas they are accessible. 
 Thus children learn from older persons about 
 God and angels, but they cast these ideas into 
 molds of their own fashioning, and the illustra- 
 tions above given prove beyond dispute how fil- 
 ially they reproduce that mythic stage of human 
 experience which explained all the phenomena 
 of nature as the work of human beings or beings 
 akin to man. 
 
 Closely connected with the animism of chil- 
 dren is their proneness to impute to physical 
 objects a power for good or ill over their lives. 
 What they wish " on a black and white horse," 
 or looking over the left shoulder at the new 
 moon, is sure to be granted ; the breaking of a 
 mirror foretells disaster, pearls bring tears, and 
 a dream of the loss of a tooth is the prophecy of 
 
 * The Contents of Children's Minds, G. Stanley Hall. 
 
THE SYMBOLISM OP CHILDHOOD. 93 
 
 tlie death of a friend. Doubtless cliildren learn 
 these superstitions from thoughtless or ignorant 
 persons; but unless there was something in the 
 mind that responded to them they would be re- 
 jected or quickly forgotten. Moreover, they be- 
 long to the childhood of the race as well as to 
 the childhood of the individual, and even in 
 times which may be called recent the great ma- 
 jority of men heard oracles in the rustle of 
 leaves, saw omens in the flight of birds, and be- 
 lieved in dreams as prophecies of impending 
 events. 
 
 One of the cardinal maxims of pedagogic sci- 
 ence is that the educator should discover and 
 conform to the mind's own process of develop- 
 ment. Such marked facts as those we have been 
 considering may not, therefore, be safely ignored. 
 Learning the truth that underlies them, and the 
 needs they indicate, we shall be able so to guide 
 the children that in their young lives the mythic 
 age of a nobler humanity may be born; or, to 
 quote the words of Froebel, " we shall revive in 
 childhood the legendary period of human his- 
 tory, with its dross cleansed, its darkness illu- 
 mined, its aims and ideals purified." 
 
 What, then, are the lessons to be learned from 
 childish animism and superstition ? Surely, the 
 former hints the soul's premonition of the fact 
 
94 SYMBOLIC EDUCATION. 
 
 tliat all true being is spiritual being — that there 
 are and can be no real forces which are not derived 
 ultimately from the forces of the mind. Surely, 
 the latter is rooted in a deep though unconscious 
 presentiment of the manifold correspondences 
 between the life of nature and the life of the 
 spirit. Surely, education should take account of 
 both these great truths, and, by presenting them 
 to the child in forms that appeal to his sympathy 
 and imagination, aid his effort to break the 
 chains of sense. Those of my readers who are 
 familiar with the writings of Froebel will rec- 
 ognize in this brief statement an echo of his 
 thoughts, and a key to much of the symbolism 
 of the kindergarten games and gifts. 
 
 As the power of imagination expands, the 
 child finds an inexhaustible fountain of joy in 
 those wonderful fairy tales which prefigure the 
 conquest of man over nature and over himself, 
 and picture in symbolic forms the free energy of 
 spirit. The hero of fairyland is beautiful, irre- 
 sistible, invincible. A wonderful belt or a still 
 more wonderful ointment has made him so strong 
 that he can uproot mountains and fling them 
 about like pebbles. He possesses an arrow which 
 never misses its aim, a trumpet at whose blast the 
 strongest walls fall to the ground, and a sword 
 to which he has only to say " Heads off ! " when 
 
THE SYMBOLISM OF CHILDHOOD. 95 
 
 all his enemies fall dead at his feet. Seven- 
 league boots, a magic carpet, a wonderful saddle, 
 or a wishing ring give him the freedom of space, 
 and time exists not for one who can summon at 
 will genii, dwarfs, and elves to do in a single 
 night the work of a lifetime. He is the owner of 
 a table which upon being commanded to cover 
 itself is straightway loaded with the choicest 
 dainties, a tap which freely pours out the best of 
 mead and wine, scissors which of themselves cut 
 out of the air all manner of fine garments, an 
 axe which, needing no man to direct its blows, 
 hews down the densest forests, and a self-mov- 
 ing spade which tirelessly digs and delves, and 
 makes earth and rock fly out in splinters. Add 
 to these possessions a wand which points the way 
 to hidden treasures, a fruit which cures all dis- 
 eases, a salve which heals all wounds, a glass 
 wherein may be seen at will all that is going on 
 in any and every part of the world, and a cloak 
 which makes invisible its all-seeing owner, and 
 we may consider our hero fairly equipped. With 
 him, stones, trees, and animals are in league. Is 
 there a secret he needs or longs to know ? The 
 stone which lies at the foot of his bed can tell 
 him all things, even declaring to him whether 
 the maiden he would wed is as she should be — 
 pure and bright as the noonday sun. Has he in 
 
96 SYMBOLIC EDUCATION. 
 
 a moment of inadvertence been blinded by a 
 wicked enemy ? Straightway the lime tree whis- 
 pers that he need only rub his eyes with the dew 
 on her leaves and they will be as good as ever. 
 Has a traitor cut off his head while he slept ? 
 This is a trivial accident, for the hare whom he 
 has befriended knows of a root which will make 
 body and head grow together again. Must he 
 find the heart of a giant hidden in an egg, which 
 in turn is safely housed in the body of a duck 
 who swims on a well within a church built on a 
 far-away island ? Let him not doubt or hesitate, 
 for a grateful wolf shall carry him to the island, 
 a grateful raven procure the otherwise unpro- 
 curable church keys, and the egg dropped into 
 the bottom of the well shall be brought up safe 
 and sound by a grateful salmon. 
 
 Such is the hero of our childhood — a hero 
 whose lineaments we learn later to recognize in 
 the world of reality. For is he not the man of 
 the Gatling gun and the nitroglycerin bomb — 
 the possessor of the steam plow, the steamship, 
 the locomotive, and the telegraph — the man of 
 science with whom all nature conspires — the in- 
 dividual member of that great whole civil soci- 
 ety, who multiplies his own power by the power 
 of all other men, whose table is covered with the 
 products of every clime, and who reads in his 
 
THE SYMBOLISM OF CHILDHOOD. 97 
 
 morning paper the news of the world ? The im- 
 age of this hero haunts and satisfies the imagina- 
 tion of the child, because it is the image of his 
 ideal self. We have seen how, through an un- 
 conscious process of analogy, he projects his 
 soul into inanimate objects ; in like manner the 
 unfading charm of fairy tales is explained by 
 the mind's presentiment of their correspondence 
 with its own ideal nature and destiny. 
 
 Turning our gaze from the hero to his deeds, 
 we find that his life seems mainly devoted to the 
 rescue of beautiful maidens who are generally 
 princesses. Sometimes the maiden is in the pow- 
 er of a wicked stepmother or witch; sometimes 
 she wanders bewildered through a gloomy forest ; 
 sometimes she lies in enchanted sleep ; sometimes 
 she stands fixed in the earth with only her head 
 visible ; sometimes by the devices of a wicked 
 magician her face seems full of wrinkles and all 
 her features are awry, though in a mirror which 
 she holds her original beauty may still be seen ; 
 oftenest she has been carried off by giant or 
 dragon and hidden in a castle under the sea, on 
 top of a glass mountain, or within the bowels of 
 the earth. No matter where she is, the hero finds 
 her • no matter how she is deformed, he recog- 
 nizes her. Up the glass mountain he rides, 
 through the unyielding forest he penetrates ; he 
 
98 SYMBOLIC EDUCATION. 
 
 slays the fire-breathing dragon, cuts off the giant's 
 multifarious heads, casts the wicked witch into a 
 pit of serpents, and finds the crystal ball which 
 destroys the power of the magician and restores 
 to the disfigured princess the beauty which had 
 been the wonder of the world. 
 
 And now, must we not ask ourselves, who is 
 this princess so beset by evil powers, so triumph- 
 ant over them ? Does her history find no paral- 
 lel in our own experience ? Have ive never felt 
 the power of the witch, the giant, and the dragon ? 
 Have we never lain in enchanted sleep ? never 
 beaten against the strong bars of a prison ? never 
 gazed in the mirror of the ideal and wept over 
 our own deformity ? In a word, must we not 
 recognize in the princess an image of the human 
 soul shut up in the castle of sense, its ideals 
 dormant, its energies unaroused ; or, again, dis- 
 figured by evil, and a victim alike to giants of 
 ignorance and dragons of sin ? 
 
 It is true that the representations of giant, 
 stepmother, and dragon seem often to indicate 
 external rather than internal foes, but this only 
 shows the depth of feeling out of which these 
 conceptions sprang. There are wild forces in 
 nature as well as in the human heart, giants of 
 frost and heat, swamp and desert, poverty and 
 disease. There is evil in the world which must 
 
THE SYMBOLISM OF CHILDHOOD. 99 
 
 be cast out unless she is to remain forever the 
 stepmother of the soul. The regeneration of the 
 individual involves that of nature and of soci- 
 ety, and our latest "world-poet has taught us that 
 not until man has created a world of freedom 
 can he himself be free. Standing on land which 
 he has rescued from the sea, and among a people 
 in whom he has created his own image, Faust 
 hails the passing moment, "Ah, still delay, thou 
 art so fair ! " and thus, literally losing his wager 
 with Mephistopheles, wins in very truth the final 
 triumph over him. 
 
 Humanity conquering and redeeming — hu- 
 manity emancipated and redeemed — such are the 
 ideals which hover before us in the images of the 
 hero and the princess. The picture, it is true, is 
 indefinite, but life and experience deepen its out- 
 line, work in the needed light and shade, and 
 give it concreteness. Thus do these primitive 
 conceptions adapt themselves to every stage of 
 spiritual development and resemble those mythic 
 garments which grew with the growth of their 
 possessor, and fitted him equally well as infant 
 and as man. 
 
 As the simple heart of humanity has treas- 
 ured the image of the hero, so also has it en- 
 shrined that of the wanderer, and it is estimated 
 that about four-fifths of the folk-lore of northern 
 
100 SYMBOLIC EDUCATION. 
 
 Europe is made up of stories of alienation and 
 return. Cinderella vanishing from the disconso- 
 late prince but leaving him the slipper through 
 which he may find and claim her as his bride, is 
 one of the most familiar and most beautiful tales 
 of this class. The myth of Psyche is told over 
 again in the German story of the Soaring Lark, 
 in the Gaelic tale of the Lady of the Sky, in the 
 modern Hindu Story of Gandharba-Sena, and in 
 the beautiful Norse tale East o' the Sun and 
 West o' the Moon. It is also the mythic sub- 
 strate of our own nursery story. Beauty and the 
 Beast. In all these tales, after sorrow comes joy, 
 and through estrangement is brought about a 
 deeper union. But there are others, such as the 
 Story of the Third Royal Mendicant in the 
 Arabian Nights, where the hero is left in his 
 estrangement, and we are made to feel the agony 
 of a forfeited happiness. Finally, in such tales as 
 the Woodcutter's Child (Grimm) and The Lassie 
 and her Godmother (Dasent's Norse Tales) the 
 spiritual meaning of the myth becomes apparent, 
 and we recognize that we are reading another 
 version of the story of Eden, the fall and the 
 reconciliation. 
 
 The great merit of fairy tales is that they en- 
 rich the imagination with the forms into which 
 all human experience is cast. " The power that 
 
THE SYMBOLISM OP CHILDHOOD. 101 
 
 has scarcely germinated in the boy's mind," says 
 Froebel, " is seen by him in the legend or tale, a 
 perfect plant filled with the most delicious blos- 
 soms and fruits. The very remoteness of the 
 comijarison with his oivn vague hopes expands 
 heart and soul, strengthens the mind, unfolds life 
 in freedom and power." * 
 
 I have illustrated, in perhaps tedious detail, 
 the sway of analogy over childish minds, because, 
 though the fact is familiar, the educational hint 
 it conveys is too generally neglected. This neg- 
 lect explains the failure of many of Froebel's 
 disciples to enter into and apply his ideas with 
 regard to symbolism. For what is a symbol but 
 a natural object, action or event which is ana- 
 logically related to some spiritual fact or process ? 
 And what is the symbolism of the kindergarten, 
 but an endeavor through the use of typical facts 
 and poetic analogies to stir the child with far- 
 away presentiments of his ideal nature, his spir- 
 itual relationships and his divine destiny ? 
 
 The symbolism of the kindergarten has two 
 distinct phases. The first and simpler phase is 
 that wherein, through plays representing the 
 typical activities of Nature and of man and the 
 typical relationships of the individual to Nature 
 and to man, there is insinuated into the child's 
 
 * Education of Man, translation by W, N. Hailmann. 
 
102 SYMBOLIC EDUCATION. 
 
 mind a sort of Ariadne clew to the labyrinth of 
 experience, and he is prepared to master instead 
 of being mastered by the infinitude of particular 
 objects and events. As illustrations of this phase 
 of symbolism may be mentioned such games as 
 The Barn- Yard Gate and The Little Gardener, 
 which hint the responsibility of the superior to 
 the inferior life; all the plays which portray 
 family relationships and duties; the games of 
 the farmer, miller, baker, etc., which picture in 
 symbolic form the dependence of the individual 
 upon the organized labor of civil society ; the 
 soldier plays which adumbrate his relationship 
 to the state ; and the song of the Church Door 
 and Window, wherein a hint is given the child 
 of the deeper meaning of that sense of com- 
 munity which attracts him to all crowds and 
 assemblages of men, and fills him with the desire 
 to share their thought and aspiration. Within 
 this class of symbolic representations fall also 
 those endless exercises with the gifts and occupa- 
 tions which foreshadow the principle of organic 
 unity, and illustrate the process of development. 
 ( The aim of these exercises is to quicken a pre- 
 dictive sense of the tie which binds the indi- 
 vidual to the social whole, and to hint the filial 
 and ancestral character of each object and event. 
 Thus the sequences which the child builds, as 
 
THE SYMBOLISM OF CHILDHOOD. 103 
 
 well as the sequence of the kindergarten gifts, 
 point on the one hand to physical evolution, 
 wherein each form " remembers the next inferior 
 and predicts the next higher/' and on the other to 
 the process of historic development, which mag- 
 nifies the present by linking it with the past and 
 the future. 
 
 The second phase of kindergarten symbolism 
 deals rather with poetic correspondences than 
 with typical facts, and is grounded in the in- 
 sight that all spiritual truths have their mate- 
 rial analogues. To this class of symbols belong, 
 among others, the play of the Bird's Nest, which 
 makes objective to the child his own relationship 
 to his mother ; the game of the forth-flying and 
 home-returning pigeons, wherein the child be- 
 holds as in a mirror his own outgoings and in- 
 comings ; the songs which deal with the analogies 
 between physical and spiritual light ; the play of 
 the bridge, which is a symbolic picture of the 
 reconciliation of contrasts ; the plays of the dart- 
 ing fish and the soaring bird, which seek to 
 deepen the presentiment of spiritual freedom 
 stirred by the sight of these types of unimpeded 
 activity in a pure element. But the most strik- 
 ing example of this aspect of symbolism is to be 
 found in the development of the kindergarten 
 gifts through which Froebel aims at nothing less 
 
104 SYMBOLIC EDUCATION. 
 
 than to put into the hands of the child the poetic 
 key to Nature. This attempt will hereafter be 
 considered in detail, but for the present I must 
 restrict myself to reminding the reader of Froe- 
 bel's belief that the nature of mind is the law of 
 the Cosmos, and to the general statement that in 
 his gifts he endeavors to set forth as in a parable 
 that ideal of man as Qliedganzes which was the 
 creative source of his entire educational work. 
 
 Is symbolic education original with Froebel ? 
 I think not. He learned it from the prattle and 
 play of the child. He learned it from the child- 
 hood of the race. He learned it from simple- 
 hearted mothers as they played with their babies 
 games like Pat-a-cake and the Little Pig that went 
 to Market. He learned it from kindly grand- 
 mothers who, sitting by bright winter fires, re- 
 lated to wide-eyed auditors the wonderful adven- 
 tures of Thumbling, or the sorrows of Maid-Ma- 
 leen. He learned it from the poets whose tropes 
 and metaphors stir in the dullest men some con- 
 sciousness of the endless analogies between the 
 life of Nature and the life of the soul. He learned 
 it most of all from the Great Teacher, who de- 
 lighted to speak to the multitude in parables, 
 and who has connected our deepest spiritual ex- 
 periences with the lilies of the field, the pearl of 
 
THE SYMBOLISM OF CHILDHOOD. 105 
 
 great price, and tlie seed hidden deep in the 
 earth. 
 
 It mnst not be supposed, even for a moment, 
 that Froebel explains to the child the meaning 
 of his symbolic representations. He has no de- 
 sire to multiply indefinitely the infant Casaubon 
 making abstracts of Hop o' my Thumb, and any 
 such use of his games and gifts would only cause 
 them to resemble that same Casaubon who, as 
 described by the racy Mrs. Cadwallader, was 
 " like the wrong physic — nasty to take and sure 
 to disagree." Froebel knows that the mind may 
 be trusted to universalize its ideas, and leaves to 
 its own alchemy the transmutation of the symbol 
 into the reality symbolized. 
 
 In the attempt to capture and hold the citadel 
 of imagination, Froebel makes one of his most 
 signal advances upon the theory and practice of 
 his predecessors. Rousseau had nothing to say 
 of imagination, save that it is the source of all 
 human misery, and that its wings should be 
 clipped as early and as close as possible. Pesta- 
 lozzi ignores it — hence the dreary monotony of 
 his sense-impressing exercises. He urges us to 
 "make the child see, hear, and touch many 
 things," to "introduce order into his observa- 
 tions," and to " develop the elementary ideas of 
 number and form in order that he may be able to 
 
 y 
 
106 SYMBOLIC EDUCATION. 
 
 compare objects and exercise his judgment upon 
 tliem." But the necessity of a " spiritual ques- 
 tioning of sense and outward things " seems to 
 have occurred neither to him nor to the more re- 
 cent advocates of the doctrine that all thought 
 is transformed sensation. Hence their practice 
 tends to arrest development at its starting point, 
 and a faithful adherence to their suggestions 
 would produce in the pupil a strong likeness to 
 that Peter Bell on whom Wordsworth has con- 
 ferred so inglorious an immortality. 
 
 Whether there be truth in the opinion that 
 the natural and spiritual worlds are related as 
 type and archetype is a question which each per- 
 son must decide for himself. The symbolism of 
 the kindergarten is neither justified by an affirm- 
 ative nor condemned by a negative decision, 
 but must be judged as we judge other symbolism, 
 by its relationship to the needs of the developing 
 soul. It is well, however, to remember that 
 Froebel's belief on this subject is not a peculiar 
 one, but has been shared by many great and 
 devout thinkers. Fathers of the Church and 
 Schoolmen of the middle ages joined in the dec- 
 laration that "the whole world is a kind of 
 visible gospel of that Word by which it was 
 created " ; * and one of the greatest of modern 
 
 * Cited from Lux Mundi. 
 
THE SYMBOLISM OP CHILDHOOD. 107 
 
 theologians — the Rev. F. D. Maurice — repeatedly 
 expresses the thought that " sensible things, by a 
 necessity of their nature, are constantly testify- 
 ing to us of that which it most concerns us to 
 know — of the mysteries of our own life, and of 
 God's relation to us." Swedenborg proclaims the 
 doctrine of correspondence as the key that un- 
 locks the meaning of the world ; and Emerson 
 declares it to be "implied in all poetry, in alle- 
 gory, in fable, in the use of emblems, and in the 
 structure of language." Wordsworth announces 
 as the theme of The Excursion "how exqui- 
 sitely the individual mind to the external world 
 is fitted, and how exquisitely, too, the external 
 world is fitted to the mind." The "discerning 
 intellect of man " must be wedded to the " goodly 
 universe," and the poet will chant " the spousal 
 verse of this great consummation." Finally, we 
 may appeal to the witness of Goethe, who in the 
 prologue to Faust affirms that the mission of the 
 poet is to " call the particular fact to its univer- 
 sal consecration,"* while in the mystic chorus 
 which concludes this great drama of the soul 
 he declares "all that is transitory to be but a 
 symbol." 
 
 Recognizing the relationship between the 
 
 * Commentary on Goethe's Faust, D. J. Snider, vol. i, 
 r- 114. 
 
 
 
108 SYMBOLIC EDUCATION. 
 
 world of Nature and the world of spirit, and with 
 clear insight into the psychologic fact that feel- 
 ing holds in solution the truths which are later 
 precipitated in the crystal forms of conscious 
 intelligence, Froebel strove to present the ideals 
 of reason under the images of phantasy and 
 thus to prepare the way for their discovery to 
 thought. The too frequent misunderstanding 
 of kindergarten symbolism is due to a lack of 
 insight into the relationship between the lower 
 and higher forms of intelligence. It is assumed 
 that consciousness and reason are convertible 
 terms, and that lack of the one implies absence 
 of the other. Unconscious or partly conscious 
 reason seems to be a contradiction in terms. Yet 
 it is admitted that there is reason in nature, and 
 that material objects and processes conform 
 blindly to ideal types. With equal truth it may 
 be affirmed that reason is always present in the 
 soul — is, indeed, one with the soul — and that 
 spiritual advance consists simply in an increas- 
 ing consciousness of its nature and scope. 
 
 Upon his recognition of this cardinal truth 
 rests Froebel's claim to be considered "the 
 psychologist of childhood," and upon the prac- 
 tical procedure born of this insight rests his 
 chief claim to originality as an educator. 
 
V. 
 
 THE MEANING OF TLAY. 
 
" Behold the child among hia newborn blisses, 
 A six-years' dftrling of a pygmy size ! 
 See where mid work of his own hand he lies, 
 Fretted by sallies of his mother's kisses, 
 
 With light upon him from his father's eyes ; 
 See at his feet some little plan or chart, 
 
 Some fragment from his dream of human life, 
 Shaped by liimself with newly learned art ! 
 A wedding or a festival, 
 A mourning or a funeral. 
 And this hath now his heart. 
 And unto this he frames his song, 
 Then will he fit his tongue 
 To dialogues of business, love, or strife ; 
 But it will not be long 
 Ere this bo thrown aside. 
 And with new joy and pride 
 The little actor cons another part ; 
 Filling from time to time his " humorous stage " 
 With all the persons, down to palsied age. 
 That life brings with her in her equipage. 
 As if his whole vocation 
 "Were endless imitation." 
 Ode: Intimations of Immortality from Eecollections of Early 
 Childhood, WoRDSwoRTU. 
 
CHAPTER V. 
 
 THE MEANING OF PLAY. 
 
 No student of childhood will challenge the 
 assertion that its most characteristic manifesta- 
 tion is play. What flight and air are to the bird, 
 play is to the child; it is both his distinctive 
 activity and the element in which his life moves. 
 In play he suffers the constraint neither of alien 
 will nor of self-imposed purpose, but exercises 
 an activity which is its own end and its own 
 reward. To study him in his play is, therefore, 
 to study him when he is most himself. 
 
 Many plays originate in the desire to exert 
 force, or to measure it against the force of others. 
 The same instinct which impels the baby to j)ush 
 with his feet against his mother's breast inspires 
 the child's love of running, leaping, wrestling, 
 and throwing. The delight he feels is in the 
 consciousness of force ; the stimulus to exertion, 
 the resistance to be overcome. Moreover, by 
 measuring himself against others he compels 
 them to recognize his strength, and thus sat- 
 
112 SYMBOLIC EDUCATION. 
 
 isfies that craving for recognition which is at 
 all times the deepest hunger of the human 
 heart. 
 
 As the desire to exert force creates games of 
 strength and skill, so the hunger to comprehend 
 impels the child to reproduce in play the life 
 around him. In their activities things show 
 what they are, and the reproduction of the ac- 
 tivity is the first step toward the understanding 
 of the object. The life that utters itself is 
 known in the uttered word. Spelling over the 
 letters of the word we enter into the life. 
 " What the child imitates," says Froebel, " he is 
 trying to understand." He turns like the wheel, 
 barks like the dog, says "Moo!" with the cow, 
 and " Baa I " with the sheep ; he creeps with the 
 mouse, flies with the bird, springs with the cat, 
 and climbs with the squirrel. " I will be each of 
 these things," is his unconscious thought, " that 
 through being them I may know what they are." 
 
 Even more significant than the imitation of 
 alien activities is the child's representation of his 
 own relationships and of those events of his life 
 which have most deeply impressed his feelings 
 and imagination. Dr. Stanley Hall tells of two 
 little sisters who never tired of playing sister- 
 hood, and I have myself watched a child of three 
 years repeating p.gain and again in play the 
 
THE MEANING OP PLAY. 113 
 
 happy moment wlien she was first allowed to see 
 her mother, who had been seriously ill. So the 
 favorite amusement of a much - traveled baby 
 was to float paper boats over the miniature 
 Atlantic of a basin of water and revive the 
 thrilling alternations of welcome and farewell. 
 These facts hint the truth that external events 
 are transmuted into experience only as they are 
 reproduced in imagination and thought, and that 
 life must be relived in order to be under- 
 stood. 
 
 The highest form of play is a synthesis of 
 the other two. The instinctive exertion of in- 
 dwelling force and the instinctive imitation of 
 external activities blend in the effort to create an 
 ideal world, and the child throws into an active 
 poem the total life within and around him. The 
 personages of his drama are flowers and birds, 
 animals and insects ; his relatives, friends, and 
 neighbors; kind fairies, cruel ogres, and mali- 
 cious dwarfs. The one sole actor is the child 
 himself who feels softly stirring within him the 
 pulses of the universal heart. Reproducing his 
 experience as a whole, he interprets it to himself, 
 and, thus transfigured, it constitutes the spiritual 
 environment in which he lives and moves and 
 has his being. Moreover, in becoming creative, 
 play conquers its own ideal form and witnesses 
 
114 SYMBOLIC EDUCATION. 
 
 to the truth, that man is made in the image of 
 God, " the perfect Poet who in Creation acts his 
 own conceptions." 
 
 Thus far we have considered the play of a 
 solitary child ; it must now be observed that only 
 as it becomes social is play clearly revealed in its 
 double nature — as, on the one hand, the expres- 
 sion of indwelling force, and, on the other, the 
 mirror held up to life. In the play world, as in 
 the actual world, there are parents and children, 
 nurses and babies, teachers and pupils. There is 
 social life, with its interchange of visits, its en- 
 tertainments, and its gossip ; there are weddings, 
 baptisms, and funerals. Again, the play world 
 has its trades and professions, its varied round of 
 work, its circle of pleasures. Here the miniature 
 Barnum exhibits his menagerie of wild beasts; 
 yonder is a theater on whose boards a coquettish 
 Cinderella tries on her diminutive slipper, or 
 the Sleeping Beauty is awakened by the Fairy 
 Prince. Now we come to a church from whose 
 pulpit some infant Boanerges thunders wrath 
 upon the doers of evil, and anon we enter a hos- 
 pital where grave child-doctors are examining 
 pulses and taking temperatures with button- 
 hooks, while little white-capped nurses vibrate 
 between the enormities of Sairy Gamp and the 
 devotion of Sister Dora. Finally, the world of 
 
THE MEANING OP PLAY. 115 
 
 childish imagination has its different states, with 
 their boundaries and treaties, their foreign wars 
 and domestic revolutions, and, strangest of all, 
 it has its written and spoken languages — the 
 former a reproduction of the primitive picture- 
 writing of mankind, the latter formed variously 
 by adding some fixed syllable to the-end of each 
 word, Introducing a fixed syllable before every 
 vowel, or rebaptizing the letters of the alphabet 
 and spelling out each word with these strange- 
 sounding letters. 
 
 To objectify himself, to take the world into 
 himself, and to discover and represent the ideal 
 implicit in each — such are the deep impulses 
 which stir the child to play, as later they impel 
 the man to literature and art. With a presenti- 
 ment of the truth that to find himself he must 
 flee himself, the soul of the child knocks at the 
 gate of the universal life. The ideal which he 
 holds up to himself in play reacts upon his char- 
 acter, and what he represents himself as being 
 he actually strives to become. Need we wonder, 
 therefore, that Schiller can so emphatically as- 
 sert that man is only man when he plays ? and 
 thoughtful Jean Paul affirm that as meat and 
 drink are man's first prose, and as the necessity 
 of obtaining these creates trades and handicrafts, 
 so is play his first poetry and the instrument 
 
116 SYMBOLIC EDUCATION. 
 
 through which all his higher possibilities are 
 developed ? 
 
 From insight into the deep meaning that lies 
 hid in childish play there is but a single step to 
 its use as a factor in education. This step Froebel 
 was the first to take, and by taking it he placed 
 himself in the van of educational reformers. 
 
 That we may fully enter into Froebel's view 
 of play, we must revert for a moment to his cen- 
 tral thought of man as Gliedganzes of human- 
 ity. Man is self -creative, hence free. He creates 
 himself through ideals. These ideals are not 
 individual, but generic ; to develop, therefore, 
 means to become generic. It follows that the 
 individual can develop only by actively repro- 
 , ducing within himself the experience of man- 
 kind. In the years, few and feeble, of his earthly 
 life he can find out but little for himself, and 
 must therefore, without detriment to his sponta- 
 neity, learn the lesson of the centuries. It is not 
 sufficient that he be taught externally the net 
 outcome of human endeavor, for he comprehends 
 and acquiesces in the result only as he relives 
 the successive struggles by which it has been 
 achieved. The error of all formal teaching is 
 that it imposes a result without reproducing the 
 experiences through which it was reached; the 
 characteristic of all vital teaching is the develop- 
 
 V 
 
THE MEANING OF PLAY. 117 
 
 ment of ideas in the order of their origination. 
 For every thought has its pedigree, and it mnst 
 be generated in the mind of the individual as it 
 was generated in the mind of the race. 
 
 The heir of all the ages must enter upon his 
 inheritance before he can become the instrument 
 of their increasing purpose. He must recreate 
 the simple arts through which man first asserted 
 his dominion over nature. He must dream over 
 again the dreams of Reason preserved for him in 
 myth and fable. He must stand before the Pyra- 
 mids, and solve the riddle of the Sphinx. He 
 must fight for Helen before the walls of Troy, 
 and break the power of the Persian upon the 
 plain of Marathon. He must march with the 
 Roman legions to universal conquest, and, sink- 
 ing himself into the depths of the Roman spirit, 
 evolve therefrom the conception of universal law. 
 He must feel the anguish of the nations " sitting 
 in darkness and in the shadow of death," and be- 
 hold with the awe-struck shepherds the dawning 
 of the world's light. He must learn reverently 
 the lesson of those ten silent centuries which 
 found a voice in Dante, then hasten to England 
 to win the victory of Runnymede, and sit at the 
 feet of Shakespeare. He must sail with Colum- 
 bus over unknown seas, land with the Pilgrims 
 on Plymouth Rock, draw the sword with Wash- 
 
118 SYMBOLIC EDUCATION. 
 
 ington, and, standing with Goethe on the heights 
 overlooking Valmy, behold in that momentous 
 battle the birth of a new era. Thus only can the 
 world into which he is born be born again in him, 
 and the aspiration of his age become the aspira- 
 tion of his soul. 
 
 The object of education is to aid the effort of 
 the individual to ascend into the life of the spe- 
 cies. Evidently it confronts its greatest diffi- 
 culty in the attempt to influence and direct the 
 unconscious thought of the child. For the youth 
 who has learned to think and who is eager to 
 know, all difficulties have vanished. Science 
 teaches him to perform for himself the experi- 
 ments which lead up to her results. Studying 
 the achievements of historic races, learning their 
 languages, and surrendering himself to the coer- 
 cive charm of their literature and art, he enriches 
 himself with their distinctive life. So, through 
 the newspapers, through travel, and through the 
 reaction of social institutions, he is borne for- 
 ward on the strong current of the universal life 
 of to-day. If, with all these helps, any man re- 
 main temporal or provincial, the responsibility 
 rests first with himself and next with those who, 
 in his irresponsible childhood, narrowed his sym- 
 pathies, paralyzed his curiosity, and warped his 
 thought. 
 
THE MEANING OP PLAY. 119 
 
 Interest in the life that is behind us is born 
 of interest in the life that is around us, and the 
 chief duty of early education is to foster those 
 sympathies with nature and man out of which 
 springs the desire to study the processes of the 
 one and appropriate the experiences of the other. 
 " At five years old/' says George Eliot, " mortals 
 are not prepared to be stimulated by abstract 
 nouns or to soar above preference into impar- 
 tiality, and that prejudice in favor of milk with 
 which we blindly begin is a type of the way 
 body and soul must be nourished at least for a 
 time." May not the deepest truths be made to 
 stir as presentiments in the awakening mind ? 
 May not the profoundest spiritual insights be 
 rooted in the sympathies and fostered by exer- 
 tions of the will ? May not the child receive 
 even in babyhood a prejudice in favor of the uni- 
 versal life, and from the beginning of his con- 
 scious career live in the clear sunlight and fresh 
 air of the generic ideal, instead of being shut 
 up in the prison walls of his own atomic indi- 
 viduality ? 
 
 " Wo live by admiration, hope, and love, 
 And even as these are well and wisely fixed 
 In dignity of being we ascend." 
 
 Recurring to our analysis of play, we observe 
 that the end we have now defined is precisely the 
 
120 SYMBOLIC EDUCATION. 
 
 result the child blindly seeks. He is striving to 
 interpret the world by creating its image. For 
 obvious reasons his efforts can be only partially 
 successful. He is unable to distinguish the form 
 of the ideal from the wrappage of the actual life, 
 and his picture of human deeds, being without 
 perspective, is necessarily a caricature. His play 
 is defective, not because it reflects both the good 
 and the evil in his surroundings, but because it 
 does not portray the good as good and the evil 
 as evil. I remember a little girl who, after un- 
 mercifully beating the playmate who was per- 
 sonating her daughter, explained that she was 
 not a real mother unless she could whip her 
 child as much as she wished. In general, children 
 seem to have a special relish for portraying cruel 
 parents, tyrannical teachers, and refractory pu- 
 pils, and they also delight in mimicking the snob- 
 bishness and insincerity of our social intercourse, 
 and the affectations which characterize many of 
 our fashions. 
 
 The traditional games handed down from age 
 to age are truer than those of the individual 
 child, because they image a wider life ; they are 
 defective, in that they sometimes accentuate van- 
 ishing rather than permanent elements of ex- 
 perience, and in that they often reflect not a 
 healthy but a depraved social condition. Thus, 
 
THE MEANING OF PLAY. 121 
 
 among the favorite games of French children is 
 one which represents an interview between a 
 priest and a penitent who, confessing to the griev- 
 ous offense of stealing a pin, is for punishment 
 commanded to kiss the confessor ; the refrain of 
 the song which accompanies the game being, " If 
 penance is so delightful, I'll sin again and again." * 
 Another play pictures an interview between a mar- 
 ried woman and her lover, the heroine exhorting 
 the hero to fly from her husband, who has broken 
 his promise of going to the country that day. 
 The games of American children are generally of 
 purer moral tone; still, their darling theme is 
 courtship and marriage, and their favorite climax 
 a kiss. Illustrations are superfluous, for we have 
 all seen some eager child turn from "East to 
 West to choose the one she loved the best," and 
 observed the excitement of all the little players 
 at the thrilling moment when the chorus sang : 
 
 , ^•Open the ring to let him in, 
 - And kiss him as he enters in." 
 
 To make explicit the ideal implicit in instinc- 
 tive play is the aim of Froebel in his Mutter und 
 Kose Liedor. This aim he accomplishes by neg- 
 lecting the accidental and emphasizing the typ- 
 
 * I am told that this game is occasionally played by Ameri- 
 can children. 
 
122 SYMBOLIC EDUCATION. 
 
 ical aspects of Nature and of human life. It is not 
 intended that the games suggested by him shall 
 be exclusively played, nor even played at all if 
 others can be found which embody in better po- 
 etic form the same universal ideals and aspira- 
 tions. It is, however, emphatically claimed that 
 Froebel pioneers the effort to transfigure play, 
 and that all future advance must be upon the 
 path which he has broken. 
 
 Undoubtedly instinctive and traditional games 
 furnish the material which may be transfigured 
 into truly educative play. The claim that any 
 one person (and that person an old man) could 
 evolve a complete series of games, as the Ger- 
 man artist evolved the camel " out of the silent 
 depths of his own moral consciousness," is an 
 absurdity. Froebel never claimed it for himself, 
 nor has any sensible disciple claimed it for him. 
 What he does claim is, that, through insight 
 into the generic ideal, we may select from among 
 traditional games those which will develop the 
 child into its image ; that we may reproduce 
 them in a form adequate to their aim ; and that 
 we may present them not abstractly and alone, 
 but in a logically related sequence. Thus pre- 
 sented, each game re-enforces all the others, and 
 becomes a vital element in a developing process. 
 Each new generation must add plays imaging 
 
THE MEANING OF PLAY. 123 
 
 the fresh elements of experience, and, finally, 
 each individual child needs dramatic reproduc- 
 tion of the vital and formative facts of his own 
 life. 
 
 We count it the highest achievement of liter- 
 ary art so to portray human deeds as to reveal 
 their ethical character. We esteem it a mark of 
 poetic genius to depict nature as the symbol of 
 mind, and to show in " light and skies and moun- 
 tains the painted vicissitudes of the soul." We 
 reverently study these great works of art in or- 
 der to clear our spiritual vision and interpret our 
 own fragmentary experience. Need we hesitate, 
 therefore, to admit that the child requires help in 
 his efforts to interpret the life around him, and 
 that, in order to realize its own ideal, play must 
 be purified by rational insight ? 
 
 It is needless to add that Froebel does not pro- 
 pose to do away with the free play of childhood. 
 For such free play there is plenty of time outside 
 of the three hours spent in the kindergarten. Its 
 importance as a means of preserving intellectual 
 balance and developing individuality can not be 
 too strongly insisted upon. But just as Froebel 
 makes " the archetypes of nature the playthings 
 of the child," and thus introduces a principle of 
 order into his sense-perceptions, so he presents in 
 
 the kindergarten games the typical aspects of 
 10 
 
124 SYMBOLIC EDUCATION. 
 
 nature and the typical deeds of man, and thus 
 introduces an organizing principle into the im- 
 agination. 
 
 r\ Having discovered the procreant idea of the 
 kindergarten games, let us now endeavor to trace 
 the genesis of the gifts and occupations. Direct- 
 ing our attention once again to the spontaneous 
 deeds of childhood, we observe that the primitive 
 impulses to express the inner and investigate 
 the outer life manifest themselves in forms other 
 than those thus far considered. Prof. Preyer 
 observes that " the most remarkable day, from a 
 psychogenetic point, of view, in the life of an in- 
 fant is the one in which he first experiences the 
 connection of a movement executed by himself 
 witli a sense-impression following upon it." This 
 experience came to his child during the fifth 
 month, when, upon tearing paper into smaller 
 and smaller pieces, he noticed on the one hand 
 the lessening size of the fragments and on the 
 other the noise which accompanied his act. In 
 the thirteenth month he found pleasure in shak- 
 ing a bunch of keys, and in the fourteenth he 
 deliberately took off and put on the cover of a 
 can seventy-nine times without stopping for a 
 moment's rest. Still later he enjoyed pulling 
 out, emptying, refilling, and pushing in a table- 
 drawer, heaping up and strewing about sand and 
 
THE MEANING OP PLAY. 126 
 
 garden mold, throwing stones into water, and 
 pouring water into and out of bottles, cups, and 
 watering-pots,* It is easy to see that each of 
 these occupations was for the young experiment- 
 er both a step in the discovery of his own self- 
 hood as a causative energy and a step in the 
 interpretation of external objects. 
 I With increasing consciousness of his own 
 power and increasing knowledge of the proper- 
 ties and adaptations of objects the child begins 
 to exercise a higher form of causative activity. 
 Discerning in objects some ideal possibility, he 
 seeks to make that possibility actual, and the 
 mere exertion of force rises into productive and 
 transforming energy. Observing the various 
 forms in which this productive energy finds ex- 
 pression, we become gradually aware of a fresh 
 parallel between the development of the indi- 
 vidual and that of the race. Science has shown 
 that the embryonic period of physical develop- 
 ment is a masquerade of long-vanished forms of 
 life. In like manner the children of each new 
 generation seek instinctively to revive the life 
 that is behind them and in their favorite occu- 
 pations and amusements re-enact the prehistoric 
 experiences of mankind. All children crave liv- 
 ing pets, build sand houses, and make caves in 
 
 * Preycr's Dcvclo])Uiciit uf Ibe Intellect, p. 102. 
 
126 SYMBOLIC EDUCATION. 
 
 the eartli ; are fond of intertwining bits of straw, 
 paper, or other pliable material ; delight in shap- 
 ing bowls and cups and saucers out of mud ; and 
 are inveterate diggers in the ground, even when, 
 as in city streets and alleys, such digging is 
 wholly without result. Can we fail to recognize 
 in these universal cravings the soul echoes of 
 that forgotten past when man began the sub- 
 jugation of Nature by the taming of wild beasts, 
 the erection of rude shelters, the weaving of gar- 
 ments, and the manufacture of pottery ? Can 
 we doubt that the order of history should be the 
 order of education, and that before we teach the 
 child to read and write we should aid his efforts 
 to repeat in outline the earlier stages of human 
 development ? 
 
 Even more interesting than the reproduction 
 of primitive industries is the struggle of the 
 child's soul to express its own nature in the 
 varied forms of art. To sing, to dance, to hear 
 and repeat simple rhymes are chief delights of 
 all young children ; and alliteration, too, has for 
 them a tireless charm. Nor are they less eager 
 to build, draw, paint, and model. To a pathetic 
 experience of Froebel's own childhood, when, 
 with such material as he could pick up, he vainly 
 tried to imitate a Gothic church, may bo traced 
 the impulse which bore fruit in the building 
 
THE MEANING OF PLAY. 127 
 
 gifts of the kindergarten. The love of drawing 
 shows itself in many forms. The child draws 
 with his finger in the air, traces outlines in the 
 sand, makes shadow pictures on the wall, blows 
 on the window-pane, and covers its clouded siir- 
 face with his motley fancies, and even bites his 
 cookies into the forms of men and animals. In 
 like manner his plastic instinct finds satisfaction 
 in shaping figures out of wax, clay, or dough, 
 and, lacking a paint-box, he will find or invent 
 coloring material for himself. 
 / The kindergarten gifts are Froebe?s practical 
 response to the cravings of childhood. The six 
 soft balls of the first gift, and the sphere, cube, 
 and cylinder of the second gift, satisfy on the 
 one hand the primitive desire to exert force and 
 cause change, and on the other afford typical ex- 
 periences of movement, form, color, direction, 
 and position. The care of animals, the cultiva- 
 tion of plants, the building exercises with the 
 third and fourth gifts, the occupations of weav- 
 ing, folding, cutting, sewing, intertwining, etc., 
 accentuate the educative elements implicit in the 
 industries of aboriginal men ; and finally, through 
 the architectural exercises of the fifth and sixth 
 gifts, through the work with tablets, sticks, and 
 rings ; through drawing and painting exercises ; 
 through peas-work, and through clay and card- 
 
128 SYMBOLIC EDUCATION. 
 
 board modeling, tlie artistic powers of the child 
 are called into happy play, and he becomes, so far 
 as in him lies, an architect, painter, designer, and 
 sculptor. Add to these varied forms of artistic 
 expression the kindergarten games with their 
 dramatic representations, rhythmic movements, 
 poetry and song, and wo must, I think, admit 
 that Froebel has in truth provided for what he 
 is fond of calling " the all-sided development " of 
 innate powers. 
 
 But, urges the objector, what is there in Froe- 
 bel's scheme that is new or original ? Have not 
 wise mothers always supplied their children with 
 balls and building blocks, encouraged them to 
 roll mud pies, shown them how to fashion simple 
 objects out of paper and cardboard, and taught 
 them the use of needle, scissors, pencil, and knife ? 
 Lovers of the kindergarten recognize in all such 
 criticisms testimony to the merit of Froebel's 
 games and occupations, for were these something 
 wholly new under the sun they would, according 
 to all sound psychologic principles, be something 
 wholly wrong. Froebel claims only to do with 
 clear consciousness and persistent purpose what 
 maternal instinct has always blindly and inter- 
 mittently attempted. He gladly accepts the tra- 
 ditional material, but vitalizes it by giving it a 
 mathematical basis, and by formulating the prin- 
 
THE MEANING OF PLAY. 129 
 
 ciples wliich should govern its use. Through the 
 productive exercises suggested by him, the child 
 achieves a fivefold develoj^ment. Advancing from 
 the external arrangement of fixed material to 
 technical and artistic processes, he gains manual 
 dexterity and skill. Rising from mere imitation 
 and production by rule to free creation, he devel- 
 ops originality of thought and power of expres- 
 sion. Receiving from productive activity the 
 incitement to observation, ho studies the salient 
 qualities of physical objects and masters thus 
 the alphabet of externality. Energizing to re- 
 alize in external things his vision of their ideal 
 possibilities, his will power is strengthened, and 
 he becomes a practical force. Last, but not least, 
 through the exertion of causal energy ho forms 
 the habit of looking from sensible facts to their 
 producing causes, and of explaining all objects 
 and events through their process of evolution. 
 
 Corruptio optimi pessima. It is a sad thing 
 for any one who has mastered Froebel's prin- 
 ciples to witness the perverted application so 
 often made of his gifts. In many kindergartens 
 the sole thought seems to be to use these gifts 
 for teaching the elements of form and number ; 
 in others, manual dexterity is the one object 
 sought ; while in still others the material of the 
 gifts suggests tedious object lessons on wood. 
 
130 SYMBOLIC EDUCATION. 
 
 iron, paper, wool, and straw. One kindergartner 
 catches the idea of sequence, and forthwith she 
 arranges a series of forms and drills her pupils 
 to repeat them ; another conceives the plan of 
 using the gifts to illustrate the songs, and pro- 
 ceeds herself to work out exercises showing 
 " what the mind did " or " what the pigeons 
 saw." Finally, the kindergartner who is really a 
 disciple of Rousseau, though she imagines her- 
 self a follower of Froebel, blandly leaves the chil- 
 dren to their own devices ; and whether they 
 build up or tear down, whether they work with 
 or without purpose and interest, stands aloof, 
 serenely confident of the thaumaturgic power of 
 wooden cubes, sticks, and tablets. Seeing these 
 things, one ceases to wonder at Froebel's remark, 
 that if in three hundred years after his death 
 there should be in the world one kindergarten 
 like that in his mind, his fondest hope would be 
 more than realized. 
 
 The manifold errors of kindergartners can be 
 avoided only by clear insight into Froebel's edu- 
 cational aim. That aim is the development of 
 creative activity. Like Goethe, Froebel held that 
 " building up teaches more than pulling in pieces ; 
 joining together more than separating; animat- 
 ing what is dead more than killing over again 
 what is killed." Like Carlyle, his cry to each 
 
THE MEANING OP PLAY. 131 
 
 individual is : " Be no longer a chaos, but a world, 
 or even worldkin. Produce ! produce ! Were it 
 but thie pitifulest infinitesimal fraction of a prod- 
 uct, produce it in God's name ! " For the ideal 
 of creativeness in education he lived, and toiled, 
 and pleaded. In the light of this ideal his 
 gifts are seen to be instrumentalities for self- 
 development through self-expression; without 
 such light they collapse, as Mr. Bowen has 
 aptly remarked, "into mere paper, sticks, and 
 stones." 
 
 /* The Hinterschlag professor who knew of the 
 human soul only "that it had a faculty called 
 memory, and could be acted on through the mus- 
 cular integument by application of birch rods," 
 had a simple task. The kindergartnor who has 
 insight into Froebel's idea of man as Gliedganzes 
 must expect and welcome a complicated task. 
 Two thoughts she must keep ever before her: 
 the first, that every exercise she gives should 
 incite and develop self-activity ; the second, that 
 in every exercise she should strive to multiply 
 the power and knowledge of each member of her 
 class by the power and knowledge of all its other 
 members. In this way alone can she secure the 
 results at which Froebel aimed, and though at 
 first the path be narrow and the ascent steep, she 
 may assure herself that the purgatorial mount 
 
132 SYMBOLIC EDUCATION. 
 
 of education is of such a nature that "aye the 
 more one climbs the less it hurts." 
 L Froebel's enthusiasm for the ideal of creative- 
 ness was born of his insight into the nature of 
 mind. His whole soul was fired with the thought 
 that spirit is its own deed ; that man knows him- 
 self only in so far as he makes himself objective ; 
 and that he knows the external world only in so 
 far as in some form he recreates it. This insight 
 interprets nature, history, and theology, as well 
 as individual life. The mystic Plotinus long ago 
 pointed out that " Nature is greedy of beholding 
 herself." * The study of history demonstrates the 
 truth that each nation is the bearer of an idea. 
 It actualizes this idea in its institutions and cus- 
 toms, its literature, art, and philosophy ; then, its 
 work being done, it gives way to the new nation 
 whoso idea transcends its own. God himself, 
 as Infinite Spirit, objectifies himself in an infi- 
 nite creation, and the living universe is at once 
 the condition and witness of his perfect self- 
 knowledge. " Of little children is the kingdom 
 of heaven, because, unchecked by the presump- 
 tion and conceit of adults, they yield themselves 
 in childlike faith to their formative and creative 
 instinct." f 
 
 * Memoir of Bronson Alcott, Sanborn, and Harris, p. 577. 
 f Education of Man, Hailmann's translation, p. 31. 
 
THE MEANING OP PLAY. 133 
 
 ■v^ Even this brief survey of kindergarten activi- 
 ties throws into relief the radical difference be- 
 tween the views of Froebel and those of Pesta- 
 lozzi. With Pestalozzi the great word is sense- 
 impression ; with Froebel the great word is self- 
 expression. The former imagines a process 
 through which " things stream in upon the 
 mind"; the latter discerns the truth that ''the 
 mind streams out upon things." The one trains 
 his pupils to note in all objects certain constantly 
 occurring qualities ; the other seeks to quicken 
 and direct the mind's premonition of causal pro- 
 cesses. In a word, the procedure of the Swiss 
 reformer is rooted in that false psychology which 
 holds that sense-perception is the source of all 
 our knowledge ; while the procedure of the Ger- 
 man educator implies the deeper insight that 
 "mind grows by self-revelation." "I saw," 
 writes Pestalozzi, "that through recognition of 
 the unity, form, and name of an object my 
 knowledge is definite knowledge ; by the gradual 
 discovery of secondary qualities it becomes clear 
 knowledge ; and through understanding the con- 
 nection between all the characteristics of an ob- 
 ject it becomes specific knowledge." " The child," 
 writes Froebel, "develops like every other es- 
 sential being in accordance with laws as simple 
 as they are imperative. Of these laws the most 
 
134 SYMBOLIC EDUCATION. 
 
 important and the simplest is that force, existing, 
 must exert itself ; exerting itself, it grows strong; 
 strengthening, it unfolds ; unfolding, it repre- 
 sents and creates; representing and creating, it 
 rises into consciousness and culminates in in- 
 sight." 
 
 The kindergarten is the apotheosis of play. 
 It is, moreover, a practical commentary upon the 
 much-abused maxim that education must follow 
 the child. Froebel follows the child in order to 
 lead him. What is new in his method is the 
 " induction of the substance of prescription into 
 the form of freedom." * What he accomplishes 
 is " to enable the pupil to walk freely in directed 
 paths." Through the exercises with the kinder- 
 garten gifts and occupations the child becomes 
 increasingly conscious of his own power to 
 master the external world. Through the ideals 
 revealed in the songs and games he is incited 
 to self-mastery, and begins to feel "the thing 
 he ought to be, beating beneath the thing 
 he is." 
 
 The symmetry of the kindergarten system is 
 much impaired by our failure to carry out in 
 practice Froebel's suggestions with regard to 
 gardening and the care of pet animals. To dig 
 gardens and cultivate plants are just as truly 
 
 * The Place of the Kindergarten, William T. Harris. 
 
THE MEANING OP PLAY. 135 
 
 kindergarten exercises as the plays with balls, 
 cubes, tablets, and sticks. The same is true of 
 the care of animal pets. We have been supinely- 
 neglectful in both these matters, and, intrench-* 
 ing ourselves in the sluggard's fortress of " im- 
 possibility," have refused to make the earnest 
 effort to which all so-called impossibilities sur- 
 render. No right thing is imi^ossible, and in this 
 case the objects to be achieved are not even diffi- 
 cult. What kindergartner can not get a large 
 box for a general garden, and a special flower- 
 pot for each child ? What kindergarten need 
 be without pet kittens, a hen and chickens, and 
 an aquarium ? These things are found in some 
 kindergartens. They will be found in all so soon 
 as kindergartners begin to realize their educa- 
 tional importance. 
 
 In a number of the kindergarten games the 
 child pictures his ideal relationship to the animal 
 world. He calls and feeds the chickens; opens 
 the door of the pigeon house, that the glad birds 
 may fly out into the sunshine ; closes it. that 
 they may be safe at night ; fastens securely the 
 barnyard gate, that none of the animals may 
 stray from its safe inclosure. The correlate of 
 this series of games is actual care of and respon- 
 sibility for some living pet. Froebel's system is 
 an educational organism, and we can not lop off 
 
136 SYMBOLIC EDUCATION. 
 
 ono of its main limbs witliout detriment to the 
 life of tlie whole. 
 
 By connecting the actual care of pet animals 
 with plays picturing the child's duty toward 
 them we achieve a twofold result : we stir the 
 young heart with premonitions of the privilege 
 of care-taking, and with glimmerings of the 
 gratitude he owes to those who have cared for 
 him. It is often said that children are imper- 
 vious to the feeling of gratitude. The reason is 
 obvious : they can not appreciate the care given 
 to them until they have given care ; and the only 
 way in which mortals of any age can learn to be 
 grateful is by doing deeds which merit gratitude. 
 In caring for animals, moreover, the child learns 
 to subordinate his pleasure to their good, purifies 
 his selfish love for them into a thoughtful and 
 protecting affection, and fosters in his own heart 
 that spirit of good will and helpfulness which, 
 transferred from feeble and defenseless animals 
 to feeble and defenseless human beings, blossoms 
 into the disinterested service of mankind. 
 
 Ttose educators who recognize a parallel be- 
 tween the development of the individual and 
 that of the race may find food for thought in the 
 suggestion that the chief reason why the move- 
 ment toward civilization was so much slower in 
 America than in Europe was the absence from 
 
THE MEANING OF PLAY. I37 
 
 the Western continent of all domesticable ani- 
 mals other than the dog.* Doubtless, the most 
 significant features of the transition to pastoral 
 life were that it broke up the roving habits of 
 savages, gave steadiness and permanence to hu- 
 man activities, and set in motion the long train 
 of social and political ideals latent in the right 
 of personal property. But when men ceased to 
 be merely hunters and fishers, and became herds- 
 men and shepherds, there occurred also a moral 
 revolution. The attitude of man toward the 
 brute creation became protective instead of pred- 
 atory. This changed attitude developed intelli- 
 gence and sympathy, and fostered those instincts 
 of watchfulness, fidelity, and self-sacrifice which 
 have made the Good Shepherd the tenderest type 
 of divine love and care. 
 
 The sense of duty roused by responsibility for 
 pet animals may be strengthened by care for 
 plants, and, faithful to his plan of suggesting 
 ideals in play, Froebel gives us the games of The 
 Garden Gate and The Little Gardener — the idea 
 brought out in the former being the obligation 
 of the child to guard and protect the flowers 
 which give him so much pleasure, while the 
 thought underlying the latter is the privilege 
 and reward of nurture. From this make-believe 
 
 *The Discovery of Americu, Juhn Fiske, vol. i, p. 37. 
 
138 SYMBOLIC EDUCATION. 
 
 gardening Froebel wislied the cliildren to go on 
 to the actual care of plants ; and the omission of 
 garden work from the programme of the kinder- 
 garten robs the little ones of many precious 
 experiences. Childhood, like every age of life, 
 needs its duties, and these must be sim2:)le, defi- 
 nite, and, above all, inexorable. Moreover, the 
 child must feel that his duties are genuine, and 
 not mere burdens imposed upon him by the arbi- 
 trary will of parents or teachers. All duties are 
 born of relationships, and should be rooted in the 
 feelings to which these relationships give rise. 
 Out of relationship to those above us arise the 
 duties of trust and obedience ; out of relationship 
 to those who stand on the same level with our- 
 selves arise the duties of helpfulness and partici- 
 pation; out of relationship to persons or things 
 beneath us arise the duties of protection and 
 nurture. Without degree "all things would meet 
 in mere oppugnancy " ; through degree each indi- 
 vidual is blessed with the opportunity of culti- 
 vating that "threefold reverence" upon which, 
 as Goethe teaches us in Wilhelm Meister, " de- 
 pends everything through which a man becomes 
 man on every side." The first reverence is culti- 
 vated in children through their relationship to 
 parents and teachers ; the second, through their 
 relationship to each other ; the third may be 
 
THE MEANING OP PLAY. 139 
 
 most effectively developed through the relation- 
 ship to animals and plants. Flowers not watered 
 will wither ; the bird or kitten not fed will die. 
 If, through sloth or thoughtlessness, the child 
 fails to give the needed care, he brings upon 
 himself the pain of loss. Moreover, he must 
 study the objects of his care, and learn to under- 
 stand the needs he tries to meet. Plants must 
 not be watered in the hot midday ; many plants 
 die if watered directly on the roots. Finally, as 
 the child matures, he should learn to weed his 
 garden, to prune his plants, and to inflict ujjon 
 his dog or kitten whatever pain is needed to in- 
 sure its safety. Through such experiences he 
 gains reverence " for what is beneath him," and 
 cultivates the strength which will enable him 
 later to grapple bravely and hopefully with the 
 inevitable trials and responsibilities of life. 
 
 The care of animals and plants is important 
 for its influence upon the intellect as well as for 
 its influence upon character. It is needless to do 
 more than allude to the fact that what the child 
 cares for he will observe and study, and that 
 hence gardens and living pets form the best pos- 
 sible introduction to botany and natural history. 
 Many suggestions with regard to the transition 
 from care-taking to observation, from observa- 
 tion to systematic study, are to be found scat- 
 11 
 
140 SYMBOLIC EDUCATION. 
 
 tered througli Froebers writings, and should be 
 carefully pondered. The main points upon which 
 he insists are, that attention shall be directed to 
 distinctions which the child himself is capable of 
 making, and that among such distinctions those 
 shall be selected which are typical and charac- 
 teristic. Thus he avoids, on the one hand, the 
 extreme of formalism, and on the other that arbi- 
 trary classification so much encouraged by " spon- 
 taneous teachers," and which reminds one of the 
 logic by which the pigeon in Wonderland proved 
 Alice to be a kind of serpent. " Do you eat eggs ? " 
 asked the pigeon. " Yes," explained Alice ; " all 
 little girls eat eggs." " Well, then," announced 
 the pigeon decisively, " all little girls are ser- 
 pents." 
 
 ■J^ Our survey of the instinctive manifestations 
 of the child has shown us that his dominant im- 
 pulses are to reproduce the life that is around 
 him ; to revive the life that is behind him ; to 
 foster the life that is beneath him ; and to pro- 
 ject the life that is within him. Rooted in these 
 generic impulses, the kindergarten may be sure 
 of a healthy and vigorous growth. Detached 
 from them, it will wither and die like the rootless 
 flowers which little children stick into the sand. 
 
 It has been the fashion to say that Froebel 
 ignored the antithesis between work and play. 
 
THE MEANING OP PLAY. 14,1 
 
 In my judgment it was precisely because he un- 
 derstood this antithesis that he was able to invent 
 the kindergarten. 
 
 In work the mind concentrates itself ; in play 
 it surrenders itself to the allurement of its ob- 
 ject. Work demands the subordination of per- 
 sonal inclination ; play occupies itself according 
 to its own caprice ; work seeks an end different 
 from its activity ; in play the end sought is the 
 activity itself ; work prepares the individual for 
 combination with his fellows ; play develops 
 originality, and enriches the individual with 
 something distinctive which he may contribute 
 to his fellows ; work without play degrades man 
 into a machine ; play without work makes him 
 the toy of circumstance and impulse. Surely it 
 is only necessary to grasp these familiar antithe- 
 ses to recognize that harmonious development 
 demands a transition from one to the other, and 
 it is only necessary to comprehend the kinder- 
 garten to be sure that it is the transition de- 
 manded. 
 
 With recognition of the transitional character 
 of the kindergarten comes insight into its lim- 
 its as an educational appliance. Its function is 
 mediatorial, and it bridges the chasm between 
 childhood, which is predominantly the period of 
 self-development through self-expression, and 
 
142 SYMBOLIC EDUCATION. 
 
 boyhood, which, is predominantly the period for 
 that study of the external and manifold through 
 which the eyes of the mind are slowly opened to 
 the vision of the whole. The kindergarten also 
 mediates the family and the school, and avoids 
 the too abrupt transition from the nurture of the 
 one to the discipline of the other. When we 
 have learned to make the transition from truths 
 taught by authority to truth inwardly discerned, 
 we shall have done for youth what Froebel has 
 done for childhood, and our system of education 
 will be an organic unity, wherein " evolution pro- 
 ceeds by numerous successive and slight modifi- 
 cations," and " all differences in kind are brought 
 about by the gradual accumulation of differences 
 in degree." * 
 
 * " As the preceding period of numan development, the 
 period of childhood was predominantly that of life for the sake 
 merely of living, for making the external internal, so the 
 period of boyhood is predominantly the period for learning, for 
 making the external internal. 
 
 " On the part of parents and educators the period of infancy 
 demanded chiefly fostering care. During the succeeding period 
 of childhood, which looks upon man predominantly as a unit 
 and would lead him to unity, training prevails. The period of 
 boyhood leads man chiefly to the consideration of particular re- 
 lationships and individual things, in order to enable him later 
 on to discover their inner unity. The inner tendencies and re- 
 lationships of individual things and conditions are sought and 
 established. 
 
 " Now, the consideration and treatment of individual and par- 
 
THE MEANING OF PLAY. 143 
 
 ticular things, as such, and in their inner bearings and relation- 
 ships, constitute the essential character and work of instruc- 
 tion ; therefore boyhood is the period in which instruction 
 predominates. 
 
 " This instruction is conducted not so much in accordance 
 with the nature of man as in accordance with the fixed, definite, 
 clear laws that lie in the nature of things, and more particularly 
 the laws to which man and things are equally subject. It is 
 conducted not so much in the method in which the universal, 
 eternal law finds peculiar expression in man as rather in the 
 method in which this law finds peculiar expression in each ex- 
 ternal thing, or simultaneous expression in both man and thing. 
 It is conducted, then, in accordance with fixed and definite con- 
 ditions lying outside the human being ; and this implies knowl- 
 edge, insight, a conscious and comprehensive survey of the field. 
 
 " Such a process constitutes the school in the widest sense of 
 the word. The school, then, leads man to a knowledge of ex- 
 ternal things, and of their nature in accordance with the par- 
 ticular and general laws that lie in them ; by the presentation 
 of the external, the individual, the particular, it leads man to a 
 knowledge of the internal, of unity, of the universal. There- 
 fore, on entering the period of boyhood, man becomes at the 
 same time a schoolboy. With this period school begins for 
 him, be it in the home or out of it, and taught by the father, 
 the members of the family, or a teacher. School, then, means 
 here by no means the schoolroom, nor school-keeping, but the 
 conscious communication of knowledge, for a definite purpose 
 and in definite inner connection." — Education of Man, Ilail- 
 mann's translation, pp. 94, 95. 
 
 Proebel's clearest statement of the ideal of creative activity 
 is as follows : 
 
 " God creates and works productively in uninterrupted con- 
 tinuity. Each thought of God is a work, a deed, a product ; 
 and each thought of God continues to work with creative power 
 in endless productive activity to all eternity. Let him who 
 has not seen this behold Jesus in his life and works ; let him 
 behold genuine life and work in man ; let him, if he truly 
 lives, behold his own life and work. 
 
 " The spirit of God hovered over chaos, and moved it ; and 
 
144: SYMBOLIC EDUCATION. 
 
 stones and plants, beasts and man, took form and separate being 
 and life. God created man in his own image ; therefore, man 
 should create and bring forth like God. His spirit, the spirit of 
 man, should hover over the shapeless, and move it that it may 
 take shape and form, a distinct being of its own. This is the 
 high meaning, the deep significance, the great purpose of work 
 and industry, of productive and creative activity. We become 
 truly godlike in diligence and industry, in working and doing, 
 which are accompanied by the clear perception or even by the 
 vaguest feeling that thereby we represent the inner in the 
 outer ; that we give body to spirit and form to thought ; that 
 we render visible the invisible; that we impart an outward, 
 finite, transient being to life in the spirit. Through this 
 godlikeness we rise more and more to a true knowledge of 
 God, to insight into his spirit; and thus, inwardly and out- 
 wardly, God comes even nearer to us. Therefore, Jesus so 
 truly says in this connection of the poor, "Theirs is the king- 
 dom of heaven," if they could but see and know it, and practice 
 it in diligence and industry, in productive and creative work. 
 Of children, too, is the kingdom of heaven; for, unchecked 
 by the presumption and conceit of adults, they yield themselves 
 in childlike trust and cheerfulness to their formative and 
 creative instinct." 
 
 Compare with this statement of Froebel's the following lines 
 from Browning : 
 
 " I find first 
 Writ down for very A B C of fact, 
 • In the beginning God made heaven and earth ' ; 
 Prom which, no matter with what lisp, I spell 
 And speak you out a consequence — that man, 
 Man, as befits the made, the inferior thing — 
 Purposed, since made, to grow, not make in turn, 
 Yet forced to try and make, else fail to grow — 
 Formed to rise, reach at, if not grasp and gain 
 The good beyond him — which attempt is growth — 
 Repeats God's process in man's due degree, 
 Attaining man's proportionate result — 
 Creates, no, but resuscitates, perhaps. 
 Inalienable, the arch-prerogative 
 
THE MEANING OF PLAY. 145 
 
 Which turns thought, act — conceives, expresses too ! 
 
 No less, man, bounded, yearning to be free, 
 
 May so project his surplusage of soul 
 
 In search of body, so add self to self 
 
 By owning what lay ownerless before — 
 
 So find, so fill full, so appropriate forms — 
 
 That, although nothing which had never life 
 
 Shall get life from him, be, not having been, 
 
 Yet, something dead may get to live again, 
 
 Something with too much life or not enough, 
 
 Which, either way imperfect, ended once : 
 
 An end whereat man's impulse intervenes, 
 
 Makes new beginning, starts the dead alive, 
 
 Completes the incomplete and saves the thing. 
 
 Man's breath were vain to light a virgin wick — 
 
 Half-burued-out, all but quite-quenched wicks o' the lamp 
 
 Stationed for temple-service on this earth, 
 
 These indeed let him breathe on and relume 1 " 
 
VI. 
 
 OLD LADY GAIRFOWL. 
 
" And there Tom saw the last of the Gairfowl, standing up on the 
 Allalonestone, all alone. And a very grand old lady she was, full 
 three feet high, and bolt upright, like some old Highland chieftainess. 
 She had on a black velvet gown, and a white pinner and apron, and a 
 very high bridge to her nose (which is a sure mark of high breeding), 
 and a large pair of white spectacles on it, which made her look rather 
 odd ; but it was the ancient fashion of her house. 
 
 " And instead of wings she had two little feathery arms, with which 
 she fanned herself, and complained of the dreadful heat ; and she kept 
 on crooning an old song to herself, which she learned when she was a 
 little baby-bird, long ago. . . , 
 
 " Tom came up to her very humbly, and made his bow ; and the 
 first thing she said was : 
 
 " ' Have you wings ? Can you fly ? ' 
 
 " ' Oh, dear, no, ma'am ; I should not think of such a thing,' said 
 cunning little Tom. 
 
 " ' Then I shall have great pleasure in talking to you, my dear. It 
 is quite refreshing nowadays to see anything without wings. They 
 must all have wings, forsooth, now, every new upstart sort of bird, 
 and fly. What can they want with flying, and raising themselves 
 above their proper station in life ? In the days of my ancestors no 
 birds ever thought of having wings, and did very well without ; and 
 now they all laugh at me because I keep to the good old fashion.' " — 
 Water Babies, Charles Kingsley. 
 
CHAPTER VI. 
 
 OLD LADY GAIRFOWL. 
 
 The origin of the Mutter- und Koselieder* 
 explains its object. Twenty-four years' expe- 
 rience as a practical teacher convinced Froebel 
 that any true reform in education must begin 
 with its foundations, and led, in 1840, to the es- 
 tablishment of the first kindergarten. Expe- 
 rience with the little children in the kinder- 
 garten showed him that conscious aims and 
 methods were needed in the nursery. Hence he 
 crowned his educational work with the book in 
 which he seeks to reveal to mothers the meaning 
 of their own instinctive play, and to deepen in 
 them the consciousness of their solemn vocation. 
 
 The Mother-Play is a collection of fifty-five 
 songs. Seven introductory songs express the 
 
 * It seems impossible to find an English equivalent for the 
 title Mutter- und Koselieder. Kosen, an untranslatable word, 
 suggests the tender prattle and play of a mother with her in- 
 fant. A clew to the meaning Froebel attached to this word is 
 given in the motto to the Kicking Song. 
 
150 SYMBOLIC EDUCATION. 
 
 feelings of a mother toward her infant child, 
 and show how through playful incitement she 
 seeks to develop its activity ; forty-nine are little 
 games which she may play with him, and the 
 concluding song outlines the results presumably 
 attained. Many of the songs are simply adapta- 
 tions of rhymes and plays which Froebel found 
 in actual use among mothers ; some are compo- 
 sitions of his own, suggested by incidents of 
 child life which came under his observation, and 
 a few were written by his wife and tested by her 
 in her play with the little son and daughter of 
 Middendorff. The music of the songs was com- 
 posed by Froebel's disciple, Robert Kohl ; while 
 the pictures illustrating them are the work of 
 the painter Frederick Unger, who had been in 
 his boyhood a pupil of Froebel's and was deeply 
 imbued with his spirit. Froebel himself wrote 
 for each play a rhymed motto suggesting and 
 epitomizing its meaning, and a prose commen- 
 tary giving a full explanation both of the game 
 and its accompanying illustration. The conver- 
 sations included in many of these commentaries 
 are wonderful pictures of an ideal intercourse 
 between mother and child. 
 
 Froebel gives the following account of the 
 genesis and development of the Mutter- und Kose- 
 lieder : " As I was one day walking through the 
 
OLD LADY GAIRFOWL. 151 
 
 fields there came toward me a motlier carrying 
 her baby on her arm. * Call the chickens ! ' she 
 cried to the child, at the same time showing 
 him how to beckon with his finger. Deeply im- 
 pressed with the simple act, its grounds and con- 
 sequences, I went home and wrote out the little 
 game Beckoning the Chickens. Another and 
 another followed, and soon I had quite a collec- 
 tion of songs and games. I sent them as I wrote 
 them to a mother whose little child was ill. She 
 assured me she could not thank me enough for 
 the delight they gave him. Thus, gradually, 
 through a constant interchange of thought and 
 feeling with mothers, grew this book." 
 
 The care with which Froebel chose his plays, 
 and the thoroughness with which he tested them, 
 are shown in his letters to his friends and co- 
 workers during the two years which elapsed be- 
 tween the publication of an originally small col- 
 lection of Koseliedchen and the appearance of 
 the Mother-Play in its expanded and permanent 
 form. Not to weary the reader with citations, I 
 limit myself to the following extract from a let- 
 ter to his cousin, Mrs. Schmidt, the organizer of 
 the second kindergarten : 
 
 " To help the child to use his own body, his 
 limbs, and his sensations, and to assist mothers 
 and those who take the place of mothers to the 
 
152 SYMBOLIC EDUCATION. 
 
 consciousness of their duties toward the children, 
 and to a lofty conception of those duties, I have 
 carefully preserved several little songs and games 
 as they have occurred to me in the course of my 
 life, and have given them the name of Little 
 Nursery Songs (Koseliedchen) and Games, to train 
 the body, the limbs, and the senses, for quite 
 little children. I send this collection to you for 
 your severe criticism. You, best of all, from the 
 rich treasure of your experience as a mother, can 
 pronounce whether I have or have not hit the 
 mark at which I have aimed. Strike out ruth- 
 lessly all that seems to you unsuitable. And if 
 you could give the songs to mothers who have 
 quite little children, so that they may test them 
 thoroughly, or if you are able yourself thus to 
 try them, I should be above all things de- 
 lighted." * 
 
 The formal defects of the Mutter- und Kose- 
 lieder are freely admitted by its most enthusi- 
 astic students. Its verse is halting, its pictures 
 are crude, its music is poor. Froebel's mottoes 
 and commentaries are often obscure. His lit- 
 erary style is of the worst. In a word, the book 
 presents imperfectly a pioneering idea. That this 
 idea will hereafter clothe itself in a more fitting 
 
 * Froebel's Letters on the Kindergarten, translated by Emily 
 Michaelis and H. Keatley Moore, p. 109. 
 
OLD LADY GAIRFOWL. 153 
 
 garment, we believe, but "until such a garment 
 has been woven we must cling to the idea itself 
 and forget its wrappage. 
 
 Critics of the Mother-Play have, however, not 
 confined themselves to pointing out its defective 
 form, but have also attacked its substance and 
 aim. The book is declared to be a dangerous in- 
 vasion of that realm of nurture where maternal 
 instinct should have full sway. The mother's 
 heart, it is urged, teaches clearly what she should 
 do for and with her child, and the attempt to ele- 
 vate an instinctive into a conscious procedure is 
 as harmful as it is absurd. This objection scarcely 
 merits a serious reply. Instinct has not prevent- 
 ed the Indian mother from flattening her baby's 
 skull, nor the Chinese mother from cramping and 
 deforming its feet, and all the scornful energy of 
 Rousseau was needed to teach European mothers 
 the evil effects of long, close, swaddling garments. 
 Since instinct has thus proved itself incapable of 
 caring for the body, it is folly to talk about trust- 
 ing to it the development of heart and mind. 
 
 Doubtless there are women who have a genius 
 for motherhood, and who do by nature all the 
 things required in the law of education. These 
 are the artist mothers, but, like other genuine 
 artists, they are few in number, and the great 
 majority of women can not claim to be more 
 
154 SYMBOLIC EDUCATION. 
 
 than mecliaiiics of the mind. It was from artist 
 mothers that Froebel learned his secret. It was 
 the criticism of such mothers that he sought. It 
 is by such mothers that he will be most appre- 
 ciated. The fear that spiritual motherhood will 
 lose any of its power or charm by being lifted 
 into the realm of clearer consciousness is about 
 as absurd as the objection of old Lady Gairfowl 
 to the " upstart birds with wings." 
 
 A more serious objection to the Mother-Play 
 is that it lacks sequence and arrangement. This 
 criticism, if valid, indicates not only a vital de- 
 fect in the book, but a singular violation on 
 Froebel's part of one of his own fundamental 
 principles. No student of his writings can fail 
 to be struck by his recurrent statements of the 
 important idea of continuity. In the Education 
 of Man he urges that *' development should pro- 
 ceed continuously from one point, and that this 
 continuous progress should be recognized and 
 guarded." In the Mother-Play itself he insists 
 that "in God's world just because it is God's 
 world, the law of all things is continuity." His 
 gifts are developed one from another on a prin- 
 ciple of inner connection, and he is never tired 
 of repeating that each gift fulfills that which 
 precedes and foreshadows that which follows 
 it. His symbolism arises, as has been already 
 
OLD LADY GAIRFOWL. 155 
 
 pointed out, from his perception of the connec- 
 tion between the lower and higher faculties of 
 mind, and the law of their unfolding. His whole 
 career as an educator shows that he not only pos- 
 sessed the idea of continuity, but was possessed 
 by it. Is it possible that in his last and greatest 
 book he can have been untrue to or unmindful of 
 this cardinal principle ? * 
 
 The apparent lack of sequence in the Mother- 
 Play is, I think, explained by the fact that while 
 each game is typical of a range of experience, and 
 may therefore be played by children of different 
 ages, its introduction is always a response to 
 some manifestation of the child, and the order 
 of the games corresponds to an ascending series 
 of indicated needs. Thus the Falling, falling 
 
 * " Your child will leurn to toddle before he learns to walk ; 
 he tries to stand before he makes an effort to step forward ; he 
 tries to strengthen and develop his legs and his whole body be- 
 fore he is willing to stand on his legs, and takes pleasure in so 
 doing. If you make your child, just because he has legs, stand 
 and walk all at once, you will make him have weak bowlegs. 
 Now, mother, in the development of the body, the law of the 
 intellect is also expressed. If you come up with help too late, 
 your child is awkward and clumsy in body and mind ; if you 
 come too soon — alas! we meet with only too many people who 
 from this cause wander about with weak, bowlcgged dispo- 
 sitions, just as children do with weak bowlegs. mother, 
 mother ! and all you who take her place, do not forget this : 
 rear your child in harmony with life's interdependence, and 
 according to its simple laws." — Mother-Play, Translation hy 
 Frances and Emily Lord, p. 154- 
 13 
 
156 SYMBOLIC EDUCATION. 
 
 play is the mother's answer to the child's dawn- 
 ing sense of a life distinct from her own, while 
 the games of Hide and Seek and the Cuckoo 
 mark a much more advanced consciousness of 
 personality, and a deeper longing for recogni- 
 tion. The Kicking Game is a response to the 
 simple instinct of movement ; the Weathervane, 
 to the child's first attempts at imitation and 
 his earliest presentiment of cause ; the Tick- 
 tack, to his delight in listening to the clock and 
 watching the swinging pendulum ; Beckoning 
 the Chickens, to his recognition of a life in Na- 
 ture, which sympathizes with his own ; the Bird's 
 Nest, to his waking consciousness of mother 
 love ; the Flower Basket, to the desire of ex- 
 pressing love ; the Carpenter, to an anticipation 
 of the meaning of home ; the Three Songs of the 
 Knights, to that desire of approbation which 
 originally expresses simply the stirrings of social 
 sympathy. There is not a single play in the 
 Mutter- und Koselieder whose genesis may not 
 be traced to some hint of need given by the child, 
 and these hints are the buds which show where a 
 new branch or twig is ready to burst forth upon 
 the tree of life. On the other hand, just as the 
 branch having budded continues to grow, so each 
 genuine need of the child deepens as he matures. 
 Recognition of this fact leads Froebel to suggest 
 
OLD LADY GAIRFOWL. 157 
 
 in his commentaries the deeper possibilities latent 
 in each of his little games, and its consequent 
 adaptability to children of different ages. In like 
 manner the pictures refer sometimes to the ear- 
 lier, sometimes to the later, often to both stages 
 in the development of the play which they illus- 
 trate. 
 
 That the order of the songs in the Mother- 
 Play is not an accidental one is shown, moreover, 
 by the fact that they fall into four well-marked 
 divisions, to each of which Froebel calls atten- 
 tion in his commentaries. The first division in- 
 cludes all the games before the Target ; * the 
 second, those intervening between the Target 
 and the Light-Songs ; the third, the Light-Songs 
 themselves, and the plays between these and the 
 Knights ; the fourth, all the remaining songs in 
 the book. 
 
 The games included in the first division relate 
 in general to the elementary experiences of move- 
 ment, change, and time. The only relationship 
 thrown into relief is that between mother and 
 child, though the germs of sympathy with the 
 life of nature are fostered by the plays of the 
 Chickens and Pigeons. The only sensations con- 
 sciously discriminated are those falling within the 
 
 * I make one change in Froebel's arrangement, by placing 
 the Grass-Mowing in the second group. 
 
158 SYMBOLIC EDUCATION. 
 
 spheres of taste and smell. With the game of the 
 Target, as Froebel points out, we enter upon a new 
 stage of development — a stage characterized, as 
 he further informs us, by the desire of the child 
 to classify objects according to their number, 
 form, and size. Number makes it possible to 
 grasp together the separate elements of a spatial 
 whole, and to express the law of proportion ; to 
 recognize as a synthetic unity the successive 
 stages of a developing process, and to mark 
 off and accentuate rhythmic intervals of time. 
 Hence in this group of games Froebel calls at- 
 tention to the family as a membered unity, to 
 the series of acts involved in a constructive pro- 
 cess, and to the laws of rhythm and proportion 
 both in their physical and spiritual applications. 
 This series ends with The Children on the Tower 
 — a review game, wherein nearly all the preced- 
 ing plays are brought together, and through 
 which a hint is given the child that his own life 
 is a process of becoming, and that in order to 
 know what is, one must learn something of how 
 it came to be. 
 
 Perhaps the most critical moment of the 
 child's life is that in which he begins to distin- 
 guish between the outside and inside of things. 
 The signs of this awakening consciousness are 
 many and unmistakable. The ticking of the 
 
OLD LADY GAIRPOWL. 159 
 
 watcli no longer satisfies ; papa must open it 
 and show its moving wheels. The doll is broken, 
 to find out what makes her eyes roll ; the kaleido- 
 scope shattered, to discover the secret of its shin- 
 ing stars. When the mother speaks, her face is 
 scanned to see if she means what she says ; more- 
 over, what she says and does to-day is compared 
 with the words and actions of yesterday. The 
 child has begun to discriminate between soul and 
 body, reality and appearance, unity and mani- 
 foldness. He is one, though his feelings and 
 actions are many ; this unity in him is active 
 and invisible — the hidden essence of his varying 
 manifestations. Such an invisible soul there 
 must be in all things. What is its nature ? How 
 is it related to him, and he to it ? 
 
 The reader will understand that in attempt- 
 ing to describe this nascent consciousness I have 
 necessarily given it a definiteness it does not in 
 reality possess. It is impossible to picture in 
 words the faint dawning of the inner light, but 
 a certain mark of its approach is the child's 
 ability to use the pronoun I. For the use of 
 this pronoun, as Rosmini has pointed out, pro- 
 supposes, first, that he who uses it has the ab- 
 stract (or general) conception of the power of 
 speaking ; second, that he refers the act of speak- 
 ing to a speaking subject ; third, that he under- 
 
160 SYMBOLIC EDUCATION. 
 
 stands that the / indicates precisely this speaking 
 subject.* In a word, the ability to say 1 implies 
 that the universal and the particular are at once 
 distinguished and identified.! 
 
 To this dawning consciousness of the relation 
 between universal and particular, Froebel re- 
 sponds in the ten songs which have for their 
 theme the varied aspects of light. They show 
 light as the revealer both of individuality and 
 relativity ; light as a self -diffusive and creative 
 energy ; light and darkness as the physical cor- 
 respondences of good and evil ; light and the eye 
 
 • Rosmini's Method in Education, p. 233. 
 
 t " 7— God excepted, who is at once the great original I and 
 Thou — is the noblest as well as the most incomprehensible thing 
 which language expresses or which we contemplate. It is these 
 all at once, as the whole realm of truth and conscience, which 
 without I is nothing." — Jean Paul, Levana, Bohii's translation^ 
 p. lU. 
 
 " Never shall I forget the inner sensation, hitherto untold to 
 any, when I was present at the birth of my self-consciousness, of 
 which I can specify both time and place. One morning, when 
 still quite a young child, I was standing under the doorway and 
 looking toward the wood-stack on the left, when suddenly the 
 internal vision,' I am an ego,^ passed before me like a lightning- 
 flash from heaven, and has remained with me shining brightly 
 ever since ; my ego had seen itself then for the first time and 
 forever. Deceptions of the memory are here hardly conceivable, 
 since no story related to me could mingle its additions with an 
 occurrence which took place in the shrouded holy of holies of 
 a human being, and whose strangeness alone has given perma- 
 nence to such every-day circumstances as those which accom- 
 panied it." — Levana, Bohn's trafislaiiori, p. £5. 
 
OLD LADY GAIRFOWL, 161 
 
 as symbolizing truth and the mind ; the pleas- 
 ures of sight as contrasted with the grosser 
 pleasures of touch, and adumbrating the truth 
 that the purest joys of life are apart from mate- 
 rial possession. Above all, however, they prophe- 
 sy the transition from physical to spiritual unity, 
 and kindle in the imagination the tiny spark of 
 presentiment which shall one day blaze into rec- 
 ognition of the truth that the universal is always 
 the creator of the particular. 
 
 The Light-Songs are followed by eight games 
 which deal with practical activities.* In the 
 commentary on The Charcoal Burner, which is 
 the first of this series, Froebel makes the follow- 
 ing suggestive remark : " We have recognized 
 the eye as the medium between man's inner 
 being and the spiritual world. In like manner 
 the hand is a special medium between the in- 
 ner life and the surrounding material world." 
 Through its use the child learns how much there 
 is to be done immediately around him. The 
 games thus introduced picture the work of the 
 Charcoal Burner, the Carpenter, Joiner, and 
 Wheelwright, and call attention to the pleasure 
 of developing jjlant life and the duty of protect- 
 
 * I follow Wichard Lange, Seidel includes in this division 
 the Song of Smell, which, in my judgment, should be included 
 in the first group. 
 
162 SYMBOLIC EDUCATION. 
 
 ing domestic anipaals. The object of these games 
 is to deepen the consciousness of social dependence 
 and kindle the sense of social obligation. They 
 relate to the preceding songs, as the hand to the 
 eye, as doing to seeing, or, stated more abstractly, 
 as the practice of duty to the vision of truth. 
 
 Up to this point in the Mutter- und Koselieder 
 there has been no direct attempt to work upon 
 the moral sense. The relationships of the child 
 to nature, to man, and to God have been pictured, 
 and the duties arising out of these relationships 
 have been incidentally suggested. There has, 
 however, been no hint of the compulsory nature 
 of these duties. In the three songs of the 
 Knights, and the games which follow them, we 
 advance, so Froebel tells us, to a new stage of 
 development. " What has hitherto been done for 
 the formation of the child's disposition and will 
 has been accidental — as it were, a thing aside ; 
 what is now done is with clear intention and de- 
 liberate aim." The moral imperative is revealed. 
 The words ought and miist acquire definite mean- 
 ing ; and conscience, begotten of imagination, be- 
 gins to utter her commands, her warnings, and 
 her threats.* With this attempt to foster self- 
 
 * See, in Memoir of Bronson Alcott, by F. B. Sanborn and 
 W. T. Harris, pages 654-656, some very suggestive remarks by 
 Dr. Harris on the process through which imagination generates 
 the conscience. 
 
OLD LADY GAIRFOWL. 163 
 
 directing activity the Mother-Play comes to an 
 end. 
 
 It has seemed important to consider in some 
 detail the objections urged against the Mother- 
 Play, because adverse criticism has tended to di- 
 minish the practical influence of the book, and 
 hence to prevent the realization of Froebel's 
 own most cherished hopes. "It would be an 
 everlasting loss," said the thoughtful Diester- 
 weg, " if the treasures which lie in Friedrich 
 Froebel were allowed to perish. He is a jewel, 
 a pearl of price." * These treasures are laid up 
 in the Mother-Play. Froebel himself always 
 made this book the basis of his lectures to moth- 
 ers and kindergartners, and never ceased to refer 
 to it as the point of departure for a natural 
 system of education. It has been recognized by 
 most of his leading disciples as the high-water 
 mark of his genius, and the richest outcome of 
 his twenty-seven years of experience as an edu- 
 cator. It should be the guide of every mother 
 who aspires to do what is best for her children. 
 It should be the favorite picture and song book 
 in every nursery. It should be the beacon light 
 by which each kindergartner directs her course. 
 It should be the beating heart of every kinder- 
 
 * Cited in the English translation of Froebel's Letters, Emily 
 Michaelis and H. Keatley Moore. 
 
164 SYMBOLIC EDUCATION. 
 
 garten. It should be the center around whicli 
 revolve all the concentric circles of kindergarten 
 activity. It should be the most important study- 
 in every kindergarten normal class. Only by 
 such varied use and application will its secret be 
 learned, and the world come to understand the 
 full meaning of the cry which fifty years ago 
 rang out from the depths of the Thuringian 
 forest : 
 
 " Come, let us live with our children." 
 
VII. 
 PATTERN EXPERIENCES. 
 
" The sun is fixed, 
 And the infinite magnificence of heaven 
 Fixed, within reach of every human eye ; 
 The sleepless ocean munnurs for all ears ; 
 The vernal field infuses fresh delight 
 Into all liearts. Throughout the world of sense, 
 Even as an object is sublime or fair. 
 That object is laid open to the view 
 Without reserve or veil ; and as a power 
 Is salutary, or an infiuence sweet, 
 Are each and all enabled to perceive 
 That power, that influence, by impartial law. 
 Gifts nobler are vouchsafed alike to all ; 
 Keason and, with that reason, smiles and tears ; 
 Imagination, freedom of the will ; 
 Conscience to guide and check ; and death to bo 
 Foretasted, immortality conceived 
 By all — a blissful immortality, 
 To them whose holiness on earth shall make 
 The spirit capable of heaven, assured. 
 Strange, then, nor less than monstrous might be deemed 
 The failure, if the Almiglity, to this point 
 Liberal and undistinguishing, should hide 
 The excellence of moral qualities 
 From common understanding ; leaving truth 
 And virtue difficult, abstruse, and dark ; 
 Hard to be won, and only by a few ; 
 Strange, should he deal herein with nice respects, 
 And frustrate all the rest ! Believe it not : 
 The primal duties shine aloft, like stars ; 
 The charities that soothe, and heal, and bless, 
 Are scattered at the feet of man, like flowers, 
 The generous inclination, the just rule, 
 Kind wishes, and good actions and pure thoughts. 
 No mystery is here ! Here is no boon 
 For high, yet not for low ; for proudly graced, 
 Yet not for meek of heart. The smoke ascends 
 To heaven as lightly from the cottage-hearth 
 As from the haughtiest palace. He whose soul 
 Ponders this true equality, may walk 
 The fields of earth witli gratitude and hope." 
 
 The Excursion^ Book IX, Wordsworth. 
 
CHAPTER VII. 
 
 PATTERN EXPERIENCES. 
 
 Two distinct and even antagonistic views with 
 regard to the purpose of the kindergarten games 
 seem to be more or less clearly shaj^ing themselves 
 in the consciousness of practical kindergartners, 
 and to be finding expression in the works of 
 Froebel's interpreters and critics. Of these con- 
 flicting views one holds that the seed-thought of 
 the Mother-Play is the dramatic reproduction of 
 each child's daily experiences, and that therefore 
 the plays suggested by Froebel must be changed 
 whenever the circumstances and surroundings of 
 the child are changed ; the other insists that the 
 procreant idea of Froebel's games is that of ac- 
 centuating and interpreting pattern experiences, 
 and that the actual supply of such experiences 
 is an essential part of the duty of mothers and 
 kindergartners. 
 
 The theory of adaptive modification has been 
 so clearly stated by Mr. Courthope Bowen in his 
 helpful book, Froebel and Education by Self- 
 
168 SYMBOLIC EDUCATION. 
 
 Activity, that I can not do better than quote his 
 words : 
 
 " The Mutter- und Koselieder was collected 
 and composed and organized some fifty years 
 ago for little German children — mainly those 
 who were surrounded with country sights and 
 sounds and occupations. A very small amount 
 of consideration will show that for little English 
 or American children — especially when they live 
 in cities — something different will be required if 
 a similar effect is to be produced. We shall 
 require what is English or American, or what 
 has become such. All of physical nature, of 
 the country, that we can actually bring into the 
 cities, that we can place and keep within the 
 sight and touch of children, we should of course 
 use freely. For the rest, we must draw upon the 
 children's homes, and upon the actual life by 
 which they are surrounded. To do otherwise is 
 to break at once with Proebel. For these little 
 city children we should not tell of The Fish in 
 the Brook, but of The Sparrow in the Street ; not 
 of The Nest with its Birdlings, but of The Cat 
 and her Kittens ; not of The Charcoal Burner, 
 but of The Costermonger, The Cabman, The 
 Newspaper Boy, The Watercress Woman ; not of 
 The Wolf and the Boar, but of The Dog ; and even 
 instead of playing at Mowing the Grass, it would 
 
PATTERN EXPERIENCES. 1G9 
 
 be better for these little city children to play at 
 sweeping the room." 
 
 No disciple of Froebel will deny that the 
 actual experience of the child should furnish 
 the incitement for his plays, and Mr. Bowen 
 merits our gratitude for his emphatic statement 
 of this cardinal point. In my judgment, how- 
 ever, he errs in insisting that the kindergarten 
 games should reproduce only literal and custom- 
 ary experiences, and in his suggestion that Ger- 
 man and English children, city children and 
 country children, rich children and poor children, 
 should have wholly different plays. In oppo- 
 sition to this view, I hold that Froebel's games 
 dramatize ideal experiences which all children 
 may and ought to have, and that consequently 
 they should be played by children of all nations 
 and all conditions in life. To these universal 
 plays may be added those which throw into relief 
 the salient experiences of children in particular 
 localities, and, as I have already suggested, each 
 mother may dramatize for her own child those 
 events of his life whose influence she wishes to 
 deepen and perpetuate.* 
 
 * I do not mean to imply that there should be a rigid adher- 
 ence to the words, music, or gestures suggested by Froebel, but 
 only that we should in general conform to the subjects he has 
 indicated. My difference from Mr. Bowen will perhaps be best 
 shown by considering the substitutes he proposes for some of 
 
170 SYMBOLIC EDUCATION. 
 
 The theory that the kindergarten games should 
 reproduce only literal and habitual experiences 
 involves those who try to carry it out in practice 
 in endless difficulties. Will any one contend that 
 
 Proebel's games. I readily admit that if the child had never 
 seen a fish it might be well to substitute for the game of the 
 fishes that of the flying bird, for the idea which this game em- 
 bodies is simply that of free activity in a pure element, and 
 Froebel himself in his commentary illustrates both by birds 
 and fishes. I also agree with Mr. Bowen, that if it were impos- 
 sible to take the child into the country or to show him different 
 kinds of birds' nests, it might be well to substitute The Cat and 
 her Kittens for The Bird and her Nestlings, though in the case 
 of birds we have far more tender and more varied illustrations 
 of mother love and care. I should, however, not admit that the 
 dog could be substituted for the wolf, since the idea in the 
 game of the wolf is the destruction of savage and the protec- 
 tion of domestic animals. Neither should I concede that such 
 a play as Sweeping the Room could be compared with that of 
 Mowing Grass, for the one represents a menial and unrelated 
 activity, while the other dramatizes a sequence of acts and stirs 
 the sense of social dependence. 
 
 That Froebel intended in his plays to embody what I have 
 called typical or pattern experiences is evident from many pas- 
 sages in his writings. The following extract from a letter to 
 Mrs. Schmidt will perhaps be sufficient to convince the reader 
 that in the pursuance of this aim he was guided not by a blind 
 impulse but by a clear insight: 
 
 " MucH-ESTEEMEU AND Dear Cousin : At last I am able to 
 reply to your kind letter of the 7th inst. Permit me to an- 
 swer you clause by clause. I. ' Often and often,' so you say, 
 * passages which I read in the Sunday Journal evoke from the 
 depths of my inner consciousness like thoughts which I have 
 originated for myself, and like experiences which I have gone 
 through in my own life, until I grow quite astonished and 
 puzzled.' What you thus confide to me relates to one part of 
 
PATTERN EXPERIENCES. 171 
 
 for the cliildren in orphan asylums we should 
 omit all family plaj'^s ? In a kindergarten for the 
 blind must we weed out such plays as the Flying 
 Bird and the Swift-darting Fish ; or admit that 
 
 the sweetest, best, and purest fruit of my life ; one part, namely, 
 of what I mean to do, or have ah-eady accomplished (through 
 my children's games and occupations), toward clearing a path- 
 way through the tangles of human life. I am endeavoring to 
 bring man, through the knowledge of his own inner feelings 
 and the experiences of his own life, to a forcfecling, a percep- 
 tion, and finally a clear consciousness, of this great fact — that 
 for all the important needs of life, and for the deepest concep- 
 tions that govern life, there exist universally applicable life 
 experiences and examples which are found to be repeated in 
 the case of every man who examines the development of his 
 own career with careful scrutiny and endeavors to bring him- 
 self to a consciousness of its meaning." — FrocheVs Letters On 
 the Kindergarte7i, translated by Emily Michaelis a?wZ II. 
 Keatley 3Ioore, p. 96. 
 
 It is also evident, both from certain of Froebel's games and 
 from his own definite statements, that while he intended his 
 plays to be in general connected with life experiences, lie by no 
 means rigidly excluded the representation of unfamiliar objects 
 or activities, but held that occasionally games and pictures 
 might anticipate experience. For example, most of the chil- 
 dren for whom ho wrote had probably never seen living wolves. 
 The following passage from the Pedagogics of the Kindergarten 
 leaves no doubt as to his own opinion on this point : 
 
 " The second remark is, that objects are here brought before 
 the child which indeed the playing adult has seen, but which as 
 yet the playing child has not seen at all. Though this is not to 
 be anxiously avoided, as little is it to be thoughtlessly carried 
 too far; kept within right limits, it justifies itself to any simple 
 and straightforward mind. The life and tlie course of develop- 
 ment of the human being and the laws of this development 
 make this procedure recurrent with the most developed man ; 
 13 
 
172 SYMBOLIC EDUCATION. 
 
 the representation of these activities may waken 
 in sightless children a faint reflection of the joy 
 with which seeing children watch the actual fish 
 and bird ? For the children of the slums must 
 
 for as man is a being destined to attain increasing conscious- 
 ness, so is he also to become and be a judging and reasoning 
 being. Besides, man has a peculiar presaging power of imagi- 
 nation, as indeed also, what must never be forgotten, but always 
 kept in view as important and guiding — the newborn child is 
 not subsequently a man, but the man already appears, and in- 
 deed is in the child with all his qualities and the unity of his 
 nature. 
 
 "Objects not yet seen in life by the child may therefore 
 be introduced to him through word and representation, but 
 with the following restriction : The introduction (as, for exam- 
 ple, in the preceding pages that of the squirrel) must not take 
 place until the child, through frequent representation of the 
 activity of a familiar object, has identified and classified such 
 object through its activity. To illustrate: The child has often 
 seen and may continue to see a kitten ; he represents with his 
 ball the act of springing, and identifies the kitten as a springing 
 animal. He also recognizes the kitten in the springing ball. 
 Subsequently he observes the climbing of the kitten, and repre- 
 sents this with the ball. lie has now identified the kitten, as a 
 living thing that springs and climbs. When, therefore, he is 
 told that the squirrel climbs, he quickly comes to the conclu- 
 sion that the sqtiirrel is a living thing that climbs. This is 
 enough to excite his attention and justify his representation 
 of the squirrel's activity. When later he sees a squirrel and it 
 is named to him, he fixes his eyes upon it sharply, perhaps 
 without even hearing its name, recognizes it through its climb- 
 ing and other possil>le connections with known animals. This 
 is a suflicient justification for the childlike and motherly pro- 
 cedure we have been considering." — Pedagogics of the Kinder- 
 garten, translated by Josephine Jar vis (vol. xxvii, International 
 Education Series). 
 
PATTERN EXPERIENCES. 173 
 
 we invent games reproducing their daily sur- 
 roundings; or try by excursions into the coun- 
 try, and by the representation of typical scenes 
 from the world of nature and the world of man, 
 to withdraw their minds from the dwarfing and 
 distorting conditions of their own lives ? 
 
 A cursory glance at the games contained in 
 the Mother-Play will show that in general they 
 embody experiences which it is easy to sup- 
 ply to children the world over. An occasional 
 morning spent in the country will furnish in- 
 citement for all the nature plays. For the 
 family, state, and church plays the ordinary ex- 
 periences of child-life give sufficient occasion. 
 Visits to the farmer, miller, baker, carpenter, 
 joiner, and wheelwright will supply the point of 
 departure for the labor plays. The recurrent 
 reproduction of these typical experiences will 
 cause them to stand out clearly and strongly in 
 the child's consciousness and give them a deter- 
 mining power upon his character, while con- 
 versely evil and painful experiences, if not dwelt 
 upon by the imagination, tend gradually to retire 
 into the background of the mind. " Without ob- 
 livion there is no remembrance possible." Is it 
 not the capital power of thought that it can 
 single out of the complex of life illuminating 
 and educative experiences, and refuse its at- 
 
174 SYMBOLIC EDUCATION. 
 
 tention to what is arbitrary, unessential, or de- 
 praving ? 
 
 It is important in this connection to remember 
 that in Froebel's view one great duty of mothers 
 and kindergartners is to introduce children to the 
 society of nature. " Out-of-door life/' ho declares 
 in the Education of Man, "is particularly desir- 
 able for the young ; it develops, strengthens, ele- 
 vates, and ennobles. It imparts life and a higher 
 significance to all things. For this reason short 
 excursions and walks are excellent educational 
 means, and to be highly esteemed even in tho 
 beginning of boy and school life." * And again : 
 "Man, particularly in boyhood, should become 
 intimate with Nature, not so much with refer- 
 ence to the details and the outer forms of her 
 phenomena, as with reference to the Spirit of 
 God that lives in her and rules over her. Indeed, 
 tho boy feels this deeply and demands it ; for this 
 reason, where love of nature is still unimpaired, 
 nothing perhaps unites teachers and pupils so 
 intimately as tho thoughtful study of nature and 
 of the objects of nature. 
 
 " Parents and teachers should remember this, 
 and the latter should, at least once a iveek, take 
 a walk with each class — not driving them out 
 like a flock of sheep, nor leading them out like 
 
 * Education of Man, Ilailraann's translation, p. 309. 
 
PATTERN EXPERIENCES. 175 
 
 a company of soldiers, but going with them as a 
 father with his sons or a brother with his broth- 
 ers, and acquainting them more fully with what- 
 ever the season or Nature offers them." * 
 
 The nature plays in our kindergartens lose 
 much of their spirit and value because we fail 
 to connect them with the objects, actions, and 
 events which it is their function to interpret. 
 Emerson chides us for "filling the hands and 
 nurseries of our children with all manner of 
 dolls, drums, and horses, and withdrawing their 
 eyes from the plain face and sufficing objects 
 of nature — the sun and moon, the animals, the 
 water, and stones which should be their toys." 
 Let us not continue to deserve this reproach, 
 but begin at once to bless the child with the 
 sweet influences of earth and air and sky. Grant 
 him the joy of roaming the fields, of finding the 
 early violet, of weaving daisy chains and lark- 
 spur wreaths, of making burdock baskets and 
 fir-twig furniture, and acorn cups and thistle 
 balls. Show him how to plant seed, and amaze 
 his unaccustomed soul with the miracle of 
 growth. Let him know the thrill of awe which 
 accompanies the peep into a bird's nest. Teach 
 him {p observe the strange metamorphoses of 
 insects. Give him occasion to study the animals 
 
 * Education of Man, p. 163. 
 
176 SYMBOLIC EDUCATION. 
 
 in their native haunts, and incite him to distin- 
 guish animals of the field and the woods, aquatic, 
 amphibious, and aerial animals. Explain to him 
 how the abode and food of animals affect their 
 color and form, and open his eyes to that won- 
 derful mimicry through which birds and insects 
 protect themselves and their young. Make him 
 notice how some plants love to bask in the sun- 
 shine, others to hide in the shade ; how some 
 need a dry, sandy soil, some flourish in the 
 marsh, while still others are parasites and de- 
 pend both for support and food upon their 
 stronger neighbors. Stir his imagination with 
 the poetry of forest life, and let him experience 
 that sense of mystery and awe which steals over 
 the soul of the solitary wanderer in the depths of 
 the woods. Make him know the great god Pan. 
 As he grows older, let him climb high hills and 
 see as a whole the landscape which he has hith- 
 erto known only in fragments. Let him follow 
 the windings of a brook, and be stirred by its 
 suggestion of whence and whither. Satisfy the 
 mystic longing which impels him to seek his 
 own reflection in pond and stream, and makes 
 him hearken with such delight to the echoes of 
 his voice ringing from rocks and woods. Let 
 him watch the shifting figures of the clouds; 
 gaze into fathomless depths of blue sky; know 
 
PATTERN EXPERIENCES. 177 
 
 the upward leap of heart which comes from the 
 sight of the rainbow ; behold the sunrise and the 
 sunset ; count the stars as they shine forth one 
 by one out of the gathering dark, and feel those 
 rising tides of the spirit which obey the attrac- 
 tion of the moon. Do you imagine that these 
 things are unimportant ? Then go yourself to 
 the poets, and learn from them that the life 
 "which sleeps in the plant and dreams in the 
 animal is one with the life that wakes in man " ; 
 that the evanescent is the parable of the perma- 
 nent ; and that the forms and metamorphoses of 
 nature are but vanishing symbols of the forms 
 and metamorphoses of mind. 
 
 Himself a poet, though he lacks the gift of 
 song, Froebel seizes by instinct the typical aspects 
 of nature and presents them sympathetically to 
 the imagination of the child. Nature is the foe 
 man must subdue ; the servant he must protect ; 
 the companion he must cherish ; the inferior life 
 which he must foster and develop ; the material 
 he must transform ; the symbol he must inter- 
 pret ; the bewildering variety which he must re- 
 duce to unity through the discovery of processes, 
 laws, and principles. To awaken in the child a 
 presentiment of his true relationship to nature 
 means to arouse in him the feelings which are 
 germinal responses to the duties enumerated. 
 
178 SYMBOLIC EDUCATION. 
 
 Hence we find Froebel calling attention to the 
 subjugation of nature in such plays as The 
 Wolf and the Wild Boar; to the protection of 
 domestic animals in the game of The Barnyard ; 
 to the nurture of plants in The Little Gardener ; 
 to the companionship of nature in the play 
 Beckoning the Chickens ; to the transformation 
 of material in such games as The Carpenter 
 and Charcoal Burner ; to the great symbols con- 
 secrated by the imagination of the race in The 
 Flying Bird, The Weathervane, and the Light- 
 Songs; to the crude beginnings of a scientific 
 interpretation of nature in the games dealing 
 with form and number, in the gifts and occu- 
 pations whose basis is mathematical, and one 
 of whose objects is the unification of nature 
 through the discovery of her geometric arche- 
 types, and finally through games such as The 
 Bird's Nest, wherein the particular object is con- 
 sidered with reference to its spatial environment ; 
 games like All Gone, Grass-mowing, The Baker 
 and the Farmer, wherein the object is considered 
 with reference to its temporal antecedents; and 
 games like The Weathervane, which throw into 
 relief the idea of cause by tracing a variety of 
 visible phenomena to the agency of a single in- 
 visible force. 
 
 Ascending from the life of nature to the life 
 
PATTERN EXPERIENCES. 179 
 
 of man, tlio kindergarten games image in sym- 
 bolic form the great institutions of humanity — 
 the family, civil society, the state, and the church. 
 That all children form some rudimentary idea 
 of these great institutions is indubitable. That 
 their future well-being and usefulness depend in 
 large measure upon the kind of idea they form 
 is undeniable. That Froebel is the first educa- 
 tor who has consciously and systematically en- 
 deavored to abet the process by which fantasy 
 generates ethical ideals constitutes one of his 
 greatest claims on our gratitude. Who shall say 
 how much of the anarchy which with Caliban 
 scouts and flouts all law in the name of freedom 
 — how much of the selfishness which with Pistol 
 declares "the world is mine oyster " — how much 
 of the atheism which scoffs at God, at immor- 
 tality, and at moral responsibility, is born of our 
 failure to influence the imagination of childhood 
 with the ideals incarnate in the institutions of 
 society ? " Of this thing," says wise Herr Teu- 
 f olsdrockh, " be certain : wouldst thou plant for 
 eternity ? then plant into the deep infinite facul- 
 ties of man, his fantasy and heart. Wouldst thou 
 plant for year and day ? then plant into his shal- 
 low, superficial faculties, his self-love, and arith- 
 metical understanding, what will grow there." 
 Each man has two selves. These two selves 
 
180 SYMBOLIC EDUCATION. 
 
 are familiar to us under many different names : 
 savage man and civilized man ; isolated man and 
 social man ; carnal man and spiritual man ; natu- 
 ral man and ideal man ; atomic man and generic 
 man ; the first man, who is of the earth, earthy ; 
 the second man, who is the Lord from heaven. 
 Such are a few of the contrasting appellations 
 under which language has striven to articulate 
 an idea which in some form makes itself known 
 to every thinking mind. 
 
 The institutions of society derive their great- 
 est significance from the fact that they embody 
 and reveal generic selfhood. The final test of 
 any system of education, therefore, must be its 
 ability to waken in the mind of its pupils the 
 ethical ideals of which social institutions are the 
 incarnation. The battle between the particular 
 man and the universal man is inevitable. The 
 only question is, Shall it be fought out in the 
 world, or in the soul ? Shall the puny individual 
 defy the external embodiments of his own ideal 
 nature and perish in the collision with these 
 substantial powers ? Shall his life be a tragedy, 
 or a divine comedy, in whose course he rises out 
 of the inferno of selfishness, and through the pur- 
 gatorial discipline of visible institutions ascends 
 into the communion of the invisible Church ? 
 Surely there can be but one answer to these ques- 
 
PATTERN EXPERIENCES. 181 
 
 tions, and when wo have learned to put tliem we 
 have ])egun to realize the importance of that 
 active membership in the universal life which 
 transmutes external restraint into internal in- 
 citement, and purifies the passion for rule into 
 the passion for service. 
 
 The influence of the long period of feeble ado- 
 lescence upon the historic development of man- 
 kind has of late years been much insisted upon 
 by thoughtful evolutionists. The helplessness of 
 infancy created the family, and from this rudi- 
 mentary germ all the more complex social organ- 
 isms have been evolved. The subordination of 
 individual caprice and selfishness to the interest 
 of the family -whole generated the altruistic 
 ideal. The plasticity of infancy made possible 
 the molding influence of family habits and tra- 
 ditions, and education began to be. Finally, the 
 acquisition of the mother-tongue lifted each new- 
 born individual out of his mere atomic selfhood, 
 and prepared him to avail himself of the experi- 
 ence of his fellow-men. 
 
 The history of the individual repeats that of 
 the race, and upon family nurture will always 
 depend in large measure the weal or woe of life. 
 What, then, must we think of that dominant and 
 despotic infant who, by cries and caresses, by 
 threats and cajolery, enslaves parents, grandpar- 
 
182 SYMBOLIC EDUCATION. 
 
 ents, friends, and domestics, and makes himself 
 the autocrat of so many homes ? Of all forms of 
 despotism this is the worst for the despot him- 
 self, since it alone grants power without corre- 
 sponding responsibility. We can not abolish it by 
 simply insisting upon the surrender of self-will, 
 for coercion of the will, in its reaction, produces 
 evils greater than those it seeks to cure. We 
 must illuminate the imagination of the child 
 with ideals of love and gratitude and service, and 
 stir his soul with premonitions of the beauty and 
 sanctity of family life. 
 
 To accomplish this result is the aim of Froebel 
 in his family plays. In the order of these plays 
 we observe that the first relationship objectified 
 is that of mother and child ; then follow games 
 depicting the relationship to father, brothers, 
 sisters, and grandparents. Most important of 
 all is the fact that the family is presented as a 
 spiritual whole enveloping and fostering the life 
 of the individual ; " for where wholeness is," says 
 Froebel, " there is life, or at least the germ of 
 life ; where division is, though it be only halfness, 
 there is death, or at least the germ of death." 
 Finally, there is hinted the response which the 
 fostered should make to the fostering life, and 
 in a number of little games is reflected, as in a 
 mirror, the image of the active child, always busy 
 
PATTERN EXPERIENCES. 183 
 
 in work or play ; the orderly child, prompt to 
 obey the voice of the clock ; the pure and open- 
 hearted child, who shuns all secret ways and 
 words ; the sympathetic child, to whom no joy is 
 perfect unless shared with others; the loving 
 child, eager to render service and give pleasure ; 
 in a word, the good child, whom all men love, 
 and whom father and mother love most of all. 
 
 Few problems are more difficult to solve than 
 that of the good which man must do, as related 
 to the freedom with which it must be done. 
 Failure to conform to the ideal pattern of hu- 
 manity means failure to create character. Yet 
 external compulsion can not form nor mere un- 
 conscious habit fix the will, and too often en- 
 forced obedience, recoiling, produces boundless 
 caprice. 
 
 Theories of moral training vibrate between 
 the equally pernicious extremes of coercion and 
 feeble indulgence, because thought oscillates be- 
 between the perceived necessity of doing riglit 
 and the instinctive sense that virtue implies vol- 
 untary choice, and that power to choose aright 
 can only be developed by long exercise in riglit 
 choosing. It seems at times that by a slow inver- 
 sion the outward may become an inward " must," 
 and the imperative of external command melt 
 imperceptibly into the imperative of conscience. 
 
184 SYMBOLIC EDUCATION. 
 
 Influenced by this latent assumption we make 
 much of formal obedience, and expect that by 
 some subtle process of moral alchemy mechan- 
 ical habit may be transmuted into spontaneous 
 energy. In the recoil from this view arises the 
 conviction that external drill and discipline tend 
 not to fashion the will, but either to break or 
 stiffen it, and with a burning feeling of the 
 sanctity of the individual soul we denounce the 
 outer compulsion which cramps, fetters, and de- 
 stroys the free energy of spirit. 
 
 Froebel has endeavored to solve this moral 
 contradiction in the plays wherein he leads the 
 child to picture ideal childhood. Representing 
 to ourselves what we ought to be is the prelimi- 
 nary of being what we ought. We form char- 
 acter by progressively canceling natural defect, 
 and we are incited to the effort that overcomes 
 by vision of the good to be achieved. The merit 
 of Froebel's plays is that they insinuate truth 
 into the mind without arousing antagonism to it. 
 Hence its beauty is felt before its constraint ; it 
 allures before it commands or threatens; and 
 with heart inflamed by the vision of the ideal the 
 child becomes a law unto himself before law is 
 externally revealed as binding upon him. 
 
 The organizing principle of industrial life is 
 the division of labor. This principle demands 
 
PATTERN EXPERIENCES. 185 
 
 that eacli man shall restrict himself to a particu- 
 lar calling, and in this calling work directly for 
 others and only indirectly for himself. On the 
 other hand, it enables each man to profit by the 
 labor of all men, and applies the strength of uni- 
 versal, endeavor to the supply of individual need. 
 Out of this reciprocal relation of each to all and 
 all to each arise the sense of social dependence 
 and the feeling of personal responsibility; and 
 these in turn give birth to the virtues of industry, 
 punctuality, kindliness, and courtesy. In a word, 
 the institution of civil society raises the ac- 
 tivity which supplies material needs into the 
 spiritual realm and causes it to take on the form 
 of participation characteristic of all spiritual 
 energies. 
 
 The aim of the labor plays is to stir in the 
 child's mind some presentiment of the beauty of 
 universal service, some sense of his own obliga- 
 tion to serve. In pursuit of this aim Froebel 
 leads him from the objects of daily use and com- 
 fort back to the activities which they imply. 
 How shall the child think of his food, his cloth- 
 ing, and the house which shelters him ? Shall he 
 think them only as related to his own need or 
 pleasure, and thus foster his inborn selfishness ? 
 Shall he be taught in vague general terms that 
 he has all these good things because God gives 
 
186 SYMBOLIC EDUCATION. 
 
 them to liim, or because his father works for 
 them ; or shall he bo led to realize in some meas- 
 ure the varied activities which must concur in 
 the production of the simplest objects, and thus 
 be brought to a more conscious sense of his 
 dependence upon nature, upon man, and upon 
 God ? In the games of The Grass-mowing and 
 The Baker, Froebel clearly indicates his own be- 
 lief that children should bo led to conceive all 
 j)articular things as results of active processes, 
 and teaches us that the first step toward the 
 formation of such a habit of thought is the 
 dramatic representation of the simple activities 
 which lie back of the commonest objects. In his 
 view, an isolated fact is a dead fact ; grasped in 
 its total process it is a living and life-giving fact. 
 Thus the cup of milk is a dead fact, but it is 
 made alive by leading the child to represent how 
 Mollie milks the cow, how Peter mows the grass 
 in the meadow and gives it to the cow for food, 
 and how upon the growing grass the sun must 
 shine and the rain fall. The slice of bread, too, 
 takes on a deeper meaning when its genesis is 
 traced through the baker, the miller, and the 
 farmer to the wheat planted in the earth, and, 
 like the grass, quickened by the sunshine and fed 
 by the showers. The final question comes of 
 itself. Hath the rain a father ? or who hath be- 
 
PATTERN EXPERIENCES. 187 
 
 gotten tlie drops of dew ? Thus man's daily food 
 testifies forever to the living bread wliich satis- 
 fies all hunger, and his drink to that wondrous 
 well which shall spring up within him into ever- 
 lasting life. 
 
 Twin-born out of the recognition that all 
 things are working together for him, spring into 
 life the child's gratitude and his sense of respon- 
 sibility. For this universal service shall not his 
 heart return love and thanks ? In a world where 
 all things work, shall he alone be idle ? Froebel 
 merely teaches him how to utter his own feeling 
 when he bids him thank Peter for the mowing, 
 Mollie for the milking, and the cow for the milk. 
 He is only responding to the child's aroused in- 
 stinct, when in the game of The Baker he urges 
 him to make ready the cake for the oven, and 
 encourages him to feel that he is one of the links 
 in that living chain of activity which girdles the 
 world. Where many work together each must 
 do his part promptly ; therefore, "Be ready, child, 
 with your cake, for the baker is calling : 
 
 " ' Bring the little cake to me, 
 Soon ray oven cold will be.' " 
 
 Having pictured the activities upon which 
 
 the child depends for food, Froebel passes to 
 
 the activities on which he depends for shelter. 
 
 *' See the carpenter," begins his new song ; " all 
 14 
 
188 SYMBOLIC EDUCATION. 
 
 day lie works away ; he makes the high low ; the 
 curved, flat; the long, short; and the rough, 
 smooth/* Singing these words the child repre- 
 sents the cutting down of the tree, and the 
 change of the cylindrical log into the flat board, 
 which is then shortened and planed. The raw 
 material of nature being at last completely trans- 
 formed, the song advances to the suggestion that 
 the planed boards be put together to make a 
 house : 
 
 " Now all must be combined, 
 All parts together joined. 
 Just sec what the carpenter shows I 
 From timbers the house now grows." 
 
 Nor is this all : the house is for the father, 
 mother, and child ; it is, as Froebol himself else- 
 where declares, " that body of the family which 
 protects its soul " ; not a house merely, but a 
 home ; the shield of family sanctity, the guardian 
 of family love. So in its varied forms as manu- 
 factory, store, statehouse, and church, the house 
 is the symbol and shelter of the spiritual ideals 
 of civil society, national unity, and religious 
 worship. These larger houses correspond to 
 man's larger selves, and prophesy the "house 
 not made with hands, eternal in the heavens " — 
 that everlasting home which shall shelter im- 
 mortal life. 
 
 To the games of The Grass-Mowing, Baker, and 
 
PATTERN EXPERIENCES. 189 
 
 Carpenter, Froebel adds those of The Joiner, The 
 Wheelwright, and The Charcoal Burner. In the 
 portrayal of these different industries the kinder- 
 gartner should follow one simple plan. She must 
 first connect the particular activity represented 
 with some essential need of the child ; then show 
 its relationship to other industries and its depend- 
 ence upon nature ; and, last of all, suggest the 
 spiritual ideal which is its final cause or motive. 
 The child readily understands that without the 
 joiner he would lack furniture ; without coal his 
 house could not be warmed or his food cooked ; 
 without the wheel there could be no cart or car- 
 riage, no mills for grinding flour or sawing wood, 
 no locomotives, and no ships. The final aim of 
 all labor may also be readily indicated. Why is 
 the child housed, fed, warmed, and transported 
 from place to place ? Is it not that he may be 
 given opportunity for spiritual growth and un- 
 folding ? Or, varying the question. Why does 
 each man work in some particular calling ? Is it 
 not that he may on the one hand make himself 
 " a worthy instrument of the universal life," and 
 on the other that in " the one thing he does right- 
 ly he may behold the semblance of all that is 
 rightly done" ? 
 
 The picture which Froebel presents of indus- 
 trial life is weakened by the addition of plays 
 
190 SYMBOLIC EDUCATION. 
 
 portraying either menial employments or those 
 which minister to accidental or artificial needs. 
 Thus, to substitute for the charcoal burner, or his 
 English and American equivalent the coal miner, 
 such personages as the water-cress woman, the 
 costermonger, or the cabman, is entirely to miss 
 the idea which this game embodies. The thought 
 Froebel wishes to make prominent in the char- 
 coal burner is the dignity of labor ; hence, he 
 purposely chooses for his hero one whose humble 
 station contrasts strikingly with his economic 
 importance. Like Carlyle, he is celebrating " the 
 toil-worn craftsman that with earth-made imple- 
 ment laboriously conquers the earth and makes 
 her man's " ; and he would have the child feel that 
 " for him was this brother's back so bent and his 
 straight limbs and fingers so deformed." Our la- 
 bor games should represent only the real heroes of 
 toil. Little Scissors-Grinders, Little Bootblacks, 
 and Little Waiters may therefore with advantage 
 be excluded from our kindergartens ; and I, for 
 one, heartily disagree with the sentiment that 
 the kindergartener should endeavor to make even 
 the garbage cart poetic. 
 
 Those disciples of Froebel who believe that he 
 held the Pestalozzian doctrine that all elemen- 
 tary instruction should be addressed to sense-per- 
 ception will do well to consider carefully his 
 
PATTERN EXPERIENCES. 191 
 
 practical procedure as illustrated in the labor 
 plays. So far was Froebel from the thought that 
 all knowledge is derived from sense-perception, 
 that one may say his whole aim is to lead the 
 pupil from the immediate object of sense back- s^' 
 ward to its producing cause and forward to its 
 ideal aim. We do not get at any true reality 
 in sense-perception, for the perceived object ex- 
 presses merely a temporary equilibrium between 
 a regressive and progressive series of activities. 
 Hence, objects can be explained only in terms of 
 force. In like manner particular events must be 
 interpreted by relating them to the past events 
 upon which they depend and the future events 
 toward which they point. 
 
 We must purge our minds of the superstition 
 that thought is a kind of etherealized sense-per- 
 ception. Thought deals not with things, but with 
 the energies that originate and destroy things. 
 The child's incessant " Why ? " shows us that he 
 can not rest in mere sense-perception. His delight 
 in such stories as The House that Jack Built, The 
 Strange Adventures of Henny Penny, and the sad 
 experiences of The Old Woman and her Pig, is 
 explained by the fact that in these tales he con- 
 templates a series of apparently related events. 
 The great duty of education is to teach the path 
 of ascent from facts to causes, and to draw around 
 
192 SYMBOLIC EDUCATION. 
 
 each circle of causal process the wider circle in 
 which it is included. 
 
 The Mother-Play contains no play symboliz- 
 ing the State, but since games of this kind are 
 justified by the instinct of childhood, the gen- 
 eral thought of Froebel, and the traditional prac- 
 tice of the kindergarten, they may fitly be con- 
 sidered in this chapter. The State orders and 
 protects the other institutions of society, and 
 upon its existence depend that participation of 
 each in the labor of all which is the condition 
 of material prosperity and that participation of 
 each in the experience of all which is the condi- 
 tion of spiritual growth. As the incarnation of 
 man's colossal selfhood, the state rightfully de- 
 mands absolute allegiance, and he is no true pa- 
 triot who will not freely surrender all things, and 
 even life itself, for his country. Therefore the 
 soldier is the truest symbol of the state, and pa- 
 triotic feeling is most easily stirred in the hearts 
 of young children by allowing them to represent 
 soldiers. Marching with drums and flags to the 
 music of national airs should be an occasional 
 exercise in all kindergartens, and the distinctive 
 feature of the programme on all anniversaries of 
 important events in the nation's history. 
 
 The objection to soldier games rests upon a 
 mistake as to their symbolic significance, and to 
 
PATTERN EXPERIENCES. 193 
 
 their association with the cruelty of war rather 
 than with the heroism, of patriotic self-sacrifice. 
 The child mind knows not the horrors but the 
 poetry of battle; the heart of the boy soldier 
 thrills not with the idea of killing others, but 
 with the lofty feeling that he, too, may be counted 
 worthy to die for the state. 
 
 As the children mature they should be told of 
 the exploits of national heroes, should learn pa- 
 triotic poems, should see national monuments, and 
 participate in the celebration of national holi- 
 days. Above all, they should from time to time 
 see a statehouse or a good picture of one. The 
 domes of these great buildings are architectural 
 symbols of the idea of justice, which, like the 
 blue vault of heaven, bends equally over all ; and 
 whoever will recall the influence of such build- 
 ings upon his childish imagination may assure 
 himself of their power to waken a predictive 
 consciousness of the truth they embody. 
 
 The early development of patriotic feeling, 
 important for all children, is especially important 
 for the children of America. Our Anglo-Saxon 
 impulse is to insist that the individual shall 
 share the energies of the state, and our proudest 
 boast is that we live under a government "of the 
 people, by the people, and for the people." On 
 the other hand, we lack that instinct of race 
 
194 SYMBOLIC EDUCATION. 
 
 wMch intensifies the passion of patriotism ; nei- 
 ther have we those traditions of a long historic 
 past which give sanctity to the customs and ob- 
 servances of the present. In onr country all 
 races meet and all the different streams of history 
 and tradition mingle. There is danger that our 
 wide tolerance may degenerate into indifference ; 
 that we shall become cosmopolitan at the expense 
 of our patriotism ; and that while loudly claim- 
 ing the right of self-government we shall grow 
 increasingly oblivious of the duties of citizenship. 
 We should therefore welcome every influence, 
 however small, which helps to stir the depths 
 of patriotic feeling and quicken the sense of 
 patriotic obligation.* 
 
 The careful student of the nursery songs will 
 observe that alike through the plays which deal 
 primarily with nature and through those which 
 deal primarily with human relationships Froebel 
 is forever suggesting, symbolizing, adumbrating 
 the child's relationship to God. Thus the song 
 
 * The reader may be interested to recall Dante's description 
 of the Florentine mothers relating to their little ones legends 
 of the heroic past : 
 
 " One o'er the cradle kept her studious watch, 
 And in her lullaby the language used 
 That first delights the fathers and the mothers ; 
 Another, drawing tresses from her distaff, 
 Told o'er among her family the tales 
 Of Trojans, and of Fesolo and Rome." ' 
 
PATTERN EXPERIENCES. 195 
 
 of The Bird's Nest points first to mother-love as 
 shown in nature, next to human motherliood, 
 and finally to the fostering care and tenderness 
 of Him who is of all mother-love the source and 
 original. In like manner, the Wind-Song ad- 
 vances from the child's consciousness of an un- 
 seen energy in himself to the recognition of an 
 unseen energy in nature, and from this to a fore- 
 gleam of the truth that in the unseen God all 
 things live and move and have their being. The 
 Light-Songs illustrate the influence of the uni- 
 versal upon the particular, and are thus symbolic 
 of the truth that the soul lives only as it reflects 
 the life of God. The labor plays move from 
 some object which supplies an essential need to 
 the human industries, and natural forces con- 
 cerned in its production, and this sequence of 
 activities points to a source of all activity. The 
 three Songs of the Knights, in which the hero of 
 the child's dreams passes judgment upon him, 
 arouse conscience and reveal the God who speaks 
 in her still small voice. Last of all, God is made 
 known in the visible institution, whose mission 
 is to hold up the Divine Ideal as the object of 
 adoration and worship, and as the final cause and 
 explanation of the world. 
 
 That this method of developing religious 
 ideals is the true one, wo may infer both from 
 
196 SYMBOLIC EDUCATION. 
 
 its correspondence with the order of their his- 
 toric unfolding and from the fact that our own 
 thoughts of God are shaped and guided by the 
 analogies under which he is made known to us 
 in our holy books. God is light. His spirit, like 
 the wind, bloweth where it listeth. As the eagle 
 fluttereth over her young and beareth them, so 
 the Lord beareth his servant. The mother may 
 forget her nursing child, yet will not God for- 
 get his own. God is a shepherd, a husbandman, 
 a judge, a king. The Son of God is our elder 
 brother, our friend, the bridegroom of the 
 Church; the ideal warrior or knight, who sits 
 upon a white horse and whose name is Faithful 
 and True. These images consecrate nature 
 and human relationships by declaring the ideal 
 which they imply but never realize. Nature 
 throws out only dark hints with regard to the 
 character of God, yet there is no single class of 
 natural objects before which the human heart 
 has failed to bow in worship. Sun and moon, 
 thunder, lightning, and wind ; mountain and 
 river, beast, reptile, bird, tree, have all told men 
 something of the Divine First Principle. In 
 human affections God is more adequately re- 
 vealed, though even in these he is still seen " as 
 in a glass darkly." Among men are no perfect 
 fathers, yet the ancestors of Aryan and Semitic 
 
PATTERN EXPERIENCES. 197 
 
 peoples alike venerated tlie perfect fatherhood. 
 Among women are no perfect mothers, yet ho 
 whom we revere as fourth and last of the poets 
 whose insight " time can not unmake," finds the 
 solution of all problems in the " Ewig-Weib- 
 liche." Among men are no perfect husbands, 
 friends, rulers, or deliverers, yet assuredly each 
 one of these relationships points to an ideal 
 which it would destroy life to believe a delusion 
 and a dream. 
 
 I venture therefore to think that Froebel is 
 only stating explicitly what we all implicitly be- 
 lieve, when he affirms that "from every object 
 in nature and life there is a way to God," * and 
 when he declares that " the feeling of community 
 first uniting the child with mother, father, 
 brothers, sisters, and resting on a higher spirit- 
 ual unity ; to which, later on, is added the dis- 
 covery that father, mother, brothers, sisters, 
 human beings in general, feel and know them- 
 selves to be in community and unity with a 
 higher principle, with humanity — with God ; this 
 feeling of community is the very first germ, the 
 very first beginning of all true religious spirit, 
 of all genuine yearning for unhindered unifica- 
 tion with the Eternal, with God." f 
 
 * Eflucation of Man, Hailmann's translation, p. 202. 
 t Ibid., p. 25. 
 
198 SYMBOLIC EDUCATION. 
 
 Only by connecting it with this method of 
 developing religious emotions and cispirations 
 can we understand Froebel's Song of the Church. 
 The heart of the child has throbbed with strange 
 presentiments in presence of the church whose 
 spire " like a silent finger points to heaven." He 
 has heard the solemn peal of the Sabbath bells, 
 and watched men and women moving in groups 
 toward the sacred building. That feeling of com- 
 munity which originally bound the family into a 
 living whole becomes now the magnet which at- 
 tracts him to the church, and inspires his de- 
 light in her uncomprehended services. He un- 
 derstands not a word of what is said and sung, 
 yet he is happy in the assurance that a common 
 thought is stirring many minds, a common feel- 
 ing thrilling many hearts. Surely this common 
 thought is the one thought worth thinking — the 
 one truth that, could he know it, would explain 
 all things to him, and make articulate the voice- 
 less longing of his own soul. 
 
 To this feeling of the child Froebol responds 
 in a song pointing him to the church as the 
 place where all questions are answered, all prob- 
 lems solved. There he shall learn " why flowers 
 bloom and birdies sing " ; " what means the feel- 
 ing with which ho watches the moon, the stars, 
 and the sunset glow ; why he trusts father and 
 
PATTERN EXPERIENCES. 199 
 
 motlier; what makes the joy of Christmas day." 
 lu a single word, the song of tlie Church recalls 
 and interprets all the salient experiences of the 
 child's soul, and " binds his days each to each by 
 natural piety." 
 
 The one great difficulty in the way of carry- 
 ing out Froebel's ideal of religious development 
 is our own lack of vital piety. It is easy to teach 
 catechisms ; it is not easy to awaken and foster 
 faith, hope, and love. Any mother may force her 
 child to memorize men's definitions of God, but 
 only one who has herself a filial spirit can teach 
 him to know his heavenly Father. She whose 
 own soul is dead may bo a religious drill ser- 
 geant, but only the living spirit can communicate 
 spiritual life.* 
 
 In what depths of the soul is rooted that 
 " feeling of community which attracts the child 
 
 * Readers of Carlyle will recall the religious education of 
 Oneschen : " My kind mother — for as such I must ever love the 
 good Gneschen — did me one altogether invaluable service : she 
 taught me, less indeed by word tlian by act and daily reverent 
 use and habitude, her own simple version of the Christian faith. 
 Andreas, too, attended church, yet more like a parade duty, 
 for which he in the other world expected pay with arrears — as, 
 I trust, he has received ; but my mother, with a true woman's 
 heart and fine though uncultivated sense, was in the strictest 
 acceptation religious. How indestructibly tlie good grows and 
 propagates itself, even among the weedy entanglements of evil ! 
 Tlie highest whom I knew on earth I hero saw bowed down, 
 with awe unspeakable, before a higher in heaven. Such things, 
 
200 SYMBOLIC EDUCATION. 
 
 to the Church, we shall best understand by re- 
 ferring once more to the fact that the words 
 ideal and generic are but diJBferent expressions of 
 one great reality. When diflEerent individuals 
 are inspired by the same ideal they enter into a 
 communion of thought and sympathy. That 
 they can be inspired by the same ideals implies 
 an original community of nature. The ideal is 
 the generic in the individual, and its progressive 
 recognition both emancipates man and enables 
 him to recognize his own essential s.elf in all 
 other men. What may be shared with all men 
 is what is highest in each man. Insight into 
 this truth is man's redemption from selfish indi- 
 vidualism into the unity of the spirit. 
 
 But one step remains to be taken. The reality 
 of each man is his ideal nature. This ideal nature 
 is universal ; it is the element in each one of us 
 which unites us with others and separates us 
 from our own partial and selfish selves. It is 
 in us, yet not of us. It is the power in our souls 
 "which always makes for righteousness." Its 
 uncompromising demand is self-renunciation, its 
 eternal promise self-fulfillment. In flashes of 
 
 especially in infancy, reach inward to the very core of your 
 being; mysteriously does a holy of holies build itself into visi- 
 bility in the mysterious deeps; and reverence, the divinest in 
 man, springs forth undying from its mean envelopment of 
 fear." 
 
PATTERN EXPEllIENCES. 201 
 
 insight we recognize it as tlie indwelling of the 
 divine in the human, a living spirit working 
 within humanity to redeem it into the image of 
 God. 
 
 In her central doctrine of the Incarnation the 
 Christian Church proclaims the ideal unity of 
 the human and the divine. Moreover, she iden- 
 tifies the divine with the generic in her asser- 
 tion that the God-man is the universal man, or, 
 in other words, that Christ was not a man, but 
 mankind. She affirms that " the true light light- 
 eth every man that cometh into the world " ; that 
 each man is a partaker of the divine nature ; 
 that in Christ Jesus there is neither Jew nor 
 Greek, bond nor free, male nor female ; that the 
 mystery hid from ages and generations is Christ 
 in man, the hope of glory. She calls upon each 
 individual to renounce the carnal and put on 
 the spiritual man, and she promises him that by 
 meditating on her doctrines, participating in her 
 prayers, her praises, and her sacraments, and 
 above all by sharing her ministry to the young, 
 the needy, the sorrowing, and the sinful, he shall 
 learn to comprehend the divine charity, and shall 
 be transfigured into its image. 
 
 The doctrine of the Incarnation bridges the 
 seemingly impassable chasm which separates the 
 finite from the infinite ; " For, if the divine de- 
 
202 SYMBOLIC EDUCATION. 
 
 sconds into tho flesh, and wraps about liim the 
 perishing vestures of time and space, then the ele- 
 ments of time and space and the finitude of the 
 human will may be receptive of tho divine."* 
 The characteristic quality of God is self-impart- 
 ing grace, and he can not be satisfied with giv- 
 ing anything less than himself. The character- 
 istic quality of man is infinite susceptibility to 
 and possibility of the divine. Hence man is, as 
 St. Chrysostom affirmed, the true shekinah ; and 
 the Incarnation, as St. Thomas declared, " the ex- 
 altation of human nature and the consummation 
 of the universe." f 
 
 He who studies tho signs of the times will 
 observe that our wisest preachers are confining 
 themselves more and more strictly to promul- 
 gation of tho truth, that in the transcendent per- 
 sonality of the historic Christ we may behold 
 what God is and what man ought to be. The 
 tendency of the carnal mind is to create the di- 
 vine in its own image, and too often the Being 
 men worship is not God, but the devil. From 
 such profane and blasphemous thoughts of our 
 heavenly Father we are delivered by the con- 
 templation of his image in the Son of Man. 
 " From the God of man's painting we turn to 
 
 * Church Jiinl State, .1 Lecture by Dr. Harris. 
 f Cited in Lux Muudi. 
 
PATTERN EXPERIENCES. 203 
 
 the man of God's being, and he leads us to the 
 true God, the radiation of whose glory we first 
 see in him." Can we doubt the love of God while 
 we remember the love of Jesus ? Can we fear 
 that God will lose one of his little ones while we 
 remember how the Good Shepherd laid down his 
 life for the sheep ? On the other hand, dare we 
 affirm that man is by nature weak and sinful 
 when we contemplate the divine humanity ? To 
 err is not human. To sin is to be less than man. 
 We paralyze our consciences by our refusal to 
 recognize in Jesus the one true man as well as 
 the perfect image of the one true God. 
 
 " Arise and fly 
 The reeling Faun, the sensual feast ; 
 Move upward, working out the beast, 
 And let the ape and tiger die." 
 
 Sacredest of all symbols is the cross, for it is 
 the meeting point of divine and human self-sac- 
 rifice — typifying, on the one hand, that process 
 of grace through which the infinite descends into 
 the finite ; and, on the other, the self-crucifixion 
 through which the finite renounces its finitude 
 and ascends into the infinite. It explains the 
 struggle of each contrite heart. It sanctifies the 
 act of every hero who dies to bless his fellow- 
 men. It elevates history into a true theodicy. 
 
 I)escendit Deus ut assurgamus ! Such is the 
 15 
 
204 SYMBOLIC EDUCATION. 
 
 answer of the cross to the enigma of the Tini- 
 verse.* 
 
 It is customary among the disciples of Froebel 
 to say that the Mother-Play is the point of de- 
 parture for a natural system of education, be- 
 cause it teaches the way in which the germs of 
 character and thought may be developed. But 
 what are these germs of character and thought ? 
 Are they independent and manifold, or are they 
 ultimately reducible to unity ? Is there any 
 principle of connection among the separate vir- 
 tues ? Has the activity of thought any general 
 or ideal form ? Such are the questions which 
 arise in our minds so soon as we seriously set 
 ourselves to consider how we may nourish the 
 germs of thought and character. To discover 
 the answer Froebel made to them in his practical 
 procedure has been my purpose in the present 
 chapter. 
 
 Having climbed by the pathway of Froebel's 
 plays tc the summit of his mount of vision, we 
 may perhaps understand his theoretical explana- 
 tions as given in the mottoes and commentaries. 
 
 * " That the history of the world, with all the changing 
 scenes which its annals present, is the process of development 
 and the realization of spirit ; this is the true Theodicsea — the 
 justification of God in history." — EegeVs Philosophy of His- 
 tory, p. 477. 
 
PATTERN EXPERIENCES. 205 
 
 One great idea fires his mind — the idea that the 
 conscious aim of education should be to illumi- 
 nate the mind of the pupil with the vision of 
 the whole, and consecrate his will with the pur- 
 pose of living in and for the whole. To seek the 
 tie which binds separate elements in one whole is 
 the characteristic act of thought. Feeling of the 
 tie which binds the individual first to the mother 
 and later to the other members of the family, 
 is the germ of moral character. The ascent of 
 thought to higher planes of development is 
 marked by the union of lesser into larger wholes 
 through the discovery of causal relationship, 
 while correspondingly the growth of character 
 is marked by an extension of the sense of com- 
 munity originally uniting the individual and the 
 family to the larger social wholes, and the culti- 
 vation of the specific virtues arising from these 
 expanded relationships. The goal of thought is 
 the discovery of a single cause capable of uniting 
 and explaining all the different series of lesser 
 causes ; the goal of character is the transmuta- 
 tion of mere spontaneity into that rational free- 
 dom which "lives resolutely in the whole, the 
 good, the true." 
 
 "With the insight that each man is ideally the / 
 Cosmos, we enter the inmost sanctuary of Froe- 
 bel's mind. This insight is identical with that of 
 
206 SYMBOLIC EDUCATION. 
 
 Christianity. It is the star which leads whoso 
 follows it to the comprehension of Occidental as 
 opposed to Oriental thought. It has created the 
 civilizations of Europe and America. It has in- 
 spired the modern crusade against ignorance. It 
 is creating the science and art of education. 
 Working in the mind of Froebel, it produced 
 the kindergarten and the Mother-Play. Man is 
 not "the dewdrop that slips into the shining 
 sea." He is the dewdrop that reflects earth and 
 sky. The chief end — say rather the sole end — of 
 man is to be the mirror of divine life and love. 
 The duty of each individual is to see to it that 
 he be not a cloudy mirror, a diminishing mirror, 
 or a distorting mirror ; or, in plain words, that, 
 purging his soul of passion, selfishness, and pride, 
 he give back to a blessed universe its own blessed 
 image.* 
 
 * The attentive reader is doubtless already conscious of the 
 fact that by a different p^th we have again arrived at Froebel's 
 insight into the nature of man as Gliedgames. To this creative 
 insight Froebel has given many different names, but in the 
 Pedagogics of the Kindergarten he himself points out the iden- 
 tity of thought under the variety of expression by calling his 
 fundamental idea in one breath " the law of Opposites, the law 
 of the Member-whole — the law of Mediation, the law of the 
 Triune Life." Each of these expressions refers to a particular 
 aspect of the general thought. Elsewhere he describes this in- 
 sight as the principle of life-unity (Lebenseinheif), the process 
 of life-unification (Lebenseinigung). The kindergartner whose 
 inward eye has never rested upon the insight thus variously 
 
PATTERN EXPERIENCES. 207 
 
 described may assure herself that she has no comprehension of 
 Froebel, and can in no true sense call herself his disciple. 
 
 The following extracts from the Introduction, Mottoes, and 
 Commentaries of the Mother-Play will show how completely 
 Froebel's mind was dominated by the idea of the "whole." 
 The poems marked with a star (*) are from the translation of 
 Miss Fanny Q. Dwight ; those marked with a f from the trans- 
 lation of the Misses Lord : 
 
 " Ever in relations with the child recall 
 The truth, that Unity exists in all. 
 Without it all thy efforts aimless are, 
 Nor can the child for higher truths prepare. 
 A hint of this already thou art showing 
 In this pleasant little game, Grass-mowing." * 
 
 " Though meaningless this play may seem, 
 There's more in it than one might dream, 
 Like the rough stone it is ; like light 
 Wherein the separate hues unite ; 
 Like many things in one that meet 
 To make the whole complete. 
 Where all the active work and skill 
 Moves not by arbitrary will, 
 Where exists proportion fair, 
 The child must feel a beauty there. 
 When all complete and polished lies, 
 He feels in his heart a glad surprise. 
 He feels the charm that binds in one 
 The work in several parts begun. 
 Behold, then, ni this little play 
 A world-wide truth set free. 
 Easily may a symbol teach 
 What thy reason may not reach — 
 Living is the perfect Whole, 
 Deeper than words it moves the soul." * 
 
 " Early the child divines aright 
 That several parts in one whole unite. 
 Therefore the family circle show, 
 Let him every member know." * 
 
208 SYMBOLIC EDUCATION. 
 
 " Whatever singly thou hast played 
 May in one charming Whole be made. 
 The child alone delights to play, 
 But better still with comrades gay. 
 The single flower he loves to view, 
 Still more the wreath of varied hue. 
 In each and all the child may find 
 The least within the Whole combined." * 
 
 " Silently cherish your Baby's dim thought 
 
 That life in itself is as Unity wrought. 
 • Make paths through which he may feel and may think 
 
 That of this great Whole he too is a link. 
 
 Make him see inner things through outer crust. 
 
 And to the inner not outer things trust. 
 
 Let him feel sure, though apart things may stand, 
 
 Life has its Unity, inner and grand ; 
 
 That each thing, though soundless it be to the ear, 
 
 A message can give emblematic but clear ; 
 
 And all who will follow this language aright 
 
 Walk a Life-pathway still, joyful, and bright." f 
 
 " To bind together what stands apart, 
 Let your child in play discover the art. 
 And exercise the manly skill 
 To span the space at his own will." * 
 
 " A silent thought lies dim and hid in Baby's mind ; 
 He's not alone in life ; he's one amid mankind." f 
 
 " The smallest child a magnet in him bears 
 That shows him how life binds together all." f 
 
 " One life works in all however riven. 
 Because this life to all, one God has given." f 
 
 '* Mother, feel it deeply. One doth watch 
 When all in somber night are wrapped in sleep. 
 Have faith ! the good awaits thy careful search, 
 Will from all fear and harm the children keep. 
 Truly to them naught better canst thou give 
 Than the true feeling they in One Life live." * 
 
PATTERN EXPERIENCES. 209 
 
 " A human being is a living whole, inner and unbroken al- 
 though connected within itself. A child knows itself first in 
 this wholeness and indivisibility of essence. iL is, moreover, of 
 the highest importance that he should know life first in its 
 wholeness and unity. 
 
 *' Your child, dear mother, must be recognized and tended as 
 in the midst of a life that is all connected into a single whole. 
 
 " How could our earthly life be long enough to develop our 
 being with equal perfection in its all-sidedness and depth? We 
 must recognize our ideal selves in the mirror of other lives. 
 Through the recognition of all by each and each by all, hu- 
 manity becomes the mirror of the divine. 
 
 " To rear your child as a unity in itself, in unity with man 
 and nature, but, above all, in unity with God, the Father of all 
 — this, dear mother, is your highest duty, your deepest joy. 
 
 '• The feeling of union in separation and of separation — that 
 is, personality in union — is the essence of conscience. 
 
 " Lead your child from the fact to the picture, from the pic- 
 ture to the symbol, from the symbol to the grasp of the fact as 
 a spiritual whole. Thus will be developed the ideas of part and 
 ■whole, of the individual and the universal. Educate your child 
 in this manner, and at the goal of his education he will recog- 
 nize himself as the living member of a living whole and will 
 know that his life reflects as in a mirror — the life of his family, 
 his people, humanity, the being, life, and working of God in 
 all and through all, 
 
 " To find or create a bond of union between seemingly op- 
 posed and even antagonistic objects is always a beneficent deed. 
 Mother, early awaken in your child the love of reconciling ac- 
 tivity. Your heart teaches you what bitter pain is born of 
 apparently insoluble contradictions, what joy springs out of 
 unhoped-for reconciliations. . . . Therefore, identifying himself 
 
210 SYMBOLIC EDUCATION. 
 
 with the carpenter, let your child build the reconciling bridge, 
 and thus through a uniting act gain his first foreboding of the 
 truth that in himself through self -activity he v.ill find the solu- 
 tion of all contradictions, the mediation of all apparently ir- 
 reconcilable opposition. Show him this truth again in your 
 own life, and above all in the mediatorial life and teaching of 
 Him who on earth was the Carpenter's Son. Thus shall the 
 visible bridge which the child carpenter builds be one link in 
 the chain of experiences with which he spans the gulf between 
 things seen and things unseen, and learns to recognize in the 
 Carpenter's Son the beloved Son of God and the All-Father, the 
 Mediator between him and man. 
 
 " From the strengthening and development of body, limbs 
 and senses rise to their use ; move from impressions to percep- 
 tion ; from perception to attentive observation and contempla- 
 tion ; from the recognition of particular objects to their rela- 
 tions and dependencies ; from the healthy life of the body to the 
 healthy life of the spirit ; from thought immanent in experience 
 to pure thinking. Ascend thus from sensation to thought, from 
 external observation to internal apprehension, from outer com- 
 bination to inner synthesis ; from a formal to a vital intellectual 
 grasp and so to the culture of the Understanding ; from the 
 observation of phenomena to the recognition of their ground or 
 cause, and hence to the development and culture of life-grasping 
 Reason. By such procedure will be formed in the mind of the 
 pupil at the goal of his education the transparent and clear 
 soul-picture of each particular being, including himself — of the 
 great Whole to which all particular beings belong as members, 
 and of the truth that the particular being reflects as in a mirror 
 the life of the Whole." * 
 
 * As there exist two literal translations of the Mutter- und 
 Koselieder, I have ventured to make my translations free, in 
 the hope that Froebel's ideas may gain clearness thereby. 
 
VIII. 
 VORTICAL EDUCATION. 
 
" I KNEW a very wise man that believed that if a man were permitted 
 to make all the ballads, he need not care who should make the laws 
 of a nation." — Andrew Fletcher of Saltoun {Letter to the Jfarquis 0/ 
 Montrose, the Earl of Bathes, etc). 
 
 " Forms ascend in order from the lowest to the highest. The lowest 
 form is angular, or the terrestrial and corporeal. The second and 
 next higher form is the circular, wliich is also called the perpetual 
 angular, because the circumference of a circle is a perpetual angle. 
 The form above this is the spiral, parent, and measure of circular 
 forms; its diameters are not rectilinear, but variously circular, and 
 have a spherical surface for center ; therefore it is called the perpetual 
 circular. The form above this is the vortical, or perpetual-spiral ; next 
 the perpetual vortical, or celestial ; last the perpetual-celestial or 
 spiritual." — Swedenhorg''s Doctrine of Forms (as given in Emerson's 
 Representative Men). 
 
. CHAPTER VIII. 
 
 VORTICAL EDUCATION. 
 
 Relapses into fetichism are recurrent both 
 among peoples and among individuals. They are 
 not confined to the sphere of religion, but char- 
 acterize all decadent movements, whether in 
 theology, politics, literature, or education. The 
 churchman makes a fetich of his creed ; the 
 statesman of some bill of rights or national con- 
 stitution ; the man of letters enshrines an idol of 
 rhetoric; the educator falls into a slavish wor- 
 ship of traditional usage. Against all these fe- 
 tiches the true iconoclast raises his protest and 
 exclaims with Carlyle, " Quit your paper formu- 
 las, equivalent to old wooden idols, undivine as 
 they ! " 
 
 The kindergarten has its own peculiar form 
 of fetich-worship. It consists in attributing a 
 magic power to Froebel's gifts and games, and in 
 expecting blocks and balls, songs and gestures to 
 do the work which can only be accomplished by 
 
214 SYMBOLIC EDUCATION. 
 
 human insight and devotion. It is time for this 
 fetichism to be outgrown, and for each kinder- 
 gartner to realize that the merit of Froebel's work 
 lies in the ideals it embodies ; that his gifts and 
 songs are merely instrumentalities for insinu- 
 ating these ideals into, or rather evolving them 
 from, the mind of the child, and that, like all 
 other grades of education, the kindergarten de- 
 pends for the realization of its aims upon the in- 
 sight and efficiency of its agents. 
 
 Of all living kindergartners, probably the one 
 who uses the Mother-Play to the greatest advan- 
 tage is Frau Henriette Schrader, of Berlin. The 
 great-niece of Froebel, a member of his last class 
 for young women at Blankenburg, and the re- 
 cipient of many of his most valuable and sug- 
 gestive letters, she is deeply imbued with his 
 spirit, and is quite generally recognized as the 
 head of the kindergarten movement in North 
 Germany. The following account of a visit to 
 the kindergarten connected with the Pestalozzi- 
 Froebel House, Berlin, of which Frau Schrader 
 is the animating spirit, illustrates her method of 
 introducing the Froebel songs. The article from 
 which I quote is contained in Barnard's Kinder- 
 garten and Child Culture (p. 459), and is entitled 
 A German Kindergarten. 
 
 "This institution consisted of two divisions 
 
VORTICAL EDUCATION. 215 
 
 of the kindergarten proper, and of the transition 
 class, altogether providing for children from 
 three to six years of age. What struck me as 
 especially worthy of notice was the unity of 
 plan u]3on which the education during these 
 three years was conducted. Each class repre- 
 sented a year of age. At three a child enters 
 the lowest division. Here the work of the 
 kindergarten teacher was eminently that of a 
 mother ; yet with all the freedom of the nursery 
 there was a thread of reason running through 
 the day's proceedings. These were not desultory, 
 but sustained by some central thought, which 
 was generally taken from a conversational lesson 
 over the picture-book, or else from the present 
 circumstance, such as of some live pet which had 
 to be cared for and fed. 
 
 " The first quarter of an hour was generally 
 devoted to a chat ; but as the children were many, 
 and the family type was upheld, the teacher took 
 the children, in relays of six or seven at a time, 
 to look at one or two plates in Froebel's Mother's 
 Book ; the rest were meanwhile building or stick- 
 laying, or playing in the garden, under the direc- 
 tion of an assistant. 
 
 "For example, a small number of children are 
 seated round the knee of their motherly friend, 
 who encourages them to talk freely on the ex- 
 
216 SYMBOLIC EDUCATION. 
 
 periences of the morning. Who brought Mary 
 to the kindergarten this morning ? Who gave 
 Annie that nice white pinafore ? The recollec- 
 tion of the loved ones at home is stirred up, and 
 every child contributes some little fact of its 
 family history: each would like to tell that it 
 has a dear mother, a father, a sister, or brother 
 at home. This idea is seized and worked out by 
 the motherly teacher. She inquires, relates, and 
 finally promises to show them a picture of a 
 family sitting together in the parlor. The pic- 
 ture of a home interior is shown. The height- 
 ened pleasure of the children may be read in 
 their eager faces as they peer into the book and 
 recognize the different members of the family in 
 turn. After this the designs all round the cen- 
 tral picture are looked at, and the children notice 
 how there are father and mother hares in the 
 long grass, accompanied by their little ones; 
 how there is a pigeon family, a deer family, etc. 
 The children return again to the central picture 
 of the family group, and finally, the disposition 
 having been created, the finger game is intro- 
 duced. 'Let us look at our fingers; are they 
 not like a little family too ? See how happily 
 they live together; they always help one an- 
 other. Shall we learn a little song about the 
 family of fingers to-day ? ' ' Yes,' the children 
 
VORTICAL EDUCATION. 217 
 
 wish to do so ; and, imitating the action, they re- 
 peat the following words : 
 
 ' This is our mother, dear and good, 
 This is our father of merry mood, 
 This our big brother so strong and tall, 
 This our dear sister beloved of all ; 
 This is the baby still tender and small, 
 And this the whole family we call ; 
 See, when together, how happy they be ! 
 Loving and working, they ever agree.' " 
 
 The ideal kindergarten course extends over 
 three years, and throughout this whole period the 
 Mother-Play, together with the concrete experi- 
 ences which it interprets, should be the center 
 of interest and activity. The right use of the 
 book will make it the nucleus around which an 
 otherwise confused mass of impressions is organ- 
 ized into a living whole. Very evidently such 
 a result can not be achieved by mechanically 
 repeating plays and recurring to pictures. Each 
 play is a germ which unfolds with the unfolding 
 of the child, and the art of the kindergartner 
 consists in nurturing this germ by ever-fresh 
 illustrations of the ideal which is its life. 
 
 We have witnessed the introduction of the 
 family song. Let us now indicate the lines upon 
 which it develops. The first point to be observed 
 is that this play stands in organic relation to a 
 number of others. Thus the play of the Bird's 
 
218 SYMBOLIC EDUCATION. 
 
 Nest is connected with the family, through its 
 symbolic presentation of mother-love ; the Hiding 
 Game, the Cuckoo, and the three Songs of the 
 Knights also deal with the relationship between 
 mother and child. Two finger plays picture the 
 relationship of sisters and brothers; The Chil- 
 dren on the Tower shows two families meeting 
 for social intercourse ; the Carpenter and Joiner 
 relate to the house which shelters the family. 
 Each one of these games makes possible a re- 
 turn with fresh and deeper interest to the play 
 of the Family- Whole. 
 
 But this is not all. The marginal pictures 
 surrounding the representation of the human 
 family open another path for the development 
 of the ideal of family life. These pictures show 
 a marsh family ; an air family ; several water 
 families ; two field families ; a forest family ; 
 and a hive family. The kindergartner should 
 procure larger pictures illustrating these several 
 types of life and make them the basis of a series 
 of games, excursions, talks, and stories. She 
 should show her little pupils ant-hills and bee- 
 hives. She should collect different kinds of 
 birds' nests, and in each kind lead the children 
 to observe the precautions the mother bird has 
 taken to insure the safety and comfort of her 
 nestlings. When one reflects on the care which 
 
VORTICAL EDUCATION. 219 
 
 bees and ants take of their yonng, both in the 
 larva and pupa states ; when one thinks of the 
 mimicry through which the bird hides her nest 
 from enemies, of her indefatigable zeal in gather- 
 ing hairs, thistle-down, or feathers to line it ; of 
 the localities in which she places it for the sake 
 of safety and food ; of the patience with which 
 she broods over her eggs — one realizes that there 
 is practically no end to the observations and 
 talks through which the heart of the child may 
 be thrilled with presentiments of mother love. 
 Analogous facts may be shown in vegetable life, 
 and the wise kindergartner will not fail to call 
 the attention of her children to the devices 
 through which different plants protect their 
 seed, to the ingenious means adopted to secure 
 its dispersion, and to the food laid up by the 
 mother plant for the nourishment of the em- 
 bryo. 
 
 The nest of the oriole is sewed firmly to twigs 
 at the end of a high branch. Why ? The nest 
 of the humming bird is covered with lichens and 
 looks like a mere knot on a tree. Why ? When 
 the weather is cold ants keep their larva in- 
 doors ? Why ? The dandelion seed is attached 
 to a fine little feather. Why? The effect of 
 such experiences and questions is twofold. On 
 
 the one hand, the child forms the habit of ascent 
 16 
 
220 SYMBOLIC EDUCATION. 
 
 from perceptible facts to tlieir causal implica- 
 tions ; and, on tlie other, through recognition of 
 the varying manifestations of mother love and 
 care in nature, he grows increasingly conscious 
 of the love and care his own mother gives to 
 him. " The use of natural history," says Emer- 
 son, " is to give us aid in supernatural history." 
 The consecration of nature through the revela- 
 tion of spiritual ideals should be the aim of all 
 excursions into the country, all nature plays 
 and pictures, and all study of the ways of plants 
 and animals. 
 
 In addition to plays, excursions, talks, and 
 pictures, the kindergartner may use carefully se- 
 lected stories to illustrate the ideal she is seeking 
 to develop. The story of the stork who would 
 not leave her nest, though the chimney wherein 
 it was built was in flames ; the beautiful tale of 
 the mother who rescued her child from wicked 
 elves by holding it tight in her arms through a 
 series of hideous and terrifying metamorphoses, 
 may be mentioned as good illustrations of mater- 
 nal love. The child's duty of obedience is the 
 theme of Little Red Riding Hood ; fraternal devo- 
 tion is portrayed in the story of the Six Brothers 
 who were transformed by malice into crows and 
 restored to the human form by the bTavery and 
 devotion of their sister. As the children mature 
 
VORTICAL EDUCATION. 221 
 
 they should hear and occasionally learn poems 
 having a similar ethical content*; and they 
 should see pictures of genuine artistic merit 
 wherein family life, relationships, and duties are 
 illustrated. Last of all, they may learn through 
 story and picture of the one perfect mother and 
 of the one ideal child " who was subject to his 
 parents in all things," and who, growing in 
 stature and wisdom, grew also in favor with 
 God and with man.f 
 
 * Misunderstandings are so likely to occur that it may not 
 be superfluous to state that I am not recommending these 
 stories and poems for children of only three or four years of 
 age. In most kindergartens there are children six and even 
 seven years old. For the younger children, the best stories I 
 know are Ida Seele's. 
 
 f It may be interesting in connection with Froebel's Family 
 Song to take a peep into the family life at Keilhau, I there- 
 fore translate part of a letter written by Froebel to his friend 
 Barop, and describing the way in which the little community, 
 poor in all the world can give, but rich in that love and con- 
 fidence the world can never take away, celebrated the birthday 
 of its head. 
 
 " In the midst of our trouble " (so begins the letter) " I sup- 
 posed the 21st of April would, of course, pass unnoticed, but you 
 shall see how greatly I was mistaken. About noonday our young- 
 est scholars, who had just had a lesson on flowers with Midden- 
 dorff, brought me a beautiful wreath, in the center of which was 
 a rosy apple. From my dear wife I received three budding twigs, 
 one of beech, one of linden, one of oak, with a touching note 
 explaining what her gift symbolized. Later, upon entering the 
 sitting room, I found upon the table Langethal's present, an 
 essay on The Hebrews, Greeks, and Romans, the Leading Na- 
 
222 SYMBOLIC EDUCATION. 
 
 The salient idea of each dramatic play may 
 also be illustrated in the gift exercises. This 
 procedure is of great importance, yet liable to 
 abuse. It is a cardinal point with Froebel that 
 
 tions of Antiquity, or the Typical Representatives of the Life 
 of Humanity in the Boyhood of the Race. The essay was placed 
 •within an exquisite wreath woven by Ernestine (Mrs. Langethal). 
 " Touched to the heart by so much love and kindness, I sat, in 
 the afternoon, wrapped in grateful and happy thought, when a 
 noise in the hall announced the arrival of visitors. It was the 
 wife and daughters of my dear brother, whom, in honor of my 
 birthday, my good wife had invited to spend the evening with 
 us. I tried to run up-stairs to put on a clean collar and cuffs, 
 but Albertine (Mrs. Middendorff) stopped me on the way. Her 
 angel daughter was in her arms, and the lovely little cherub 
 held out to me a fragrant bouquet, around the stem of which 
 was wrapped a strip of white paper, on which were written the 
 following lines : 
 
 " ' Can we go out to-day, mother my dear? ' 
 ' Nay, love, it rains ; bring thy playthings here ! 
 
 Where wouldst thou, little darling, goV 
 ' Where all the loveliest blossoms blow,' 
 ' And what wouldst thou do with the blossoms sweet I' 
 ' I'd lay them all at his gracious feet.' 
 ' At whose, my little one kind and dear ? ' 
 ' His who was born this day of the year ! ' 
 ' Ah, little darling, stay thou here ! 
 
 Our garden shall make thee lovely cheer : 
 
 There color and fragrance breathe and blow, 
 
 And heaven's pure air shall fill thee so.' 
 ' Mother, oh, see now my garland fine 1 
 
 In sunshine I'll lay it before his shrine.' " 
 
 Translation by Mrs. Laura Richards. 
 
 " With what feelings I joined the circle of loving friends 
 you can readily imagine. Our precious little baby was the pure 
 
VORTICAL EDUCATION. 223 
 
 the child reproduce his experiences in varied 
 forms. Such reproduction, however, should be 
 original, and the habit of preparing illustrations 
 for the children to copy can not be too strongly 
 condemned. Who would like to make something 
 for baby ? Shall we build houses for our finger- 
 families ? Shall we make furniture for the sit- 
 ting room, the dining room, the nursery ? Such 
 are examples of the questions, through which it 
 is permissible to direct the energies of the chil- 
 dren into definite channels. Add to these sug- 
 gestions the participation of the kindergartner in 
 each productive exercise — a minimum of help in 
 ordering the separate achievements of the little 
 
 and living bond which united our hearts more closely than ever 
 during that golden afternoon. Toward twilight I proposed that 
 we should all walk to the Kolm " (the plateau of a neighboring 
 mountain, always a favorite resort with Froebeland his friends). 
 "What was my astonishment to find this sanctum beautifully 
 decorated and its seats covered with velvet moss ! I need not tell 
 you that this charming surprise had been prepared by our dear 
 Middendorff with the help of our pupils. Ferdinand and Wil- 
 liam had also decorated the space around our favorite beech 
 tree as well as the path leading to it. Whether we had music 
 I know not, but it seems to me I yet hear the voice of singing, 
 and that the echoes of that harmonioiis evening will never die 
 out of my soul." 
 
 " Thus," comments Wichard Lange, " did these innocent old 
 boys riot in love and friendship, and revel in the simplest gifts 
 of nature, while creditors threatened them, the world despised 
 them, and actual want stared them in the face." — Aus FroeheVs 
 Lehen, pp. 150-152. 
 
224 SYMBOLIC EDUCATION. 
 
 ones into a logical series, and a slight pressure in 
 the direction of enabling each child to multiply 
 his own ideas by the ideas of all the other chil- 
 dren, and the extreme limit of interference in the 
 process of free creation is reached.* 
 
 The All-gone Song and the play of Grass-mow- 
 ing initiate another series of games. The point 
 of departure for this series is the cup of milk. 
 The child looks into the cup, to find the milk all 
 gone. Where has it gone ? What will it do ? 
 How do we grow strong ? Such are the questions 
 asked and answered in the little song whose 
 theme is the final cause of food-taking. This 
 play, pointing forward to ideal ends, is re-en- 
 forced by the Grass-mowing, which rehearses 
 the process through which milk is obtained and 
 is interpreted by a picture showing mother and 
 child ; a cup of milk ; the milkmaid and the 
 cow ; the barn where hay is kept ; the farmer's 
 wagon loaded with hay en route for the barn; 
 a man mowing grass ; and a child helping him. 
 The picture should be placed before the children, 
 and its separate features discovered by them. 
 When its details are mastered the kindergartner 
 may weave them into a whole after the pattern 
 of the story of The Old Woman and her Pig : 
 
 * I do not mean to imply that there should never be a dic- 
 tated exercise. They should, however, be infrequent. 
 
VORTICAL EDUCATION. 225 
 
 "Cow, COW, give milk, that baby may have 
 his supper to-night." 
 
 " Yes, but first you must give me hay." 
 
 "Barn, barn, give hay, then cow will give 
 milk, and baby shall have his supper to-night." 
 
 "Yes. but first I must be filled." 
 
 " Farmer, farmer, fill barn, then barn will give 
 hay, then cow will give milk, and baby shall 
 have his supper to-night." 
 
 So runs the story through the series of acts 
 leading back from the cup of milk to the sun- 
 shine and the shower : Shine sun ; fall rain ; grow 
 grass ; mow, Peter ; farmer fill the barn ; barn 
 give hay ; eat, cow ; milk away, Mollie, and baby 
 shall have his supper to-night. 
 
 The story of The Bowl of Milk may also be 
 told in rhyme. The following version, after the 
 model of The House that Jack Built, was kindly 
 written for me by Miss Emilie Poulsson : 
 
 • THE RHYME OP THE BOWL OP MILK. 
 
 Oh I here is the Milk, so sweet and white, 
 All ready for dear little Baby. 
 
 This is the Mother who, with delight, 
 Poured into the bowl the milk so white. 
 All ready for dear little Baby. 
 
 This is the Milkmaid, who worked with a will 
 Her pail with the cow's good milk to fill. 
 To take to the Mother, who, with delight, 
 Poured into the bowl the milk so white, 
 All ready for dear little Baby. 
 
226 SYMBOLIC EDUCATION. 
 
 This is the Cow that gave milk each day 
 To Molly the Milkmaid, who worked with a will 
 Her pail with the cow's good milk to fill, 
 To take to the Mother who, with delight, 
 Poured into the bowl the milk so white, 
 All ready for dear little Baby. 
 
 This is the dry and sweet-smelling Hay, 
 That was fed to the Cow that gave milk each day 
 To Molly the Milkmaid, who worked with a will 
 Her pail with the cow's good milk to fill, 
 To take to the Mother who, with delight, 
 Poured into tlie bowl the milk so white. 
 All ready for dear little Baby. 
 
 This is the Grass (in the field it grew, 
 Helped by the sunshine and rain and dew) — 
 The grass that was dried into sweet-smelling Hay 
 And fed to the Cow that gave milk each day 
 To Molly the Milkmaid, who worked with a will 
 Her pail with the cow's good milk to fill. 
 To take to the Mother who, with delight, 
 Poured into the bowl the milk so white. 
 All ready for dear little Baby. 
 
 This is the Mower, who worked at the farm , 
 Swinging his scythe with his strong, right arm, 
 Mowing the fields of Grass (that grew. 
 Helped by the sunshine and rain and dew) — 
 The grass that was dried into sweet-smelling Hay 
 And fed to the Cow that gave milk each day 
 To Molly the Milkmaid, who worked with a will 
 Her pail with the cow's good milk to fill. 
 To take to the Mother who, with delight, 
 Poured into the bowl the milk so white. 
 All ready for dear little Baby. 
 
 When the children have become familiar with 
 the connected activities upon which depends the 
 
VORTICAL EDUCATION". 227 
 
 cup of milk, their attention may again be direct- 
 ed to the picture of Grass-mowing, and they may 
 be led to notice in the foreground the two little 
 girls who are sitting under opposite trees making 
 dandelion chains. " What," asks the kindergart- 
 ner, " are these children doing ? Shall we, too, 
 make a chain ? " Such questions will lead up 
 to a more conscious connection of the numerous 
 links in the chain of causal energy, and this final 
 rehearsal of the supper-producing process may 
 end with thanks to sun, rain, grass, mower, 
 farmer, milkmaid, cow, and, most of all, to the 
 mother who sets in motion the long train of 
 service. 
 
 The reader will not require to be told that I 
 have summed up the results of many repetitions 
 of the game of Grass-mowing, nor yet that this 
 play, like that of The Family, is organically re- 
 lated to many others (Farmer, Miller, Baker, 
 etc.), and should receive varied illustration from 
 stories, poems, artistic pictures, and exercises 
 with the kindergarten gifts. It may, however, 
 be well to call attention to the fact that the rep- 
 resentation in this and many other games de- 
 velops with the unfolding of the idea. The little 
 child should at first represent only the mow- 
 ing; later he may add the milking, and still 
 later he should make this game the center of a 
 
228 SYMBOLIC EDUCATION. 
 
 circular series, illustrating all its collateral ideas. 
 Inexperienced kindergartners fall into many er- 
 rors in playing Froebel's games. Often they 
 ignore the gymnastic element ; often they make 
 it so prominent as to take all life out of the play. 
 Sometimes they introduce movements beyond the 
 child's power of execution, or whose dramatic 
 motive he fails to apprehend ; sometimes they 
 persistently restrict the representation to a single 
 activity, and thus make it formal and mechan- 
 ical ; sometimes they allow the game to be played 
 haphazard, losing thereby the help of the mimetic 
 art in the unfolding of its idea, and the physical 
 benefit of wisely ordered and varied exercise. 
 These manifold errors can be avoided only by 
 insight into the rational content of each particu- 
 lar game and clear apprehension of the varied 
 instrumentalities through which this content 
 may be developed in the consciousness of the 
 child.* 
 
 In the examples thus far given I have indi- 
 cated the manner of using the Mother-Play in 
 the kindergarten. Even more important, how- 
 
 * It is hoped that these simple illustrations of the use of 
 Froebel's plays may help to correct that too common perver- 
 sion and exaggeration of his symbolic method against which 
 Mrs. Hailmann uttered a timely protest at the recent (July, 
 1893) International Educational Congress in Chicago. 
 
VORTICAL EDUCATION. 229 
 
 ever, than its use in the kindergarten is its use 
 in the nursery, and I shall therefore endeavor 
 to illustrate through the single game of The 
 Pigeon House Froebel's conception of the ideal 
 intercourse of mother and child. 
 
 Many mothers live for their children ; fewer 
 live with their children ; fewer still permit their 
 children to live with them. Yet nothing is more 
 certain than that doing for children when disso- 
 ciated from living with them breeds selfishness 
 and fails to awaken love. Human hearts can be 
 knit together only by common experiences and 
 sympathies, and every mother would do well to 
 adopt as her motto the words of Luther : " God, 
 that he might draw man to him, became man ; 
 we, if we would draw children to us, must be- 
 come children." 
 
 That mother and child should have a common 
 life does not, however, imply that they should 
 always be together, and no sensible person will 
 accept the sentimental theory that the mother 
 should be her child's sole and constant com- 
 panion. 
 
 One fatal objection to this theory is its impos- 
 sibility. Mothers are not only mothers ; they are 
 likewise wives, housewives, members of society, 
 and individuals with minds of their own to be 
 nourished and developed. But even if the ideal 
 
230 SYMBOLIC EDUCATION. 
 
 described were practically possible, its realiza- 
 tion would be fatal in its influence upon the 
 child, for it ignores one of the profoundest of 
 psychologic truths, the truth which (borrowing 
 the words from Rosenkranz as he from Hegel). 
 I have called estrangement {Selhst-entfremdung 
 = self -estrangement), and return ; the truth to 
 which Froebel never tires of calling attention 
 under the name of "Mediation of Opposites." 
 This truth has varied aspects, and throws light 
 upon many of the most mysterious phenomena 
 of nature and of human life. Adequately to 
 explain Froebel, a whole volume should be de- 
 voted to its elucidation and illustration. For the 
 present, however, I must -restrict myself to the 
 statement that it furnishes the clew to a large 
 number of the songs in the Mother-Play, and 
 the key to Froebel's conception of education as 
 a practical art. In the Falling-falling game, 
 Froebel gives his first hint of the truth that 
 spiritual union is realized through separation. 
 During the first weeks of life the infant has no 
 consciousness of its own distinct being. It is, in 
 a physical sense, one with its mother, and shows 
 in many ways that it is affected by her chang- 
 ing states of mind and body. Gradually, how- 
 ever, the baby learns to sit, creep, stand, walk, 
 notice, play, and assert its own will. How shall 
 
VORTICAL EDUCATION. 231 
 
 the motlier respond to these varying manifesta- 
 tions of a life distinct from her own ? Has not 
 instinct taught her that in the crescive feeling 
 of independent existence she must find the means 
 of binding her child in deeper bonds of love and 
 sympathy ? The little game. See how Baby Falls, 
 is played in every nursery. The child, lying on 
 a soft pillow, is gently raised by the mother into 
 a sitting position, and then allowed to fall back. 
 At first he is frightened, but gradually he begins 
 to enjoy the play ; and when he has learned to 
 fall without any feeling of alarm, we may be 
 sure that the germs of faith have budded in his 
 soul. Later, he will jump from a high mantel 
 into his mother's arms, and seem never to tire of 
 the fun. With increasing consciousness of his 
 distinct selfhood comes the desire to hide him- 
 self, and he delights in games like the third play 
 of the Knights, wherein strangers are repre- 
 sented as wishing to carry off the child, whom 
 the mother stoutly refuses to give up, and even 
 conceals from those who would seize her treas- 
 ure. No person who remembers his childhood 
 will need to be told that many of our most popu- 
 lar traditional games are freighted with a simi- 
 lar motive. 
 
 Froebel asks of mothers only to universalize 
 the lesson taught by instinct. If the infant needs 
 
232 SYMBOLIC EDUCATION. 
 
 to fall from the mother's arms in order to trust 
 the mother's love, does not the older child need 
 to be sometimes separated from her that he may 
 know the joy of return to her ? Does not the boy 
 need other companions, if only for the sake of 
 learning that none of them can replace the one 
 dearest companion ? Does not the youth need 
 absence from home, and the experiences of board- 
 ing-school and college in order to realize the 
 sweetness of home ? Does not each man need 
 foreign travel to bring him spiritually near to 
 his own country ? Does not the student need to 
 sink himself in the past that he may rise into 
 adequate consciousness of the present ? Did not 
 the prodigal son need the journey into a far coun- 
 try, the riotous living, and the husks fit only for 
 swine, to stir his dull soul with the sense of his 
 father's love ? Does not the whole striving, as- 
 piring, sinning, suffering, repenting human race 
 need the discipline of evil to fit it for the Father's 
 house above ? Such are a few of the truths which 
 lie coiled up in the principle of estrangement and 
 return. Froebel deals with those applications of 
 the principle which fall within the scope of early 
 education. I have indicated the steps through 
 which he seeks to deepen the inner unity of 
 mother and child. It is only necessary to allude 
 to The Fishes, The Child and Moon, The Boy and 
 
VORTICAL EDUCATION. 233 
 
 Moon, and The Light-Bird on the Wall, to waken 
 in the mind of the kindergartner consciousness 
 of the fact that in these plays he endeavors to 
 aid the soul in its ascent from a physical to a 
 spiritual union with nature. As primitive men 
 dreamed of heroes who mounted to the "sky 
 country'' and built towers which aspired to 
 reach unto heaven, so the baby tries to grasp the 
 moon, and the boy thinks he may climb to it by 
 a ladder. As the hope that built Babel was ful- 
 filled at Pentecost, so the impulse which moves 
 the child to grasp for the sun and moon is satis- 
 fied when he learns the truths that "impara- 
 dise the mind," and from the physical heaven 
 that lies about infancy, passes into the true 
 heaven which is "not in space nor turns on 
 poles." 
 
 In every attempt to apply practically the in- 
 sight into estrangement and return, the impor- 
 tant thing to remember is that alienation is 
 always means to an end. The child who hides 
 too long in play may do something which will 
 create the desire to hide in earnest. The boy, 
 whose adventures at school, in the field, on the 
 playground, are not poured into his mother's ear 
 and interpreted by her sympathy, will be led 
 away from her instead of being drawn nearer 
 to her by these alien experiences. The student 
 
234 SYMBOLIC EDUCATION. 
 
 may lose himself so completely in the past that 
 he can never find himself in the present ; the 
 traveler may wander too long in foreign lands 
 and thus kill his love of country ; the sinner 
 may get frozen with Lucifer in the circle of ice 
 instead of returning with the prodigal to the 
 light and warmth of the Father's house. Sepa- 
 ration for union, estrangement for return, is the 
 watchword of education, and the impetus through 
 which individual life widens from a mere point 
 to infinitude. 
 
 The play of The Pigeon House is interesting 
 as one of the series of games wherein Froehel 
 points out to the mother how, by entering into 
 the child's life, she may knit him to her in love 
 and sympathy. The child shall see his home in 
 the Dove-Cote, and himself in the forth-flying 
 and home-returning doves. The first step in the 
 process is dramatic representation, and so the 
 left arm is raised to show the pillar on which the 
 pigeon house stands ; the right hand makes the 
 house, and the fingers the flying birds. Accom- 
 panying the representation the mother sings : 
 
 " I open wide my dove-cote door, 
 The pigeons fly out and away they soar ; 
 They fly to green field and spreading tree, 
 Where little birds are glad to be ; 
 And when they come back to rest at night 
 Again I close my pigeon house tight." 
 
VORTICAL EDUCATION". ,235. 
 
 The picture illustrating this play shows a 
 pigeon house and a sparrow house ; birds flying 
 from and returning to each ; a mother bird 
 perched on a tree beside her nest ; a mother 
 with her baby and a somewhat older child going 
 to the fields ; two children returning from the 
 fields ; in the background the home, in the fore- 
 ground a snail creeping out of his shell, and 
 a snake crawling into its hole. Thus outgoing 
 and incoming life is the burden of the whole 
 picture. 
 
 "Behold," says Froebel, "the child that can 
 scarcely keep himself erect, and that can walk 
 only with the greatest care ; he sees a twig or a 
 bit of straw ; painfully he secures it, and, like the 
 young bird in spring, carries it, as it were, to his 
 nest. . . . The force of the rain has washed out of 
 the sand small, smooth, bright pebbles ; quickly 
 the little one gathers them and tries to build with 
 them. Is he not in a deeper sense collecting ma- 
 terial for his future life-building ? " Moreover, 
 is not the child here, too, father of the man ; and 
 the contrast of outgoing and incoming life shown 
 in the picture of the Pigeon House a type of all 
 human experience ? Projecting ourselves in 
 deeds ; beholding ourselves mirrored therein ; 
 groping our painful way through the maze of 
 particular facts; rising therefrom to the vision 
 17 
 
236 SYMBOLIC EDUCATION. 
 
 of the wliole; breaking ourselves up into dis- 
 jointed fragments of feeling, thought, and will ; 
 collecting ourselves together out of these frag- 
 ments into the unity of self-consciousness — such 
 are the alternations of energy through which the 
 soul attains at last divine illumination, and is 
 consecrated to divine service. 
 
 One more feature of the Pigeon-House picture 
 deserves mention, because it is common to most 
 of the illustrations in the Mother-Play. Behind 
 the mother, who with her little ones is going 
 to the field, sits another mother who is teach- 
 ing her baby the Pigeon-House game. Thus 
 the child not only reflects his experience in his 
 play, but beholds this reflection mirrored in the 
 picture. That this naive process of mirroring 
 life is in accord with the method of all true 
 poets no student of literature will need to be 
 reminded. 
 
 Returning to the mother at play with her 
 child, we observe that the refrain of the song 
 imitates the cooing of doves. What, asks the 
 mother, are the little doves talking about ? Are 
 they not telling each other what they have seen 
 in the meadows and gardens ? Now you shall 
 be my little dove, and tell me all you have seen 
 and done while you have been away from me. 
 
 Children love to recount their experiences, for 
 
VORTICAL EDUCATION. 287 
 
 in telling what they have seen and done they take 
 possession of it.* How the mother may aid this 
 effort to master experience Froebel indicates 
 in the following conversation : The child has 
 
 * At the age of twenty mouths a child is not keen to hear 
 stories and fables, which he would not understand ; but he 
 delights in recounting his own experiences. A little girl of 
 this age, whenever her mother took her out with her, used to 
 relate to her father in the evening all that she and her mother 
 had seen and done. " We went out under the large trees of the 
 Luxembourg ; the dog was with us ; he kept running around 
 the perambulator of a little girl, and every now and then he 
 came up and licked her hands and face. But the dog was very 
 naughty : he ate the little girl's cake. Mamma scolded the dog 
 well, and drove him away with her blue umbrella, which made 
 Mary laugh just when she was beginning to cry. Then a little 
 boy named Joseph came and sat on a bench by Mary. He was 
 bigger than little Mary, but he was very polite, and he is very 
 fond of the little girl. He let her take his balloon, and he did 
 not hurt her doll ; then he and Mary jumped about together, 
 but the little boy fell down and made a bump on his forehead. 
 He cried very much, and the little girl cried too, because he was 
 hurt ; and then we walked a long, long way to the farthest 
 bench with Madame X., who loves baby very much. Madame 
 X. said to baby : ' When are you coming to see me ? There 
 are some beautiful apricots in the garden, and the birds in the 
 aviary are always very pretty and very happy ; they often ask 
 where little Mary is, saying, 'Coui, coui, coui,' etc." And dur- 
 ing this recital, often interrupted by the kisses and pettings 
 of her mother, or by bursts of laughter and short remarks from 
 her father, the little girl, all eyes and ears, enacted all the va- 
 rious emotions which the events called forth, gesticulating with 
 arms, feet, and head, and mimicking the cries of the animals 
 she was talking about. She would become half lost in the nar- 
 rative, or rather in dramatizing it ; and the habit of recounting 
 these true stories prepared her for following the fictitious ones 
 
238 SYMBOLIC EDUCATION. 
 
 spent the afternoon out of doors. He is full of 
 emotions born of what he has seen, but he can 
 not bind and hold his fleeting memories. The 
 mother comes to his help. By a few well-di- 
 rected questions she finds out that he has seen 
 many kinds of birds, likewise bees, beetles, and 
 butterflies. Then she asks : 
 
 " Where did you see the pigeons and chick- 
 ens ? " 
 
 " In the yard, mother ; they were picking up 
 the grains of corn and eating them. The little 
 chickens ran so fast when they found anything, 
 or when the cock called them because he had 
 found something for them. But the pigeons 
 could not run so fast, nor the ravens which I 
 saw in the field. One raven ran almost as a 
 pigeon runs, and one black pigeon ran so that 
 I thought it was a raven. But the ravens and 
 magpies could hop, and you will never believe 
 how the water- wagtails and sparrows can too ; 
 it is such fun to see them hop about on their 
 little stiff legs ; and the geese and ducks too, 
 
 ■which her mother invented for her, suiting them gradually to 
 the progressive development of her intelligence. When two 
 years old she could not exist without these exciting little tales, 
 and she used to say several times a day to her mother: " Mamma, 
 tale about dood ittle dal ; mamma, tale about ittle dal." — First 
 Three Years of Childhood, Bernard Ferez, translated by Alice 
 M. Christie, pp. 96, 97. 
 
VORTICAL EDUCATION. 239 
 
 how they swim in the water and dive ! But only 
 think ! they could fly too. They flew straight 
 over my head, away to the pond. I was so 
 frightened ! " 
 
 " My child, why should the geese and ducks 
 not fly ? They are birds, just as doves and hens, 
 swallows and sparrows, larks and finches are 
 birds." 
 
 " Mother, are the pigeons and hens really 
 birds ? " 
 
 " Have they not feathers ? Have they not 
 wings ? Have they not two legs, as all birds 
 have ? " 
 
 " But the pigeons live in their holes and in 
 the pigeon house, and chickens don't fly." 
 
 " Chickens have forgotten how to fly, because 
 they use their power of flying so little. If we do 
 not want to forget how to do a thing we must 
 practice it. As for the pigeons who live in 
 houses, they are like the sparrows and swallows, 
 who are certainly birds, though they live in 
 houses and under roofs." 
 
 " Mother, are the bees and beetles and butter- 
 flies birds too. They have wings, and can fly 
 much higher than the ducks and hens can." 
 
 " They have no feathers ; they build no little 
 nests, and there are many things which they have 
 not and which birds have. They are animals, it 
 
24:0 SYMBOLIC EDUCATION. 
 
 is true, just as birds are, for they can move as 
 they like. They have something, too, which 
 birds do not have. Look at this beetle, look at 
 this fly. Each has a notch here, and another 
 there. These notches are called sections, and the 
 creatures themselves are called insects." * 
 
 Helping us to knowledge is binding us in 
 sympathy. Out of the depths of his satisfied 
 heart comes the child's eager cry, " O mother, 
 when I next go out you must go with me ! " 
 
 I have likened the unfolding of the nursery 
 songs to the life of a tree. In this conversation 
 we see the branch of natural history shooting out 
 from the great limb of sympathy with nature. 
 In relating the isolated elements of her child's 
 experience the mother necessarily becomes sci- 
 entific. 
 
 The category of our age is evolution, and the 
 one question we ask of each object is how it 
 came to be. Of our own coming to be, however, 
 we know little or nothing. To most of us the 
 first few years of life are a blank in memory. 
 We wake to consciousness with definite feel- 
 
 * Mother's Songs, Games, and Stories, translation by Frances 
 and Emily Lord, pp, 155, 156. (I have made a few unimportant 
 changes. The thought of this sentence is more simply and 
 naively expressed in the original. Kerb = notch ; Kerbthiere 
 = notched animals.) 
 
VORTICAL EDUCATION. 241 
 
 iugs, thoughts, and tendencies. Whence sprang 
 the feelings ? How grew the thoughts ? What 
 fixed the tendencies ? We ask in vain. Over 
 the sources of life roll the silent waves of un- 
 consciousness, and memory loses itself in a be- 
 ginning when "all was without form and void, 
 and darkness was upon the face of the deep." 
 
 How much it would add to the power and 
 beauty of our lives if this lost connection could 
 be at least partially restored ! Should we not 
 better understand what we are if we knew how 
 we came to be ? Might not a wise and tender 
 mother, by watching her child, behold the dawn- 
 ing of his conscious life ? Might she not, by sa- 
 credly guarding in her heart his small experi- 
 ences, reconstruct for him the past he can not 
 remember ? Should not the first history a child 
 learns be his own ? 
 
 The play and talk we have been considering 
 hint to us how this end may be attained. The 
 organization of the child's experience not only 
 interprets it but helps him to remember it. 
 Other games take further steps in this same 
 direction. Thus in The Children on the Tower 
 Froebel unites all the plays previously learned, 
 the particular gesture associated with each game 
 being repeated when that game is referred to. 
 In The Little Artist ho indicates how familiar 
 
242 SYMBOLIC EDUCATION. 
 
 objects may be roughly drawn, explaining in the 
 commentary that "the child now has a small 
 world within him, and should represent this 
 world in a way suited to his strength." Through 
 such representation all that life has taught him 
 is made to " pass in review before his soul." 
 Finally, the Mother-Play as a whole preserves for 
 the child the history of his life. The infant edu- 
 cated in obedience to its wise suggestions, and 
 grown to a child six years old, sees himself and 
 his past in its pictures, and understands himself 
 through his mother's explanation of them. In 
 one picture he is making a basket for papa ; in 
 another he is calling the chickens ; in still an- 
 other he is trying to grasp the moon. Into the 
 general history of childhood each mother may 
 weave the history of her own child, and, guided 
 by Froebel, teach him how to pause in life that 
 he may collect the results of living. 
 
 The principle of concentric instruction has of 
 late years excited a great and growing interest. 
 This form of education selects some theme which 
 appeals to the imagination of the pupil, and re- 
 lates all the different school exercises to this cen- 
 tral topic. Thus in a European school of the 
 third grade, described by Dr. Klemm, everything 
 done was in organic connection with the story of 
 Robinson Qrusoe. The children made pots of 
 
VORTICAL EDUCATION. 243 
 
 clay like Robinson, wove baskets like Robinson, 
 and, in imitation of this hero, fashioned rude fur- 
 niture, ladders, fish-hooks, anchors, and sails; 
 geography was learned by molding maps in the 
 sand and tracing Crusoe's journeys ; the compo- 
 sitions written on slates had his exploits for their 
 subjects, and even arithmetical problems were in 
 some way connected with his experiences.* 
 
 That the practice of the kindergarten is in 
 accord with the principle of concentric education 
 will, it is hoped, be evident from the illustrations 
 given. A brief summary of the process of devel- 
 opment indicated may, however, help to define its 
 idea. 
 
 I. The point of departure is generally some 
 actual experience of the children. 
 
 II. This experience, together with its causal 
 presuppositions, is reproduced in pantomime. 
 
 III. The pantomime is interpreted by word 
 and music. 
 
 IV. The dramatized experience is shown in a 
 picture. 
 
 V. In the picture the child not only beholds 
 the fact or process dramatized, but also contem- 
 plates himself in the act of dramatizing it. In 
 other words, the picture is a mirror wherein he 
 sees himself playing. 
 
 * European Schools, pp. 185-192. 
 
244 SYMBOLIC EDUCATION. 
 
 VI. Conversations on the subjects illustrated 
 in the play bring its entire circle of activities 
 under the focus of consciousness. 
 
 VII. Stories and poems having a related con- 
 tent are used to deepen and spiritualize the cen- 
 tral idea embodied in each play. 
 
 VIII. Pictures presenting the subject of the 
 play in a truly artistic form are hung upon the 
 walls of the kindergarten, and create a spiritual 
 environment from which the child draws spirit- 
 ual food. 
 
 IX. The child is encouraged to reproduce, with 
 the kindergarten gifts and occupations, the facts 
 and i)rocesses illustrated in his games. Actively 
 recreating his experiences, he both interprets 
 them to himself and stamps upon them his own 
 individuality. 
 
 X. Related games are thrown into a series 
 and played in sequence. 
 
 XI. Each circle of experiences, pantomimes, 
 songs, pictures, stories, and poems, is organized 
 into a living and developing unity by recurrences 
 to the original experience and play from which 
 such circle has been evolved.* 
 
 * It may seem that I am describing rather what ought to be 
 than what is. The following additional extract from the article 
 already quoted will show that in Fran Schrader's Kindergarten, 
 the ideal is at least approximately realized : 
 
 " Let us trace how this method of introducing the children 
 
VORTICAL EDUCATION. 245 
 
 If I may venture to criticise the ordinary pro- 
 cess of concentric instruction, I should say that 
 its chief defect is lack of clear insight in the 
 choice of its themes. These themes furnish what 
 
 to life around them was continued with those from four to six 
 years of age. These were occupied once or twice a week in 
 gardening a plot of ground belonging to them. Here many 
 of the plants which were to furnish subject-matter for their ob- 
 servation were sown, and carefully tended throughout the spring 
 and summer. They also became practically acquainted with a 
 few industrial processes, such as they could take part in. For 
 instance, when 'wheat' was being especially considered, the 
 children enjoyed the fun of actually reaping the wheat they had 
 helped to sow in the spring in the plot of ground common to all. 
 They bound it in sheaves and carried it in triumph into their 
 schoolroom, where each child received a stalk or two with the 
 full ear ; and, while sitting quietly round the table, they held 
 the stalks upright and close together, until the children could 
 very nearly picture to themselves a cornfield which had taken 
 root indoors. The kindergartnerin then led them by a series of 
 self-made experiences to an appreciation of such facts as — 
 
 1. " The height of the stalk. (This was very simply and well 
 brought out by a story being told of how the kindergiirtnerin 
 had played at hide-and-seek with a little boy in a cornfield dur- 
 ing the summer liolidays.) 
 
 2. " The hollowness of the stalk. The children learned this 
 by blowing soap-bubbles through the straw. 
 
 3. " The presence of knots in the stalk. (This experience was 
 likewise gained while blowing soap-bubbles ; some children hav- 
 ing been allowed to break the straws in the spaces between the 
 knots, they found they could not use them.) 
 
 4. " The ear of corn hangs its head. Why ? (This led to an 
 examination of an empty and a full ear.) 
 
 5. " The ear is a great house in which there are many rooms. 
 
 6. " In each room there lives a single little grain. 
 
 7. " Of what use is the grain ? (They had sown it in 
 
246 SYMBOLIC EDUCATION. 
 
 is called the Gesinnungsstoff — i. e., matter ap- 
 pealing to sentiment and imagination.* One 
 effect of the concentric exercises is, or should be, 
 to deepen the influence of this Oesinnungsstoff 
 
 the spring ; they were now about to learn its use experi- 
 mentally.) 
 
 "Another day the corn was thrashed in the garden, the chil- 
 dren using a small flail in turn. The grain was gathered and 
 separated from the chaff by some others. Part of the grain was 
 reserved for seed, and a small quantity was ground by the chil- 
 dren between stones. 
 
 "Another day flour was taken and pancakes were baked. 
 The children, under the direction of an older person, had each 
 something to do in the process, the older ones learning to beat 
 the eggs and to stir the flour, while the younger ones ran on 
 little errands. At last, the great moment having arrived, the 
 company sat down to enjoy the feast. Meanwhile the leading 
 idea was carried through the various occupations somewhat in 
 the following manner : 
 
 "The elder children were 'pricking' on paper the ear of 
 corn or the mill which ground the corn ; the younger children 
 only outlined the millstones. Again, a scythe was sewn in col- 
 ored silk or wool. When stick and ring laying was the order of 
 the day, then the cart which carried the sacks of corn was rep- 
 resented, etc. The appropriate games were The Farmer, The 
 Miller, The Mill, etc. 
 
 " Finally a story, or simple piece of poetry, summing up the 
 children's experiences, was spoken or sung to Ihe kindcrgiirtner- 
 in's accompaniment on the piano. A picture, representing the 
 subject from an artistic point of view (The Sower, by L. Riohter), 
 was shown and enjoyed as a resume of the children's experiences 
 during the past week or two. There was nothing in either the 
 story or the poem which was foreign to their experience." — 
 Barnard's Kindergarten and Child Culture, pp. 460, 4G1. 
 
 * European Schools, L. R. Kleram, Ph. I)., p. 185. 
 
VORTICAL EDUCATION. 247 
 
 upon the mind. It would seem, therefore, that 
 the selection of suitable themes is a matter of 
 prime import, and that serious injury may be 
 done the mind by developing concentric exercises 
 around facts which belong not to the center but 
 the circumference of thought. 
 
 Froebel solves this problem by using as Ge- 
 sinnungsstoff the symbolic aspects of nature and 
 the ethical ideals embodied in human institu- 
 tions. His plan of education is, therefore, not 
 merely concentric but spiral, and not merely 
 spiral but vortical. Its physical symbol is the 
 inverted cone, the point upon which the whole 
 scheme revolves being to fill the emotions with a 
 rational content, while the widening and ascend- 
 ing circles represent the progressive development 
 within the conscious intellect of the ideals which 
 originally floated unconscious in the depths of 
 feeling. 
 
 Pestalozzi claims that the center from which 
 education radiates is sense-perception {Anscliau- 
 ung). Froebel claims that this center is Oemiith, 
 a word explained by Hegel to mean the " unde- 
 veloped, indefinite totality of spiritual being." 
 We may approximately translate GemiHh by 
 heart, and affirm that with Froebel the pivot 
 upon which true education turns is the regener- 
 ation of the affections. Long before, Froebel, 
 
248 SYMBOLIC EDUCATION". 
 
 that great pliilosoplier whose books " make such 
 havoc of all our originalities/' had given expres- 
 sion to the same thought, and no better state- 
 ment of the aim of the Mother-Play can ever be 
 made than is contained in the following passage 
 from the second book of Plato's Laws : 
 
 "As to wisdom and true and fixed opinions, 
 liappy is the man who acquires them, even when 
 declining in years ; and he who possesses them, 
 and the blessings which are contained in them, 
 is a perfect man. Now, I mean by education that 
 training which is given by suitable habits to the 
 first instincts of virtue in children ; when pleas- 
 ure, and friendship, and pain, and hatred, are 
 rightly implanted in souls not yet capable of 
 understanding the nature of them, and who find 
 them, after they have attained reason, to be in 
 harmony with her. This harmony of the soul, 
 when perfected, is virtue ; but the particular 
 training in respect of pleasure and pain, which 
 leads you always to hate what you ought to hate 
 and love what you ought to love, from the begin- 
 ning to the end, may be separated off ; and, in my 
 view, will be rightly called education." * 
 
 With insight into Froebel's aim comes appre- 
 ciation of his symbolic method ; for, while we rec- 
 
 * Laws, Book II, Jowett's translation, p. 222. 
 
VORTICAL EDUCATION. 249 
 
 ognize that the seeds of truth will germinate only 
 in soil which has been " made fertile with right 
 emotion," we must also admit that there is no 
 " feeling worthy the name but is as dew around 
 an idea." If, therefore, we wish to make children 
 feel, we must give them something to feel about, 
 and in order to educate the heart we must illu- 
 minate the imagination. In the childhood of the 
 race the premonitions of reason were uttered in 
 symbol and myth. The history of the individual 
 repeats that of the race, and through typical facts 
 and poetic analogies we may waken in the heart 
 of childhood those truths which are the "foun- 
 tain light of all our day " — " the master light of 
 all our seeing " : 
 
 " Truths that wake 
 
 To perish never ; 
 Which neither listlessness nor mad endeavor, 
 
 Nor man, nor boy, 
 Nor all that is at enmity with joy, 
 Can utterly abolish or destroy," 
 
 Reverting for the last time to Froebel's defi- 
 nition of man as Gliedganses, we ought now to 
 perceive clearly that it implies two apparently 
 antagonistic yet really complementary ideas. 
 The individual can develop only through his 
 own self-activity. The individual can develop 
 only by appropriating the experience of man- 
 kind. The solution of the paradox is found in a 
 
250 SYMBOLIC EDUCATION. 
 
 t'development incited by generic ideals. SucL. a 
 development testifies to tlie freedom of man as 
 well as to the solidarity of mankind ; for ideals 
 are not external to the mind, but products of its 
 own activity, and through obeying them man be- 
 comes his own creator. 
 
 True freedom is not a dower, but an achieve- 
 ment ; and insight into the ideal nature of man 
 justifies both the long agony of history and the 
 ignorance, impotence, and bondage wherein the 
 career of each individual begins. "Man is the 
 worm born to bring forth the angelic butterfly/* 
 and in the very fact that by nature he is prone 
 upon the earth may be read the prophecy that he 
 shall one day expand his wings freely in the free 
 air. His destiny could never be realized unless 
 contradicted at every point by his original state. 
 He is born a slave that he may conquer freedom 
 by breaking the chains of ignorance and throw- 
 ing off the shackles of sin.* 
 
 * In his first aspect, as child of Nature, man must be con- 
 ceived as fettered and chained, ruled by impulse and dominated 
 by sense ; not yet awakened to consciousness, he is a being of 
 sense and of physical life. In his final aspect as a child of God 
 man must be conceived as free : he is not only capable of self- 
 consciousness and destined to realize this capability, but he al- 
 ready possesses a prophetic knowledge of his nature and des- 
 tiny ; hence he is a being who reasons and reflects, and of his 
 own free will seeks the highest unity of life. In his inter- 
 mediate condition as child of man he is to be conceived as a 
 
VORTICAL EDUCATION. 251 
 
 Science lias become poetic since she has 
 learned to recognize in the process of evolution 
 the travail of a world pregnant with the ideal 
 of freedom. The problem of all religions is how 
 to escape from that slavery which the prescient 
 soul knows to be contrary to its true nature. 
 The clew to history is "the progress of souls 
 into the consciousness of freedom." The ascend- 
 ing rounds of individual development are marked 
 by clearer insight into what freedom implies, and 
 by more concrete realization of freedom in the 
 acts of the will. The conscious aim of education 
 should be to aid the self -emancipation of the pu- 
 pil by inflaming his soul with the ideals symbol- 
 ized in nature, revealed in history, incarnated in i 
 institutions, and always and everywhere inciting 
 the struggle through which the worm mounts to 
 man and the man to God. 
 
 being who, in chains and shackles, yet struggles for freedom ; 
 who in isolation strives for union, and who in thought is ever 
 seeking relief from the oppression of particulars in the unity of 
 consciousness. Hence the child of man strives, aspires, and 
 loves, and under the pain of conflict beats the joy of his hope." 
 — Pddagogik des Kindergartens, p. 9 {free translation). 
 
 THE END. 
 
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 the study of history— one of the very most important of all studies for its 
 widening influence on general culture. 
 
 "Fills a decided gap which has existed for 
 the past twenty years in American historical 
 literature. The work is .idmirably planned 
 and executed, and will at once take its place as 
 a standard record of the life, growth, and de- 
 velopment of the nation. It is profusely and 
 beautifully illustrated." — Boston Transcript. 
 
 " The book in its new dress makes a much 
 finer appearance than 
 before, and will be wel- 
 comed by older readers ' • -^ > 
 as gladly as its predeces- Indian's TRAP, 
 sor was greeted by girls 
 
 and boys. The lavish use the publishers have made of colored 
 plates, woodcuts, and photographic reproductions, gives an un- 
 wonted piquancy to the printed page, catching the eye as surely 
 as the text engages the mind." — New York Critic. 
 
 "The author writes history as a story. It can 'never be 
 less than that. The book will enlist the interest of young 
 people, enlighten their understanding, and by the glow of its 
 statements fix the great events of the country firmly in tho 
 OENERAL PUTNAM. mind." — Sati Francisco Bulletin. 
 
 New York: D. APPLETON & CO., i, 3, & 5 Bond Street. 
 
D. APPLETON & CO.'S PUBLICATIONS. 
 
 yj BR AH AM LINCOLN: The True Story of a Great 
 -tJt LIFE. By William H. Herndon and Jesse W. Weik. 
 With numerous Illustrations. New and revised edition, with 
 an introduction by Horace White. In two volumes. i2mo. 
 Cloth, $3.00. 
 This is probably the most intimate life of Lincoln ever written. The 
 book, by Lincoln's law-partner, William H. Herndon, and his friend Jesse 
 W. Weik, shows us Lincoln the man. It is a true picture of his surround- 
 ings and influences and acts. It is not an attempt to construct a political 
 history, with Lincoln often in the background, nor is it an effort to apotheo- 
 size the American who stands first in our history next to Washington. The 
 writers knew Lincoln intimately. Their book is the result of unreserved 
 association. There is no attempt to portray the man as other than he really 
 was, and on this account their frank testimony must be accepted, and their 
 biography must take permanent rank as the best and most illuminating study 
 of Lincoln's character and personality. Their story, simply told, relieved 
 by characteristic anecdotes, and vivid with local color, will be found a fasci- 
 nating work. 
 
 "Truly, they who wish to know Lincoln as he really was must read the biography 
 of him written by his friend and law-partner, W. H. Herndon. This book was im- 
 peratively needed to brush aside the rank growth of myth and legend which was 
 threatening to hide the real lineaments of Lincoln from the eyes of posterity. On one 
 pretext or another, but usually upon the plea that he was the central figure of a great 
 historical picture, most of his self-appointed biographers have, by suppressing a part 
 of the truth and magnifying or embellishing the rest, produced portraits which those of 
 Lincoln's contemporaries who knew him best are scarcely able to recognize. There is, 
 on the other hand, no doubt about the faithfulness of Mr. Herndon's delineation. The 
 marks of unflinching veracity are patent in every line." — New York Sun. 
 
 "Among the books which ought most emphatically to have been written must be 
 classed ' Herndon's Lincoln.' " — Chicago Inter-Ocean. 
 
 " The author has his own notion of what a biography should be, and it is simple 
 enough. The story should tell all, plainly and even bluntly. Mr. Herndon is naturally 
 a very direct writer, and he has been industrious in gathering material. Whether an 
 incident happened before or behind the scenes, is all the same to him. He gives it 
 without artifice or apology. He describes the life of his friend Lincoln just as he saw 
 it." — Cincinftati Cotnmercial Gazette. 
 
 " A remarkable piece of literary achievement — remarkable alike for its fidelity to 
 facts, its fullness of details, its constructive skill, and its literary charm." — New I'ark 
 Times. 
 
 " It will always remain the authentic life of Abraham Lincoln." — Chicago Herald. 
 
 "The book is a valuable depository of anecdotes, innumerable and characteristic 
 It has every claim to the proud boast of being the ' true story of a great life.' " — Phila- 
 delphia Ledger. 
 
 "Will be accepted as the best biography yet written of the great President." — 
 Chicago Inter-Ocean. 
 
 " Mr. White claims that, as a portraiture of the man Lincoln, Mr. Herndon's work 
 'will never be surpassed.' Certainly it has never been equaled yet, and this new edi- 
 tion is all that could be desired." — New i'ork Observer. 
 
 " The three portraits of Lincoln are the best that exist ; and not the least charac- 
 teristic of these, the Lincoln of the Douglas debates, has never before been engraved. 
 . . . Herndon's narrative gives, as nothing else is likely to give, the material from 
 which we may form a true picture of the man from infancy to maturity." — The Nation. 
 
 New York : D. APPLETON & CO., 1, 3. & 5 Bond Street. 
 
D. APPLETON & CO.'S PUBLICATIONS. 
 
 nrHE COUNTRY SCHOOL IN NEW ENG- 
 J- LAND. By Clifton Johnson. With 60 Illustrations from 
 Photographs and Drawings made by the Author. Square 8vo. 
 Cloth, gilt edges, $2.50. 
 
 " An admirable undertaking carried out in an admirable way. . . . Mr. Johnson's 
 descriptions are vivid and lifelike and are full of humor, and the illustrations, mostly 
 after photographs, give a solid effect of realism to the whole work, and are superbly re- 
 produced. . . . The definitions at the close of this volume are very, verj' funny, and yet 
 they are not stupid; .hey are usually the result of deficient logic." — Boston Beacon. 
 
 " A charmingly written account of the rural schools in this section of the country. 
 It speaks of the old-fashioned school days of the early quarter of this century, of the 
 mid century schools, of the country school of to-day, and of how scholars think and 
 write. The style is animated and picturesque. ... It is handsomely printed, and is 
 interesting from its pretty cover to its very last page." — Boston Saturday Evening 
 Gazette. 
 
 "A unique piece of book-making that deserves to be popular. . . . Prettily and 
 serviceably bound, and well illustrated." — The Churchman, 
 
 " The readers who turn the leaves of this handsome book will unite in saying the 
 author has 'been there.' It is no fancy sketch, but text and illustrations are both a 
 reality." — Chicago Inter-Ocean. 
 
 " No one who is familiar with the little red schoolhouse can look at these pictures 
 and read these chapters without having the mind recall the boyhood experiences, and 
 the memory is pretty sure to be a pleasant one." — Chicago Times. 
 
 " A superlily prepared volume, which by its reading matter and its beautiful illustra- 
 tions, so natural and finished, pleasantly and profitably recall memories and associa- 
 tions connected with the very foundations of our national greatness." — A'ew York 
 Observer. 
 
 " It is a point not yet decided whether the text or illustrations of this ' Country 
 School ' give the most pleasure. Both are original, and removed from the beaten track 
 of conventionality." — Philadelphia Ledger. 
 
 " One of the finest and most fitting of all the Christmas books likely to appear." — 
 Hartford Times. 
 
 'J^HE BRONTES IN IRELAND. By Dr. William 
 
 J- Wright. With Portraits and numerous Illustrations. i2mo. 
 
 Cloth, $1.50. 
 
 "A striking; contribution to biographical literature and a significant confirmation of 
 the doctrine of hereditary genius has been made by Dr. William Wright in his wonder- 
 fully entertaining narrative. . . . The book is admirably written, and is in itself as 
 interesting as a romance. It has a number of valuable illustrations, plans, etc., and 
 will be of the .most intense fascination to all who have read and thrilled over 'Jane 
 Eyre ' and ' Shirley,' or puzzled over the mystery of the wild and erratic Branwell." — • 
 Boston Beacon. 
 
 "Dr. Wright has fathfuUy traced the current of Bronte life and thought back to 
 the hidden sources. The biography has some surprises in store for the reader. It is 
 fully illustrated, and presents a varied and romantic tale without a touch of the com- 
 monplace. " — Philadelphia Ledger. 
 
 " One of the most curious pages which have lately been added to literary history." 
 — Boston Traveller. 
 
 " A new and thrilling chapter in the history of the Bronte sisters." — Boston Ad, 
 litrtiscr. 
 
 New York: D. APPLETON & CO., i, 3, & 5 Bond Street. 
 
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 WORKS BY ARABELLA B. BUCKLEY (MRS. FISHER). 
 
 'T^HE FAIRY-LAND OF SCIENCE. With 74 II- 
 J- lustrations. Cloth, gilt, $1.50. 
 
 " Deserves to take a permanent place in the literature of youth." — London Times. 
 
 "So interesting that, having once opened the book, we do not know how to leave 
 off reading." — Saturday Review. 
 
 'HROUGH MAGIC GLASSES and other Lectures. 
 A Sequel to " The Fairy-Land of Science." Cloth, $1.50. 
 CONTENTS. 
 The Magician's Chamber by Moon- An Hour with the Sun. 
 
 LIGHT. An Evening with the Stars. 
 
 Magic Glasses and How to Use Them. Little Beings from a Miniature 
 Fairy Rings and How They are Made. Ocean. 
 
 The Life-History of Lichens and The Dartmoor Ponies. 
 
 Mosses. The Magician's Dream of Ancient 
 
 The Hi.story of a Lava-Stream. Days. 
 
 T IFF AND HER CHILDREN : Glimpses of Ani- 
 ■^— ' mal Life from the Amceba to the Insects. With over 100 Illus- 
 trations. Cloth, gilt, $1.50. 
 
 " The work forms a charming introduction to the study of zo61ogy — the science of 
 living things — which, we trust, will find its way into many hands." — Nature. 
 
 TjnNNERS IN LLFE'S RACE ; or, The Great 
 
 ^ ^ Backboned Family. With numerous Illustrations. Cloth, gilt, 
 
 $1.50. 
 
 "We can conceive no better gift-book than this vohime. Miss Buckley has spared 
 no pains to incorporate in her book the latest results of scientific research. The illus- 
 trations in the book deserve the highest praise — they are numerous, accurate, and 
 Striking. ' ' — Spectator. 
 
 yj SHORT HISTORY OF NATURAL SCL- 
 -^^ ENCE ; and of the Progress of Discovery from the Time of 
 the Greeks to the Present Time. New edition, revised and re- 
 arranged. With 77 Illustrations. Cloth, $2.00. 
 "The work, though mainly intended for children and young persons, may be most 
 advantageously read by many persons of riper age, and may serve to implant in their 
 minds a fuller and clearer conception of ' the promises, the achievements, and claims of 
 science.' " — Journal of Science. 
 
 ORAL TEACHINGS OF SCIENCE. Cloth, 
 
 75 cents. 
 
 " The book is intended for readers who would not take up an elaborate philo- 
 sophical work — those who, feeling puzzled and adrift in the present chans of opmion, 
 may welcome even a partial solution, from a scientific point of view, of the difficulties 
 which oppress their minds." — Frotn the Preface. 
 
 New York: D. APPLETON & CO., i, 3, & 5 Bond Street. 
 
 M 
 
D. APPLETON & CO.'S PUBLICATIONS. 
 
 CAMP-FIRES OF A NATURALIST. From the 
 Field Notes of Lewis Lindsay Dyche, A. M., M. S., Professor 
 of Zoology and Curator of Birds and Mammals in the Kansas 
 State University. The Story of Fourteen Expeditions after 
 North American Mammals. By Clarence E. Edwords. 
 With numerous Illustrations. i2mo. Cloth, $1.50. 
 
 " It is not always that a professor of zoology is so enthusiastic a sportsman as Prof. 
 Dyche. His huntinj; exploits are as varied as those of Gordon Gumming, for example, 
 ill South Africa. His grizzly bear is as dangerous as the lion, and his mountain sheep 
 and goats more difficult to stalk and shoot than any creatures of the torrid zone. Evi- 
 dently he came by his tastes as a hunter from liielong experience." — New York 
 Tribune. 
 
 " The book has no dull pages, and is often excitingly interesting, and fully in- 
 structive as to the habits, haunts, and nature of wild beasts." — Chicago hiter-Ocean. 
 
 "There is abundance of interesting incident in addition to the scientific element, 
 and the illustrations are numerous and highly graphic as to the big game met by the 
 hunters, and the hardships cheerfully undertaken." — Brooklyn Eagle. 
 
 "The narrative is simple and manly and full of the freedom of forests. . . . This 
 record of his work ought to awaken the interest of the generation growing up, if only 
 by the contrast of his active e.xperience of the resources of Nature and of savage life 
 with the background of culture and the environment of educational advantages that 
 are being rapidly formed for the students of the United States. Prof. Dyche seems, 
 from this account of him, to have thought no personal hardship or exertion wasted in 
 his attempt to collect facts, that the naturalist of the future may be provided with com- 
 plete and verified ideas as to species which will soon be extinct. This is good work — 
 work that we need and that posterity will recognize with gratitude. The illustrations 
 of the book are interesting, and the type is clear." — New York Times. 
 
 " The adventures are simply told, but some of them are thrilling of necessity, how- 
 ever modestly the narrator does his work. Prof. Dyche has had about as many expe- 
 riences in the way of hunting for science as fail to the lot of the most fortunate, and 
 this recountal of them is most interesting. The camps from which he worked ranged 
 from the Lake of the Woods to Arizona, and northwest to British Columbia, and in 
 every region he was successful in securing rare specimens for his museum." — Chicago 
 Times. 
 
 " The literary construction is refreshing. The reader is carried into the midst of 
 the very scenes of which the author tells, not by elaborateness of description but by the 
 directness and vividness of every sentence. He is given no opportunity to abandon 
 the companions with which the book has provided him, for incident is made to follow 
 incident with no intervening literary padding. In fact, the book is all aclioD."— Kansas 
 City Journal. 
 
 " As an outdoor book of camping and hunting this book possesses a timely 
 interest, but it also has the merit of scientific exactness in the descriptions of the 
 habits, peculiarities, and haunts of wild animals." — Philadelphia Press. 
 
 " But what is most important of all in a narrative of this kind— for it seems to us 
 that 'Camp-Fires of a Naturalist' was written first of all for entertainment — these 
 notes iieither have been ' dressed up ' and their accuracy thereby impaired, nor yet re- 
 tailed in a dry and statistical manner. The book, in a word, is a plain narrative of 
 adventures among the larger American animals." — Philadelphia Bulletin. 
 
 " We recommend it most heartily to old and young alike, and suggest it as a beauti- 
 ful souvenir volume for those who have seen the wonderful display of mounted animals 
 at the World's Y^\i."—Topeka Capital. 
 
 New York : D. APPLETON & CO., i, 3, & 5 Bond Street. 
 
D. APPLETON & CO.'S PUBLICATIONS. 
 
 HAND-BOOKS OF SOCIAL USAGES. 
 
 (TOCIAL ETIQUETTE OF NEW YORK. Re- 
 
 V— ^ written and enlarged. i8mo. Cloth, gilt, $i.oo. 
 
 Special pains have been taken to make this work represent accurately 
 existing customs in New York society. The subjects treated are of visiting 
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 debuts, chaperons, weddings, opera and theatre parties, costumes and cus- 
 toms, addresses and signatures, and funeral customs, covering so far as 
 practicable all social usages. 
 
 ON'T ; or, Directions for avoiding Improprieties in 
 Conduct and Common Errors of Speech. By Censor. Parch- 
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 "Don't" deals with manners at the table, in the drawing-room, and in 
 public, with taste in dress, with personal habits, with common mistakes in 
 various situations in life, and with ordinary errors of speech. 
 
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 'HAT TO DO. A Companion to "Don't." By 
 
 Mrs. Oliver Bell Bunce. Small i8mo, cloth, gilt, uniform 
 
 with Boudoir Edition of " Don't," 30 cents. 
 
 A dainty little book, containing helpful and practical explanations of 
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 entertained, and sets forth the etiquette of engagements and marriages, in- 
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 American, resident in the United Kingdom, i2mo. Cloth, 
 $1.50. 
 
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 what is known in England as 'high life." " — From the Pre/ace. 
 
 TNTS ABOUT MEN'S DRESS: Right Prin- 
 ciples Economically Applied. By a New York Clubman. 
 i8mo. Parchment-paper, 30 cents. 
 
 A useful manual, especially for young men desirous of dressing eco- 
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 New York: D. APPLETON & CO., i, 3, & 5 Bond Street. 
 
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 r^HE ORTHOEPIST. a Pronouncing Manual, contain- 
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 Revised and enlarged edition. i8mo. Cloth, $1.25. 
 
 rnJIE RHYMESTER J or the Rules of Rhyme. A 
 
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 n-^HE CORRESPONDENT. By James Wood David- 
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APPLETONS' LIBRARY LISTS. 
 
 Libraries, whether for the school, home, or the public at large, are 
 among the mo.st important and wide- reaching educational factors in the 
 advancement of cisilization. Modern intellectual activity, keeping pace 
 with modern invention, has added to the earlier stores ot literature myriads 
 of books, and a still greater mass of reading matter in other forms. Unfor- 
 tunately, much of the material put into print is not of an educational or 
 elevating character. It is important, then, in the selection of books for 
 public use, especially for the young, that great care be exercised to secure 
 only such kinds of reading as will be wholesome, instructive, and intrinsic- 
 ally valuable. 
 
 For more than fifty years Messrs. D. Appleton & Co. have been en- 
 gaged in the publication of the choicest productions from the pens of dis- 
 tinguished authors of the past and present, of both Europe and America, 
 and their catalogue of books now comprises several thousand volumes, em- 
 bracing every department of knowledjje. Classified lists of these publica- 
 tions have been prepared, affording facilities for a judicious selection of 
 books covering the whole ran^e of Literature, Science, and Art, for 
 individual bookbuyers or for a thorough equipment of any library. 
 
 Lists A, B, and C are of books selected especially for School Libraries. 
 
 Zist A. — For Primary and Litermediate Grades. 
 
 List B. — For Grammar and High School Grades. 
 
 List C. — For College and University Libraries, 
 
 The other lists are of books grouped according to subjects, and include 
 the above. 
 
 The classifications are as follows : 
 
 List D.— History. List O.— Language, Literature, and 
 " E. — BiOQRAPer. Art. 
 
 " P.— Physical Science. " P. — Reference Books. 
 
 " G.— Mental AND Moral Science. " Q. — Poetry and Essay. 
 
 " H.— Political and Social Sci- " R.— Travel and Adventure. 
 
 ENCE. " S.— Pedagogy and Education. 
 
 " I. — Finance and Economics. " T. — Fiction. 
 
 " K.— Hygiene and Sanitary Sci- " U.— Amusement and Rechea- 
 
 ENCE. TION. 
 
 " L.— Philosophy and Metaphysics. " V.— Evolution. 
 " M.— Technology and Indus- " W.— Religion. 
 
 trial Arts. " X.— Law. 
 
 " N.— Anthropology, Ethnology, " Y. — Medicine. 
 
 Archeology, Pal^eontol- " Z. — Juvenile Books. 
 
 OGY. 
 
 AA.— Unclassified. BB.— School and College Text-Books. 
 
 CO.— Spanish Publications. 
 
 We respectfully invito the attention of public and private book-buyers 
 everywhere to these lists, confident that they will be found of interest 
 and profit. Single lists mailed free. Complete set, 18 cents to cover 
 postage. 
 
 D. APPLETON & CO., Publishers, 
 
 New York, Boston, Chicago. 
 
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