Froebel as a pioneer in modern psychology E-Book

E. R. Murray

• Herausgeber: Books on Demand
• Kategorie: Geisteswissenschaft
• Sprache: Englisch

Seitenzahl: 292

Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2019

Beschreibung

The purpose of this little book is to show that Froebel?s educational theories were based on psychological views of a type much more modern than is at all generally understood. It is frequently stated that Froebel's psychology is conspicuous by its absence, but in a somewhat close study of Froebel's writings I have been again and again surprised to find how much Froebel seems to have anticipated modern psychology. A probable reason for the overlooking of so much sound psychological truth is to be found in the fact that much of it is obscured by details which seem to us trivial, but which Froebel meant as applications of the theories he was endeavouring to make clear to minds not only innocent of, but incapable of, psychology. Most educationists have read "The Education of Man," but few outside the Kindergarten world are likely to have bestowed much thought on Froebel's later writings. It is in these, however, that we see Froebel watching with earnest attention that earliest mental development which is now regarded as a distinct chapter in mental science, but which was then largely if not entirely ignored. With the same spirit of inquiry and the same field for investigation-for children acted and thought then as they act and think now-it is only natural that Froebel should have made at least some of the same discoveries as the genetic psychologist of today.

Leseprobe

Froebel as a pioneer in modern psychology

Froebel as a pioneer in modern psychologyPREFACEEXPLANATION OF REFERENCESCHAPTER I Froebel’s Anticipation of Modern PsychologyCHAPTER II Froebel’s Analysis of MindCHAPTER III Will and its Early ManifestationsCHAPTER IV Characteristics of the Earliest ConsciousnessCHAPTER V How Consciousness is Differentiated.—The Place of Action in the Development of Perception and of FeelingCHAPTER VI Instinct and InstinctsCHAPTER VII Play and Its Relation to WorkCHAPTER VIII Froebel’s Play-Material and its Original PurposeCHAPTER IX Weak Points ConsideredCHAPTER X Some Criticisms AnsweredAPPENDIX I On the Meaning of the Word “Activity”APPENDIX II Comparison of Plays noted by Froebel with the Enumeration given by GroosFOOTNOTESCopyright

Froebel as a pioneer in modern psychology

E. R. Murray

PREFACE

Some day Froebel will come to his own, and the carefulness of his observation, the depth of his thought, the truth of his theories, and the success of his actual experiments in education will all be acknowledged.There are few schools nowadays so modern as the short-lived Keilhau, with its spirit of freedom and independence and its “Areopagus” in which the boys themselves judged grave misdemeanours while the masters settled smaller matters alone. There are few schools now which have such an all-round curriculum, including, as it did, the mother tongue as well as classics and modern languages; ancient and modern history; Nature study and Nature rambles; school journeys, lasting for two or three weeks and extending as far as Switzerland for the older lads, while the younger boys visited German towns and were made acquainted with peasant life; definite instruction in field-work, in building and carpentry, etc.; religious teaching in which Middendorf endeavoured “to show the merits of the religions of all nations”; physical training with the out-of-doors wrestling ground and shooting stand and gymnasium “for every spare moment of the winter,” and organized games; and dramatic teaching where “classic dramas” and other plays were performed, and for which the boys built the stage and painted the scenes. There was even co-education, “flirtation being unknown,” because all had their heads so full of more important matters, but where free intercourse of boy and girl “softened the manners of the young German savages.”The purpose of this book is to show that all these things, besides the Kindergarten and the excellent plan for the Helba Institute, did not come into being by chance, but were the outcome of the deep reflection of a man who combined the scientific with the philosophic temperament; and who, because his ideal as a teacher was “Education by Development,” had made a special study of the instinctive tendencies, and the requirements of different stages of child development, as I have tried to prove in Chapters VI and VII.I should like to explain one or two points, first, that though for all quotations I have referred to the most commonly used translations of Froebel’s writings, yet I have frequently given my own rendering when the other seemed inadequate; secondly, that I have endeavoured to give the context as often as possible, and have also given the actual German words, that I might not be accused of reading in modern ideas which are not really in the text; and, lastly, that I have purposely repeated quotations rather than give my readers the trouble of turning back to another page.In conclusion may I take this opportunity of paying grateful thanks first to Miss Alice Words and to Miss K. M. Clarke, without whose kind encouragement I should never have completed my task, and also to Professor Alexander for several helpful suggestions, and to Miss Ida Sachs for friendly help.E. R. Murray.

EXPLANATION OF REFERENCES

To the Works of Froebel quoted in the text

EEDUCATION OF MAN. TRANSLATED BY W. N. HAILMANN.MMUTTER U. KOSE LIEDER. TRANSLATED BY F. AND E. LORD.PPEDAGOGICS OF THE KINDERGARTEN. TRANSLATED BY JOSEPHINE JARVIS.LLETTERS.AAUTOBIOGRAPHY.

CHAPTER I Froebel’s Anticipation of Modern Psychology

“ A great man condemns the world to the task of explaining him.”The purpose of this little book is to show that Froebel’s educational theories were based on psychological views of a type much more modern than is at all generally understood. It is frequently stated that Froebel’s psychology is conspicuous by its absence, but in a somewhat close study of Froebel’s writings I have been again and again surprised to find how much Froebel seems to have anticipated modern psychology.A probable reason for the overlooking of so much sound psychological truth is to be found in the fact that much of it is obscured by details which seem to us trivial, but which Froebel meant as applications of the theories he was endeavouring to make clear to minds not only innocent of, but incapable of, psychology.Most educationists have read “The Education of Man,” but few outside the Kindergarten world are likely to have bestowed much thought on Froebel’s later writings. It is in these, however, that we see Froebel watching with earnest attention that earliest mental development which is now regarded as a distinct chapter in mental science, but which was then largely if not entirely ignored.With the same spirit of inquiry and the same field for investigation—for children acted and thought then as they act and think now—it is only natural that Froebel should have made at least some of the same discoveries as the genetic psychologist of today.It would be unfair at any date to expect a complete psychology from a writer whose subject is not mental science, but education. Mistakes, too, one must expect, and these are not to be ignored.[1]Still there remains a solid amount of psychological discovery for which Froebel has had as yet but little credit.Indeed, just as his disciples have been inclined, like all disciples, to think that their master has said the last word on his own subject, so have opponents of Froebelian doctrines, irritated perhaps by these pretensions, made direct attacks on somewhat insufficient grounds. In a later chapter, an attempt has been made to deal with what seems unfounded in such attacks.[2]The major part of the book, however, is intended to show the correctness of Froebel’s views on points now regarded as of fundamental importance, and generally recognized as modern theories. For this purpose passages from Froebel’s writings are here compared with similar passages from such undoubted authorities as Dr. James Ward, Professor Stout, Professor Lloyd Morgan, Mr. W. Macdougall, Mr. J. Irving King, and others.In the first place, it should be noted that Froebel was fully aware of the necessity for a psychological basis for his educational theories.Writing in 1841, he says: “ I am firmly convinced that all the phenomena of the child world, those which delight us, as well as those which grieve us, depend upon fixed laws as definite as those of the cosmos, the planetary system and the operations of Nature; it is therefore possible to discover them and examine them. When once we know and have assimilated these laws, we shall be able powerfully to counteract any retrograde and faulty tendencies in children, and to encourage, at the same time, all that is good and virtuous.”—L., p. 91.Nor was Froebel in any doubt as to how these laws are to be discovered, and his order of investigation is very similar to that prescribed by Professor Stout. The latter, though regarding genetic psychology as “the most important and most interesting,” considers that it should be preceded by:—1, A general analysis of consciousness, analytic and largely introspective; 2, An investigation of the laws of mental process, “analytic also, inasmuch as we endeavour to ascertain the general laws of mental process by analysis of the fully developed mind.”Froebel, too, regards the analytic as a necessary preparation for the genetic, and says that parents and teachers, who wish to supply the needs of the child at different stages of development: “ are to consider lifefirstlythrough looking into themselves, into the course of their own development, its phenomena and its claims—through the retrospection (Rückblick) of the earliest possible years of their own lives, and also the introspection (Einblick) of their present lives, that their own experience may furnish a key to the problem of the child’s condition (den Zustand des Kindes in sich zu lösen).Secondly, by the deepest possible search into the life of the child, and into what he must necessarily require according to his present stage of development.”—P., p. 168.Professor Stout adds later that anthropology and philology may ultimately yield results as important as those yielded by physiology. Froebel could have no idea of the physiological parallel to mental process, but he did not omit the anthropological inquiry, for in another passage he enlarges his first point, declaring that: “ It is essential for parents and teachers, for the sake of their children, and that their educational efforts may meet with a rich reward, not only to recall as far as possible the first phenomena, the course and conditions of the development of their own lives, but that they should compare this with the phenomena, the course and conditions of the development of the world, and of life in general in Nature and History, and so by degrees raise themselves to a knowledge of the general as well as of the particular laws of life development, that the guidance of the child may find in these laws a higher and stronger—their true foundation, as well as their surest determination.”—P., p. 66.Even his detractors generally allow that Froebel had a wonderful insight into child-nature, but this is too often spoken of as if it were due to some specialized faculty of intuition, not known to psychology.Froebel’s knowledge of child-nature came to him precisely as it comes to the psychologist of the present day, through patient observation of the doings of little children, and thoughtful interpretation of their possible meaning. It is true that he drew his conclusions from too narrow a field, but of this he was well aware. In a letter to a cousin thanking her for the “comparative account of the various manifestations of children,” which she had sent him, he complains,and this, be it remembered, in 1840, that “it is a subject to which one can rarely get even cultivated parents to pay attention,” and he adds: “ I would beg of you to collect as many observations for me as you can, both things which you yourself have observed, and also remarks made by your Robert and the other children when at play. If you have the time for this, pray do it for the furtherance of the cause; other friends are at work for me in the same way.”—L., p. 67.In another letter to this cousin he says: “ It would delight me greatly if you could confide to me what you remember of your feelings, perceptions, and ideas as a mother greeting the new-born life of her infant, and your observations of the first movements of its limbs and the beginning of the development of its senses.”—L., p. 110.To another friend he writes: “ In the interests of the children I have still another request to make—that you would record in writing the most important facts about each separate child. It seems to me most necessary for the comprehension, and for the true treatment of child-nature, that such observations should be made public from time to time, in order that children may become better and better understood in their manifestations, and may therefore be more rightly treated, and that true care and observation of unsophisticated childhood may ever increase.”—L., p. 89.Froebel made these requests, as he made his own observations, as the result of the conviction with which he declares himself “thoroughly penetrated,” “ that the movements of the young and delicate mind of the child, although as yet so small as to be almost unnoticeable, are of the most essential consequence to his future life.”—P., p. 53. “ Why do we observe the child less than the germ of a plant? Is it to be supposed that in the child, the capacity to become a complete human being is contained less than in the acorn is contained the capacity to become a strong, vigorous and complete oak?”—P., p. 62. “ We cannot pass over unmentioned the fact, essential for the whole life of the child, for the whole course of his development, that phenomena and impressions which seem to us insignificant, and which we generally leave unnoticed, have for the child, and especially for his inner world, most important results, since the child develops more through what seems to us small and imperceptible, than through what appears to us large and striking … hence—wholly contrary to prevailing opinion—nowhere is consideration of that which is small and insignificant of more importance than in the nursery.”—P., p. 125.Professor Dewey, one of the few important educational writers who do justice to Froebel as a pioneer, gives as a general summary of his educational principles: “ 1. That the primary business of school is to train children in co-operative and mutually helpful living; to foster in them the consciousness of mutual interdependence, and to help them practically in making the adjustments that will carry this spirit into overt deeds. “ 2. That the primary root of all educative activity is in the instinctive, impulsive attitudes and activities of the child, and not in the presentation and application of external material, whether through the ideas of others or through the senses; and that, accordingly, numberless spontaneous activities of children, plays, games, mimic efforts, even the apparently meaningless motions of infants—exhibitions previously ignored as trivial, futile, or even condemned as positively evil—are capable of educational use, nay, are the foundation-stones of educational effort. “ 3. That these individual tendencies and activities are organized and directed through the uses made of them in keeping up the co-operative living already spoken of; taking advantage of them to reproduce on the child’s plane the typical doings and occupations of the larger maturer society into which he is finally to go forth; and that it is through production and creative use that valuable knowledge is secured and clinched.”[3]So little, however, are these principles understood as Froebel’s, that in the Pedagogical Seminary for July, 1900, a paper was published on “The Reconstruction of the Kindergarten,” wherein it was maintained that the basis of reconstruction must be the child’s natural instincts. The writer, Mr. Eby, had apparently no idea that the Kindergarten was originally based on this very foundation. He evidently did not know that Froebel has given, in his “Education of Man,” a very fair account of these instincts, omitting nothing of great importance, and pointing, at least, to a better principle of classification than that adopted by Mr. Eby.[4]It is, however, only fair to Froebel to mention that he himself regarded his own account as far from being commensurate with the importance of the subject, for the year following that of the publication of “The Education of Man” he writes: “ Since these spontaneous activities of children have not yet been thoroughly thought out from a high point of view, and have not yet been regarded from what I might almost call their cosmical and anthropological side, we may from day to day expect some philosopher to write a comprehensive book about them.”—A., p. 76.The problems Froebel endeavoured to solve are precisely those which are absorbing the genetic psychologist of the present day, as stated, for example, in Mr. Irving King’s “Psychology of Child Development,” viz.: “to examine the various forms of the child’s activity, to get some insight into the nature of the child himself”—“to get at the meaning of child-life in terms of itself.”Every reader of “The Education of Man” will remember how Froebel uses his own boyish reminiscences to help others to understand childish actions often utterly misunderstood. In his paper on “Movement Plays” he writes: “ In that nurture of childhood which is intended to assist development, it is by no means sufficient to supply play-material in proportion merely to the stage of development already outwardly manifest. It is at the same time of the utmost importance to trace out the inner process of development and to satisfy its demands.… In the nurture, development, and education of the child, and especially in the attempt to employ him, his own nature, his own life and energy must be the main consideration. The knowledge of isolated and external phenomena may occasionally be a guide-post pointing our direction, but it can never be a path leading to the specific aim of child culture and education; forthe condition of education is none other than comprehension of the whole nature and essence of humanity as manifested in the child.”—P., p. 239.Just as Mr. Irving King, writing in 1904, says that we must take as our starting-point the child’s bodily activities, so did Froebel too declare, that: “ The present time makes upon the educator the wholly indispensable requirement—to comprehend the earliest activity, the first action of the child.”—P., p. 16.To this first action, Froebel devotes a whole paper, “Das erste Kindesthun,” the opening sentence of which contains the words: “ As the new-born child, like a ripe grain of corn, bears life within itself which will be developed progressively and spontaneously, though in close connection with life in general, so activity and action are the first manifestations of awakening child-life.”—P., p. 23.Writing in 1847, Froebel says that “decision, zeal, and perseverance” must be brought to bear upon his plan, in order that: “ (a) More careful observation of the child, his relationships and his line of development, may become general amongst us; and thereby “ (b) A better grounded insight be obtained into the child’s being, mental and physical, and the general collective conditions of his life.… Deeper insight will be gained into the meaning and importance of the child’s actions and outward manifestations.”—L., p. 248.This quotation is important as showing that Froebel was deliberately looking for “a line of development,” that he might better understand “the child’s being, mental and physical.” Considering that Froebel wrote between 1826 and 1850, the important points on which he may be said to have successfully anticipated modern psychology are, his recognition that the mind is what he calls “a tri-unity” of action, feeling, and thought; his treatment of early mental activity and his definition of will; his conception of the earliest consciousness as an undifferentiated whole; his recognition of the importance of action not only in the realm of perception, but also in that of feeling; and his surprisingly complete account of instinct. Such anticipations are due to the fact that the idea of development then new to the scientific world possessed his very soul. “ Humanity,which lives only in its continuous developmentand cultivation, seems to us dead and stationary, something to be modelled over again and again in accordance with its present type. We are ignorant of our own nature and the nature of humanity.…”—E., p. 146. “ God neither ingrafts nor inoculates. Hedevelopsthe most trivial and imperfect things in continuously ascending series and in accordance with eternal self-grounded and self-developing laws. And God-likeness is and ought to be man’s highest aim in thought and deed.”—E., p. 328.Justice has already been done to Froebel’s philosophy by Dr. John Angus MacVannel, who says in his closing paragraph: “ Froebel’s system has that unmistakable mark of greatness about it that makes it worth our faithful effort to understand it, and turn its conclusions to our advantage.… His philosophy of education taken as a whole seems, perhaps, the most satisfactory we have yet had. One cannot but believe, however, that the candid reader will at times find conclusions in his writings sustained by reasonings, that are inadequately developed and important questions by no means satisfactorily answered.… On the other hand we must not forget that it is insight, rather than exactitude, that is the life of a philosophy; herein lies the secret of Froebel’s lasting influence and power.”[5]

CHAPTER II Froebel’s Analysis of Mind

It is probably due to the emphasis which Froebel laid upon the careful observation and equally careful interpretation of the very earliest manifestations of mental activity, that his views as to mental analysis approach so closely to more modern ideas. His psychology cannot possibly be dismissed as “faculty psychology” in which the mind of a child is regarded as a smaller and weaker replica of the mind of an adult. The older psychologies, Professor Stout points out, are based chiefly, if not entirely, on introspection alone, while Froebel, as we have already seen, demanded close observation of children in general, and of “each separate child,” as well as consideration of mental development in the race, in addition to introspection.This “too exclusive reliance upon introspection” to which Professor Stout refers as “the fundamental error” of the faculty psychology, caused the older writers to infer that just as a child is possessed of legs, arms and hands, smaller and weaker, but otherwise apparently the same as those of an adult, even so did he possess mental “faculties,” such as memory and imagination, which, like the little legs and arms, only required exercise in order to grow strong. “It never occurred to them,” writes Professor Stout, “that the powers of understanding, willing, imagining, etc., instead of existing at the outset, might have arisen as the result of a long series of changes, each of which paved the way for the next.” It did more than “occur” to Froebel, it was a cardinal point with him. Professor Stout points out that the idea of development is essential to mental science, and Froebel was a biologist actually studying development, before he became a psychologist. He came to the study of mind prepared to find just such a series of changes.[6]In speaking of evolution in general, he says: “ Each successive stage of development does not exclude the preceding, but takes it up into itself, ennobled, uplifted, perfected.”—P., p. 198.He speaks of: “ the master thought, the fundamental idea of our time, that is, the education and development of mankind.”—L., p. 149.And in his “Education of Man,” in a long and eloquent passage on the need for continuity of training from the tiniest of beginnings, he says: “ It is highly pernicious and even destructive to consider the stages of human development as distinct, and not as life shows them, continuous in themselves, in unbroken transitions.”—E., p. 27.The analysis of mind which Froebel recognizes, is the still commonly accepted “tri-partite,” but he never fails to refer to this as a unity or a tri-unity. Indeed, his constant harping upon this string becomes almost wearisome, in spite of the ingenuity with which he continually varies his terms. “ The early phenomenon of child-life, of human existence in childhood, is an activity, one with feeling and perception (Wahrnehmen).”—P., p. 23. “ That the nature of man shows itself early in the life of the child, as feeling, acting and representing, thinking and perceiving, and that in this tri-unity is included the whole of his life utterance and activity, we have said repeatedly, and it lies open for any one to notice.”—P., p. 122.Disguised as Love, Life, and Light, this trinity is made the connection of man, on the one side with Nature, on the other side with God. God—who is Life, Love, and Light, the All—shows Himself in Nature, in the universe as life (energy), in humanity as love, and in wisdom or in the spirit as light. Energy or life man shares with Nature; by love he is united with humanity; and by light or wisdom he is at one with God.For his “gift plays” Froebel claims that they “take hold of the child in the tri-unity of his nature”: “ As now each of the single plays separately considered takes hold of the child early, in the tri-unity of his nature, as doing, feeling, and thinking, so yet more do the employments as a whole.”—P., p. 56.And a forcible passage runs: “ Only if the child is treated through fostering his instinct for activity in the tri-unity of his nature, as living, loving, and perceiving, in the unity of his life, only thus can he develop as that which he is, the manifold and organized, but in himself single, whole.”—P., p. 12.This development of the threefold yet single nature constitutes the “harmonious development,” reiteratedad nauseamand without explanation, in Kindergarten text-books. It is also the key to much that seems to us useless detail as to the toys and games of early childhood. The mother is told that: “ It is of the highest importance for the nurse to consider the earliest and slightest traces of the organization (Gliederung) within itself of the child’s mind as bodily, emotional and intellectual, that in his development from mere existence to perception and thought, none of these directions of his nature should be fostered at the expense of the other … the real foundation, the starting-point of human development is the heart and the emotions, but cultivation of action and thought (die Ausbildung zur That und zum Denken) must go side by side with it, constantly and inseparably: and thought must form itself into action, and action resolve and clear itself into thought; but both have their roots in the emotional nature.”[7]—P., p. 42.The first part of the following quotation from a letter written in 1851 towards the close of Froebel’s life might almost be taken from a text-book of the present day: “ We find also three attitudes, spheres of work, and regions of mind in man: “ (1) the region of the soul, the heart, Feeling; “ (2) the region of the mind, the head, Intellect; “ (3) the region of the active life, the putting forth to actual deed, Will. “ As mental attitudes these three divisions seem the wider apart the more we contemplate them; as spheres of work and regions of mind they seem quite separate and perfect opposites. But the highest and most absolute opposition is that which most needs, and necessitates reconciliation; complete opposites condition their uniting link. The need for the uniting link appears in almost every circumstance of life.… To satisfy that need is the most imperative need now set before the human race, … you will realize that the strengthening of character which we all agree to be a necessity of the age, is to be gained not only by stimulating and elevating the soul and the emotions, but by raising the whole mind, by training the intellect and the will.… Then the heart would acknowledge and esteem the intellectual power, just as the intellect already recognizes feeling as that which gives true warmth to our lives; and life as a whole would make manifest the soul which quickens existence, and gives it a meaning, as well as the intellect which gives it precision and culture.Intellect,feelingandwillwould then unite,a many-sided power, to build up and constitute our life. In the room of the unstable character which must result from the mere cultivation of the one department of emotion; in the room of the doubt, or, I might say empty negation, which too often proceeds from the mere cultivation of the intellect; in the room of the materialism, animalism, and sensuality which must come from the mere attention to the body, and physical side of our nature; we should then have the harmonious development of every side of our nature alike, we should then be able to build up a life which would be everywhere in touch with God, with physical nature, with humanity at large.”—L., p. 300.In his article in the Encyclopædia Britannica, Dr. Ward says, that in taking up the question of what we exactly mean bythinking, “we are really passing one of the hardest and fastest lines of the old psychology—that between sense and understanding. So long as it was the fashion to assume a multiplicity of faculties the need was less felt for a clear exposition of their connection. A man had senses and intellect much as he had eyes and ears; the heterogeneity in the one case was no more puzzling than in the other.”In this connection it can again be shown that Froebel was in advance of the old psychologists. In the first of the two games in the Mother-Play book dealing with sense-training—two out of forty-nine, the remainder dealing chiefly with action—he makes it very clear that he draws no hard and fast line between sense and understanding. He tells the mother that Nature speaks to the child through the senses, which act as gateways to the world within, but that light comes from the mind: “ Durch die Sinne, schliesst sich auf des Innern ThorDoch der Geist ist’s der dies zieht ans Licht hervor.”And when he says that the baby in the cradle should not be left unoccupied if it wakes, he uses a pronoun in the singular in referring to “the activity of sense and mind.” He suggests hanging a cage containing a lively bird in the child’s line of vision and adds: “ This attracts the activity of the child’s senses and mind and givesitnourishment in many ways.”[8]—E., p. 49.The faculty psychology and the formal discipline theory that came from it, says Professor Horne, did not admit the possibility of training one faculty, e.g. perception, by training another, e.g. reason, “it was not the mind that was trained, but its faculties.”It is, however, of the merest infant that Froebel uses such expressions as “the awakening power of thought,” “the tenderest growth of mind,” and tells the mother that he “shows trace of thought, and can draw conclusions.” The ball is given to the baby to help him “to find himself in the midst of his perceptive, operative, and his comparing (thinking) activity.”[9]—P., p. 55.Long years before this he had written of the teaching of drawing, “this instruction addresses itself to the senses, and through them to the power of thought.”—E., p. 294. “ He who does not perceive traces of the future development of the child, who does not foster these with self-consciousness and wisdom, when they lie hidden in the depths and in the night, will not see them clearly, will not nourish them suitably, at least, not sufficiently, when they lie open before him.”—P., p. 58.Instead of ready-made faculties Froebel recognizes possibilities, conditions, which will remain possibilities if the necessary stimulus is not forthcoming, for in noting how the mother talks to her infant, though she is obliged to confess that there can be no understanding of her words, he says the mother’s instinctive action is right: “ for that which will one day develop, and which must originate, begins and must begin when as yet nothing exists but the conditions, the possibility.”—P., p. 40.Elsewhere he asks: “ Is it to be supposed that in the child the capacity for becoming a complete human being is contained less than in the acorn is contained the capacity to become a strong, vigorous and complete oak?”—P., p. 62.And he speaks of how the mother appeals to the infant as “ understanding, perceptive and capable, for where there is not the germ of something, that something can never be called forth and appear.”—P., p. 31.It is true that in the same passage in which he speaks of “the tenderest growth of mind,” he does speak of mental powers (Geisteskräfte), as indeed every one does, but a few lines above he has spoken of “the cultivation of the mental power of the child in different directions.”[10]Besides, the mental powers to which he here alludes, and which are to be awakened and fostered in the infant, are the powers “to compare, to infer, to judge, to think.”—P., p. 57.Here, too, Froebel gives a description of what he means by memory, and it is clearly not a separate faculty considered apart from another faculty, viz. imagination: “ The plays carried on with the ball awaken and exercise the power of the child’s mind to place again before himself mentally a vanished object, to see it mentally even when the outer perception is gone; these games awaken and practise the power of re-presenting, of remembering, of holding fast in remembrance an object formerly present, of again thinking of it; that is, they foster the memory.”—P., p. 57.So even the infant is to think, and the progress is well described in the Mother Plays as “ from experience of a thing, joined with thought about it, up to pure thought.”—M., p. 121.In a lecture[11]given many years ago, Dr. Ward sought to drive home to teachers the futility of this hard and fast line between sense training and training to think. And there are some interesting parallels between Dr. Ward’s metaphors here and Froebel’s writing in “The Education of Man.” Dr. Ward said: “ Training of the senses, as it is not very happily called, is, if it is anything, so much intellectual exercise.… And nothing can be more absurd than to suppose it is not necessary.… By a judicious training in observation you begin to make a child think when it is five years old.… If a child is to think to any purpose, he must think as he goes on; as soon as the material he has gathered begins to oppress him he must think it into shape, or it will tend to smother intellectual life at its dawn, as a bee is drowned in its own honey, for want of cells in which to store it.”It is in describing how the little child collects pebbles, twigs, leaves, etc., that Froebel writes: “ The child loves all things that enter his small horizon and extend his little world. To him the least thing is a new discovery; but it must not come dead into the little world, nor lie dead therein, lest it obscure the small horizon and crush the little world.… It is the longing for interpretation that urges the child to appeal to us … the intense desire for this that urges him to bring his treasures to us and lay them in our laps.”—E., p. 73.The help we are told to give at first is merely to supply the child with a name, for “through the name the form is retained in memory and defined in thought.” Later the mother is told to provide “encouragement and help, that the child may weave into a whole what he has found scattered and parted.” As a type of the help considered necessary we have: “‘ Mother, are the pigeons and hens birds, for the pigeons live in pigeon-houses and the chickens don’t fly?’ ‘Have they no feathers, child; have they no wings? Haven’t they two legs like all birds?’ ‘Are the bees and butterflies and beetles birds, too: for they have wings and fly much higher.…’ ‘Look, they have no feathers, they build no nests.’”—M., p. 56.In another passage Froebel calls it not only advisable but necessary that the parents, without being pedantic or over-anxious, should connect the child’s doings with language, because this “increases knowledge, and awakens that judgment and reflection (die Urtheilskraft und das Nachdenken), to which man, left to Nature, does not attain sufficiently early.”—E., p. 79.Giving names, and helping in classification is surely a sufficient parallel to Dr. Ward’s “thinking the material into shape,” and just as the latter says that by such training you can “make a child think” when it is five years old, so Froebel in his chapter on “Man in Earliest Childhood” makes his ideal father “sum up his rule of conduct in a few words,” declaring that: “To lead children early to think, this I consider the first and foremost object of child-training.”—E., p. 87.Froebel’s theories, then, cannot be dismissed as based on “faculty psychology,” since it seems clear that wherever he found them his views on mental analysis were very similar to those now generally accepted. It is more remarkable, however, that he should have modern views about Conation and Will.

CHAPTER III Will and its Early Manifestations

It is open to doubt whether any modern psychologist has yet given a better definition of fully developed Will than that given by Froebel eighty-seven years ago: “ Will is the mental activity of man ever consciously proceeding from a definite point, in a definite direction, to a definite conscious end and aim, in harmony with the whole nature of humanity.”—E., p. 96.With this definition compare what Professor Stout has to say: “ In its most complex developments, mental activity takes the form of self-conscious and deliberate volition, in which the starting-point is the idea of an end to be attained, and the desire to attain it; and the goal is the realization of this end, by the production of a long series of changes in the external world … it belongs to the essence of will, not merely to be directed towards an end, but to ideally anticipate this and consciously aim at it.”[12]