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+The Project Gutenberg EBook of Education in The Home, The Kindergarten,
+and The Primary School, by Elizabeth P. Peabody
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+Title: Education in The Home, The Kindergarten, and The Primary School
+
+Author: Elizabeth P. Peabody
+
+Release Date: March 25, 2011 [EBook #35677]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: UTF-8
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK EDUCATION IN THE HOME ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by David Edwards, Emmy and the Online Distributed
+Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net (This file was
+produced from images generously made available by The
+Internet Archive)
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+LECTURES
+
+IN THE
+
+TRAINING SCHOOLS
+
+FOR
+
+Kindergarten Teachers.
+
+
+
+
+EDUCATION
+
+IN
+
+THE HOME, THE KINDERGARTEN,
+
+AND
+
+THE PRIMARY SCHOOL.
+
+BY
+
+ELIZABETH P. PEABODY.
+
+
+_WITH AN INTRODUCTION_
+
+BY
+
+E. ADELAIDE MANNING.
+
+    "Come, let us live _with_ our children."--FRÅ’BEL.
+
+          LONDON:
+          SWAN SONNENSCHEIN, LOWREY & CO.,
+          PATERNOSTER SQUARE.
+          1887.
+
+
+
+
+INTRODUCTION.
+
+
+AMONG those who in the last twenty years have helped to spread a
+knowledge of the educational principles of Froebel beyond the limits of
+his native country, Miss Elizabeth Peabody's name deserves to be
+specially remembered. It is mainly owing to her enthusiastic efforts
+that the value of the Kindergarten was early recognised in the United
+States, and that its first American promoters were encouraged to
+maintain, amid many difficulties, a standard of real efficiency for the
+teachers of Froebel's system. Miss Peabody had long occupied herself,
+theoretically and practically, with educational subjects. Not satisfied
+by merely intellectual methods of instruction, and impatient of the
+superficiality which was too often approved, she made it her great aim
+to train character, and, by a simultaneous development of children's
+mental capacities and of their moral nature, to prepare them for the
+responsible duties of life. It was not surprising that when Miss
+Peabody, holding such views of education, came in contact with the ideas
+and the work of Froebel, she at once experienced the delight always
+attached to the discovery that the problems exercising our own minds
+have been successfully solved by some one who has started from
+principles such as ours, and who has cultivated the same ideal. She
+found that Froebel had carried into practice that very kind of training
+of which she had realized the immense importance, and that he had placed
+in a clear light truths which she had already more dimly perceived.
+Eager to inform herself about the new system, Miss Peabody travelled, in
+1868, to Europe, on purpose to visit in Germany the Kindergartens
+established by Froebel, who was no longer living, and by his best
+pupils. On her return to America, she devoted herself for many years to
+the introduction and improvement of Kindergartens and of training
+institutions, and to enlightening, by her writings and addresses,
+mothers and educators respecting the value and simplicity of Froebel's
+methods. Miss Peabody has the satisfaction of witnessing a good measure
+of success from her generous exertions, in the increasing number of
+advocates of the Kindergarten in America, in its adoption as a first
+department of many State primary schools, and in the numerous private
+and charity Kindergartens founded from North to South, and from New York
+to San Francisco. Advanced now in years, this warm-hearted lady is
+engaged in other lines of philanthropic work, but she retains, and still
+manifests, her earnest interest in the educational progress which she
+has laboured so actively to secure.
+
+Ever since Miss Peabody's zeal was kindled for Froebel's ideal as to
+young children's education, her help and criticism have been sought by
+the trainers of Kindergarten students in America, and by all who, with
+serious purpose, have thus worked for the movement. Hence she has often
+delivered lectures at the opening of the session at Normal Colleges, and
+on other occasions when she saw an opportunity of exercising influence
+in favour of rational principles of education. This book, which appeared
+only lately at Boston, consists of a few of such lectures. It is now,
+with Miss Peabody's consent, published in England, where many parents
+and teachers will be glad to profit by the author's wise and loving
+study of little children, and her sympathetic insight into Froebel's
+methods for their development. During the last few years various
+thoughtful writers on education have drawn attention here to the subject
+of infant management, and it is remarkable how widely the principles of
+Froebel and Pestalozzi are now recognised and accepted. But books are
+still greatly needed which, especially addressed to those who have
+charge of children, urge in a convincing manner how essential it is
+that the first few years should be rightly guided, and indicate certain
+defined educational aims. I think that Miss Peabody's lectures are
+likely to prove very useful in this direction. Though her readers will
+perhaps contest some of her psychological deductions, they cannot fail
+to be impressed and benefited by the high tone of her reasoning, by her
+evidently tender and reverent love of children, and by her excellent
+suggestions in regard to their harmonious development.
+
+Amongst its other merits, this book tends to correct the still too
+prevalent notion, that the Kindergarten is a peculiar--an almost
+magical--institution, which provides a sure remedy for children's
+imperfections, apart from their home conditions. Doubtless, in the case
+of poor neglected little ones, the contrast between their treatment at
+the Kindergarten and their ordinary experience, is necessarily striking
+and decided, because the parents are careless and ignorant. But
+Froebel's view of the Kindergarten was, that it should be a
+supplementary help to the loving and judicious mother, who, owing to her
+many household and other duties, might be unable to give, through the
+whole day, to her younger children the regular attention which their
+awakening faculties need. It was to be a portion of the home pattern and
+web of training, not a patch of a new texture. He saw that a child
+requires to have about it, as Miss Peabody says, "love and thought in
+practical operation," and this not now and then, but always. And as the
+mother may have at times to transfer her children to the charge of
+others, he organised the Kindergarten--a higher nursery, under refined
+and motherly influences, for those that have passed out of babyhood.
+There, on the same principles as at home, they may be gently tended for
+two or three hours of the day, and developed in body, mind, and
+character. Froebel's object also was to provide companionship for these
+children, adapted to their age and attainments, which could only be done
+by including some from outside the family circle. But again, he desired
+to give the opportunity to inexperienced mothers of observing the
+patient and resourceful guidance carried out by even young teachers, who
+had been trained to study children, and had learnt how to occupy them
+suitably. Here we see another link with the home. Now Miss Peabody
+entered so much into Froebel's ideas that she helps to remove the
+Kindergarten out of its supposed exceptional sphere, and to show that
+the teachers represent temporarily the mother, doing that which the
+mother also aims, or ought to aim, at doing, for the children's good.
+
+These Lectures are also useful in presenting a high ideal of
+Kindergarten teaching. Miss Peabody sees that the work of educating
+requires special qualifications in those who undertake it, and that such
+as are not fitted for it, had better take up a different career. At the
+same time placing, as always, character above intellect, she considers
+that most women, whose religious and moral nature is well cultivated,
+and who take pains to develop their mental powers, may hope for success
+in devoting themselves to the training of young children. Her writings
+are calculated to inspire the teacher with hearty zest for her labour,
+and yet with an abiding feeling that even years of practice leave her
+far behind her ever advancing standard. Miss Peabody encourages no
+exaggerated estimate of Froebel's thoughts and methods. She freely
+recognises that he gained many truths from fellow-students of children's
+nature and faculties; but she claims for him the originality which
+belongs to those who with unselfish aims bestow close attention on a
+subject of deep human interest. To teachers, therefore, as well as to
+all who love children, she says--and with this quotation I will close my
+few introductory remarks--"You will not be wise if you do not look out
+of Froebel's window."
+
+                                            E. A. MANNING.
+
+
+
+
+LECTURE I.
+
+THE KINDERGARTNER.
+
+
+WHOEVER proposes to become a kindergartner according to the idea of
+Frœbel, must at once dismiss from her mind the notion that it requires
+less ability and culture to educate children of three, than those of ten
+or fifteen years of age. It demands more; for, is it not plain that to
+superintend and guide accurately the _formation_ of the human
+understanding itself, requires a finer ability and a profounder insight
+than to listen to recitations from books ever so learned and scientific?
+To form the human understanding is a work of time, demanding a knowledge
+of the laws of thought, will, and feeling, in their interaction upon the
+threshold of consciousness, which can be acquired only by the study of
+children themselves in their every act of life--a study to be pursued in
+the spirit that reveals what Jesus Christ _meant_, when he said: "He
+that receiveth a little child in my name, receiveth _me, and Him that
+sent me_;" "Woe unto him who offends one of these little ones, for their
+spirits behold the face of my Father who is in heaven."
+
+Not till children who have been themselves educated according to
+Frœbel's principles, grow up, will there be found any adult persons who
+can keep kindergartens without devoting themselves to a special study of
+child-nature in the spirit of devout humility. For we are all suffering
+the ignorance and injury inevitable from having begun our own lives in
+the confusions of accidental and disorderly impressions, without having
+had the clue of reason put into our hands by that human providence of
+education, which, to be true, must reflect point by point the Divine
+Providence, that according to the revelations of history is educating
+the whole race, and which may find hints for its procedure in observing
+the spontaneous play of children fresh from the hands of the Creator.
+
+The education of children by a genial training of their spontaneous
+playful activities to the production of order and beauty within the
+humble sphere of childish fancy and affection, was a fresh idea with
+Frœbel; but, like every universal idea, it was not absolutely new in the
+world. Plato says, in his great book on _Laws_:--
+
+"Play has the mightiest influence on the maintenance and non-maintenance
+of laws; and if children's plays are conducted according to laws and
+rules, and they always pursue their amusements in conformity with order,
+while finding pleasure therein, it need not be feared that when they are
+grown up they will break laws whose objects are more serious."
+
+And again, in his _Republic_, he says:--
+
+"From their earliest years, the plays of children ought to be subject to
+strict laws. For if their plays, and those who mingle with them, are
+arbitrary and lawless, how can they become virtuous men, law-abiding and
+obedient? On the contrary, when children are early trained to submit to
+laws in their plays, love for these laws enters into their souls with
+the music accompanying them, and helps their development."
+
+You will observe Plato's association of music with the laws that are to
+regulate play. Music, with the Greeks, had indeed a broader meaning than
+attaches to the word with us, who confine it to that subtle expression
+of the sense of law and harmony which is made in the element of sound,
+and addressed to the imagination through the ear. All knowledge and art
+inspired by the sacred Nine, they named _music_. Singing was no more
+music than dancing, drawing, the harmonizing of colors, plastic art,
+poetry, and science, which is nothing less than thinking according to
+the rhythmic laws of nature. To learn to commune with the Muses,
+daughters of Memory and Jove, who were led by the god Apollo,
+symbolizing the moral harmony of the universe, and expressing the mind
+of the Father of gods and men, by oracle, was learning _music_ or how to
+live divinely; a process which may commence before children leave the
+nursery, if their plays are regulated according to artistic principles.
+
+It is common to speak of the Greeks, as if they were of exceptional
+organization. I think their organization was only exceptional, because
+it was more carefully treated in infancy than ours is apt to be. I do
+not believe that in Greece, or anywhere in the world, there were ever
+more beautiful little children than there are in America; and the beauty
+would not be so transient as it unquestionably is with us, if truly
+cultivated persons took our children in hand from babyhood for the care
+of their bodies and minds, instead of leaving this work to the most
+ignorant class of the community, such as the general run of the servants
+who have the education of them during their earliest infancy. Even many
+parents who take care of their own children do not make it an object to
+study physiology or psychology, and seem to think that there is nothing
+in little children which requires special study, except indeed at the
+very first, when the child is put into the mother's arms more helpless
+than the lowest form of animal life (for the very insect is endowed by
+nature, as the child is not, with enough absolute knowledge--we call it
+instinct--to fulfil its small circle of relations without help of its
+parents). It seems mysterious, at first sight, that the child, whose
+duty and whose destiny it is to have dominion over nature, should be
+endowed least of all creatures with any absolute knowledge of it. But
+the mystery is solved when we consider that the happiness which is
+distinctively human, is only to be found in the discovery and enjoyment
+of ever-widening relations to our kind, with the fulfilment of the
+duties belonging to them. It is the absolute helplessness of the human
+infant which challenges the maternal instinct to rush to his rescue,
+lest he should die at once. And to continue to study his manifestations
+of pleasure and discontent with obedient respectfulness, is the
+perfection of the maternal nursing. But when the child has got on so far
+as to know the simplest uses of its own body, and especially after it
+has learned enough words to express its simplest wants and sensations,
+even parents seem to think it can get on by itself, so that children
+from about two to five years of age are left to self-education, as it
+were; this virtual abandonment being crossed by a capricious and
+arbitrary handling of them--mind and body--on the part of those around
+them, which is even worse than the neglect; for when are children more
+unable, than between three and five years old, to guide their own
+thoughts and action? How would a garden of flowers fare, to be planted,
+and then left to grow with so little scientific care taken by the
+gardener, as is bestowed upon children between one and five years old?
+
+Frœbel, in the very word kindergarten, proclaimed that gospel for
+children which holds within it the promise of the coming of the kingdom,
+in which God's will is to be done on earth as it is in heaven--a
+consummation which we daily pray for with our lips, but do not do the
+first thing to bring about, by educating our children in the way of
+order, which is no less earth's than "heaven's first law," and makes
+earth heaven so far as it is fulfilled.
+
+A kindergarten means a guarded company of children, who are to be
+treated as a gardener treats his plants; that is, in the first place,
+studied to see what they are, and what conditions they require for the
+fullest and most beautiful growth; in the second place, put into or
+supplied with these conditions, with as little handling of their
+individuality as possible, but with an unceasing genial and provident
+care to remove all obstructions, and favor all the circumstances of
+growth. It is because they are living organisms that they are to be
+_cultivated_--not _drilled_ (which is a process only appropriate to
+insensate stone).
+
+I think there is perhaps no better way of making apparent what this
+kindergartning is, which makes such an importunate demand on your
+consideration, than to tell you how the idea germinated and grew in the
+mind of Frœbel himself; for thus we shall see that it would be
+unreasonable to expect that it could be improvised by every teacher; but
+that here, as elsewhere in human life, God has sent into the world a
+gifted person to guide his fellows, according to the law enunciated by
+St. John in the 38th verse of the 4th chapter of his Gospel.
+
+We have the materials of this history on Frœbel's own authority, in an
+autobiographical letter that he wrote to the Duke of Meiningen, whose
+interest in him was excited by an incident so characteristic of Frœbel,
+that I will relate it. Having heard of a cruel and stupid opposition
+made to the ardent educator by the unthinking officials of a region
+where he was making a martyr of himself, the duke made inquiries, which
+resulted in his offering him the situation of head-tutor to his only
+son. But Frœbel astonished him with a refusal of the place, sending the
+duke word that it would be impossible to educate, in a perfect manner, a
+child so isolated by conventional rank and circumstances that he must
+inevitably conceive himself to be intrinsically superior to other
+children. The duke was so much struck that a poor man, struggling with
+every difficulty, should refuse one of the highest posts in a royal
+household, with all its emoluments, from a purely conscientious scruple
+of this kind, that his curiosity was piqued. He sent for Frœbel, and
+they had a conversation upon the principles and spirit of a truly human
+education, by which Frœbel convinced him that a noble moral development
+was indispensable to a truly intellectual one, so that the duke was
+actually persuaded to send his son as an equal with other boys to a
+neighboring school. One day, some little time after, the boy came home
+_roaring_, on account of a beating he had received from one of his
+playmates. The duke, in a transport of rage, asked the name of the
+offender, and said that he should be immediately expelled from the
+school. Then was Frœbel's advice justified. The young prince dried his
+tears, refused to tell the boy's name, and declared that "the beating
+was all fair!" It is quite consistent with these facts, that the duke
+should ask Frœbel how his idea grew in his mind. Frœbel's answer is
+still extant. I have not been able to get the original text, but I can
+give you the substance of it, as it was given to me.
+
+Friedrich Frœbel was the son of a laborious pastor of seven villages in
+Thuringia. He lost his mother before his remembrance, and fell into the
+care of hard-worked domestic servants, with no light upon his infant
+life except what came from the love and sympathy of two older brothers,
+who cherished him when they were at home from boarding-school. The
+parsonage was in the shadow of the church, and into it no ray of
+sunshine ever came; and the child was kept drearily in the house. He
+tells of seeing workmen building a part of the church that had become
+dilapidated, and how he longed to imitate them; and traces to this
+desire of employing the time that hung so heavily on his hands, his
+discovery of the building instinct, so universal in childhood, and which
+he thought should always have simple materials afforded it with which to
+express itself. At last his father married again, and at first the
+stepmother petted the young child of her husband, and awakened in him a
+hope of a satisfying love, which he reciprocated with all the energies
+of his long-starved heart. But when the merely instinctive woman had a
+child of her own, a certain jealousy arose in her, and she repulsed poor
+little Friedrich, and "no longer"--as he pathetically remarks--"called
+him _thou_," (du) which is an endearing expression in German, but _he_
+(er), which has a rough association. It is plain that the child was
+endowed with an immense sensibility to, or more than ordinary
+presentiment of the Divine Order of Nature, and with the extreme
+tendency to reflection always involved in this gift. As he was so poorly
+developed physically, he became in his joyless early life perhaps
+morbidly nervous. Disappointed in his timid efforts to please, all the
+sweet bells of his nature were jangled, and he was miserable--he knew
+not why. He says he always found himself doing the wrong thing--the too
+much, or the too little--and was complained of to his father, who
+treated him as a naughty boy. But sometimes the pastor took him out of
+his stepmother's way, to accompany himself in his parochial visits, in
+which Frœbel says he seemed continually to be settling family quarrels.
+This made on the child's mind an impression of things that was rather
+ludicrously expressed, when he one day asked of his oldest brother, who
+happened to come home from boarding-school, why it was that God had not
+made people all men, or all women, so that there should not be so much
+quarrelling in the world. In order to divert him from such premature
+consideration of social questions, the posed elder brother undertook to
+teach him botany according to the sexual system, revealing to him the
+law of contrasts conciliated with each other for the production of
+harmony and beauty. The child was delighted with what he was shown; but
+still his exceptionally moral genius importunately asked, why may not
+human differences be thus harmonized, to produce happiness and goodness?
+The presentiment of the great truth which was felt in his heart, though
+not yet caught by his mind, was signalized by another anecdote that he
+tells of himself. There was a rumor among the peasants of North Germany
+(it was about the year 1792) that the world was coming to an end; but
+Frœbel declares that he could not make himself feel alarmed. He says he
+was sure it could not be true, because the will of God had not yet been
+brought about in human life. This extraordinary reflection of a child of
+ten years old was preceded, probably, by a happy change that came over
+him in consequence of the visit of his maternal uncle to his father's
+house; who, seeing that the child was not happy, invited him to go home
+with him to live with his grandmother. His uncle's house was bright and
+sunny, and he was received by his grandmother with joy and tenderness.
+Immediately the freedom of the fields was given him, provided only that
+he should come home punctually to the meals. He soon became so healthy
+and happy, that his uncle put him into a day school in the neighborhood,
+to the child's great delight. The school was opened, the first day he
+went into it, with a little sermon of the master's upon the text: "Seek
+first the kingdom of heaven and its righteousness, and all other things
+shall be added unto you." It must have been a wise and good discourse,
+for it left a life-long impression upon the mind of the little Frœbel.
+There was a law then, for human beings as well as for plants; human
+beings might consciously realize in happiness and virtue, the harmony
+and beauty unconsciously manifested by the vegetable world. For God was
+the Ever-present Friend and Lawgiver! He tells the duke how happy he
+felt himself in his new circumstances and opportunities, and blessed
+with this inspiring faith. After school, he went out to play with his
+schoolmates; but, alas! poor starveling of nature as he was, he found he
+could not play with his athletic companions, and had to sit on one side
+and look on; and then and there he distinctly came to a conclusion,
+which is a first principle of the kindergarten, that every child should
+have free exercise of his limbs in play, in order to get entire command
+of all the physical strength and agility they are capable of.
+
+After a few years of this happy home and school life, which he
+continually reflected upon in contrast with what he had suffered for so
+many years, the good grandmother died, and he was sent back to his
+stepmother. The question now came up, whether he should study for the
+university, where his brothers had gone; but the stepmother, in the
+interest of her younger child, opposed his father's spending the money,
+and he went to a farmer to learn practical agriculture. But he was
+physically so incompetent to the labor of a farm life, that it did not
+pay; and being sent home by the farmer, he was finally apprenticed to a
+forester, where he found genial occupation in wood-lore, and in studying
+geometry for the purpose of surveying. Here he became a thorough and
+ardent mathematician. But his friend the forester died, or was removed,
+which brought this occupation to a premature close. At that moment,
+however, a maternal relation died, and left him a little money, so that
+he went to the University of Jena, where he devoted himself principally
+to the physical sciences; and by and by we find him curator of the
+Mineralogical Museum of Berlin. Here he made a great impression on the
+mind of a young lady who frequented the museum, by the "sermons" that he
+found "in stones," for he read them out to her, showing that in
+inorganic nature, so called, could be traced not only laws of decay,
+that threw into stronger light those laws of life that he had learned to
+see in vegetation, but those of crystallization. Everywhere he read
+God's revelation of the processes of life and death, which also make
+human development and happiness, or its deterioration and misery.
+
+The trumpet call of patriotism, to rescue Germany from French despotism,
+made by the good Queen Louise of Prussia, called him from these peaceful
+studies to partake in the great national act of delivering his country;
+and he obeyed it by volunteering his service. Though his regiment was
+never called into battle, he always rejoiced in the effects upon himself
+of learning the military drill, as well as in the life-long friendships
+he made in camp. After the war was over, a legacy received at the death
+of his uncle Hoffman gave him the means to enter an architect's office, to
+which he had a great attraction. He was boarding at Frankfort-on-the-Main,
+where Middendorf and other of his late military friends were boarding,
+who had just engaged themselves as teachers in the city, waiting to
+perfect this arrangement. It was a moment when there was a great
+uprising of education in Germany, and that system was beginning to
+germinate, which has turned out to make Prussia the effective power in
+Europe that she has lately proved herself to be; and whose first
+principle is, that the primary is the most important stage of education.
+In connection with this general movement, there was about to be
+established a new school in Frankfort; and Grüner, its principal, who
+was one of the boarders, talked over with Frœbel and the others the new
+plan. Whatever Frœbel said was so striking and vital, that Grüner at
+last exclaimed: "Plainly this is your vocation! Give up the
+architecture, and come in with us, and help to build men." Strange to
+say, though Frœbel had all his life been meditating upon the secret of
+human education, this was the first time it occurred to him to make it
+his own business. The more he thought of Grüner's suggestion, the more
+he liked it; and the issue was, that he took one of the younger classes
+in the new school. Immediately afterwards he wrote to his brother that
+at last he had found his element--he "felt like a bird in air, a fish in
+water." But the teachers were hampered in their action by the
+proprietors of the school; and after a season Grüner said to Frœbel,
+"You should lead; not be led. I release you from your engagement. Set up
+independently, and carry out your own ideas unhindered."
+
+When his purpose of leaving was known, one of the parents who patronized
+the school, gave him his two sons to educate, just as he should think
+best; and because he now heard of Pestalozzi, he took them to Yverdun,
+where he remained as pupil with them, for a season. But he was not quite
+satisfied with Pestalozzi's methods. He saw there was a process to be
+attended to, anterior to the observation of objects; namely, to employ
+and discipline the activity of children yet too young to attend except
+to what they are themselves doing. Education was to begin, as he saw, in
+doing, and thence proceed to knowing. In returning from Yverdun, his
+elder brother, and his younger brother's widow, offered him their
+children to add to the two young Frankforters; and the widow offered,
+besides, a small house that she owned in Keilhau, if he would fit it up.
+He and Middendorf and another friend united together and accepted this
+offer; and, with their own hands repaired the house, living in the
+outbuildings meanwhile and subsisting on rations most carefully
+economized. They then, for one thing, went to work on the land, which
+they taught the children to cultivate, and deduced their lessons out of
+the objects into which they were putting their life and labor. To these
+six children three cultivated men devoted themselves; and Frœbel also
+wrote to the lady that used to study with him in the Mineralogical
+Museum of Berlin, and she took her fortune, and left her rank, to help
+the poor schoolmaster in his life work, as the most devoted of wives.
+
+Working on the land was not all that they did. They began with it,
+because the children of the city had been rather starved of the
+gratification of that instinct to work in the earth, which very soon
+appears in all children--though, as Frœbel says, it will die out by
+being left uncultivated. He found that his pupils had been already
+injured by their artificial city life, and in many ways they had things
+to unlearn. It was not a perfectly easy thing to determine how much
+liberty to give to individual tendencies that had been exaggerated by
+the reactions of disorder, or of an artificial order. Frœbel thought the
+educator should give full play to all that is universal in human nature
+without pampering human idiosyncrasy, to do which was the vicious point
+of Rousseau's system that Frœbel has happily avoided. It was natural
+that he should first bring before his pupils the processes of vegetable
+growth, because it was in observing them that he had himself first found
+the laws of God. But he was older than any child in the kindergarten
+when he learned that lesson. Observation of anything outward is not the
+first thing in human development, but exertion of powers from within,
+which provokes the reaction of the outward and makes it known.
+
+I cannot follow out, in this introductory lecture, all his studies of
+the nature of man in these children, and all his experiments of
+cultivation. But I hope to do so in those which follow. The school
+founded in Keilhau exists to this day; but Frœbel ever found himself
+going back till at last he came to the infant in the mother's arms. Then
+he went into the huts of the peasantry to observe the mother's
+instinctive ways, reason upon them, purify them of her individual
+caprices and selfishness, and eliminate everything inconsistent with the
+divine idea and method of procedure, indicated by the instinct to the
+intelligence. He did not confine himself to Keilhau, where Middendorf
+steadily lived, though always keeping in relation with it; but went at
+times to other places, and once, for a year or two, left all, to go to
+the University of Göttingen to study philology. There he made himself
+acquainted with Greek, Latin, and Sanskrit, studying out those laws of
+mind exemplified in the formation and decay of languages. For it was the
+secret of a perfect development that he sought, and how to keep his
+pupils at the height they "were competent to gain." After half a century
+of the study of childhood in the living subject, and elaboration of the
+means of discipline, he settled in his old age into the conviction, that
+the most important period of human education was before the child was
+seven years old. And his last years were spent in preparing teachers
+for kindergartens at Rudolstadt and at Hamburg--which he did by teaching
+before them as well as by lecturing to them. Now it is what he
+discovered and elaborated, and has left, not in logical formulas, though
+he has certainly stated principles in words and embodied them in songs,
+but in processes of work and play, that is to be taught in our training
+schools. It took a Newton to discover gravitation and other principles
+of nature, but men without genius can comprehend and apply these
+principles, which they could not, like him, discover. So it took a
+Frœbel's genius to discover the first principles of education, and his
+sensibility to apply them without mistake; but intelligent and heartful
+young women can learn them and apply them, if--and only if--they will
+study devoutly and faithfully what he has taught; and in doing so they
+will find themselves--_not_ becoming artificial, but more profoundly
+natural than ever; for the true educational process is but the mother's
+instinct and method, clearly understood in all its bearings, and acted
+out. To be a kindergartner is the perfect development of womanliness--a
+working with God at the very fountain of artistic and intellectual power
+and moral character. It is therefore the highest finish that can be
+given to a woman's education, to be educated for a kindergartner; and it
+is from the most advanced classes of high and normal schools, public and
+private, that the pupils of our training schools should come, and from
+the most refined circles of private life--remembering that these are not
+identical with wealthy and fashionable ones, for in the latter we often
+find the vulgar and coarse. The refinement of feeling and thought which
+is always attended with gentle and courteous manners is a religious
+quality, that not seldom glorifies humble homes whose inmates escape the
+sometimes hardening effect of poverty by "seeing Him who is invisible,"
+while those "the imagination of whose hearts are evil continually," and
+even the merely frivolous, betray that they have "faculties that they
+have never used" though they dwell in palaces.
+
+Ever since the normal teaching of kindergartners was begun in America,
+in 1868, letters have been received from teachers, already at work in
+the old routine of primary instruction, asking for knowledge of the
+plays and occupations invented by Frœbel; in order that, by means of
+them, they may give such prestige to their infant schools as the name of
+kindergarten may. But this superficial, inappreciative use of Frœbel's
+processes, is as fatal to his reform as was _judaizing_ to the primitive
+Christian Church. Frœbel's method is a radical change of direction. It
+changes the educator's point of view. Instead of looking down upon the
+child, the kindergartner must clear her mind of all foregone arbitrary
+conclusions, and humbly look up to the innocent soul, which in its turn
+sees nothing but the face of the Father in heaven--(for thus Christ
+explains children's being "of the kingdom of heaven"). This is difficult
+for her to do, because--not seldom--a shadow has fallen on the original
+innocence of the children confided to her care, from those human beings
+in relation to them, who have not done for them what every human being
+needs by reason of the essential dependence of individuals upon their
+race.
+
+The child is doubtless an embryo angel; but no less certainly a possible
+devil. If the immortal will, impassioned by the heart, which never rests
+permanently satisfied till the mind recognizes God, be puzzled, it may
+be turned in a wrong direction by what it meets, and then the
+manifestation will be ugly and more or less hateful. Evil is the
+inevitable effect of an ignorant, disorderly action of the will; of its
+not adopting the laws of order, by which God creates the universe, and
+of which the universe is the unconscious exponent. But knowledge of the
+laws of order must come to guide the will, from outside the child's
+conscious individuality, _through the human providence of education_,
+in which the heavenly Father veils His infinite power, in order that the
+child may be free to make the choice of good, that shall lift him from
+the state, of merely instinctive being, into that union of Love and
+Thought, which characterizes a spirit _creative_, _i.e._, causing
+effects.
+
+Perhaps you will say that if human influence must embody Divine
+Providence, in order to educate, then children never will be educated.
+Well! Except in one instance I admit that children never have been
+educated up to the ideal standard. But the one instance of the perfectly
+Divine Son of the perfectly holy Mother; and the partial successes of
+such fitful good education as history and tradition report, forbid us to
+despair of making human education a worthy image of Divine Providence.
+_To despair of this_ is want of the proper action of human free
+will,--Faith.
+
+The first qualification of the true kindergartner, then, is Faith, which
+can be based only on the abiding conviction that God is with us "_to
+will and to do_," if we will only have the courage to take for granted
+that if _we are willing_, He will make of us divine guides to others.
+That He is calling them to be so, whoever feels a strong love of
+children, sympathy with their life, and sensibility to their beauty, may
+have a reasonable assurance; and that such as shall faithfully qualify
+themselves for the work will not fail of the divine help. But observe my
+proviso. Their love must not be a passing emotion, grounded on the
+children's superficial beauty. It must be a love that involves patience,
+that can stand the manifestation of ugly temper, and perverse will, and
+never lose sight of the embryo angel that wears for the moment the
+devilish mask. In children, evil is actual, but always superficial and
+temporary, if the educator does not become party to it by losing her own
+temper and idea. Also she must have resources by means of a cultivated
+understanding and imagination, to command the child's imagination and
+heart.
+
+It may be said that everybody cannot have, at will, imagination and
+culture. This is true; but such persons should not undertake to keep a
+kindergarten. Let them do something else; keep shop, cultivate
+vegetables, work the sewing machine; even keep those schools for older
+children, in which books are the main teachers. There are multitudes of
+things to be done; the greatest variety of functions to be performed in
+human life. But of all things to do, the cultivation of human beings at
+that period of life when they are utterly at the mercy of those who
+teach them, is the most sacred. Why rush into that, impelled by any
+motive below the highest?
+
+On the other hand, I do not wish to produce any artificial
+sentimentality on this subject. It is my belief that the average woman
+is sufficiently gifted by nature to make a good kindergartner, if she
+will give her nature fair play, by cultivating religious and moral
+sentiment; and will take pains to develop her intellect by the study of
+nature's laws in at least one department of science--that of vegetable
+physiology for instance, the materials of which are everywhere. One who
+_could not_ be educated to become a kindergartner, should never dare to
+become a mother; for she would not know even how to choose the
+assistance necessary to her for the work that ought to be done for every
+child by somebody. While I would discourage, and if possible effectually
+frighten every one from professing kindergartning who is morally
+disqualified by sordid aims, or by making it a means to another end than
+itself, I welcome the young and ardent to this beautiful womanly work,
+which, to do well, requires of them to do the very best thing for their
+own intellect and heart, and which, more certainly than anything else,
+will give them the secret of Power and Beauty.
+
+It was my privilege, a year or two since, to pass a week in one of the
+schools of the feeble-minded; and I there saw six women, some of them
+quite young girls, devoted to the terrible work of waking up Will and
+Perception in those poor prisoners of mal-organization, so many of them
+frightful to look upon. They were doing their work under the strongest
+sense of humanity and religion. It would have been impossible to do it
+at all, as they were doing it, had they had no other inspiration than
+the pay they were receiving. The main reward was in their having some
+success in waking up the mind. In their countenances something angelic
+was dawning; and this was not my fancy merely, for I heard the same
+remark made again and again, by persons who went there as I did. I do
+not think one of these women wished to leave the good work; and if
+acting on a mind-cherishing principle was so interesting, and productive
+of such reactive effects, in such sad circumstances, how much more may
+be expected from working upon children fairly gifted! The charm of the
+sadder work was, that, like kindergartning, it stimulated to profound
+study of the laws of mental nature, in order to work reverently among
+them, instead of arbitrarily, in defiance or irreverence of them. To do
+this made these women feel that they were working with God; and this
+made them practical saints. But why cannot we believe that God is
+present, and acting with us, and wooing us to act with Himself, in the
+joyous paradise of life, as well as in chambers of disease, and among
+the wretched? Is He not the God of the living and joyful, as well as of
+the dying and sad? Why is the church-yard only a grave-yard? Why should
+it not always be a kindergarten?
+
+One of the pleasantest observations that I made of the kindergartens of
+Germany--and I went to the very best ones, those kept by the
+kindergartners whom Frœbel had trained--was the happy absorption of the
+teachers in the children; their sympathy with them; the utter
+companionship between them. I never saw a punishment; I never heard a
+Don't (or its German equivalent); but when anything went wrong, there
+was always a pause, and sometimes questions were asked; and all seemed
+to wait till the inward guide had been brought out into consciousness
+(whether the thing in hand was social action or artistic work). Perhaps
+it might be harder work to govern American children. Their vivacious
+temperament, their lively energies, need "conscious law" as a curb,
+rather than as a spur. But all the more is it necessary for the American
+kindergartner to vivify the invisible guide; she should present order to
+the mind, by her genial questioning and conversation over the work in
+hand, rather than exert an arbitrary power which might stimulate the
+reaction of obstinacy or the subterfuges of cunning. To _govern_ is not
+the whole thing. The question is _how_ we govern; whether we so govern
+as to make a cringing slave, a cunning hypocrite, or an intelligent,
+law-abiding, self-respecting, _willing_ servant of God. I have seen a
+magnetic teacher produce a marvellous obedience, and apparent order, by
+his imposing presence and keen satire. He imagined that he governed by
+moral power; but as soon as he was out of the schoolroom, the children
+were the victims of their own impulses, to which seemed given a stronger
+spring by the enforced repression. There is no order which is more than
+skin deep, unless it be the free, glad obedience of the child to a law,
+which he perceives to be creative because it enables him to do something
+real. Nothing short of the union of love and thought can produce
+spiritual power, _i.e._, creativeness. It is only spiritual power that
+inaugurates order--the Eternal Beauty may be inaugurated in childhood
+and among childish toys.
+
+There is reason, on their own account, why we want our pupils, in this
+art of kindergartning, to be in their disposition and circumstances
+above merely pecuniary motive for entering on the work; and that is,
+because it will be long before the work will pay much in money. I need
+not adduce any other proof of this than our experience in Boston; where,
+for four years, the rarely gifted, thoroughly educated, religiously
+devoted Alma Kriege poured out her young energies on classes of less
+than a score of children; bringing her a pittance so small that she had
+to fill up the rest of her hours, which ought to have been given to
+recreation and culture, with other work, in order to pay for rent and
+necessary bread. Our rich and cultivated people will not forego a little
+more upholstery than is necessary, or a style of dress that makes the
+laundry bill--to say nothing of the mantua-maker's and milliner's--larger
+than the school bill, in order to give the required remuneration to the
+kindergartner for spending herself on their children in exhausting study
+and labor. But the truth is, people do not really believe that anything
+better can be done for children than to kill the time between the
+mother's arms and the season when they are to be taught to read; and so
+this precious interval, when the habits of thought and affection are
+forming, is given up to be filled by chance, risking life-long
+difficulties for the child.
+
+Now, what is to reform this state of things? Nothing but the
+self-sacrificing work of kindergartners, who, for the sake of
+enlightening these benighted parents, will do their work faithfully,
+steadily refusing to undertake the care of those whom their parents will
+not trust to Frœbel's system. The refusal will not seldom force the
+truth on the parents--who, when they know it, will be glad to know it. I
+do not say to any particular person, it is your duty to wear yourself
+out and half starve, for the sake of keeping a kindergarten. It is only
+you who are sufficiently free from other obligations, to give yourselves
+the privilege and luxury of working with God, on the paradisaical ground
+of childhood, who should enter this field. If you can make it your
+object to study how to avoid offending those who are beholding the face
+of the Father in heaven, by not hindering, but bringing them to Christ,
+which means helping them to grow as He did, in grace as in stature, and
+in favor with God and man, till like Him they become redeemers of their
+brethren from bondage, and can help to make earth the kingdom of
+heaven; then you may hope, in your day and generation, to initiate
+kindergartning, and make the way smooth for those that follow. When the
+true thing is initiated, it will pay even in money; for parents will see
+that it is invaluable.
+
+It is twenty-two years since Frœbel died. He had made a band of
+kindergartners, and set them at work. They all began with small
+pecuniary reward. It was at first a starving business. In Europe it is
+more difficult than it is here, to induce women of culture and position
+to undertake any work which is paid for with money. Frœbel's genius had
+overcome this prejudice in a few instances. The ladies of one wealthy
+family in Hamburg became his pupils, one of whom introduced it into
+England, though under some great disadvantages. The Baroness
+Marenholtz-Bülow is the most important person inspired by Frœbel; and
+the circumstances of her introduction to him are even picturesque. Being
+in feeble health, she went into an obscure village for rest and
+retirement; and one day asked the woman with whom she boarded, if
+anything interesting was going on among the villagers. The woman replied
+that there was "one queer thing, a natural fool who played about among
+the children, who followed him, and were very much taken up with him."
+The Baroness hardly heeded this singular assertion; but some time after,
+being abroad for exercise, she saw a white-haired man under a tree, with
+a group of children around him; and, thinking this might be the "natural
+fool," she drew near, and was soon arrested by what she heard, and
+joined the little throng herself. Subsequent interviews with Frœbel--for
+it was he--made a new era in her life, and she corresponded with him
+closely till his death. She has since been his chief apostle. After
+years of earnest work, with tongue and pen, she succeeded in getting rid
+of the injunction against his schools, made by the Prussian Government,
+which was jealous of what claimed to be an improvement on their
+world-renowned Reform. Since this injunction was taken off, she has
+worked, by means of a normal school which she helped to found in Berlin,
+in which she lectured gratuitously many years, fighting earnestly
+against just such deteriorations of the system as have already begun to
+appear in this country. Some of the pseudo-kindergartens use the plays
+and occupations there, as here, in the most superficial way. When
+children work by patterns, or are shown--instead of being told in
+words--how to do things, they merely imitate, with as little
+accompaniment of intellectual action as a monkey; and neither the mind
+nor the character will be developed, but rather dissipated and weakened.
+Others, especially in this country, use the plays in the intervals
+between lessons or reading,--which, being taught before the mind has
+been regularly developed by success in doing things, and before the
+meaning of words has been learned in an adequate manner, are confused
+with a chaos of unrelated particulars, that it will take years of
+self-education, by and by, to grow out of; and, in short, only a few
+vigorous natures fortunately situated ever surmount the difficulty.
+
+But the work of the Baroness has not been in vain; and she writes in a
+late letter that a government decree has just been made in Austria,
+ordering that all the children between four and six years of age should
+be sent to kindergartens; and that every normal school must give
+kindergarten training, and every teacher, whether of that or the
+following stages of education, must be made acquainted with Frœbel's
+principles and practices. This great step is the final result of the
+agitation of the subject for the last few years in Europe, which began
+in the first Philosophers' Congress at Prague, in 1867. The dying out of
+the teachers instructed by Frœbel himself was manifestly producing a
+deteriorating effect in the quality of kindergartners; and his most
+intelligent and devoted disciples proposed to the Congress an effort for
+the revival of his science and art in its pristine purity and power.
+
+It is most desirable that such falsification and deterioration do not
+get ahead in America. But there is impending danger of it, and it can
+only be prevented by establishing and keeping up adequate
+training-schools, and so informing public opinion, that it shall not be
+tolerated in the community to call by the sacred name of kindergarten
+anything short of it. There will necessarily be infant schools of an
+inferior quality for a long time, because it will take time to make
+common an adequate education in the art of kindergartning; but let such
+be _called_ play-schools. _Pretenders_ in this profession should be
+frowned upon by all good people, as pretenders in the clerical
+profession are. They do more harm than bad clergymen can, because the
+subjects of their teaching are more helpless and undefended, and can do
+nothing for themselves.
+
+The experience I have had in my apostolate in this cause, has brought me
+to the conclusion that in America the best way to proceed is, to induce
+the public authorities to have kindergartning taught in the State and
+city normal schools, and to open public kindergartens as fast as there
+are adequate teachers for them.
+
+Everything depends on the quality of the first kindergartners we
+train--their spiritual, moral and intellectual quality--which must be
+such as to operate in two ways: first, to do for the children the right
+thing; secondly, to educate the community to require it done as a
+general thing. Many characteristics of America give great encouragement.
+We are not dragged back, as they are in Europe, by old customs, whose
+roots are intertwined with the heart-strings of inherited sentiment. Our
+patriotic hearts fasten themselves on the great future that our fathers
+died to inaugurate. We must justify their ideal of universal equality,
+by an equal education, an equal opportunity for development of all our
+people. "The spirit that makes all things new," as the heart of
+childhood craves, and its hand is eager to enact, is "_every_ word that
+proceedeth out of the mouth of God," to make alive the human heart.
+Therefore we leave behind us--more and more--those conventions of the
+Old World that have made even the great work of educating rank as
+inferior to that which wields the sword of war. Some people groan at
+seeing how the growing facilities of getting money, which our
+institutions give to every man and woman of energy, is effacing the old
+distinctions of rank. But if our Culture may be made universal, by
+employing part of this money in making public education adequate, what
+ground will be left for _distinction of rank_? What pretext for
+exclusion will there be, when there are none rude and uncultivated to be
+excluded? That any distinction of ranks came among the children of God
+is incidental to free agency. Children know nothing of them--till we
+profane their golden age of innocence by revealing them. (Appendix, Note
+A.)
+
+
+
+
+LECTURE II.
+
+THE NURSERY.
+
+
+IT is my object to inspire, if I can, an enthusiasm for educating
+children strictly on Frœbel's method, and no other; and I wish to
+justify myself by giving reasons for this; for I know that, at first
+sight, Americans start back from putting faith in any leader;
+immediately exclaiming, that they must be free to follow the light of
+their own minds.
+
+This sounds large and liberal, certainly; and no one sees the danger of
+yielding to any individual authority more than I do; but it is certain
+that nothing may make us so narrow, as a bigoted adherence to the rule
+of following the light of our own mind condignly. The light of our own
+individual mind may be darkness; it must, in any case, be that of a
+farthing candle, compared with Eternal Reason, "the light that lighteth
+every man that cometh into the world." The question is, do we
+distinguish between that greater light and our own idiosyncrasy, with a
+becoming and discriminating humility? I once heard a lady, whose name
+was Gurley, say to a witty gentleman, that she believed "in the total
+depravity of human nature from the experience of her own heart." Ah! but
+that is not quite fair, he replied, "for how do you know what is human
+nature and what is Gurleyism?" Here is tersely suggested the danger of
+the individualistic philosophy, which has developed itself into a new
+kind of bigotry in these later days, not less denunciatory in its
+_animus_ than any other; and which shuts up its votaries in a dungeon
+from the light of Universal experience. I acknowledge the legitimacy of
+the philosophy of individualism, as a protest against the glittering
+generality which theological philosophy had become, at the time when it
+arose; and as affirmation that God makes every man separately an eye,
+and if he would see into the Infinite Over-soul, he must look with it
+out of his own window. But this is only the way to begin to search for
+truth. If he is not self-intoxicated, every man soon learns that his
+window does not command the whole horizon, that God not only has given a
+window to him, but to every other man; that we are all free to look out
+of each others' windows, some being higher up in the tower of the common
+humanity than our own, commanding wider views; in fine that it is with
+_all_ the sons of man that "wisdom dwells," and they must
+inter-communicate with mutual reverence if they would know her well.
+Frœbel had not been so wise, had he not, with reverent humility, sought
+what God says immediately to mothers and babes. You will not be wise if
+you do not look out of Frœbel's window.
+
+The story I told you, in my last lecture, of the growth of Frœbel's mind
+from his boyhood, suggested the fact that the common motherly instinct,
+purified of individual passion and caprice, and, understanding itself as
+the presence of the Living God overshadowing her, is the social
+atmosphere necessary to be breathed by every child who is to grow in
+wisdom and stature, and in favor with God and man.
+
+Frœbel learned this primal fact or truth, first negatively, as it were,
+by lacking it in his own childish experience; and he verified it
+positively afterwards, by studying the method of unsophisticated
+mothers, at that earliest period of their children's lives, when, in
+order to keep them alive merely, the nurse must take the rule of her
+nursing from the needs which her heart divines, aided by the nursling's
+own expression of want and content--its tears and smiles.
+
+Let us then determine first, as he did, the nursery art, which is
+preliminary to that of the Kindergarten.
+
+By the primal miracle (_i.e._, wonder working) of nature, the mother
+finds in her arms a fellow-being, who has an immeasurable susceptibility
+of suffering, and an immeasurable desire of enjoyment, and an equally
+immeasurable force intent on compassing this desire, already in
+activity, but with no knowledge at all of the material conditions in
+which he is placed, to which he is subject, and by which he is limited
+in the exercise of this immense nature.
+
+As I have said before, every form of animal existence _but_ the human,
+is endowed with some absolute knowledge, enabling it to fulfil its
+limited sphere of relationship as unerringly as the magnetized needle
+turns to the pole, and, even with more or less of enjoyment; yet with no
+forethought. But the knowledge that is to guide the blind will of the
+human being, even to escape death in the first hour of its bodily life,
+exists substantially outside of its own individuality in the mother, or
+whoever supplies the mother's place.
+
+And throughout the existence of the human being, the forethought that is
+to enable him to appreciate his ever multiplying relations with his own
+kind, and which grows wider and sweeter as he fulfils the duties they
+involve, is essentially outside of himself as a mere individual; being
+found first in those who are in relation with him in the family,
+afterwards in social, national, cosmopolitan relationship; till at last
+he realizes himself to be in sonship with God, in whom all humanity,
+nations, families, individuals, "live and move and have their being."
+There is no absolute isolation or independency possible for a spiritual
+being. This is a truth involved in the very meaning of the word spirit,
+and revealed to every family on earth, by the ever recurring fact of the
+child born into the arms of a love that emparadises both parties, on
+which he lives more or less a pensioner throughout his whole existence,
+so far as he lives humanly, finding fullness of life at last in the
+clear vision and conscious communion of an Infinite Father, who has been
+revealing Himself all along, in the love of parent and child, brother
+and sister, husband and wife, friend, fellow-citizen and fellow-man.
+Christ said, that little children see the Father face to face, but
+surely not with the eyes of the body or of the understanding! They see
+him with the heart. And is it not true, that we never quite forget the
+child's vision in turning our eyes on lower things? for what but
+remembrance of our Heavenly Father's face is hope, "that springs eternal
+in the human breast?" What but this remembrance are the ideals of
+beauty, that haunt the savage and the sage? the sense of law that gives
+us our moral dignity, and in the saddest case, what but this are the
+pangs of remorse, in which, as Emerson has sung in his wonderful sphinx
+song, "lurks the joy that is sweetest?"
+
+Frœbel has authority with me, because, in this great faith, making
+himself a little child, he received little children in the name (that
+is, as germinating forms) of the Divine humanity, with a simple
+sincerity, such as few seem to have done since Jesus claimed little
+children as the pure elements of the kingdom he came to establish on
+earth; and exhorted that, as they were such, they should be brought to
+him as the motherly instinct prompted, and declared that they were not
+to be forbidden (that is, hindered as all false education hinders.)
+
+As an American then, and more--as a human being, I acknowledge no
+authority except the union of love and thought in practical operation.
+But whenever I see this union in any one, to a greater degree than I
+have it in myself, I bow before that person, and _feel_ (which is the
+subtlest kind of knowing) that I am larger wiser, freer, more effective
+for good, by following and obeying him as a master for the time being.
+
+Therefore, after the study I have made of Frœbel, and of the method with
+little children that he was fifty years discovering and elaborating into
+practical processes, whose _rationale_ and creative influence I
+perceive; I feel, as it were, _Divinely authorized_ to present him to
+you as an authority which you can reverently trust; and so be delivered
+from the uncertainties of your own narrow and crude notions,
+inexperienced and ignorant as you undoubtedly are, however talented.
+
+It is quite necessary for me to say, and for you to accept this now, or
+our short time together will be wasted. There is a time for criticism
+undoubtedly, and nothing is true that can not make itself good against
+"honest doubt." But as Sterne has said, "of all the cants that are
+canted in this canting world, though the cant of hypocrisy may be the
+worst, the cant of criticism is the most provoking. I would go fifty
+miles on foot to kiss the hand of that man, whose generous heart will
+give up the reins into his author's hands, for the time being, and let
+him lead him where he will." I am quoting from memory, and may forget
+the exact words; but the idea is, that the mood of self-surrendering
+reverence is the mood for profitable study, for it is to "become a
+little child," which Christ told his disciples was the condition of any
+one's becoming the greatest in the kingdom of Divine Truth.
+
+Let us begin, then, with reverently considering the new born child, as
+Frœbel did; for that is to be "the light of all our seeing."
+
+A child is a living soul, from the very first; not a mere animal force,
+but a person, open to God on one side by his heart, which appreciates
+love, and on the other side to be opened to nature, by the reaction upon
+his sensibility of those beauteous forms of things that are the analysis
+of God's creative wisdom; and which, therefore, gives him a growing
+understanding, whereby his mere active force shall be elevated into a
+rational, productive will. For heart and will are, at first, blind to
+outward things and therefore inefficient, until the understanding shall
+be developed according to the order of nature.
+
+But during this process of its development, adult wisdom must supply the
+place of the child's wisdom, which is not, as yet, grown; that is--an
+educator must point out the way, genially, not peremptorily; for in
+following the educator's indications, the child must still act in a
+measure from himself. As he is irrefragably free, he will not always
+obey; he will try other paths--perhaps the contrary one--by way of
+testing whether he has life in himself. But unless he shall go a right
+way, he will accomplish nothing satisfactory and reproductive; and it is
+Frœbel's idea to give him something to do, within the possible sphere of
+his affection and fancy, which shall be an opportunity of his making an
+experience of success, that shall stimulate him to desire, and thereby
+make him receptive of the guidance of creative law, which is the only
+true object for the obedience of a spiritual being.
+
+To the new born child, his own body is the whole universe; and the first
+impression he gets of it seems to come from his need of nutriment. But
+it is the mother, not the child, that responds to this want, by
+presenting food to the organ of taste, and producing a pleasurable
+impression which arouses the soul to _intend itself_ into the organ,
+which is developed to receive impression more and more perfectly, by the
+child's seeking for a repetition of the pleasure. For a time, whatever
+uneasiness a child feels, he attempts to remove by the exercise of this
+organ, through which he has gained his first pleasant impression of
+objective nature. Therefore is it, that his lips and tongue become his
+first means of examining the outward world into which he has been
+projected by his Creator.
+
+The ear seems to be the next organ of which the child becomes conscious,
+or through which he receives impressions of personal pleasure and pain;
+and here it is noticeable, that _rhythmical_ sound seems, from the very
+first, to give most pleasure; and is wonderfully effective to soothe the
+nerves, and remove uneasiness. All mothers and nurses sing to babies,
+as well as rock them, (which is _rhythmical_ motion,) and this pleasant
+impression on the ear diverts the child from intending himself
+exclusively into the organ of tasting. He now stretches himself into his
+ears, whose powers are developed by gently exercising their function of
+hearing.
+
+The child seems to taste and hear, before he begins to see anything more
+definite than the difference between light and darkness. By and by a
+salient point of light, it may be the light of a candle, catches and
+fixes his eye, and gives a distinct visual impression, which is
+evidently pleasurable, for the child's eye follows the light, showing
+that the soul intends itself into the organ of sight. Soon after, gay
+colors fix its gaze and evidently give pleasure. The eye for color is
+developed gradually, like the ear for music, by exercise, which being
+pleasurable becomes spontaneous.
+
+The whole body is the organ of touch; but as the hands are made
+convenient for grasping, to which the infant has an instinctive
+tendency, and the tips of the fingers are especially handy for touching,
+they become, by the intension of the mind into them, the special organ
+for examining things by touch, and getting impressions of qualities
+obvious to no other sense. When, as it sometimes happens, by
+malformation or maltreatment of them, the eyes fail to perform their
+functions, it is wonderful how much more the soul intends itself into
+the special organs of touch, developing them to such a degree, that a
+cultivated blind person seems almost to see with the tips of the
+fingers. This fact proves what I have been trying to impress on your
+minds, that the soul which spontaneously desires and wills enjoyment,
+takes possession and becomes conscious of its organs of sensuous
+perception, partly by an original impulse, given to it by the Creator,
+and partly, (which I want you especially to observe,) by the genial,
+sympathetic, intelligent, careful co-working of the mother and nurse;
+who, by what we call nursery play, gives a needed help to the child to
+accomplish this feat in a healthy and pleasurable manner. And we shall
+be better convinced of the virtue of this nursery play, if we consider
+the case of the neglected children of the very poor, so pathetically
+described by Charles Lamb. See essays on Popular Fallacies, No. 12.
+
+Madame Marenholtz-Bülow has happily remarked, in her preface to Jacob's
+Manual, _Le jardin des Enfans_, that "to develop and train the senses is
+not to pamper them." The organs of tasting and smelling do not require
+so much exercise by the duplicate action of the mother, as those of
+seeing and hearing. The former have for their end to build up the body;
+the latter to lead the child's mind out of the body, to that part of
+nature which connects him with other persons. The functions of both are
+equally worthy; but those of the latter belong to the child as a social
+and intellectual being. It is the mother's office to temper the
+exercises of each sense, so that they may limit and balance each other.
+And in order to limit those which are building up the body, so that they
+shall not absorb the child, the action of the others must be helped out.
+"Our bodies feel--where'er they be--against or with our will;" but to
+see and hear all that children can, requires exertion of will and this
+is coaxed out by the sympathetic action of others. Yet the functions of
+tasting or smelling are not to be banned. The Creator has made them
+delightful; and if others do their proper part, their exercise will
+never become harmful. To enjoy tasting and smelling is no less innocent
+than to enjoy seeing and hearing. There is no function of mind or body
+but may be performed Divinely. Milton shows insight into this truth by
+making Raphael sit and eat at table with man in Paradise; and he says
+some wonderful things upon the point, which will bear much study. And
+have we not in sacred tradition a symbol, still more venerable, of the
+truth, that the fire of spirit burns without consuming, and may
+transform the body without leaving visible residue? There are in Brown's
+philosophy (which does not penetrate into _all_ the mysteries of the
+rational soul and immortal spirit) some very instructive chapters on the
+social and moral relations of the grosser senses, (as taste, smell and
+touch are sometimes called.) It is the part of rational education to
+understand all these things thoroughly, and adjust the spontaneous
+activities by subordinating them to the end of a harmonious and
+beneficent social life. The Lord's Supper may be made to illustrate this
+general human duty.
+
+There is doubtless marked difference in the original energy of life, in
+different children. Young--but not too young, happy, healthy, loving
+parents, have the most vigorous, lively and harmoniously organized
+children; but in all cases, the impulse of life must be met and
+cherished by the tender, attractive, inspiring force of motherly love;
+which with caressing tone and invoking smile, peers into the infant's
+eyes, and importunately calls forth the new person, who, as her
+instinctive motherly faith and love assure her, is there; and whom she
+yearns to make conscious of himself in self-enjoyment. The time comes
+when the little body has become so far subject to the new soul, that an
+answering smile of recognition signalizes the arrival upon the shores of
+mortal being of "that light which never was on sea or land," another
+immortal intelligence! It is only the smile of the intelligent human
+face, that can call forth this smile of the child in the first instance;
+but let this glad mutual recognition of souls take place once, and both
+parties will seek to repeat the delight, again and again. Few persons,
+indeed, get so chilled by the sufferings and disappointments, and so
+hardened by the crimes of human life, but on the sight of a little
+child, they are impelled to invoke this answering smile by making
+themselves, for the moment, little children again; seeking and finding
+that communion with our kind which is the Alpha and Omega of life.
+
+Do not say that I am wandering, fancifully, from the serious work which
+we are upon: I am only beginning at the beginning. We can only
+understand the child, and what we are to do for it in the Kindergarten,
+by understanding the first stage of its being--the pre-intellectual one
+in the nursery. The body is the first garden in which God plants the
+human soul, "to dress and to keep it." The loving mother is the first
+gardener of the human flower. Good nursing is the first word of Frœbel's
+gospel of child-culture.
+
+The process of taking possession of the organs, that I have just
+described, is never performed perfectly unless children are nursed
+genially. If bitter and disagreeable things are presented to the organ
+of the taste, they are rejected with the whole force of a will, which is
+too blind in its ignorance to find the thing it wants, but vindicates
+its irrefragable freedom of choice by uttering cries of fright, pain and
+anger, as it shrinks back, instead of throwing itself forward into
+nature. If the cruel thing is repeated, the nerves are paralyzed, or at
+least rendered morbid, especially when rude untender handling outrages
+the sense of touch. When rough and discordant sounds assail the ear, or
+too sharply salient a light, the eye, these organs will be injured, and
+may be rendered useless for life. The neglected and maltreated child is
+dull of sense, and lifeless, or morbidly impulsive, possibly savagely
+cruel and cunning, in sheer self-defence. The pure element and first
+condition of perfect growth, is the joy that responds to the electric
+touch of love.
+
+Underlying and outmeasuring all this delicate development of the organs
+of the five senses, is the whole body's instinct of motion, which is the
+primal action of will. The perfectly healthy body of a little child,
+when it is awake, is always in motion--more or less intentionally. When
+asleep, there is the circulation of the blood, and pulsation of the
+solids of the body, corresponding to the act of breathing, which is
+involuntary; and any interruption of these produces disease--their
+suspension, death. But the motion which makes the limbs agile, and the
+whole body elastic, and gradually to become an obedient servant, is
+voluntary, intentional, and can be helped by that sympathetic action of
+others, which we call _playing with the child_. Frœbel's rich
+suggestions on this play are contained in his mother's cossetting songs;
+and I am glad to tell you that two English ladies, a poet and a
+musician, have translated and set to music this unique book; and that
+just now it has been published by Wilkie, Wood & Co., in London. It
+suggests all kinds of little gymnastics of the hands, fingers, feet,
+toes and legs, for these are the child's first play things; and also the
+first symbols of intelligent communication, giving the core and
+significance to all languages.[1]
+
+I think that a baby never _begins_ to play, in the first instance, but
+responds to the mother and nurse's play, and learns thereby its various
+members and their powers and uses; and when at last it jumps, runs,
+walks by itself, which it cannot begin to do without the help of others,
+it is prepared to say _I_, with a clear sense of individuality.
+
+In analyzing the process of a child's learning to walk, we see most
+clearly the characteristic difference between the human person and the
+animals below man in the scale of relation. The little chicken runs
+about of itself, as soon as it is out of the shell; but the human child,
+even after all its limbs are grown, and though he has been moving
+himself on all fours by means of the floor, and supporting himself by
+means of the furniture to which he clings, _does not walk_. He will only
+stand alone, unsupported, when he sees that there are guarding arms
+round about him, all ready to catch him if he should fall. He seems to
+know instinctively, that all the force of the earth's gravitation is
+against him. He does not know that he may balance it by his personal
+power. His body weighs upon his soul like a mountain, precisely because
+he is intelligent of it as an object, loves it as a means of pleasure,
+and dreads its power of giving pain to him. The little darling stands,
+perhaps between the knees of his father, whose arms are round about him;
+the mother opens her loving arms to receive him, and calls him to her
+embrace; the way is short between, and three steps will be sufficient,
+but where is the courageous faith to say to this mountain of a body, "be
+removed to another place?" It is not in himself; he cannot produce it
+any more than he can take himself up by his own ears. It is in the
+mother; for it is she, not he, who has the knowledge of the yet
+unexerted power which is flowing into the child from the Creator. Only
+by the electric touch of her faith in him does his faith in himself
+flash out in answer to her look and voice of cheer, and he rushes to her
+arms. It is the doing of the deed which gives to himself the knowledge
+of the power that is in him. He repeats it again and again, seeming to
+wish to be more and more certain of his being the cause of so great
+effect. Thus cause and effect are discriminated, and "to him that hath"
+a sense of individuality, "shall be given," forevermore, a growing power
+over the body, to which no measure can be stated. Even on the vulgar
+plane of the professional tumbler, a man's power over his body seems,
+sometimes, to be absolute and miraculous. But the annals of heroism and
+martyrdom are full of facts that go to prove to all who consider them
+profoundly, that the immaterial soul is sovereign, when, by recognizing
+all its relations, it subjects the individual to the universal, and
+becomes thereby entirely spiritual, (which is man reciprocating with
+God; becoming more and more conscious forever.[2])
+
+From what has been said of the soul's taking possession of the body and
+its several organs, by exercising the functions of tasting, hearing,
+seeing, smelling, touching, grasping, moving the limbs, and at last
+taking up the whole body into itself in the act of walking, we see that
+it is all done, even the last, by virtue of the social nature.
+
+Frœbel took his clue from this fact, a primal one, and never let it go,
+and it is of the greatest importance that it be understood clearly, that
+conscious individuality, which gives the sense of free personality, the
+starting point, as it were, of intelligent will, is perfectly consistent
+with and even dependent on the simultaneous development of the social
+principle in all its purity and power.
+
+We see a sad negative proof of this, in asylums for infants abandoned by
+their mothers, or given up by them through stress of poverty. There is
+one of these in New York city, into which are received poor little
+things in the first weeks of their existence. Every thing is done for
+their bodily comfort which the general human kindness can devise. They
+have clean warm cradles and clothes, good milk, in short everything but
+that caressing motherly play, which goes from the personal heart to the
+personal heart. That is one thing general charity cannot supply; it is
+the personal gift of God to the mother for her child, and none but she
+can be the sufficient medium of it, and therefore, undoubtedly it is,
+that almost all new-born children in foundling hospitals die; or, if
+they survive, are found to be feeble-minded or idiotic. They seem to
+sink into their animal natures, and belie the legend man written on
+their brows, showing none of that beautiful fearlessness and courageous
+affectionateness that characterise the heartily welcomed, healthy,
+well-cared-for human infant. On the contrary, they show a dreary apathy,
+morbid fearfulness, or a belligerent self-defence, anticipative of other
+forms of the cruel neglect which has been their dreary experience.
+
+Taking a hint from observations of this kind, together with the bitter
+experiences of his own childhood, Frœbel supplied to the mother or nurse
+some playthings for the baby, which might continue to improve the
+various organs of its body, by making the exercise of their functions a
+social delight.
+
+What is called the first gift, he proposes should be used in the nursery
+first. It consists of six soft balls, not too large to be grasped by a
+little hand, and the use of which in the nursery, is suggested by a
+little first book for mothers, that has been translated from Jacob's _Le
+jardin des Enfans_.[3] I think it is important for the Kindergartner to
+know what Frœbel thought could be done for the development of the infant
+in the nursery, since if it has not been done there, she must contrive
+to remedy the evil in the Kindergarten. You will bear with me,
+therefore, if I go quite into the minutiæ of this matter. It will open
+your eyes to observe delicately, as Frœbel did.
+
+He proposed that the red ball should be first presented. He had observed
+that a bright light concentrated, as in a candle, first excited the
+organ of sight and stimulated its action. Hence he inferred that a
+bright color would do the same, a neutral tint would not be seen at all
+probably. The red ball is not quite so salient and exciting as the light
+of a candle, but on that account it can be gazed at longer, without
+producing a painful re-action. The child will have a pleasure in
+grasping it, and will probably carry it to his lips; but as it is
+woolen, it will not be especially agreeable to the delicate organ of
+taste. It will all the more be looked at therefore, and give the
+impression of red. Frœbel proposes that it shall be called the red ball,
+in order that the impression of the word _red_ on the ear, shall blend
+in memory with the impression of the color on the eye. As long as the
+child seems amused with the red ball, he would not have another color
+introduced, because he thought it took time for the eye to get a clear
+and strong impression of one color, and this should be done before it
+was tried with a contrasted impression. But by and by the blue ball, as
+the greatest contrast, may be given and named; and all the little plays
+suggested in the mother's book be repeated with the blue ball; and then
+the yellow ball should be given with its name; and then the three be
+given together, and the baby be asked to choose the blue, or red, or
+yellow one. By attaching a string to them, and whirling them, or letting
+the infant do so, it is surprising how long the child will amuse itself
+with these balls, and what pleasure colors alone give, especially when
+combined with motion.
+
+The secondary colors may afterwards be added to the treasury for the
+eye, with the same carefulness to secure completeness and distinctness
+of impression; and to associate the color with the word that names it;
+for language, the special organ of social communion, should be
+addressed to the child from the first, though its complete attainment
+and use is the crown of all education.
+
+Smiles and sounds, proceeding out of the mouth, are the first languages,
+and begin to fix the little child's eyes and attention upon the mouth of
+the mother, from which issue the tones that are sweetest to hear, and
+especially when in musical cadence. But the child understands the words
+addressed to him long before he himself begins to articulate; for
+language is no function of the individual, but only of the consciously
+social being, yearning to find himself in another.
+
+There is a reciprocal communication between infants and adults that
+precedes the difficult act of articulation. This we call the natural
+language, and it is common to all nations, being mutually intelligible,
+as is proved by deaf mutes from remote countries who understand each
+other at once. But this natural language has a very narrow scope. It
+serves to communicate instinctive wants of body and heart, but does not
+serve the fine purposes of intellectual communication, nor minister any
+considerable intellectual development. These signs are very general,
+while every word in its origin has represented a particular object in
+nature. In analyzing any language, we find that the names given to the
+body and its members, and to the actions and facts of life, without
+which no human society can exist, are the nucleus or central words that
+characterize it, and from which the whole national rhetoric is derived.
+Hence there is a value for the mind in associating the words and action
+of even such a little play as "here we go up, up, up, and here we go
+down, down, down, and here we go backwards and forwards, and here we go
+round, round, round," with other rhymes and plays of an analogous
+character that are found wherever there are mothers and children.
+
+We have observed that the moment of first accomplishing the feat of
+running alone, seemed to be that of the child's beginning to realize
+himself to be a person, but that even, in this act, he was dependent
+upon his mother; that his bodily independence was the gift of her faith
+in that within him, which is essentially superior to the body and can
+command it as instrumentality. To make it instrumentality is, more and
+more, a delight to the child, in which his mother sympathises; and by
+this sympathy aids him. All his plays involve exercise of the power of
+commanding his body. As soon as a child can move it from place to place,
+his desire to exercise power on nature outside of himself increases, and
+he is prompted to measure strength with other children. If children were
+mere individuals they would merely quarrel, as Hobbes says; but being
+social beings also, they tend to unite forces and aid one another to
+compass desired ends. By so doing, they rise to a greater sense of life,
+and brotherly love is evolved. But in the development of the social
+life, the more developed and cultivated elder must come in, to keep both
+parties steady to some object outside of themselves, which it takes
+their union to reach. Children can be taught to play together, by
+engaging their powers of imitation, and addressing their fancy. Every
+mother knows, that in the first opening of children's social life, their
+bodily energies are stimulated to such a degree, that it is quite as
+much as she or one nurse can do, to tend two or three children together;
+and by the time they are three years old, the family nursery becomes too
+narrow a sphere for them. It is then that they are to be received into a
+Kindergarten, whose very numbers will check the energy of activity a
+little, by presenting a greater variety of objects to be contemplated;
+and because social action must be orderly and rhythmical, in order to be
+agreeable. This, a properly prepared Kindergartner knows, and by her
+sympathetic influence and power over the childish imagination, she will
+bring gradually all the laws of the child's being to the conscious
+understanding, beginning with this rhythmical one at the center.
+
+The movement plays which Frœbel invented, express, in dramatic form,
+some simple fact of nature or some childish fancy, for which he gives,
+as accompaniment, a descriptive song set to a simple melody. The
+children learn both to recite and to sing the words of the song, and
+then the movements of the play. To them the whole reason for the play
+seems to be the delight it gives, the exhilaration of body, the
+amusement of mind. But the Kindergartner knows that it serves higher
+ends, and that it is at least always a lesson in order, enabling them to
+begin to enact upon earth "Heaven's first law."
+
+Do not say I am making too solemn a matter of these movement plays, to
+the Kindergartner. Unless she remembers that this very serious aim
+underlies every play which she conducts, she will not do justice to the
+children. Law or order is one and the same thing with beauty; and play
+is hindrance if it is not beautiful. When she insists upon the children
+governing themselves, so far as to keep their proper places in relation
+to each other; to forbear exerting undue force, and to seek to give the
+necessary aid to others by exerting sufficient force, the beautiful
+result justifies her will to the minds of the children, and commands
+their ready obedience. She must call forth by addressing the sense of
+personal responsibility in each child; and this, if done tenderly and
+with faith, it is by no means difficult to do. The reward to the
+children is instant in the success of the play, and therefore not
+thought of as reward of merit. It is a form of obedience that really
+elevates the little one higher in the scale of being as an individual,
+without danger of the re-action of pride and self-conceit; for self is
+swallowed up in social joy.
+
+When I was in Germany, I went, as I believe I told you, to those
+Kindergartens, which were taught by Frœbel's own pupils, and I found
+that in these the movement plays were the most prominent feature of the
+practice. More than one was played in the course of the three or four
+hours, and especially when the session was as much as four hours. It was
+done in a very exact though not constrained manner, and much stress
+seemed to be laid upon every part. The singing was not done by three or
+four, but all the children were encouraged to sing. Often the little
+timider ones were called on to repeat the rhyme alone, without singing
+it, and then to sing it alone with the teacher. Thus the stronger and
+abler were exercised (as they must be so much in real life) in waiting,
+sympathetically, for the weaker. A great deal of care was also exercised
+in regard to the form and character of the play itself. Those of
+Frœbel's own suggestion and invention were the preferred ones. They
+consisted in imitating, in rather a free and fanciful manner, the
+actions of the gentler animals, hares and rabbits, fishes, bees and
+birds. There were plays in which children impersonated animals,
+evidently for the purpose of awakening their sympathies and eliciting
+their kindness towards them. Many of the labors of human beings, common
+mechanics, such as cooperage, the work of the farmer, that of the
+miller, trundling the wheelbarrow, sawing wood, &c., were put into form
+by simple rhymes. The children sometimes personated machinery, sometimes
+great natural movements. In one instance I saw the solar system
+performed by a company of children that had been in the Kindergarten
+four years, but none of them were over seven years old. Mere movement is
+in itself so delightful and salutary for children that a very little
+action of the imitative or fanciful power is necessary, just to take the
+rudeness out of bodily exercise without destroying its exhilaration.
+
+My Kindergarten Guide, the revised edition of which is published by E.
+Steiger, of New York, contains some of the principal plays, set to
+Frœbel's own music. I would gladly have printed all that Madame Ronge
+published in her Guide, which is out of print, but for the expense.
+
+But it is by no means merely a moral discipline that is aimed at in the
+Kindergarten, as you will see when the bearings upon their habits of
+thought, of all that the children do, are pointed out to you, in the
+various occupations, which are sedentary sports, though the moral
+discipline is the paramount idea, and never must be lost sight of one
+moment by the Kindergartner. We mean by moral discipline, exercising the
+children to _act_ to the end of making _others_ happy, rather than of
+merely enjoying _themselves_. If the individual enjoyment is not a
+social enjoyment, it is disorderly and vitiating. But the individual is
+lifted into the higher order for which he is created, by merely
+enjoying, whenever his enjoyment is _social_. I am of course speaking of
+that season of life under seven years of age, when the mind is yet
+undeveloped to the comprehension of humanity as a whole; when the good,
+the true and the beautiful are nothing as abstractions, and can only be
+realized to their experience and brought within the sphere of their
+senses, by being embodied in persons whom they love, reverence or trust.
+The words _good_, _beautiful_, _kind_, _true_, get their meaning for
+children by their intercourse with such persons. Specific knowledge of
+God cannot be opened up in them by any words, unless these words have
+first got their meaning by being associated with human beings who bear
+traces that they can appreciate of His ineffable perfections. To liken
+God's love to the mother's love, brings home a conception of it to
+children, for _hers_ they realize every day.
+
+The connecting link between the nursery and Kindergarten is the First
+Gift of Frœbel's series, being used in both. The nursery use will have
+taught the names of the six colors, red, orange, yellow, green, blue and
+purple, and made it a favorite play thing. It is all the better if the
+child has had no other playthings prepared for him. He has doubtless
+used the chairs, footstools, and whatever else he could lay his hands
+on, to embody his childish fancies; and it is to be hoped he has been
+allowed to play out of doors with the earth, and has made mud pies to
+his heart's content--not tormented with any sense of the--at his
+age--artificial duty of keeping his clothes clean. That duty is to be
+reserved for the Kindergarten age, and will come duly, by proper
+development of the mental powers.
+
+In the Kindergarten, the ball-plays are to become more skillful, and the
+teacher must see that the child learns to throw the ball so that it may
+bound back into his own hands; so that it may bound into the hands of
+another who is in such position as to catch its reflex motion. The
+children must learn to toss it up and catch it again themselves. When
+standing in two rows they can throw it back and forwards to each other.
+When standing in a circle, the balls may be made to circulate with
+rapidity, passing from hand to hand, the children singing the
+accompanying song.
+
+"Who'll buy my eggs?" is a good play to exercise them in counting. And
+all these movement plays with the ball are admirable for exercising the
+body, giving it agility, grace of movement, precision of eye and touch.
+These things will accrue all the more surely if it is kept play, and no
+constraining sense of duty is called on. As most of these plays are not
+solitary, they become the occasion for children's learning to adjust
+themselves to each other, and the teacher must watch that hilarity do
+not become violence or rudeness to each other, but furtherance of one
+another's fun; and occasionally, in enforcing this harmony, a child must
+be removed from the play, and made to stand in a corner alone, or even
+outside the room, till the desire of rejoining his companions shall
+quicken him to be sufficiently considerate of them to make pleasant play
+possible. All children in playing together learn justice and social
+graces, more or less, because they find that without fair play their
+sport is spoilt; but this play must be supervised by the Kindergartner,
+in order that there may not be injustice, selfishness and quarreling. A
+Kindergartner, who is not a martinet, and who is herself a good
+play-fellow, will magnetize the children, and inspire such general good
+will that unpleasantness will be foreclosed in a great measure; but a
+company of children are generally of such variety of temperament and
+different degrees of bodily strength, have so often come from such
+inadequate nursery life, that the regulating Kindergartner has a good
+deal to do to prevent discords and secure their kindness to each other,
+and the reasonable little self-sacrifices of common courtesy. But she
+will find a word is often enough; the question, Is that right? Would you
+like to have any one else do so? It is sometimes necessary to bring all
+the play to a full stop, in order to bring the common conscience to
+pronounce upon the fairness of what some one is doing. I would suggest
+that the question be asked not of the class, but of the individual
+culprit, whether what is being done wrong, is right or wrong? The child,
+with the eyes of the class upon him, will generally be eager to confess
+and reform, because the moral sense is quite as strong as self-love, and
+especially when re-inforced by the presence of others. It is not worth
+while to make too much of little faults, and the first indication of
+turning to the right must be accepted; the child is grateful for being
+believed in and trusted, and the wrong doing is a superficial thing; the
+moral sentiment is the substantial being of the child.
+
+Of all the materials used in Kindergarten, the colored balls are most
+purely _playthings_; and there are none of the plays so liable to be
+riotous as the ball plays. There is the greatest difficulty in keeping
+children from being _too_ noisy, and it is not wise to make too much of
+a point of it. The ball seems a thing of life. It is very difficult for
+them to get good command of it. It excites them to run after it; and
+shouts and laughter are irrepressible. But there are reasonable limits.
+The Kindergartner, in conversation before hand, should make them see
+that they may get too noisy, and tire each other, and she will easily
+induce them to agree to stop short when she shall ring the bell, and be
+willing to stand still while she counts twenty-five, or watches the
+second hand of her watch go around a quarter, a half, or a whole minute,
+as may be agreed upon. This can be made a part of the play, and to pause
+and be perfectly still in this way, will give them some conception of
+the length of a minute, and teach self-command, as well as make a
+pleasant variety.
+
+The ball plays should always be accompanied and alternated, in the
+Kindergarten, with conversations upon the ball, naming the colors,
+telling which are primary, which secondary, and illustrating the
+difference by giving them pieces of glass of pure carmine, blue and
+yellow, and letting them put two upon each other, and hold them towards
+the window, and so realize the combinations of the secondary colors. Ask
+them, afterwards, to tell what colors make orange, or purple, or green;
+and what color connects the orange and green; or the purple and orange,
+or the green and purple.
+
+One of the other exercises, on the day of using the First Gift may be
+sewing with the colored threads on the cards; and the colors may be
+arranged so as to illustrate the connections, &c., just learned. The use
+of the First Gift need only be once a week. It will then be a fresh
+pleasure every time during the whole of the Kindergarten course, even if
+it should last three years. After the children have become perfectly
+familiar with the primary and secondary colors, their combinations and
+connections, the lessons on colors may be varied, by telling them that
+tints of the primary colors and of the secondary colors, are made by
+adding white to them; and shades of them, (which will, of course, be
+darker,) by adding black to them. This may be illustrated by flowers, as
+may various combinations of colors. A very little child, whom it was
+hard to train even to the hilarious and gay plays, and whose attention
+could not easily be fixed, surprised a teacher one day by his aptitude
+in detecting what color had been mixed with red to make a very glorious
+pink in a phlox. This child liked to sew, but was very impatient of
+putting his needle into any special holes. It proved to be the pleasure
+of handling the colored yarns, and he was always eager to change them
+and form new combinations. It may not be irrelevant to say here, in
+regard to ball playing, from which I have digressed to colors, that the
+ball is the last plaything of men as well as the first with children.
+
+The object teaching upon the ball is strictly inexhaustible. Children
+learn practically, by means of it, the laws of motion. Beware of any
+strictly scientific teaching of these laws _in terms_. You may make
+children familiar with the phenomena of the laws of incidence and
+reflection, by simply telling them that if they strike the ball straight
+against the wall opposite, it will bound straight back to them, and then
+ask them whether it returns to them when they strike it in a slanting
+direction. By and by this knowledge can be used to give meaning to a
+scientific expression. It is a first principle that the object, motion,
+or action, should precede the _word_ that names them. This is Frœbel's
+uniform method, and the reason is, that when the scientific study does
+come, it shall be substantial mental life, and not mere superficial
+talk. It is the laws of _things_ that are the laws of _thought_; and
+thought must precede all attempt at logic, or logic will be deceptive,
+not reasonable. Most erroneous speculation has its roots in mistakes
+about words, which it is fatal to divorce from what they express of
+nature, or to use without taking in their full meaning.
+
+In the easy mood of mind that attends the lively play of childhood,
+impressions are made clearly; and it should be the care of the educator
+to have all the child's notions associated with significant words, as
+can only be done by his becoming their companion in the play, and
+talking about it, as children always incline to do. It is half the
+pleasure of their play, to represent it in words, as they are playing.
+In the nursery, the mothers play with the child, and all her dealings
+with it, are expressed in words that are important lessons in language;
+and together with language, we give a lesson in manners, by first
+trotting a child gently, and then jouncingly, to the words, "This is the
+way the gentle folks go, this is the way the gentle folks go; and this
+is the way the country folks go, this is the way the country folks
+go--bouncing and jouncing and jumping so." To describe what they are
+doing in little rhymes when playing ball, makes it a mental as well as
+physical play of faculty, and Frœbel published a hundred little rhymes,
+and the music for as many ball plays.
+
+It is not an unimportant lesson for children to learn, that the same
+things seem different in different circumstances. The fact that white
+light is composed of different colored rays can be illustrated by giving
+the children prisms to hold up in the sunshine; and by calling their
+attention to the splendid colors of the sky at sunset and sunrise, when
+the clouds act as prisms, and to the rainbow. Children of the
+Kindergarten age, will be so much engaged with the beautiful phenomenon,
+they will not be likely to ask questions as to how the light is
+separated by the prism and clouds; they will rest in the fact. But if,
+by chance, analytic reflection has supervened, and they do, then a large
+ball on which all the six colors are arranged in lines meridian-wise, to
+which a string is attached at one pole, or both poles, can be given
+them, and they be told to whirl it very swiftly. This will present the
+phenomenon of the merging of the colors to the eye by motion, so that
+the ball looks whitish from which you can proceed to speak of light as
+being composed of multitudinous little balls, of the colors of the
+rainbow, in motion, and so looking white.
+
+If some uncommon little investigator should persist to ask why things
+seem to be other than they are, he must be plainly told, that the reason
+is in something about his eyes, which he cannot understand now, but will
+learn by and by, when he goes to school and learns _optics_.
+
+Children are only to be _entertained_ in the Kindergarten, with the
+facts of nature that develop the organs of perception, but a skillful
+teacher who reads Tyndall's charming books and the photographic
+journals, may bring into the later years of the Kindergarten period many
+pretty phenomena of light and colors, which shall increase the stock of
+facts, on which the scientific mind, when it shall be developed, may
+work, or which the future painter may make use of in his art.
+
+When Allston painted his great picture of Uriel, whose background was
+the sun, he thought out carefully the means of producing the dazzling
+effect, and drew lines of all the rainbow colors in their order, side by
+side, after having put on his canvass a ground of the three primary
+colors mixed. When the picture was first exhibited at Somerset House,
+the effect was dazzling, and it was bought at once by Lord Egremont, in
+a transport of delight; and for twice the sum the artist put upon it,
+that is, six hundred guineas. I do not know whether time may not have
+dimmed its brilliancy, since paint is of the earth, earthy; but to paint
+the sun at high noon, and have it a success, even for a short time, is a
+great feat; and art, in this instance, took counsel of science
+deliberately, according to the artist's confession. But perfect sensuous
+impressions of color and its combinations, were the basis of both the
+science and the art.
+
+This lecture is getting too long, and I will close by saying, that the
+First Gift has, for its most important office, to develop the organ of
+sight, which grows by seeing. Colors arouse _intentional_ seeing by the
+delightful impression they make. I believe that _color-blindness_,
+(which our army examinations have proved to be as common as _want of ear
+for music_,) may be cured by intentional exercise of the organ of sight
+in a systematic way; just as _ear for music_ may be developed in those
+who are not born with it. Lowell Mason proved, by years of experiment in
+the public schools, that the musical ear may be formed, in all cases, by
+beginning gently with little children, giving graduated exercises, so
+agreeable to them as to arouse their will to _try to hear_, in order to
+reproduce.
+
+That you may receive a sufficiently strong impression of the fact, that
+the organs of perception actually grow by exercise _with intention_, I
+will relate to you a fact that came under my own observation.
+
+A young friend of mine became a pupil of Mr. Agassiz, who gave him,
+among his first exercises, two fish scales to look at through a very
+powerful microscope, asking him to find out and tell all their
+differences. At first they appeared exactly alike, but on peering
+through the microscope, all the time that he dared to use his eyes, for
+a month, he found them full of differences; and he afterwards said, that
+"it was the best month's work he ever did, to form _the scientific eye_
+which could detect differences ever after, _at a glance_," and proved to
+him an invaluable talent, and gave him exceptional authority with
+scientists.
+
+FOOTNOTES:
+
+[1] An American translation has been published by Lee & Shepard, Boston.
+
+[2] Since this lecture was written and delivered in Boston, I have
+received from Europe a French version of the Baroness Crombrugghe's
+translation of Frœbel's _Education of Man_, and find that the first
+chapters analyze the first and second stages of development so much, in
+the way that I have done, that it gives me, on the one hand, confidence
+in myself as a true interpreter of Frœbel, and on the other, new
+confidence in Frœbel as a scientific observer and recorder of what I
+have been accused of founding on a merely sentimental knowledge. But
+scientific knowledge, or that gained by the exercise of the
+understanding, and sentimental knowledge, or what is gained by the
+intuitions of the heart, must necessarily correspond if the
+understanding is sound and the heart has been kept diligently to the
+issues of life. Mr. Emerson calls the intellect sensibility, and there
+is a fine meaning in this. Is there not analogous instruction in calling
+the heart apprehension? What are love, justice, beauty, &c., but
+apprehensions of the primal relations established by God? Can the
+understanding have sensibility to them, unless apprehension of them
+exists from the beginning?
+
+In the June, July and August numbers of the _Kindergarten Messenger_,
+for 1874, will be found translations of the first chapters of Frœbel's
+book, above mentioned. I began in February to print the translation of
+the introduction, which will be finished in the May number, and then
+will follow the first chapter, entitled "The Nursling," and in the
+following numbers the subsequent chapters, on the child's development
+during the Kindergarten era. This work of Frœbel's was published at an
+earlier period of his career than 1840, when he began to devote himself
+almost entirely to the first stage of education, which, as he grew
+older, he felt to be the most important, because it enfolds the germs of
+all later developments.
+
+[3] It is sold for ten cents by Hammett, publisher, in Brattle street,
+Boston.
+
+
+
+
+LECTURE III.
+
+DISCIPLINE.
+
+
+SINCE the kindergartner is to receive the child from the nursery, and
+half of the work in the kindergarten is what ought to have been done in
+the nursery, I will give another lecture upon what Frœbel thought the
+nursery ought to do for religious nurture; since, if it has not been
+done in the nursery, it must be done in the kindergarten.
+
+We have seen that the soul takes possession of the organs of sense
+gradually, by tasting, hearing, seeing, smelling, and touching that
+which is agreeable; and that the continuous exercise of the organs
+develops them up to a certain though indefinite limit to finer
+susceptibility of impression. We have seen that by exercising the limbs,
+the soul takes possession of them in particular and in general. Thus the
+nursery plays, improvised instinctively by all mothers, Frœbel has
+enlarged, describing in his _Mother's Book_ various duplicate movements
+of the limbs, especially of the hands, that, with the accompanying
+songs, have for their end, besides physical health, to make the mind
+discriminate various parts of the body and know their several forms and
+functions. This is the beginning of human education.
+
+"Patty-cake" teaches a child that he has hands and fingers; "This little
+pig goes to market, this one stays at home," that he has toes. It is the
+child's own body that first furnishes the objects of his attention to be
+associated with words. From the beginning it is the instinct of the
+maternal nurse to talk to the child, which attracts him to observe the
+organs of speech; and this prompts the sympathetic use of his own
+organs. Speech is a function distinctively human, which, beginning in
+the nursery, is carried on carefully in the kindergarten, creating the
+sphere of the intellectual life; for words support the operation of
+thinking.
+
+From all that I said of the _modus operandi_ of the child's taking
+possession of his body in the nursery period, you see that childish
+action is involved in the mother's action. It is _her_ wisdom, such as
+it may be, which must be the guide of the child's will, as it is brought
+gradually out of the blindness of ignorance; and it is she, not the
+child, who is responsible for the perfection of this part of the child's
+life.
+
+And is not this, on the whole, the common sense of mankind? Does any
+sane person hold a baby, up to three years old, and often, indeed, much
+later, responsible for the state of its temper, or for the rightfulness
+of its action?
+
+Nevertheless, the child is a moral person all this time, and it is of
+the last importance to his subsequent moral life whether or not his
+temper has been kept sweet, and his action according to law, or
+discordant. Discordant action must have a bad reactionary effect upon
+the temper, and interrupt or retard the growth of the several organs of
+sense and of motion. Hence the mother or nurse must not neglect to use
+her power wisely as well as gently to prevent these evils, by duplicate
+movements that are rhythmic, and calculated to bring about some end that
+the child's mind may easily grasp.
+
+It is instinctive with every one, as soon as he begins to play with a
+child, whether it be reasonable or not, to talk to it about its being
+good or bad, although a little child cannot be good or bad, but only
+orderly or disorderly; and there is no little danger to his moral and
+spiritual future in anticipating by our words the workings of his
+conscience before it has the conditions for its development. One of
+these conditions is such a sense of individuality as enables the child
+to say "I," with which it presently combines such perception of
+relationship to others as will say, "I ought,"--a phrase that occurs in
+all languages, and means something very different from "I will." It is
+of the greatest importance to keep this distinction in mind, for an
+imposed or artificial conscience almost certainly forecloses the natural
+or inspired conscience,--a truth largely illustrated by the history both
+of families and of nations, from which we learn that periods of
+corruption and wild license invariably follow periods of extreme
+restraint and asceticism. And all conscientious action and moral
+judgment in children also presupposes _thinking_, which is a process
+that does not begin until after much repetition of impressions, being a
+reflective act, which associates impressions with specific things and
+actions (as the etymology of the word suggests). Mere reception of
+impressions is passive; but to compare impressions of difference or
+similarity (which individualizes _things_) is _active_. Therefore
+thinking and putting thoughts into words includes comparison and
+inference, and really _produces_ the human understanding, which we do
+not bring into the world with us, as we do our heart and will. Before
+there is a possibility of conscience or any moral judgment properly so
+called, the child's affections (or feeling of relation with other
+persons) must be cultivated by the mother's genial care, directing
+mental activity towards fellow-beings, instead of leaving the heart to
+turn back and stagnate upon self. The more impressible a child is, the
+more important is the mother's or kindergartner's providential care of
+his affections during this irresponsible, pre-intellectual period of his
+life.
+
+I think the most frightfully selfish beings I have ever known were
+endowed with great natural sensibility, which was left to concentrate
+upon self, because the claims made by the sensibility of others were not
+early enough presented to the imagination of their hearts. By the growth
+of personal affections, the individual intensifies the feeling of
+individuality, which first comes to him by his having taken such
+possession of his body as enabled him to run alone; and this growth,
+whether intentionally directed towards that combination of his soul and
+body, which he begins to call himself or "I," or directed toward others,
+to whom he clings at first as part of himself (their embrace of him
+being necessary to his comfort), is cherished by the duplicate action of
+the mother. She moulds his heart in her heart, as she has moulded his
+bodily activity by her care and cheering sympathy, when helping out the
+power of his limbs in walking and manipulation. She half creates the
+child's generous and devout affections, if she is herself faithful to
+their proper objects, starting him on the way of a brotherly humanity
+and a filial adoration of the common Father, long before the
+understanding has completely discerned the objects of these human and
+divine affections, which must be blended in order to continue vital and
+pure. But the moral and religious is the most delicate region of the
+child's life, the _holy of holies_, into which "fools incontinently
+rush, though angels fear to tread." She can only be the mother of the
+soul as well as of the body of her child, on condition of being herself
+rich in love of others and in piety to God.
+
+Frœbel suggests this in the introductory poems of _Die Mutter Spiele und
+Kose Lieder_. The first five of these are the mother's communings with
+herself upon the emotions that arise in her heart, as she nurses her
+baby in her arms, and realizes that to her and her husband has been sent
+a living witness of the "very present God," who is the author of their
+being, and has united them by a love that makes that being a blessing to
+themselves, which they are bound to extend beyond themselves. The rhymed
+introduction of the several little child-songs that follow are
+suggestions to her of the meaning of her instincts, and of the bearing
+on the development of the child's heart and mind of the little
+gymnastics described. And just as she could not be the educator of her
+child into his individual body if she were a paralytic herself, so, if
+she be not affectionate and generous herself, she cannot educate him
+into the social body of which he is a living member; nor unless she
+loves God herself, can she inspire him to recognize the Parental Spirit
+of whom we are (as heathen poet and Christian apostle alike aver) the
+veritable children. "We are the offspring of God," said St. Paul,
+quoting from the Greek poet Aratus in the Sermon on Mars' Hill, which is
+a model of all reformatory instruction, whether religious or secular. I
+think all true instruction, proceeding from the known to the unknown, is
+both secular and religious, on the principle that to those who have the
+seed, can be given the increase.
+
+In the first of these mother-songs of Frœbel, the mother finds that the
+baby she holds in her arms, though another than herself, is in a certain
+sense one with herself; thus is unveiled (revealed) to her the Divine
+Fountain of Being, the Person of Persons, from whom she and her little
+one have severally come; and her feelings of wonder and gratitude awaken
+the sense of responsibility to make her child grow conscious as she is
+of the common Father,--and thankful as she is for life in such close
+relation with herself,--who is the first form in which God reveals
+Himself to the child; for when he first looks away from his body so far
+as to perceive that his mother is another than himself, she fills the
+whole sphere of his perception!
+
+Rousseau affirms that every child, if left to its own natural growth,
+would think its mother was its creator. And William Godwin in his
+_Enquirer_ (or some volume of his writings) has quite an eloquent paper,
+setting forth that the natural religion of a child is to worship its
+earthly parents. I have made some observations and had a personal
+experience which makes me doubt this, though I do not doubt that the
+characteristics of parents nearly always determine the character of the
+child's religion. But the question of who is his own creator does not
+naturally come up to a child, even when he begins to ask who made the
+things about him. His own consciousness is of "being increate," and when
+brought to know that his body grows old and must die, the fear that this
+causes is because he imaginatively associates his undying self, which is
+a "presence not to be put by" with the perishing body. What the soul, by
+virtue of its inherent immortality, fears and hates, is loneliness,
+absolute isolation! And when we think of the body, which we identify
+with ourselves from the moment that we have taken it up and walked by
+its instrumentality, as put away alone in the ground, the undying person
+that the soul is, shudders, and can only be comforted by learning to
+conceive itself wholly detached from the decay, and housed within the
+bosom of Him who is the Alpha and Omega of our life; of Him whom we have
+learnt to know with the spirit and understanding also, by the process of
+living in human relations. For we know ourselves as individuals first by
+means of the body, and we know ourselves as a component part of the
+social whole of humanity by means of genial intercourse with our
+kindred, it being revealed to us that we are substantially social, as
+well as distinctly individual, by our instinctive horror of separation
+from them. Later in life only, there are pleasures of solitude for those
+few who by imaginative act make nature populous with personifications,
+and consequently the refracting atmosphere of the Divine Personality.
+The baby that finds itself alone cries for and is comforted by the
+embrace which restores the sense of union with its mother. Seldom is a
+baby in such a wretched state of feeling that a tender embrace and kiss
+will not completely comfort it.
+
+What a proof it is that God is _Love_, that the very embrace that
+symbolizes to the baby's heart the sense of human companionship, gives
+its mind that impression of objective nature which is the first momentum
+of the human understanding! The gentle pressure of one sensitive body
+upon another produces counter-pressure, a resistance that is positively
+pleasurable, whereby the impenetrability of matter becomes a delightful
+instead of a frightful revelation to the mind of the Immutable Reality
+of the loving Creator, as the complement of our own changeful
+individuality! It is the first syllable of that word (or speech of God)
+made intelligible by the various qualities and forms of matter, the
+Truth which He is forever addressing to man. How gracious it is, that He
+should so inextricably mingle the first impression of matter with that
+perception of the _otherness_ of person that makes Love possible! Thus
+love and the sense of individuality are correlative creations and twin
+births. Later, the sense of individuality becomes a positive self-love
+(which in its healthy degree is innocent), and the perception of
+_otherness of person_, with whom it is delightful to be in free union,
+becomes the basis of the self-forgetting generosity of mankind. These
+opposite principles are at first mere and perhaps equal sources of
+satisfaction, having no moral character whatever. Afterwards, they
+become respectively hard selfishness or a weak and base servility, or
+they may rise into a majestic self-respect, and that sublimest love
+which is to make the human race, as a whole, the _image of God_, not
+only king over material nature, but one with the perfect Son of Man,
+also Son of God, who, with a humility and dignity equally venerable, is
+able to say, "I and my Father are One!"
+
+But you will say that I am getting quite beyond the nursery.
+
+In the earlier years, the growth of the religious life is merely
+germinal. And as it is involved within the mothers at the beginning, it
+must be cherished _sympathetically_ by her removing all occasion for
+self-care and self-defence, and thus prevent the sense of individuality
+from degenerating through fear into inordinate self-will and self-love.
+The child should be treated with unvarying tenderness and consideration,
+without having his senses pampered into morbid excess by
+over-indulgence, but above all things, never wounding nor frightening
+his heart, nor repressing the simple and healthy expression of his
+feelings and thoughts. For enforced repression tends to produce ugly
+temper, baseness, or subtlety, according to the child's temperament,
+which is also in imperfect social harmony, if not absolutely
+quarrelsome. It must be her work, therefore, not only to complete the
+child's organic education, but to take him, as it were, into her own
+affectionate spirit by using the methods which Frœbel has suggested to
+the mother for the discipline of her infants. (I use this word
+_discipline_ in its true sense of teaching; not in the sense of
+_punishment_. That the word _discipline_ should ever have come to mean
+punishment is a severe commentary on the ideas and modes of education
+that have hitherto prevailed in Christendom.)
+
+The kindergartner, as well as the mother, must be thoroughly grounded in
+the faith that God has done His part in the original endowment of
+children; and that He is truly present with her, helping her to remedy
+the effects of the mother's shortcomings. She will certainly succeed in
+her work if she studies His laws with an earnest purpose to carry them
+out, first in the government of herself, and then in leading the
+children to self-government. Wordsworth in his _Ode to Duty_, sings:--
+
+          "There are who ask not if Thine eye
+           Be on them, who, in love and truth,
+           Where no misgiving is, rely
+           Upon the genial sense of youth.
+           _Glad hearts!_ without reproach or blot,
+           Who do Thy work, and know it not!
+           And blest are they who in the main
+           This happy faith still entertain,
+           Live in the spirit of this creed,
+           Yet find another strength according to their _need_.
+           May joy be theirs while life shall last,
+           And _Thou_, if they should totter, teach them to stand fast."
+
+Little children certainly, of all persons, are oftenest found in this
+condition when
+
+          "Love is an unerring light,
+           And joy its own security."
+
+And that "other strength," which must come by reflection on and study of
+the unfolding nature of the child in the felt presence of the Inspirer
+of Duty, will certainly be needed by the kindergartner who will receive
+children not always from the hands of natural and faithful mothers, but
+of uncultured servant-maids. (It is but justice to the latter to say
+that there are occasionally found among the Irish nurses those who could
+teach many mothers. The Irish nature is not altogether bad material for
+the production of good motherly nurses; but it must not be left _wild_;
+it needs a great deal of discipline; and I hope the time may come when
+schools for the education of children's nurses, such as Frœbel
+established in Hamburg, which still exist, may be founded in all our
+cities.) Though I think the education of _mothers_ is still more
+important and the first thing to aim at, as it would render nursery
+maids comparatively unnecessary. It is so short a period of a mother's
+life when she _has_ young children, and the book of nature which these
+few years open to her _is so rich_, that, for her own being's sake as
+well as for the children's, it seems to me a terrible loss for her to
+delegate her maternal cares to others during the nursery period. On the
+other hand, when the age for the kindergarten comes, the mother needs to
+be relieved of the increasing care; and children, in their turn, need
+other influences than can be had in a family, especially in families
+where parents have work to do outside of their homes. It is, indeed, "a
+consummation devoutly to be wished," that the time may come when labor
+may be so organized that no mothers may be obliged to leave their
+children's souls uncared for in order to get the wherewithal to sustain
+their bodies.
+
+The deepest reason why a child should be taken care of in its earliest
+infancy _by its mother_ rather than by a person comparatively
+uninterested in its personality, is this, that _only_ a mother can
+respect a child's personality sufficiently. All others regard the child
+for its manifested qualities; but with the mother, it is the child
+itself that she loves, quite irrespective of any qualities that he
+manifests. Phenomenally, a little child is a complex of self-assertion
+and generosity (or a desire for union with its kind); a desire or a
+feeling of finiteness in strange contrast with that instinct to "have
+dominion" which gives vitality to self-assertion. We call this primal
+desire for union his heart, and this primal self-assertion his will. The
+will expresses itself in efforts to change its environments, putting
+what is at rest in motion, knocking down, tearing up, because it does
+not yet know how to put in order, or to change things artistically. The
+child acts without external motive,--doing things merely because it
+_can_. Even after a child is old enough to think and talk, and has done
+some act for which you see no reason or motive, when you ask him why he
+did it, he not unfrequently will say, "_because_." I remember when I was
+a child of six or seven, that I would give this answer with a perfect
+sense of satisfaction that it was _an answer_; and when it would
+sometimes be said, "_because_ is no reason," or "_because_ is an old
+woman's reason," I recollect my feeling of surprise. I seemed to myself
+to have given the most substantial reason. The word meant to me a great
+deal. And I now think I was truly philosophical in this, for I affirmed
+the primal truth, that a self-determining person in spontaneous action,
+if only of some instinct, is a first _cause_[4]--an _absolute cause_--to
+the extent of consciousness. It was an intuition.
+
+Now to retain the sense of this causal personality is at the root of
+all stability of character, all nobleness of manifestation. But
+self-assertion in an ignorant child is more apt than otherwise to be
+disorderly, discordant, and perhaps destructive; it therefore provokes
+resistance in the unthinking, but challenges the thoughtful to give
+guidance. It is of life-and-death importance to the child whether this
+force shall meet mere hard resistance, which shall utterly crush it or
+increase it by reaction, or whether it shall meet with a genial
+sympathetic guidance to which it will voluntarily and gladly surrender
+itself. A mother _loves_ this little ignorant force of self-will and
+wants it to have free course. She cannot help desiring to have her child
+have its own way. She does not want it to be opposed by others. She
+will, as far as possible, further or humor it, as we say. And when she
+finds it necessary to control it, she will try to do it by awakening the
+child's affectionateness, and so captivating its fancy as to make it
+feel it is doing as it likes, though it be something different from what
+it was impelled to do at first; in short, she inspires him to will the
+better thing, and so educates the blind instinct of self-assertion into
+a harmonizing and beneficent power, and preserves the child's dignity
+and nobleness instead of crushing its personality. We hear of "breaking
+the child's will." A child's will should never be broken, but opened up
+into harmony with God's will through a lower harmony with the will of
+its loving and loved mother or kindergartner. But a mother will be more
+sure than any one else to bring about this result, because she acts from
+an impulse of the heart deeper than all thought, while the kindergartner
+by thought must cultivate in herself the impulse.
+
+There are those who deprecate motherly indulgence as if it were the
+greatest evil. Doubtless it will become a great evil if it be not
+properly subordinated to the wisdom which appreciates the divinity of
+order, or if it is alternated with capricious severities; in short, if
+the indulgence proceeds from indolence or self-love instead of love of
+the child. The indulgence that really comes from the last is a
+recognition (unconscious, it may be) of the divine possibilities of the
+child,--a spark of the divine creativeness! Of the two evils, extreme
+indulgence is not so deadly a mistake as extreme severity. Indulged
+children return from afar. The prodigal of the Gospel story may have
+been over-indulged, perhaps, in being allowed to take his portion of
+goods, and go off by himself, out of the reach of his father's counsel
+and authority, and left to his own uneducated self-will. But the sinner,
+when he _came to himself_ (observe that expression), recognized the
+self-forgetting, fatherly love in that very indulgence; and it was the
+immeasurableness of that love that revived his self-respect and hope,
+and saved him; for the hope was not disappointed. Love giveth,
+"upbraiding not."
+
+The one fatal thing is to wound the child's heart. It is better to give
+up the point of controlling its will to righteousness for the moment,
+than to do that; and a parent is the least likely of all persons to
+wound his child's heart.
+
+When nothing can be done without wounding, the parent who trusts his own
+heart will leave the rebel to the consequences which God holds in his
+gracious hands for the final salvation of every one of his children.
+
+Besides, to _choose_ to give up one's own will is the only complete and
+salutary giving up, enabling the soul to mount up spiritually like the
+eagle and renew its strength. There are families in which the act of
+disobedience is absolutely unknown, in earlier or in later life; where
+there is no necessity for uttered commands, because expressed wishes are
+enough. The most perfect, if not the only real, obedience I have ever
+seen, has been that of strong men to an unexacting, tender mother.
+
+This is a subject on which I feel very strongly, for it seems to me that
+the greatest social disorders that exist in the nations among which the
+"order that reigns in Warsaw"[5] is foremost, is the consequence of
+_unreasoning obedience_ to wills _not_ infinitely wise and good. The
+worth and duty of obedience is precisely in ratio with the validity of
+the command; and a command is valid only so far as it is inspired by a
+disinterested and proper respect for the being who is commanded.
+Children should only obey their parents, _in the Lord_; and parents
+should never "provoke their children to wrath."
+
+I may be told that the important element of self-assertion (which gives
+strength to character) may be weakened by being always disarmed, and
+killed by the mother's sympathy; and that to provoke it into conscious
+strength, direct antagonism is necessary. But the best antagonism is
+that quiet, inevitable one, that comes from the inexorableness of
+material nature which the child must needs feel, the more disorderly he
+is, but which he sees is insensate and impersonal; whose antagonism,
+therefore, does not grieve his heart, and disappoint his hope as human
+oppression does, making him sad or bitter, but stimulates his mind to
+conquer and subdue it, or develops a dignified patience. The appointed
+domain for kingly man is not the brotherhood, but material nature; and
+gradually he is to learn that nature's inexorable laws are the
+expression of a Supreme Personality as benignant as it is august, who
+takes up His human child into Himself, not without his concurring will;
+for mankind mounts on the nature which he gradually subdues into a
+stepping-stone, by knowledge, and the use of it. The mother must
+remember that though the first, she is not the only instrumentality by
+which the Divine Providence works. The time comes when she is compelled
+to deliver her cherished darling up to other influences; when the child
+bursts out of the nursery, not only self-asserting and affectionate,
+but putting forth energies, and seeking satisfaction of sensibilities
+that cannot be met within that narrow precinct.
+
+The kindergarten must, then, succeed by complementing the nursery; and
+the child begin to take his place in the company of his equals, to learn
+his place in their companionship, and still later to learn wider social
+relations and their involved duties. No nursery, therefore, not even a
+perfect one, can supersede the necessity of a kindergarten, where
+children shall come into cognizance of the moral laws which are to
+restrain and guide their self-assertion, and quicken and enlarge their
+social affections, leading them to self-denials for the sake of
+opportunities for themselves of useful and creative art, beneficence,
+and heroism.
+
+The time for transition from the nursery to the kindergarten is
+definitely indicated by two facts. Firstly, Divine Providence has so
+arranged general family events that every mother must give up having the
+child live, as it were, entirely within _her_ life, because she has
+other children to nurse, or other social duties to do. And, secondly,
+every child's growth in bodily strength and conscious individuality
+makes him too strong a force of will for so narrow a scope of relation
+as is afforded by one family. While hitherto, to be outside of the
+single family influence was an evil, it would now be an evil to confine
+the child entirely to it, narrowing his heart and mind, and deforming
+his character. He needs to be brought into relation with equals who have
+other personal characteristics, other relations with nature and the
+human race than his own family. The instinct of the growing child, at
+this period, to get out of doors to play with other children, is
+unmistakable. To check it vexes or depresses him. In getting possession,
+first of his body, and then of his personal and social consciousness, he
+has become an object to himself, and feels himself a power among other
+powers affecting each other. But he is still more or less consciously a
+prisoner (if not a slave) of nature, by reason of his ignorance of the
+laws of the universe,--_that body_ outside of his own body,--which he is
+destined, in alliance with others, to take possession of, by action
+_upon_ and _within_ it, giving him knowledge of it, and enabling him to
+make it into instrumentality for the expression and embodiment of great
+ideas and a noble will.
+
+All government worthy of the name begins in self-government, a free
+subordination of the individual in order to form the social whole.
+Subordination is something higher than subjection. We subject mere
+animals; intelligent moral agents must be subordinated. It is still the
+mother's part rather to inspire; the kindergartner's part is to
+subordinate, not to check childish, spontaneous talk, though, of course,
+it must be regulated so far as not to let the children interrupt each
+other _impolitely_, and to keep it to some main subject. Some
+kindergartners begin the session by asking each in turn what is
+interesting to him. Mrs. Kraus-Boelte generally receives each one as he
+or she comes in. They go to her for the morning kiss, and have something
+to say, in which she expresses due sympathy, and later recurs to and
+connects with what others say, and thus produces general conversation.
+Mrs. Van Kirk is very happy in her introductory conversations.
+
+In playing with the gifts, the teacher dictates certain movements and
+arrangements, for the purpose of the children's getting into the habit
+of listening and quickly catching the directions given; and the children
+should be encouraged to follow _her words_ in what they do, rather than
+to imitate each other. In their spontaneous work they often make a new
+symmetrical form, which is really beautiful; and then it is well to call
+on the child to direct his companions how to make it; for children
+delight in the dignity of _directing_, and learn to be very precise in
+the use of all the words expressing relation of all kinds,--prepositions,
+adjectives, and adverbs,--_precisely_ as well as nouns and verbs.
+Language does not merely transfer the outward inward, but soon begins to
+transfer the inward outward. Love, and other sentiments of the soul,
+good and bad, are named, as well as sensible objects. Even the
+instinctive search after proximate causes leads children to infer the
+substantiality of _wind_ and the other invisible forms of matter; and
+the spiritual senses inherent in the "Me," which is the most essential
+of all substances, verifies the ideal world to children, as truly as the
+bodily senses verify the material world, and even _more so_; for
+children live in God before they _exist_ out of God. The Italian
+philosopher Gioberti says that the soul is a _spiritual activity_; that
+is, it sees God as the first act of its life. God says, "_Be thou_" and
+the soul--before it is put into the sleep of nature (the deep sleep that
+came upon Adam)--looks back and says, "_Thou art_." We have the memory
+of this primeval vision, and act in our sense of holiness (wholeness?),
+right, justice, pure love from the uncalculating delight of loving, the
+ideals of beauty, and the sense of accountability to God and man, which
+forever haunt us, sometimes giving us pain, as _remorse_, whose sting is
+in the comparison of our outward manifested self with our inward sense
+of "being increate" (as Milton expresses it). It is this supernatural
+pre-intellectual _soul_ which distinguishes man from the animal
+creation, and is symbolized by his form, which looks upward to the
+symbol of infinity made by the sky, with which the human being
+instinctively _communes_, and towards which the child wants to fly,--and
+delights in and loves the birds, beyond all other forms of animal life,
+because they _can_ fly. Gioberti goes on, in his psychology, to say that
+when the soul, which has recognized its Divine Source as the first act
+of its life, is put to sleep in nature, it is gradually waked up by the
+individual forms of nature, which are so many syllables of the Divine
+Word that are echoed in human words, which describe matter and its
+evolutions; then the understanding begins, and (which is the point I
+want you to observe especially at this moment) the words of even a very
+young child soon bring to its understanding spiritual realities. And it
+is the office of education to see that the relations of things,--the
+laws of order among things,--the adjustment of external cause and
+effect, be _accurately worded_; and especially that the _spiritual_
+consciousness gets a happy symbolization; that is, that the best words
+are used to _do justice_ to the Ideas of God and the sentiments of the
+heart of man.
+
+A materialistic educator (or no less a mere dogmatist in religion, who
+does not see that the logical formulas and abstract terms of scientific
+theology cannot possibly _wake up_ the primeval vision) may do an all
+but infinite mischief to the character and heart, by the words he uses
+in talking to children; and the theologian a greater mischief than the
+materialist, because the forms and evolutions of matter are, as I have
+said, _syllables of the Word_ that was in the beginning with God and, in
+a certain sense, _God_, while the abstractions of the human mind are the
+refuse of finite spirit, infinitely superficial, mere limitations of
+thought which become stumbling-blocks to the mind when not used as
+stepping-stones to new outlooks, or rather, inlooks. Never should
+children be talked to in the language of theological science, but wholly
+in imaginative symbolization, and the symbols should be chosen with
+great care, and we should be on our guard against rousing the faculty of
+abstraction which is a sleeping danger in the nature, whose premature
+development is injurious in strict proportion to ignorance and
+sensitiveness. The symbols of the spiritual should be human because
+human consciousness involves substance outside the physical, and,
+therefore, did the Word which had not been comprehended in its creation
+of "everything which it had made," though "without it nothing was made,"
+take flesh and dwell among us, in order that we might apprehend the
+glory of God and perfection of man with our whole nature. That it would
+do so, was the insight of the Hebrew genius, whenever by worthy
+soul-action the law-giver, king, and whoever entered into "the liberty
+of prophesying" was raised to the height of his nature. Now a child is
+"on its being's height," "mighty prophet," "seer blest,"
+
+          "On whom those truths do rest
+           That we are toiling all our lives to find,"
+
+and therefore a child can supply a substantial meaning to any name for
+God adequate to awaken the living echo of the soul that
+
+          "Cometh from afar
+           Trailing clouds of glory from God,"
+
+whose voice sent it forth, as Gioberti says, "to suffer and to be for a
+season on earth."
+
+I hope you follow me in my thought, for I think I am looking into the
+child, which is the thing that ought to be done if one undertakes to
+teach it. That the child really knows God before God is even named to
+him is not a speculative theory with me but a fact of my experience. It
+is one of my earliest remembrances, that I was sitting in the lap of a
+young lady, whose name and countenance I have forgotten, who was
+caressing me, and calling me sweet, beautiful, darling, etc., when all
+at once she seized me into a closer embrace and exclaimed, rather than
+asked, Who made you?
+
+I remember my pleased surprise at the question, that I feel very sure
+had never been addressed to my consciousness before. At once a Face
+arose to my imagination,--only a Face and head,--close to me, and
+looking upon me with the most benignant smile, in which the kindness
+rather predominated over the intelligence; but it looked at me as if
+meaning, "Yes, I made you, as you know very well." I was so thoroughly
+satisfied, that I replied to the question decisively, "A man."
+
+The lady said to another who sat near us, "Only think! this great girl
+does not know who made her!"
+
+I remember I was no less sure of my knowledge, notwithstanding she said
+this. Though it was the first time I had thought God and given the name
+"man" to the thought, it seemed not new to me. I had felt God before.
+
+I _was_ a rather large girl, more than four years old, as I know from
+the fact that we were living in a certain house, to which we went on my
+fourth birthday. My next recollection is of going into a room of this
+house, where my mother was sitting, working at an embroidery frame that
+hung against the wall. I went up to her and said, "Mamma, Eliza asked me
+who made me, and I told her a man, and she said he didn't!" I stated
+this reply as a grievance and outrage.
+
+Since I came to the age of reflection, I have always regretted the
+conversation that followed. It was not judicious, and seems to me a
+little out of character for my mother, who was of strong religious
+sentiment and quick imagination, and all other conversation on religious
+subjects that I remember of hers was very good. She was rather thrown
+off her guard by my unexpected theology and lost her presence of mind. I
+was her oldest child, and she had waited to see some enquiry raised
+before speaking on the subject. I had seemed more stupid than I was, for
+I belong by nature rather to the reflective than perceptive class, and
+so had very little language. At this distance of time I cannot, of
+course, remember the details of the conversation, but I came out of it
+with another image of God in my mind, conveying not half so much of the
+truth as did that kind Face, close up to mine, and seeming to be so
+wholly occupied with His creature. The new image was of an old man,
+sitting away up on the clouds, dressed in a black silk gown and cocked
+hat, the costume of our old Puritan minister. He was looking down upon
+the earth, and spying round among the children to see who was doing
+wrong, in order to punish offenders by touching them with a long rod he
+held in his hand, thus exposing them to everybody's censure. Of course
+my mother said no such thing to me, but what she did say, by subtle
+associations with the words she used, gave me this image, which I need
+not say rather checked than promoted my spiritual advancement.
+
+This experience has been of value to me as a teacher since, for it has
+effectually saved me from being didactic and dogmatic in my religious
+teaching of children. The Socratic method is the true way of bringing
+into the definite conscious thought God's revelation of Himself to the
+soul. That image of authority and power to punish did not, I think,
+help, but rather puzzled my moral sense of which I was already
+conscious. For I remember that I used to muse very much in my childhood
+upon the mental phenomenon of feeling myself to be two persons. I was
+clearly conscious of an inward conversation on all occasions of a
+question of right and wrong, when a higher and lower law distinctly
+uttered themselves. The lower self often prevailed by the argument that
+the thing to be done was _transient_, I would do it only this _once_,
+and never again; and often I thus sinned against the very present God,
+which I think I might not have done so presumptuously, had I associated
+the thought of this strange other me with that kind face of Love Divine.
+When later in life I did learn that the remonstrating voice was
+unquestionably God, because He is the Love that I saw in my childish
+vision, the war between self-love and conscience ceased. But this was
+not till a great body of death had been accumulated, which I have never
+shuffled off except in moments of hope.
+
+But to take up the thread of my discourse again. I would very earnestly
+say that the Socratic or conversational method is the only way of
+bringing into a child's definite consciousness God's revelation of
+Himself to souls. But this requires a mutual understanding of words,
+and if we are careful, we may produce this in the kindergarten.
+
+Frœbel intimates that a general impression of there being an invisible
+Friend and Protector may be given by the baby's seeing the mother in the
+attitude of devotion, and he would have recognition of God called forth
+by her naming the unseen Father at moments when the child's heart is
+overflowing with joy and love, or seeking to know where some beautiful
+thing comes from. The child feels already at such times the presence of
+the Infinite Cause, the Infinite Source of joy and goodness, and the
+name of Heavenly Father given to this presence will not be an empty
+vocable. Using with the name of Father the word "our," with which the
+Lord's Prayer begins, suggests that He is the Father of all alike, and
+all human beings will thus be united together with Him in the child's
+imagination.[6]
+
+This idea of one personal but comprehensive Being, the centre of the
+social organization, is a quickening of the immortal personality, which
+has a date in time no less certainly than the quickening of the body,
+and is our sense of identity.[7]
+
+FOOTNOTES:
+
+[4] See Hazard's _Man a Creative First Cause_. A book published since
+this lecture was first given.
+
+[5] "Order reigns in Warsaw" was the form of words in which the
+subjugation of the Poles to Russians in 1849 was announced in France.
+
+[6] See Frederic Denison Maurice's book on the Lord's Prayer, published
+by Hurd & Houghton.
+
+[7] See Appendix, note A.
+
+
+
+
+LECTURE IV.
+
+THE KINDERGARTEN.
+
+
+IN my last lecture I spoke of the ideal nursery; for only there,
+hitherto, has the divine method of education ever been completely
+carried out, the unquestionable teacher there being _the child_,
+"trailing clouds of glory from God who is our home"; its sweet content
+and inspiring smile indicating when its nurse is treating it aright;
+while all that is wrong, whether proceeding from mere ignorance or
+selfish wilfulness on the part of the adult, is indicated by its cries
+of fright and anger, which it behooves her to heed.
+
+How is it that, with the spectacle forever before our eyes of the mother
+and infant, mutually emparadised in child's play (that mutually
+educating communion of trust and love, by which the child is put into
+gradual possession of his body, and joyous consciousness of his
+individuality),--how is it, I say, that we find education has lost its
+_ideal_, and as soon as the child leaves the nursery for the schoolroom,
+an antagonism has begun, "with its blessedness at strife," and which
+leaves us all such scarred and bewildered creatures as we find ourselves
+to be, as soon as we come to reflect?
+
+But I must remember that what we have to speak of especially is the
+kindergarten, which follows hard upon the nursery.
+
+When the child's growing activities begin to require a larger social
+sphere than the nursery,--_i.e._, at about three years old,--it was
+Frœbel's plan to gather the children of several families into what he
+called a "Child Garden," and to extend the nursery law of _cherishing_
+(which is the dealing with living organisms that children are), by
+exercising them for several hours of every day in rehearsing in plays,
+in the first place, all the sweet charities of life. This employs their
+physical forces, and makes them experimentally know that human happiness
+and goodness are social and generous.
+
+For the so-called "movement plays" are social exercises, gently calling
+out moral sentiments, as well as intellectual powers. They can only be
+beautiful and enjoyable when they give mutual pleasure; and this
+involves that mutual reference and kind consideration of each other
+which leave no room for selfish feeling or action. Moral education is
+the alpha and omega of a kindergarten, but it cannot be given by
+precept. To _do_ the will of God,--_i.e._, to obey the moral
+law,--"doing to others as we would have others do to us," _even in
+play_, is the only way for children to know vitally the doctrine of
+moral life.
+
+Frœbel has suggested a variety of these movement plays, all of them
+conceived with the greatest care as to their intellectual as well as
+moral effect. They always have a fanciful aim, within the scope of the
+child's knowledge and affection, and to play them begins to develop the
+understanding also.
+
+A gentle intellectual exercise, involved in learning by rote, reciting,
+and singing the songs that direct the plays, takes the rudeness out and
+puts intelligence into that exhilaration of the animal spirits which
+healthy children crave, and prevents it from exhausting the body or
+disordering the mind; the joyous association of the children with each
+other aiding this effect. In the sedentary plays, which are called
+"occupations," and in which the child is genially drawn into producing
+symmetrical effects to the eye, by making things (albeit only little
+toys) which begin their artistic life, Frœbel has had equal regard to
+the moral as to the intellectual influences. When the child has gone
+beyond the age in which he is satisfied with making transient forms and
+gathering the materials back into boxes, and desires to make something
+that will last, a legitimate sense of property arises. He feels that
+what he has made is _his own_, for the thought and work which he knows
+that he has put into it are his own. Frœbel, therefore, would have him,
+before he begins to _make_ anything, pause and appropriate it
+intentionally to some object of his love, reverence, or pity. This will
+check the otherwise rampant propensity to hoard, and prevent the
+passions of avarice, vanity, and jealousy from making their appearance.
+In our common school life, the pride of _showing off_ their powers, and
+excelling others, is regularly cultivated in children by competition, as
+a stimulus to industry. But this is as unnecessary as it is deleterious.
+For disinterested desire to confer pleasure, and express gratitude and
+love of others, is found by experience to be a surer stimulus to
+industry than the baser passions, and has the additional value of
+cultivating positive sweetness and active benevolence. It is desirable,
+and really produces the greatest practical humility, for children to
+regard themselves as embryo powers of beneficence, learning to do the
+Heavenly Father's business from the beginning, like the child Jesus.
+Then may they grow "in favor with God and men," as they grow "in
+stature," and all their knowledge will prove a divine wisdom unto the
+salvation of others and themselves. To go into a truly ordered and well
+governed child-garden, and see all the little children busy making
+things for the Christmas tree, or for birthday and new year's gifts, for
+all the friends they know or fancy, we shall see sufficient proofs that
+love is the truest quickener of industry, and love-inspired industry the
+true sweetener of the disposition and temper.
+
+Moreover, such industry is the special desideratum to temper the spirit
+of the present age, which is so keen and energetic that it hurries our
+young men into pursuits in their amusements which take on the character
+of gambling; and hence gambling in business, gambling in politics, where
+even human beings, instead of being regarded as _brothers to be kept_,
+are used as dice, to be recklessly thrown in our game. The only
+preventive or cure for this passion for gambling is industry, and the
+only industry that is attractive is artistic; and why should not all
+industry become artistic, now that the great cosmic forces are suborned,
+by our advancing civilization, as the legitimate slaves of men, to do
+all the hard work for men? I have already set forth this view of the
+subject in the _Plea for Frœbel's Kindergarten as the Primary
+Art-School_, which I appended to Cardinal Wiseman's lecture on the
+relation of the arts of design with the arts of production (which I
+published in 1869, under the title of _The Artist and the Artisan
+Identified,--the Proper Object of American Education_).
+
+Before I leave these general remarks for more specific explanation of
+Frœbel's method of intellectual development, I would make one more
+observation. It is in the social and moral character of the kindergarten
+that Frœbel has shown himself so much superior to Rousseau, whose method
+was to cultivate individualities exclusively, the teacher pretending to
+know no more than the child, but taking his idiosyncrasy for his only
+guide in discovery and invention. In the first place, Rousseau's method
+has been found an impracticable one, for it requires a separate teacher
+for every child; and in the only instance, perhaps, in which it was ever
+carried out with perfect fidelity, that of Maria Edgeworth's eldest
+brother (we have in her memoirs of her father all the facts), the
+ultimate effect was to make a monstrosity. He was utterly strange, so
+odd and unsocial, nobody but his father, who educated him, could have
+any practicable relation with him. He might be said to be
+conscientiously unsocial, and therefore immoral; and, though not
+ungifted, he was an utter failure in human life. We see similar effects
+produced measurably, in all cases where the main object is to cultivate
+the individual rather than the universal characteristics of humanity.
+Frœbel was tender, and gave freedom to individualities, but he took
+great care not to _pamper_ them. They are the results of the free-will,
+irrefragable, and will take care of themselves sufficiently, if not
+cruelly snubbed, but tenderly respected.
+
+What is to be _intentionally_ cultivated in earliest infancy, are the
+_general_ affections and faculties, which relate us to our kind,
+insuring _common_ sense and _common_ conscience with a reasonable
+self-respect. Therefore, what is done in the kindergarten is necessary
+for all children, their idiosyncrasies being left free to play on the
+surface and give variety and piquancy to life, freedom and dignity to
+the individual.
+
+All minds seem to be divided into two classes. In one class, the primal
+tendency is to observe single objects; and these are the so-called smart
+children, interesting the spectator by their vivacity and precocity. In
+the other class, children seem to be dull in sense, unobserving, but
+dreamy, as if they had an over-mastering _presentiment_ of that
+connection of things which binds them into wholes. It has been remarked
+that this latter class turns out the great men,--the poets, the
+philosophers, the inventors, high artists, great statesmen, and
+law-givers,--while the precocious children disappoint expectation;
+probably because they have accumulated such a chaos of single
+impressions of disconnected things, that it quite overwhelms the
+classifying and generalizing powers of the intellect. Frœbel's method
+equally meets the respective wants of both these classes of minds,
+supplying by specific culture the _other_ side of their practical
+endowment. By its discipline of production, it gives the lively and
+restless ones the wand of the Fairy-Order, in discovering to them the
+connections of things, and the conditions as well as laws of
+organization; while for those of the dreamy, poetic, philosophic
+temperament, it sharpens the senses to individual things, supplying the
+definite and sensuous impressions, and suggesting the corresponding
+words that enable them to give an account of their own thinking, and
+illustrate to others the struggling ideal; which, like conscience and
+the love of order and rhythm, is perhaps the yet persistent vision of
+that Heavenly Father's face, which Jesus Christ has told us we are
+created beholding.
+
+Jesus evidently is quoting a familiar proverb, when he says "for their
+angels behold the face of my Father who is in heaven." Does it not refer
+to the Persian mythology current in Judea after the captivity? However
+neglected and eclipsed, that primeval vision can never be quite lost. It
+persists in the love of order and beauty; in the desire to be loved
+_infinitely_; in hope "that springs eternal in the human breast"; in the
+ideals of imagination, that haunt both the savage and the sage, and, at
+worst, in _remorse_, in which, as Emerson says, "there is a certain
+_sweetness_," whether it be gentle as in what the Quakers call "the
+reproof of truth," or felt as the reproachful strivings within us of our
+neglected infinite nature.
+
+This brings me to speak of Frœbel's superiority to Pestalozzi. The
+kindergarten is not mainly _object-teaching_, though of course a
+constant object-teaching is _involved_; all the materials of their work
+and all the surroundings of the children become objects of examination
+in their individualities of form, size, number, etc., and in their
+possible connections with each other and with the _child_. If Frœbel
+proposes to give the fruits of the tree of _life_, before he gives those
+of the tree of knowledge, it is only that the latter may prove, _not a
+curse_, but a blessing. The world's history and the present state of
+civilization in the foremost nations of the world shows us that
+knowledge may be _a power_ without being _a good_ (a snakish subtlety
+not Divine Wisdom). It begins to be realized in Europe as well as in
+America, that Frœbel's idea of education, in making _character_ the
+first thing, and knowledge the _hand-maiden_ of goodness, is the
+desideratum of the age, and promise of the millennium.
+
+I should like to read you some letters of eminent men in France,
+addressed to Frœbel's most earnest disciple and apostle, the Baroness
+Marenholtz-Bülow, which I have translated from the appendix of her _Work
+in Relation to Education_ (see Appendix, Note B).
+
+In an address to the school committee of Boston in 1868 I gave the call
+addressed in 1867 by the Philosophers' Congress in Prague to the
+convention of teachers in Berlin, and the call of the latter to the
+second convention of this congress at Frankfort-on-the-Main in 1869. The
+burden of all these papers is the paramount necessity of religious and
+moral education, begun in earliest infancy, in order that the modern
+intellectual activity may not land us in licentious vices and heartless
+atheism, _our nearest dangers_. They all accept Frœbel's method of
+education by work and experience (beginning with the work and experience
+of the child of three years old) as the first condition of the
+regeneration of the human race.
+
+It is the office of the kindergartner to awaken the intellect, which the
+child does not bring into the world, like its heart and will,
+full-grown. The infant suffers and enjoys as keenly, and wills as
+energetically, at first as ever in its life, but apparently begins and
+lives for some time, unconscious of a world without as a _not me_. It is
+purely subjective, _i.e._, feeling its material environment to be a part
+of itself. As Emerson says:--
+
+          "The babe, by its mother,
+             Lies bathed in joy;
+           Glide its hours uncounted;
+             The sun is its toy!
+           Shines the peace of all being,
+             Without cloud, in its eyes;
+           And the sum of the world
+             In soft miniature lies!"
+
+Only by intentional help of those around the child can it grow into
+individual consciousness of its relations with nature in that order
+which produces the sound intellect. For the intellect is a growth in
+time, that carries on the nursery exercises of the limbs and affections
+by the movement plays, and adds those sedentary plays with the series of
+gifts, which are symbols of all nature in miniature, that objective
+revelation of God to which the receptive mind answers by thoughts.
+Thinking is that reaction of the individual mind upon nature which, when
+it is put into words, produces progressively an image of God, which is
+the human mind.
+
+The kindergartner's conversation with the children upon their playthings
+is therefore her most important and delicate work, and one which she
+cannot do instinctively, but only if she scientifically understands the
+child on the one hand, and nature in some department on the other. It is
+impossible in this lecture, perhaps, to demonstrate my meaning. By
+following out Frœbel's own method of playing with the gifts, as
+suggested in Mrs. Kraus-Boelte's guide or in _The Florence Handbook_,
+the whole process of the formation of the human understanding by the
+order of objective nature will become patent, and enable the
+kindergartner to avoid any great mistakes in her guidance of the
+children's minds, which guidance should always be tentative, and
+respectful, to say the least, of their freedom to will. Then we shall
+have not mechanical work, but orderly, creative work from the children,
+whose spontaneity is not to be choked; but when it seems to be going in
+a wrong direction, interrogatively guided. Like Ariel, she must do her
+spiriting gently, lest she violate the legitimate individuality, and we
+have Caliban instead of the germ of Prospero.
+
+I here pause to display two kinds of work actually done by children
+under seven years of age at Frau Marquadt's kindergarten in Dresden.
+They enable me to show that those sedentary plays, with which Frœbel
+would have children amused, must needs develop and educate the
+perceptive faculty and understanding in a substantial manner; for these
+things were done without patterns, and therefore from _thought_,--the
+thought being sometimes suggested by the dictation of the
+child-gardener, requiring of the child only one single act of
+reflection. But much of this work was invented by the children
+themselves, their wildest fancies being controlled to produce symmetry,
+by following the one rhythmical law of always making an opposite to
+everything they do. After showing and explaining the _modus operandi_ of
+the work exhibited, I went on to say:--
+
+I believe nobody disputes, after they see what kindergarten is, that it
+is the gospel of salvation for children. The exercises put them into
+complete possession, not only of their limbs, especially the
+characteristic limb of man, the hand, just when they are the most
+flexible, and therefore most easily trained; and of their organs of
+sense (by which they gradually make the universe their instrumentality),
+but also of _accurate speech_, enabling them to express their
+impressions of individual things, as well as of what they _do_ with
+things and in the order of its doing. Thus they are prepared for
+entering upon more abstract subjects, by means of books and schools of
+instruction. A child well "gardened" and exercised in the intelligent
+use of his mother tongue enters upon the process of learning to read,
+for instance, with all the more advantage from being accustomed to hear
+and use language with precision and fluency; and is ready to learn to
+cipher all the more quickly, because of the concrete arithmetic and
+geometry he has mastered experimentally with the playthings and in the
+occupations, all his habits of delicate observation and nice calculation
+formed by the embroidery and other fanciful work giving the basis for
+intelligent classifications. Even the few years of experience of some
+genuine kindergartens in this country has already proved this. I can
+give an instance in detail of the almost miraculous rapidity with which
+a class of seven-year-old children learned to read in the primer called
+_After Kindergarten--What?_ (Note C, in Appendix.) All the time given to
+"child-gardening" is therefore more than saved at the next stage, when
+instruction begins. Other advantages accruing are incalculable, for the
+children themselves have become intelligent and conscientious
+co-operators with their elders, instead of passive receivers or
+antagonists. When Miss Youmans' _First Lessons in Botany_ (a book made
+to teach botany in nature on Prof. Henslow's method) was introduced into
+the New York primary schools, with great expectations of a brilliant
+success, it was found that the children did not take hold as expected of
+this science of observation. "I see now," said Miss Youmans to me, "the
+indispensableness of kindergartens to develop the faculties; more than
+half the children are intellectually demoralized by neglect or
+injudicious teaching before they are seven years old." Everything,
+however, depends upon the single-minded self-devotion and affectionate
+character of the kindergartner, and it is obvious that her education
+must be as special as that of a teacher of instrumental and vocal music;
+for as little as music can be taught by the ear, or drawing by the eye,
+without studying the underlying principles of harmony and symmetry, can
+kindergartning be taught empirically. Its foundation is in both a
+scientific and sympathetic study and understanding of the child's
+perceptive powers and the material world. Not merely what is to be
+taught, as is the case with a university professor, but the free-willing
+and deep-feeling beings that are to be taught must be studied generally
+and individually above all things else. Hence, there must be special
+schools for teaching child-gardening, or a special department made in
+the already existing normal schools.
+
+The burden of thinking out the steps of procedure in the schoolroom is
+too great a one to be laid on the teacher who has to exercise the
+general care. It must all be at the tongue's tip and fingers' ends
+beforehand. It took Frœbel a lifetime, with all his genius and wisdom,
+to discover all the steps of this order of exercises, in correspondence
+with the true evolution of the faculties; but "one man dies, and other
+men enter into the fruits of his labors." Besides, it is as cruel to
+study the philosophy of education at the expense of the living
+children's minds, as it would be to study anatomy and medicine at the
+expense of their living bodies. All kindergartners should observe and
+practise for awhile under the direction and criticism of those who are
+already experts and adepts; and the latter should be careful that their
+assistants try no rash experiments, but at first reverently observe
+successful work. It is the highest interest of all teachers to learn
+this method, because it develops themselves. It not only makes the best
+mothers, but the most perfectly accomplished women. It is entering into
+the secret of creation and redemption, which is the flower and fruit of
+human culture.[8]
+
+When people ask me if kindergartning is not a method especially adapted
+to German children, I reply that it seems to me to encounter as great
+obstacles in that nationality as in any other. It is not a _national_
+method, but the _human_ method; and I would remark in this place that it
+strikes me as especially desirable for Irish children. The natural
+predominance in them of fancy needs the check of accurate perception,
+associated with accurate expression; accurate perception, first, of the
+individuality of objects, their form, size, color, direction, their
+mutual resemblances and contrasts, and the no less accurate perception
+of their relations to each other and to the child. These things can only
+be made objects of perception by children's being accustomed to _make_
+things, which employ the activities that otherwise will play at random
+and divert their attention from the matter in hand. In my observations
+of Irish servants, I am struck with their never seeming to see what is
+before their eyes, or to hear what is said to them, on account of the
+predominance of their creative faculties. Accurate perception of the
+things children play with, and successful manipulation of them to
+produce effects, would also help them to moral integrity; for order
+moralizes just in proportion as disorder demoralizes. Successful action
+cures idle dissipation, while unsuccessful efforts discourage and
+paralyze industry. Frœbel wishes the child to be started at something he
+can certainly accomplish, though perhaps not without direction in words.
+When the child sees an effect produced by himself, he will repeat it
+until he can produce the effect without direction, and, if asked, will
+be delighted to show another child how he has done it. It is a necessary
+step to put his action into words, and raises it from mere mechanical
+into intellectual work; from Chinese imitation into European and
+American invention. By and by, when he has learned a little steadiness
+of attention by doing successfully what pleases his fancy, he will make
+some motion of his own, and proceed according to the law of symmetry
+(whose virtue he has learned) to discover and make new forms of beauty
+and use; but he should still be carefully overlooked, and saved, by
+timely suggestions, from making mistakes. These suggestions he will
+crave and not resist, _if they are not peremptory_, but are put in the
+form of a question, which seems to respect his power to choose, which is
+his _personality_, the image of God within him. In proceeding in this
+way, both teacher and child are led more and more to realize that there
+is a mysterious third Being present, who is neither the teacher nor the
+child, but in whom they meet, through whom they communicate, and who
+gives the law they both must respect; that there is, in short, One "in
+whom they live and move and have their being"; that is the God who
+"worketh in them to will and to do"; that He enables them to create
+beauty, not at random, but with a certain freedom which is not
+lawlessness. He is the Creator of the Beauty they do not make, and of
+the Good they love, and gives the Laws which they obey, and in obeying
+become powers of good and inventors of beauty; for the laws of order are
+truly God's thought revealed to their thought. To be active powers of
+good and beauty is to be religious, and also to be free from
+superstition; to love God instead of being afraid of Him; to make their
+lives a reasonable service, and thus become free from priestcraft and
+spiritual tyranny. Inefficiency, still more than ignorance, is the
+mother of fetich worship, and reduces man to slavery; and to be
+surrounded by natural and artistic beauty does not cultivate the mind,
+unless it is already an active power. Reverie is not thinking. But the
+mind can only become active by the electric touch of a sympathetic mind
+which is already in motion. It is the destiny of men to become one in
+that same sense that the Divine Father and Son are one. God has made
+human communion a moral necessity, and does nothing for man, except by
+the instrumentality of man. "By man came death, by man also cometh the
+resurrection from the dead." In short, education, that "mysterious
+communion of wisdom and innocence," is presupposed in reasonable
+religion. I once heard an eloquent man, who was speaking of education,
+say, "The Archangel is born upon earth; we may know him by the many
+difficulties that he has found and surmounted, and his consequent power
+to educate; for _education_ is the highest function of humanity in earth
+and heaven, cementing the links of the chain of love which binds us all
+to one another and to God." We are always either educating or hindering
+the development of our fellow-creatures; we are always being uplifted or
+being dragged down by our fellow-creatures. Education is always mutual.
+The child teaches his parents (as GÅ“the has said) what his parents
+omitted to teach him. Every child is a new thought of God, whose
+individuality is significant and interesting to others, though it is his
+own limitation; and to appreciate a child's individuality is the
+advantage the teacher gets in exchange for the general laws which he
+leads the child to appreciate. It is this variety of individuals that
+makes the work of education fascinating, and takes from it all wearisome
+monotony. Those persons who feel that education is wearisome work have
+not learned the secret of it. I have never seen a good kindergartner who
+was not as fond of the work as a painter of his painting, a sculptor of
+his modelling. Teachers who are not conscious of learning from their
+pupils, may be pretty sure they teach them very little.
+
+It is because kindergartning is this true education, which is mutual
+delight to the adult and the child, that I have faith it will prevail,
+and its prevalence is my hope for humanity. By the infinite mercy of
+God, no human being is hopeless of redemption into God's perfect image
+at last; but humanity will not be redeemed as a whole,--will not become
+the image of God, or live the life of God,--until little children are
+suffered to go unto Christ while they are yet of the kingdom of heaven,
+and are blessed from the first and continually, by those who shall take
+them in their arms to bless them. Those are only perfect kindergartners
+who are "hidden in Christ," receiving every child in his name, and
+humbly learning of them the secrets of greatness in the kingdom of
+heaven, which is to be established on earth. Kindergartning is not a
+craft, it is a religion; not an avocation, but a vocation from on High.
+
+FOOTNOTE:
+
+[8] For details of manipulating the gifts and occupations, see _The
+Florence Handbook_, published by Milton Bradley; or Mrs. Kraus-BÅ“lte's
+_Manual in Eight Parts_, which is being published by Steiger.
+
+
+
+
+LECTURE V.
+
+LANGUAGE.
+
+
+TEACHING, which in the common sense of the word is the suggestion of
+thoughts by words, is not the kindergartner's special work, but the _a
+priori_ process of drawing out into the individual consciousness of a
+child those latent powers whose free activity gives him conscious
+relations, first, with his kind; secondly, with material nature,
+including his own body; and, thirdly, with God. He is unconsciously in
+this threefold relation already, but to become conscious of these
+relations severally, in his own growth builds up the human
+understanding, which is not born with him like his sensibility and force
+of will. The human understanding, a creation in time of the free will,
+creates language as the element of a life not shared with animals; an
+intellectual life using the symbolism of nature as a means of
+intercommunication, and which is correspondent and bearing a relation to
+its creator, man, similar to the relation of the material universe to
+God, being in both instances an image, as in a mirror, of what is
+necessary and immutable in the self-consciousness, though without entity
+itself. Hence, as the material universe expresses the wisdom of God,
+human languages express the imperfect wisdom of man. Language is the
+element in which the intellectual nature makes a sphere wherein to live
+and move and have its being. What breath is to the material body, making
+man alive in nature, language is to the social body, making it alive in
+history.
+
+A word is both spiritual and material, being an articulate form of the
+voice which, as GÅ“the has happily said, is the nearest spiritual of our
+bodily powers, taking significance from the articulating organs, which
+are symbolical, like everything else in material nature, which, as I
+said before, is but an image, as reflected in a mirror, without absolute
+entity, but bearing witness of an entity progressively apprehended by
+the finite spirits of men, who are the children of the Infinite Spirit
+inheriting creative power forevermore.
+
+The _in_articulate sound of the voice is the scream of pain or the shout
+of joy, mutually intelligible to all human hearts; and this aerial basis
+of language continues to be more or less intelligible to all souls, when
+modulated as in poetry into melody and rhythm by emotion and character.
+The first human language was, perhaps, music of the deepest character,
+of which phase there is historic trace in the spoken Chinese, which has
+been perishing for ages on the lips of a nation whose origin is lost in
+the depths of antiquity. This spoken language is monosyllabic, and even
+the initial consonant often only a semivowel, while the whole word takes
+its significance from the _tone_ of the vowel; thus _lu_ in a low tone
+would have one meaning, LU in the tone of a musical third another
+meaning, and so on as the tone ascends through the octave. The inception
+of such a language implies an original equipoise of a brain not yet
+despoiled of its first vigor through moral delinquency which is incident
+to the freedom to will of a finite spirit, and consequently the Chinese
+language was inevitably lost. It would be interesting to enquire if
+those rare individuals among the Chinese who are expert in the spoken
+Chinese, are not of finest musical temperament.
+
+Not till after thinking had begun could articulation by the organs of
+speech begin. Thinking is the free individual act which associates the
+mind's activity and the sensibility of the heart with material things,
+and must precede the use of words.
+
+A time comes to every intelligent child when it wonders how words
+should express thoughts. Victorious analysis has never yet penetrated
+the whole mystery of language to the complete satisfaction of men,
+though I think philologists and metaphysicians are on the way to it, and
+have reached some fundamental facts. For instance, that _in_significant
+sounds and articulations could not make significant words, and that
+vocal sounds (vowels) get their meaning from feeling, while
+articulations get theirs from the symbolism of the organs of speech.
+
+The organs of speech are, first, the throat,--as the guttural organ is
+called in English because through it we take our food and send forth our
+voice,--is _out of sight_, _covered up_, _hidden_, the _central_ point
+where the voice starts; secondly, the lips, which are obvious, movable,
+parallel; thirdly, our teeth, against which the voice strikes, are hard,
+stiff, and dead in comparison with the flexible lips, and the tongue
+which connects all together, the voice rolling over it and hardly
+articulated. Hence the hard _c_ and _g_, and the rough aspirate _h_ are
+factors in all words signifying the beginning of self-originating motion
+(observe _go_ and _kick_, or _cause to go_), the causal, the central,
+covered, hidden; while the labials, _p_, _b_, _f_, _v_, are factors in
+all words expressing obviously moving phenomena; and the dentals, _d_,
+_t_, _s_, _z_, found in words expressive of stiff, hard, dead phenomena
+(the word _death_ is all but identical with the word _teeth_);
+separation and number being expressed by _s_ and _z_, which are made by
+throwing the vocal breath out between the separated teeth. The liquids
+_r_ and _l_, _r_ being also a factor of words expressing indefinite
+beginning, (as _original_, _auroral_, _arise_, etc.) are made by the
+voice moving over the tongue more or less energetically, to express
+movements whose difference of energy is exemplified in the words _fry_
+and _fly_, _grow_ and _glow_, _M_ closes the lips without preventing the
+continuous sound of the voice from being heard; and _n_, negating
+limitation by throwing the breath (or voice) out at the nose, symbolize
+respectively the positive and negative aspects of Infinity.
+
+Of course I am giving only a hint in order to define what I mean when I
+say significant words are not made out of insignificant sounds, and that
+articulated sounds get their meaning from the symbolism of the organs of
+speech.
+
+The historical origin of language is lost in the depths of antiquity,
+when the human race was yet in that equipoise of mind, heart, and
+self-activity, which in the process of evolution is only progressively
+recovered by the free agent, it being the office of education to restore
+it.
+
+The infant (that is, the _non-speaking_ child) in vision of the Eternal,
+only gradually becomes aware of the succession of time. For, as Mr.
+Emerson sings in his Sphinx song,--
+
+          "The babe by its mother
+           Lies bathed in joy,
+           _Glide its hours uncounted_."
+
+And Wordsworth says of "the little child,--"
+
+          "On whom those truths do rest,
+           That we are toiling all our lives to find;"
+
+          "By the vision splendid
+           The youth is still attended;"
+
+and
+
+          "Shades of the prison-house begin to close
+           Upon the growing boy,
+           Yet he beholds the light and whence it flows;
+           He sees it in his joy:
+           At length the man perceives it die away,
+           And fade into the light of common day."
+
+But this fall from the Ideal is not what Calvinistic theology declares
+it to be, reprobation either intellectual or spiritual!
+
+          "Oh, joy that in our embers
+           Is something that doth live,
+           That nature yet remembers
+           What was so fugitive."
+
+True education shall lead out the imprisoned spirit, growingly conscious
+of individuality, by means of the symbolism of the prison-house itself
+which is that correlation of necessary forces we call the material
+universe.
+
+The material universe, as I have already said, is the symbolization of
+everything in God except his creativeness which is the spiritual essence
+that he shares with Humanity, his only-begotten Son. It is the body of
+God, and human language is the body of individualized Humanity, whose
+imperfections correspond with its various partial developments and
+short-comings. And it is ever growing towards perfection in the form of
+poetry, bearing witness to the creativeness (or genius) of man
+forevermore. As breath is to the material body, keeping men alive in
+nature, so language is to the social body, keeping individuals alive in
+history and literature; and as the material universe is symbolical of
+God's wisdom, so the echoes of the universe tossed from the lips of men
+are symbolic images of the wisdom of man. Language, in short, being of
+both natures, spiritual and material, makes an elemental sphere for the
+intellectual life, beyond the material; in short, makes a metaphysical
+world, in which the finite and infinite spirits commune with other
+finite spirits and with the Infinite One; for by words every minutest
+shade of individual consciousness may be communicated from one finite
+mind to another, making not only an immortal communion of men possible,
+but a communion of God and Humanity also that shall have no end. Heaven
+and earth pass away, but the Word of the Lord endureth forever.
+
+But I must not be tempted into philosophizing farther upon language at
+present, precisely because it takes us into the deepest mysteries of
+speculative thought, and our business with it now is practical, and
+concerns the nursery and kindergarten processes of culture.
+
+Looking at it superficially, speech is an imitative art, and so far as
+our experience goes, is always taught by elders to the young generation
+empirically. This teaching of the mother-tongue in the nursery is an
+immensely important thing, because it carries on the development of the
+understanding towards the fulness of Reason (which is seeing particular
+things in their proportionate relation to the whole).
+
+In the whole course of a child's education, nothing is done which so
+much involves the totality of his activity as his learning to talk. For
+to talk presupposes observation, discrimination, memory, fancy,
+understanding. The first three (observation, discrimination, and memory)
+are nearly passive reactions from sensuous impressions. But fancy and
+understanding are creative acts of the human spirit, almost defying
+analysis. In fancy, the mind acts quite reckless and even defiant of
+nature's laws and order. In understanding, it observes and uses them
+subjectively. That children delight in using words to name things in the
+order of nature, and to express qualities and relations in connection,
+making an echo-picture within of what they see without, is not so
+wonderful as the exaltation of delight produced by a story which is, as
+it were, triumphant over nature's laws, and reckless of its order; and
+the shocks of laughter with which they catch at a grotesque and
+impossible combination of images made in their fancy by means of words.
+The predominance of fanciful talk to children which seems to be
+instinctive with all peoples, everywhere, is an indication that fancy is
+as legitimate an activity as understanding, to say the least. It seems
+to me to be an evidence of our being begotten directly by the creative
+spirit, sons of a divine Father, who is the complex of Infinite Love,
+Infinite Wisdom, and Infinite Power, of which our human feeling, power
+of thinking, and executive ability are the shadow, or rather a living
+image.
+
+Both fancy and understanding are developed in time by words. We all know
+how children are waked up and delighted by Mother Goose absurdities,
+and still more by fairy stories that seem to set at naught the facts and
+override the laws of nature. It is a stubborn fact, of which
+materialistic positivists afford us no explanation, and which I commend
+to the consideration of Mr. Mansell, and whoever else talks of the
+limitations of religious thought. And I think it will be found that
+children who are talked to by Mother Goose and fairy-story tellers learn
+to talk more quickly than others, and have more vivacity of mind
+generally, with a power of entering into the minds of others
+commensurate with their sensibility, and justifying the human sympathies
+which are often a burden to the unimaginative, who are nevertheless
+kind. A great deal of the misunderstanding of others which causes
+unnecessary pain and social bitterness, checking generous furtherance of
+one another's good purposes, arises from want of saliency of
+imagination, preventing us from being able to put ourselves in another's
+place. And of course it is not without the highest reason that the
+Father of our Spirits has given fancy the advantage of the first start
+in our mental process. That fancy precedes understanding in our
+psychological history cannot be denied by any nice observer. I have
+known some parents who would not use Mother Goose or fairy stories with
+their children, but substituted therefor amusing experiments in
+physics,--the metamorphosis of insects and the classification of plants
+according to their differences. Their children became scientific when
+they grew up, were fine mathematicians, and were interested in
+mechanical inventions and natural history; but took comparatively little
+interest in political and moral problems, though not at all wanting in
+the social and patriotic affections, which also characterized their
+parents, who were themselves brought up on the imaginative system not
+well modified by studies of nature's phenomena, which was probably the
+reason of their strong reaction from the imaginative method.
+
+But I have known as intimately some other parents who made predominant,
+perhaps extreme use of Mother Goose and fairy literature. Their children
+much earlier and more completely got command of all the resources of
+language, had a tendency to art, especially literary art, in their own
+activity, and were earlier interested in human history, and all
+varieties of human experience reflected in the literature of nations;
+but perhaps were slower in attaining practical ability for life's
+labors. Each direction of education has its advantages and disadvantages
+in the religious relation, and I think it is the better way to mingle
+them, especially at the early period of the kindergarten, where the
+objective point is to cultivate the understanding, which needs that we
+should appreciate the facts and order of external nature as the exponent
+of God's wisdom. This will chasten and give substantiality to the
+creative action of the human fancy, which is never to be snubbed, but
+gently entreated to be reasonable, or we shall have Caliban instead of
+Ariel or Prospero, as I have said before.
+
+I cannot find out whether Frœbel has anywhere expressed himself
+distinctly on this point. There are certainly no grotesque images and no
+fairy stories in the mother's prattle with her children over pictures,
+and in the out-door walks which are suggested in the _Mütterspiele und
+Köse-Lieder_; but children are led to recognize the poetical symbolism
+of nature, and its invisible and impalpable substances and forces; the
+invisible forces of air, heat, and light are used to lead them out from
+the world of matter towards the more substantial spiritual world where
+the soul meets and communes with God, the omnipresent Spirit to be
+apprehended only by the spirit within us, whose organs are ideas.[9]
+
+In the kindergarten, as in the nursery, children learn language by using
+it empirically. To utilize their love of talking as they play is what is
+first to be done by the kindergartner. The things seen and done give a
+clear definition and precise significance to the words used, which
+become the stepping-stones of the mind, by which it mounts up from the
+sensuous ground of the understanding into the heaven of invention and
+imaginative art, plastic and heroic; and thence to communion with God.
+But before children are put to reading, before proceeding from things
+through thoughts, and from spiritual experiences through ideas to their
+vocal signs, and from vocal signs to their written or printed
+representations, it is wise to consider the signs themselves. I do not
+mean to go deeply into etymologies or anything that is abstract. It is
+not doing so, for instance, to ask children what is the difference
+between the words _see_ and _look_. (Can you see without looking? Can
+you look without seeing?) It gives precision to the understanding to
+discriminate what are often called synonymes, but which seldom mean
+precisely the same thing, unless, in our _potpourri_ of a language they
+are mere translations, as for instance _morsel_ and _bit_, respective
+derivatives from the Latin _morsum_ and the English _bitten_. The little
+English-speaking child should not be troubled with the derivation of
+_morsel_, but is pleased to be called to notice that of _bit_. We must
+be guided here by Frœbel's rule of proceeding from the known to the
+unknown, and not endeavor to plunge children into the unknown without a
+clue.
+
+That children understand and use figurative language readily, shows that
+without going out of their childish world we can define symbolic
+expression to some degree, and this is a means of regulating fancy. But
+I must take another opportunity to speak of the method of doing
+this.[10] I can now only affirm that unless children could signify by
+words not merely their impressions of material things and their
+correlations, but their feelings and thoughts, it would be impossible
+for the religious education to be begun in the nursery, or to be
+carried on in the kindergarten, as Frœbel proposes it shall be.
+
+It is only by naming to the child his own intuition of creative being or
+cause, or rather by leading the child to name it, that the understanding
+is started upon the religious thinking which is necessary to keep pure
+from superstition his religious feeling, while his blind sense of God is
+changing from an undefined intuition of the heart into a definite
+thought of the mind, which change Frœbel would have take place very
+early. But this is the most delicate region of consciousness to enter,
+and we must take great care that we do not profane instead of
+consecrating the process by what we do and say. Words that are adequate
+and living names for the spiritual intuition of a very present God,
+generate spiritual thoughts in natural relation with them. And this
+reminds me of a circumstance in the mental history of Laura Bridgeman,
+illustrative of what I mean.
+
+This poor child was deprived, when two years old, of her sight and
+hearing, and partially of taste and smell, by the scarlet fever, which
+left her but one avenue of knowledge of material things,--the sense of
+touch. But through that the practical benevolence of Dr. Howe won a way
+to her imprisoned spirit, and opened communication of thought with her
+by means of words; and she even learned to read in the raised type for
+the blind. The whole story is immensely interesting and important to any
+teacher. She had been taught enough of the properties of matter to be
+able to work on and with _things_, and moral science could be taught her
+through her own and others' activity; but how was she to be taught about
+God and spiritual things? Dr. Howe reserved to himself to speak to her
+of God, forbidding all others to do so, and watched for his opportunity.
+
+My sister Sophia went over to the asylum to model Laura's bust, and one
+day asked her teacher (who was with her always) to translate into spoken
+words the conversation that she saw was passing between them by means
+of the hand language. Very soon occurred the following:--
+
+_Laura._ I want to go to walk.
+
+_Teacher._ You cannot go to-day, because it rains.
+
+_Laura._ Who makes it rain?
+
+Instead of making a direct reply, the teacher went on to explain how
+moisture exhaled from the earth by the action of the sun, and was
+collected in masses which were called clouds, and when the clouds were
+so full as to be heavier than the air, it fell to the earth in drops of
+rain.
+
+Laura said, reverently, "God is very full."
+
+The teacher was startled, and said, "Who told you about God?"
+
+_Laura._ No one told me. The Doctor is going to tell me about him when I
+know more words. But I think about God all times.
+
+The teacher said to my sister, "This is very important," and went to
+tell the Doctor, who was a good deal moved, but found himself at
+somewhat of a loss. That evening he came to a little gathering at our
+house to talk about it. He said that nearly a year before, if not
+longer, Laura had come upon the word _God_ in her reading, and
+immediately stopped and asked the meaning of the word. According to his
+directions, she was then sent to him, and he was so anxious not to do
+any harm, especially not to frighten her with the idea of Infinite Power
+(which is the main element of our conception of God, even eighteen
+hundred years after Christ's manifestation of Infinite _Love_), that he
+was embarrassed, and said to her that she did not yet know other words
+enough to explain the word _God_, but when she had learned more words,
+he would tell her, and meanwhile he wished she would not ask any one
+else. But now he was pondering what was the best way to proceed. I
+suggested that perhaps Laura could teach him more than he could teach
+her about God, and asked what was the sentence in which she had found
+the word. But this he had never known. It was then suggested that
+probably the word had explained itself, for no sentence could possibly
+contain the word, not even in an exclamation, that would not suggest to
+such a perfectly clear thinking mind as Laura had always shown, the fact
+of supreme love or wisdom. The company present proved this by trying to
+make sentences. I do not know what he finally concluded to do or say to
+Laura. I think certainly that the true way would have been to have drawn
+her out, and according to what she said or seemed to need, to have
+shaped whatever teaching he had to give, taking great care not to negate
+any of her positive assertions; for we could not doubt that God was
+manifesting himself to the imagination of her heart, if not yet in the
+forms of the human understanding.
+
+If I had known how to use the hand language, I would have solicited the
+privilege of going to learn what this hermit soul could have told me
+before it was darkened by our traditional theology, which did not
+originate in children,--
+
+          "On whom those truths do rest
+           That we are toiling all our lives to find,"
+
+but in the minds of old sinners who had lost the original purity of soul
+that "sees God." "I think about God all times!" How interesting it would
+be to know exactly what she thought! That it was nothing terrific or
+painful was evident from her habitual mood, which was even joyous. So
+careful had the Doctor been to educate every bodily and mental activity,
+that she had none of that discouragement, inelasticity, and indolence of
+mind, which comes of want of success in childish effort. A genial,
+educating assistance was always around her, but careful not to weaken
+her by doing anything for her that she could learn to do for herself.
+Obstacles, therefore, only stimulated her efforts, and so delightful was
+her sense of overcoming them, that, for instance, she would laugh
+exultingly when sewing if her thread became knotted, or if in anything
+she was doing there was some little difficulty to be surmounted. Her
+faith in herself seemed never to have been broken; but she rested on the
+fulcrum of Infinite God, in whom she "lives and moves and has her
+being."
+
+The only thing we ought to do in the religious nurture of childhood is
+to _preserve_ this faith which comes from the child's seeing God even
+more clearly and certainly than it can see outward things. See to it
+that you use language so as more clearly to define and not to blot out
+the divine vision, as old Dr. Barnard's cocked hat and black silk gown
+and seat in the clouds eclipsed the sweet face with which my Creator
+seemed to own me as his child, as I told you in my last lecture.
+
+Another mistake that was made in my religious education was during a
+visit that I made to a great-aunt when I was five years old, and was
+taught to say the Lord's prayer by the servant who put me to bed. I got
+the idea that some unknown evil might happen to me in my sleep if I did
+not do this, and was also told that God would be displeased with me if I
+thought about anything else when I was saying it. But I was
+involuntarily conscious of having my mind full of images, while the
+words of the prayer were empty vocables. In order to prevent the
+intruding thoughts, I would try to rush through the words quickly, going
+back to the beginning over and over again. But this artificial duty was
+not associated with the instruction of my mother, who was in general
+very happy in what she said to me about God, dwelling on his goodness,
+referring to it everything delightful, making Sunday a day of quiet but
+constant enjoyment, letting us paint, and cut paper, with other little
+amusements, devoting herself to making us happy, while the rest of the
+week she was busy; for she kept a large school, and Sunday was, as she
+often said, her only and blessed day of rest. Long after, at a time of
+religious controversy and so-called revival, I was immensely aided by
+hearing my mother say to a young aunt of mine who affirmed that St.
+Paul, in saying that we must pray without ceasing was fanatically
+unreasonable: "Yes, if praying meant saying over prayers; but spiritual
+prayers mean a devotional attitude of mind towards God which we can have
+whatever we are doing."
+
+This sentence seemed to pour light into a shady place.
+
+"Don't you _say prayers_, mama?" I said to her when aunt was gone.
+
+"Not when I am alone," she said; "for God sees my thoughts and feelings,
+and knows that I love him, and always want his help."
+
+My mother had nothing of the martinet about her. She took it for granted
+that upon the whole we wanted to do what was right. She was not apt to
+give the worst, but the best interpretation to doubtful phenomena. She
+believed that to treat a child with generous confidence invoked
+generosity and truthfulness, and what was better than all the rest, she
+did not _talk down_ to her children, but rather drew them up to her own
+mental and moral level; and interlarded stories from Spenser's _Faerie
+Queen_ and the Scriptures with stories of the kind and noble deeds of
+real people around us. (See Appendix.)
+
+Her religion was moral inspiration to herself and consolation for all
+calamity, and always very naturally expressed. She more than corrected
+her first mistake and inadequate talk with me about my Creator, by
+telling me the story of the Pilgrim Fathers, when I was yet so very
+young that my fancy clothed her words with grotesque images, but on the
+whole did better justice to the _spirit_ of the emigration and the
+ultimate results it has worked out for the world than the exact facts
+that transpired in history. What I gained from my self-created mythology
+was that my ancestors knew themselves to be God's children, whom neither
+tyrannizing king nor priest had any right to prevent from going to him
+in prayer first hand, and that in order to do his will as their
+consciences understood it, they left home and country and all the
+comforts of civilization, and trusted themselves in a frail vessel to be
+driven over a stormy ocean by the winds, at imminent peril from the
+waves below, which would have swallowed them up, had not God, who loved
+them, approved what they were doing, guided the ship (by a power
+stronger than the wind, for it was his love) through the narrow opening
+of Plymouth Harbor to the rock where I still seem to see them streaming
+along, a procession of fair women in white robes as _sisters_ (for so I
+had interpreted the word _ancestors_, who strangely enough were all
+named _Ann_). I still seem to see these holy women kneel down in the
+snow under the trees of the forest, and thank God for their safety from
+the perils of the sea; and then go to work in the sense of his very
+present help, and gather sticks to make a fire, and build shelters from
+the weather with the branches of the trees. Among these rude buildings
+my mother took pains to tell me that they built a schoolhouse where all
+the children were to be taught to read the Bible.
+
+There is nothing for which I thank my mother and my God more than for
+this grand impression of all-inspiring love to God, and of
+all-conquering duty to posterity, thus made on my childish imagination,
+and its association with the idea of personal freedom and independent
+action. It never could have been made except by one who herself had
+faith in God, and believed that he had made all men free to come to him,
+and also that the mother was his first appointed mouthpiece. The
+fanciful images which were the effect of the shortcomings of my
+ignorance did not hide the vital truths which I was as open to accept
+then as now; namely, that God is my Father, the Father of all souls,
+from whom no one has a right to shut off another.
+
+That first schoolhouse, which I fancied that I saw the "Ann Sisters"
+building, taught me as no mere words ever could have done, that it was
+the most acceptable service to God to educate all his children to know
+him and his works. That first idea of human duty I have never outgrown,
+but still believe universal education is the true culture of the
+American people, the reasonable service they owe to him who called them
+out of the Old World to be a nation of individuals. There was nothing
+fatal, therefore, in that first false notion of God (which I received
+for a time), though it was for a time more of an evil to me than it
+would have been to a child less subjective, or of more lively perception
+of things without. Liveliness of perception brings so many things before
+the mind, and so stimulates its volatility, that it undoubtedly prevents
+the stereotyping of many a single impression and fancy that does
+injustice to spiritual truths; and false impressions, unless strongly
+associated with terror or some other morbid sensibility, do not take
+hold of a child so strongly as the images that are consistent with the
+eternal laws of mental evolution, such, for instance, as that human face
+divine with which I had instantaneously clothed my intuition of God, and
+which, notwithstanding its temporary eclipse, has haunted me all my
+life.
+
+It is very encouraging to the educator to know that the innocent soul of
+childhood has so much more affinity with truth than with falsehood,
+because the best and most careful educator cannot sequestrate children
+entirely from false impressions. But what finds no echo in the spirit
+passes off, unless the mind is shocked into passivity by fear or pain.
+When the soul is active, it has a certain superiority to passive
+impressions, and makes use of them as materials for imaginative
+production. It is, therefore, desirable to keep children employed in
+gentle activity which has successful results, and happy in the midst of
+attractive natural surroundings, by which God is working with us in the
+same purpose of educating the child, allowing us to be his partners, as
+it were, in this work, because it educates us. It is not uncommon to
+hear persons say that they would like to begin life all over again with
+the knowledge they have gained from their life-experience. This we can
+all do if we will in imagination really _live with our children_, as
+Frœbel says, whose motto explains what Christ meant when he bids us to
+be converted and become little children.
+
+FOOTNOTES:
+
+[9] _Idea_ is a word I always use in the sense of _insight_, as Plato
+uses it, rather than in the sense of _notion_, as Locke uses it.
+
+[10] See note A in Appendix, and the Record of a School.
+
+
+
+
+LECTURE VI.
+
+A PSYCHOLOGICAL OBSERVATION.
+
+PART FIRST.
+
+
+I SAID in my last lecture that had I possessed the power to talk in
+Laura Bridgeman's hand, I should have begged Dr. Howe to let me have
+some conversation with her after she said that she "thought about God
+all times"; not that I felt that I could teach her, but that I might
+learn what God had taught her concerning Himself. It was a wonderful
+chance for a most important psychological observation of the innocent
+mind of childhood, and would have afforded, doubtless, a luminous
+illustration of the truth that the human soul is also a divine
+personality justifying the method initiated by Frœbel of conversing with
+the children in the Socratic manner.
+
+But already in my lifetime I had had an opportunity for psychological
+observation, made under circumstances perhaps still more favorable for
+getting evidence of the importance of a very early recognition of the
+Heavenly Father's name in the formation in a healthy manner of the human
+understanding and the development of the reason, verifying the
+declaration which Frœbel has made the corner-stone of his system;
+namely, that though a child is the extreme opposite of God, contrasting
+as effect to cause, as absolute want to infinite supply, all these terms
+are connected--_conciliated_--into unity, by Love and Thought, which
+must recognize each other, and whose loss of equal companionship is a
+
+          "Grief, past all balsam and relief,"
+
+as Mr. Emerson has sung.
+
+I have somewhere, very careful memoranda, made at the time, which I have
+unfortunately mislaid, but I will present from present recollection as
+well as I can the whole psychological observation, though I am aware
+that I shall leave out many little things said and done which were
+perhaps not unimportant links in the chain.
+
+Before I begin, I will observe that I tell it to the class to show the
+difference between talking to and conversing with children, and to
+illustrate several truths.
+
+First, There is an innate Idea, not as a thought but as a feeling, given
+to every child, of an all-embracing Love (named by Jesus, Father), one
+in substance with the deepest consciousness of self;
+
+Second, That this Idea becomes a child's personal and individual
+perception only when he has a realizable name for it;
+
+Third, That such a name is not an empty vocable, a mere movement of air,
+but a sign, to which the intuition of his heart gives vital meaning;
+
+Fourth, That an adequate name for GOD is the axis of the intellect, and
+the revolution of thought around it gives perfect globular form and
+solidity to the mind, balancing the centripetal force of individual
+self-assertion with the centripetal force of a Divine Love,
+comprehending all Being. Before GOD was named to and by this child of
+whom I am about to speak, you will see that he was a dreary little chaos
+"without form and void." After he had learned to utter intelligently the
+name of a Heavenly Father he was what I am going to tell you.
+
+But first I must tell you how I had this opportunity and privilege of
+being the first person to name GOD to this child when he was four and a
+half years old. He was the son of a most conscientious mother whose
+early orphan life had been saddened with religious terrors. Her earliest
+recollection, as she told me, having been the death-bed, and
+immediately after, the burial of her mother, whom she saw, when she was
+too young to comprehend death, shut up in a coffin and put into the
+ground; and she remembered how her agonizing cries at what seemed the
+frightful cruelty, were peremptorily hushed, with the declaration of the
+person taking care of her, that GOD who made the heavens and the earth
+willed it to be so and would punish her if she did not acquiesce. Little
+did the thoughtless and heartless person who thus dealt with the
+distressed little heart think, how disastrously she was emasculating the
+word GOD of good by associating it with such an image of ruthless power
+divorced from tenderness, as she unheedingly did. It was not till long
+years after that her imagination was cleared of the frightful falsehood;
+and when she came to have a child of her own, her governing thought was
+to keep him ignorant of the fact of death, and the name of GOD, until he
+should be old enough to understand them, as she said. She was a person
+of deep feeling, upright and benevolent, but her imagination, probably
+by reason of this life-long depression, was of feeble wing, and she was
+taciturn. In consequence, her child, though most tenderly cared for as
+to his body, was starved in mind and spirit. His face continued to be an
+infant's countenance, and he was strangely without that childish
+joyousness called animal spirits, and grew more and more peevish as he
+grew older; for he was sequestered to the society of his silent mother,
+who would not even be read to in his presence, lest, as she said, some
+chance word which he could not understand should excite some fear.
+
+Suddenly a hemorrhage of the lungs brought this mother to death's door.
+She had been, for a few years before her marriage, my pupil in my own
+house, and she used to say she owed to me all the happy views she had of
+God and Heaven, as well as of human life and death, and I was sent for
+in this extremity as a mother to a child.
+
+Since her marriage she had lived in a city distant from me, and I had
+seen her but little. Her child was so very timid I had made no
+acquaintance with him in transient interviews, and of me he had no
+impression but of one little story that I had told him six months before
+when I met him at the house of her husband's parents. This story I had
+half invented to explain a picture in the "Story without an end," that I
+was showing to him. (See Appendix.)
+
+When I came to the mother's bedside, she told me it was best for her to
+die, because she was utterly baffled in all her efforts to bring up her
+child. She went on to describe her timid methods; she said she feared he
+was _non compos_, for he made no progress. Among many phenomena, she
+mentioned that when she gave him playthings, he immediately broke them
+to pieces, and when she tried to prevent this, by endeavoring to make
+him understand their uses and construction, he would look drearily into
+her face and say, rather than ask, "What for?" He seemed deficient in
+will, without impulse, for, though flowers seemed rather to please him,
+if she took him into the garden and told him he might gather them, he
+would stand still, and helplessly cry; and she had to command him to do
+everything, even to play, before he would attempt it. He acted like an
+automaton. Moreover, he had no sensibility, and expressed no affection.
+
+Just at this point of her dismal story her chamber door was opened by
+the nurse, with this great boy in her arms. He had his mother's
+beautiful large brow and deep eyes, but with no speculation in them, and
+his whole figure was lifeless and so languid that the arms that had been
+about the nurse's neck, slowly lost their curve when she put him down on
+his feet. But his look rested on me, who, with an inviting smile and
+gesture, held out my hand. Immediately the large eyes filled with
+intelligent light, and with a cry of joy he sprang towards me, climbed
+up into my lap, clasped his arms round my neck, nestled upon my bosom,
+and looking up with a joyful expression of confidence said,
+"Story--little boy--drop of water!" It was, as I have said, about half a
+year before, that I had lured him to me as he held off in timidity, by
+offering to show him the picture where the child, in the "Story without
+an end" is represented beside the brook, looking at a drop of water
+hanging from a leaf, "telling the little boy a story," as I said, to
+which he had answered "Story!" and I had gone on and invented a free
+paraphrase of the story given in the book, adapted to his infantile
+capacity, and when I had finished, he said, "Story again!" and I
+repeated it again and again, so imperative was his "story again!" and
+now he again said "Story," with a confiding pressure, as he leaned on me
+then, gazing at the picture on the book in my lap, giving me the
+conviction that he understood me. It was really, as I found
+subsequently, the only rational words that had ever been addressed to
+the child's imagination.
+
+"This does not look like want of sensibility, or _mens non compos_," I
+said to the mother. "I never saw anything like it before," she said, all
+tears. The ensuing silence was immediately broken by the child's
+imperative repetition of the word "story!" I was too much affected by
+the mother's emotion to remember or invent any story, but it was an
+early, warm spring day and the windows were open. The house stood on a
+bluff of the Merrimac, within sight of the Rapids; and the sound of the
+rushing waters came in upon our silence. I said, cheerfully, "Do you
+hear the water running?" to which he responded with a joyful "yes! what
+does it run for?" "Oh, because it is glad," I replied, and again he
+responded with a joyful and satisfied "yes," and after a moment asked,
+"Where is it running to?" "Oh, into the ocean, where all the rest of the
+waters are!" and again an emphatic "yes" expressed his satisfaction.
+Perhaps he remembered that in the story I had told him of a drop of
+water it had ended with the drop falling off the leaf, and running away
+with its brothers and sisters, and falling into the ocean, out of which
+the sun had originally taken it. At any rate, he not only repeated his
+yes with the emphasis of satisfaction, but seemed to be thoughtful. I
+said, "Do you ever look out of the window and see the sun shine on the
+water, and all the little sparkles of light in the water?" "Yes," said
+he, joyfully, "what makes the sun shine on the water?" "Oh," said I, "it
+is because the sun loves the water." "Yes," said he, and began to
+embrace me in the most energetic manner.
+
+It was too much for the poor mother, who absolutely wept aloud, whether
+with joy or sorrow she could not tell, as she afterwards said.
+
+The sound of her weeping attracted his attention, and he sat up in my
+lap and turned his large eyes upon her as she lay in bed, and then upon
+me, with a look of concern and appeal. "See," said I, "poor mother. She
+is sick and sorry. She wants me to tell _her_ a story, and won't you get
+down and go into the nursery and let me tell dear mother a story to make
+her feel better? Then I will come to you and tell you one."
+
+With a cheerful "yes" he immediately got down and went into the nursery,
+but stopped at the door to say:--
+
+"When you have told mother a story, won't you come right in and tell me
+one?"
+
+I said to the mother, "You see, my dear friend, that the child has mind
+enough, heart enough, and a moral nature. He can understand and feel
+sympathy; feels the symbolism of nature; and can obey a self-denying
+motive. No fatal harm has been done after all by your delay, but he
+needs now to know he has a Heavenly Father, fully to manifest all the
+powers of a human being. You must allow me to give him that name for the
+Love he feels within and without."
+
+"Not quite yet," said she, "not until you come to stay, because he would
+ask me questions that I should not know how to answer. Children ask
+such terrible questions. I am afraid as soon as you name the Invisible
+GOD, he will be frightened. Don't you know M. D. was afraid to stay in a
+room alone because of the omnipresence of GOD, which seemed to be an
+unimaginable horror to her?"
+
+"I do not wonder," I replied. "Omnipresence of GOD! What was there in a
+child's experience to interpret this Latin abstraction? I think it would
+have been quite another thing, considering who her earthly father was,
+had she been told that our Heavenly Father was all about her though she
+could not see Him with her eyes, but could feel Him giving her love and
+joy. I cannot but wonder that anybody around her should have talked to
+her in such abstractions."
+
+"I am so unready in expression," she persisted, "and can so poorly
+express my thoughts and feelings, I am sure I should only do mischief if
+I should try to answer his questions, and I am sure he will go on asking
+them, for his mind seemed to wake up at once as soon as you began to
+talk to him. How different was that 'yes' from the dreary 'what for?'
+with which he always received the very best explanations that I could
+make of the things he played with. That 'what for?' was not an enquiry
+of intelligence, but an expression of utter want of perception, with no
+interest to hear a reply. It is best for him that I should die; then I
+shall ask his father to give him to you to bring up. Nobody ought to
+have children but people of genius!"
+
+"No, no," said I; "it does not require genius to talk with children, but
+only simplicity of heart trusted in. I interested him and gained a
+response, not because of genius, for I have none, but because I believe
+in him, and in myself, whose happiness is in loving, and that GOD has
+created us to love and commune with one another and Him. You have said
+yourself that he seemed to love flowers, though he was afraid to gather
+them, and that he loved to hear the street musicians. Beauty and music
+touch his sensibility. By saying that the waters run because they are
+glad, and the sun shines on and makes things beautiful because he loves
+them, I put his own conscious life into the music of waters and the
+light of the sun. He recognized the meaning of gladness and love because
+he himself felt glad and loving, which made a pre-existent possibility
+of recognizing the love and joy of the Creator that shine in those
+natural objects, because they are GOD'S own words of love addressed to
+His own image, who is capable of love and joy and knowledge of Him. If
+we talk to children in instinctive faith, they understand us. You have
+not done so because of your early misfortune that saddened your heart
+and took away your instinctive courage. Faith is the proper act of the
+heart (courage, you know, is a synonym of heartiness); the heart goes
+before the understanding in the process of life. Without heart one can
+do no justice to children in talking with them; with it, we awaken their
+minds and nurture their souls, and all our mistakes will be of small
+account beside the positive advantage of setting their minds in joyful
+motion 'amidst this mighty sum of things forever speaking.'"
+
+"When you come to stay," was her rejoinder, "you can say to him what you
+please, for then you will be here to take care of his mind and answer
+his questions."
+
+This was all I could gain at that moment, and I left her, to go to the
+child, who had several times opened the door and looked at me wistfully,
+with a silent appeal which was all the more proof of his quickened
+intelligence that he did not tease. His own desire to have a story had
+interpreted to him his mother's need.
+
+I have very little power of inventing a story, and to his demand for one
+I responded by taking from the bookshelves Miss Edgeworth's first story
+of Frank, and began to read to him of Frank's making a noise on the
+table and the conversation between him and his mother that ensued. But
+this did not suit my little one's mood, which was a little exalted by
+his delight at seeing me, and having had his imagination touched by the
+beautiful language of nature that I had made intelligible to him. He
+pulled the book away, and asked me to tell him a story "out of your own
+self," as he said.
+
+Thus urged, I began: "Once there was a little worm about as long as the
+nail of my thumb, and no larger round than a big darning-needle. This
+little worm lived in a little house that he had made for himself in the
+ground, just big enough to hold him, when he rolled himself up like a
+little ball with his head sticking out. There were no windows nor doors
+in his house, but one on top, which was his door to go in at, and his
+window to look out of. When he had made this house he was tired and
+crawled into it and curled himself up and went to sleep, and slept all
+night. In the morning the sun rose and spread his beams all over the
+world, and one of the bright sunbeams shone into the window of the
+little worm's house and touched his eyes and waked him, and he popped up
+his head and looked out and saw it was very pleasant in the garden, and
+he thought he would go out. He squirmed himself up out of his hole, and
+because he had no feet he crept along the garden path. The warm beams of
+the sun put their arms all round his cold, little body and made it warm
+as could be, and the sunbeam went into his little mites of eyes, and
+filled him all full of light, and the songs of the birds went into his
+little mites of ears and filled him all up with music, and the sweet
+smell of hundreds of flowers went up that little mite of a nose and
+filled him up with their perfumes. And so that little worm went creeping
+along as glad as he could be that he was alive.
+
+"Now in the house that stood in that garden lived a little boy about
+four years old; and when the morning came, the sunbeams had gone into
+the window of his nursery and waked him, and he was washed and dressed
+and had his breakfast of bread and milk, and then his mama took him to
+the door that led down the steps of the piazza into the garden, and
+told him he might go down the path and have a good run to make himself
+warm. So down he ran. But now if that little boy should put his strong
+foot on that dear little worm, it would break him all to pieces--"
+
+"Oh, he shall not, he must not!" cried the child in a spasm of distress.
+"Aunt Lizzie, don't let him break the dear little worm to pieces!"
+
+"No indeed," said I, "that little boy would not not do such a cruel
+thing for the world! He saw the little worm creeping along, so glad to
+be alive, and he ran on the other side of the path; and the little worm
+nibbled a little blade of grass, and drank a little dew for his
+breakfast, and then he felt tired, and went creeping back, full of good
+food, to the little hole that was his home, and curled himself up like a
+little ball and went to sleep."
+
+"Now tell me that story all over again!" said the child.
+
+I did so more than once at his entreaty, and always when I came to the
+possible catastrophe of crushing the worm, the same terror seemed to
+seize him, and he would cry out:--
+
+"Oh, he must not, he shall not!" and I always tranquillized him again,
+and gratified his sense of justice by my assurance of the little boy's
+consideration of the little worm's right to his life and happiness.
+
+Of course, I told his mother of the effect of this story, and the
+evidence it gave of the child's sound moral nature and innate sense of
+justice. And I begged her to let me lose no time in referring to the
+presence of the Heavenly Father, that the intuition of his heart might
+become the possession of his mind. I said I did not believe that he
+would ask any question. He would suppose that I alone knew, for, as I
+observed to her, he had never for the whole six months referred to the
+little boy with the drop of water, and yet had vividly remembered the
+whole story, as his greeting me had shown, and I had the proof of it,
+for I had just told it to him again at his request. I told her if I
+proved to be mistaken, and he should ask her any question she could not
+answer to her own satisfaction, she could say she would write to me and
+ask me, and I felt sure he would wait. But I told her I believed what I
+was thinking of saying to him would keep his thoughts busy while I was
+gone (for I was going only for a week to prepare for a stay with her for
+an indefinite time). At last I gained her consent, and the child was put
+into my bed, that I might have the conversation the first thing in the
+morning.
+
+When I awoke, I found him awake, close by me, and his great eyes seemed
+to devour me.
+
+"How long you did sleep!" said he; "I have been seeing you sleep."
+
+Said I, "What do you see with?"
+
+"My eyes," he replied, and to the questions, What do you hear, smell,
+taste, touch with? he made the appropriate answers.
+
+"But what do you _love_ with?" I asked.
+
+He jumped up upon his knees and crossed his arms on his breast, paused a
+moment wonderingly, and then exclaimed, "With my arms!" and throwing his
+arms round my neck, hugged me. I was taken a little aback, but in a
+moment said:--
+
+"Have you a great deal of love?"
+
+"Oh, a great deal, a great deal!" he exclaimed.
+
+"Where is it? where do you keep it?" said I.
+
+He started up again on his knees, again crossed his arms upon his
+breast, and said, "Where do I?"
+
+Placing my hand on his heart, I said, "Is it not in there?"
+
+His whole expression was affirmative, he looked delighted, but did not
+speak.
+
+"Are you good?" said I.
+
+"Sometimes," he said.
+
+"What are you when you are not good?"
+
+"I cry."
+
+He had evidently been told it was naughty to cry.
+
+I said, "Why are you not good all the time?"
+
+"Why ain't I?" said he, after a moment's pause.
+
+"Oh," said I, "I think you have not goodness enough to be good with all
+the time."
+
+He looked assent, delighted and earnest. I answered his unuttered
+feeling with the question,--
+
+"Should you like to have goodness enough to be good with all the time?"
+
+"How can I?"
+
+"Oh," said I, "you have a good friend who has a whole sky full of
+goodness. He gave you all the goodness and love you have in there (I
+touched his breast), and will give you more and more if you want him to,
+always and always, enough to be good with all the time."
+
+He looked perfectly blest, did not speak, but laid himself down close by
+me, took my arm and put it over him, and said, as he nestled up to me,--
+
+"Talk to me some more."
+
+I went on: "Your good friend gives you all your joy to be glad with, and
+all your love and goodness. They always go together. And now listen to
+me: the next time you are going to cry (I used his own practical
+expression instead of saying the next time you are naughty), stop and
+think. I have a good friend who has a whole sky full of goodness and he
+will give me goodness enough to be good with all the time, and I guess
+you will not cry." He responded only with huggings and kissings and
+exclamations of "I love you a whole sky full," and as I did not want to
+overdo or say anything to mar the impression I had made, I took
+advantage of a noise I heard, to change the subject, and said:--
+
+"What is that noise?"
+
+He jumped out of bed, went to the window, and said:--
+
+"It is the carpenters making a house," and after a pause, asked, "Who
+made all the other houses?"
+
+"Carpenters," said I; "don't you see they make houses out of boards?"
+
+"Who made the boards?"
+
+"The boards are made out of trees. People cut down the trees, and then
+they saw them up into great logs, and then they split up the logs and
+smooth them out into pieces we call boards."
+
+"Who made the trees?" said he.
+
+I understood very well where the tyrannizing unity of his personality
+was leading his understanding, but did not wish, just then, to risk
+giving outward form or connection to his thought of the Divine Cause, so
+I said:--
+
+"The trees grow out of the ground; don't you see old trees and young
+trees and little baby trees growing out of the ground?"
+
+For this information he did not give me that hearty "_yes_" with which
+he had received my communication of spiritual facts, but came back to
+bed again. I persisted, however, in talking playful nonsense for half an
+hour, until his nurse came to take him up to dress him. As soon as she
+appeared at the door, he started up on his knees again, crossed his arms
+over his breast, and in a loud, joyful voice cried out:--
+
+"Mrs. Doyle! I have a good friend up in the sky who has a whole sky full
+of goodness, and he will give me as much goodness as I want to be good
+with _all the time_," emphasizing the last three words.
+
+The nurse, a good-hearted Roman Catholic, who, like all the servants,
+had been forbidden to talk to the child about GOD or any kindred
+subject, looked at me startled, yet gratified, and said:--
+
+"What will his mother say?"
+
+I replied, "His mother will be very glad; she only wanted to wait till
+she thought he could understand. But I have told him enough for the
+present; don't talk to him about it; but if he says anything to you,
+come and tell me."
+
+"Yes," said she, "and I thank GOD you have come to teach the poor child
+something."
+
+I then said to her aside, "His mother is very anxious lest he be
+frightened; for she was frightened about GOD and death when she was a
+little child, and has suffered from it all her life long. She has been a
+double orphan ever since she can remember."
+
+I said this to her for several reasons: one was my extreme desire to see
+what the one simple truth would do for the child, and this was the
+reason I gave _good friend_ for GOD's name. Of course, the mother craved
+to know exactly what had passed on this important occasion, and was
+immensely relieved and gratified at what I told her, and wanted it all
+to be written down; and thus it happened that I made memoranda of this
+and subsequent conversations, and even of those held in her presence,
+for they continued to be no less interesting than they began.
+
+Observe these points in the child's speech to the nurse: he interpolated
+the words _up in the sky_. I had given no place to the good friend,
+though I had said he had a whole sky full of goodness and love; and the
+sky being the glorious symbol of unboundedness, elevation, purity, and
+power to the human imagination, in all nations and times, as is proved
+by the earliest idolaters who worshipped the heavens, and the host of
+stars, and verifying the more spiritual conceptions of the Hebrew
+Psalmist, and of Job, who did not confound (nor did this child) the sign
+with the Living GOD who created it to signify His Being. Another thing:
+Observe it was not even as the giver of love and joy, but as the giver
+of _goodness_ that the Person of Persons had seized the imagination of
+the child so powerfully. It was wonderful to see that very day, the
+effect upon his understanding of this conversation. The night before,
+when I told him the story of the little worm, I found his vocabulary so
+small that I could give my imagination a very narrow scope. But in the
+course of the day (in which, for the first time in his life) he talked
+incessantly, asking innumerable questions about his _good friend_, he
+seemed to have no difficulty in talking. I am very sorry I have not my
+written memoranda, because I should like to tell you everything in
+order; but I remember he wanted to know how his _good friend_ "looked."
+I replied by asking him, "How does love look?" He laughed, and said,
+"Love does not look, but feels." "Well," said I, "so your good friend
+does not look, but feels. Don't you feel him now, putting love and
+goodness into you?" He laughed assent, and said, "Where is he?"
+
+"Wherever love and goodness are," said I; "in you, in me, and in mother,
+in everybody who _loves_." I was encouraged to believe he would
+comprehend this language, unimaginable and inconceivable as such truth
+is to the mere understanding, for I had in my remembrance a conversation
+I once overheard between two children, one five and the other not three
+years old, at which I had not ceased to wonder since I heard it. I was
+sitting drawing with their mother in a recess of a room that hid us from
+the children's sight, when our attention was diverted by hearing the
+younger one say:--
+
+"Can GOD see me now, when I am all wrapped up in this shawl?"
+
+The elder one replied very earnestly, "O yes! GOD can see everybody,
+everywhere."
+
+"But I don't see how He can see me when I am all wrapped up in this
+shawl. It is dark," persisted the little three-year-old. There was a
+pause, when Eliza, in a very anxious voice, said:--
+
+"Amelia, can you see mama in your eye?" (She meant imagination.)
+
+Amelia replied after a moment, "Yes, I can see mama in my eye, just how
+she looks."
+
+"Well," said Eliza, "I suppose that is the way GOD sees everything,
+because He knows everything."
+
+I cannot conceive a more perfect proof that the soul of a child is a
+"sparkle of GOD," and its mind the intuition of the eternal reason--its
+image, than was given by this original illustration of the truth of
+truths made by a child of five years old. The mother made an exclamation
+of wonder, and said:--
+
+"I am sure I never could have given so profound an answer as that," and
+I continue to think it the most wonderful thing I ever heard of so young
+a child's saying, and had I not heard it myself, I doubt if I could have
+believed it was said. But it has given me courage to think that children
+might have very early a definite conception of the invisible GOD without
+materializing it.
+
+The omnipresence and invisibility of GOD were mysteries that attracted
+my little pupil's mind and taxed it, but did not distress nor perplex
+it. Of the reality of GOD's being, the intimacy of his own relations
+with Him, he never seemed to have a doubt; his delight in the thought of
+Him was boundless. At the end of the first day he said a thing which
+struck his parents with astonishment. The evening of the day on which I
+arrived, his father had made tea for me in the parlor, and as the child
+did not want to leave me a moment, he was set up at the table in his
+high-chair opposite me, to eat his bread and milk with us. While the
+father talked of one thing and another, the child's eye and mine
+occasionally met, and he would immediately make some gesture of
+lovingness and an inarticulate sound, ee ee ee! At last his father
+checked him with the words "Don't make those silly noises, Foster!" I
+interposed, and playfully said:--
+
+"Now please don't come between me and Foster. I understand his silly
+noises and just what he means to say to me. How can you expect he will
+talk any sense when you have never given him any help to think?" The
+father laughed at my "transcendentalism," as he called it. But the
+second night, when we were all again in the same relative position, the
+demeanor of the child was wholly changed; he sat silently eating as if
+wrapped in thought. By and by he said in a very decided tone, "Some
+things live, and some things only keep."
+
+With a look of astonishment his father exclaimed, "What an extraordinary
+generalization!" "The consequence," said I, "of being talked to as if he
+were a rational being one day!"
+
+The next day I went to Boston for a day or two, to make arrangements for
+returning to stay an indefinite time, which was such a disappointment to
+the poor little thing that he screamed in the most passionate manner, so
+that his mother could no longer doubt his sensibility or will. He was so
+angry with the stage-coachman who took me away, that his father had
+great difficulty in persuading him that he was not a bad man, but, on
+the contrary, a kind one, whom Aunt Lizzie had asked to come to take her
+to the railroad. At last he somewhat reluctantly agreed that he might be
+a good man.
+
+"But I shall never like him," he said, and left his father, to go and
+caress his mother, who was weeping, as he divined, with the same regret
+as his own, and he was apparently comforted by her saying, that she,
+too, was sorry Aunt Lizzie had to go away for a little while, but she
+had promised to come back in a day or two and stay all summer.
+
+It turned out as I had surmised, that he had asked no questions while I
+was gone, and had said very little except to wonder that I stayed so
+long, though I was gone only two days.
+
+When I came back I had immediate evidence that he had been thinking
+while I was gone, and to some purpose. You remember that on that first
+morning of our conversation, he had asked me who made the trees, and I
+had said, "The trees grow out of the ground," which did not seem to give
+him the satisfaction that my reference of his emotions, sensibilities,
+and thoughts, to an invisible personality had given him. Now, as soon as
+the embraces of welcome and expressions of joy had subsided a little, he
+burst into the subject which had so possessed his mind, and with a sort
+of triumphant air, as if he was sure of a satisfactory response, he
+asked:--
+
+"What did our good friend want the trees to grow out cf the ground for?"
+
+I said, "Do you think the trees are pretty? Do you like to look at
+them?"
+
+"Yes, I think they are beautiful."
+
+"Well," said I, "I guess that was one reason; you know he loves us all,
+and so he likes to please us. Do you like to please those you love?"
+
+"Yes!" and a passionate embrace and kiss was the expressive reply.
+
+I then went on to call his attention to the fruits that grow on some of
+the trees, and which serve us with delicious food, and the uses of wood
+to build houses with, etc. This conversation naturally introduced other
+kindred subjects of inquiry as to why our good friend had arranged
+things so and so. The tyrannizing instinct of his own mind, of which he
+had become conscious through the exercise of it, that my naming of the
+Spirit Father had so happily started, had made objective to him the
+Unity of all life, and he was sure that the good friend was at the
+bottom of everything outward as well as inward, even trifles; for I one
+day heard him say, as he was lying on the floor at play, "Heavenly
+Father, I wish you would not let my leg feel so cold." This was later
+on, in the winter time, however.
+
+I cannot sufficiently regret that I have lost my original memoranda.
+They were transcribed from notes that his mother made, who was watching
+every word said, with the most intense interest. She always had pencil
+and paper at her side, because the danger of hemorrhage caused her to
+avoid speaking. She wrote down with care the very words, as if they
+were, as indeed they were, a divine Revelation. Whatever he accepted or
+expressed with joy, she felt was true, knowing as well as she did the
+past emptiness of his understanding, and the dreariness of his feeling
+as an individual. But I can perhaps remember enough to show you the
+method I took, which was truly the very method of conversation that
+Frœbel proposes we should have with children, prompted by the Wisdom of
+love, which so profoundly respects its object that it gives it
+opportunity to be itself by not obtruding. The reason that we do not get
+the lesson that childhood can give us is that we thrust our finite minds
+between the child and the Divine, instead of limiting ourselves to
+putting the child into the point of view to see for itself what of
+course though essentially one, is perhaps of different aspect to each. I
+made it a point to be very quiet, and to exhibit no surprise at his
+questions or mistakes, but to lead him by my questions to the answers,
+and the corrections of mistakes which must needs arise from
+one-sidedness. The entire respect with which I listened to what he said
+gave him complete possession of and confidence in his own mind. One
+laugh at any incongruity he uttered (as Dr. Seguin would tell you) would
+have shut him up perhaps forever. How often children's thinking is thus
+nipped in the bud!
+
+The circumstances in this instance were favorable to real conversation.
+In addition to my love of psychological observation in general, and my
+love and interest in this child in particular, was that which I felt in
+the mother, whose own childhood had been so shadowed by her human
+environment that it had not taught her what only childhood can teach
+with its uneclipsed vision of the Father's face, of which Christ speaks
+and warns the adult not to offend (or, as the revised version translates
+it, _cause to stumble_). On her account, as well as on my own and the
+child's, I was careful not to put my thoughts into his head, but merely
+lead him to the standpoint from which he could see the truth for
+himself. It is because these conditions made for once an opportunity for
+a genuine conversation between intuitive childhood and such maturity of
+experience as I had attained, realizing Frœbel's ideal of the
+conversation of the kindergarten, that I am desirous to give it to you
+as a hint of how you should proceed--though, of course, you would
+probably never have so exceptional an opportunity; because the children
+that come to you will generally have minds already misty with
+half-defined ideas of GOD, received from the vague, half-defined minds
+of the imperfectly educated adults, conveyed to the children either in
+that careless or dogmatic manner in which they are usually talked to,
+not with.
+
+Another advantage I had with this child was, that besides the arrested
+development arising from his mother's timid plan with him, he inherited
+from both parents, and perhaps from remoter ancestry, an individuality
+of mind that was not at all imaginative; which did not, however, exclude
+him from spiritual truth, for that is not the work of imagination, but
+is discerned by the spiritual sense, being as objective as what is
+discerned by the five senses (a transcendental objective, not a material
+one). The respectful interest with which I treated him gave him a happy
+confidence in his own thought, which was my opportunity for observing
+the natural order of mental development. In short, the conversation we
+had was a genuine one as between equals, unless, indeed, he was the
+superior in giving to me the divine laws of the spiritual order. He
+often surprised me by his next question, and was so disarmed of all fear
+by my consideration and tenderness, that he revealed that which is
+always the individual's secret, and I gained as much as he did by the
+conversations, and certainly I gained certainty in what was previously
+only conjecture on my part. I was sometimes obliged to say I did not
+know, and remember his asking me with surprise, "Don't you know
+everything?" "Oh, no!" said I. "Only our good friend knows everything
+and gives us our thoughts all the time. Doesn't he give new thoughts to
+you every day?"
+
+"Yes, he gives me a great many new thoughts all the time," he replied
+with animation. On another occasion, when I had become perfectly
+exhausted in answering his questions, I said to him:--
+
+"I am very tired, but I will answer that question, provided you will not
+ask me another before dinner."
+
+As he walked away he said, "Oh, I wish I had asked another question
+instead of that!"
+
+"Well," said I, "what? Perhaps I will answer that one."
+
+Turning back, he said eagerly, "Will our good friend answer all my
+questions when I go into the sky?"
+
+I said, "Yes, every one; for he knows everything, and can never be
+tired."
+
+The expression of complete satisfaction with which he went away from me
+was most expressive.
+
+You will observe his expression of "when I go into the sky," and
+consider it together with the words that he interpolated saying, "I have
+a good friend up in the sky," in repeating to Mrs. Doyle that first
+morning when I had told him that his good friend who gave him thoughts,
+and joy, and goodness, and love, had a sky full of goodness. The sky is
+the natural symbol of the unbounded and infinite and the essentially
+spiritual, and the conception of GOD into which I had led him, and which
+I named his good friend, pervaded all space.
+
+The subsequent questions of how GOD looked, and upon His whereabouts,
+and the conversation on this, by identifying Him with the Love that he
+felt within himself, had revealed to him _Immortality_ before he had
+defined mortality.
+
+The GOD he felt within him in his conscious Love and without him in all
+manifestations of beauty and power, gave him assurance that he would be
+sometime wherever GOD was. I have lost the connection and place in the
+narrative of another conversation I had with him on the omnipresence of
+GOD. He often had said his thoughts were in his head, and his feelings
+were in his bosom. One day he was sitting in my lap close to a table,
+with his feet bare, and I put my hand under the table and pinched his
+toe. He said:--
+
+"What are you pinching my toe for?"
+
+I said, "How do you know I pinched your toe? you cannot see what I am
+doing under the table."
+
+"I think you pinched my toe, because I felt it."
+
+"I thought all your thoughts were in your head, and all your feelings in
+your bosom, not in your toes."
+
+"My feelings are all over my body," said he; "and when you pinched my
+toe, the feeling ran right into my head and turned into a thought."
+
+"So you see," said I, "that you live all over your body and in any part
+of it, just as your Heavenly Father lives all over the world and in
+everything at once."
+
+"Yes," said he, "I did not know how that was before."
+
+The date of this conversation was some weeks, perhaps months, from the
+beginning of our intercourse, as I know from the use of the word
+_Heavenly Father_, which came after a time to take the place of _good
+friend_, and it was preceded by some other conversations. He was always
+overflowing with expressions of love to me. When I gave him anything, he
+would embrace me, and I would ask, "Which do you love best, me or the
+thing given?" (an apple perhaps, or whatever it might be). He would
+always say, "You, you." Once he said, "I love you more than all the
+apples in the world." Once when he was kissing my hand, I said, "Which
+do you love best, me or my hand?"
+
+"I love both," he said.
+
+I persisted, and said, "Supposing my hand was cut off, would you love me
+as well?"
+
+"I should love you a great deal more," said he, energetically; "for it
+would hurt you so to have your poor hand cut off. Would it not hurt you
+dreadfully?"
+
+"I suppose it would, but by and by it would get well and what I want to
+know is, whether you would love me as well without my hand as with it?"
+
+He still declared he should love me more. I then said, "So you see my
+hand is not me. It is only one of the things the Heavenly Father gave me
+to make things with, and He gave me my feet to walk with, and eyes to
+see with; but my eyes and ears and tongue are not me; and if I should
+lose them all, still I would be all of myself, and you could love me?"
+
+"Yes," said he; "but I don't want you to lose any of those things, for I
+love them all together."
+
+My object in these conversations was to see if he would separate in
+thought the finite material body from the conscious soul or _himself_,
+as I preferred to say, for to speak of one's self as a _soul_ makes what
+is essentially subjective as objective as we desire to make the body,
+the use of which is to reveal to others the feelings and thoughts of the
+individual that otherwise the finite apprehension could not seize. I was
+endeavoring to prepare him to minister to his mother, when I could
+persuade her to let him know the fact of death, by appreciating and
+defining that crisis of life as a step onward into the deep
+consciousness of immortality, which I believed would lift her out of the
+abyss into which her own consciousness seemed to fall at the utterance
+of the word, in spite of all the intellectual views of immortality which
+she had for many years cultivated, but which somehow did not meet her
+exigency, when she felt herself on the brink of the separation of body
+and mind. No intellectual process can give what the faith of childhood
+has in its own immortality of which those who had the care of her
+infancy had robbed her.
+
+It was delightful to see how she enjoyed the child who had long been a
+burden to her. She wanted him in her presence all the time with his
+playthings, and to hear all our conversation, and that I should tell
+her what we said in the little time that he could not be with her. She
+declared that she never had known what the enjoyment of life was till
+she had it in her sympathy with him. All the pleasures of intellect, and
+also of personal affections of the happiest kind, were pale beside the
+joy of this child--in his communion with GOD, who was in all his
+thoughts, and had taken him from his dreariness and growing peevishness,
+into that joy of childhood which Ruskin speaks of as so entirely out of
+proportion to the occasions of its expression, and which still had no
+painful excitement in it, but was simply a spontaneous outflow, not only
+quickening his thoughts but informing his affections with generosity and
+gratitude. The self that lost all sense of boundary, in its joy in the
+unbounded, spread out to embrace all about it. He said one thing to me
+which will, I think, explain to you what I mean. Of course, I was the
+first person on whom the flood of his heart poured itself out, though he
+did not stop with me, but also expressed his love to all with whom he
+came into near or remote relation. When saying to me how much he loved
+me, what a skyful of love he had for me, I said, "Yes, darling, I know
+you love me as much as you can," he replied scornfully, "I love you a
+great deal more than I can!" Was not that a wonderful expression of the
+immortal essence of his love,--of Love Divine?
+
+Without its being suggested to him to thank others for kindnesses, he
+did so without a single exception. He would be taken to drive in the
+carriage with his mother, and standing at the window, would shout with
+delight at the things he saw on the way, and when he got home would
+often run back to the gate to say, "Thank you, horsey!" and all his
+habits of timidity were forgotten when the street musicians came by, and
+he was allowed to take out pennies to them. Callers at the house, from
+whom he used to shrink when they would have spoken to him, were in
+wonder at his hospitable welcome and fearless but intelligent
+interpositions in the conversation, which they thought indicated
+precocity instead of backwardness. The length, breadth, and depth of all
+the words Christ let fall in the last part of his life, of which I had
+had some insight before, became doubly intelligible to me. I saw into
+the beauty and meaning of mankind's being created in successive
+generations, and I was thus prepared to enter into and appreciate
+Frœbel's ideas and methods, with which I did not become acquainted till
+a quarter of a century later.
+
+I want you to observe that in what I did there was simply the
+spontaneous wisdom of love--love, not fondness, not desire of
+reciprocation, but self-forgetting and reverent of its object. Only this
+gives the creative method, or is the essence of creativeness, whether
+human or divine.
+
+You remember, in the memoir of Frœbel with which I began this course of
+lectures, it was said that he posed his elder brother with his
+questionings of GOD's wisdom in the arrangement of the social sphere.
+Unable to answer him, the instinct of his love led him to divert the
+child's attention into a department of nature where apparent discords
+were seen to be harmonized for the production of beauty and use, that
+the poor little perplexed and bewildered child might enjoy himself
+legitimately. He gave him the clue to the labyrinth and the strength to
+conquer the Minotaur. He had no idea of educating, but only of
+comforting. Thus, unconscious of any theory of education, he solved the
+problem practically, first for the child Frœbel himself, later for
+mankind to whom the man Frœbel has revealed it with such ample
+illustrations as to make an era in human history that, as we hope, shall
+retrieve the past. Childhood understood, leading in the promised
+millennium of peace on earth and good will among men, will make mankind
+forget the Babel confusion of its first experimenting, and enter into
+the mutual understanding of the Pentecostal miracle.
+
+
+
+
+LECTURE VII.
+
+A PSYCHOLOGICAL OBSERVATION.
+
+PART SECOND.
+
+
+IN our little F.'s case, as it became perfectly plain to his mother that
+he conceived clearly of God's embracing unbounded space as well as time
+in His Infinite Essence, she became desirous of knowing how he would
+receive the fact of death, so painfully and prematurely forced upon her
+own soul,--whether his mind would leap the gulf in which hers seemed to
+sink at the utterance of the word.
+
+But the difficulty for him seemed to be to conceive of death at all. I
+tried to approach the subject in such a manner that he should have the
+initiative, as it were, in any conversation upon it. There was a poor
+old man who occasionally passed the house in the clothes of a pauper,
+supporting his steps with a stick. One day when he did so, F. asked me,
+"What makes men old?" and before I had time to answer, added, "Mary [the
+name of a former servant] used to say _many days_, when I asked her. Do
+many days make men old?"
+
+"Yes," said I, "just as many days make your clothes and shoes old. That
+old man has walked on his poor old legs so long that they are quite worn
+out, and he has looked so long with his eyes that they are dim, and
+listened so long with his ears that they have grown dull, and his back
+has grown weak, and his whole body is so worn out that it will not do
+what his thoughts tell it to do, as your little fresh legs and eyes and
+ears and as your whole body does."
+
+He received this intimation quietly, but raised no question as to the
+ultimate result; and as often as the old man walked by, he would ask the
+same question and receive the same answer.
+
+At last I took down from the book-closet Mrs. Trimmer's story of the
+robins and read it to him, and he became very much interested in the
+little nest and its inhabitants. After a while, the children in the
+story had birds of their own in a cage, which they took care of
+assiduously, but at length on one occasion went away and left them for
+many days uncared for, so that they died; I read right on through the
+page on which it was told that on going to the cage when they came home,
+they found the birds lying on their backs with their beaks wide open,
+stark dead! I paused in my reading, and he repeated, "stark dead! what
+do those words mean? What was the matter with the birds?" I laid the
+book down, and said, "You know that some things live, and some things
+only keep." "Yes," said he. I continued, "You know that living beings
+feel pain or pleasure, one or the other, all the time, and that things
+that only keep do not feel at all."
+
+"Yes," said he.
+
+"Well, things that live and feel--living beings--always eat and drink;
+they continue to live by eating and drinking, and God tells them to eat
+by making it pleasant for them to taste things. Now these little birds
+lived by eating and drinking, and if they had been free, they would have
+found food and drink somewhere in the world; but those children had shut
+them up in a cage; and when they were so thoughtless as to go away and
+forget the birds that they had undertaken to take care of, the little
+birds grew hungry, and you know it is not pleasant to feel even a little
+hungry, but they grew hungrier and hungrier till their poor little
+bodies were as full of pain as they could be. Now our Heavenly Father
+could not possibly have them suffer so much pain, and so He told them
+to come to Him, and their life went right out of their bodies, and then
+their bodies were just like everything else that only keeps; they could
+feel no more pain."
+
+"What a dear, dear, dear Heavenly Father it is!" said the child; "what
+nice ways He has about everything!"
+
+"Yes," said I, "He has the ways of love."
+
+He asked no questions at this time, nor made any generalization. I took
+up the book, and read on about the children's burying the bodies of the
+birds, etc.
+
+Thus the death of the body was first presented to his imagination as
+only a relief from pain of the life that inhabited it. He was immensely
+interested, and the subject became the most common topic of
+conversation.
+
+There were some books in the house which had pictures of hunts, and one
+was of a stag-hunt, the stag at bay, the dogs seizing him, the huntsmen
+firing. These books had been carefully kept from him. I now took them
+down, and showed them to him, interested him in the timid stag running
+for its life, and its ingenious devices to elude the dogs by swimming
+across streams, and at last when the dogs had seized it, or the huntsman
+fired the cruel shot which tore the breast or side of the poor beast,
+the final release, God's call of the life to Himself! At which the child
+would utter exclamations of delight: that final escape was _the best of
+all_.
+
+This story was so interesting, it absorbed his attention, and he did not
+generalize. But it took its place among the good deeds of God's love,
+that when life became too painful in the body it was taken away to enjoy
+itself with God.
+
+His mother, in whose presence were all the conversations, was intensely
+interested; but still as he did not think of human death, she hardly
+felt that he had conceived the idea.
+
+I told him about the metamorphoses of insects, and their depositing
+their life in eggs as soon as they were born. When the old man came by,
+as he did nearly every day, we commented on the wearing out of his
+body, but he did not think of death as a relief for him.
+
+At last one day it happened that stretching out of the window for some
+purpose, he nearly lost his balance, and it was only by my timely
+seizing him that he escaped falling out. I said, "F., what if you had
+fallen out on those rocks and been broken all to pieces!" He shrieked
+with horror, "I don't want to! I don't want to!" "But what if you had!"
+said I, calmly. "You came very near it. What should you have done?"
+"What could I?" he screamed. "What could I do, all broken to pieces!"
+"Why, don't you think," said I, smiling, "that your Heavenly Father
+would have taken you right into His own bosom?"
+
+A heavenly smile spread over his face and a look of perfect satisfaction
+and acquiescence, and he said after a moment's pause, "I forgot my
+Heavenly Father. Oh, what a dear, dear, dear Heavenly Father He is!"
+Then, after another moment, he said in a distressed voice, "But must I
+be broken all to pieces when I go to the Heavenly Father?"
+
+"Oh, dear, no!" said I; "but when we are broken all to pieces, or
+starved, or are very sick, He takes us; but generally people grow to be
+old like the old man, and all their bodies get worn out, and they get
+very tired and kind of go to sleep, and the Heavenly Father takes them,
+so they do not wake up again in their old bodies, which are buried as
+the children buried the bodies of the robins."
+
+He expressed himself very happy, and asked a great many questions, and
+it seemed as if he had already known of the fact of death. At all
+events, he now accepted it as the common destiny, without any painful
+feeling, and it seemed to give new realization to his mother's feeling
+that her own was indeed nothing but a morbid feeling, and that normal
+nature did not shrink from death. The subsequent questions were
+innumerable. I read to him Krummacher's parable of the caterpillar and
+butterfly in the garden of Thirza, after the death of Abel, as it was
+paraphrased by Mr. Alcott when he read it in his school, in which I was
+assisting him at the very time that I was called away to the child's
+mother. And it was the study I had made of childhood in his school which
+had enabled me to pursue with so much confidence the method I took with
+the child, though it was in my own childhood I conceived the plan; and I
+remember speaking of it to Dr. Channing in 1824, and how much interested
+he was in the idea, though he told me that in his own case he was
+indebted to the symbolism of nature, especially the ocean seen from the
+beach at Newport, for clearing his mind of the effects of the teaching
+and preaching which he had heard. These grand objects, and later the
+beauty of some manifestations he had seen of love giving courage and
+power to the weak, kindled his ideal, and gave form and substance to his
+consciousness of God.
+
+For a time there was nothing but delight expressed in the fact of death,
+the relief from all suffering, the enlargement of life and joy and new
+knowledge of God and His ways. At last a little incident showed him the
+shadow which attends death in this world.
+
+We often went to call on the family of the physician who attended his
+mother. One day when we went, the Doctor, who was very fond of F., took
+him into his lap while I was playing with the baby in his mother's arms.
+They always called it "baby." I said to Mrs. D., "Has not baby any
+name?" The mother replied, "His name is Edward." F. looked up at the
+Doctor with a bright, joyous expression, and said, "Where is your other
+Edward?" The Doctor's face changed instantaneously; he clasped the child
+close to him, and said, "Oh, he has gone to his Heavenly Father," with a
+burst of grief. F. stretched himself back, looked into the agitated
+face, and said with a look of the greatest concern, "Are you sorry that
+he has gone to the Heavenly Father?" "Oh, very, very sorry," said the
+poor father. "Should not you be sorry if he should take away your dear
+mother?" and putting the child down, he immediately left the room. Mrs.
+D. said, "The Doctor has never got over the death of that child, and we
+never name him in his presence."
+
+I immediately left the house, and we walked some distance in silence,
+and as I found F. did not incline to speak, I said, "F., did the Doctor
+look glad when you spoke to him about his other Edward?" He pressed
+himself close up to me, and said eagerly, "No, no! he looked very sorry.
+What made him sorry? Did he not like to have his other Edward with the
+Heavenly Father?" "Oh, yes! he liked that, but then he wanted to have
+him in his own arms. You see he cannot see him now, and he wants to kiss
+him." "Yes," said F., "he hugged me!" I continued: "You see, the Doctor
+is very strong and well, and I suppose he will live in his body a good
+many years, and he has Mrs. D. and Julia and the rest, but he wants that
+other Edward, too, every day of his life." F. replied sympathizingly,
+"He was large, and white, and bright, and when I go into the sky, I
+shall look all over to see where he is." I said, after a little while,
+"Shall you say anything more to the Doctor about his other Edward?" "No,
+indeed!" said he. "I never shall say another word about him. Do you
+think I want to make the poor Doctor sorry?" I told his mother, when I
+got home, of the whole affair, and we agreed that it was well he should
+see the sad side of death for the survivors.
+
+It was soon a question with F. how we were to live without the body, and
+he asked me. I told him I did not know exactly how it was to be, but I
+supposed God would let new eyes, ears, and whatever limbs we should
+need, grow out of us, made of the finest stuff like air, which we could
+not see because it was so delicate, or even feel, as we did the air when
+it moved, but which souls could use just as they pleased. He said, "I
+have seen some pictures of souls that had gone out of their bodies, and
+I did not know before what they were." Surprised, I asked him how they
+looked. He said, "They were nothing but heads with wings."
+
+The delightful thing was to see the effect of all this earnest prattle
+upon the mother; and one day, after I had returned from a visit to a
+friend in the town, she told me she had had a conversation with F. on
+her own approaching death that was very satisfactory.
+
+She said she had his bread and milk put on a little table opposite her
+easy-chair, and when he was happily engaged, she said, "F., I think our
+Heavenly Father will soon take me to Himself." He looked up with an
+expression of great feeling, and said tenderly: "Do you? Then you will
+get rid of that poor, sick body, and your cough;" and he added
+presently, "Perhaps he will give you _wings_!" She said nothing could be
+likened to the impression of peace and sweetness which these simple
+words made upon her. Soon after, he said, "But what will be done with
+your poor old body?" (She said he spoke as if it was of not much
+importance.) She replied, "Your father and Aunt Lizzy will take it to
+Cambridge in a carriage, and put it into the ground; and the grass will
+grow over the place, and sometimes you can come to the place; and I
+guess I shall look out of heaven and see you." But in a few minutes he
+began to cry, and said, "I want to go with you into the sky." She said,
+"Oh, you have a nice little body, which gives you a great deal of
+pleasure, and you must stay here with poor, dear father! What would he
+do when he has no wife any longer, without his little boy to make him
+happy, and take care of him when he grows old?" After a little more of
+such remonstrance he said, "Well, I will stay with him!" It was curious
+that in talking with me he never referred to this subject of his
+mother's approaching death, which evidently had touched him tenderly,
+and I did not introduce the subject.
+
+It was also a curious circumstance, that after this matter of death
+was, as it were, settled satisfactorily, and the mind of his mother
+freed from all trouble on the point, _the love of this life_, to which
+she had hitherto been more than indifferent, sprang up in her with great
+energy, and she proposed to break up the house, and go to Florida for
+cure! Her husband and I could not share the hope, but we could not but
+sympathize in the new joy in life, that she seemed to have received from
+her now happy child, with whom she had learnt _to live_ in the spirit.
+Things were so arranged that she made her husband's father's house,
+about thirty miles distant, the first goal of her journey. She reached
+with great fatigue this first stage, and stopped to rest, and never
+mentioned Florida afterwards. She breathed on another year, during which
+time I only saw her in weekly visits, having returned to Mr. Alcott's
+school in Boston. Her disease was not very painful, but so lingering
+that every trace of her former beauty was lost in the ghastly
+emaciation.
+
+There were in the house two little cousins, younger than F., taken care
+of exclusively by a very sweet mother, and this gave him the most
+desirable social intercourse and play that took the place of our
+discourses at the right moment, and called into action very sweet traits
+of character. My weekly visit of a day or two was a great affair to the
+children. I told them stories, innumerable variations of _The Story
+without an End_, and of _Pilgrim's Progress_, modified to their infant
+minds. I always repeated the stories in precisely the same words (which
+is a great point in telling stories to children, and impresses them on
+the memory), and they became very familiar with the ends of my
+paragraphs, and would take them from my lips, and repeat them as a
+chorus. Thus when I had got Pilgrim laid away in the upper chamber of
+the House Beautiful, whose white draperies I minutely described, they
+would all interrupt me, and sing out, "And the name of that chamber was
+Peace." So of the last words of other paragraphs that I purposely made
+epigrammatic.
+
+The substantial character of the child's piety and sense of immortality,
+which I have described as bubbling up at the name _Heavenly_ Father,
+spoken at the right time, and in the right way, was exhibited
+unmistakably in his after life, and began to express itself at once in
+his association with his little cousins, which proved a very timely
+thing for him, bringing out his moral character by means of what he
+constantly did to make them happy, and keep them good, but he never said
+anything to them about the Heavenly Father. That subject seemed reserved
+for me.
+
+It was amusing to see how fatherly he was to the little one, and he
+continued this fatherly manner all his after life to all the children
+with whom he came in contact, and even during his childhood it was
+singularly unmixed with any tyranny or managing spirit. He would play as
+they wanted to with them. He seemed to be drawn to children because he
+could so easily understand their innocence, and make them happy by his
+companionship, and because he enjoyed _them_.
+
+All his subsequent life he exhibited an exquisite sensibility to beauty,
+which he continued to accept as the Creator's _smile of consent_; the
+_very good_ pronounced on everything which He had made. In the last part
+of his mother's life, she became so frightfully emaciated, that it was
+evidently painful for him to look at her; but he _said_ nothing about
+it; and it was sweet to see the delicacy with which he tried to conceal
+this pain from _her_, when he was admitted into the room to see her,
+which, at length, came to be only in the middle of the day, when she was
+seated in an easy-chair, with a broad white footstool at her feet. He
+would come into the room, looking on the floor, and seat himself on the
+footstool, with his back partly turned to her, and, drawing down her
+hands, cover them with kisses: he refused, as it were, to recognize her,
+under that ghastly mask, which, however, did not shut off from his
+_remembrance_, her former loveliness; for, as soon as she was really
+dead, and he began to think of her _in heaven_, she became his standard
+of beauty. During the little more than a year that he continued under my
+care, "_not_ so beautiful as my mother," or "_as_ beautiful as my
+mother" were words very frequently in his mouth. As she approached her
+death, she was so careful lest he should have any of the _shock_ which
+her own mother's death gave to her, that she readily consented that he
+should go for the last few days with the other children to stay with a
+kind neighbor. He was therefore not present at her death; neither was I.
+It was an event greatly longed for by herself, at last, and its
+approach, which she knew before any one else discerned any special
+change, seemed to gladden her. Her last breath was peaceful; her last
+words, "Give my love to F."
+
+I told him of the event the morning after the funeral, from which I
+returned with his father, in the dusk of the evening, calling for the
+child to go home and sleep with me, which he always was delighted to do.
+He was put to bed in the room where his mother had died, and I went in
+with him, to explain her absence, if he should notice it. But he was
+tired, and so occupied with my presence, he did _not_,--not even when he
+woke in the morning. At last, I said to him, "Do you see what room we
+are in?" He rose up and looked around, and said, "Why, it is my mother's
+chamber! Where is my mother?" I paused a moment to see if he would
+divine the truth, and then said, "The dear Heavenly Father has taken her
+at last!" He fell back on the pillow, with a single exclamation of _not
+painful wonder_, and a countenance sublime with the mingled expression
+of awe, love, and joyful satisfaction. The fact of her absent body
+seemed to be a more palpable proof of the truth of her deathless soul,
+than even her form and word, which had represented it to his senses. He
+was "silent, as we grow when feeling most," as if he realized that he
+was in the presence of the "substance of things hoped for, the evidence
+of things unseen." You may be sure I respected this sacred silence,
+which seemed to me to last several minutes, but possibly it was only
+_one_. At last he said gently, "Was the window open?" I replied, "I
+don't know; I only know our Heavenly Father, who is everywhere, you
+know, took her to himself. He does not mind about windows, you know."
+"_No, indeed!_ I know that very well," he said, with a little laugh (as
+if he wondered at his momentary lapse of thought). Soon he asked, "Did
+He give her a new body right away?" "I do not know anything more about
+that than _you_ do," I replied; "I only know He will do better things
+for her than we can think of." "Do you think," said he, "that she looks
+beautiful as she used to?" but, before I could reply, he suddenly added,
+"I want to _go_ to my mother. I want to see her _now_," and began to
+cry.
+
+I kissed him, and began gently to recall the conversation that she had
+had with him the day she told him she expected soon to leave him; and,
+after a while, he said spontaneously, as he had done when he talked with
+her he "would stay with his father to comfort him for the loss of her."
+His father told me afterwards, that when he saw _him_, he went over the
+same ground again, beginning with saying that he wanted to go to her;
+but when his father represented to him how solitary he should be with no
+wife or son to show their love to him, F. closed the conversation with
+the words, "Well, I will stay with you till I grow up" (as if it was
+quite within his option to do so or not).
+
+Very soon after this I took him away with me to Salem, where he remained
+in our family for a year or more, I think. My father's family were
+living at the corner of an old burial ground, two sides of the house
+being bordered by it. The day we arrived we went directly to my sister
+Sophia's room, which looked out upon this burial ground. He was
+immediately attracted to the window by the trees, and exclaimed
+joyfully, "Oh, Aunt Lizzy, what a beautiful green garden this is! What
+are those things?" (referring to the tomb stones.) I replied: "That
+green garden is where people lay away, underground, the _poor old
+worn-out dead bodies_ of their friends, who are with our Father in
+Heaven, and those things are called tombstones; they are put there with
+the names carved on them of the persons whose bodies are buried in those
+spots." He at once seemed greatly interested and pleased, and became
+still more so after he had seen some burials; his emotions of joy at the
+thought of the enfranchised spirits entering on their heavenly life,
+being tempered with tender sympathy for the bereaved friends in their
+mourning-robes, whom he sometimes saw weeping at the earthly parting. He
+was always very anxious to know how the buried ones had died, from what
+particular sickness or danger they had escaped; and one day when my
+sister Mary came back from a walk, he joyfully told her that he had
+found out another way in which souls went to heaven. She, of course,
+asked him, "What way?" and he said, "Why, sometimes ships that go to sea
+are driven by the wind against some rocks and broken to pieces, and all
+the men's bodies are drowned, and they go to heaven through the water."
+Another time, he ran to her in great excitement, and said: "Oh, Aunt
+Mary! I saw a little baby's body buried in the green garden; some
+carriages came, and there was a hole dug already, and people got out of
+the carriages, and one man had a little box in his arms in which the
+baby's body was; and they put some ropes around it, and let it down; and
+then they filled up the hole with the dirt, and I saw the little baby
+fly up, fly up, fly up!" and he accompanied the words with a circular
+gesture of his arm. Whether the subjective conception was so vivid, that
+it reproduced itself to his imagination in an objective form, as the
+Sistine Madonna is said to have done to Raphael; or it was what is
+called "a spiritual manifestation"; it was evidently a reality to him,
+and no comment was made, except that my sister said, "_I never saw a
+soul fly up_."
+
+I should say here that this child was not imaginative, and we never saw
+in him the smallest untruthfulness in speech or act, nor tendency to
+exaggeration. In this he resembled both his parents. Afterwards, he
+became something of a scientist, and studied medicine for his
+profession. He was a good classical scholar in college, and before his
+early death, had completed in manuscript the history of one of the
+mechanical arts. I think he was not of a visionary temperament. (See
+Appendix E.)
+
+His life with us in Salem was perfectly delightful. He had no faults,
+though a certain pertinacity (which was an expression of inherited
+firmness of character) sometimes required a little disciplinary
+conversation, nothing more. I never knew of his being subjected to any
+punishment, or requiring any, in all his childhood. He had not the usual
+impetuosity of children; perhaps the effect of his early depression of
+spirits.
+
+My sister Mary had a day-school in the house, made up of children
+between six and twelve years of age; he was allowed to have his
+playthings in the school-room, and loved to listen to her oral
+instruction of the children in natural history and science, especially
+in the stories that she told or read to them about human beings, in whom
+he was always more interested than in animals. I taught him how to read
+by the word method in _The Story without an End_, a slower and more
+laborious way both for him and me than the mixed method detailed in my
+_Kindergarten Guide_, of which I have lately published a primer under
+the title of _After Kindergarten, what?_
+
+But had I then known of Frœbel's method of employing childish play,
+organized by the adult with single aim to intellectual development, I
+should not have taught him to read so early, but something more
+profitable; I then shared what Professor Agassiz called "_the American
+insanity_ of teaching children to read before they have learned the
+things signified by words," which he, like Frœbel, believed would
+produce habits of mind positively injurious, dropping a veil between the
+observer and nature, preventing all freshness of thought, and destroying
+the mind's elasticity and _originality_. But I had not (at that time)
+presumed to question the time-honored tradition, that _the beginning of
+education_ was _learning to read_.
+
+When, later, my studies with a great philologist gave me a little light
+upon the subject, and showed me that English had the misfortune to be
+written by an inadequate alphabet, whose result was to confuse the
+phonography entirely, by obscuring the original principle of having but
+one letter for one sound, and a letter for every different sound, I
+realized the positive disadvantage of children's being forced through a
+process which baffles all their natural instincts of classification; and
+it was then I invented a method of separating English words into
+classes, the phonographic ones to be first made familiar, and the
+exceptions classified. Yet I could not be insensible to the
+unnaturalness of beginning with spending so much of the time of very
+young children upon this work of the _imperfect mind of man_, as
+languages are, rather than on the works of Infinite Wisdom. I was
+therefore well prepared to accept Frœbel's method of first sharpening
+the senses by examination of things that charm children, and of
+developing the understanding by first making things according to the
+laws which constitute the mind, and then naming them in all perceptible
+relations. First let us form a mind which can apprehend nature as the
+standard of truth, before we undertake to _in_form it with what embodies
+the confusions and errors of men; as, for instance, in a considerable
+degree the written English language does. For language stands in the
+same relation to man as nature does in relation to God. The eternal word
+of Truth makes _things_ before it is made flesh. The confusion of
+tongues was the inevitable consequence of the fall of man out of that
+communion with God in which children are born, and our written language
+is an image of this confusion, especially the English, whose so-called
+orthography is the most anomalous of all languages; and the acquisition,
+therefore, ought to be postponed, at least until the understanding is
+fairly developed by some recognition of so much of the Word of God as is
+alive in the things we see and can handle. The time comes when the
+children can understand that exceptions prove the rule, and then those
+irregularities and anomalies of English writing may be made even
+entertaining lessons to children; because if its laws and rules are
+apprehended first, there is something amusing to them in contradictions
+of law that so many words seem to be. It is the pleasure in the
+grotesque; children enjoy the _funny_, as they call it, but it is a
+different enjoyment from that of the beautiful, and the latter is the
+highest element for human activity. A predominance of the _funny_ even
+demoralizes intellectually as well as morally, but it has its own
+subordinate place in healthy child life.
+
+My little friend had a slate and pencil, and immediately inclined to
+draw from real objects, but we did not know how to give him any other
+help than to guess at what were the things he was trying to represent.
+If we could not guess, I remember he would blush, and go away, saying he
+would "_fix it a little_." I had the instinct that he could only be
+effectually encouraged by success, and I would endeavor to divine what
+he meant, by looking to see what were the surrounding objects when I saw
+him drawing, and would point out to him with congratulation any part in
+which he had at all succeeded, letting the rest go. But without adequate
+and legitimate guidance he necessarily became discouraged with his
+failures. What children do not succeed in, becomes distasteful to them,
+and they turn their attention from what has disappointed them, and thus
+their natural tastes die, or are starved out. As they have no knowledge
+of materials, nor judgment in using them, they undertake _the
+impossible_, and being baffled, lose courage to undertake the possible.
+So young artists accumulate difficulties by their unwise choice of
+subjects, not realizing the limitations of their own powers. It is the
+part of the educated kindergartner to supply this want of judgment and
+analysis until the pupil catches the secret of gradualism and the law of
+opposites. Frœbel's plan of giving the squared slate and paper to ensure
+straightness of line in children's drawing is like the leading strings
+by which the mother helps the child to develop his limbs for walking,
+which cannot be done without his own personal effort. So Frœbel's plan
+of having the kindergartner suggest a symmetrical drawing of lines in
+opposites, vivifies the sense of symmetry into a thought, whence springs
+a plan of making still another symmetry. For by suggesting opposites,
+and then the connecting of them, the child delightedly sees orderly
+forms that grow under his hands, and feels that he is acting from his
+own individual personality (which _he is_, though the thought was
+suggested by the words of another). What he _does_ gives him confidence
+in his own mind, whose fanciful movement suggests other symmetries; for
+though fancy is a spontaneous play of the free will among impressions
+passively received, it is amenable to the laws whose exponents are
+presented to it by nature's works and human suggestion.
+
+F. liked to watch my sister Sophia at her drawing and painting, but its
+very perfection discouraged efforts on his own part. It is bad not to
+_do_ really at once what we conceive of ideally. It was only in the
+moral and religious sphere that we really lived with him, and he was
+properly educated by us. We always answered all his questions about what
+we were doing, and how, and why (I wish now I had asked him more
+questions).
+
+My sister Sophia had a rare talent for talking with children, whose
+purity and innocence she comprehended by a sympathetic intuition, and to
+whose imagination her Christian faith gave ample scope, for it was
+hampered by no human creeds. We had a circle of acquaintances who were
+only too much inclined to pet him, and who, knowing something of the
+history of his mind, liked to talk with him. His mother had been very
+much beloved by this circle, and I used to tell him that _for her_ sake,
+they cared for and attended to _him_, which interested him immensely,
+and perhaps prevented his considering himself as a person of too much
+importance comparatively. He would talk of going to see his "MOTHER'S
+FRIENDS." If new persons spoke to him kindly, he would ask me
+immediately if they knew and loved his mother; at all events, the
+element of personal EGOTISM did not appear, and the affection he at
+first poured out on me, now freely flowed out in every direction. I
+remember his saying to me, one day, with an accent of great
+self-gratulation, "I think I have a great many friends," and in a moment
+after added, "my mother was so beautiful!" (as if that were the reason
+of it). A young husband and wife became inmates of our house, and
+brought a beautiful infant. This was a perennial fountain of delight to
+F. The singular beauty of the little one was a constant subject of
+observation. One day he was looking at her, as she lay on her mother's
+lap, and presently he burst out, "Oh, Ellen, your little bright eyes are
+shining themselves into a _sun_!" He was equally delighted with the
+musical sound of her crowing. His ear for sounds was fastidiously
+delicate. One day my mother was in the garden, looking at some wild
+flowers which had been brought to her for transplanting. As she looked
+at them she said to F., "Run into the house, and get my--" He
+interrupted her eagerly with, "Don't say that ugly _word_! I know what
+you mean," and he ran into the house, and brought back Bigelow's _Plants
+around Boston_ (_Bigelow_ was the ugly word). But let me hasten from
+these details, to redeem my promise of telling you how _prayer_ became a
+thought of his mind, and his spontaneous practice.
+
+It was very early a question of great interest to his mother, and also
+to me, whether prayer _would_ become spontaneous with him; that is,
+whether he would think of speaking to God _in human words_. His intense
+realization of God's _presence_ seemed to be a cause of his _not_ doing
+so, and I feared to put GOD _at a distance_ by suggesting what, in
+ordinary cases, is a means of bringing Him near. If prayer be defined as
+a communion of the finite and Infinite, as personal as that of
+_children_ with earthly parents, _his_ whole conscious life was a
+prayer; for truly God was in all his thoughts from the day he first
+accepted Him so joyfully as the Substance and Giver of _goodness and
+love_, which involved to the natural logic of his innocent mind the
+corollary that He was the Giver of everything outward, as well as
+inward, which gave him any happiness. I did not dare to meddle with the
+natural evolution of thought in so happy an instance, but watched to
+learn the true method of life of the little child, as Christ suggested
+to his disciples to do. One day when his grandmother, who was at the
+house on a visit, dropped her needle, she called to F., "Come, and look
+with _your little sharp eyes_ for my needle." He did so, with his usual
+alacrity in service, and soon found it. Then he ran to me, and said,
+"When I go into the sky, I shall thank my good Friend for giving me such
+sharp eyes." I said, "What do you wait so long for?" He gave me a glance
+of recognition, as it were, and laughed (as if he had been convicted of
+saying something silly); but he said no more _then_. From that moment,
+however, he often came to me to say, "When I go into the sky, I shall
+thank my Heavenly Father for giving me" this or that; and I would always
+answer him as before, "Why do you _wait_?" which would always bring out
+the same complete expression of satisfaction on his face, showing that
+he loved to renew the occasion for my uniform reply, "Why do you wait
+_till then_?"
+
+On one of these occasions he turned from me, and said very tenderly, "_I
+thank you, God_." One day, after he went to Salem, he had been suffering
+from a bad earache, and my sister had relieved it by putting a little
+tuft of cotton dipped in arnica into his ear. Then she asked him to go
+to the window and look out into "the green garden," and she took up a
+pencil to draw. Very soon he began, "GOD, I thank you for making this
+green garden to put away the dead bodies _in_. GOD, I thank you for
+making these beautiful trees grow out of the ground. GOD, I thank you
+for making all the pretty wild flowers grow." He paused between each
+complete sentence, and my sister, having a pencil in her hand, wrote
+down his words till she had covered a sheet of letter paper with his
+thanksgivings; for he went on naming everything he could think of; and
+it was quite wonderful to hear the minuteness of his grateful
+appreciation of life.
+
+One sentence was: "I thank you, GOD, for making medicine to put into my
+ear when it aches." He also thanked GOD for his father, and his father's
+letters to him, for his mother in heaven, for many friends whom he
+loved, naming them. I hope that sometime I shall find my sister's paper,
+which I have mislaid with the other memoranda of this interesting
+psychological observation. The pauses between the thanksgivings became
+longer and longer, and at last, after one for which he seemed to have
+searched his inmost mind, in despair of finding anything else, he closed
+with, "My dear GOD, I love you very much."
+
+You will observe that in all this spontaneous act of devotion, there was
+no _petition_. In the fulness of his happy life, and, as I think, in the
+faith that God was giving him everything needful, and more, he never
+thought of _asking_ for anything.
+
+Temptation to wrong-doing had not yet revealed the need that the
+progressing spirit always feels of _more_ goodness and love, which I had
+taken care to represent that God gave whenever the soul acknowledged to
+itself its need and aspired for more of this, its vital substance. For
+it is my opinion that prayer should always be for spiritual good only,
+in order that our religion should be pure from self-seeking, and
+generously self-forgetting in its aspirations for perfection.
+
+A little while after this incident, my sister was reading to him, and
+came to a sentence in which were the words "morning and evening prayer."
+He immediately stopped her and asked her, "What does that mean, that
+word _prayer_?" She said, "Many grown up people, when they wake in the
+morning, and find that God has taken care of them in the night when they
+could not take care of themselves, and given them a new day after their
+good sleep, feel very thankful, and love to tell God so, just as you did
+the other day when you thanked God for so many things; and besides,
+remembering that there are a good many things they ought to do, and that
+He gives _the love and goodness_, they like to ask Him beforehand to
+give them what they shall need _to be good with_ when the time comes to
+want it; and at night, after they have got through the day, they like to
+thank Him for all the joys of the day, and they ask Him to take care of
+them through the night that is coming, when they shall be asleep and
+cannot take care of themselves; and this loving talk with God is called
+the morning and evening prayer." I think she added that when she was
+little she used to say, when she was going to bed:--
+
+          "Now I lay me down to sleep;
+           I pray the Lord my soul to keep;
+           If I should die before I wake,
+           I pray the Lord my soul to take;"
+
+and that was her evening prayer. "I think it is a very good way," said
+he, "and I mean to do so this very night when I go to bed." And it was
+true that when he went to bed, he remembered and made a similar
+thanksgiving to his former one in kind, and closed with this little
+verse. And again in the morning he began the first thing to thank God
+for the new day, etc. Nor did he forget afterwards, night and morning,
+to give thanks and utter prayers spontaneously, and seemed to enjoy it.
+
+One morning he waked me with his loud singing, and as soon as I opened
+my eyes, said to me, "Aunt Lizzy, I am _singing_ my morning prayer." I
+said, "There was a wonderful little shepherd boy once, whose name was
+David, who loved God as you do, and who always sang his prayers."
+Immediately he wanted to know all about him, and I told him the story of
+David in his childhood and up to the time he was sent for to sing to
+King Saul; and I ended with saying that I would read to him some of
+David's _psalms_ (as these sung prayers were called); and this I did,
+and the eloquence of the sweet singer of Israel seemed to vivify his
+idea of the Heavenly Father, and of His connection with the soul within
+us all and the world without. Especially I tried on him the effect of
+the Psalm beginning, "The heavens are telling of the glory of God,"
+whose rhythm had charmed my own childhood, even before I fully
+comprehended it; and he liked to hear it, too. Before this, I had read
+considerably from the Bible to him, for he had one day said that he
+wondered how the world began to be in the first place, and I had said:
+"_Yes_, everybody wonders about that. But there is a book (pointing to
+the Bible) where one of the first men told about how it seemed to him,
+and I will read it to you." So I opened the book and began the first
+chapter of Genesis, without introductory comment. When I came to the
+words "_And there was light_," he sprang up and shouted, "Directly when
+He said 'Let there be light,' there _was_ light _directly_!"
+
+I wished Longinus could have heard the confirmation of his great
+criticism. Immediately he ran into my father's study, which was across
+the entry, and burst out, "Dr. Peabody, when it was all dark and there
+was nothing made, God said, '_Let there be light, and there was light_'
+directly! directly!" This was not enough; he ran to find my mother and
+sister, and again repeated the simply sublime words.
+
+Then he came back to me to hear the rest, and I finished the chapter
+which he wanted me to read to him again and again, day after day. I read
+afterwards the parable of Jotham, which he liked to hear very much. I
+cannot help thinking how much more I might have made of that very
+parable for his moral culture had I then known of Frœbel's _gospel of
+work_. I can hardly bear to think how stupid I was; the effect of not
+having had the kindergarten education myself.
+
+But he was too soon taken away from my observation, not without my
+acquiescence, however; for it was to go to his father, who, I thought,
+needed his companionship. And as it was at a distance that he lived,
+and, as afterwards my own life was full of vicissitude for many years, I
+lost the run of him entirely. There was a mutual misunderstanding
+between his father and me, for several years, from his thinking I wanted
+to be free from the care of him, and I thinking he did not desire my
+personal influence on him, and we were both mistaken, as we found out
+afterwards. When he went to Harvard College, he came to see me, and the
+interview was very interesting. He had a sweet, though it had become a
+dim, remembrance of a happy time with us, succeeded, as he told me, by a
+_lack-love_ experience of years of a dark, gloomy time at a
+boarding-school, to which he was sent when he was eight years old,
+because, as he said, his grandmother thought he ought not to be living
+with his solitary father at a hotel. But the boarding-school proved more
+than a heart solitude, as the boys were rough and cruel to him in their
+unguided play. While he was with me, on the occasion of this call, it
+happened that my sister Sophia's children came into the room where we
+were. They had a very vivid idea of him from their mother, she having
+often spoken of him to them, and telling them of his joy in learning he
+had a Heavenly Father, when he had never thought or been told of it.
+When I said to them, "This is F.," one of them said, "Is this F.? I
+thought he was a little boy," looking at him wonderingly, surprised to
+see a grown-up man. I told him they were well acquainted with his
+childhood. It touched him very much, and the conversation that ensued
+touching on several things I have told, brought back the old time more
+distinctively, and he said he should often come to recall it by my help,
+and to learn more of his mother, whose beautiful face haunted his
+dreams. But just afterwards I left Boston for some years, and did not
+see him again until after his return from Vienna, where he went after
+leaving college, and remained till he had completed his medical studies.
+I promised then to show him his mother's letters to me, written in her
+girlhood, and to tell him how much the early experience of his own
+childhood had ministered to her a heavenly consolation. But again
+inexorable circumstances interfered. He became a practising physician in
+Worcester, and I went to Concord to live, and we procrastinated a
+promised visit until at last Death mocked our slow affections. I saw him
+last wrapped in the flag of his country, for when the war broke out in
+1861, nothing would do but he must go to it; and he went as one of the
+surgeons of the 15th Regiment, which was terribly cut up. For a year and
+a half he did an incredible amount of work, for he would always have his
+hospital on the field of battle, and the 15th was in a great many
+battles, and left but few survivors, most of whom are maimed or halt. He
+took care of those wounded ones who could not be taken from the
+battle-field, wrote letters for them, and never took a furlough, as
+every other officer and surgeon did. In the last letter that he wrote to
+his father, he said that this year and a half was in one sense the
+happiest time of his life; for it was the only time when he seemed to be
+of any use. He was killed at last, walking up through the main street of
+Fredericksburg, Virginia, in the van of the regiment, as was his wont,
+and his death was instantaneous. His patriotism and his bravery were
+the fruits of his piety. Every year his father and I met to decorate his
+grave until his father's death in 1883-4. He is buried at Mt. Auburn by
+his mother's side, whose body was removed from the tomb in the old
+burial ground of Cambridge. I have a photograph of him taken at the same
+age as his mother when she died,--thirty-one years. It was the year
+before he went to the war, a drooping head, pensive as if marked for
+early death. But when I saw him dead, his brow was lifted, his whole
+countenance had become grand and heroic, and it was plain that he had
+found his ideal vocation. His funeral was celebrated in the city of
+Worcester with military honors, the wounded soldiers of his regiment
+following the hearse in carriages, and the sidewalks of the city
+thronged with the multitude of spectators. A discourse upon the text,
+"No man can do more than lay down his life for his friends," was
+pronounced over him at the church, and the beautiful hymn sung, "Nearer
+my God to Thee," which seemed to me the most appropriate conceivable,
+though he had never been far from Him, after he knew a name for Him.
+
+After the funeral his father's relatives and friends gathered together,
+and we talked of him. I told my recollections of his childhood, and all
+of them expressed the feeling that the life he had led was in perfect
+harmony with such an early acquaintance made with the Heavenly Father.
+
+
+
+
+LECTURE VIII.
+
+RELIGIOUS NURTURE.
+
+
+FRÅ’BEL speaks of the child as a trinity, meaning a unity in threefold
+relation (with God, with man, and with nature), and says that education,
+to be perfect, or even healthy, must help him to be conscious of all
+these relations _at once_, in order to ensure the equipoise of heart and
+intellect with his spiritual power (or freedom to will), in which
+inheres his just self-respect and natural religion.
+
+Nature (that is, the material universe, as I have said before) is God's
+expression of mathematical and all correlative laws, the apprehension of
+which builds up the intellect of the individual who, through his sense
+perceptions, on which he reflects and generalizes, gains _knowledge_ of
+his surroundings, beginning with that part of nature which is within his
+own skin.
+
+It was the grand intuition of Oken which has been splendidly illustrated
+by Dr. J. Garth Wilkinson in his _Human Body in its Connections with
+Man_, that the human body is the metropolis of material nature, in which
+may be found in _vital order_ all the elements of the material universe
+which are, outside of the human body, in a more or less chaotic state.
+This development of the individual intellect needs more or less aid from
+the human environment, simultaneously with that nurture of the _heart_
+which means man's conscious relation to man. But though morality, which
+is the performance of man's duty to man, is not religion, which is man's
+consciousness of relation to God, it leads to it inversely, because it
+shows the heart its need of a Father of us all, in order to be happy.
+All three processes, the intellectual, the moral, and the religious,
+must go on together, to make a perfect education, for in proportion as
+integral education is wanting in those about the child, his intellect
+will be starved, confused, or darkened with error; and immorality and
+irreligion will more or less transpire in the individual.
+
+Frœbel perfectly realized the deficiency of this integral education to
+be the cause of all the evil that is the present experience of mankind,
+in spite of Church and State and the optimism which in form of hope
+"springs eternal in the human breast" (for the pessimist is the
+exception, not the rule among men, the great mass of whom are pursuing
+some ideal aim, even though it be a low one, their moral sentiment
+having been perverted and their religion having become a superstitious
+idolatry either of material forms or of logical formulas).
+
+The system of education which Frœbel discovered, or invented, in
+consequence of realizing this, is what we are endeavoring to learn and
+apply, that we may bring out of the moral chaos around us the lost
+equipoise of the threefold nature in our children, by ourselves plunging
+into infant life in imagination and realizing its innocent heart and
+unfallen spiritual state, watching it in its own attempts to understand
+and use its material surroundings and its human environment, to the end
+of guiding it by our own experience and matured knowledge, from the
+errors and misfortunes it inevitably falls into if left to its own
+ignorant experimenting unrevised.
+
+The playthings and means of occupation Frœbel invented are to develop
+the intellect, and are a perfect miniature of nature, and to use them in
+playing with the child is an art and a science that the kindergartner
+must add to her moral affections and religion, which are also her
+indispensable qualifications.
+
+I wish to say this very emphatically, all the more because this part of
+your education (the art and science that develop the intellect) is not
+my part of your training course, but the moral and religious nurture;
+and therefore I must leave the exhaustive analysis of the gifts in their
+relation to the unfolding intellect as well as of the "schools of work"
+(as the series of embroideries, foldings, drawings, weavings, pea-work,
+etc., are called, and which require your study the whole year) to your
+accomplished trainers to do justice to.
+
+But before I turn to my specific department, I would say that this
+intellectual part of the training, which it was the special genius of
+Frœbel to discover, is of equal importance; for it is the duty of man to
+worship God with the _mind_, as well as with the _heart_ and _might_,
+though that is a part of the great commandment, which seems to have been
+systematically overlooked by many of the churches, if not virtually
+denied.
+
+To worship God _with the mind_ means to develop the intellect; as to
+worship Him with the _heart_ keeps pure the moral sentiments and
+quickens moral action; and to worship Him with the _might_ lifts the
+will, quickened by the heart and enlightened by the mind into oneness
+with the Holy Spirit, more and more forever. And here let me recall to
+you what I said of Frœbel's authority in my second lecture, and beware
+of deviating from the path he has pointed out (he was nearly fifty years
+in inventing his technique); and be very careful about adding to his
+_Gifts_ or _Schools of Work_, though I would not have you mechanical
+followers. There will be legitimate outgrowths of his method. He
+himself, in one of his _Pedagogies_, published after his death by
+Wichard Lange, has suggested a "school of drawing" upon _the curve_,
+which Miss Marwedel has developed, leading the child naturally through
+vegetable formation; and Mr. Edward A. Spring, the sculptor, has also
+suggested and partly carried some children through animal forms, from
+the worm to the "human face divine"; and we hope both these "schools"
+may be published and used. In the musical line, also, in which Frœbel
+was personally rather deficient, Mr. Daniel Bachellor, now of
+Philadelphia, has suggested a series of exercises by means of the
+correspondence of tones and colors, that makes the children as creative
+in the discovery of melodies, as they are of the harmonies of color in
+their weaving and painting.
+
+There is unquestionably danger that the kindergartner may degenerate
+into mechanical imitation and rote-work in this part of her guidance of
+the children, nevertheless in some of the charity kindergartens I have
+seen there was danger of doing injustice to the technique.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+On this last day of communion with you on the Frœbel education, I would
+like to speak with some comprehensiveness and particularity on the
+subject of religious nurture. Mark me, I say religious _nurture_, not
+religious teaching. The religion that integrates human education is not
+to be taught. It is the primeval consciousness of filial relation to
+GOD, who alone can reveal Himself; for human language has no adequate
+expression of GOD, founded as it is on the material universe, which is
+the finite opposite of Creative Being. Every individual child is a
+momentum of GOD's creativeness which the human Providence of education
+must take as its _datum_. Only childhood symbolizes GOD as "the sum of
+all being," realizing itself in joy incommensurable. Ruskin has happily
+said the joy of childhood is out of all proportion to the occasions that
+call forth its expression, and in order to make GOD the central
+conscious truth of the child's intellect, we must give the name father
+or mother to GOD, which is intelligible to the heart, and which will
+identify its filial aspiration with the parental bounty, as another, yet
+the same.
+
+But what I want you to observe is, that language being limited in
+meaning by its origin in material nature, you should talk about GOD as
+little as possible, after having given Him the name that will excite the
+child's worshipful aspiration, and limit yourselves carefully to
+regulating moral manifestations, leading children to act kindly,
+generously, truthfully, in your own assured faith that GOD is present to
+inspire the truth, generosity, and loving _will_ that is practically
+prayed for with _good resolution_. (Good resolutions are the special
+prayers of faith, as children should be taught expressly.)
+
+Kindergartners cannot carry out this course quite irrespective of the
+theory of human nature declared in their creeds. But the heart is
+generally larger than the creed, as was once strikingly evidenced to me
+by Louisa Frankenberg, a dear, devout old German kindergartner, who had
+learned the art of kindergartning from Frœbel himself, in the very
+beginning of his own experimenting; but she was such a bigot to the
+Lutheran Church that she could not theoretically admit as a Christian
+any one who did not swear by its dogma of total depravity. Yet I
+remember hearing her exclaim, "Oh, Frœbel's method is so beautiful!
+because the affectionate plays and innocent occupations take the
+children entirely away from the depravity of their hearts." She said
+this with a gush of love and faith that showed how much the unbounded
+human heart is beyond being totally eclipsed by shadows cast by the
+limited human intellect. It is neither feeling or thinking, but
+righteous doing, that gives us victory.[11]
+
+The child in the first era of his life has no individual consciousness
+of separation from GOD, and for a certain time it is obvious to all
+observers that this august unconsciousness even prevents the immediate
+development of an intellectual conception of him. The child in its
+infancy (infant, you remember, means _not speaking_) does not see nature
+as object, but feels it also to be himself, and hence he has no
+language, for language is the expression of his intellect. Hence the
+infant's sublime unconsciousness of danger and absolute fearlessness,
+and its impulse to spring upward out of its mother's arms, the laws of
+gravity notwithstanding! It stands, as Wordsworth has sung,--
+
+  "Glorious in the might of heaven-born freedom on its being's height,"
+
+and only gradually do
+
+  "Shades of the prison-house begin to close around the growing boy."
+
+For, as the same poet has it in that ode which is as much inspired as
+anything in the sacred oracles of the Hebrew or the Christian:--
+
+              "Earth fills her lap with pleasures of her own;
+          Yearnings she hath in her own natural kind,
+          And even with something of a mother's mind,
+                  And no unworthy aim,
+          The homely nurse doth all she can
+          To make her foster-child, her innate man,
+              Forget the glories he hath known
+                  And that Imperial Palace whence he came.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+              Hence, in a season of calm weather,
+          Though inland far we be,
+          Our souls have sight of that immortal sea
+              Which brought us hither;
+              Can in a moment travel thither,
+          And see the children sport upon the shore,
+          And hear the mighty waters rolling evermore."
+
+The "not unworthy aim" of the "humble nurse" is to give the child the
+sense of "having life in himself" as an individual free agent, so that
+he may come into intellectual consciousness of the laws of GOD by going
+counter to them, which reveals to him that he is separating from GOD in
+his activity. This separation is _sin_, which is a short word for
+separation, and the first step in the development of individuality, and
+therefore pardonable, because it is finite.
+
+Now the true religious nurture is to keep the child in the mood of
+ineffable joy in which he was created, while he is evolving his sense of
+individuality and free agency by experimenting freely, but more or less
+painfully, so that he shall not lose sight of the central Sun, to which
+everything he is slowly learning through his senses and his reflection
+is related; and this must be begun by giving a name to the central Sun
+that shall express the character of his inmost consciousness of joy and
+love, which is his vision of GOD, and needs to be recognized as GOD in
+the understanding.
+
+In the Old Testament we see that it is the _name_ of the Lord which is
+set forth as the only means of escaping that idolatry which is
+destructive of progressive spiritual religion. The name of the Lord, or
+Ruler, with the Hebrews was JEHOVAH, a word made up of the three tenses
+of the substantive verb _to be_, "was, is, and shall be," and which
+Philo, the Alexandrian Jewish philosopher, translates THE ETERNAL. It
+was understood by the worshippers to be the ineffable Creative Reality,
+so that when they came to the word in their sacred ritual they did not
+speak it, but reverently bowed their heads in a moment's silence, or
+paraphrased it, THE LORD GOD.
+
+But Jesus, the bright, consummate flower of the Hebrew race, used the
+name Father (_my_ and _our_ Father), which you may observe was original
+with him. That word expressed the whole of his theology. He made no
+disquisitions on GOD'S being, but simply recognized the vital relation
+of mankind to its Creator by this word, which any child who has come to
+see that he and his mother are two can understand and will love.
+
+Frœbel has proved by his nursery method that the child shall get _this
+idea_ and name of GOD from his mother; and at all events when children
+come to the kindergarten they will generally already have heard some
+name for GOD, adequate or inadequate. Now all you have to do--but that
+is a great deal, indeed the greatest thing--is not to cloud the child's
+intuitive knowledge of GOD by your inadequate words as was done in the
+case of M. D., who was afraid of the omnipresence of GOD, as I mentioned
+in my narrative of F. H., and in the case of his unfortunate mother at
+her mother's funeral. In the case of little F. the mistake was not to
+have given any name before his sense perceptions had made "a prison
+house for the growing boy." But you have seen how the shades were
+dispelled by my taking it for granted with him that a Heavenly Father
+existed, which he joyfully accepted at once, for I knew that
+
+          "In the embers was something that did live,
+           And Nature yet remembers
+           What was so fugitive."
+
+The naming of GOD in the kindergarten should be in music, which is the
+natural language of spirituality (or aspiration), lifting the soul above
+the cold level of the intellect that cognizes the correlations of the
+natural universe. Frœbel finds support of his faith in the efficacy of
+song, that puts devout expression into the works of nature, in the
+historical fact that the civilizing literature of all nations begins in
+religious hymns. The different characteristics and the different
+destinies of nations are seen in germ in the national songs, which are
+in large degree and sometimes exclusively addressed to _the Powers
+above_. The Li-king of the Chinese, the Rig Veda of the old Aryans, the
+Puranas of the Hindus, the Garthas of the Iranians, the recently
+discovered early poetry of the Egyptians, and even the magical formulas
+of the Babylonians, all express with more or less exaltation of spirit
+the primeval intuition of Supreme Being, and use the particulars of
+material nature as words of GOD pointing to that unity of all life that
+is the music of the spheres. Is it not heard in the voice of the healthy
+infant, which is the most exquisite music on earth, and later seen in
+the pictures made by the imagination before language that is coined by
+the human understanding has introduced prosaic, that is, analytic
+definitions, and drawn the human individual away from feeding its heart
+on the fruits of the Tree of Life (which are music and poetry) to the
+fruits of the tree of knowledge, which are evil as well as good. The
+kindergarten exercises should begin and end with spiritual songs and
+hymns; indeed, they should come in any time at the call of the children,
+who, it will be found, will oftener call for hymns of praise than for
+any other songs.
+
+The hymns of the kindergarten repertory should be entirely free from all
+that is didactic and denominationally doctrinal. Their object is not to
+teach any science, whether intellectual, moral, or theological; but to
+express childish joy in existence, or quicken the original childish
+faith, which in all ages and nations has expressed itself in music and
+the dance. Nor should the singing of hymns in kindergarten be ever
+perfunctory or a thing of course. A good kindergartner begins the day
+with bringing all the children into company for preliminary
+conversation, and asking each in turn what is in his mind; or the class
+as a whole may be asked some general question, perhaps about the
+weather, which always has something beneficial that can be brought to
+the attention; then they could be asked, "Could you have made this
+weather? Who made it? and would you not like to thank the Heavenly
+Father for it?" Something similar to this should precede all the hymns
+to rouse their sense of free activity, and prevent routine, and then
+they will sing with the heart and understanding also. I remember going
+one day into a kindergarten with Mr. Alcott when such a preliminary
+conversation was going on, which was followed by this song of the
+weather, the children making the illustrative gesticulations with their
+arms. They began with the weather of the day, and continued with several
+varieties, for it is not often the whole song is sung at one time. The
+intense delight of the children when themselves personifying the
+weather, poured itself out in the chorus, which they had first learned
+to sing with a will,--
+
+          "Wonderful, Lord, are all thy works,
+              Wheresoever falling.
+           All, their various voices raise;
+           Speaking forth their Maker's praise
+              Wheresoever falling."
+
+(See Appendix, Note F.)
+
+Mr. Alcott, with his eyes full of tears, turned to me, and said, "This
+must have an immense influence upon character." In religious
+conversation children have the advantage of us in their as yet
+uneclipsed original vision of GOD, and we have an advantage of them in
+knowledge of outside things and the adaptation of means to ends. By this
+knowledge of ours we can generally guide them to accomplish their
+purposes when they are such as will really give them pleasure and do no
+harm to any one else. They get our knowledge by confidingly doing as we
+direct, and a confidence in the method which brings about the results
+they have instinctively foreseen. We save their minds from getting lost
+or bewildered in the chaos of particulars by winning their attention to
+the orderly connections of things, and leading them to realize how they
+connect little things in order to make larger things, and how opposites
+are connected in the world around about them. To recognize their own
+little plans and open their eyes to GOD's methods and plans; and because
+they cause new effects, they realize that all effects have causes, and
+in the last analysis realize one personal cause. They must believe in
+themselves as a preliminary to believing in GOD. Let them with things
+create order; and you will have influence with them in proportion to
+their feeling that you respect their free will, and divine in a genial
+way what they want; and this you can do if you inform yourself of what
+is _universal_ in human desire, keeping your eyes open to what
+modifications _their_ individuality suggests; and it is your cognizance
+of these individualities which makes your part of the enjoyment. If
+there are no two leaves alike, much more are there no two human
+individuals precisely alike, and human intercourse is made refreshing by
+these various individualities playing over the surface of the universal
+race-consciousness. If you respect the individuality of a child, and let
+it have fair play, you gain its confidence. Nothing is so delightful as
+to feel oneself understood. It is much more delightful than to be
+admired. But to give a child's individuality fair play in a company of
+children, you must open children's eyes to one another's
+individualities, and you will find that if you suggest their respecting
+each other's rights in the plays, there is something within them that
+will justify you. The consciousness of individuality is the correlated
+opposite to the conscience of universality. Justice is an intuition. The
+opposite poles of a human being are self-assertion or personal
+consciousness on the one side, and generosity or _race_ consciousness on
+the other.
+
+We have seen that the maternal instinct, which the kindergartner is to
+make her own by cultivating it, cherishes the indispensable innocent
+self-assertion (which is only changed into selfishness by lack of that
+social cherishing which keeps generosity wide awake to balance
+self-assertion). We must sympathize with the play instincts of the
+child, so that it may get knowledge of its body in its parts and its
+powers of locomotion, manipulation and speech, giving self-respect to
+the consciousness of power, while the simultaneous knowledge of
+limitation is prevented from becoming fear by experience of the
+motherly providence, which is the first comprehensible form of that love
+which in due time calls forth ideal worship of the Infinite GOD, if GOD
+has been adequately named in natural sympathetic conversation with an
+earnest self-persuasion but without sanctimonious affectation. Unless
+you have unaffected spontaneity of faith yourselves, you should not dare
+to talk about GOD to the child.
+
+The religious nurture which Frœbel proposes therefore consists simply in
+so living with children as to preserve their primeval joy by tenderly
+and reverently respecting it, as that human instinct prompts which is in
+the highest power in the mother. Sympathetic tenderness is the first of
+all means for moral culture. The child's faith in GOD must be cherished
+into self-reliance. There is a self-distrust that is really a distrust
+of GOD, and no harm we can do a child is so great as to lead it to doubt
+its own spontaneity. The common religious teacher--even a conscientious
+mother--sometimes does this, and so far from nurturing the child's
+conscious union with GOD, starts a morbid self-consciousness, the
+opposite of religious peace. In order not to make this mistake, let the
+mother and kindergartner read and ponder Frœbel's _Mother Love_ and
+_Cossetting Songs_.[12]
+
+If you ask me what aid the moral culture derives from the religious
+nurture, I reply, the name Heavenly Father, given to the inmost
+consciousness, keeps the heart happy and the will self-respecting, by
+preventing those indefinite fears, incident to a sense of helplessness,
+which engenders selfishness. Hope and Faith are correlatives, and
+conscious or necessary means of goodness (which is enacted thereby),
+not agonies of will in the absence of this support. In the majority of
+cases moral discouragement is the secret of children's naughtiness; and,
+as Dr. Channing used to say, "there is nothing fatal to child or man but
+discouragement," which often exists close beside manifestations of pride
+and self-will.
+
+When I kept school, in my earlier life, I became the confidante of many
+cases of wrong-doing and conscious wrong feeling. Sometimes the
+confidentialness was altogether spontaneous on the part of the children,
+and in other cases I took the initiative, drawing out the confidence, by
+intervening on occasion to console and help, especially when I saw that
+the sensibility had been wounded, or there was moral puzzle. And my
+experience and observation in this line justified the faith in which I
+began to keep school; viz., that children are all _but perfectly_ good,
+in all cases, and are never so grateful for anything else, when they
+find themselves naughty, as for spiritual and moral help, given as _God
+gives_, "upbraiding not."
+
+When they are not grateful for moral help, it is the fault or mistake of
+the grown-up counsellor. Even in the worst cases I always took it for
+granted that nevertheless they loved goodness better than the naughty
+self which for the hour had got the victory over the better self.
+Spiritual being, whether finite or infinite, is only to be discerned by
+aspiring faith. Yet I do not think it right or wise to suggest to little
+children that _their_ wrong-doings, which are more weaknesses than
+presumptions, are _sins against God_. Children can comprehend their
+relations to each other, and the violation of each other's rights to
+happiness, and can be easily led to sympathize with the pain or
+inconvenience of those they make suffer, which touches their sense of
+justice and generosity; they can appreciate wrong and its consequences
+to their equals and to themselves in the _present life_. But GOD is too
+great to be injured by them; and to bring GOD to their imagination as
+personally angry with them, overwhelms thought, and annihilates all
+sense of responsibility, with all self-respect. Children can comprehend
+perfectly that wrong-doing, in particular cases, is an injury to
+themselves, as well as a harm to their neighbor; also that they forfeit,
+for the time being, their privilege of being, as it were, in partnership
+with GOD in making others happy, as well as being companions with Him in
+making things grow; and an occasional hint of this, when they are very
+happy and successful, is well. But to suggest that they are forfeiting
+this privilege of divine companionship and partnership, is quite painful
+enough, be this forfeiture ever so partial. Old sinners are to be
+disciplined, perhaps, by that love of GOD which speaks in the thunder,
+the earthquake, and fire, breaking through the crust of selfish habit to
+awaken attention to the still, small voice of conscience, in which alone
+the Lord is _in person_. But the naughty child, at his worst, needs only
+to think of God as sorry for him, and "waiting to be gracious," like the
+father of the prodigal son.
+
+I can illustrate this by anecdotes of a child to whose moral life I was
+obliged to call in the aid of the religious sentiment, and even of the
+specific Christian revelation of pardon for all past wrong repented. It
+was the case of a very sensitive child of nine years of age, whose
+mother was gifted with the finest imagination and moral instincts, but
+was married to a cold, Dombey-like husband, whom she unfortunately
+thought superior to herself, whom she idealized, and endeavored to make
+her children satisfactory to his worldly ideal. The result in their
+characters was more or less disastrous to each, ending with the suicide
+of one. This child's conscience of the duty of satisfying both parents I
+soon found to be abnormal; and her sense of her father's contempt for
+her intellect, and her mother's painstaking that she should satisfy him,
+so worked on her sensibility that it suspended her reasoning powers; and
+no matter what it was she failed in, whether in missing an answer to a
+question in arithmetic, or in failure of good temper when tormented,
+she fell into despair. I endeavored to show her that a mistake in any
+school exercise was no crime, but only made an occasion for her learning
+more thoroughly the thing in hand, and to show her that, unless she had
+fortitude to bear failures, and courage and hope to overcome them, I
+could not help her out of them; and I never rebuked any naughty
+manifestation of a moral character of any one in her presence, but she
+would burst into tears, and tell me how much naughtier she was. One
+Monday morning I asked my children, as I was wont to do, if there was
+anything interesting that they had heard at church or Sunday-school the
+day before, when, almost with a shriek, she cried out, "Oh, don't ask me
+that." I said gently, "Come with me into my chamber," which she did,
+crying all the while. "Mr. Greenwood preached about the prayers, and he
+said we should not look about the church, or think of anything else,
+while the service was being read; and I always do, and I can't help it,
+because I am so bad." I took her into my arms, and said, "It is a sure
+proof that you are not bad, that you are so distressed at the thought of
+doing wrong. Bad people do not care, and so they grow worse and worse;
+but your conscience seems to forget the Heavenly Father, who did not
+give it to you to discourage you, but to help you to see what way you
+must not go, and to remind you that He is close by to help your good
+resolution, which is the prayer of your will."
+
+"But I read in a hymn that GOD sets down everything we do wrong in a
+book; and at the judgment day He will read it all out to the assembled
+universe. I told a lie once."
+
+"Did you?" said I, tenderly. "Tell me all about how you came to." "I
+cannot," said she, "because then I should have to tell something bad
+about somebody else, which I must not." "How long ago was it?" "It was
+when we were living at ----." I saw by this that it was several years
+before.
+
+She had a little brother, of whom she was very fond. I took hold of a
+locket that she wore about her neck, that contained the hair of the lady
+for whom she was named, and the memory of whose great virtues had been
+impressed on her imagination, and said:--
+
+"What if Edward should take this locket and break it, and take out the
+hair and throw it in the fire?" With a great deal of energy she said:--
+
+"He never would do such a naughty thing."
+
+"He might do it without being naughty; he would not know that you never
+could get any more of Miss ----'s hair; and he would do it from innocent
+curiosity--and what if he should do it, what would you do?"
+
+"Why, I should tell him he was a very naughty boy, meddling with other
+people's things, and that he had done something that he could never make
+up, for there was no more of that hair."
+
+"Well," said I, "and I suppose you would say that, very likely crying,
+and if he seeing that he had given you such pain, should begin to cry,
+and should cry all the rest of the day, and cry himself to sleep, and
+when he waked in the morning should begin to cry again, and should cry
+all day for weeks--what would you do?"
+
+"Why, I should tell him I was sorry to lose my locket, but I could bear
+it, and he must forget about it, for he did not know what a mischief he
+was doing, and I should take him out to walk, and amuse him, and do
+everything to make him forget it."
+
+"Why should you do all this?"
+
+"Because I love him," she said.
+
+"Do you believe you love him better than GOD loves you?"
+
+With a look of surprise, she said, "Does GOD love us the same way we
+love?"
+
+"There is but one kind of love," I said, "and I really think He would
+like to have you forget that _lie_ you told so long ago, without
+thinking how wrong it was, because you were thinking of something else,
+just as Edward was only thinking he wanted to see what was under the
+glass of the locket."
+
+She looked at me wistfully.
+
+"Did you ever read about Jesus Christ in the New Testament?" said I.
+
+"Yes, and I hate to."
+
+"Why?"
+
+"Because you know everybody says we must be like Him, and He never did
+anything wrong, and I cannot be like Him, for I do wrong of all
+kinds--beside that _lie_, and you know how cross I am."
+
+"O," said I, "I do not wonder you feel discouraged if you think that you
+must be as good as Jesus Christ right away, to begin with; but Jesus
+Christ came into the world to say a word that is the most important word
+in the New Testament, and if He had not said it, He would have done us
+more harm than good with His perfect example, discouraging us entirely."
+
+"What was that word?" she asked, with the most eager interest.
+
+"_Pardon_," said I, "for all past wrong-doing that you are sorry for."
+
+"Oh, Miss Peabody, I never thought of the meaning of that word before."
+
+"Yes, darling," said I, "and that is the reason of all your trouble. Now
+think of it always; and thank GOD that He sent Jesus to say it. That
+_lie_ of yours GOD has pardoned long ago, just as you would have
+pardoned little Edward. We all do wrong things when we are children, and
+learn by doing them not to do them again. Now from to-day begin all your
+life over again. When you miss in your lessons, instead of crying, just
+let it go, and ask me to help you try again. So in making other
+mistakes, and when you feel cross, which comes in your case because you
+are so easily discouraged,--for that makes you have dyspepsia,--just
+forget it as soon as possible and go and do something pleasant, and
+think that GOD loves you, and only lets you do wrong to show you that
+you need to be getting wisdom all the time, and you will grow stronger
+continually, and the older you grow, the better you will understand."
+
+I never knew a moral crisis in any child's life so marked as this was.
+She had a very hard path in life to walk and suffered much, but she
+never again lost the hope by which we live, and at length, full of
+years, joined "the Choir Invisible," from which commanding standpoint
+she doubtless sees the end from the beginning, and how GOD's redeeming
+Providence completes His creation of a free agent. What I insist upon
+is, that a child should never be left to doubt, but should always be
+helped to feel _sure_ that GOD is loving him better than he loves
+himself; is sorry far more than angry with him when he has done wrong,
+and therefore it is that He will not let him succeed in doing wrong, but
+has so arranged things that the wrong always gets checked; that GOD is
+especially good precisely because He "makes the ways of the transgressor
+hard." Never let the Infinite Power appear to the naughty child's
+imagination as punishing, but only as encouraging, inspiring, helping!
+It is recorded as characteristic of the highest manifestation of GOD and
+Educator of man, who appeared to His most spiritual disciple as the
+"Eternal Word made flesh," that He did not "quench the smoking flax or
+bruise the broken reed," but distilled upon humanity--especially in its
+flowering stage--the gentle dews of blessing,--taking little children in
+His arms to bless them.
+
+You may ask, But what if a child proves in some instances incorrigible
+to the method of love? What shall we do then? I think it will be
+sufficient to ask any _Christian_, What did Jesus do when the Jews
+proved insensible and incorrigible to his long-suffering, brotherly
+love, making it the occasion of their own capital crime? Did he abandon
+the method of love when they nailed him to the cross, or even doubt it?
+Let us dwell on this a little. Was it not the special trial of Jesus
+Christ's human life, the last temptation through which he was
+constrained by his apparent failure of accomplishing the work of
+redeeming Israel, by leading them of their own selves to judge and do
+what is right to cry out, My God! my God! why hast thou forsaken me? For
+instead of their _coming to him_ to get the waters of life he offered,
+they had made it the very act of their _religion_ to murder him as a
+blasphemer. I ask, Did he, even then, exchange his method of _forbearing
+love for cursing_? Did he not, _even then_, hold fast to the principle
+of brotherliness by commending his spirit (which was his work) into the
+hands of the Father, with the words: "Forgive them, for _they know not
+what they do_"; showing that he felt that this ignorance was infinitely
+more pitiable than his own apparently forgotten bodily agonies? And, in
+this great _humane_ act of forbearance, and _divine_ act of faith did he
+not reveal in its fulness the loving character of God, whom he had
+always called _Father_, and with whom he proved himself _one_ by this
+very token, which converted the Jewish thief and the Roman centurion on
+the spot; and which, step by step, is slowly but surely (by inspiring
+his disciples with the same spirit and method of dealing with their
+fellow-beings) _converting the world_? The moment of despair of an
+immediate spiritual good we are trying to do, is often the moment of our
+doing a higher and greater good.
+
+As Jesus resigned his own finite will, as the son of David, which was
+fixed on bringing the Jewish nation to fulfil its national mission of
+"_blessing_ all the families of the earth," which he understood to be
+the motive inspiration of Abraham's emigration from Babylonian
+civilization into the wilderness; and as he accepted the will of his
+Father, which seemed to be that the privilege to do this patriotic duty
+was not granted to him as he had grown up thinking, _the will was
+lifted_, and he found himself doing _more_--becoming the Saviour, not of
+the _nation_ of the Jews merely, _but of all men_, and so sat down on
+the right hand of GOD. For he proved himself to the _heart of all
+humanity_, GOD's Son, _loving_, not for the sake of men's
+_reciprocation_ and appreciation of himself, but for the sake of _the
+salvation_ of humanity. Therefore Christ's method is the one for every
+man and woman on all planes of activity, however humble. I have heard
+more than one mother say, that when they had tried every method they
+knew of to influence their child to give up some wrong object on which
+the irrefragable free will was bent, and all tender and violent measures
+had failed, the _irrepressible_ tears of their despairing love had most
+unexpectedly melted the hardness of self-will at _once_, and _effected
+the cure_. LOVE, _when it is understood_, is _irresistible_. Our sacred
+oracles teach us that the origin of evil is in a doubt of GOD's love. In
+Eden it was a suspicion that He had some selfish ends in forbidding even
+one thing in a world of free gifts.
+
+The conquest of evil, on the other hand, they represent, was in Jesus
+Christ's trusting _God's love_, in a lost world, amidst the physical
+agonies of his cross, and the moral anguish of a disappointment of the
+grandest aim that ever one born of woman had set to himself for his
+life-work. In faithfully trying to do the lesser good just at hand, he
+developed the power to _save all men from their sins; not merely his own
+people_.
+
+To the training class of kindergartners I would say, _your_ special work
+is rather to _prevent_, than to conquer sin, in the objects of your
+care; therefore you should, in your own imagination, associate yourself
+with _God creating_, first leading children to realize that all He has
+made is _very good_ and must be kept so, which is giving the religious
+nurture.
+
+That great word of Frœbel, _man is a creative_ being, has said in the
+world of education, whether religious, moral, or intellectual, "Let
+there be light," and is never to be forgotten in its uttermost meaning.
+
+In this truth you will find an infinite resource of hope and successful
+energy. You may think that you apprehend and accept the scope of this
+pregnant word, because you do not reject it as a proposition; but
+partial knowledge is often deluding, and _not doubting_ is far from
+_efficient conviction_, which a comprehensive and penetrating
+understanding of a principle gives. Let me illustrate this illusion of
+thinking we comprehend when we do not, by some of Frœbel's gifts.
+
+Think of the four last gifts of Frœbel in their wholeness of form, _as
+cubes_. When these cubes are uncovered and you recognize them as eight,
+or twenty-seven, or thirty-six wooden, solid, six-sided, eight-cornered,
+twelve-edged units, and see the relations of their properties in nature,
+it may seem to you as if you exhaustively knew the cube; but you do not
+if you have omitted to notice one property inherent in it, more
+important because pregnant with more consequences than any other
+property,--I mean its _divisibility_ by means of which its possible
+transformations are innumerable, every transformation presenting the
+symmetry of the original in a new variety of beauty, so that if you will
+give to a child one of these divisible cubes and suggest to him the clue
+of the law of connecting contrasts, which is the law of all production,
+he will never tire (except physically) of making the new combinations,
+and seeking through each and all, that sense of a _whole_ which was the
+first impression. It is by reason of its divisibility, that the cube can
+be transformed infinitely. Now you may conceive the nature of man as a
+whole, and observe a great many of his attributes, and yet not see the
+greatest,--_his creativeness_, whose consequences are infinite.
+
+Educational science has, in fact, generally omitted to do this in the
+past, and treated a child according to the attributes it recognized;
+but, because before Frœbel's day man had not been recognized by the
+reflective mind as a creative being, it had not been realized that he
+can be transformed, or transform himself as well as his surroundings,
+infinitely, ever producing something _new_, and hence that there may be,
+in the lapse of ages, as much variety in human production as there is in
+God's workings in the Universe.
+
+It is, in short, because education has not hitherto conceived of man as
+_creative_, that there has been so much dead uniformity and lifeless
+repetition on the plane of humanity; and that a general characteristic
+of educational systems hitherto has been a mechanical running of the
+human being into certain fixed moulds, not only irrespective of
+individual tendencies, but antagonistic to the universal creative
+impulse, which is the profoundest characteristic of man, and which, not
+being understood, has, in a great measure, proved only a source of
+disorder, and given a bad name with people of genius to educational art
+(although it is the highest of all the high arts), its material, if you
+will forgive the verbal ambiguity, being living spirit.
+
+Richard Wagner has said that "were it not for education, all men would
+be geniuses, for they are endowed at birth with the passionate pursuit
+of the new, needing only liberty and opportunity for self-direction."
+
+_Liberty and opportunity!_ There could not be a better description of
+Frœbel's principle and method of education.
+
+To give liberty and opportunity to the creative principle of the child
+is just the work you have to do; but observe, this is not to leave him
+to the caprices of an uneducated will. There is neither _liberty_ nor
+_opportunity in that_!
+
+"Eternal vigilance is the price of liberty," _moral_ as well as
+political; and before the child is old enough to appreciate this, and
+_be vigilant for himself_, the educator must do so _for him_, genially,
+but firmly intervening to secure to his mind that _pause before action_
+on the moral, the artistic, and intellectual plane, that the Friends
+recognize to be necessary before acting on the spiritual plane.
+
+The ways of caprice are multitudinous,--the way of life is _one_ for
+each individual, and is pointed out to the _pausing_ attentive mind by
+the Father, who speaks to us, within, forever; but whose voice can only
+be heard when listened to by _intention_; even on the intellectual
+plane, we do not let the will go storming on, without the guidance of
+law, which is the voice of the very present Creator heard in the silence
+of _reflection_ on perceived facts and truths.
+
+There is a right and a wrong way of doing everything,--_always_. The
+right way will always produce a thing of use or of beauty, whose
+reaction on the mind of the producer _cultivates_ his mind, or _grows
+the human understanding_; but this right way is only to be discovered in
+that pause between impulse and action which is the characteristic
+discrimination of man from all other animals, and must be _secured for
+the child_ by the care of his educators--even when he is only playing,
+or the play will tire instead of exhilarate.
+
+Hence it is not _enough_, though it is indispensable, to guide
+children's activity while it is still irreflective to spontaneously make
+forms of beauty and use with its playthings and materials of occupation;
+but after they have made something, you are to make them stop and look
+back (not every time, but often), and _go over in thought_, and put into
+words, what they have done, and lead them to observe all the properties
+and relations of the thing that are obvious to the childish sense; and
+when you have thus secured an impression of the means by which order is
+attained, you have given an experimental knowledge of there being a
+spiritual order; that is, a world of individual laws and a law-giver
+independent of human will and meant to lift it into the divine. Those of
+you who are _Friends_ will agree with me that human beings can manifest
+no _spiritual_ beauty or moral power, except so far as they listen to
+the Shepherd of souls in the holy pause of the hours of worship, a
+voice always suggesting loving activity. And cannot you see, that no
+artistic production, no intellectual work, is possible without
+listening, in the pause of reflection for the word of the law of beauty
+or use, that the Creator of the intellect gives? and which makes art and
+science the worship of GOD _with the mind_?
+
+The most important, the crowning work of the kindergartner, is to secure
+to the child this moment of reflection in the midst of his play and work
+on all planes of life; and you do so by sympathetically playing with him
+and gently guiding his unthinking, impulsive activity, and asking him
+what he has done and is _going to do_, and not letting him do anything
+till he seeks to do the symmetrical or, at least, the useful thing. It
+is not every movement that will produce the satisfactory result. It is
+thus that the child learns that there is a greater mind than his own, or
+even than his teacher's mind, present with him guiding the intellect,
+for artistic principles flow into the mind from an Eternal source, _no
+less_ than do moral and spiritual principles. In short, the true method
+of the intellect is the perpetual _gift_ of a very present GOD, as much
+as the true method of the heart and soul.
+
+Man, then, in the last analysis, is a creative being; and the Frœbel
+education has for its final object, to give him the dominion over
+everything in the earth; put all the cosmic forces into his hands,--as
+well as to bring him into the communion of love with his fellows; thus
+lifting his whole nature to the height of sitting down with our Elder
+brother on the throne, with the Universal Father.
+
+You should keep this great idea before you, and it will enable you to
+_use the technique_ that you have been learning, with a certain freedom
+as well as fidelity, guiding these playful exercises in such an order as
+you may find agreeable and salutary for them; and to check caprice, you
+must insist that, in these appointed times, they do the appointed
+things, OR DO NOTHING, for they will generally conclude to do the thing
+in hand, rather than DO NOTHING while all their companions are doing
+their work; and when they are doing nothing, they will have time for
+reflection, and to hear the inward voice of law, with the opportunity
+voluntarily to accept it. Thus does GOD give to all his children "to
+have life in themselves," and to bring out their whole likeness to
+Himself, which proves that they are not his bond slaves,--like the lower
+animals,--but SONS. If there are not in the universe two leaves that are
+alike, still less are there two souls that are alike. But leaves and
+souls, after all, are alike in more than they are different. You can
+provide action for all the instincts that children have in common, and
+create a common consciousness to a certain extent, which is the _common
+sense_; but what is peculiar to each, and makes the independent
+individual, is his _own secret_, and you can only help THAT to flower
+and fruitage by giving him the conditions of free, _independent action_,
+opening the inward eye and sharpening the inward ear for communication
+with Him who alone can adequately guide the will to the satisfaction of
+all the sensibilities of the heart, and the powers of intellect, and all
+the creative energies: but the religious and moral principles I shall
+endeavor to _define_ are _general_, not peculiar to, but inclusive of,
+the kindergarten plan of education. To have these principles clear and
+disengaged from the accidental associations of the various denominations
+of the church, all of which (and also with many of those outside of any
+visible church) _unite in that faith in God_, and that _disinterested
+love of humanity_, which was historically enacted on earth by Jesus
+Christ, and _into_ which every child born on the earth should be brought
+before he is old enough to appreciate those _intellectual_ distinctions
+which make different _creeds_; because then the kindergartner will be
+able to meet children on the high plane of life where their _angels_
+(does not that mean their spiritual instincts or ideals?) behold the
+face of the Father, and only then will the kindergartner practically
+enter into Frœbel's method of _living with the children_, and communing
+with their innocence.
+
+I see a great deal of this practical application in the kindergartens
+kept by the well-trained kindergartners; and especially when they are
+_mothers_, who unquestionably make the best kindergartners (other things
+being equal), because it is easier for mothers to _divine_ the
+consciousness of their children. In the opening hour of the
+kindergarten, when the kindergartner interchanges the songs and hymns
+which the children choose, or at least agree to, with real free
+conversation, in which each child has a chance to tell what is uppermost
+in his little mind, the very most important work of the kindergartner is
+done. It has been my privilege to listen to much of this in the
+kindergartens kept severally by the mothers, who make the children feel
+that they are interested in whatever they say, however apparently
+trivial is the subject, and who answer genially, connecting it with
+something else, and so organizing the reflective powers of the children,
+that everything they think is seen to be a part of the process of moral,
+religious, and even intellectual growth.
+
+The possibility of doing this will prove to any one who has any heart
+and imagination that it is no mere poetic phrase, but a profound
+spiritual truth, that "Heaven lies about us in our infancy," that
+children do "come from GOD who is their home, trailing clouds of glory,"
+and for a time
+
+                "are still attended
+          By the vision splendid,"
+
+although too often
+
+          "The man beholds it die away,
+           And fade into the light of common day."
+
+Of course _all_ the opening conversation need not be on the moral and
+religious planes, but some of it should lead into explanations of
+nature and of the common life of this work-day world, improving
+dexterity and common sense; but one can hardly talk with children about
+anything, in a genuine way, that does not bring out of them some
+religious or moral expression. I think it is in connection with these
+conversations to which the children furnish by their spontaneous
+confidences the vital points, round which the thoughts of the whole
+little company shall revolve, that the teacher can connect her own
+story-telling.
+
+For such genuine conversation the necessary prerequisite on the part of
+the teacher is a real faith in children's being the _breath of God_ in
+their Essence.
+
+Then she will not have any _will-work_ of her own, but listen to hear
+what the child is attending to, be it nothing but a bit of string,
+which, of course, must have a certain length that can be measured, and
+with which other things may be measured, and which is made of material
+that has passed perhaps through the hands of many manufacturers, and
+which in its elements at least was a growth of nature, all whose works
+bear witness to the being of GOD; for GOD's throne may be reached from
+the ground of childish play as certainly and readily as from many a
+pulpit and cathedral, if not more so.
+
+A child whose affection for his companions and for the personages of a
+story told by the kindergartner, and who sees the connection of some
+little playful or other experience that he tells as his story for the
+morning, is _engaged in a service of God_, more vitally bearing on his
+growth in grace than any mere repetition of prayers. A play bringing out
+little kindnesses, sweet courtesies, gentle self-adjustments to his
+companions, the asking and giving of forgiveness for little
+discourtesies or grave wrong-doings, brings the child nearer GOD than
+any spoken words of worship can, the joy attending such innocent
+sweetness being the proof of the vital union of his soul with a very
+present GOD.
+
+So the work of the good Samaritan, though he was doubtless _thinking_
+only of the _individual_ he was comforting, and not at all of God, was
+recognized by Christ as a _real act of worship_; for it was the
+fulfilment of the second commandment _like unto the first_.
+
+The time will come, I confidently believe, when all religionists of
+whatever denomination will recognize that the favorite doctrines and
+formalities which distinguish them from each other are a mere
+superficial crust of that true spiritual life which is to be lived when
+the grown-up shall all become as little children, who feel that,
+
+          "In their work and in their play,
+           God is with them all the day."
+
+In speaking of the ceremonies of the Temple worship, which Moses made
+symbolical of all the virtues of life, moral and religious, but which in
+Paul's day had fallen into such a _mere_ ritual that this great Apostle
+said that the _Holy Ghost was not bodily exercise_, but a hopeful,
+faithful _charity of thought_, _feeling_, _and deed_; and this is what
+children can be guided into from the beginning, provided the
+kindergartner knows how to converse and play _with_ them instead of
+talking to them and coercing them _ever so kindly_ into acting out _her_
+will. The play of childhood is the most genuine and intense life that is
+lived, body, heart, and will _conspiring_ entirely; and it is by
+respecting the child's _will_ and _heart_ that you really help instead
+of _hindering_ this unification of his threefold nature, which
+corresponds to the Trinity of the Supreme Being and prevents _that_ from
+becoming a bewildering tritheism in his conception.
+
+A child cannot be _just_ unless he is _loving_, nor attain the freedom
+of moral dignity unless he asserts himself; and there is no way to
+nurture this self-respect except to express respect to him, by being as
+courteous to him as you are to any adult, always asking him to explain
+himself and his own motives, when he seems to be in the wrong, before
+you condemn him.
+
+I think I have gained some of the deepest insights I have ever had into
+_Divine Truth_, by discovering what was the motive thought of some
+child, who did what seemed inexplicable, till he told me, or I had
+divined, his secret reason.
+
+It is not mothers alone who can charm out of children their secret, as
+those know who have seen some maiden kindergartners talk _with_ their
+pupils in the opening exercises; but those who are not mothers will
+always do well to observe carefully those who are. On the other hand,
+mothers have to guard themselves against exaggerating their own
+children's natures _comparatively_. I have known some of the best
+mothers in the world _do that_, so as to be practically of bad influence
+over children not their own.
+
+Mothers who would be and can be the best kindergartners should therefore
+none the less study Frœbel's science carefully and humbly.
+
+_All_ children are alike in having the _threefold nature_. I wish I had
+time to tell of a hundred kindergarten experiences that have come under
+my observation, in which the respectful, genial kindergartner has
+assisted in some moral development, whose occasion was very trivial to
+the superficial observer.
+
+Herein lies the importance of prefacing the school with the
+kindergarten, that in it all the virtues and Christian graces can be
+unconsciously practised on the plane of play, which is the moral
+gymnasium of mankind.
+
+This is the meaning of Solomon's wise saying, "Train up a child in the
+way he should go, and when he is old he will not depart from it." But
+the nature, which is the image of the Divine Nature, cannot be
+_mechanically_, but must be morally and spiritually, trained; that is,
+addressed and treated as free agency.
+
+The salutation of the Brahmin to his youthful son, no less than to his
+equal in age, is "to the divinity which is in you I do homage." This is
+one of the gleams of light from the lost Paradise in which man was
+created, and to which we hope the kindergarten is to more than restore
+the race, when it shall have become the universally applied principle of
+culture for human beings. (See Appendix, Note F.)
+
+FOOTNOTES:
+
+[11] See George Macdonald's _Vicar's Daughter_.
+
+[12] This unique book was the text-book Frœbel used in his
+training-school. Its profound meaning, and how it points to the divine
+philosophy of the instinctive play, that is the first phenomenon of
+human life with mother and child, some of you have heard Miss Blow and
+Miss Fisher luminously explain in a course of lectures much longer than
+mine, and which I hope they may be persuaded to publish in book form.
+
+
+
+
+GLIMPSES OF PSYCHOLOGY.
+
+
+SPIRITUALITY.
+
+WE speak of the necessity of studying childhood; we call children living
+books of nature, and say that we cannot succeed in educating them (which
+is putting them into a harmonious activity of all their powers), without
+knowledge, such as a musical performer has of his instrument, of these
+"harps of a thousand strings."
+
+This fundamental knowledge of children is not chiefly a discrimination
+of their individualities; though observation of these will be made by a
+consummate kindergartner; it is a knowledge of what is universal in
+children, essential to the constitution of human beings.
+
+Frœbel never wrote out, in systematic form, the psychology which
+underlies and gives the rational ground to all the details of his
+method. But there are pregnant sentences in all his writings, and in his
+sayings handed down by tradition, which give such insights, that it can
+be divined with some completeness.
+
+We propose to give such glimpses as occur to us from time to time--not
+always in our own words, but as often as we can in Frœbel's, and also in
+the words of other thinkers, whose guesses at this kind of truth light
+up their writings on many subjects.
+
+We must, in the first place, attend to one important fact; there is, in
+the experience of childhood, somewhat pre-existent to all impressions
+made by the universe, and consequently to all operations of the
+understanding--perceiving, comparing, judging--for these are
+intentional acts of the pre-existent soul breathed into his body and
+bidden to "have dominion."--_Genesis 1._
+
+What is this pre-existent soul, this mysterious depth of personality?
+
+Washington Allston, in his posthumous lectures on Art, has finely said:
+"Man does not live by science; he feels, acts, and judges right in a
+thousand things, without the consciousness of any rule by which he so
+feels, acts, and judges. Happily for him, he has a surer guide than
+human science in that _unknown power within him_, without which he had
+been without any knowledge." Again, he speaks of "those intuitive
+powers, which are above and beyond both the understanding and the
+senses; which, nevertheless, are so far from precluding knowledge, as,
+on the contrary, to require--as their effective condition--the widest
+intimacy with things external, without which their very existence must
+remain unknown."
+
+He does not, however, merely assert this pre-existence of the soul to
+the understanding, but speaks of the evidence of it that we all can
+appreciate. "Suppose," he says, "we analyze a certain combination of
+sounds and colors, so as to ascertain the exact relative qualities of
+the one, and the collocation of the other, and then compare them, what
+possible resemblance can the understanding perceive between these sounds
+and colors? And yet a something within us responds to both--a _similar
+emotion_. And so it is with a thousand things, nay, with myriads of
+objects, that have no other affinity but with that mysterious harmony,
+which began with our being, which slept with our infancy, and which
+their presence only seems to have awakened. If we cannot go back to our
+own childhood, we may see its illustration in those about us who are now
+in that unsophisticated state. Look at them in the fields, among the
+birds and flowers; their happy faces speak the harmony within them; the
+divine instrument which these objects have touched, gives them a joy,
+which perhaps only childhood, in its first fresh consciousness, can
+know, yet what do children _understand_ of the theory of colors, or
+musical quantities?"
+
+That this mysterious power, this feeling soul, is the _human_
+characteristic, is suggested in another paragraph of these lectures.
+"What, for instance, can we suppose to be the effect of the purple haze
+of a summer sunset on the cows or sheep, or even on the more delicate
+inhabitants of the air? From what we know of their habits, we cannot
+suppose more than the mere physical enjoyment of its genial temperature?
+But how is it with the man, whom we shall suppose an object in the same
+scene, stretched on the same bank with the ruminating cattle, and
+basking in the same light that flickers from the skimming birds? Does he
+feel nothing more than the genial warmth?"--Vol. I. p. 84.
+
+This feeling of beauty, this power which appreciates harmony, this
+creative unity, in fine, this æsthetic soul, distinct from and above the
+understanding (which certain philosophers seem to think is all of man,
+over and above his body), is not all of the soul,--but the moral and
+even merely social sentiment has the same pre-existence. Allston bears
+witness to this also. He says: "With respect to Truth and Goodness,
+whose pre-existent ideas, being living constituents of an immortal
+spirit, need but the slightest breath of some _outward condition_ of the
+true and good--a simple problem or a kind act--to awaken them, as it
+were, from their unconscious sleep.... We may venture to assert that no
+philosopher, however ingenious, could communicate to a child the
+abstract idea of Right, had the child nothing beyond or above the
+understanding. He might, indeed, be taught, like inferior animals,--a
+dog, for instance,--that if he took certain forbidden things, he would
+be punished, and thus do right through _fear_. Still he would desire the
+forbidden thing belonging to another, nor could he conceive why he
+should not appropriate to himself--and thus allay his appetite--what
+was another's, could he do so undetected; nor attain to any higher
+notion of Right than that of the strongest. But the child _has_
+something higher than the mere power of apprehending consequences
+(external?). The simplest exposition, whether of right or wrong, is
+instantly responded to by something within him, which, thus awakened,
+becomes to him a living voice, and the good and the true must
+thenceforth answer its call. We do not say that these ideas of Beauty,
+Truth, and Goodness will, strictly speaking, always act. Though
+indestructible, they may be banished for a time by the perverted Will,
+and mockeries of the brain, like the fume-born phantoms from the
+witches' cauldron in Macbeth, may take their places and assume their
+functions. We have examples of this in every age, and perhaps in none
+more startling than the present. But we mean only that they cannot be
+(absolutely?) forgotten; nay, they are but too often recalled with
+unwelcome distinctness....
+
+"From the dim present, then, we would appeal to that fresher time, ere
+the young spirit had shrunk from the overbearing pride of the
+(vitiated?) understanding, and confidently ask, if the emotions we then
+felt from the Beautiful, the True, and the Good, did not seem, in some
+way, to refer to a common origin? And we would also ask, if it was
+frequent that the influence from one was singly felt? if it did not
+rather bring with it, however remotely, a sense of something--though
+widely differing,--yet still akin to it? when we have basked in the
+beauty of a summer sunset, was there nothing in the sky, that spoke to
+the soul of Truth and Goodness? And when the opening intellect first
+received the truth of the great law of gravitation, and felt itself
+mounting through the profound of space, to travel with the planets in
+their unerring rounds,--did never then the kindred ideas of Goodness and
+Beauty chime in, as it were, with the fabled music (not fabled to the
+soul), which led you on as one entranced? And again, when, in the
+passive quiet of your moral nature, so predisposed, in youth, to all
+things genial, you have looked around on this marvellous, ever-teeming
+earth, ever teeming alike for mind and body, and have felt upon you the
+flow, as from ten thousand streams of innocent enjoyment, did you not
+then almost hear them shout in confluence, and almost see them gushing
+upwards, as if they would prove their _unity_ in one harmonious
+fountain?"
+
+It is of the last consequence that the kindergartner should take into
+her mind that this æsthetic soul exists in children as a primary fact;
+for, unless she believes in it, she will not respect it, and take
+advantage of it in what she does for them. It is to be respected and
+brought out into the understanding of children, by means of the
+beautiful things which she leads them to do and make, and with which she
+surrounds them; for, as Allston says, this consciousness "requires as
+its effective condition, the widest intimacy with things external." When
+children are continually in squalid surroundings, these seem at length
+to strike in and paralyze the spontaneous action of the æsthetic being,
+who is pre-existent to consciousness of the power which compares and
+judges and makes up a theory of colors. And, as has been shown, this
+feeling of beauty, this power of appreciating harmony and unity, this
+æsthetic nature, distinct from and above the understanding, which some
+people idly think to be all of man beside his body, is not all of the
+soul, for the moral sentiment has the same pre-existence.
+
+We have brought together these paragraphs taken from Allston's lectures
+on Art, for the consideration of practical kindergartners, all the more
+confidently, because they were not written as theory of education, but
+were parts of a practical inquiry after the standard of judgment for
+pictorial and plastic artists and the spectator of their works. He
+sought to deliver them from the benumbing effect of inadequate
+science,--for science must always be inadequate, as Newton so forcibly
+expressed, when he defined it "gathering a few pebbles on the shores of
+the infinite ocean of truth." The object of the lecturer was what the
+kindergartner's first object should be,--to awaken the self-respect of
+the eternal soul within us all, making the life of our individuality--our
+personality--which, in its mysterious depth and independent
+pre-existence to the finite understanding, is the image of the Divine
+Personality, whose spoken word is the material universe, but clothed in
+flesh becomes MAN. It is no part of the kindergartner's duty to
+give--she can only awaken--the feelings of harmony, beauty, unity, and
+conscience. She is to present the right order of proceeding, in all that
+the child shall do, thereby assisting him to form his own understanding
+so that his bodily organization may be properly developed; to let in
+upon his soul _nature_ in its beauteous forms and order, and his
+fellow-creatures, in their legitimate claims upon him. Then he shall
+come forth from the sleep of unconscious infancy, into a progressive
+consciousness of all his relations, with the blessings and duties that
+belong to them. This forming of the understanding, this marrying of
+finite thought to infinite love, is Frœbel's Education; and cannot be
+accomplished, unless the kindergartner clearly sees what God has done
+for the child absolutely, and what for an ineffable purpose,--most
+gracious to the human race,--He has left to be done by human providence,
+whether of the mother or kindergartner, or some other fellow-creature.
+
+It makes a heaven-wide difference whether the soul of a child is
+regarded as a piece of blank paper to be written upon, or as a living
+power, to be quickened by sympathy, to be educated by truth.
+
+
+UNDERSTANDING.
+
+WE have spoken of the evidences of the æsthetic being found in the
+mysterious depths of human personality, pre-existent to the individual
+understanding (which is a growth in time); and that, without there were
+this æsthetic being, underlying all _individual_ consciousness, there
+would be no standard of human virtue or art.
+
+This æsthetic person has also (previous to the development of the
+understanding, which makes the synthesis of himself and nature) an
+impulsive force, instinct with the desire to change his conditions. Man
+does not appear in the world merely as sensibility to enjoyment and
+suffering; but as veritable force, as well, whose action must produce an
+effect either orderly or disorderly.
+
+The material universe is composed of forces, limiting in a measure
+personal force. All material forces are uniform and necessary and
+correlative in their action, which is impressed upon them from without
+themselves. Man alone is self-active, and may clash with the other
+forces to his own pain, and he will often do so, until by knowledge of
+them he can harmonize with them, and make them his own instrumentality
+to satisfy his æsthetic nature. We call this self-activity of man, which
+is in such vital union with his sensibility, the human will, and it
+makes the personal life of every one to learn this self-activity of his,
+in its differences from and relations to all other forces, as he can
+only do perfectly by keeping in intellectual and sympathetic social
+relation with other æsthetic persons. In every individual case, he finds
+himself in these relations with fellow-beings who have more or less of
+the knowledge he has not; and some of them have all the responsibility
+of his actions until he has begun to know himself in discrimination from
+the material universe and its fixed relations and laws, which serve as a
+fulcrum for his own effective action among them. The one central unity
+whose æsthetic being and will are inclusive of himself and fellow-beings
+as subject, on the one hand, and of the material universe as object, on
+the other, is God.
+
+The absoluteness of man as a force, is no less certain because he is
+finite and not omnipotent. God is the omnipotent maker of the material
+universe, but man is not absolutely made; he is a cause, that is,
+_created to make_, if we may credit the ancient prophet, whose hymn of
+creation is the most wonderful expression of human genius, unless it be
+surpassed by the proem of St. John's Gospel, which is a correspondent
+poem, with God for its theme instead of man and nature.
+
+It was not till the embryo man had become, in one instance at least, the
+fully developed man, that this hymn of the Creator was possible. God's
+word (revelation of himself) was in the world, embodied in the things
+made from the beginning; but until it was embodied in a man, free to
+will, it was truth in the form of law only (_regulative_), not yet in
+the completer form of love (_creative_). In short, before St. John could
+sing that divine song, he must have seen God in a man, full of grace and
+truth, dwelling among men as a fellow-man, and overflowing with a power
+at once sympathetic and causal.
+
+God created man, male and female (that is, giving and receiving
+equally), to be keepers of each other, and to educate each other. They
+may tempt and fail each other by presumption as Eve, and want of
+self-respect as Adam, are represented to have done, at the beginning; or
+may save and redeem one another, as the cherished son of Mary
+historically did in a measure, and is doing forevermore, by inspiring
+all who know him, to educate and redeem each other.
+
+In coming into relation with infant man, to educate him, it is
+indispensable to appreciate his freedom of willing, which is a primeval
+fact, as much as his susceptibility of suffering and enjoyment. The
+educator ought to embody God in a measure, and treat the will of the
+child that is to be educated, on the same grand system of respecting
+individual freedom, as must needs flow from Infinite love. Let him
+clothe law in love, and instead of rousing fear of opposition, awaken
+the hope of becoming a beauty-creating and man-blessing power.
+
+This is the _rationale_ of Frœbel's method of government. He assumes
+that the child is--not to be made by education a sensibility, but--an
+infinite sensibility already, and to be vivified into individual
+consciousness thereof, by the knowledge of nature to which you are to
+give him the clue;--not to be made by your government of him, a power of
+creating effects, but already an immeasurable power of creating effects
+(that is, causal)--which you are to make him feel responsible for, by
+helping him to get experimental knowledge of the laws that obtain in
+God's creation.
+
+For it is knowledge of laws that is the first thing attainable--not
+knowledge of objects. A child's senses are the avenues of the knowledge
+of objects; his self-activity is the avenue of the knowledge of laws. He
+must have experimental knowledge of laws before he can begin to have
+knowledge of objects, because his impulsive activity is the means of
+developing his organs of sense, by which he becomes capable of receiving
+impressions from objects of nature; and his own effective action
+produces the objects outside of his organs which first command his
+interested attention, and rouse his powers of analysis, or by which his
+powers of analysis are roused through your educating intervention.
+
+It is the maternal nursing of body and mind which educates the free
+force within to produce transient effects, and finally objects,
+agreeable to the sensibility. Even before the will is educated to
+causality, it exerts itself, because exertion is agreeable to human
+sensibility; but when left uneducated, the will brings about effects
+that prove disagreeable ultimately, if not immediately, to the æsthetic
+being, paralyzing it more or less, if the organization be feeble; and
+perverting it when it is strong; in either case, whether crushing or
+exasperating it, producing selfishness, the germ of all evil.
+
+Thus evil begins in the social sphere, in the disorderly action or in
+the neglect of those who have in charge the æsthetic free force of the
+child, compelling it to revolve on its own axis in a vain endeavor to
+obtain the satisfaction of its æsthetic nature, which it ought to obtain
+through the generous cherishing action of others' love, carrying it
+round the central sun in human companionship. The soul instinctively
+expects love, and to do so, and to act out love intentionally, is its
+salvation, its eternal life. There is no signature of immortality so
+sure as the immeasurable craving for love on the one hand, and the
+immeasurable impulse to love on the other hand, which characterizes man;
+for the satisfaction of the craving is no greater joy than the
+satisfaction of loving.
+
+It is because death _seems_ the cessation of relation with our kind,
+that it is the king of terrors. When the disease or decay of the body
+curtails relations and makes us solitary, or incapable of enjoying
+relations, death is not dreaded, but craved as relief. To whomever it
+seems the beginning of wider relations, it is hailed as the revealing
+angel of God. Isolation is the horror of horrors. It was one of the
+primal intuitions that "it is not good for man to be alone." The nurse
+should remember this, and not leave the baby to feel lonely. Every
+mother and real nurse knows that when the baby begins to be uneasy and
+gives a cry of dissatisfaction,--to come near with a smile, to make
+one's presence felt by a caressing tone, or to take the infant in their
+arms, will comfort it, bringing back the joyful sense of life--a word
+which signifies active relation;--and, in its highest sense, spiritual
+relation. _Life_, _love_, and _liberty_ are identical words in their
+radical elements. There is no love without liberty, nor fulness of life
+without love.
+
+The liberty of man, or his freedom to will, though it gives him the
+power to dash himself against antagonizing law, is the proof of infinite
+love to man in the Creator,--a love which must needs outmeasure all the
+evil he can do himself or others; for evil provokes others' love for our
+victims, and is self-limited, by reason of the pain it brings, sooner or
+later, on him who does it, and the desire for infinite love which it
+defines and stimulates.
+
+Man and nature are the contrasts which God connects and harmonizes. He
+presents nature to the mind as immutable law, but before the
+understanding is formed to apprehend law, He emparadises the child in
+the love of the mother. In short, the human race embodies love to the
+soul, before the universe (which embodies law) is yet apprehended. The
+heart that apprehends love, is older than the mind which apprehends law;
+and it is because it is so, that man _feels free_. When man becomes mere
+law to man, instead of love, he feels he is enslaved.
+
+These are the most practical truths for the kindergartner. If these
+propositions are truths (and their evidence is the explanation they give
+of the mysteries of sin and redemption, both of which are unquestionable
+facts of human history, according to the testimony of all nations), then
+let her see to it, that in her relation with the children of her charge,
+she never so presents the law, as to obscure the love, which it is the
+primal duty of men to embody and manifest to each other.
+
+But, on the other hand, do not keep back the law; for the law, too, is
+one expression of the Creator's being. What is law? It is the order of
+the beauteous forms of things, which, when appreciated as God's order,
+becomes a stepping stone to his throne. For God proposes to share his
+throne with us, if we may trust another primeval intuition of the human
+mind, viz., that God commands man, male and female, that is, men in
+equal social relation, to "have dominion" over all creation, below man.
+
+The human being not only craves liberty and love instinctively, but law
+also; he "feels the weight of chance desires," and "longs for a repose
+that ever is the same." This is the _rationale_ of Frœbel's method in
+the occupations; he suggests the child's action, sometimes by
+interrogation merely, instead of directing it peremptorily. He asks the
+child, when he has done one thing, what is the opposite? which itself
+suggests the combination of opposites, that immediately produces a
+symmetrical effect. The child enjoys the symmetry all the more, if he
+feels as if he personally produced it. This is the secret of his love of
+repetition. He wants to see if by the same means he can again produce
+the same effect. He does the thing again and again, till he feels that
+he does it all of himself. He does not want you to help him even with
+your words (and you never should help him _except_ with words). If a
+child acts from a suggestion, he feels free,--but if he produces the
+same effect, or a similar effect, without your suggestion, he has a
+still more self-respecting sense of power; and his will becomes more
+consciously free the more he chooses to put on the harness of order.
+
+The kindergartner will sometimes have a child put under her care whose
+will has been exasperated by arbitrary and capricious treatment, or who
+has been made to act against his inclination till he has reacted, out of
+pure _contrariness_, as we say. This contrariness proves that he has
+been outraged; perhaps in some instances the effect has been produced by
+not feeding his mind with knowledge of law. The very violence of the
+evil may show that he is an exceptionally fine child, with an enormous
+sense of power that he does not know what to do with because the proper
+educational influence has failed him. In other cases obstinacy may be a
+reaction against the vicious will of another, who, instead of offering
+him the bread of law, has presented to him the stone of his own
+stumbling. It is indispensable to give the child law, as well as love;
+but when you are doubtful whether you can genially suggest the law,--at
+all events express the love; and never substitute for the law your own
+will. The law which produces a good or beautiful effect, is God's will;
+your will is not creative of the child's will like God's; its best
+effect is to stimulate the antagonism of the child's, when the latter is
+feeble, which it sometimes is by reason of physical mal-organization, or
+by having been crushed by overbearing management, or vitiated by selfish
+caprice.
+
+I may be told that if Frœbel's education is wholly of a genial, coaxing
+character, it fails of being an image of the Divine Providence, which is
+an alternation of attractions and antagonisms, speaking now in the music
+of nature, and now in thunders and lightnings, not only cherishing the
+heart with love, but stimulating the will with law; and be warned not to
+enervate the character, by producing an æsthetic luxury of sentiment, by
+which the personal being shall stagnate in the worst kind of
+selfishness--the passive kind. This objection might be pertinent, if the
+kindergarten were to be protracted beyond the era to which Frœbel limits
+it. Certainly the time comes, when the finite will should be
+antagonized, if need be, by the law of universal humanity. The purest,
+most loving, most disinterested will known to human history, recognized
+that there might be a _wiser_ will, not to be doubted as still more
+loving; and said, "Not my will, but Thine be done,"--"Into Thy hands I
+commend my spirit" (my free causal power). But let the kindergartner
+remember she is not infinitely wise and good, and beware of enacting the
+sovereign judge. There is no doubt that an exclusively cherishing
+tenderness should be the law of the nursery, with no antagonism
+whatever, because at that age it is a wise self-assertion which we wish
+to develop. We therefore act _for_ the infant, having secured his acting
+_with_ us by our genial encouragement. But this is no argument for
+continuing to act for him, when he can act with consciousness of an
+individual life. We must not prolong babyhood into the kindergarten; or,
+at least, we must begin to engraft personal consciousness upon it, by
+_playing_ little antagonisms merely. And so, it is no argument against
+the play of kindergarten that it does mature men. Let the children play
+with complete earnestness, but, as Plato says, "according to laws," and
+they will all the more likely seek laws when they come into wider
+relations.
+
+The development of the consciousness of man is serial. In the nursery we
+coax the child to exercise the various muscles by playfully duplicating
+their action; we make him _make believe_ walk, impressing his senses, as
+it were, with the whole operation as an object. The child first
+experiences the pleasure of movement, then desires to move for the sake
+of renewing this pleasure; then enjoys your helping him to do what he
+has not yet the bodily strength and skill to accomplish; and finally
+wills to take up his body and make his first independent step. This is
+the first crisis in the history of his individuality, and every mother
+knows it is the cheer of her magnetizing faith that enables him to pass
+through it. He then repeats the action intentionally, simply because he
+can; enjoying the exertion he makes all the more if, by your care, he
+has not begun to walk too soon and experienced the pain of numerous
+falls, from want of guardian arms and supporting hands. Such pains
+disturb and haunt his fancy, and dishearten him. Courage and serene joy
+give strength and enterprise to activity.
+
+The nursery and kindergarten education are the preliminary processes
+which foreshadow all the processes of the Divine Providence. Therefore,
+even in the nursery we _play_ antagonizing processes. We heighten the
+child's enjoyment by making him conscious of isolation a moment, to
+restore, as it were, with a shout, the delightful sense of relation; for
+the baby likes to have a handkerchief thrown over his head unexpectedly,
+and suddenly withdrawn again and again. So we sometimes pretend to let
+him fall, and just when he is about to cry with alarm, catch him again
+and kiss him.
+
+Frœbel in his nursery plays has several of this nature; and as children
+grow older they play antagonisms spontaneously, which are beneficial
+just so far as they elicit the consciousness of individual power; but
+are harmful if, proceeding too far, they show its limitations painfully,
+and make the child feel himself a victim.
+
+In the kindergarten season various sensibilities are manifest that have
+not shown themselves in the nursery, and which are premonitions of the
+destined dominion over material nature, which at first so much dominates
+the child, and would destroy his body if you did not intervene with your
+loving care. These are to be mothered in the kindergartner's heart till
+they become conscious desires, informing and directing his will, which
+is encouraged and strengthened--if it is never superseded by your
+will--until he shall begin to realize his personal responsibility. Then,
+as he took his body into his own keeping when he began to run alone, so
+now he will take his character into his own hands to educate, and he
+will do it all the more certainly and energetically, if he feels you to
+be an all-helping, all-cherishing, all-inspiring friend, which you must
+needs be if you are open to feel and wise to know God's love to you, in
+making you His vicegerent to give glimpses, at least, of the
+immeasurable love of God, in giving the inexorable laws of nature, for
+the fulcrum of the power that He pours into His children in the form of
+will; and which obeys Him just in proportion as it keeps its freedom to
+alter and alter and alter, till there is no longer any evil to be
+conscious of, and men shall have got the dominion over nature, which
+consists in using it for all generous purposes, in a universal mutual
+understanding with one another. To be in the progressive attainment of
+this high destiny, is the growing happiness of man; a happiness which
+must ever have in it that element of _victory_, which distinguishes the
+eternal life of Christ from the nirwana of Buddha.
+
+
+MORAL SENTIMENT.
+
+WE have been asked by one of the students of Frœbel's art and science,
+what books we should recommend to help her to a fuller knowledge of the
+subjects on which we gave a few hints in our first and second paper of
+_Glimpses_.
+
+In reply, we would first say, that it is a needed preparation for any
+study of books on intellectual and moral philosophy, to look back on our
+own moral history and mental experience, and ask ourselves what was the
+process of our moral growth, and the circumstances of the formation of
+our opinions; that is, what action of our relatives, guardians, and
+companions, had the best--and what the worst--practical effects upon our
+characters; what aided and what hindered us? Every fault in our
+characters has its history, having generally originated in the action of
+others upon us; sometimes their intentional action, which may have been
+merely mistaken, or may have been wilfully selfish and malignant; and
+sometimes an influence unconsciously exerted. On the other hand, much of
+our life that has blest ourselves and others, can be referred to
+spontaneous manifestations of others, having no special reference to
+ourselves; generous sentiments uttered in felicitous words, generous
+acts recorded in history, or done in the privacy of domestic life; great
+truths bodied forth in imaginative poetry, over which our young hearts
+mused till the fire burned.
+
+This empirical knowledge of the great nature which we share, is a living
+nucleus that will give vital meaning to any true words with which
+scientific treatises on the mind are written; and a power to judge
+whether the writer is talking about facts of life, or mere abstractions,
+out of which have died all spiritual substance, leaving only "a heap of
+empty boxes." In no department of study are we more liable to take words
+for things than in this. Abstraction is the source of all the false
+philosophy and theology which has distracted the world. Generalizations
+are of no aid--but a delusion and a snare--unless the mental and moral
+phenomena, from which they are derived, have been the writer's
+experiences, personal or sympathetic. Such experiences are as
+substantial as material things, to say the least; and even they do not
+do justice to the whole truth, which is--if we may so express it--the
+vital experience of God. Hence is the Living Word to which human
+abstractions can never do justice; being, indeed, but the refuse of
+thought, "a weight to be laid aside" and forgotten, like a work done, as
+we stretch forward to the prize of truth, which is our "high calling."
+
+In Book II. chapter vii. of Campbell's _Philosophy of Rhetoric_, there
+is a section headed, "Why is it that nonsense so often escapes being
+detected, both by the writer and reader?" It explains with great
+perspicuity the uses and abuses of our faculty of abstraction, which is
+not a spiritual, but merely an intellectual faculty. I would commend
+this essay (and indeed, for several reasons, the whole book) to a
+student of intellectual philosophy. A great deal may be learned upon
+this subject, also, from an Essay on Language, printed a second time
+with some other papers, by Phillips & Sampson, Boston, in 1857, and
+probably still to be found in old bookstores, if it be not reprinted by
+its author, R. L. Hazard.
+
+On the subject of my second paper of _Glimpses_ the same author has
+written two books, one published by D. Appleton, in New York, in 1864,
+_The Freedom of the Mind in Willing; or, Every Being that wills, a
+Creative First Cause_; and in 1869, Lee & Shepard, Boston, published, as
+supplement, _Two Letters on Causation and Freedom in Willing, addressed
+to John Stuart Mill, with an Appendix on the Existence of Matter, and
+our Notions of Infinite Space_.[13]
+
+
+INDIVIDUAL FREEDOM TO WILL.
+
+IF the spontaneous will of man, and its heart with its latent love,
+hope, and sense of beauty and justice, are without date,
+
+                        "An eye among the blind,
+          That deaf and silent reads the eternal deep,
+          Haunted forever by the eternal mind,"
+
+yet there is no doubt that the human understanding, as well as the body,
+begins in time, and gradually identifies the individual for
+communication with other individuals of its kind. The beginning of the
+human understanding is in the impressions of an environing universe,
+against which the sensibility reacts, and by this activity develops the
+organs of sense, which are the connection of those two great contrasts,
+the soul and the outward universe. For perceptions of sense are the
+instrumentality by which the will vivifies the heart, so disposing the
+particulars of the surrounding universe as to give the definite form of
+_thoughts_ to consciousness. The human being has no absolute knowledge
+like the lower animals, who are passive instrumentality of God to
+certain finite ends below the plane of spirituality. Created for the
+infinite ends of intelligence, and free communion with one another and
+God, men need to become conscious of the whole process of their own
+being, and do so by a gradual conversation with God, who is forever
+saying, by the universe, which is his speech, I AM. And here education
+begins its offices, by helping man to reply THOU ART, which he does by
+his legitimate art. But no one man can utter the _thou art_ of humanity
+adequately. It takes all humanity forever and ever to do so; and it does
+not do so but just so far as the men who compose it are in mutual
+understanding and communion with each other. Therefore each child must
+be taken by the hand by those already conscious, and led to realize his
+own consciousness by learning that of his fellows.
+
+In the action and reaction of the individual with his special
+environment, he comes to distinguish himself from that which gives him
+pleasure and pain, and he will be attracted to the former, and repelled
+from the latter; and thus come to discriminate outward things from each
+other. The observation and discrimination of the particulars of nature
+is _thinking_. Sensuous impressions are the raw material of thoughts,
+but discrimination and classification of things according to their
+similarities, is the _operation_ of thought.
+
+Education has an office in both the accumulation of sensuous impressions
+and the operation of thinking. The mother and nurse of each child must
+so order the objects about him, that his organs shall be properly
+impressed, and not overtaxed, because only so can they grow to be a good
+instrumentality for receiving even more delicate impressions. A tender
+sympathy for the unconscious little one, who is gradually coming to
+identify himself, and love,--such as only a mother can have in the
+greatest perfection,--are the special qualifications of the educator at
+this stage. Such a knowledge of nature's laws and order, as may enable
+the educator to lead the child's activity according to law and order,
+can alone help the child to reproduce, on his finite plane, an image of
+God's creative action. The educator who should succeed the nurse is the
+kindergartner, who, without lacking the sympathetic affection of the
+nurse, must add a knowledge of nature both material and spiritual, so
+that she may bring these opposites into their right connection with each
+other.
+
+She will therefore lead the child to _produce_ something that shall
+serve as a ground for the operation of thinking. Instead of letting the
+blind will spend its energy in wild and aimless motion, she will present
+a desirable aim to attain, which will produce an effect that shall
+satisfy the heart, and produce an object that shall engage the
+attention, and stimulate to a reproduction of it, until it is thoroughly
+known, not only in its natural properties, but in the law of its being,
+which was the child's own method of producing the thing.
+
+The genesis of the understanding, then, is, first, sensuous impression,
+which, reproducing itself intentionally, becomes, secondly, perception;
+and, thirdly, an adapting of means to ends, and thereby rising into
+judgment and knowledge. To get understanding precedes getting knowledge,
+which is the special work of the understanding when it is developed.
+
+There is another faculty of the individual, besides understanding, and
+which is to be discriminated from it--fancy. Vivid and clear sensuous
+impressions are the foundation of fancy, as well as of understanding.
+But the will, acting among these impressions in a wild and sovereign
+way, is fancy; while the will arranging impressions according to the
+order of nature, is understanding. Frœbel has provided for the
+development of the understanding the occupations, as he calls the
+regular _production_ of forms, transient and permanent. Nothing can be
+produced which satisfies the æsthetic sense, except by following the
+laws of creation. To analyze these productions will give experimental
+understanding of those laws. In superintending the occupations, the
+kindergartner must, therefore, see that the child does things in the
+right order, and gives an account of what he does in the right words;
+for words, the first works of human art, have a great deal to do with
+the development of the understanding, lifting man into a sphere above
+that of the mere animal. After a thing is made, or an effect produced
+and named, it must be made a subject for analysis; and it can easily be
+made so, because children's attention is easily conciliated to what they
+themselves have done or produced. Putting their own action into a thing,
+makes it interesting to them; and they can make an exhaustive analysis
+of it, because, in addition to its appearances, they know the law of its
+being, which was their own method, and the cause of its being, which was
+their own _motive_. From analyzing their own works, children can, in due
+time, be led to analyze works of nature. And here the kindergartner has
+great room for the exercise of judgment, in the selection of suitable
+objects.
+
+Frœbel advised that objects for lessons should be taken from the
+vegetable creation; and that children should be interested in planting
+seeds and watching growth, becoming acquainted with its general
+conditions, observing which are within the scope of their own powers to
+provide, and which are beyond human power; thus leading the
+understanding through nature, outward and inward, to God.
+
+If we see that the work done is artistic, and that the objects of nature
+analyzed are beautiful, this culture of the understanding may refine and
+elevate the taste, and beautify the fancy.
+
+For the fancy is to be carefully cherished by the kindergartner. It is
+not amenable to direct influence perhaps, but not beyond an indirect
+influence. The soundness of the understanding is conducive to a
+beautiful play of fancy, which is a peculiarly human faculty; for we
+have not a particle of evidence that any animal below man has this kind
+of thinking, which delights in transcending the facts of nature in its
+creations, and sometimes sets the laws of nature at defiance. But we
+must defer to another paper the many things we have to say in regard to
+the imagination and its culture.
+
+
+CONSCIENCE.
+
+WE have given a few hints by way of answering the questions on
+psychology, which must come up, to be considered by a kindergartner who
+is intent on understanding the "harp of a thousand strings," from which
+it is her duty to bring out the music.
+
+We have found that the human being comes into the world with an æsthetic
+nature, which is to be vivified by the presentation of the beauties of
+nature and art, in such a way as to insure reaction of the will in
+creations of fancy; for only so can sensibility to beauty be prevented
+from degenerating into sensuality. If the fancy remains wholly
+subjective, it loses its childish health and leads astray. It should
+have objective embodiment in song, dance, and artistic manipulation of
+some sort. Now, artistic manipulation of any kind necessitates the
+examination of natural elements and the discovery of the laws of
+production, which are, of course, identical with the organic laws of
+nature that bear witness to an intelligent Creator.
+
+To excite the human understanding to appreciate names, and classify
+things for _use_ and giving pleasure, it is necessary to present things
+to children gradually, first singly, and then in simple rhythmical
+combinations, so that they may have time to find themselves personally,
+and not be overwhelmed with a multitude of impressions. A real lover of
+children will quickly find out that they like to take time "playing with
+things," as they call it; and that there is a special pleasure in
+discovering differences in things; that a new distinct perception of any
+relation of things delights the child, as the discovery of a principle
+delights the adult mind. The fanciful plays of the kindergarten, whether
+sedentary or moving, cultivate the imagination, the understanding, and
+the physical powers in harmony, and more than this, they cultivate the
+heart and conscience, because the moving plays have for their
+indispensable condition numbers of their equals, and everything they
+make is intended for others. The presentation of persons, as having the
+same needs and desires of enjoyment as themselves, proves sufficient to
+call into consciousness the heart and conscience, just as immediately
+and inevitably as the presentation of nature and art calls into activity
+the understanding and imagination.
+
+Because nature and human kind are so _vast_ that, as a whole they daunt
+the young mind, even to the point of checking its growth, it is
+necessary that some one, who has had time to analyze it in some degree,
+should call attention to points; and it is the consummate art of
+education to know what points to touch, so that the mind shall make out
+the octave; for, unless it does so, it will not act to purpose. As
+exercise of the limbs is necessary to physical development, and the act
+of perceiving, understanding, and fancying, with actual manipulation of
+nature, is necessary to intellectual development; so is kindness and
+justice acted out, to the development of the social and moral nature or
+conscience.
+
+But there is something else in man than relations to external nature and
+fellow-man. This self-determining being, who moves, perceives,
+understands, fancies, loves, and feels moral responsibility to the race
+in which he finds himself a living member, is only consciously happy
+when he is magnanimous, which he can only be, if he feels himself a free
+power in the bosom of infinite love; in short, a son of the Father of
+all men! "We are the offspring of God" is the inspiration alike of
+heathen poet and Christian apostle.
+
+As the psychological condition of the human love which is man's social
+happiness, is that sense of individual want and imperfection which
+stimulates the will to seek the mother and brother; so the psychological
+condition of the piety which makes man's beatitude, is the sense of
+social imperfection, in respect both to moral purity and happiness,
+stimulating the will to seek a Father of all spirits. The more we love,
+the more we feel the need of God. But is God nothing but "an infinite
+sigh at the bottom of the heart," as Feuerbach, the holiest of infidels,
+sadly says? or, as in thinking, we discover the entity we name I; so in
+loving, do we not discover God, or rather does not God reveal Himself to
+us, as Essential Substance? Wordsworth declares that
+
+          "Serene will be our days and bright,
+             And happy will our nature be,
+           When love is an unerring light,
+             And joy its own security;
+           And blest are they, who in the main,
+           This faith even now do entertain,
+           Live in the spirit of this creed,
+           Yet find _another strength_ according to their need."
+
+"That other strength" is to be found, as he had already sung in that
+same great song, in Duty--"daughter of the voice of God,"
+
+                              "Victory and Law
+          When empty terrors overawe;
+          From vain temptations doth set free,
+          And calms the weary strife of frail humanity!"
+
+Conscience, then, is the soul's witness, first of the relation of the
+individual to the human race; and ultimately, of the relation of the
+human race to God; and it must be inspired with knowledge of the sonship
+of the human race to the Universal Father, or human life is bottomless
+despair. But with that knowledge which God must give (since man cannot
+reach it with his own understanding) he shall be able, even on the
+cross, to love the most ignorant brother infinitely; and infinitely to
+trust that the Father of all will justify his spirit in acting
+accordingly.
+
+FOOTNOTE:
+
+[13] In the first of these last two books, Mr. Hazard has made an
+examination of Edwards on the Will, and the only satisfactory reply to
+his argument for Necessity ever made. Very early in life, the task of
+answering Edwards was given him, by the late William E. Channing, D.D.,
+who read his first edition of _Language_, and was so much struck with
+the metaphysical genius displayed in it, that he sought out the
+anonymous author on purpose to make this suggestion. He found him a
+clerk in his father's great manufactory, to whose business he afterwards
+succeeded, and he was engaged in it until he was an old man. All his
+books are a proof that _business_ may be as good a disciplinarian of the
+higher intellect as scholastic education, to say the least.
+
+
+
+
+APPENDIX.
+
+
+NOTE A, TO LECTURE I.
+
+IN 1872 the first training school for kindergartners was founded in
+England by the Manchester Kindergarten Assoc.
+
+To the prospectus is subjoined the following statement:--
+
+The aim of the kindergarten system of training, intended for young
+children up to the age of seven, when school-teaching _proper_ should
+begin, is to prepare for all subsequent education. A short examination
+of the system will show that it is in idea far superior to any other
+method of early training, while experience proves that its pupils acquit
+themselves well even under plans most dissimilar. The theory of the
+kindergarten is that every exertion of the faculties, whether of body or
+mind, will be healthful and pleasurable, so long as such exertion takes
+place without compulsion, without appeal to selfish motives, with no
+more than necessary restraint. The experience of parents and teachers
+may be appealed to as proving that children enjoy their employments
+most, and learn best, when associated in numbers.
+
+The kindergarten, therefore, gathers children together in numbers, which
+vary with class and other circumstances, and proceeds to exercise, on a
+plan most carefully reasoned out, all limbs and muscles of the body by
+marching, gymnastics, and regulated games; to practise all the senses,
+and tastes that depend directly upon the senses, by drawing, singing,
+modelling in clay, and many most beautiful "occupations," which in
+addition arouse invention--one of the highest human faculties. The
+intellectual powers, being in a rudimentary condition, are less directly
+called into action; but the faculties of number and form, along with
+skill of hand, are so developed that the learning of "the three R's"
+becomes incredibly easy. Above all, good feeling is exercised and evil
+feeling checked, by happy social life, in which the tender plants of the
+kindergarten see that each one's happiness depends upon all, and that of
+all on each.
+
+Sedulous attention is paid to the effect of each employment upon
+children of different temperaments. Sanitary conditions are most
+carefully observed, and unflagging interest is secured by frequent
+changes of occupation.
+
+Wherever the kindergarten has been fairly tried, its results have been
+lively enjoyment by the little pupils of their "school" hours, and
+readiness to receive not as drudgery, but with delight, all
+opportunities of acquiring knowledge. This readiness, it is believed,
+would less often change into a hatred of lessons, if the subsequent
+school-teaching did not too commonly despise those indications of
+natural taste and fitness which Frœbel, in his system, has carefully
+interpreted and obeyed. The kindergartens for the poor, already
+established at Queen Street, Salford, and in the Workpeople's Hall,
+Pendleton,--where visitors are at all times most heartily
+welcomed,--will convince any one that this system is able to give a
+truly humanizing and religious training to children of the least favored
+class, gathered in large numbers even out of very neglected homes. By
+inspecting these schools also, intelligent persons will form an idea of
+the ingenuity and beauty of the processes by which this natural and
+simple training is effected. Thus too will be understood, that the
+kindergarten system, which in relation to its pupils is the simplest and
+easiest possible because it travels along, not athwart, their natural
+tastes, is, as respects its professors, very far removed indeed from
+every-day facility and _rule of thumb_. It demands in those who aspire
+to teach, a sincere love of children and an earnest devotion to duties
+which bring much pleasure when well performed, and it demands besides
+that they be willing to give up sufficient time and labor to become
+thoroughly instructed in the principles, and sufficiently practised in
+the use, of a machinery which, while beautifully simple in idea, is
+complicated in detail. A great and increasing demand for teachers
+thoroughly trained in this system exists, as well for families as for
+kindergarten schools proper, and for infant schools commonly so called.
+To supply this demand is the purpose of the training school.
+
+
+NOTE B, TO PAGE 81.
+
+_Letter from Michelet to the Baroness Marenholtz von Bülow._
+
+                                                    MARCH 27, 1859.
+
+By a stroke of genius Frœbel has found what the wise men of all times
+have sought in vain,--the solution of the problem of human education.
+And again: Your first explanation made it clear to me that Frœbel has
+laid the necessary basis for a new education for the present and future.
+Frœbel looks at human beings in a new light, and finds the means to
+develop them according to natural laws, as heretofore has never been
+done. I am your most faithful advocate, and speak constantly with
+friends and acquaintances about this great work that you have
+undertaken. Several journalists and writers will mention it in their
+papers. Dispose of all my power to aid you. The ambassador of Hayti,
+Monsieur Ardoin, minister of instruction, is ready to return to Port au
+Prince, and wishes to make your acquaintance. He will come to see you
+to-morrow. For the inhabitants of that island, in process of
+reorganization, Frœbel's method may do a great deal. I have asked
+several persons to aid in this work. Niffner and Dolfus are writing, at
+present, a great work on education, and will be happy to give a place to
+your cause. I send you a letter for Isodore Cohen; you must see him.
+You, personally, can do more than all speeches, recommendations, and
+writings together. I shall come to you shortly to hear more about
+Frœbel. I would like to have a comparison drawn between him and
+Pestalozzi. Your written communications interest me highly. Let me have
+some German works about Frœbel. I read German and know how to guess at
+incomprehensible things. I would like to know about the continuation of
+his method for more advanced years, especially for girls, and await
+impatiently the appearance of your manual. The more I investigate the
+heads of children of different ages, the more important Frœbel's method
+appears to me, as it begins in early childhood, when the most important
+changes in the brain take place. All my sympathies are with your work.
+
+
+_Letter from the Abbe Miraud, author of voluminous works, one of them
+being "La Democratic et la Catholicisme."_
+
+                                                         JULY, 1858.
+
+We have to fulfil a great mission in common. I shall be most happy to
+procure for Frœbel's theory, _which I accept fully_, a hearing. To
+appreciate this theory in all its grandeur, richness, and utility, the
+shade of pantheism it seems to contain is no hindrance to me; it seems
+inseparable from the German mind. I accept the obligation to work for
+the ideas of Frœbel according to my ability, of course within the limits
+of orthodox Catholicism, to which I am devoted from faith and reason.
+You must certainly go with me to Rome, that we may work together there.
+If you resolve to do so, I will meet you at Orleans. You would find in
+Rome a good opportunity for _propaganda_. My friends there would aid us,
+but without your presence nothing can be done. Italy needs a
+regeneration by education. Let us work where the most rapid diffusion is
+certain.
+
+
+_Mons. A. Guyard, a Parisian author writes:_
+
+                                                      JUNE 14, 1857.
+
+The more I hear you about Frœbel's method, the more my interest
+increases, and the deeper my conviction becomes that by this means a
+basis is laid for a new education for the salvation of humanity. Accept
+my warmest and most sincere wishes for the propagation of Frœbel's
+method. He is great, perhaps the greatest philosopher of our time, and
+has found in you what all philosophers need, that is, a woman who
+understands him, who clothes him with flesh and blood, and makes him
+alive. I think, I believe, indeed, that an idea in order to bear fruit,
+must have a father and a mother. Hitherto, all ideas have had only
+fathers. As Frœbel's ideas are so likely to find mothers, they will have
+an immense success. When the ideas of the future have become alive in
+devoted women, the face of the world will be changed.
+
+
+          _Lamarche of Paris, philanthropist and writer on
+          social and religious subjects, after listening to
+          the lectures upon Frœbel given by Madam Marenholtz
+          in Paris, wrote  on:_--
+
+                                              PARIS, March 4, 1856.
+
+Your last lecture has unmistakably shown that Frœbel's method, in a
+religious point of view, surpasses everything that has hitherto been
+done in education. And this is the main point from which a method of
+education is to be judged for its aim is to awaken love to God and
+man--the foundation upon which Christianity rests. Education has
+hitherto done little to awaken this love of man in the young soul, from
+which all piety flows. This is the reason we find so much skepticism and
+indifference in human society, and which is the source of most of the
+existing misery, and of the want of order and lawfulness. These sad
+results are the condemnations of those methods of education that
+suppress the human faculties, or force them into wrong channels, or
+arbitrarily superimpose something instead of aiding free development. It
+is the sad mistake of our moralists who, without faith in a Heavenly
+Father, do not understand human nature, and replace _revealed_ religion
+with human tenets.... Frœbel has found the missing truth, in first
+awakening the child's senses and capacities by the simplest means, and
+making him feel in nature the loving Creator, before he taxes his
+intellect with religious dogmas, which are beyond the intellect of
+childhood, and only confuse it. To lead it through the love of God, the
+Heavenly Father of us all, to the love of the neighbor, by acting and
+doing, is the natural and simple way which Frœbel has pointed out, and
+we shall owe it to him, if before our children are four or five years
+old, before they can read books, they learn the great law of humanity,
+_Love to God and the neighbor_.
+
+Again: Frœbel's discovery, or invention, furnishes the means to follow
+the natural order of all development for human beings, by which alone
+they will come to the knowledge of, and at last to union with, their
+Heavenly Father. This is the way which Christianity prescribed eighteen
+hundred years ago, but into which education has not understood how to
+lead us, because it has put statutes instead of actual experience, and
+has not let the study of nature, as the work of God, _precede_ statutes.
+Frœbel leads education again into the path intended by GOD, which, in
+the course of universal development, will lead to the happiness of the
+individual, as well as of the whole of society. In the human being
+itself are the rich mines, the development of which our false modes of
+education have hitherto made impossible. May mothers have faith in GOD,
+the Heavenly Father of their children, and that he has given them the
+capacity for good, which will crush the head of the serpent, and bring
+the kingdom of God upon earth.
+
+
+NOTE C, TO PAGE 84.
+
+In the second part of my _Guide to Kindergarten and Moral Training of
+Infancy_, published by E. Steiger, 25 Park Place, New York, is an
+account of how I actually first began to teach to read on this method,
+that may be of practical aid to one teaching _After Kindergarten--what?_
+The first kindergartner who tried the method, in the course of the first
+half-hour led her children to write on their slates (in imitation of
+what she wrote on the blackboard, letter by letter, giving the power,
+not the name, of each as she wrote) words enough to involve the whole
+alphabet; namely, _cars_, _go_, _bells_, _sing_, _dizzy_, _old_, _hen_,
+_fixes_, _vest_, _jelly_, _jars_, _puss_, _kitty_. The words were in a
+column, and after they were written, the children recognized each word,
+pronouncing it right when she pointed to it on the blackboard. But she
+was surprised the next day to find they remembered every one, and they
+had so clear an idea of the correspondence of the letters and sounds,
+that, long before they had finished writing at her dictation the words
+of the first vocabulary, they read at sight any word of it, no matter
+how many syllables it had. In fact, at the end of the first week she
+wrote and asked me for the groups of exceptions, and, beginning with the
+smallest group, which is most exceptional, in a few weeks they could all
+read.
+
+But I would not advise this rapid acquisition of the whole language in
+so short a time. It is better to pause on the meaning of the words,--not
+asking them to define them by other words, but asking them to make
+sentences in which they put the word, which will show whether or not
+they understand its meaning. A great deal more than mere pronunciation
+may be taught children while learning to read.
+
+
+NOTE D, TO PAGE 102.
+
+History of Printing, an unfinished manuscript of which he found in the
+Antiquarian Library of Worcester.
+
+
+NOTE E, TO PAGE 110.
+
+The story, as I paraphrased it, was this. The drop of water speaks,
+"Once I lived with hundreds, and hundreds, and hundreds of brothers and
+sisters, in the great ocean. There we all took hold of hands, and played
+with each other; and the winds played with us, and took us up on their
+backs, making us into little waves and great waves. But sometimes, when
+the winds were not there, we would spread ourselves out smooth like a
+looking-glass, and look up into the sky; and the moon and the stars
+would look down upon us, and the ocean would look just like the sky.
+
+"And we wanted to go up into the sky; and so, when the sun sent down his
+sunbeams, and the moon sent down her moonbeams, and the stars sent down
+their starbeams, some of us would jump up on their backs, and ride up
+into the sky. But soon they would be tired of us, and shake us off; and
+down we fell, and then we would catch hold of hands, and make ourselves
+into clouds; and when the clouds got to be so heavy that the air could
+not hold them up, we would let go of hands, and fall down in drops of
+rain. But sometimes the clouds would stay up, and sail round; and one
+day the cloud that I was in, bumped up against a mountain, and we all
+fell out, down into the little holes of the mountain, and I soon found I
+was alone in the dark; but I saw a light a little ways off, and so I ran
+along and came to the light, which was outside the mountain. And as I
+stood there, I saw a great many of my sisters and brothers standing at
+just such holes as I was looking out of; and when we saw each other, we
+burst out laughing, and ran to each other, and took hold of hands, and
+made a little brook that ran down the sides of the mountain into a
+meadow full of flowers; and we ran about the meadow, watering the roots
+of all the flowers to make them grow, for we wanted to do as much good
+as we could; and then we thought we would run on, and see if we could
+not find our old home in the ocean, where we left hundreds of brothers
+and sisters; but as I got rather tired, I thought I would stop and rest
+awhile on this flower-leaf. But now I am rested. So good by; I will jump
+off, and run home as fast as I can with the rest."
+
+This story I had to tell over and over again at the time, which I did in
+the same words; and now, when I again repeated it in the same words, he
+liked to hear it over and over again, looking at the picture in the book
+while I told it.
+
+
+NOTE F, TO PAGE 167.
+
+I here insert the version of the Lord's Prayer and the _Song of the
+Weather_, which have been found so effective in the religious nurture,
+and which, if used in the simple, unsanctimonious manner I have so
+earnestly suggested, will preclude the necessity of talking to the
+children in prose. These songs explain themselves to the child's heart
+and imagination.
+
+          OUR FATHER, who in Heaven art,
+            Thy name we dearly love;
+          We'd do thy will with all our heart,
+            As done in heaven above.
+          Give us this day our daily bread,
+            Forgive the wrong we do,
+          And we'll not mind when treated ill,
+            That we may be like you.
+          Help us avoid temptation's snare;
+            Deliver us from evil ways;
+          For thine's the kingdom and the power,
+            All glory and all praise.
+
+
+SONG OF THE WEATHER.
+
+          THIS is the way the snow comes down,
+              Softly, softly falling.
+          God, he giveth his snow like wool,
+          Fair, and white, and beautiful.
+          This is the way the snow comes down,
+              Softly, softly falling.
+
+          _Chorus._
+
+          Wonderful, Lord, are all thy works,
+              Wheresoever falling;
+          All their various voices raise,
+          Speaking forth their Maker's praise.
+          Wonderful, Lord, are all thy works,
+              Wheresoever falling.
+
+          This is the way the rain comes down,
+              Swiftly, swiftly falling;
+          So he sendeth his welcome rain.
+          On the field, and hill, and plain,
+          This is the way the rain comes down,
+              Swiftly, swiftly falling.
+
+          (_Repeat the chorus._)
+
+          This is the way the frost comes down,
+              Widely, widely falling;
+          So it spreadeth all through the night,
+          Shining, cold, and pure, and bright,
+          This is the way the frost comes down,
+              Widely, widely falling.
+
+          (_Chorus._)
+
+          This is the way the hail comes down,
+              Loudly, loudly falling;
+          So it flieth beneath the cloud,
+          Swift, and strong, and wild, and loud,
+          This is the way the hail comes down,
+              Loudly, loudly falling.
+
+          (_Chorus._)
+
+          This is the way the cloud comes down,
+              Darkly, darkly falling;
+          So it covers the shining blue,
+          Till no ray can glisten through,
+          This is the way the cloud comes down,
+              Darkly, darkly falling.
+
+          (_Chorus._)
+
+          This is the way sunshine comes down,
+              Sweetly, sweetly falling;
+          So it chaseth the cloud away,
+          So it waketh the lovely day,
+          This is the way sunshine comes down,
+              Sweetly, sweetly falling.
+
+          (_Chorus._)
+
+          This is the way rainbow comes round,
+              Brightly, brightly falling;
+          So it smileth across the sky,
+          Making fair the heavens on high,
+          This is the way rainbow comes down,
+              Brightly, brightly falling.
+
+          _Chorus._
+
+          Wonderful, Lord, are all thy works,
+              Wheresoever falling;
+          All their various voices raise,
+          Speaking forth their Maker's praise.
+          Wonderful, Lord, are all thy works,
+              Wheresoever falling.
+
+(The appropriate gesture is spreading the arms, and, when it is the rain
+or the hail, the children enjoy making the patter on the table,--gently
+for the rain, and louder for the hail.)
+
+
+  Butler & Tanner, The Selwood Printing Works, Frome, and London.
+
+
+
+
+THE COMMITTEE OF THE
+
+Manchester Kindergarten Association
+
+Beg to Announce that the
+
+TRAINING CLASSES FOR TEACHERS
+
+Meet in the AFTERNOON at
+
+Thorney Abbey, Alexandra Park, Manchester,
+
+For THEORETICAL instruction in the following subjects:--
+
+  Drawing                                     J. CLEGG, Esq.
+  Music                                       MISS WICHERN.
+  Theory and Application of the Kindergarten
+        System                                MISS SNELL.
+  Physiology and Laws of Health               MISS CLEGHORN.
+  Science of Education                        W. H. HERFORD, Esq., B.A.
+  Natural History and Physiography            F. J. WEBB, Esq.
+  Elements of Geometry                        MISS SNELL.
+  Botany                                      MISS HERFORD.
+
+=Practical Instruction is afforded at the Model Kindergarten in the
+Forenoon.=
+
+FEES FOR THE ABOVE.
+
+    THE WHOLE COURSE (per Term of Ten Weeks) 5 GUINEAS.
+    SEPARATE CLASSES (per term of Ten Hours) 2½ GUINEAS.
+
+_Students are expected to take the whole Course of Two Years; when
+withdrawal before the end of the course is necessary a Term's notice is
+required._
+
+A LIMITED NUMBER OF STUDENTS CAN BE RECEIVED AS BOARDERS BY THE HEAD
+MISTRESS.
+
+    CHARGE FOR BOARD AND LODGING 44 GUINEAS PER ANNUM.
+    WEEKLY BOARDERS              33    "          "
+
+=Satisfactory References Required.=
+
+
+
+
+Froebel Society,
+
+17, BUCKINGHAM STREET, STRAND.
+
+
+President:
+
+MISS SHIRREFF.
+
+
+Vice-Presidents:
+
+    OSCAR BROWNING, Esq., M.A.
+    Rev. Canon DANIEL, M.A.
+    J. G. FITCH, Esq., H.M. _Inspector of Training Colleges._
+    Prof. G. CAREY FOSTER, B.A.
+    Dr. J. H. GLADSTONE, F.R.S.
+    Lady GOLDSMID.
+    Mrs. W. GREY.
+    Fräulein HEERWART.
+    Prof. MEIKLEJOHN, M.A.
+    Rev. R. H. QUICK, M.A.
+    A. SONNENSCHEIN, Esq.
+
+
+Council:
+
+          Miss M. E. BAILEY.
+          Miss BAKER.
+          Miss BELCHER.
+          Rev. A. BOURNE.
+          Hon. Mrs. BUXTON.
+          E. COOKE, Esq.
+          Miss S. CROMBIE.
+          Mrs. FIELDEN.
+          Miss FRANKS.
+          Mrs. GREEN.
+          Mrs. LAW.
+          Miss E. LORD.
+          Miss LYSCHINSKA.
+          Miss E. A. MANNING.
+          Mme. MICHAELIS.
+          H. K. MOORE, Esq., B.Mus., B.A.
+          J. S. PHILLPOTTS, Esq.
+          Miss KATE PHILLIPS.
+          Mrs. ROMANES.
+          Rev. T. W. SHARPE, H.M.I.S.
+          Miss SIM.
+          F. STORR, Esq., B.A.
+          Miss KATE THORNBURY.
+          Miss WARD.
+
+
+Hon. Treasurer:
+
+          A. R. PRICE, Esq.
+
+
+Hon. Secretary:
+
+          C. G. MONTEFIORE, Esq.
+
+
+Secretary:
+
+          Miss BAYLEY.
+
+
+
+
+The Froebel Society
+
+
+WAS formed in 1874 for the purpose of promoting co-operation among those
+engaged in Kindergarten work, of spreading the knowledge and practice of
+the system, and of maintaining a high standard of efficiency among
+Kindergarten Teachers.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+AN EXAMINATION OF STUDENTS
+
+Will be held in London in the month of July, for the Higher and (this
+year only) for the Elementary Certificate. In December next there will
+be an Examination for the Elementary Certificate only.
+
+Under certain conditions the Council are prepared to hold the
+Examinations at local centres.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+A Registry for Kindergarten Teachers
+
+Has been opened at the Office of the Society. A small fee is charged to
+those who apply.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Arrangements have been made by the Council for the INSPECTION AND
+REGISTRATION OF KINDERGARTENS upon certain conditions.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+The Calendar of the Froebel Society, price 1/-,
+
+Contains the Syllabus for the Examinations, and the Examination Papers
+of 1886.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Further information can be obtained from the Secretary, at the Office of
+the Society,
+
+          17, BUCKINGHAM STREET, STRAND.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+The Office is open daily from 11 a.m. to 4 p.m., except on Thursdays.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Transcriber's Notes:
+
+In the introduction and last two pages which use an ornamental font in
+the original, Frœbel is presented without the oe-ligature. This was
+retained.
+
+Book uses both "Mütterspiele und Köse-Lieder" and "Die Mutter Spiele und
+Kose Lieder" for Frœbel's work: "Mutter- und Kose-Lieder." Also
+referenced as " _Mother Love_ and _Cossetting Songs_."
+
+Mrs. Kraus-Boelte is spelled without an oe-ligature except in a single
+footnote where a ligature was used.
+
+Obvious punctuation errors repaired.
+
+Page 32, "Bulow" changed to "Bülow" (Marenholtz-Bülow has happily
+remarked)
+
+Page 42, word "it" removed from text. Original read: (forth by
+addressing it the)
+
+Page 44, "her's" changed to "hers" (for _hers_ they realize)
+
+Page 50, "combinanations" changed to "combinations" (color and its
+combinations)
+
+Page 50, "develope" changed to "develop" (office, to develop)
+
+Page 209, "beuause" changed to "because" (of it, because, in addition)
+
+Page 223-224, the word "Chorus" sometimes appeared in parentheses and
+sometimes did not. This was retained.
+
+
+
+
+
+
+End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of Education in The Home, The
+Kindergarten, and The Prim, by Elizabeth P. Peabody
+
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+The Project Gutenberg EBook of Education in The Home, The Kindergarten,
+and The Primary School, by Elizabeth P. Peabody
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+Title: Education in The Home, The Kindergarten, and The Primary School
+
+Author: Elizabeth P. Peabody
+
+Release Date: March 25, 2011 [EBook #35677]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK EDUCATION IN THE HOME ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by David Edwards, Emmy and the Online Distributed
+Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net (This file was
+produced from images generously made available by The
+Internet Archive)
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+LECTURES
+
+IN THE
+
+TRAINING SCHOOLS
+
+FOR
+
+Kindergarten Teachers.
+
+
+
+
+EDUCATION
+
+IN
+
+THE HOME, THE KINDERGARTEN,
+
+AND
+
+THE PRIMARY SCHOOL.
+
+BY
+
+ELIZABETH P. PEABODY.
+
+
+_WITH AN INTRODUCTION_
+
+BY
+
+E. ADELAIDE MANNING.
+
+    "Come, let us live _with_ our children."--FROEBEL.
+
+          LONDON:
+          SWAN SONNENSCHEIN, LOWREY & CO.,
+          PATERNOSTER SQUARE.
+          1887.
+
+
+
+
+INTRODUCTION.
+
+
+AMONG those who in the last twenty years have helped to spread a
+knowledge of the educational principles of Froebel beyond the limits of
+his native country, Miss Elizabeth Peabody's name deserves to be
+specially remembered. It is mainly owing to her enthusiastic efforts
+that the value of the Kindergarten was early recognised in the United
+States, and that its first American promoters were encouraged to
+maintain, amid many difficulties, a standard of real efficiency for the
+teachers of Froebel's system. Miss Peabody had long occupied herself,
+theoretically and practically, with educational subjects. Not satisfied
+by merely intellectual methods of instruction, and impatient of the
+superficiality which was too often approved, she made it her great aim
+to train character, and, by a simultaneous development of children's
+mental capacities and of their moral nature, to prepare them for the
+responsible duties of life. It was not surprising that when Miss
+Peabody, holding such views of education, came in contact with the ideas
+and the work of Froebel, she at once experienced the delight always
+attached to the discovery that the problems exercising our own minds
+have been successfully solved by some one who has started from
+principles such as ours, and who has cultivated the same ideal. She
+found that Froebel had carried into practice that very kind of training
+of which she had realized the immense importance, and that he had placed
+in a clear light truths which she had already more dimly perceived.
+Eager to inform herself about the new system, Miss Peabody travelled, in
+1868, to Europe, on purpose to visit in Germany the Kindergartens
+established by Froebel, who was no longer living, and by his best
+pupils. On her return to America, she devoted herself for many years to
+the introduction and improvement of Kindergartens and of training
+institutions, and to enlightening, by her writings and addresses,
+mothers and educators respecting the value and simplicity of Froebel's
+methods. Miss Peabody has the satisfaction of witnessing a good measure
+of success from her generous exertions, in the increasing number of
+advocates of the Kindergarten in America, in its adoption as a first
+department of many State primary schools, and in the numerous private
+and charity Kindergartens founded from North to South, and from New York
+to San Francisco. Advanced now in years, this warm-hearted lady is
+engaged in other lines of philanthropic work, but she retains, and still
+manifests, her earnest interest in the educational progress which she
+has laboured so actively to secure.
+
+Ever since Miss Peabody's zeal was kindled for Froebel's ideal as to
+young children's education, her help and criticism have been sought by
+the trainers of Kindergarten students in America, and by all who, with
+serious purpose, have thus worked for the movement. Hence she has often
+delivered lectures at the opening of the session at Normal Colleges, and
+on other occasions when she saw an opportunity of exercising influence
+in favour of rational principles of education. This book, which appeared
+only lately at Boston, consists of a few of such lectures. It is now,
+with Miss Peabody's consent, published in England, where many parents
+and teachers will be glad to profit by the author's wise and loving
+study of little children, and her sympathetic insight into Froebel's
+methods for their development. During the last few years various
+thoughtful writers on education have drawn attention here to the subject
+of infant management, and it is remarkable how widely the principles of
+Froebel and Pestalozzi are now recognised and accepted. But books are
+still greatly needed which, especially addressed to those who have
+charge of children, urge in a convincing manner how essential it is
+that the first few years should be rightly guided, and indicate certain
+defined educational aims. I think that Miss Peabody's lectures are
+likely to prove very useful in this direction. Though her readers will
+perhaps contest some of her psychological deductions, they cannot fail
+to be impressed and benefited by the high tone of her reasoning, by her
+evidently tender and reverent love of children, and by her excellent
+suggestions in regard to their harmonious development.
+
+Amongst its other merits, this book tends to correct the still too
+prevalent notion, that the Kindergarten is a peculiar--an almost
+magical--institution, which provides a sure remedy for children's
+imperfections, apart from their home conditions. Doubtless, in the case
+of poor neglected little ones, the contrast between their treatment at
+the Kindergarten and their ordinary experience, is necessarily striking
+and decided, because the parents are careless and ignorant. But
+Froebel's view of the Kindergarten was, that it should be a
+supplementary help to the loving and judicious mother, who, owing to her
+many household and other duties, might be unable to give, through the
+whole day, to her younger children the regular attention which their
+awakening faculties need. It was to be a portion of the home pattern and
+web of training, not a patch of a new texture. He saw that a child
+requires to have about it, as Miss Peabody says, "love and thought in
+practical operation," and this not now and then, but always. And as the
+mother may have at times to transfer her children to the charge of
+others, he organised the Kindergarten--a higher nursery, under refined
+and motherly influences, for those that have passed out of babyhood.
+There, on the same principles as at home, they may be gently tended for
+two or three hours of the day, and developed in body, mind, and
+character. Froebel's object also was to provide companionship for these
+children, adapted to their age and attainments, which could only be done
+by including some from outside the family circle. But again, he desired
+to give the opportunity to inexperienced mothers of observing the
+patient and resourceful guidance carried out by even young teachers, who
+had been trained to study children, and had learnt how to occupy them
+suitably. Here we see another link with the home. Now Miss Peabody
+entered so much into Froebel's ideas that she helps to remove the
+Kindergarten out of its supposed exceptional sphere, and to show that
+the teachers represent temporarily the mother, doing that which the
+mother also aims, or ought to aim, at doing, for the children's good.
+
+These Lectures are also useful in presenting a high ideal of
+Kindergarten teaching. Miss Peabody sees that the work of educating
+requires special qualifications in those who undertake it, and that such
+as are not fitted for it, had better take up a different career. At the
+same time placing, as always, character above intellect, she considers
+that most women, whose religious and moral nature is well cultivated,
+and who take pains to develop their mental powers, may hope for success
+in devoting themselves to the training of young children. Her writings
+are calculated to inspire the teacher with hearty zest for her labour,
+and yet with an abiding feeling that even years of practice leave her
+far behind her ever advancing standard. Miss Peabody encourages no
+exaggerated estimate of Froebel's thoughts and methods. She freely
+recognises that he gained many truths from fellow-students of children's
+nature and faculties; but she claims for him the originality which
+belongs to those who with unselfish aims bestow close attention on a
+subject of deep human interest. To teachers, therefore, as well as to
+all who love children, she says--and with this quotation I will close my
+few introductory remarks--"You will not be wise if you do not look out
+of Froebel's window."
+
+                                            E. A. MANNING.
+
+
+
+
+LECTURE I.
+
+THE KINDERGARTNER.
+
+
+WHOEVER proposes to become a kindergartner according to the idea of
+Froebel, must at once dismiss from her mind the notion that it requires
+less ability and culture to educate children of three, than those of ten
+or fifteen years of age. It demands more; for, is it not plain that to
+superintend and guide accurately the _formation_ of the human
+understanding itself, requires a finer ability and a profounder insight
+than to listen to recitations from books ever so learned and scientific?
+To form the human understanding is a work of time, demanding a knowledge
+of the laws of thought, will, and feeling, in their interaction upon the
+threshold of consciousness, which can be acquired only by the study of
+children themselves in their every act of life--a study to be pursued in
+the spirit that reveals what Jesus Christ _meant_, when he said: "He
+that receiveth a little child in my name, receiveth _me, and Him that
+sent me_;" "Woe unto him who offends one of these little ones, for their
+spirits behold the face of my Father who is in heaven."
+
+Not till children who have been themselves educated according to
+Froebel's principles, grow up, will there be found any adult persons who
+can keep kindergartens without devoting themselves to a special study of
+child-nature in the spirit of devout humility. For we are all suffering
+the ignorance and injury inevitable from having begun our own lives in
+the confusions of accidental and disorderly impressions, without having
+had the clue of reason put into our hands by that human providence of
+education, which, to be true, must reflect point by point the Divine
+Providence, that according to the revelations of history is educating
+the whole race, and which may find hints for its procedure in observing
+the spontaneous play of children fresh from the hands of the Creator.
+
+The education of children by a genial training of their spontaneous
+playful activities to the production of order and beauty within the
+humble sphere of childish fancy and affection, was a fresh idea with
+Froebel; but, like every universal idea, it was not absolutely new in
+the world. Plato says, in his great book on _Laws_:--
+
+"Play has the mightiest influence on the maintenance and non-maintenance
+of laws; and if children's plays are conducted according to laws and
+rules, and they always pursue their amusements in conformity with order,
+while finding pleasure therein, it need not be feared that when they are
+grown up they will break laws whose objects are more serious."
+
+And again, in his _Republic_, he says:--
+
+"From their earliest years, the plays of children ought to be subject to
+strict laws. For if their plays, and those who mingle with them, are
+arbitrary and lawless, how can they become virtuous men, law-abiding and
+obedient? On the contrary, when children are early trained to submit to
+laws in their plays, love for these laws enters into their souls with
+the music accompanying them, and helps their development."
+
+You will observe Plato's association of music with the laws that are to
+regulate play. Music, with the Greeks, had indeed a broader meaning than
+attaches to the word with us, who confine it to that subtle expression
+of the sense of law and harmony which is made in the element of sound,
+and addressed to the imagination through the ear. All knowledge and art
+inspired by the sacred Nine, they named _music_. Singing was no more
+music than dancing, drawing, the harmonizing of colors, plastic art,
+poetry, and science, which is nothing less than thinking according to
+the rhythmic laws of nature. To learn to commune with the Muses,
+daughters of Memory and Jove, who were led by the god Apollo,
+symbolizing the moral harmony of the universe, and expressing the mind
+of the Father of gods and men, by oracle, was learning _music_ or how to
+live divinely; a process which may commence before children leave the
+nursery, if their plays are regulated according to artistic principles.
+
+It is common to speak of the Greeks, as if they were of exceptional
+organization. I think their organization was only exceptional, because
+it was more carefully treated in infancy than ours is apt to be. I do
+not believe that in Greece, or anywhere in the world, there were ever
+more beautiful little children than there are in America; and the beauty
+would not be so transient as it unquestionably is with us, if truly
+cultivated persons took our children in hand from babyhood for the care
+of their bodies and minds, instead of leaving this work to the most
+ignorant class of the community, such as the general run of the servants
+who have the education of them during their earliest infancy. Even many
+parents who take care of their own children do not make it an object to
+study physiology or psychology, and seem to think that there is nothing
+in little children which requires special study, except indeed at the
+very first, when the child is put into the mother's arms more helpless
+than the lowest form of animal life (for the very insect is endowed by
+nature, as the child is not, with enough absolute knowledge--we call it
+instinct--to fulfil its small circle of relations without help of its
+parents). It seems mysterious, at first sight, that the child, whose
+duty and whose destiny it is to have dominion over nature, should be
+endowed least of all creatures with any absolute knowledge of it. But
+the mystery is solved when we consider that the happiness which is
+distinctively human, is only to be found in the discovery and enjoyment
+of ever-widening relations to our kind, with the fulfilment of the
+duties belonging to them. It is the absolute helplessness of the human
+infant which challenges the maternal instinct to rush to his rescue,
+lest he should die at once. And to continue to study his manifestations
+of pleasure and discontent with obedient respectfulness, is the
+perfection of the maternal nursing. But when the child has got on so far
+as to know the simplest uses of its own body, and especially after it
+has learned enough words to express its simplest wants and sensations,
+even parents seem to think it can get on by itself, so that children
+from about two to five years of age are left to self-education, as it
+were; this virtual abandonment being crossed by a capricious and
+arbitrary handling of them--mind and body--on the part of those around
+them, which is even worse than the neglect; for when are children more
+unable, than between three and five years old, to guide their own
+thoughts and action? How would a garden of flowers fare, to be planted,
+and then left to grow with so little scientific care taken by the
+gardener, as is bestowed upon children between one and five years old?
+
+Froebel, in the very word kindergarten, proclaimed that gospel for
+children which holds within it the promise of the coming of the kingdom,
+in which God's will is to be done on earth as it is in heaven--a
+consummation which we daily pray for with our lips, but do not do the
+first thing to bring about, by educating our children in the way of
+order, which is no less earth's than "heaven's first law," and makes
+earth heaven so far as it is fulfilled.
+
+A kindergarten means a guarded company of children, who are to be
+treated as a gardener treats his plants; that is, in the first place,
+studied to see what they are, and what conditions they require for the
+fullest and most beautiful growth; in the second place, put into or
+supplied with these conditions, with as little handling of their
+individuality as possible, but with an unceasing genial and provident
+care to remove all obstructions, and favor all the circumstances of
+growth. It is because they are living organisms that they are to be
+_cultivated_--not _drilled_ (which is a process only appropriate to
+insensate stone).
+
+I think there is perhaps no better way of making apparent what this
+kindergartning is, which makes such an importunate demand on your
+consideration, than to tell you how the idea germinated and grew in the
+mind of Froebel himself; for thus we shall see that it would be
+unreasonable to expect that it could be improvised by every teacher; but
+that here, as elsewhere in human life, God has sent into the world a
+gifted person to guide his fellows, according to the law enunciated by
+St. John in the 38th verse of the 4th chapter of his Gospel.
+
+We have the materials of this history on Froebel's own authority, in an
+autobiographical letter that he wrote to the Duke of Meiningen, whose
+interest in him was excited by an incident so characteristic of Froebel,
+that I will relate it. Having heard of a cruel and stupid opposition
+made to the ardent educator by the unthinking officials of a region
+where he was making a martyr of himself, the duke made inquiries, which
+resulted in his offering him the situation of head-tutor to his only
+son. But Froebel astonished him with a refusal of the place, sending the
+duke word that it would be impossible to educate, in a perfect manner, a
+child so isolated by conventional rank and circumstances that he must
+inevitably conceive himself to be intrinsically superior to other
+children. The duke was so much struck that a poor man, struggling with
+every difficulty, should refuse one of the highest posts in a royal
+household, with all its emoluments, from a purely conscientious scruple
+of this kind, that his curiosity was piqued. He sent for Froebel, and
+they had a conversation upon the principles and spirit of a truly human
+education, by which Froebel convinced him that a noble moral
+development was indispensable to a truly intellectual one, so that the
+duke was actually persuaded to send his son as an equal with other boys
+to a neighboring school. One day, some little time after, the boy came
+home _roaring_, on account of a beating he had received from one of his
+playmates. The duke, in a transport of rage, asked the name of the
+offender, and said that he should be immediately expelled from the
+school. Then was Froebel's advice justified. The young prince dried his
+tears, refused to tell the boy's name, and declared that "the beating
+was all fair!" It is quite consistent with these facts, that the duke
+should ask Froebel how his idea grew in his mind. Froebel's answer is
+still extant. I have not been able to get the original text, but I can
+give you the substance of it, as it was given to me.
+
+Friedrich Froebel was the son of a laborious pastor of seven villages in
+Thuringia. He lost his mother before his remembrance, and fell into the
+care of hard-worked domestic servants, with no light upon his infant
+life except what came from the love and sympathy of two older brothers,
+who cherished him when they were at home from boarding-school. The
+parsonage was in the shadow of the church, and into it no ray of
+sunshine ever came; and the child was kept drearily in the house. He
+tells of seeing workmen building a part of the church that had become
+dilapidated, and how he longed to imitate them; and traces to this
+desire of employing the time that hung so heavily on his hands, his
+discovery of the building instinct, so universal in childhood, and which
+he thought should always have simple materials afforded it with which to
+express itself. At last his father married again, and at first the
+stepmother petted the young child of her husband, and awakened in him a
+hope of a satisfying love, which he reciprocated with all the energies
+of his long-starved heart. But when the merely instinctive woman had a
+child of her own, a certain jealousy arose in her, and she repulsed poor
+little Friedrich, and "no longer"--as he pathetically remarks--"called
+him _thou_," (du) which is an endearing expression in German, but _he_
+(er), which has a rough association. It is plain that the child was
+endowed with an immense sensibility to, or more than ordinary
+presentiment of the Divine Order of Nature, and with the extreme
+tendency to reflection always involved in this gift. As he was so poorly
+developed physically, he became in his joyless early life perhaps
+morbidly nervous. Disappointed in his timid efforts to please, all the
+sweet bells of his nature were jangled, and he was miserable--he knew
+not why. He says he always found himself doing the wrong thing--the too
+much, or the too little--and was complained of to his father, who
+treated him as a naughty boy. But sometimes the pastor took him out of
+his stepmother's way, to accompany himself in his parochial visits, in
+which Froebel says he seemed continually to be settling family quarrels.
+This made on the child's mind an impression of things that was rather
+ludicrously expressed, when he one day asked of his oldest brother, who
+happened to come home from boarding-school, why it was that God had not
+made people all men, or all women, so that there should not be so much
+quarrelling in the world. In order to divert him from such premature
+consideration of social questions, the posed elder brother undertook to
+teach him botany according to the sexual system, revealing to him the
+law of contrasts conciliated with each other for the production of
+harmony and beauty. The child was delighted with what he was shown; but
+still his exceptionally moral genius importunately asked, why may not
+human differences be thus harmonized, to produce happiness and goodness?
+The presentiment of the great truth which was felt in his heart, though
+not yet caught by his mind, was signalized by another anecdote that he
+tells of himself. There was a rumor among the peasants of North Germany
+(it was about the year 1792) that the world was coming to an end; but
+Froebel declares that he could not make himself feel alarmed. He says
+he was sure it could not be true, because the will of God had not yet
+been brought about in human life. This extraordinary reflection of a
+child of ten years old was preceded, probably, by a happy change that
+came over him in consequence of the visit of his maternal uncle to his
+father's house; who, seeing that the child was not happy, invited him to
+go home with him to live with his grandmother. His uncle's house was
+bright and sunny, and he was received by his grandmother with joy and
+tenderness. Immediately the freedom of the fields was given him,
+provided only that he should come home punctually to the meals. He soon
+became so healthy and happy, that his uncle put him into a day school in
+the neighborhood, to the child's great delight. The school was opened,
+the first day he went into it, with a little sermon of the master's upon
+the text: "Seek first the kingdom of heaven and its righteousness, and
+all other things shall be added unto you." It must have been a wise and
+good discourse, for it left a life-long impression upon the mind of the
+little Froebel. There was a law then, for human beings as well as for
+plants; human beings might consciously realize in happiness and virtue,
+the harmony and beauty unconsciously manifested by the vegetable world.
+For God was the Ever-present Friend and Lawgiver! He tells the duke how
+happy he felt himself in his new circumstances and opportunities, and
+blessed with this inspiring faith. After school, he went out to play
+with his schoolmates; but, alas! poor starveling of nature as he was, he
+found he could not play with his athletic companions, and had to sit on
+one side and look on; and then and there he distinctly came to a
+conclusion, which is a first principle of the kindergarten, that every
+child should have free exercise of his limbs in play, in order to get
+entire command of all the physical strength and agility they are capable
+of.
+
+After a few years of this happy home and school life, which he
+continually reflected upon in contrast with what he had suffered for so
+many years, the good grandmother died, and he was sent back to his
+stepmother. The question now came up, whether he should study for the
+university, where his brothers had gone; but the stepmother, in the
+interest of her younger child, opposed his father's spending the money,
+and he went to a farmer to learn practical agriculture. But he was
+physically so incompetent to the labor of a farm life, that it did not
+pay; and being sent home by the farmer, he was finally apprenticed to a
+forester, where he found genial occupation in wood-lore, and in studying
+geometry for the purpose of surveying. Here he became a thorough and
+ardent mathematician. But his friend the forester died, or was removed,
+which brought this occupation to a premature close. At that moment,
+however, a maternal relation died, and left him a little money, so that
+he went to the University of Jena, where he devoted himself principally
+to the physical sciences; and by and by we find him curator of the
+Mineralogical Museum of Berlin. Here he made a great impression on the
+mind of a young lady who frequented the museum, by the "sermons" that he
+found "in stones," for he read them out to her, showing that in
+inorganic nature, so called, could be traced not only laws of decay,
+that threw into stronger light those laws of life that he had learned to
+see in vegetation, but those of crystallization. Everywhere he read
+God's revelation of the processes of life and death, which also make
+human development and happiness, or its deterioration and misery.
+
+The trumpet call of patriotism, to rescue Germany from French despotism,
+made by the good Queen Louise of Prussia, called him from these peaceful
+studies to partake in the great national act of delivering his country;
+and he obeyed it by volunteering his service. Though his regiment was
+never called into battle, he always rejoiced in the effects upon himself
+of learning the military drill, as well as in the life-long friendships
+he made in camp. After the war was over, a legacy received at the death
+of his uncle Hoffman gave him the means to enter an architect's office, to
+which he had a great attraction. He was boarding at Frankfort-on-the-Main,
+where Middendorf and other of his late military friends were boarding,
+who had just engaged themselves as teachers in the city, waiting to
+perfect this arrangement. It was a moment when there was a great
+uprising of education in Germany, and that system was beginning to
+germinate, which has turned out to make Prussia the effective power in
+Europe that she has lately proved herself to be; and whose first
+principle is, that the primary is the most important stage of education.
+In connection with this general movement, there was about to be
+established a new school in Frankfort; and Grüner, its principal, who
+was one of the boarders, talked over with Froebel and the others the new
+plan. Whatever Froebel said was so striking and vital, that Grüner at
+last exclaimed: "Plainly this is your vocation! Give up the
+architecture, and come in with us, and help to build men." Strange to
+say, though Froebel had all his life been meditating upon the secret of
+human education, this was the first time it occurred to him to make it
+his own business. The more he thought of Grüner's suggestion, the more
+he liked it; and the issue was, that he took one of the younger classes
+in the new school. Immediately afterwards he wrote to his brother that
+at last he had found his element--he "felt like a bird in air, a fish in
+water." But the teachers were hampered in their action by the
+proprietors of the school; and after a season Grüner said to Froebel,
+"You should lead; not be led. I release you from your engagement. Set up
+independently, and carry out your own ideas unhindered."
+
+When his purpose of leaving was known, one of the parents who patronized
+the school, gave him his two sons to educate, just as he should think
+best; and because he now heard of Pestalozzi, he took them to Yverdun,
+where he remained as pupil with them, for a season. But he was not quite
+satisfied with Pestalozzi's methods. He saw there was a process to be
+attended to, anterior to the observation of objects; namely, to employ
+and discipline the activity of children yet too young to attend except
+to what they are themselves doing. Education was to begin, as he saw, in
+doing, and thence proceed to knowing. In returning from Yverdun, his
+elder brother, and his younger brother's widow, offered him their
+children to add to the two young Frankforters; and the widow offered,
+besides, a small house that she owned in Keilhau, if he would fit it up.
+He and Middendorf and another friend united together and accepted this
+offer; and, with their own hands repaired the house, living in the
+outbuildings meanwhile and subsisting on rations most carefully
+economized. They then, for one thing, went to work on the land, which
+they taught the children to cultivate, and deduced their lessons out of
+the objects into which they were putting their life and labor. To these
+six children three cultivated men devoted themselves; and Froebel also
+wrote to the lady that used to study with him in the Mineralogical
+Museum of Berlin, and she took her fortune, and left her rank, to help
+the poor schoolmaster in his life work, as the most devoted of wives.
+
+Working on the land was not all that they did. They began with it,
+because the children of the city had been rather starved of the
+gratification of that instinct to work in the earth, which very soon
+appears in all children--though, as Froebel says, it will die out by
+being left uncultivated. He found that his pupils had been already
+injured by their artificial city life, and in many ways they had things
+to unlearn. It was not a perfectly easy thing to determine how much
+liberty to give to individual tendencies that had been exaggerated by
+the reactions of disorder, or of an artificial order. Froebel thought
+the educator should give full play to all that is universal in human
+nature without pampering human idiosyncrasy, to do which was the vicious
+point of Rousseau's system that Froebel has happily avoided. It was
+natural that he should first bring before his pupils the processes of
+vegetable growth, because it was in observing them that he had himself
+first found the laws of God. But he was older than any child in the
+kindergarten when he learned that lesson. Observation of anything
+outward is not the first thing in human development, but exertion of
+powers from within, which provokes the reaction of the outward and makes
+it known.
+
+I cannot follow out, in this introductory lecture, all his studies of
+the nature of man in these children, and all his experiments of
+cultivation. But I hope to do so in those which follow. The school
+founded in Keilhau exists to this day; but Froebel ever found himself
+going back till at last he came to the infant in the mother's arms. Then
+he went into the huts of the peasantry to observe the mother's
+instinctive ways, reason upon them, purify them of her individual
+caprices and selfishness, and eliminate everything inconsistent with the
+divine idea and method of procedure, indicated by the instinct to the
+intelligence. He did not confine himself to Keilhau, where Middendorf
+steadily lived, though always keeping in relation with it; but went at
+times to other places, and once, for a year or two, left all, to go to
+the University of Göttingen to study philology. There he made himself
+acquainted with Greek, Latin, and Sanskrit, studying out those laws of
+mind exemplified in the formation and decay of languages. For it was the
+secret of a perfect development that he sought, and how to keep his
+pupils at the height they "were competent to gain." After half a century
+of the study of childhood in the living subject, and elaboration of the
+means of discipline, he settled in his old age into the conviction, that
+the most important period of human education was before the child was
+seven years old. And his last years were spent in preparing teachers
+for kindergartens at Rudolstadt and at Hamburg--which he did by teaching
+before them as well as by lecturing to them. Now it is what he
+discovered and elaborated, and has left, not in logical formulas, though
+he has certainly stated principles in words and embodied them in songs,
+but in processes of work and play, that is to be taught in our training
+schools. It took a Newton to discover gravitation and other principles
+of nature, but men without genius can comprehend and apply these
+principles, which they could not, like him, discover. So it took a
+Froebel's genius to discover the first principles of education, and his
+sensibility to apply them without mistake; but intelligent and heartful
+young women can learn them and apply them, if--and only if--they will
+study devoutly and faithfully what he has taught; and in doing so they
+will find themselves--_not_ becoming artificial, but more profoundly
+natural than ever; for the true educational process is but the mother's
+instinct and method, clearly understood in all its bearings, and acted
+out. To be a kindergartner is the perfect development of womanliness--a
+working with God at the very fountain of artistic and intellectual power
+and moral character. It is therefore the highest finish that can be
+given to a woman's education, to be educated for a kindergartner; and it
+is from the most advanced classes of high and normal schools, public and
+private, that the pupils of our training schools should come, and from
+the most refined circles of private life--remembering that these are not
+identical with wealthy and fashionable ones, for in the latter we often
+find the vulgar and coarse. The refinement of feeling and thought which
+is always attended with gentle and courteous manners is a religious
+quality, that not seldom glorifies humble homes whose inmates escape the
+sometimes hardening effect of poverty by "seeing Him who is invisible,"
+while those "the imagination of whose hearts are evil continually," and
+even the merely frivolous, betray that they have "faculties that they
+have never used" though they dwell in palaces.
+
+Ever since the normal teaching of kindergartners was begun in America,
+in 1868, letters have been received from teachers, already at work in
+the old routine of primary instruction, asking for knowledge of the
+plays and occupations invented by Froebel; in order that, by means of
+them, they may give such prestige to their infant schools as the name of
+kindergarten may. But this superficial, inappreciative use of Froebel's
+processes, is as fatal to his reform as was _judaizing_ to the primitive
+Christian Church. Froebel's method is a radical change of direction. It
+changes the educator's point of view. Instead of looking down upon the
+child, the kindergartner must clear her mind of all foregone arbitrary
+conclusions, and humbly look up to the innocent soul, which in its turn
+sees nothing but the face of the Father in heaven--(for thus Christ
+explains children's being "of the kingdom of heaven"). This is difficult
+for her to do, because--not seldom--a shadow has fallen on the original
+innocence of the children confided to her care, from those human beings
+in relation to them, who have not done for them what every human being
+needs by reason of the essential dependence of individuals upon their
+race.
+
+The child is doubtless an embryo angel; but no less certainly a possible
+devil. If the immortal will, impassioned by the heart, which never rests
+permanently satisfied till the mind recognizes God, be puzzled, it may
+be turned in a wrong direction by what it meets, and then the
+manifestation will be ugly and more or less hateful. Evil is the
+inevitable effect of an ignorant, disorderly action of the will; of its
+not adopting the laws of order, by which God creates the universe, and
+of which the universe is the unconscious exponent. But knowledge of the
+laws of order must come to guide the will, from outside the child's
+conscious individuality, _through the human providence of education_,
+in which the heavenly Father veils His infinite power, in order that the
+child may be free to make the choice of good, that shall lift him from
+the state, of merely instinctive being, into that union of Love and
+Thought, which characterizes a spirit _creative_, _i.e._, causing
+effects.
+
+Perhaps you will say that if human influence must embody Divine
+Providence, in order to educate, then children never will be educated.
+Well! Except in one instance I admit that children never have been
+educated up to the ideal standard. But the one instance of the perfectly
+Divine Son of the perfectly holy Mother; and the partial successes of
+such fitful good education as history and tradition report, forbid us to
+despair of making human education a worthy image of Divine Providence.
+_To despair of this_ is want of the proper action of human free
+will,--Faith.
+
+The first qualification of the true kindergartner, then, is Faith, which
+can be based only on the abiding conviction that God is with us "_to
+will and to do_," if we will only have the courage to take for granted
+that if _we are willing_, He will make of us divine guides to others.
+That He is calling them to be so, whoever feels a strong love of
+children, sympathy with their life, and sensibility to their beauty, may
+have a reasonable assurance; and that such as shall faithfully qualify
+themselves for the work will not fail of the divine help. But observe my
+proviso. Their love must not be a passing emotion, grounded on the
+children's superficial beauty. It must be a love that involves patience,
+that can stand the manifestation of ugly temper, and perverse will, and
+never lose sight of the embryo angel that wears for the moment the
+devilish mask. In children, evil is actual, but always superficial and
+temporary, if the educator does not become party to it by losing her own
+temper and idea. Also she must have resources by means of a cultivated
+understanding and imagination, to command the child's imagination and
+heart.
+
+It may be said that everybody cannot have, at will, imagination and
+culture. This is true; but such persons should not undertake to keep a
+kindergarten. Let them do something else; keep shop, cultivate
+vegetables, work the sewing machine; even keep those schools for older
+children, in which books are the main teachers. There are multitudes of
+things to be done; the greatest variety of functions to be performed in
+human life. But of all things to do, the cultivation of human beings at
+that period of life when they are utterly at the mercy of those who
+teach them, is the most sacred. Why rush into that, impelled by any
+motive below the highest?
+
+On the other hand, I do not wish to produce any artificial
+sentimentality on this subject. It is my belief that the average woman
+is sufficiently gifted by nature to make a good kindergartner, if she
+will give her nature fair play, by cultivating religious and moral
+sentiment; and will take pains to develop her intellect by the study of
+nature's laws in at least one department of science--that of vegetable
+physiology for instance, the materials of which are everywhere. One who
+_could not_ be educated to become a kindergartner, should never dare to
+become a mother; for she would not know even how to choose the
+assistance necessary to her for the work that ought to be done for every
+child by somebody. While I would discourage, and if possible effectually
+frighten every one from professing kindergartning who is morally
+disqualified by sordid aims, or by making it a means to another end than
+itself, I welcome the young and ardent to this beautiful womanly work,
+which, to do well, requires of them to do the very best thing for their
+own intellect and heart, and which, more certainly than anything else,
+will give them the secret of Power and Beauty.
+
+It was my privilege, a year or two since, to pass a week in one of the
+schools of the feeble-minded; and I there saw six women, some of them
+quite young girls, devoted to the terrible work of waking up Will and
+Perception in those poor prisoners of mal-organization, so many of them
+frightful to look upon. They were doing their work under the strongest
+sense of humanity and religion. It would have been impossible to do it
+at all, as they were doing it, had they had no other inspiration than
+the pay they were receiving. The main reward was in their having some
+success in waking up the mind. In their countenances something angelic
+was dawning; and this was not my fancy merely, for I heard the same
+remark made again and again, by persons who went there as I did. I do
+not think one of these women wished to leave the good work; and if
+acting on a mind-cherishing principle was so interesting, and productive
+of such reactive effects, in such sad circumstances, how much more may
+be expected from working upon children fairly gifted! The charm of the
+sadder work was, that, like kindergartning, it stimulated to profound
+study of the laws of mental nature, in order to work reverently among
+them, instead of arbitrarily, in defiance or irreverence of them. To do
+this made these women feel that they were working with God; and this
+made them practical saints. But why cannot we believe that God is
+present, and acting with us, and wooing us to act with Himself, in the
+joyous paradise of life, as well as in chambers of disease, and among
+the wretched? Is He not the God of the living and joyful, as well as of
+the dying and sad? Why is the church-yard only a grave-yard? Why should
+it not always be a kindergarten?
+
+One of the pleasantest observations that I made of the kindergartens of
+Germany--and I went to the very best ones, those kept by the
+kindergartners whom Froebel had trained--was the happy absorption of the
+teachers in the children; their sympathy with them; the utter
+companionship between them. I never saw a punishment; I never heard a
+Don't (or its German equivalent); but when anything went wrong, there
+was always a pause, and sometimes questions were asked; and all seemed
+to wait till the inward guide had been brought out into consciousness
+(whether the thing in hand was social action or artistic work). Perhaps
+it might be harder work to govern American children. Their vivacious
+temperament, their lively energies, need "conscious law" as a curb,
+rather than as a spur. But all the more is it necessary for the American
+kindergartner to vivify the invisible guide; she should present order to
+the mind, by her genial questioning and conversation over the work in
+hand, rather than exert an arbitrary power which might stimulate the
+reaction of obstinacy or the subterfuges of cunning. To _govern_ is not
+the whole thing. The question is _how_ we govern; whether we so govern
+as to make a cringing slave, a cunning hypocrite, or an intelligent,
+law-abiding, self-respecting, _willing_ servant of God. I have seen a
+magnetic teacher produce a marvellous obedience, and apparent order, by
+his imposing presence and keen satire. He imagined that he governed by
+moral power; but as soon as he was out of the schoolroom, the children
+were the victims of their own impulses, to which seemed given a stronger
+spring by the enforced repression. There is no order which is more than
+skin deep, unless it be the free, glad obedience of the child to a law,
+which he perceives to be creative because it enables him to do something
+real. Nothing short of the union of love and thought can produce
+spiritual power, _i.e._, creativeness. It is only spiritual power that
+inaugurates order--the Eternal Beauty may be inaugurated in childhood
+and among childish toys.
+
+There is reason, on their own account, why we want our pupils, in this
+art of kindergartning, to be in their disposition and circumstances
+above merely pecuniary motive for entering on the work; and that is,
+because it will be long before the work will pay much in money. I need
+not adduce any other proof of this than our experience in Boston; where,
+for four years, the rarely gifted, thoroughly educated, religiously
+devoted Alma Kriege poured out her young energies on classes of less
+than a score of children; bringing her a pittance so small that she had
+to fill up the rest of her hours, which ought to have been given to
+recreation and culture, with other work, in order to pay for rent and
+necessary bread. Our rich and cultivated people will not forego a little
+more upholstery than is necessary, or a style of dress that makes the
+laundry bill--to say nothing of the mantua-maker's and milliner's--larger
+than the school bill, in order to give the required remuneration to the
+kindergartner for spending herself on their children in exhausting study
+and labor. But the truth is, people do not really believe that anything
+better can be done for children than to kill the time between the
+mother's arms and the season when they are to be taught to read; and so
+this precious interval, when the habits of thought and affection are
+forming, is given up to be filled by chance, risking life-long
+difficulties for the child.
+
+Now, what is to reform this state of things? Nothing but the
+self-sacrificing work of kindergartners, who, for the sake of
+enlightening these benighted parents, will do their work faithfully,
+steadily refusing to undertake the care of those whom their parents will
+not trust to Froebel's system. The refusal will not seldom force the
+truth on the parents--who, when they know it, will be glad to know it. I
+do not say to any particular person, it is your duty to wear yourself
+out and half starve, for the sake of keeping a kindergarten. It is only
+you who are sufficiently free from other obligations, to give yourselves
+the privilege and luxury of working with God, on the paradisaical ground
+of childhood, who should enter this field. If you can make it your
+object to study how to avoid offending those who are beholding the face
+of the Father in heaven, by not hindering, but bringing them to Christ,
+which means helping them to grow as He did, in grace as in stature, and
+in favor with God and man, till like Him they become redeemers of their
+brethren from bondage, and can help to make earth the kingdom of
+heaven; then you may hope, in your day and generation, to initiate
+kindergartning, and make the way smooth for those that follow. When the
+true thing is initiated, it will pay even in money; for parents will see
+that it is invaluable.
+
+It is twenty-two years since Froebel died. He had made a band of
+kindergartners, and set them at work. They all began with small
+pecuniary reward. It was at first a starving business. In Europe it is
+more difficult than it is here, to induce women of culture and position
+to undertake any work which is paid for with money. Froebel's genius had
+overcome this prejudice in a few instances. The ladies of one wealthy
+family in Hamburg became his pupils, one of whom introduced it into
+England, though under some great disadvantages. The Baroness
+Marenholtz-Bülow is the most important person inspired by Froebel; and
+the circumstances of her introduction to him are even picturesque. Being
+in feeble health, she went into an obscure village for rest and
+retirement; and one day asked the woman with whom she boarded, if
+anything interesting was going on among the villagers. The woman replied
+that there was "one queer thing, a natural fool who played about among
+the children, who followed him, and were very much taken up with him."
+The Baroness hardly heeded this singular assertion; but some time after,
+being abroad for exercise, she saw a white-haired man under a tree, with
+a group of children around him; and, thinking this might be the "natural
+fool," she drew near, and was soon arrested by what she heard, and
+joined the little throng herself. Subsequent interviews with
+Froebel--for it was he--made a new era in her life, and she corresponded
+with him closely till his death. She has since been his chief apostle.
+After years of earnest work, with tongue and pen, she succeeded in
+getting rid of the injunction against his schools, made by the Prussian
+Government, which was jealous of what claimed to be an improvement on
+their world-renowned Reform. Since this injunction was taken off, she
+has worked, by means of a normal school which she helped to found in
+Berlin, in which she lectured gratuitously many years, fighting
+earnestly against just such deteriorations of the system as have already
+begun to appear in this country. Some of the pseudo-kindergartens use
+the plays and occupations there, as here, in the most superficial way.
+When children work by patterns, or are shown--instead of being told in
+words--how to do things, they merely imitate, with as little
+accompaniment of intellectual action as a monkey; and neither the mind
+nor the character will be developed, but rather dissipated and weakened.
+Others, especially in this country, use the plays in the intervals
+between lessons or reading,--which, being taught before the mind has
+been regularly developed by success in doing things, and before the
+meaning of words has been learned in an adequate manner, are confused
+with a chaos of unrelated particulars, that it will take years of
+self-education, by and by, to grow out of; and, in short, only a few
+vigorous natures fortunately situated ever surmount the difficulty.
+
+But the work of the Baroness has not been in vain; and she writes in a
+late letter that a government decree has just been made in Austria,
+ordering that all the children between four and six years of age should
+be sent to kindergartens; and that every normal school must give
+kindergarten training, and every teacher, whether of that or the
+following stages of education, must be made acquainted with Froebel's
+principles and practices. This great step is the final result of the
+agitation of the subject for the last few years in Europe, which began
+in the first Philosophers' Congress at Prague, in 1867. The dying out of
+the teachers instructed by Froebel himself was manifestly producing a
+deteriorating effect in the quality of kindergartners; and his most
+intelligent and devoted disciples proposed to the Congress an effort for
+the revival of his science and art in its pristine purity and power.
+
+It is most desirable that such falsification and deterioration do not
+get ahead in America. But there is impending danger of it, and it can
+only be prevented by establishing and keeping up adequate
+training-schools, and so informing public opinion, that it shall not be
+tolerated in the community to call by the sacred name of kindergarten
+anything short of it. There will necessarily be infant schools of an
+inferior quality for a long time, because it will take time to make
+common an adequate education in the art of kindergartning; but let such
+be _called_ play-schools. _Pretenders_ in this profession should be
+frowned upon by all good people, as pretenders in the clerical
+profession are. They do more harm than bad clergymen can, because the
+subjects of their teaching are more helpless and undefended, and can do
+nothing for themselves.
+
+The experience I have had in my apostolate in this cause, has brought me
+to the conclusion that in America the best way to proceed is, to induce
+the public authorities to have kindergartning taught in the State and
+city normal schools, and to open public kindergartens as fast as there
+are adequate teachers for them.
+
+Everything depends on the quality of the first kindergartners we
+train--their spiritual, moral and intellectual quality--which must be
+such as to operate in two ways: first, to do for the children the right
+thing; secondly, to educate the community to require it done as a
+general thing. Many characteristics of America give great encouragement.
+We are not dragged back, as they are in Europe, by old customs, whose
+roots are intertwined with the heart-strings of inherited sentiment. Our
+patriotic hearts fasten themselves on the great future that our fathers
+died to inaugurate. We must justify their ideal of universal equality,
+by an equal education, an equal opportunity for development of all our
+people. "The spirit that makes all things new," as the heart of
+childhood craves, and its hand is eager to enact, is "_every_ word that
+proceedeth out of the mouth of God," to make alive the human heart.
+Therefore we leave behind us--more and more--those conventions of the
+Old World that have made even the great work of educating rank as
+inferior to that which wields the sword of war. Some people groan at
+seeing how the growing facilities of getting money, which our
+institutions give to every man and woman of energy, is effacing the old
+distinctions of rank. But if our Culture may be made universal, by
+employing part of this money in making public education adequate, what
+ground will be left for _distinction of rank_? What pretext for
+exclusion will there be, when there are none rude and uncultivated to be
+excluded? That any distinction of ranks came among the children of God
+is incidental to free agency. Children know nothing of them--till we
+profane their golden age of innocence by revealing them. (Appendix, Note
+A.)
+
+
+
+
+LECTURE II.
+
+THE NURSERY.
+
+
+IT is my object to inspire, if I can, an enthusiasm for educating
+children strictly on Froebel's method, and no other; and I wish to
+justify myself by giving reasons for this; for I know that, at first
+sight, Americans start back from putting faith in any leader;
+immediately exclaiming, that they must be free to follow the light of
+their own minds.
+
+This sounds large and liberal, certainly; and no one sees the danger of
+yielding to any individual authority more than I do; but it is certain
+that nothing may make us so narrow, as a bigoted adherence to the rule
+of following the light of our own mind condignly. The light of our own
+individual mind may be darkness; it must, in any case, be that of a
+farthing candle, compared with Eternal Reason, "the light that lighteth
+every man that cometh into the world." The question is, do we
+distinguish between that greater light and our own idiosyncrasy, with a
+becoming and discriminating humility? I once heard a lady, whose name
+was Gurley, say to a witty gentleman, that she believed "in the total
+depravity of human nature from the experience of her own heart." Ah! but
+that is not quite fair, he replied, "for how do you know what is human
+nature and what is Gurleyism?" Here is tersely suggested the danger of
+the individualistic philosophy, which has developed itself into a new
+kind of bigotry in these later days, not less denunciatory in its
+_animus_ than any other; and which shuts up its votaries in a dungeon
+from the light of Universal experience. I acknowledge the legitimacy of
+the philosophy of individualism, as a protest against the glittering
+generality which theological philosophy had become, at the time when it
+arose; and as affirmation that God makes every man separately an eye,
+and if he would see into the Infinite Over-soul, he must look with it
+out of his own window. But this is only the way to begin to search for
+truth. If he is not self-intoxicated, every man soon learns that his
+window does not command the whole horizon, that God not only has given a
+window to him, but to every other man; that we are all free to look out
+of each others' windows, some being higher up in the tower of the common
+humanity than our own, commanding wider views; in fine that it is with
+_all_ the sons of man that "wisdom dwells," and they must
+inter-communicate with mutual reverence if they would know her well.
+Froebel had not been so wise, had he not, with reverent humility, sought
+what God says immediately to mothers and babes. You will not be wise if
+you do not look out of Froebel's window.
+
+The story I told you, in my last lecture, of the growth of Froebel's
+mind from his boyhood, suggested the fact that the common motherly
+instinct, purified of individual passion and caprice, and, understanding
+itself as the presence of the Living God overshadowing her, is the
+social atmosphere necessary to be breathed by every child who is to grow
+in wisdom and stature, and in favor with God and man.
+
+Froebel learned this primal fact or truth, first negatively, as it were,
+by lacking it in his own childish experience; and he verified it
+positively afterwards, by studying the method of unsophisticated
+mothers, at that earliest period of their children's lives, when, in
+order to keep them alive merely, the nurse must take the rule of her
+nursing from the needs which her heart divines, aided by the nursling's
+own expression of want and content--its tears and smiles.
+
+Let us then determine first, as he did, the nursery art, which is
+preliminary to that of the Kindergarten.
+
+By the primal miracle (_i.e._, wonder working) of nature, the mother
+finds in her arms a fellow-being, who has an immeasurable susceptibility
+of suffering, and an immeasurable desire of enjoyment, and an equally
+immeasurable force intent on compassing this desire, already in
+activity, but with no knowledge at all of the material conditions in
+which he is placed, to which he is subject, and by which he is limited
+in the exercise of this immense nature.
+
+As I have said before, every form of animal existence _but_ the human,
+is endowed with some absolute knowledge, enabling it to fulfil its
+limited sphere of relationship as unerringly as the magnetized needle
+turns to the pole, and, even with more or less of enjoyment; yet with no
+forethought. But the knowledge that is to guide the blind will of the
+human being, even to escape death in the first hour of its bodily life,
+exists substantially outside of its own individuality in the mother, or
+whoever supplies the mother's place.
+
+And throughout the existence of the human being, the forethought that is
+to enable him to appreciate his ever multiplying relations with his own
+kind, and which grows wider and sweeter as he fulfils the duties they
+involve, is essentially outside of himself as a mere individual; being
+found first in those who are in relation with him in the family,
+afterwards in social, national, cosmopolitan relationship; till at last
+he realizes himself to be in sonship with God, in whom all humanity,
+nations, families, individuals, "live and move and have their being."
+There is no absolute isolation or independency possible for a spiritual
+being. This is a truth involved in the very meaning of the word spirit,
+and revealed to every family on earth, by the ever recurring fact of the
+child born into the arms of a love that emparadises both parties, on
+which he lives more or less a pensioner throughout his whole existence,
+so far as he lives humanly, finding fullness of life at last in the
+clear vision and conscious communion of an Infinite Father, who has been
+revealing Himself all along, in the love of parent and child, brother
+and sister, husband and wife, friend, fellow-citizen and fellow-man.
+Christ said, that little children see the Father face to face, but
+surely not with the eyes of the body or of the understanding! They see
+him with the heart. And is it not true, that we never quite forget the
+child's vision in turning our eyes on lower things? for what but
+remembrance of our Heavenly Father's face is hope, "that springs eternal
+in the human breast?" What but this remembrance are the ideals of
+beauty, that haunt the savage and the sage? the sense of law that gives
+us our moral dignity, and in the saddest case, what but this are the
+pangs of remorse, in which, as Emerson has sung in his wonderful sphinx
+song, "lurks the joy that is sweetest?"
+
+Froebel has authority with me, because, in this great faith, making
+himself a little child, he received little children in the name (that
+is, as germinating forms) of the Divine humanity, with a simple
+sincerity, such as few seem to have done since Jesus claimed little
+children as the pure elements of the kingdom he came to establish on
+earth; and exhorted that, as they were such, they should be brought to
+him as the motherly instinct prompted, and declared that they were not
+to be forbidden (that is, hindered as all false education hinders.)
+
+As an American then, and more--as a human being, I acknowledge no
+authority except the union of love and thought in practical operation.
+But whenever I see this union in any one, to a greater degree than I
+have it in myself, I bow before that person, and _feel_ (which is the
+subtlest kind of knowing) that I am larger wiser, freer, more effective
+for good, by following and obeying him as a master for the time being.
+
+Therefore, after the study I have made of Froebel, and of the method
+with little children that he was fifty years discovering and elaborating
+into practical processes, whose _rationale_ and creative influence I
+perceive; I feel, as it were, _Divinely authorized_ to present him to
+you as an authority which you can reverently trust; and so be delivered
+from the uncertainties of your own narrow and crude notions,
+inexperienced and ignorant as you undoubtedly are, however talented.
+
+It is quite necessary for me to say, and for you to accept this now, or
+our short time together will be wasted. There is a time for criticism
+undoubtedly, and nothing is true that can not make itself good against
+"honest doubt." But as Sterne has said, "of all the cants that are
+canted in this canting world, though the cant of hypocrisy may be the
+worst, the cant of criticism is the most provoking. I would go fifty
+miles on foot to kiss the hand of that man, whose generous heart will
+give up the reins into his author's hands, for the time being, and let
+him lead him where he will." I am quoting from memory, and may forget
+the exact words; but the idea is, that the mood of self-surrendering
+reverence is the mood for profitable study, for it is to "become a
+little child," which Christ told his disciples was the condition of any
+one's becoming the greatest in the kingdom of Divine Truth.
+
+Let us begin, then, with reverently considering the new born child, as
+Froebel did; for that is to be "the light of all our seeing."
+
+A child is a living soul, from the very first; not a mere animal force,
+but a person, open to God on one side by his heart, which appreciates
+love, and on the other side to be opened to nature, by the reaction upon
+his sensibility of those beauteous forms of things that are the analysis
+of God's creative wisdom; and which, therefore, gives him a growing
+understanding, whereby his mere active force shall be elevated into a
+rational, productive will. For heart and will are, at first, blind to
+outward things and therefore inefficient, until the understanding shall
+be developed according to the order of nature.
+
+But during this process of its development, adult wisdom must supply the
+place of the child's wisdom, which is not, as yet, grown; that is--an
+educator must point out the way, genially, not peremptorily; for in
+following the educator's indications, the child must still act in a
+measure from himself. As he is irrefragably free, he will not always
+obey; he will try other paths--perhaps the contrary one--by way of
+testing whether he has life in himself. But unless he shall go a right
+way, he will accomplish nothing satisfactory and reproductive; and it is
+Froebel's idea to give him something to do, within the possible sphere
+of his affection and fancy, which shall be an opportunity of his making
+an experience of success, that shall stimulate him to desire, and
+thereby make him receptive of the guidance of creative law, which is the
+only true object for the obedience of a spiritual being.
+
+To the new born child, his own body is the whole universe; and the first
+impression he gets of it seems to come from his need of nutriment. But
+it is the mother, not the child, that responds to this want, by
+presenting food to the organ of taste, and producing a pleasurable
+impression which arouses the soul to _intend itself_ into the organ,
+which is developed to receive impression more and more perfectly, by the
+child's seeking for a repetition of the pleasure. For a time, whatever
+uneasiness a child feels, he attempts to remove by the exercise of this
+organ, through which he has gained his first pleasant impression of
+objective nature. Therefore is it, that his lips and tongue become his
+first means of examining the outward world into which he has been
+projected by his Creator.
+
+The ear seems to be the next organ of which the child becomes conscious,
+or through which he receives impressions of personal pleasure and pain;
+and here it is noticeable, that _rhythmical_ sound seems, from the very
+first, to give most pleasure; and is wonderfully effective to soothe the
+nerves, and remove uneasiness. All mothers and nurses sing to babies,
+as well as rock them, (which is _rhythmical_ motion,) and this pleasant
+impression on the ear diverts the child from intending himself
+exclusively into the organ of tasting. He now stretches himself into his
+ears, whose powers are developed by gently exercising their function of
+hearing.
+
+The child seems to taste and hear, before he begins to see anything more
+definite than the difference between light and darkness. By and by a
+salient point of light, it may be the light of a candle, catches and
+fixes his eye, and gives a distinct visual impression, which is
+evidently pleasurable, for the child's eye follows the light, showing
+that the soul intends itself into the organ of sight. Soon after, gay
+colors fix its gaze and evidently give pleasure. The eye for color is
+developed gradually, like the ear for music, by exercise, which being
+pleasurable becomes spontaneous.
+
+The whole body is the organ of touch; but as the hands are made
+convenient for grasping, to which the infant has an instinctive
+tendency, and the tips of the fingers are especially handy for touching,
+they become, by the intension of the mind into them, the special organ
+for examining things by touch, and getting impressions of qualities
+obvious to no other sense. When, as it sometimes happens, by
+malformation or maltreatment of them, the eyes fail to perform their
+functions, it is wonderful how much more the soul intends itself into
+the special organs of touch, developing them to such a degree, that a
+cultivated blind person seems almost to see with the tips of the
+fingers. This fact proves what I have been trying to impress on your
+minds, that the soul which spontaneously desires and wills enjoyment,
+takes possession and becomes conscious of its organs of sensuous
+perception, partly by an original impulse, given to it by the Creator,
+and partly, (which I want you especially to observe,) by the genial,
+sympathetic, intelligent, careful co-working of the mother and nurse;
+who, by what we call nursery play, gives a needed help to the child to
+accomplish this feat in a healthy and pleasurable manner. And we shall
+be better convinced of the virtue of this nursery play, if we consider
+the case of the neglected children of the very poor, so pathetically
+described by Charles Lamb. See essays on Popular Fallacies, No. 12.
+
+Madame Marenholtz-Bülow has happily remarked, in her preface to Jacob's
+Manual, _Le jardin des Enfans_, that "to develop and train the senses is
+not to pamper them." The organs of tasting and smelling do not require
+so much exercise by the duplicate action of the mother, as those of
+seeing and hearing. The former have for their end to build up the body;
+the latter to lead the child's mind out of the body, to that part of
+nature which connects him with other persons. The functions of both are
+equally worthy; but those of the latter belong to the child as a social
+and intellectual being. It is the mother's office to temper the
+exercises of each sense, so that they may limit and balance each other.
+And in order to limit those which are building up the body, so that they
+shall not absorb the child, the action of the others must be helped out.
+"Our bodies feel--where'er they be--against or with our will;" but to
+see and hear all that children can, requires exertion of will and this
+is coaxed out by the sympathetic action of others. Yet the functions of
+tasting or smelling are not to be banned. The Creator has made them
+delightful; and if others do their proper part, their exercise will
+never become harmful. To enjoy tasting and smelling is no less innocent
+than to enjoy seeing and hearing. There is no function of mind or body
+but may be performed Divinely. Milton shows insight into this truth by
+making Raphael sit and eat at table with man in Paradise; and he says
+some wonderful things upon the point, which will bear much study. And
+have we not in sacred tradition a symbol, still more venerable, of the
+truth, that the fire of spirit burns without consuming, and may
+transform the body without leaving visible residue? There are in Brown's
+philosophy (which does not penetrate into _all_ the mysteries of the
+rational soul and immortal spirit) some very instructive chapters on the
+social and moral relations of the grosser senses, (as taste, smell and
+touch are sometimes called.) It is the part of rational education to
+understand all these things thoroughly, and adjust the spontaneous
+activities by subordinating them to the end of a harmonious and
+beneficent social life. The Lord's Supper may be made to illustrate this
+general human duty.
+
+There is doubtless marked difference in the original energy of life, in
+different children. Young--but not too young, happy, healthy, loving
+parents, have the most vigorous, lively and harmoniously organized
+children; but in all cases, the impulse of life must be met and
+cherished by the tender, attractive, inspiring force of motherly love;
+which with caressing tone and invoking smile, peers into the infant's
+eyes, and importunately calls forth the new person, who, as her
+instinctive motherly faith and love assure her, is there; and whom she
+yearns to make conscious of himself in self-enjoyment. The time comes
+when the little body has become so far subject to the new soul, that an
+answering smile of recognition signalizes the arrival upon the shores of
+mortal being of "that light which never was on sea or land," another
+immortal intelligence! It is only the smile of the intelligent human
+face, that can call forth this smile of the child in the first instance;
+but let this glad mutual recognition of souls take place once, and both
+parties will seek to repeat the delight, again and again. Few persons,
+indeed, get so chilled by the sufferings and disappointments, and so
+hardened by the crimes of human life, but on the sight of a little
+child, they are impelled to invoke this answering smile by making
+themselves, for the moment, little children again; seeking and finding
+that communion with our kind which is the Alpha and Omega of life.
+
+Do not say that I am wandering, fancifully, from the serious work which
+we are upon: I am only beginning at the beginning. We can only
+understand the child, and what we are to do for it in the Kindergarten,
+by understanding the first stage of its being--the pre-intellectual one
+in the nursery. The body is the first garden in which God plants the
+human soul, "to dress and to keep it." The loving mother is the first
+gardener of the human flower. Good nursing is the first word of
+Froebel's gospel of child-culture.
+
+The process of taking possession of the organs, that I have just
+described, is never performed perfectly unless children are nursed
+genially. If bitter and disagreeable things are presented to the organ
+of the taste, they are rejected with the whole force of a will, which is
+too blind in its ignorance to find the thing it wants, but vindicates
+its irrefragable freedom of choice by uttering cries of fright, pain and
+anger, as it shrinks back, instead of throwing itself forward into
+nature. If the cruel thing is repeated, the nerves are paralyzed, or at
+least rendered morbid, especially when rude untender handling outrages
+the sense of touch. When rough and discordant sounds assail the ear, or
+too sharply salient a light, the eye, these organs will be injured, and
+may be rendered useless for life. The neglected and maltreated child is
+dull of sense, and lifeless, or morbidly impulsive, possibly savagely
+cruel and cunning, in sheer self-defence. The pure element and first
+condition of perfect growth, is the joy that responds to the electric
+touch of love.
+
+Underlying and outmeasuring all this delicate development of the organs
+of the five senses, is the whole body's instinct of motion, which is the
+primal action of will. The perfectly healthy body of a little child,
+when it is awake, is always in motion--more or less intentionally. When
+asleep, there is the circulation of the blood, and pulsation of the
+solids of the body, corresponding to the act of breathing, which is
+involuntary; and any interruption of these produces disease--their
+suspension, death. But the motion which makes the limbs agile, and the
+whole body elastic, and gradually to become an obedient servant, is
+voluntary, intentional, and can be helped by that sympathetic action of
+others, which we call _playing with the child_. Froebel's rich
+suggestions on this play are contained in his mother's cossetting songs;
+and I am glad to tell you that two English ladies, a poet and a
+musician, have translated and set to music this unique book; and that
+just now it has been published by Wilkie, Wood & Co., in London. It
+suggests all kinds of little gymnastics of the hands, fingers, feet,
+toes and legs, for these are the child's first play things; and also the
+first symbols of intelligent communication, giving the core and
+significance to all languages.[1]
+
+I think that a baby never _begins_ to play, in the first instance, but
+responds to the mother and nurse's play, and learns thereby its various
+members and their powers and uses; and when at last it jumps, runs,
+walks by itself, which it cannot begin to do without the help of others,
+it is prepared to say _I_, with a clear sense of individuality.
+
+In analyzing the process of a child's learning to walk, we see most
+clearly the characteristic difference between the human person and the
+animals below man in the scale of relation. The little chicken runs
+about of itself, as soon as it is out of the shell; but the human child,
+even after all its limbs are grown, and though he has been moving
+himself on all fours by means of the floor, and supporting himself by
+means of the furniture to which he clings, _does not walk_. He will only
+stand alone, unsupported, when he sees that there are guarding arms
+round about him, all ready to catch him if he should fall. He seems to
+know instinctively, that all the force of the earth's gravitation is
+against him. He does not know that he may balance it by his personal
+power. His body weighs upon his soul like a mountain, precisely because
+he is intelligent of it as an object, loves it as a means of pleasure,
+and dreads its power of giving pain to him. The little darling stands,
+perhaps between the knees of his father, whose arms are round about him;
+the mother opens her loving arms to receive him, and calls him to her
+embrace; the way is short between, and three steps will be sufficient,
+but where is the courageous faith to say to this mountain of a body, "be
+removed to another place?" It is not in himself; he cannot produce it
+any more than he can take himself up by his own ears. It is in the
+mother; for it is she, not he, who has the knowledge of the yet
+unexerted power which is flowing into the child from the Creator. Only
+by the electric touch of her faith in him does his faith in himself
+flash out in answer to her look and voice of cheer, and he rushes to her
+arms. It is the doing of the deed which gives to himself the knowledge
+of the power that is in him. He repeats it again and again, seeming to
+wish to be more and more certain of his being the cause of so great
+effect. Thus cause and effect are discriminated, and "to him that hath"
+a sense of individuality, "shall be given," forevermore, a growing power
+over the body, to which no measure can be stated. Even on the vulgar
+plane of the professional tumbler, a man's power over his body seems,
+sometimes, to be absolute and miraculous. But the annals of heroism and
+martyrdom are full of facts that go to prove to all who consider them
+profoundly, that the immaterial soul is sovereign, when, by recognizing
+all its relations, it subjects the individual to the universal, and
+becomes thereby entirely spiritual, (which is man reciprocating with
+God; becoming more and more conscious forever.[2])
+
+From what has been said of the soul's taking possession of the body and
+its several organs, by exercising the functions of tasting, hearing,
+seeing, smelling, touching, grasping, moving the limbs, and at last
+taking up the whole body into itself in the act of walking, we see that
+it is all done, even the last, by virtue of the social nature.
+
+Froebel took his clue from this fact, a primal one, and never let it go,
+and it is of the greatest importance that it be understood clearly, that
+conscious individuality, which gives the sense of free personality, the
+starting point, as it were, of intelligent will, is perfectly consistent
+with and even dependent on the simultaneous development of the social
+principle in all its purity and power.
+
+We see a sad negative proof of this, in asylums for infants abandoned by
+their mothers, or given up by them through stress of poverty. There is
+one of these in New York city, into which are received poor little
+things in the first weeks of their existence. Every thing is done for
+their bodily comfort which the general human kindness can devise. They
+have clean warm cradles and clothes, good milk, in short everything but
+that caressing motherly play, which goes from the personal heart to the
+personal heart. That is one thing general charity cannot supply; it is
+the personal gift of God to the mother for her child, and none but she
+can be the sufficient medium of it, and therefore, undoubtedly it is,
+that almost all new-born children in foundling hospitals die; or, if
+they survive, are found to be feeble-minded or idiotic. They seem to
+sink into their animal natures, and belie the legend man written on
+their brows, showing none of that beautiful fearlessness and courageous
+affectionateness that characterise the heartily welcomed, healthy,
+well-cared-for human infant. On the contrary, they show a dreary apathy,
+morbid fearfulness, or a belligerent self-defence, anticipative of other
+forms of the cruel neglect which has been their dreary experience.
+
+Taking a hint from observations of this kind, together with the bitter
+experiences of his own childhood, Froebel supplied to the mother or
+nurse some playthings for the baby, which might continue to improve the
+various organs of its body, by making the exercise of their functions a
+social delight.
+
+What is called the first gift, he proposes should be used in the nursery
+first. It consists of six soft balls, not too large to be grasped by a
+little hand, and the use of which in the nursery, is suggested by a
+little first book for mothers, that has been translated from Jacob's _Le
+jardin des Enfans_.[3] I think it is important for the Kindergartner to
+know what Froebel thought could be done for the development of the
+infant in the nursery, since if it has not been done there, she must
+contrive to remedy the evil in the Kindergarten. You will bear with me,
+therefore, if I go quite into the minutiæ of this matter. It will open
+your eyes to observe delicately, as Froebel did.
+
+He proposed that the red ball should be first presented. He had observed
+that a bright light concentrated, as in a candle, first excited the
+organ of sight and stimulated its action. Hence he inferred that a
+bright color would do the same, a neutral tint would not be seen at all
+probably. The red ball is not quite so salient and exciting as the light
+of a candle, but on that account it can be gazed at longer, without
+producing a painful re-action. The child will have a pleasure in
+grasping it, and will probably carry it to his lips; but as it is
+woolen, it will not be especially agreeable to the delicate organ of
+taste. It will all the more be looked at therefore, and give the
+impression of red. Froebel proposes that it shall be called the red
+ball, in order that the impression of the word _red_ on the ear, shall
+blend in memory with the impression of the color on the eye. As long as
+the child seems amused with the red ball, he would not have another
+color introduced, because he thought it took time for the eye to get a
+clear and strong impression of one color, and this should be done before
+it was tried with a contrasted impression. But by and by the blue ball,
+as the greatest contrast, may be given and named; and all the little
+plays suggested in the mother's book be repeated with the blue ball; and
+then the yellow ball should be given with its name; and then the three
+be given together, and the baby be asked to choose the blue, or red, or
+yellow one. By attaching a string to them, and whirling them, or letting
+the infant do so, it is surprising how long the child will amuse itself
+with these balls, and what pleasure colors alone give, especially when
+combined with motion.
+
+The secondary colors may afterwards be added to the treasury for the
+eye, with the same carefulness to secure completeness and distinctness
+of impression; and to associate the color with the word that names it;
+for language, the special organ of social communion, should be
+addressed to the child from the first, though its complete attainment
+and use is the crown of all education.
+
+Smiles and sounds, proceeding out of the mouth, are the first languages,
+and begin to fix the little child's eyes and attention upon the mouth of
+the mother, from which issue the tones that are sweetest to hear, and
+especially when in musical cadence. But the child understands the words
+addressed to him long before he himself begins to articulate; for
+language is no function of the individual, but only of the consciously
+social being, yearning to find himself in another.
+
+There is a reciprocal communication between infants and adults that
+precedes the difficult act of articulation. This we call the natural
+language, and it is common to all nations, being mutually intelligible,
+as is proved by deaf mutes from remote countries who understand each
+other at once. But this natural language has a very narrow scope. It
+serves to communicate instinctive wants of body and heart, but does not
+serve the fine purposes of intellectual communication, nor minister any
+considerable intellectual development. These signs are very general,
+while every word in its origin has represented a particular object in
+nature. In analyzing any language, we find that the names given to the
+body and its members, and to the actions and facts of life, without
+which no human society can exist, are the nucleus or central words that
+characterize it, and from which the whole national rhetoric is derived.
+Hence there is a value for the mind in associating the words and action
+of even such a little play as "here we go up, up, up, and here we go
+down, down, down, and here we go backwards and forwards, and here we go
+round, round, round," with other rhymes and plays of an analogous
+character that are found wherever there are mothers and children.
+
+We have observed that the moment of first accomplishing the feat of
+running alone, seemed to be that of the child's beginning to realize
+himself to be a person, but that even, in this act, he was dependent
+upon his mother; that his bodily independence was the gift of her faith
+in that within him, which is essentially superior to the body and can
+command it as instrumentality. To make it instrumentality is, more and
+more, a delight to the child, in which his mother sympathises; and by
+this sympathy aids him. All his plays involve exercise of the power of
+commanding his body. As soon as a child can move it from place to place,
+his desire to exercise power on nature outside of himself increases, and
+he is prompted to measure strength with other children. If children were
+mere individuals they would merely quarrel, as Hobbes says; but being
+social beings also, they tend to unite forces and aid one another to
+compass desired ends. By so doing, they rise to a greater sense of life,
+and brotherly love is evolved. But in the development of the social
+life, the more developed and cultivated elder must come in, to keep both
+parties steady to some object outside of themselves, which it takes
+their union to reach. Children can be taught to play together, by
+engaging their powers of imitation, and addressing their fancy. Every
+mother knows, that in the first opening of children's social life, their
+bodily energies are stimulated to such a degree, that it is quite as
+much as she or one nurse can do, to tend two or three children together;
+and by the time they are three years old, the family nursery becomes too
+narrow a sphere for them. It is then that they are to be received into a
+Kindergarten, whose very numbers will check the energy of activity a
+little, by presenting a greater variety of objects to be contemplated;
+and because social action must be orderly and rhythmical, in order to be
+agreeable. This, a properly prepared Kindergartner knows, and by her
+sympathetic influence and power over the childish imagination, she will
+bring gradually all the laws of the child's being to the conscious
+understanding, beginning with this rhythmical one at the center.
+
+The movement plays which Froebel invented, express, in dramatic form,
+some simple fact of nature or some childish fancy, for which he gives,
+as accompaniment, a descriptive song set to a simple melody. The
+children learn both to recite and to sing the words of the song, and
+then the movements of the play. To them the whole reason for the play
+seems to be the delight it gives, the exhilaration of body, the
+amusement of mind. But the Kindergartner knows that it serves higher
+ends, and that it is at least always a lesson in order, enabling them to
+begin to enact upon earth "Heaven's first law."
+
+Do not say I am making too solemn a matter of these movement plays, to
+the Kindergartner. Unless she remembers that this very serious aim
+underlies every play which she conducts, she will not do justice to the
+children. Law or order is one and the same thing with beauty; and play
+is hindrance if it is not beautiful. When she insists upon the children
+governing themselves, so far as to keep their proper places in relation
+to each other; to forbear exerting undue force, and to seek to give the
+necessary aid to others by exerting sufficient force, the beautiful
+result justifies her will to the minds of the children, and commands
+their ready obedience. She must call forth by addressing the sense of
+personal responsibility in each child; and this, if done tenderly and
+with faith, it is by no means difficult to do. The reward to the
+children is instant in the success of the play, and therefore not
+thought of as reward of merit. It is a form of obedience that really
+elevates the little one higher in the scale of being as an individual,
+without danger of the re-action of pride and self-conceit; for self is
+swallowed up in social joy.
+
+When I was in Germany, I went, as I believe I told you, to those
+Kindergartens, which were taught by Froebel's own pupils, and I found
+that in these the movement plays were the most prominent feature of the
+practice. More than one was played in the course of the three or four
+hours, and especially when the session was as much as four hours. It was
+done in a very exact though not constrained manner, and much stress
+seemed to be laid upon every part. The singing was not done by three or
+four, but all the children were encouraged to sing. Often the little
+timider ones were called on to repeat the rhyme alone, without singing
+it, and then to sing it alone with the teacher. Thus the stronger and
+abler were exercised (as they must be so much in real life) in waiting,
+sympathetically, for the weaker. A great deal of care was also exercised
+in regard to the form and character of the play itself. Those of
+Froebel's own suggestion and invention were the preferred ones. They
+consisted in imitating, in rather a free and fanciful manner, the
+actions of the gentler animals, hares and rabbits, fishes, bees and
+birds. There were plays in which children impersonated animals,
+evidently for the purpose of awakening their sympathies and eliciting
+their kindness towards them. Many of the labors of human beings, common
+mechanics, such as cooperage, the work of the farmer, that of the
+miller, trundling the wheelbarrow, sawing wood, &c., were put into form
+by simple rhymes. The children sometimes personated machinery, sometimes
+great natural movements. In one instance I saw the solar system
+performed by a company of children that had been in the Kindergarten
+four years, but none of them were over seven years old. Mere movement is
+in itself so delightful and salutary for children that a very little
+action of the imitative or fanciful power is necessary, just to take the
+rudeness out of bodily exercise without destroying its exhilaration.
+
+My Kindergarten Guide, the revised edition of which is published by E.
+Steiger, of New York, contains some of the principal plays, set to
+Froebel's own music. I would gladly have printed all that Madame Ronge
+published in her Guide, which is out of print, but for the expense.
+
+But it is by no means merely a moral discipline that is aimed at in the
+Kindergarten, as you will see when the bearings upon their habits of
+thought, of all that the children do, are pointed out to you, in the
+various occupations, which are sedentary sports, though the moral
+discipline is the paramount idea, and never must be lost sight of one
+moment by the Kindergartner. We mean by moral discipline, exercising the
+children to _act_ to the end of making _others_ happy, rather than of
+merely enjoying _themselves_. If the individual enjoyment is not a
+social enjoyment, it is disorderly and vitiating. But the individual is
+lifted into the higher order for which he is created, by merely
+enjoying, whenever his enjoyment is _social_. I am of course speaking of
+that season of life under seven years of age, when the mind is yet
+undeveloped to the comprehension of humanity as a whole; when the good,
+the true and the beautiful are nothing as abstractions, and can only be
+realized to their experience and brought within the sphere of their
+senses, by being embodied in persons whom they love, reverence or trust.
+The words _good_, _beautiful_, _kind_, _true_, get their meaning for
+children by their intercourse with such persons. Specific knowledge of
+God cannot be opened up in them by any words, unless these words have
+first got their meaning by being associated with human beings who bear
+traces that they can appreciate of His ineffable perfections. To liken
+God's love to the mother's love, brings home a conception of it to
+children, for _hers_ they realize every day.
+
+The connecting link between the nursery and Kindergarten is the First
+Gift of Froebel's series, being used in both. The nursery use will have
+taught the names of the six colors, red, orange, yellow, green, blue and
+purple, and made it a favorite play thing. It is all the better if the
+child has had no other playthings prepared for him. He has doubtless
+used the chairs, footstools, and whatever else he could lay his hands
+on, to embody his childish fancies; and it is to be hoped he has been
+allowed to play out of doors with the earth, and has made mud pies to
+his heart's content--not tormented with any sense of the--at his
+age--artificial duty of keeping his clothes clean. That duty is to be
+reserved for the Kindergarten age, and will come duly, by proper
+development of the mental powers.
+
+In the Kindergarten, the ball-plays are to become more skillful, and the
+teacher must see that the child learns to throw the ball so that it may
+bound back into his own hands; so that it may bound into the hands of
+another who is in such position as to catch its reflex motion. The
+children must learn to toss it up and catch it again themselves. When
+standing in two rows they can throw it back and forwards to each other.
+When standing in a circle, the balls may be made to circulate with
+rapidity, passing from hand to hand, the children singing the
+accompanying song.
+
+"Who'll buy my eggs?" is a good play to exercise them in counting. And
+all these movement plays with the ball are admirable for exercising the
+body, giving it agility, grace of movement, precision of eye and touch.
+These things will accrue all the more surely if it is kept play, and no
+constraining sense of duty is called on. As most of these plays are not
+solitary, they become the occasion for children's learning to adjust
+themselves to each other, and the teacher must watch that hilarity do
+not become violence or rudeness to each other, but furtherance of one
+another's fun; and occasionally, in enforcing this harmony, a child must
+be removed from the play, and made to stand in a corner alone, or even
+outside the room, till the desire of rejoining his companions shall
+quicken him to be sufficiently considerate of them to make pleasant play
+possible. All children in playing together learn justice and social
+graces, more or less, because they find that without fair play their
+sport is spoilt; but this play must be supervised by the Kindergartner,
+in order that there may not be injustice, selfishness and quarreling. A
+Kindergartner, who is not a martinet, and who is herself a good
+play-fellow, will magnetize the children, and inspire such general good
+will that unpleasantness will be foreclosed in a great measure; but a
+company of children are generally of such variety of temperament and
+different degrees of bodily strength, have so often come from such
+inadequate nursery life, that the regulating Kindergartner has a good
+deal to do to prevent discords and secure their kindness to each other,
+and the reasonable little self-sacrifices of common courtesy. But she
+will find a word is often enough; the question, Is that right? Would you
+like to have any one else do so? It is sometimes necessary to bring all
+the play to a full stop, in order to bring the common conscience to
+pronounce upon the fairness of what some one is doing. I would suggest
+that the question be asked not of the class, but of the individual
+culprit, whether what is being done wrong, is right or wrong? The child,
+with the eyes of the class upon him, will generally be eager to confess
+and reform, because the moral sense is quite as strong as self-love, and
+especially when re-inforced by the presence of others. It is not worth
+while to make too much of little faults, and the first indication of
+turning to the right must be accepted; the child is grateful for being
+believed in and trusted, and the wrong doing is a superficial thing; the
+moral sentiment is the substantial being of the child.
+
+Of all the materials used in Kindergarten, the colored balls are most
+purely _playthings_; and there are none of the plays so liable to be
+riotous as the ball plays. There is the greatest difficulty in keeping
+children from being _too_ noisy, and it is not wise to make too much of
+a point of it. The ball seems a thing of life. It is very difficult for
+them to get good command of it. It excites them to run after it; and
+shouts and laughter are irrepressible. But there are reasonable limits.
+The Kindergartner, in conversation before hand, should make them see
+that they may get too noisy, and tire each other, and she will easily
+induce them to agree to stop short when she shall ring the bell, and be
+willing to stand still while she counts twenty-five, or watches the
+second hand of her watch go around a quarter, a half, or a whole minute,
+as may be agreed upon. This can be made a part of the play, and to pause
+and be perfectly still in this way, will give them some conception of
+the length of a minute, and teach self-command, as well as make a
+pleasant variety.
+
+The ball plays should always be accompanied and alternated, in the
+Kindergarten, with conversations upon the ball, naming the colors,
+telling which are primary, which secondary, and illustrating the
+difference by giving them pieces of glass of pure carmine, blue and
+yellow, and letting them put two upon each other, and hold them towards
+the window, and so realize the combinations of the secondary colors. Ask
+them, afterwards, to tell what colors make orange, or purple, or green;
+and what color connects the orange and green; or the purple and orange,
+or the green and purple.
+
+One of the other exercises, on the day of using the First Gift may be
+sewing with the colored threads on the cards; and the colors may be
+arranged so as to illustrate the connections, &c., just learned. The use
+of the First Gift need only be once a week. It will then be a fresh
+pleasure every time during the whole of the Kindergarten course, even if
+it should last three years. After the children have become perfectly
+familiar with the primary and secondary colors, their combinations and
+connections, the lessons on colors may be varied, by telling them that
+tints of the primary colors and of the secondary colors, are made by
+adding white to them; and shades of them, (which will, of course, be
+darker,) by adding black to them. This may be illustrated by flowers, as
+may various combinations of colors. A very little child, whom it was
+hard to train even to the hilarious and gay plays, and whose attention
+could not easily be fixed, surprised a teacher one day by his aptitude
+in detecting what color had been mixed with red to make a very glorious
+pink in a phlox. This child liked to sew, but was very impatient of
+putting his needle into any special holes. It proved to be the pleasure
+of handling the colored yarns, and he was always eager to change them
+and form new combinations. It may not be irrelevant to say here, in
+regard to ball playing, from which I have digressed to colors, that the
+ball is the last plaything of men as well as the first with children.
+
+The object teaching upon the ball is strictly inexhaustible. Children
+learn practically, by means of it, the laws of motion. Beware of any
+strictly scientific teaching of these laws _in terms_. You may make
+children familiar with the phenomena of the laws of incidence and
+reflection, by simply telling them that if they strike the ball straight
+against the wall opposite, it will bound straight back to them, and then
+ask them whether it returns to them when they strike it in a slanting
+direction. By and by this knowledge can be used to give meaning to a
+scientific expression. It is a first principle that the object, motion,
+or action, should precede the _word_ that names them. This is Froebel's
+uniform method, and the reason is, that when the scientific study does
+come, it shall be substantial mental life, and not mere superficial
+talk. It is the laws of _things_ that are the laws of _thought_; and
+thought must precede all attempt at logic, or logic will be deceptive,
+not reasonable. Most erroneous speculation has its roots in mistakes
+about words, which it is fatal to divorce from what they express of
+nature, or to use without taking in their full meaning.
+
+In the easy mood of mind that attends the lively play of childhood,
+impressions are made clearly; and it should be the care of the educator
+to have all the child's notions associated with significant words, as
+can only be done by his becoming their companion in the play, and
+talking about it, as children always incline to do. It is half the
+pleasure of their play, to represent it in words, as they are playing.
+In the nursery, the mothers play with the child, and all her dealings
+with it, are expressed in words that are important lessons in language;
+and together with language, we give a lesson in manners, by first
+trotting a child gently, and then jouncingly, to the words, "This is the
+way the gentle folks go, this is the way the gentle folks go; and this
+is the way the country folks go, this is the way the country folks
+go--bouncing and jouncing and jumping so." To describe what they are
+doing in little rhymes when playing ball, makes it a mental as well as
+physical play of faculty, and Froebel published a hundred little rhymes,
+and the music for as many ball plays.
+
+It is not an unimportant lesson for children to learn, that the same
+things seem different in different circumstances. The fact that white
+light is composed of different colored rays can be illustrated by giving
+the children prisms to hold up in the sunshine; and by calling their
+attention to the splendid colors of the sky at sunset and sunrise, when
+the clouds act as prisms, and to the rainbow. Children of the
+Kindergarten age, will be so much engaged with the beautiful phenomenon,
+they will not be likely to ask questions as to how the light is
+separated by the prism and clouds; they will rest in the fact. But if,
+by chance, analytic reflection has supervened, and they do, then a large
+ball on which all the six colors are arranged in lines meridian-wise, to
+which a string is attached at one pole, or both poles, can be given
+them, and they be told to whirl it very swiftly. This will present the
+phenomenon of the merging of the colors to the eye by motion, so that
+the ball looks whitish from which you can proceed to speak of light as
+being composed of multitudinous little balls, of the colors of the
+rainbow, in motion, and so looking white.
+
+If some uncommon little investigator should persist to ask why things
+seem to be other than they are, he must be plainly told, that the reason
+is in something about his eyes, which he cannot understand now, but will
+learn by and by, when he goes to school and learns _optics_.
+
+Children are only to be _entertained_ in the Kindergarten, with the
+facts of nature that develop the organs of perception, but a skillful
+teacher who reads Tyndall's charming books and the photographic
+journals, may bring into the later years of the Kindergarten period many
+pretty phenomena of light and colors, which shall increase the stock of
+facts, on which the scientific mind, when it shall be developed, may
+work, or which the future painter may make use of in his art.
+
+When Allston painted his great picture of Uriel, whose background was
+the sun, he thought out carefully the means of producing the dazzling
+effect, and drew lines of all the rainbow colors in their order, side by
+side, after having put on his canvass a ground of the three primary
+colors mixed. When the picture was first exhibited at Somerset House,
+the effect was dazzling, and it was bought at once by Lord Egremont, in
+a transport of delight; and for twice the sum the artist put upon it,
+that is, six hundred guineas. I do not know whether time may not have
+dimmed its brilliancy, since paint is of the earth, earthy; but to paint
+the sun at high noon, and have it a success, even for a short time, is a
+great feat; and art, in this instance, took counsel of science
+deliberately, according to the artist's confession. But perfect sensuous
+impressions of color and its combinations, were the basis of both the
+science and the art.
+
+This lecture is getting too long, and I will close by saying, that the
+First Gift has, for its most important office, to develop the organ of
+sight, which grows by seeing. Colors arouse _intentional_ seeing by the
+delightful impression they make. I believe that _color-blindness_,
+(which our army examinations have proved to be as common as _want of ear
+for music_,) may be cured by intentional exercise of the organ of sight
+in a systematic way; just as _ear for music_ may be developed in those
+who are not born with it. Lowell Mason proved, by years of experiment in
+the public schools, that the musical ear may be formed, in all cases, by
+beginning gently with little children, giving graduated exercises, so
+agreeable to them as to arouse their will to _try to hear_, in order to
+reproduce.
+
+That you may receive a sufficiently strong impression of the fact, that
+the organs of perception actually grow by exercise _with intention_, I
+will relate to you a fact that came under my own observation.
+
+A young friend of mine became a pupil of Mr. Agassiz, who gave him,
+among his first exercises, two fish scales to look at through a very
+powerful microscope, asking him to find out and tell all their
+differences. At first they appeared exactly alike, but on peering
+through the microscope, all the time that he dared to use his eyes, for
+a month, he found them full of differences; and he afterwards said, that
+"it was the best month's work he ever did, to form _the scientific eye_
+which could detect differences ever after, _at a glance_," and proved to
+him an invaluable talent, and gave him exceptional authority with
+scientists.
+
+FOOTNOTES:
+
+[1] An American translation has been published by Lee & Shepard, Boston.
+
+[2] Since this lecture was written and delivered in Boston, I have
+received from Europe a French version of the Baroness Crombrugghe's
+translation of Froebel's _Education of Man_, and find that the first
+chapters analyze the first and second stages of development so much, in
+the way that I have done, that it gives me, on the one hand, confidence
+in myself as a true interpreter of Froebel, and on the other, new
+confidence in Froebel as a scientific observer and recorder of what I
+have been accused of founding on a merely sentimental knowledge. But
+scientific knowledge, or that gained by the exercise of the
+understanding, and sentimental knowledge, or what is gained by the
+intuitions of the heart, must necessarily correspond if the
+understanding is sound and the heart has been kept diligently to the
+issues of life. Mr. Emerson calls the intellect sensibility, and there
+is a fine meaning in this. Is there not analogous instruction in calling
+the heart apprehension? What are love, justice, beauty, &c., but
+apprehensions of the primal relations established by God? Can the
+understanding have sensibility to them, unless apprehension of them
+exists from the beginning?
+
+In the June, July and August numbers of the _Kindergarten Messenger_,
+for 1874, will be found translations of the first chapters of Froebel's
+book, above mentioned. I began in February to print the translation of
+the introduction, which will be finished in the May number, and then
+will follow the first chapter, entitled "The Nursling," and in the
+following numbers the subsequent chapters, on the child's development
+during the Kindergarten era. This work of Froebel's was published at an
+earlier period of his career than 1840, when he began to devote himself
+almost entirely to the first stage of education, which, as he grew
+older, he felt to be the most important, because it enfolds the germs of
+all later developments.
+
+[3] It is sold for ten cents by Hammett, publisher, in Brattle street,
+Boston.
+
+
+
+
+LECTURE III.
+
+DISCIPLINE.
+
+
+SINCE the kindergartner is to receive the child from the nursery, and
+half of the work in the kindergarten is what ought to have been done in
+the nursery, I will give another lecture upon what Froebel thought the
+nursery ought to do for religious nurture; since, if it has not been
+done in the nursery, it must be done in the kindergarten.
+
+We have seen that the soul takes possession of the organs of sense
+gradually, by tasting, hearing, seeing, smelling, and touching that
+which is agreeable; and that the continuous exercise of the organs
+develops them up to a certain though indefinite limit to finer
+susceptibility of impression. We have seen that by exercising the limbs,
+the soul takes possession of them in particular and in general. Thus the
+nursery plays, improvised instinctively by all mothers, Froebel has
+enlarged, describing in his _Mother's Book_ various duplicate movements
+of the limbs, especially of the hands, that, with the accompanying
+songs, have for their end, besides physical health, to make the mind
+discriminate various parts of the body and know their several forms and
+functions. This is the beginning of human education.
+
+"Patty-cake" teaches a child that he has hands and fingers; "This little
+pig goes to market, this one stays at home," that he has toes. It is the
+child's own body that first furnishes the objects of his attention to be
+associated with words. From the beginning it is the instinct of the
+maternal nurse to talk to the child, which attracts him to observe the
+organs of speech; and this prompts the sympathetic use of his own
+organs. Speech is a function distinctively human, which, beginning in
+the nursery, is carried on carefully in the kindergarten, creating the
+sphere of the intellectual life; for words support the operation of
+thinking.
+
+From all that I said of the _modus operandi_ of the child's taking
+possession of his body in the nursery period, you see that childish
+action is involved in the mother's action. It is _her_ wisdom, such as
+it may be, which must be the guide of the child's will, as it is brought
+gradually out of the blindness of ignorance; and it is she, not the
+child, who is responsible for the perfection of this part of the child's
+life.
+
+And is not this, on the whole, the common sense of mankind? Does any
+sane person hold a baby, up to three years old, and often, indeed, much
+later, responsible for the state of its temper, or for the rightfulness
+of its action?
+
+Nevertheless, the child is a moral person all this time, and it is of
+the last importance to his subsequent moral life whether or not his
+temper has been kept sweet, and his action according to law, or
+discordant. Discordant action must have a bad reactionary effect upon
+the temper, and interrupt or retard the growth of the several organs of
+sense and of motion. Hence the mother or nurse must not neglect to use
+her power wisely as well as gently to prevent these evils, by duplicate
+movements that are rhythmic, and calculated to bring about some end that
+the child's mind may easily grasp.
+
+It is instinctive with every one, as soon as he begins to play with a
+child, whether it be reasonable or not, to talk to it about its being
+good or bad, although a little child cannot be good or bad, but only
+orderly or disorderly; and there is no little danger to his moral and
+spiritual future in anticipating by our words the workings of his
+conscience before it has the conditions for its development. One of
+these conditions is such a sense of individuality as enables the child
+to say "I," with which it presently combines such perception of
+relationship to others as will say, "I ought,"--a phrase that occurs in
+all languages, and means something very different from "I will." It is
+of the greatest importance to keep this distinction in mind, for an
+imposed or artificial conscience almost certainly forecloses the natural
+or inspired conscience,--a truth largely illustrated by the history both
+of families and of nations, from which we learn that periods of
+corruption and wild license invariably follow periods of extreme
+restraint and asceticism. And all conscientious action and moral
+judgment in children also presupposes _thinking_, which is a process
+that does not begin until after much repetition of impressions, being a
+reflective act, which associates impressions with specific things and
+actions (as the etymology of the word suggests). Mere reception of
+impressions is passive; but to compare impressions of difference or
+similarity (which individualizes _things_) is _active_. Therefore
+thinking and putting thoughts into words includes comparison and
+inference, and really _produces_ the human understanding, which we do
+not bring into the world with us, as we do our heart and will. Before
+there is a possibility of conscience or any moral judgment properly so
+called, the child's affections (or feeling of relation with other
+persons) must be cultivated by the mother's genial care, directing
+mental activity towards fellow-beings, instead of leaving the heart to
+turn back and stagnate upon self. The more impressible a child is, the
+more important is the mother's or kindergartner's providential care of
+his affections during this irresponsible, pre-intellectual period of his
+life.
+
+I think the most frightfully selfish beings I have ever known were
+endowed with great natural sensibility, which was left to concentrate
+upon self, because the claims made by the sensibility of others were not
+early enough presented to the imagination of their hearts. By the growth
+of personal affections, the individual intensifies the feeling of
+individuality, which first comes to him by his having taken such
+possession of his body as enabled him to run alone; and this growth,
+whether intentionally directed towards that combination of his soul and
+body, which he begins to call himself or "I," or directed toward others,
+to whom he clings at first as part of himself (their embrace of him
+being necessary to his comfort), is cherished by the duplicate action of
+the mother. She moulds his heart in her heart, as she has moulded his
+bodily activity by her care and cheering sympathy, when helping out the
+power of his limbs in walking and manipulation. She half creates the
+child's generous and devout affections, if she is herself faithful to
+their proper objects, starting him on the way of a brotherly humanity
+and a filial adoration of the common Father, long before the
+understanding has completely discerned the objects of these human and
+divine affections, which must be blended in order to continue vital and
+pure. But the moral and religious is the most delicate region of the
+child's life, the _holy of holies_, into which "fools incontinently
+rush, though angels fear to tread." She can only be the mother of the
+soul as well as of the body of her child, on condition of being herself
+rich in love of others and in piety to God.
+
+Froebel suggests this in the introductory poems of _Die Mutter Spiele
+und Kose Lieder_. The first five of these are the mother's communings
+with herself upon the emotions that arise in her heart, as she nurses
+her baby in her arms, and realizes that to her and her husband has been
+sent a living witness of the "very present God," who is the author of
+their being, and has united them by a love that makes that being a
+blessing to themselves, which they are bound to extend beyond
+themselves. The rhymed introduction of the several little child-songs
+that follow are suggestions to her of the meaning of her instincts, and
+of the bearing on the development of the child's heart and mind of the
+little gymnastics described. And just as she could not be the educator
+of her child into his individual body if she were a paralytic herself,
+so, if she be not affectionate and generous herself, she cannot educate
+him into the social body of which he is a living member; nor unless she
+loves God herself, can she inspire him to recognize the Parental Spirit
+of whom we are (as heathen poet and Christian apostle alike aver) the
+veritable children. "We are the offspring of God," said St. Paul,
+quoting from the Greek poet Aratus in the Sermon on Mars' Hill, which is
+a model of all reformatory instruction, whether religious or secular. I
+think all true instruction, proceeding from the known to the unknown, is
+both secular and religious, on the principle that to those who have the
+seed, can be given the increase.
+
+In the first of these mother-songs of Froebel, the mother finds that the
+baby she holds in her arms, though another than herself, is in a certain
+sense one with herself; thus is unveiled (revealed) to her the Divine
+Fountain of Being, the Person of Persons, from whom she and her little
+one have severally come; and her feelings of wonder and gratitude awaken
+the sense of responsibility to make her child grow conscious as she is
+of the common Father,--and thankful as she is for life in such close
+relation with herself,--who is the first form in which God reveals
+Himself to the child; for when he first looks away from his body so far
+as to perceive that his mother is another than himself, she fills the
+whole sphere of his perception!
+
+Rousseau affirms that every child, if left to its own natural growth,
+would think its mother was its creator. And William Godwin in his
+_Enquirer_ (or some volume of his writings) has quite an eloquent paper,
+setting forth that the natural religion of a child is to worship its
+earthly parents. I have made some observations and had a personal
+experience which makes me doubt this, though I do not doubt that the
+characteristics of parents nearly always determine the character of the
+child's religion. But the question of who is his own creator does not
+naturally come up to a child, even when he begins to ask who made the
+things about him. His own consciousness is of "being increate," and when
+brought to know that his body grows old and must die, the fear that this
+causes is because he imaginatively associates his undying self, which is
+a "presence not to be put by" with the perishing body. What the soul, by
+virtue of its inherent immortality, fears and hates, is loneliness,
+absolute isolation! And when we think of the body, which we identify
+with ourselves from the moment that we have taken it up and walked by
+its instrumentality, as put away alone in the ground, the undying person
+that the soul is, shudders, and can only be comforted by learning to
+conceive itself wholly detached from the decay, and housed within the
+bosom of Him who is the Alpha and Omega of our life; of Him whom we have
+learnt to know with the spirit and understanding also, by the process of
+living in human relations. For we know ourselves as individuals first by
+means of the body, and we know ourselves as a component part of the
+social whole of humanity by means of genial intercourse with our
+kindred, it being revealed to us that we are substantially social, as
+well as distinctly individual, by our instinctive horror of separation
+from them. Later in life only, there are pleasures of solitude for those
+few who by imaginative act make nature populous with personifications,
+and consequently the refracting atmosphere of the Divine Personality.
+The baby that finds itself alone cries for and is comforted by the
+embrace which restores the sense of union with its mother. Seldom is a
+baby in such a wretched state of feeling that a tender embrace and kiss
+will not completely comfort it.
+
+What a proof it is that God is _Love_, that the very embrace that
+symbolizes to the baby's heart the sense of human companionship, gives
+its mind that impression of objective nature which is the first momentum
+of the human understanding! The gentle pressure of one sensitive body
+upon another produces counter-pressure, a resistance that is positively
+pleasurable, whereby the impenetrability of matter becomes a delightful
+instead of a frightful revelation to the mind of the Immutable Reality
+of the loving Creator, as the complement of our own changeful
+individuality! It is the first syllable of that word (or speech of God)
+made intelligible by the various qualities and forms of matter, the
+Truth which He is forever addressing to man. How gracious it is, that He
+should so inextricably mingle the first impression of matter with that
+perception of the _otherness_ of person that makes Love possible! Thus
+love and the sense of individuality are correlative creations and twin
+births. Later, the sense of individuality becomes a positive self-love
+(which in its healthy degree is innocent), and the perception of
+_otherness of person_, with whom it is delightful to be in free union,
+becomes the basis of the self-forgetting generosity of mankind. These
+opposite principles are at first mere and perhaps equal sources of
+satisfaction, having no moral character whatever. Afterwards, they
+become respectively hard selfishness or a weak and base servility, or
+they may rise into a majestic self-respect, and that sublimest love
+which is to make the human race, as a whole, the _image of God_, not
+only king over material nature, but one with the perfect Son of Man,
+also Son of God, who, with a humility and dignity equally venerable, is
+able to say, "I and my Father are One!"
+
+But you will say that I am getting quite beyond the nursery.
+
+In the earlier years, the growth of the religious life is merely
+germinal. And as it is involved within the mothers at the beginning, it
+must be cherished _sympathetically_ by her removing all occasion for
+self-care and self-defence, and thus prevent the sense of individuality
+from degenerating through fear into inordinate self-will and self-love.
+The child should be treated with unvarying tenderness and consideration,
+without having his senses pampered into morbid excess by
+over-indulgence, but above all things, never wounding nor frightening
+his heart, nor repressing the simple and healthy expression of his
+feelings and thoughts. For enforced repression tends to produce ugly
+temper, baseness, or subtlety, according to the child's temperament,
+which is also in imperfect social harmony, if not absolutely
+quarrelsome. It must be her work, therefore, not only to complete the
+child's organic education, but to take him, as it were, into her own
+affectionate spirit by using the methods which Froebel has suggested to
+the mother for the discipline of her infants. (I use this word
+_discipline_ in its true sense of teaching; not in the sense of
+_punishment_. That the word _discipline_ should ever have come to mean
+punishment is a severe commentary on the ideas and modes of education
+that have hitherto prevailed in Christendom.)
+
+The kindergartner, as well as the mother, must be thoroughly grounded in
+the faith that God has done His part in the original endowment of
+children; and that He is truly present with her, helping her to remedy
+the effects of the mother's shortcomings. She will certainly succeed in
+her work if she studies His laws with an earnest purpose to carry them
+out, first in the government of herself, and then in leading the
+children to self-government. Wordsworth in his _Ode to Duty_, sings:--
+
+          "There are who ask not if Thine eye
+           Be on them, who, in love and truth,
+           Where no misgiving is, rely
+           Upon the genial sense of youth.
+           _Glad hearts!_ without reproach or blot,
+           Who do Thy work, and know it not!
+           And blest are they who in the main
+           This happy faith still entertain,
+           Live in the spirit of this creed,
+           Yet find another strength according to their _need_.
+           May joy be theirs while life shall last,
+           And _Thou_, if they should totter, teach them to stand fast."
+
+Little children certainly, of all persons, are oftenest found in this
+condition when
+
+          "Love is an unerring light,
+           And joy its own security."
+
+And that "other strength," which must come by reflection on and study of
+the unfolding nature of the child in the felt presence of the Inspirer
+of Duty, will certainly be needed by the kindergartner who will receive
+children not always from the hands of natural and faithful mothers, but
+of uncultured servant-maids. (It is but justice to the latter to say
+that there are occasionally found among the Irish nurses those who could
+teach many mothers. The Irish nature is not altogether bad material for
+the production of good motherly nurses; but it must not be left _wild_;
+it needs a great deal of discipline; and I hope the time may come when
+schools for the education of children's nurses, such as Froebel
+established in Hamburg, which still exist, may be founded in all our
+cities.) Though I think the education of _mothers_ is still more
+important and the first thing to aim at, as it would render nursery
+maids comparatively unnecessary. It is so short a period of a mother's
+life when she _has_ young children, and the book of nature which these
+few years open to her _is so rich_, that, for her own being's sake as
+well as for the children's, it seems to me a terrible loss for her to
+delegate her maternal cares to others during the nursery period. On the
+other hand, when the age for the kindergarten comes, the mother needs to
+be relieved of the increasing care; and children, in their turn, need
+other influences than can be had in a family, especially in families
+where parents have work to do outside of their homes. It is, indeed, "a
+consummation devoutly to be wished," that the time may come when labor
+may be so organized that no mothers may be obliged to leave their
+children's souls uncared for in order to get the wherewithal to sustain
+their bodies.
+
+The deepest reason why a child should be taken care of in its earliest
+infancy _by its mother_ rather than by a person comparatively
+uninterested in its personality, is this, that _only_ a mother can
+respect a child's personality sufficiently. All others regard the child
+for its manifested qualities; but with the mother, it is the child
+itself that she loves, quite irrespective of any qualities that he
+manifests. Phenomenally, a little child is a complex of self-assertion
+and generosity (or a desire for union with its kind); a desire or a
+feeling of finiteness in strange contrast with that instinct to "have
+dominion" which gives vitality to self-assertion. We call this primal
+desire for union his heart, and this primal self-assertion his will. The
+will expresses itself in efforts to change its environments, putting
+what is at rest in motion, knocking down, tearing up, because it does
+not yet know how to put in order, or to change things artistically. The
+child acts without external motive,--doing things merely because it
+_can_. Even after a child is old enough to think and talk, and has done
+some act for which you see no reason or motive, when you ask him why he
+did it, he not unfrequently will say, "_because_." I remember when I was
+a child of six or seven, that I would give this answer with a perfect
+sense of satisfaction that it was _an answer_; and when it would
+sometimes be said, "_because_ is no reason," or "_because_ is an old
+woman's reason," I recollect my feeling of surprise. I seemed to myself
+to have given the most substantial reason. The word meant to me a great
+deal. And I now think I was truly philosophical in this, for I affirmed
+the primal truth, that a self-determining person in spontaneous action,
+if only of some instinct, is a first _cause_[4]--an _absolute cause_--to
+the extent of consciousness. It was an intuition.
+
+Now to retain the sense of this causal personality is at the root of
+all stability of character, all nobleness of manifestation. But
+self-assertion in an ignorant child is more apt than otherwise to be
+disorderly, discordant, and perhaps destructive; it therefore provokes
+resistance in the unthinking, but challenges the thoughtful to give
+guidance. It is of life-and-death importance to the child whether this
+force shall meet mere hard resistance, which shall utterly crush it or
+increase it by reaction, or whether it shall meet with a genial
+sympathetic guidance to which it will voluntarily and gladly surrender
+itself. A mother _loves_ this little ignorant force of self-will and
+wants it to have free course. She cannot help desiring to have her child
+have its own way. She does not want it to be opposed by others. She
+will, as far as possible, further or humor it, as we say. And when she
+finds it necessary to control it, she will try to do it by awakening the
+child's affectionateness, and so captivating its fancy as to make it
+feel it is doing as it likes, though it be something different from what
+it was impelled to do at first; in short, she inspires him to will the
+better thing, and so educates the blind instinct of self-assertion into
+a harmonizing and beneficent power, and preserves the child's dignity
+and nobleness instead of crushing its personality. We hear of "breaking
+the child's will." A child's will should never be broken, but opened up
+into harmony with God's will through a lower harmony with the will of
+its loving and loved mother or kindergartner. But a mother will be more
+sure than any one else to bring about this result, because she acts from
+an impulse of the heart deeper than all thought, while the kindergartner
+by thought must cultivate in herself the impulse.
+
+There are those who deprecate motherly indulgence as if it were the
+greatest evil. Doubtless it will become a great evil if it be not
+properly subordinated to the wisdom which appreciates the divinity of
+order, or if it is alternated with capricious severities; in short, if
+the indulgence proceeds from indolence or self-love instead of love of
+the child. The indulgence that really comes from the last is a
+recognition (unconscious, it may be) of the divine possibilities of the
+child,--a spark of the divine creativeness! Of the two evils, extreme
+indulgence is not so deadly a mistake as extreme severity. Indulged
+children return from afar. The prodigal of the Gospel story may have
+been over-indulged, perhaps, in being allowed to take his portion of
+goods, and go off by himself, out of the reach of his father's counsel
+and authority, and left to his own uneducated self-will. But the sinner,
+when he _came to himself_ (observe that expression), recognized the
+self-forgetting, fatherly love in that very indulgence; and it was the
+immeasurableness of that love that revived his self-respect and hope,
+and saved him; for the hope was not disappointed. Love giveth,
+"upbraiding not."
+
+The one fatal thing is to wound the child's heart. It is better to give
+up the point of controlling its will to righteousness for the moment,
+than to do that; and a parent is the least likely of all persons to
+wound his child's heart.
+
+When nothing can be done without wounding, the parent who trusts his own
+heart will leave the rebel to the consequences which God holds in his
+gracious hands for the final salvation of every one of his children.
+
+Besides, to _choose_ to give up one's own will is the only complete and
+salutary giving up, enabling the soul to mount up spiritually like the
+eagle and renew its strength. There are families in which the act of
+disobedience is absolutely unknown, in earlier or in later life; where
+there is no necessity for uttered commands, because expressed wishes are
+enough. The most perfect, if not the only real, obedience I have ever
+seen, has been that of strong men to an unexacting, tender mother.
+
+This is a subject on which I feel very strongly, for it seems to me that
+the greatest social disorders that exist in the nations among which the
+"order that reigns in Warsaw"[5] is foremost, is the consequence of
+_unreasoning obedience_ to wills _not_ infinitely wise and good. The
+worth and duty of obedience is precisely in ratio with the validity of
+the command; and a command is valid only so far as it is inspired by a
+disinterested and proper respect for the being who is commanded.
+Children should only obey their parents, _in the Lord_; and parents
+should never "provoke their children to wrath."
+
+I may be told that the important element of self-assertion (which gives
+strength to character) may be weakened by being always disarmed, and
+killed by the mother's sympathy; and that to provoke it into conscious
+strength, direct antagonism is necessary. But the best antagonism is
+that quiet, inevitable one, that comes from the inexorableness of
+material nature which the child must needs feel, the more disorderly he
+is, but which he sees is insensate and impersonal; whose antagonism,
+therefore, does not grieve his heart, and disappoint his hope as human
+oppression does, making him sad or bitter, but stimulates his mind to
+conquer and subdue it, or develops a dignified patience. The appointed
+domain for kingly man is not the brotherhood, but material nature; and
+gradually he is to learn that nature's inexorable laws are the
+expression of a Supreme Personality as benignant as it is august, who
+takes up His human child into Himself, not without his concurring will;
+for mankind mounts on the nature which he gradually subdues into a
+stepping-stone, by knowledge, and the use of it. The mother must
+remember that though the first, she is not the only instrumentality by
+which the Divine Providence works. The time comes when she is compelled
+to deliver her cherished darling up to other influences; when the child
+bursts out of the nursery, not only self-asserting and affectionate,
+but putting forth energies, and seeking satisfaction of sensibilities
+that cannot be met within that narrow precinct.
+
+The kindergarten must, then, succeed by complementing the nursery; and
+the child begin to take his place in the company of his equals, to learn
+his place in their companionship, and still later to learn wider social
+relations and their involved duties. No nursery, therefore, not even a
+perfect one, can supersede the necessity of a kindergarten, where
+children shall come into cognizance of the moral laws which are to
+restrain and guide their self-assertion, and quicken and enlarge their
+social affections, leading them to self-denials for the sake of
+opportunities for themselves of useful and creative art, beneficence,
+and heroism.
+
+The time for transition from the nursery to the kindergarten is
+definitely indicated by two facts. Firstly, Divine Providence has so
+arranged general family events that every mother must give up having the
+child live, as it were, entirely within _her_ life, because she has
+other children to nurse, or other social duties to do. And, secondly,
+every child's growth in bodily strength and conscious individuality
+makes him too strong a force of will for so narrow a scope of relation
+as is afforded by one family. While hitherto, to be outside of the
+single family influence was an evil, it would now be an evil to confine
+the child entirely to it, narrowing his heart and mind, and deforming
+his character. He needs to be brought into relation with equals who have
+other personal characteristics, other relations with nature and the
+human race than his own family. The instinct of the growing child, at
+this period, to get out of doors to play with other children, is
+unmistakable. To check it vexes or depresses him. In getting possession,
+first of his body, and then of his personal and social consciousness, he
+has become an object to himself, and feels himself a power among other
+powers affecting each other. But he is still more or less consciously a
+prisoner (if not a slave) of nature, by reason of his ignorance of the
+laws of the universe,--_that body_ outside of his own body,--which he is
+destined, in alliance with others, to take possession of, by action
+_upon_ and _within_ it, giving him knowledge of it, and enabling him to
+make it into instrumentality for the expression and embodiment of great
+ideas and a noble will.
+
+All government worthy of the name begins in self-government, a free
+subordination of the individual in order to form the social whole.
+Subordination is something higher than subjection. We subject mere
+animals; intelligent moral agents must be subordinated. It is still the
+mother's part rather to inspire; the kindergartner's part is to
+subordinate, not to check childish, spontaneous talk, though, of course,
+it must be regulated so far as not to let the children interrupt each
+other _impolitely_, and to keep it to some main subject. Some
+kindergartners begin the session by asking each in turn what is
+interesting to him. Mrs. Kraus-Boelte generally receives each one as he
+or she comes in. They go to her for the morning kiss, and have something
+to say, in which she expresses due sympathy, and later recurs to and
+connects with what others say, and thus produces general conversation.
+Mrs. Van Kirk is very happy in her introductory conversations.
+
+In playing with the gifts, the teacher dictates certain movements and
+arrangements, for the purpose of the children's getting into the habit
+of listening and quickly catching the directions given; and the children
+should be encouraged to follow _her words_ in what they do, rather than
+to imitate each other. In their spontaneous work they often make a new
+symmetrical form, which is really beautiful; and then it is well to call
+on the child to direct his companions how to make it; for children
+delight in the dignity of _directing_, and learn to be very precise in
+the use of all the words expressing relation of all kinds,--prepositions,
+adjectives, and adverbs,--_precisely_ as well as nouns and verbs.
+Language does not merely transfer the outward inward, but soon begins to
+transfer the inward outward. Love, and other sentiments of the soul,
+good and bad, are named, as well as sensible objects. Even the
+instinctive search after proximate causes leads children to infer the
+substantiality of _wind_ and the other invisible forms of matter; and
+the spiritual senses inherent in the "Me," which is the most essential
+of all substances, verifies the ideal world to children, as truly as the
+bodily senses verify the material world, and even _more so_; for
+children live in God before they _exist_ out of God. The Italian
+philosopher Gioberti says that the soul is a _spiritual activity_; that
+is, it sees God as the first act of its life. God says, "_Be thou_" and
+the soul--before it is put into the sleep of nature (the deep sleep that
+came upon Adam)--looks back and says, "_Thou art_." We have the memory
+of this primeval vision, and act in our sense of holiness (wholeness?),
+right, justice, pure love from the uncalculating delight of loving, the
+ideals of beauty, and the sense of accountability to God and man, which
+forever haunt us, sometimes giving us pain, as _remorse_, whose sting is
+in the comparison of our outward manifested self with our inward sense
+of "being increate" (as Milton expresses it). It is this supernatural
+pre-intellectual _soul_ which distinguishes man from the animal
+creation, and is symbolized by his form, which looks upward to the
+symbol of infinity made by the sky, with which the human being
+instinctively _communes_, and towards which the child wants to fly,--and
+delights in and loves the birds, beyond all other forms of animal life,
+because they _can_ fly. Gioberti goes on, in his psychology, to say that
+when the soul, which has recognized its Divine Source as the first act
+of its life, is put to sleep in nature, it is gradually waked up by the
+individual forms of nature, which are so many syllables of the Divine
+Word that are echoed in human words, which describe matter and its
+evolutions; then the understanding begins, and (which is the point I
+want you to observe especially at this moment) the words of even a very
+young child soon bring to its understanding spiritual realities. And it
+is the office of education to see that the relations of things,--the
+laws of order among things,--the adjustment of external cause and
+effect, be _accurately worded_; and especially that the _spiritual_
+consciousness gets a happy symbolization; that is, that the best words
+are used to _do justice_ to the Ideas of God and the sentiments of the
+heart of man.
+
+A materialistic educator (or no less a mere dogmatist in religion, who
+does not see that the logical formulas and abstract terms of scientific
+theology cannot possibly _wake up_ the primeval vision) may do an all
+but infinite mischief to the character and heart, by the words he uses
+in talking to children; and the theologian a greater mischief than the
+materialist, because the forms and evolutions of matter are, as I have
+said, _syllables of the Word_ that was in the beginning with God and, in
+a certain sense, _God_, while the abstractions of the human mind are the
+refuse of finite spirit, infinitely superficial, mere limitations of
+thought which become stumbling-blocks to the mind when not used as
+stepping-stones to new outlooks, or rather, inlooks. Never should
+children be talked to in the language of theological science, but wholly
+in imaginative symbolization, and the symbols should be chosen with
+great care, and we should be on our guard against rousing the faculty of
+abstraction which is a sleeping danger in the nature, whose premature
+development is injurious in strict proportion to ignorance and
+sensitiveness. The symbols of the spiritual should be human because
+human consciousness involves substance outside the physical, and,
+therefore, did the Word which had not been comprehended in its creation
+of "everything which it had made," though "without it nothing was made,"
+take flesh and dwell among us, in order that we might apprehend the
+glory of God and perfection of man with our whole nature. That it would
+do so, was the insight of the Hebrew genius, whenever by worthy
+soul-action the law-giver, king, and whoever entered into "the liberty
+of prophesying" was raised to the height of his nature. Now a child is
+"on its being's height," "mighty prophet," "seer blest,"
+
+          "On whom those truths do rest
+           That we are toiling all our lives to find,"
+
+and therefore a child can supply a substantial meaning to any name for
+God adequate to awaken the living echo of the soul that
+
+          "Cometh from afar
+           Trailing clouds of glory from God,"
+
+whose voice sent it forth, as Gioberti says, "to suffer and to be for a
+season on earth."
+
+I hope you follow me in my thought, for I think I am looking into the
+child, which is the thing that ought to be done if one undertakes to
+teach it. That the child really knows God before God is even named to
+him is not a speculative theory with me but a fact of my experience. It
+is one of my earliest remembrances, that I was sitting in the lap of a
+young lady, whose name and countenance I have forgotten, who was
+caressing me, and calling me sweet, beautiful, darling, etc., when all
+at once she seized me into a closer embrace and exclaimed, rather than
+asked, Who made you?
+
+I remember my pleased surprise at the question, that I feel very sure
+had never been addressed to my consciousness before. At once a Face
+arose to my imagination,--only a Face and head,--close to me, and
+looking upon me with the most benignant smile, in which the kindness
+rather predominated over the intelligence; but it looked at me as if
+meaning, "Yes, I made you, as you know very well." I was so thoroughly
+satisfied, that I replied to the question decisively, "A man."
+
+The lady said to another who sat near us, "Only think! this great girl
+does not know who made her!"
+
+I remember I was no less sure of my knowledge, notwithstanding she said
+this. Though it was the first time I had thought God and given the name
+"man" to the thought, it seemed not new to me. I had felt God before.
+
+I _was_ a rather large girl, more than four years old, as I know from
+the fact that we were living in a certain house, to which we went on my
+fourth birthday. My next recollection is of going into a room of this
+house, where my mother was sitting, working at an embroidery frame that
+hung against the wall. I went up to her and said, "Mamma, Eliza asked me
+who made me, and I told her a man, and she said he didn't!" I stated
+this reply as a grievance and outrage.
+
+Since I came to the age of reflection, I have always regretted the
+conversation that followed. It was not judicious, and seems to me a
+little out of character for my mother, who was of strong religious
+sentiment and quick imagination, and all other conversation on religious
+subjects that I remember of hers was very good. She was rather thrown
+off her guard by my unexpected theology and lost her presence of mind. I
+was her oldest child, and she had waited to see some enquiry raised
+before speaking on the subject. I had seemed more stupid than I was, for
+I belong by nature rather to the reflective than perceptive class, and
+so had very little language. At this distance of time I cannot, of
+course, remember the details of the conversation, but I came out of it
+with another image of God in my mind, conveying not half so much of the
+truth as did that kind Face, close up to mine, and seeming to be so
+wholly occupied with His creature. The new image was of an old man,
+sitting away up on the clouds, dressed in a black silk gown and cocked
+hat, the costume of our old Puritan minister. He was looking down upon
+the earth, and spying round among the children to see who was doing
+wrong, in order to punish offenders by touching them with a long rod he
+held in his hand, thus exposing them to everybody's censure. Of course
+my mother said no such thing to me, but what she did say, by subtle
+associations with the words she used, gave me this image, which I need
+not say rather checked than promoted my spiritual advancement.
+
+This experience has been of value to me as a teacher since, for it has
+effectually saved me from being didactic and dogmatic in my religious
+teaching of children. The Socratic method is the true way of bringing
+into the definite conscious thought God's revelation of Himself to the
+soul. That image of authority and power to punish did not, I think,
+help, but rather puzzled my moral sense of which I was already
+conscious. For I remember that I used to muse very much in my childhood
+upon the mental phenomenon of feeling myself to be two persons. I was
+clearly conscious of an inward conversation on all occasions of a
+question of right and wrong, when a higher and lower law distinctly
+uttered themselves. The lower self often prevailed by the argument that
+the thing to be done was _transient_, I would do it only this _once_,
+and never again; and often I thus sinned against the very present God,
+which I think I might not have done so presumptuously, had I associated
+the thought of this strange other me with that kind face of Love Divine.
+When later in life I did learn that the remonstrating voice was
+unquestionably God, because He is the Love that I saw in my childish
+vision, the war between self-love and conscience ceased. But this was
+not till a great body of death had been accumulated, which I have never
+shuffled off except in moments of hope.
+
+But to take up the thread of my discourse again. I would very earnestly
+say that the Socratic or conversational method is the only way of
+bringing into a child's definite consciousness God's revelation of
+Himself to souls. But this requires a mutual understanding of words,
+and if we are careful, we may produce this in the kindergarten.
+
+Froebel intimates that a general impression of there being an invisible
+Friend and Protector may be given by the baby's seeing the mother in the
+attitude of devotion, and he would have recognition of God called forth
+by her naming the unseen Father at moments when the child's heart is
+overflowing with joy and love, or seeking to know where some beautiful
+thing comes from. The child feels already at such times the presence of
+the Infinite Cause, the Infinite Source of joy and goodness, and the
+name of Heavenly Father given to this presence will not be an empty
+vocable. Using with the name of Father the word "our," with which the
+Lord's Prayer begins, suggests that He is the Father of all alike, and
+all human beings will thus be united together with Him in the child's
+imagination.[6]
+
+This idea of one personal but comprehensive Being, the centre of the
+social organization, is a quickening of the immortal personality, which
+has a date in time no less certainly than the quickening of the body,
+and is our sense of identity.[7]
+
+FOOTNOTES:
+
+[4] See Hazard's _Man a Creative First Cause_. A book published since
+this lecture was first given.
+
+[5] "Order reigns in Warsaw" was the form of words in which the
+subjugation of the Poles to Russians in 1849 was announced in France.
+
+[6] See Frederic Denison Maurice's book on the Lord's Prayer, published
+by Hurd & Houghton.
+
+[7] See Appendix, note A.
+
+
+
+
+LECTURE IV.
+
+THE KINDERGARTEN.
+
+
+IN my last lecture I spoke of the ideal nursery; for only there,
+hitherto, has the divine method of education ever been completely
+carried out, the unquestionable teacher there being _the child_,
+"trailing clouds of glory from God who is our home"; its sweet content
+and inspiring smile indicating when its nurse is treating it aright;
+while all that is wrong, whether proceeding from mere ignorance or
+selfish wilfulness on the part of the adult, is indicated by its cries
+of fright and anger, which it behooves her to heed.
+
+How is it that, with the spectacle forever before our eyes of the mother
+and infant, mutually emparadised in child's play (that mutually
+educating communion of trust and love, by which the child is put into
+gradual possession of his body, and joyous consciousness of his
+individuality),--how is it, I say, that we find education has lost its
+_ideal_, and as soon as the child leaves the nursery for the schoolroom,
+an antagonism has begun, "with its blessedness at strife," and which
+leaves us all such scarred and bewildered creatures as we find ourselves
+to be, as soon as we come to reflect?
+
+But I must remember that what we have to speak of especially is the
+kindergarten, which follows hard upon the nursery.
+
+When the child's growing activities begin to require a larger social
+sphere than the nursery,--_i.e._, at about three years old,--it was
+Froebel's plan to gather the children of several families into what he
+called a "Child Garden," and to extend the nursery law of _cherishing_
+(which is the dealing with living organisms that children are), by
+exercising them for several hours of every day in rehearsing in plays,
+in the first place, all the sweet charities of life. This employs their
+physical forces, and makes them experimentally know that human happiness
+and goodness are social and generous.
+
+For the so-called "movement plays" are social exercises, gently calling
+out moral sentiments, as well as intellectual powers. They can only be
+beautiful and enjoyable when they give mutual pleasure; and this
+involves that mutual reference and kind consideration of each other
+which leave no room for selfish feeling or action. Moral education is
+the alpha and omega of a kindergarten, but it cannot be given by
+precept. To _do_ the will of God,--_i.e._, to obey the moral
+law,--"doing to others as we would have others do to us," _even in
+play_, is the only way for children to know vitally the doctrine of
+moral life.
+
+Froebel has suggested a variety of these movement plays, all of them
+conceived with the greatest care as to their intellectual as well as
+moral effect. They always have a fanciful aim, within the scope of the
+child's knowledge and affection, and to play them begins to develop the
+understanding also.
+
+A gentle intellectual exercise, involved in learning by rote, reciting,
+and singing the songs that direct the plays, takes the rudeness out and
+puts intelligence into that exhilaration of the animal spirits which
+healthy children crave, and prevents it from exhausting the body or
+disordering the mind; the joyous association of the children with each
+other aiding this effect. In the sedentary plays, which are called
+"occupations," and in which the child is genially drawn into producing
+symmetrical effects to the eye, by making things (albeit only little
+toys) which begin their artistic life, Froebel has had equal regard to
+the moral as to the intellectual influences. When the child has gone
+beyond the age in which he is satisfied with making transient forms and
+gathering the materials back into boxes, and desires to make something
+that will last, a legitimate sense of property arises. He feels that
+what he has made is _his own_, for the thought and work which he knows
+that he has put into it are his own. Froebel, therefore, would have him,
+before he begins to _make_ anything, pause and appropriate it
+intentionally to some object of his love, reverence, or pity. This will
+check the otherwise rampant propensity to hoard, and prevent the
+passions of avarice, vanity, and jealousy from making their appearance.
+In our common school life, the pride of _showing off_ their powers, and
+excelling others, is regularly cultivated in children by competition, as
+a stimulus to industry. But this is as unnecessary as it is deleterious.
+For disinterested desire to confer pleasure, and express gratitude and
+love of others, is found by experience to be a surer stimulus to
+industry than the baser passions, and has the additional value of
+cultivating positive sweetness and active benevolence. It is desirable,
+and really produces the greatest practical humility, for children to
+regard themselves as embryo powers of beneficence, learning to do the
+Heavenly Father's business from the beginning, like the child Jesus.
+Then may they grow "in favor with God and men," as they grow "in
+stature," and all their knowledge will prove a divine wisdom unto the
+salvation of others and themselves. To go into a truly ordered and well
+governed child-garden, and see all the little children busy making
+things for the Christmas tree, or for birthday and new year's gifts, for
+all the friends they know or fancy, we shall see sufficient proofs that
+love is the truest quickener of industry, and love-inspired industry the
+true sweetener of the disposition and temper.
+
+Moreover, such industry is the special desideratum to temper the spirit
+of the present age, which is so keen and energetic that it hurries our
+young men into pursuits in their amusements which take on the character
+of gambling; and hence gambling in business, gambling in politics, where
+even human beings, instead of being regarded as _brothers to be kept_,
+are used as dice, to be recklessly thrown in our game. The only
+preventive or cure for this passion for gambling is industry, and the
+only industry that is attractive is artistic; and why should not all
+industry become artistic, now that the great cosmic forces are suborned,
+by our advancing civilization, as the legitimate slaves of men, to do
+all the hard work for men? I have already set forth this view of the
+subject in the _Plea for Froebel's Kindergarten as the Primary
+Art-School_, which I appended to Cardinal Wiseman's lecture on the
+relation of the arts of design with the arts of production (which I
+published in 1869, under the title of _The Artist and the Artisan
+Identified,--the Proper Object of American Education_).
+
+Before I leave these general remarks for more specific explanation of
+Froebel's method of intellectual development, I would make one more
+observation. It is in the social and moral character of the kindergarten
+that Froebel has shown himself so much superior to Rousseau, whose
+method was to cultivate individualities exclusively, the teacher
+pretending to know no more than the child, but taking his idiosyncrasy
+for his only guide in discovery and invention. In the first place,
+Rousseau's method has been found an impracticable one, for it requires a
+separate teacher for every child; and in the only instance, perhaps, in
+which it was ever carried out with perfect fidelity, that of Maria
+Edgeworth's eldest brother (we have in her memoirs of her father all the
+facts), the ultimate effect was to make a monstrosity. He was utterly
+strange, so odd and unsocial, nobody but his father, who educated him,
+could have any practicable relation with him. He might be said to be
+conscientiously unsocial, and therefore immoral; and, though not
+ungifted, he was an utter failure in human life. We see similar effects
+produced measurably, in all cases where the main object is to cultivate
+the individual rather than the universal characteristics of humanity.
+Froebel was tender, and gave freedom to individualities, but he took
+great care not to _pamper_ them. They are the results of the free-will,
+irrefragable, and will take care of themselves sufficiently, if not
+cruelly snubbed, but tenderly respected.
+
+What is to be _intentionally_ cultivated in earliest infancy, are the
+_general_ affections and faculties, which relate us to our kind,
+insuring _common_ sense and _common_ conscience with a reasonable
+self-respect. Therefore, what is done in the kindergarten is necessary
+for all children, their idiosyncrasies being left free to play on the
+surface and give variety and piquancy to life, freedom and dignity to
+the individual.
+
+All minds seem to be divided into two classes. In one class, the primal
+tendency is to observe single objects; and these are the so-called smart
+children, interesting the spectator by their vivacity and precocity. In
+the other class, children seem to be dull in sense, unobserving, but
+dreamy, as if they had an over-mastering _presentiment_ of that
+connection of things which binds them into wholes. It has been remarked
+that this latter class turns out the great men,--the poets, the
+philosophers, the inventors, high artists, great statesmen, and
+law-givers,--while the precocious children disappoint expectation;
+probably because they have accumulated such a chaos of single
+impressions of disconnected things, that it quite overwhelms the
+classifying and generalizing powers of the intellect. Froebel's method
+equally meets the respective wants of both these classes of minds,
+supplying by specific culture the _other_ side of their practical
+endowment. By its discipline of production, it gives the lively and
+restless ones the wand of the Fairy-Order, in discovering to them the
+connections of things, and the conditions as well as laws of
+organization; while for those of the dreamy, poetic, philosophic
+temperament, it sharpens the senses to individual things, supplying the
+definite and sensuous impressions, and suggesting the corresponding
+words that enable them to give an account of their own thinking, and
+illustrate to others the struggling ideal; which, like conscience and
+the love of order and rhythm, is perhaps the yet persistent vision of
+that Heavenly Father's face, which Jesus Christ has told us we are
+created beholding.
+
+Jesus evidently is quoting a familiar proverb, when he says "for their
+angels behold the face of my Father who is in heaven." Does it not refer
+to the Persian mythology current in Judea after the captivity? However
+neglected and eclipsed, that primeval vision can never be quite lost. It
+persists in the love of order and beauty; in the desire to be loved
+_infinitely_; in hope "that springs eternal in the human breast"; in the
+ideals of imagination, that haunt both the savage and the sage, and, at
+worst, in _remorse_, in which, as Emerson says, "there is a certain
+_sweetness_," whether it be gentle as in what the Quakers call "the
+reproof of truth," or felt as the reproachful strivings within us of our
+neglected infinite nature.
+
+This brings me to speak of Froebel's superiority to Pestalozzi. The
+kindergarten is not mainly _object-teaching_, though of course a
+constant object-teaching is _involved_; all the materials of their work
+and all the surroundings of the children become objects of examination
+in their individualities of form, size, number, etc., and in their
+possible connections with each other and with the _child_. If Froebel
+proposes to give the fruits of the tree of _life_, before he gives those
+of the tree of knowledge, it is only that the latter may prove, _not a
+curse_, but a blessing. The world's history and the present state of
+civilization in the foremost nations of the world shows us that
+knowledge may be _a power_ without being _a good_ (a snakish subtlety
+not Divine Wisdom). It begins to be realized in Europe as well as in
+America, that Froebel's idea of education, in making _character_ the
+first thing, and knowledge the _hand-maiden_ of goodness, is the
+desideratum of the age, and promise of the millennium.
+
+I should like to read you some letters of eminent men in France,
+addressed to Froebel's most earnest disciple and apostle, the Baroness
+Marenholtz-Bülow, which I have translated from the appendix of her _Work
+in Relation to Education_ (see Appendix, Note B).
+
+In an address to the school committee of Boston in 1868 I gave the call
+addressed in 1867 by the Philosophers' Congress in Prague to the
+convention of teachers in Berlin, and the call of the latter to the
+second convention of this congress at Frankfort-on-the-Main in 1869. The
+burden of all these papers is the paramount necessity of religious and
+moral education, begun in earliest infancy, in order that the modern
+intellectual activity may not land us in licentious vices and heartless
+atheism, _our nearest dangers_. They all accept Froebel's method of
+education by work and experience (beginning with the work and experience
+of the child of three years old) as the first condition of the
+regeneration of the human race.
+
+It is the office of the kindergartner to awaken the intellect, which the
+child does not bring into the world, like its heart and will,
+full-grown. The infant suffers and enjoys as keenly, and wills as
+energetically, at first as ever in its life, but apparently begins and
+lives for some time, unconscious of a world without as a _not me_. It is
+purely subjective, _i.e._, feeling its material environment to be a part
+of itself. As Emerson says:--
+
+          "The babe, by its mother,
+             Lies bathed in joy;
+           Glide its hours uncounted;
+             The sun is its toy!
+           Shines the peace of all being,
+             Without cloud, in its eyes;
+           And the sum of the world
+             In soft miniature lies!"
+
+Only by intentional help of those around the child can it grow into
+individual consciousness of its relations with nature in that order
+which produces the sound intellect. For the intellect is a growth in
+time, that carries on the nursery exercises of the limbs and affections
+by the movement plays, and adds those sedentary plays with the series of
+gifts, which are symbols of all nature in miniature, that objective
+revelation of God to which the receptive mind answers by thoughts.
+Thinking is that reaction of the individual mind upon nature which, when
+it is put into words, produces progressively an image of God, which is
+the human mind.
+
+The kindergartner's conversation with the children upon their playthings
+is therefore her most important and delicate work, and one which she
+cannot do instinctively, but only if she scientifically understands the
+child on the one hand, and nature in some department on the other. It is
+impossible in this lecture, perhaps, to demonstrate my meaning. By
+following out Froebel's own method of playing with the gifts, as
+suggested in Mrs. Kraus-Boelte's guide or in _The Florence Handbook_,
+the whole process of the formation of the human understanding by the
+order of objective nature will become patent, and enable the
+kindergartner to avoid any great mistakes in her guidance of the
+children's minds, which guidance should always be tentative, and
+respectful, to say the least, of their freedom to will. Then we shall
+have not mechanical work, but orderly, creative work from the children,
+whose spontaneity is not to be choked; but when it seems to be going in
+a wrong direction, interrogatively guided. Like Ariel, she must do her
+spiriting gently, lest she violate the legitimate individuality, and we
+have Caliban instead of the germ of Prospero.
+
+I here pause to display two kinds of work actually done by children
+under seven years of age at Frau Marquadt's kindergarten in Dresden.
+They enable me to show that those sedentary plays, with which Froebel
+would have children amused, must needs develop and educate the
+perceptive faculty and understanding in a substantial manner; for these
+things were done without patterns, and therefore from _thought_,--the
+thought being sometimes suggested by the dictation of the
+child-gardener, requiring of the child only one single act of
+reflection. But much of this work was invented by the children
+themselves, their wildest fancies being controlled to produce symmetry,
+by following the one rhythmical law of always making an opposite to
+everything they do. After showing and explaining the _modus operandi_ of
+the work exhibited, I went on to say:--
+
+I believe nobody disputes, after they see what kindergarten is, that it
+is the gospel of salvation for children. The exercises put them into
+complete possession, not only of their limbs, especially the
+characteristic limb of man, the hand, just when they are the most
+flexible, and therefore most easily trained; and of their organs of
+sense (by which they gradually make the universe their instrumentality),
+but also of _accurate speech_, enabling them to express their
+impressions of individual things, as well as of what they _do_ with
+things and in the order of its doing. Thus they are prepared for
+entering upon more abstract subjects, by means of books and schools of
+instruction. A child well "gardened" and exercised in the intelligent
+use of his mother tongue enters upon the process of learning to read,
+for instance, with all the more advantage from being accustomed to hear
+and use language with precision and fluency; and is ready to learn to
+cipher all the more quickly, because of the concrete arithmetic and
+geometry he has mastered experimentally with the playthings and in the
+occupations, all his habits of delicate observation and nice calculation
+formed by the embroidery and other fanciful work giving the basis for
+intelligent classifications. Even the few years of experience of some
+genuine kindergartens in this country has already proved this. I can
+give an instance in detail of the almost miraculous rapidity with which
+a class of seven-year-old children learned to read in the primer called
+_After Kindergarten--What?_ (Note C, in Appendix.) All the time given to
+"child-gardening" is therefore more than saved at the next stage, when
+instruction begins. Other advantages accruing are incalculable, for the
+children themselves have become intelligent and conscientious
+co-operators with their elders, instead of passive receivers or
+antagonists. When Miss Youmans' _First Lessons in Botany_ (a book made
+to teach botany in nature on Prof. Henslow's method) was introduced into
+the New York primary schools, with great expectations of a brilliant
+success, it was found that the children did not take hold as expected of
+this science of observation. "I see now," said Miss Youmans to me, "the
+indispensableness of kindergartens to develop the faculties; more than
+half the children are intellectually demoralized by neglect or
+injudicious teaching before they are seven years old." Everything,
+however, depends upon the single-minded self-devotion and affectionate
+character of the kindergartner, and it is obvious that her education
+must be as special as that of a teacher of instrumental and vocal music;
+for as little as music can be taught by the ear, or drawing by the eye,
+without studying the underlying principles of harmony and symmetry, can
+kindergartning be taught empirically. Its foundation is in both a
+scientific and sympathetic study and understanding of the child's
+perceptive powers and the material world. Not merely what is to be
+taught, as is the case with a university professor, but the free-willing
+and deep-feeling beings that are to be taught must be studied generally
+and individually above all things else. Hence, there must be special
+schools for teaching child-gardening, or a special department made in
+the already existing normal schools.
+
+The burden of thinking out the steps of procedure in the schoolroom is
+too great a one to be laid on the teacher who has to exercise the
+general care. It must all be at the tongue's tip and fingers' ends
+beforehand. It took Froebel a lifetime, with all his genius and wisdom,
+to discover all the steps of this order of exercises, in correspondence
+with the true evolution of the faculties; but "one man dies, and other
+men enter into the fruits of his labors." Besides, it is as cruel to
+study the philosophy of education at the expense of the living
+children's minds, as it would be to study anatomy and medicine at the
+expense of their living bodies. All kindergartners should observe and
+practise for awhile under the direction and criticism of those who are
+already experts and adepts; and the latter should be careful that their
+assistants try no rash experiments, but at first reverently observe
+successful work. It is the highest interest of all teachers to learn
+this method, because it develops themselves. It not only makes the best
+mothers, but the most perfectly accomplished women. It is entering into
+the secret of creation and redemption, which is the flower and fruit of
+human culture.[8]
+
+When people ask me if kindergartning is not a method especially adapted
+to German children, I reply that it seems to me to encounter as great
+obstacles in that nationality as in any other. It is not a _national_
+method, but the _human_ method; and I would remark in this place that it
+strikes me as especially desirable for Irish children. The natural
+predominance in them of fancy needs the check of accurate perception,
+associated with accurate expression; accurate perception, first, of the
+individuality of objects, their form, size, color, direction, their
+mutual resemblances and contrasts, and the no less accurate perception
+of their relations to each other and to the child. These things can only
+be made objects of perception by children's being accustomed to _make_
+things, which employ the activities that otherwise will play at random
+and divert their attention from the matter in hand. In my observations
+of Irish servants, I am struck with their never seeming to see what is
+before their eyes, or to hear what is said to them, on account of the
+predominance of their creative faculties. Accurate perception of the
+things children play with, and successful manipulation of them to
+produce effects, would also help them to moral integrity; for order
+moralizes just in proportion as disorder demoralizes. Successful action
+cures idle dissipation, while unsuccessful efforts discourage and
+paralyze industry. Froebel wishes the child to be started at something
+he can certainly accomplish, though perhaps not without direction in
+words. When the child sees an effect produced by himself, he will repeat
+it until he can produce the effect without direction, and, if asked,
+will be delighted to show another child how he has done it. It is a
+necessary step to put his action into words, and raises it from mere
+mechanical into intellectual work; from Chinese imitation into European
+and American invention. By and by, when he has learned a little
+steadiness of attention by doing successfully what pleases his fancy, he
+will make some motion of his own, and proceed according to the law of
+symmetry (whose virtue he has learned) to discover and make new forms of
+beauty and use; but he should still be carefully overlooked, and saved,
+by timely suggestions, from making mistakes. These suggestions he will
+crave and not resist, _if they are not peremptory_, but are put in the
+form of a question, which seems to respect his power to choose, which is
+his _personality_, the image of God within him. In proceeding in this
+way, both teacher and child are led more and more to realize that there
+is a mysterious third Being present, who is neither the teacher nor the
+child, but in whom they meet, through whom they communicate, and who
+gives the law they both must respect; that there is, in short, One "in
+whom they live and move and have their being"; that is the God who
+"worketh in them to will and to do"; that He enables them to create
+beauty, not at random, but with a certain freedom which is not
+lawlessness. He is the Creator of the Beauty they do not make, and of
+the Good they love, and gives the Laws which they obey, and in obeying
+become powers of good and inventors of beauty; for the laws of order are
+truly God's thought revealed to their thought. To be active powers of
+good and beauty is to be religious, and also to be free from
+superstition; to love God instead of being afraid of Him; to make their
+lives a reasonable service, and thus become free from priestcraft and
+spiritual tyranny. Inefficiency, still more than ignorance, is the
+mother of fetich worship, and reduces man to slavery; and to be
+surrounded by natural and artistic beauty does not cultivate the mind,
+unless it is already an active power. Reverie is not thinking. But the
+mind can only become active by the electric touch of a sympathetic mind
+which is already in motion. It is the destiny of men to become one in
+that same sense that the Divine Father and Son are one. God has made
+human communion a moral necessity, and does nothing for man, except by
+the instrumentality of man. "By man came death, by man also cometh the
+resurrection from the dead." In short, education, that "mysterious
+communion of wisdom and innocence," is presupposed in reasonable
+religion. I once heard an eloquent man, who was speaking of education,
+say, "The Archangel is born upon earth; we may know him by the many
+difficulties that he has found and surmounted, and his consequent power
+to educate; for _education_ is the highest function of humanity in earth
+and heaven, cementing the links of the chain of love which binds us all
+to one another and to God." We are always either educating or hindering
+the development of our fellow-creatures; we are always being uplifted or
+being dragged down by our fellow-creatures. Education is always mutual.
+The child teaches his parents (as Goethe has said) what his parents
+omitted to teach him. Every child is a new thought of God, whose
+individuality is significant and interesting to others, though it is his
+own limitation; and to appreciate a child's individuality is the
+advantage the teacher gets in exchange for the general laws which he
+leads the child to appreciate. It is this variety of individuals that
+makes the work of education fascinating, and takes from it all wearisome
+monotony. Those persons who feel that education is wearisome work have
+not learned the secret of it. I have never seen a good kindergartner who
+was not as fond of the work as a painter of his painting, a sculptor of
+his modelling. Teachers who are not conscious of learning from their
+pupils, may be pretty sure they teach them very little.
+
+It is because kindergartning is this true education, which is mutual
+delight to the adult and the child, that I have faith it will prevail,
+and its prevalence is my hope for humanity. By the infinite mercy of
+God, no human being is hopeless of redemption into God's perfect image
+at last; but humanity will not be redeemed as a whole,--will not become
+the image of God, or live the life of God,--until little children are
+suffered to go unto Christ while they are yet of the kingdom of heaven,
+and are blessed from the first and continually, by those who shall take
+them in their arms to bless them. Those are only perfect kindergartners
+who are "hidden in Christ," receiving every child in his name, and
+humbly learning of them the secrets of greatness in the kingdom of
+heaven, which is to be established on earth. Kindergartning is not a
+craft, it is a religion; not an avocation, but a vocation from on High.
+
+FOOTNOTES:
+
+[8] For details of manipulating the gifts and occupations, see _The
+Florence Handbook_, published by Milton Bradley; or Mrs. Kraus-Boelte's
+_Manual in Eight Parts_, which is being published by Steiger.
+
+
+
+
+LECTURE V.
+
+LANGUAGE.
+
+
+TEACHING, which in the common sense of the word is the suggestion of
+thoughts by words, is not the kindergartner's special work, but the _a
+priori_ process of drawing out into the individual consciousness of a
+child those latent powers whose free activity gives him conscious
+relations, first, with his kind; secondly, with material nature,
+including his own body; and, thirdly, with God. He is unconsciously in
+this threefold relation already, but to become conscious of these
+relations severally, in his own growth builds up the human
+understanding, which is not born with him like his sensibility and force
+of will. The human understanding, a creation in time of the free will,
+creates language as the element of a life not shared with animals; an
+intellectual life using the symbolism of nature as a means of
+intercommunication, and which is correspondent and bearing a relation to
+its creator, man, similar to the relation of the material universe to
+God, being in both instances an image, as in a mirror, of what is
+necessary and immutable in the self-consciousness, though without entity
+itself. Hence, as the material universe expresses the wisdom of God,
+human languages express the imperfect wisdom of man. Language is the
+element in which the intellectual nature makes a sphere wherein to live
+and move and have its being. What breath is to the material body, making
+man alive in nature, language is to the social body, making it alive in
+history.
+
+A word is both spiritual and material, being an articulate form of the
+voice which, as Goethe has happily said, is the nearest spiritual of
+our bodily powers, taking significance from the articulating organs,
+which are symbolical, like everything else in material nature, which, as
+I said before, is but an image, as reflected in a mirror, without
+absolute entity, but bearing witness of an entity progressively
+apprehended by the finite spirits of men, who are the children of the
+Infinite Spirit inheriting creative power forevermore.
+
+The _in_articulate sound of the voice is the scream of pain or the shout
+of joy, mutually intelligible to all human hearts; and this aerial basis
+of language continues to be more or less intelligible to all souls, when
+modulated as in poetry into melody and rhythm by emotion and character.
+The first human language was, perhaps, music of the deepest character,
+of which phase there is historic trace in the spoken Chinese, which has
+been perishing for ages on the lips of a nation whose origin is lost in
+the depths of antiquity. This spoken language is monosyllabic, and even
+the initial consonant often only a semivowel, while the whole word takes
+its significance from the _tone_ of the vowel; thus _lu_ in a low tone
+would have one meaning, LU in the tone of a musical third another
+meaning, and so on as the tone ascends through the octave. The inception
+of such a language implies an original equipoise of a brain not yet
+despoiled of its first vigor through moral delinquency which is incident
+to the freedom to will of a finite spirit, and consequently the Chinese
+language was inevitably lost. It would be interesting to enquire if
+those rare individuals among the Chinese who are expert in the spoken
+Chinese, are not of finest musical temperament.
+
+Not till after thinking had begun could articulation by the organs of
+speech begin. Thinking is the free individual act which associates the
+mind's activity and the sensibility of the heart with material things,
+and must precede the use of words.
+
+A time comes to every intelligent child when it wonders how words
+should express thoughts. Victorious analysis has never yet penetrated
+the whole mystery of language to the complete satisfaction of men,
+though I think philologists and metaphysicians are on the way to it, and
+have reached some fundamental facts. For instance, that _in_significant
+sounds and articulations could not make significant words, and that
+vocal sounds (vowels) get their meaning from feeling, while
+articulations get theirs from the symbolism of the organs of speech.
+
+The organs of speech are, first, the throat,--as the guttural organ is
+called in English because through it we take our food and send forth our
+voice,--is _out of sight_, _covered up_, _hidden_, the _central_ point
+where the voice starts; secondly, the lips, which are obvious, movable,
+parallel; thirdly, our teeth, against which the voice strikes, are hard,
+stiff, and dead in comparison with the flexible lips, and the tongue
+which connects all together, the voice rolling over it and hardly
+articulated. Hence the hard _c_ and _g_, and the rough aspirate _h_ are
+factors in all words signifying the beginning of self-originating motion
+(observe _go_ and _kick_, or _cause to go_), the causal, the central,
+covered, hidden; while the labials, _p_, _b_, _f_, _v_, are factors in
+all words expressing obviously moving phenomena; and the dentals, _d_,
+_t_, _s_, _z_, found in words expressive of stiff, hard, dead phenomena
+(the word _death_ is all but identical with the word _teeth_);
+separation and number being expressed by _s_ and _z_, which are made by
+throwing the vocal breath out between the separated teeth. The liquids
+_r_ and _l_, _r_ being also a factor of words expressing indefinite
+beginning, (as _original_, _auroral_, _arise_, etc.) are made by the
+voice moving over the tongue more or less energetically, to express
+movements whose difference of energy is exemplified in the words _fry_
+and _fly_, _grow_ and _glow_, _M_ closes the lips without preventing the
+continuous sound of the voice from being heard; and _n_, negating
+limitation by throwing the breath (or voice) out at the nose, symbolize
+respectively the positive and negative aspects of Infinity.
+
+Of course I am giving only a hint in order to define what I mean when I
+say significant words are not made out of insignificant sounds, and that
+articulated sounds get their meaning from the symbolism of the organs of
+speech.
+
+The historical origin of language is lost in the depths of antiquity,
+when the human race was yet in that equipoise of mind, heart, and
+self-activity, which in the process of evolution is only progressively
+recovered by the free agent, it being the office of education to restore
+it.
+
+The infant (that is, the _non-speaking_ child) in vision of the Eternal,
+only gradually becomes aware of the succession of time. For, as Mr.
+Emerson sings in his Sphinx song,--
+
+          "The babe by its mother
+           Lies bathed in joy,
+           _Glide its hours uncounted_."
+
+And Wordsworth says of "the little child,--"
+
+          "On whom those truths do rest,
+           That we are toiling all our lives to find;"
+
+          "By the vision splendid
+           The youth is still attended;"
+
+and
+
+          "Shades of the prison-house begin to close
+           Upon the growing boy,
+           Yet he beholds the light and whence it flows;
+           He sees it in his joy:
+           At length the man perceives it die away,
+           And fade into the light of common day."
+
+But this fall from the Ideal is not what Calvinistic theology declares
+it to be, reprobation either intellectual or spiritual!
+
+          "Oh, joy that in our embers
+           Is something that doth live,
+           That nature yet remembers
+           What was so fugitive."
+
+True education shall lead out the imprisoned spirit, growingly conscious
+of individuality, by means of the symbolism of the prison-house itself
+which is that correlation of necessary forces we call the material
+universe.
+
+The material universe, as I have already said, is the symbolization of
+everything in God except his creativeness which is the spiritual essence
+that he shares with Humanity, his only-begotten Son. It is the body of
+God, and human language is the body of individualized Humanity, whose
+imperfections correspond with its various partial developments and
+short-comings. And it is ever growing towards perfection in the form of
+poetry, bearing witness to the creativeness (or genius) of man
+forevermore. As breath is to the material body, keeping men alive in
+nature, so language is to the social body, keeping individuals alive in
+history and literature; and as the material universe is symbolical of
+God's wisdom, so the echoes of the universe tossed from the lips of men
+are symbolic images of the wisdom of man. Language, in short, being of
+both natures, spiritual and material, makes an elemental sphere for the
+intellectual life, beyond the material; in short, makes a metaphysical
+world, in which the finite and infinite spirits commune with other
+finite spirits and with the Infinite One; for by words every minutest
+shade of individual consciousness may be communicated from one finite
+mind to another, making not only an immortal communion of men possible,
+but a communion of God and Humanity also that shall have no end. Heaven
+and earth pass away, but the Word of the Lord endureth forever.
+
+But I must not be tempted into philosophizing farther upon language at
+present, precisely because it takes us into the deepest mysteries of
+speculative thought, and our business with it now is practical, and
+concerns the nursery and kindergarten processes of culture.
+
+Looking at it superficially, speech is an imitative art, and so far as
+our experience goes, is always taught by elders to the young generation
+empirically. This teaching of the mother-tongue in the nursery is an
+immensely important thing, because it carries on the development of the
+understanding towards the fulness of Reason (which is seeing particular
+things in their proportionate relation to the whole).
+
+In the whole course of a child's education, nothing is done which so
+much involves the totality of his activity as his learning to talk. For
+to talk presupposes observation, discrimination, memory, fancy,
+understanding. The first three (observation, discrimination, and memory)
+are nearly passive reactions from sensuous impressions. But fancy and
+understanding are creative acts of the human spirit, almost defying
+analysis. In fancy, the mind acts quite reckless and even defiant of
+nature's laws and order. In understanding, it observes and uses them
+subjectively. That children delight in using words to name things in the
+order of nature, and to express qualities and relations in connection,
+making an echo-picture within of what they see without, is not so
+wonderful as the exaltation of delight produced by a story which is, as
+it were, triumphant over nature's laws, and reckless of its order; and
+the shocks of laughter with which they catch at a grotesque and
+impossible combination of images made in their fancy by means of words.
+The predominance of fanciful talk to children which seems to be
+instinctive with all peoples, everywhere, is an indication that fancy is
+as legitimate an activity as understanding, to say the least. It seems
+to me to be an evidence of our being begotten directly by the creative
+spirit, sons of a divine Father, who is the complex of Infinite Love,
+Infinite Wisdom, and Infinite Power, of which our human feeling, power
+of thinking, and executive ability are the shadow, or rather a living
+image.
+
+Both fancy and understanding are developed in time by words. We all know
+how children are waked up and delighted by Mother Goose absurdities,
+and still more by fairy stories that seem to set at naught the facts and
+override the laws of nature. It is a stubborn fact, of which
+materialistic positivists afford us no explanation, and which I commend
+to the consideration of Mr. Mansell, and whoever else talks of the
+limitations of religious thought. And I think it will be found that
+children who are talked to by Mother Goose and fairy-story tellers learn
+to talk more quickly than others, and have more vivacity of mind
+generally, with a power of entering into the minds of others
+commensurate with their sensibility, and justifying the human sympathies
+which are often a burden to the unimaginative, who are nevertheless
+kind. A great deal of the misunderstanding of others which causes
+unnecessary pain and social bitterness, checking generous furtherance of
+one another's good purposes, arises from want of saliency of
+imagination, preventing us from being able to put ourselves in another's
+place. And of course it is not without the highest reason that the
+Father of our Spirits has given fancy the advantage of the first start
+in our mental process. That fancy precedes understanding in our
+psychological history cannot be denied by any nice observer. I have
+known some parents who would not use Mother Goose or fairy stories with
+their children, but substituted therefor amusing experiments in
+physics,--the metamorphosis of insects and the classification of plants
+according to their differences. Their children became scientific when
+they grew up, were fine mathematicians, and were interested in
+mechanical inventions and natural history; but took comparatively little
+interest in political and moral problems, though not at all wanting in
+the social and patriotic affections, which also characterized their
+parents, who were themselves brought up on the imaginative system not
+well modified by studies of nature's phenomena, which was probably the
+reason of their strong reaction from the imaginative method.
+
+But I have known as intimately some other parents who made predominant,
+perhaps extreme use of Mother Goose and fairy literature. Their children
+much earlier and more completely got command of all the resources of
+language, had a tendency to art, especially literary art, in their own
+activity, and were earlier interested in human history, and all
+varieties of human experience reflected in the literature of nations;
+but perhaps were slower in attaining practical ability for life's
+labors. Each direction of education has its advantages and disadvantages
+in the religious relation, and I think it is the better way to mingle
+them, especially at the early period of the kindergarten, where the
+objective point is to cultivate the understanding, which needs that we
+should appreciate the facts and order of external nature as the exponent
+of God's wisdom. This will chasten and give substantiality to the
+creative action of the human fancy, which is never to be snubbed, but
+gently entreated to be reasonable, or we shall have Caliban instead of
+Ariel or Prospero, as I have said before.
+
+I cannot find out whether Froebel has anywhere expressed himself
+distinctly on this point. There are certainly no grotesque images and no
+fairy stories in the mother's prattle with her children over pictures,
+and in the out-door walks which are suggested in the _Mütterspiele und
+Köse-Lieder_; but children are led to recognize the poetical symbolism
+of nature, and its invisible and impalpable substances and forces; the
+invisible forces of air, heat, and light are used to lead them out from
+the world of matter towards the more substantial spiritual world where
+the soul meets and communes with God, the omnipresent Spirit to be
+apprehended only by the spirit within us, whose organs are ideas.[9]
+
+In the kindergarten, as in the nursery, children learn language by using
+it empirically. To utilize their love of talking as they play is what is
+first to be done by the kindergartner. The things seen and done give a
+clear definition and precise significance to the words used, which
+become the stepping-stones of the mind, by which it mounts up from the
+sensuous ground of the understanding into the heaven of invention and
+imaginative art, plastic and heroic; and thence to communion with God.
+But before children are put to reading, before proceeding from things
+through thoughts, and from spiritual experiences through ideas to their
+vocal signs, and from vocal signs to their written or printed
+representations, it is wise to consider the signs themselves. I do not
+mean to go deeply into etymologies or anything that is abstract. It is
+not doing so, for instance, to ask children what is the difference
+between the words _see_ and _look_. (Can you see without looking? Can
+you look without seeing?) It gives precision to the understanding to
+discriminate what are often called synonymes, but which seldom mean
+precisely the same thing, unless, in our _potpourri_ of a language they
+are mere translations, as for instance _morsel_ and _bit_, respective
+derivatives from the Latin _morsum_ and the English _bitten_. The little
+English-speaking child should not be troubled with the derivation of
+_morsel_, but is pleased to be called to notice that of _bit_. We must
+be guided here by Froebel's rule of proceeding from the known to the
+unknown, and not endeavor to plunge children into the unknown without a
+clue.
+
+That children understand and use figurative language readily, shows that
+without going out of their childish world we can define symbolic
+expression to some degree, and this is a means of regulating fancy. But
+I must take another opportunity to speak of the method of doing
+this.[10] I can now only affirm that unless children could signify by
+words not merely their impressions of material things and their
+correlations, but their feelings and thoughts, it would be impossible
+for the religious education to be begun in the nursery, or to be
+carried on in the kindergarten, as Froebel proposes it shall be.
+
+It is only by naming to the child his own intuition of creative being or
+cause, or rather by leading the child to name it, that the understanding
+is started upon the religious thinking which is necessary to keep pure
+from superstition his religious feeling, while his blind sense of God is
+changing from an undefined intuition of the heart into a definite
+thought of the mind, which change Froebel would have take place very
+early. But this is the most delicate region of consciousness to enter,
+and we must take great care that we do not profane instead of
+consecrating the process by what we do and say. Words that are adequate
+and living names for the spiritual intuition of a very present God,
+generate spiritual thoughts in natural relation with them. And this
+reminds me of a circumstance in the mental history of Laura Bridgeman,
+illustrative of what I mean.
+
+This poor child was deprived, when two years old, of her sight and
+hearing, and partially of taste and smell, by the scarlet fever, which
+left her but one avenue of knowledge of material things,--the sense of
+touch. But through that the practical benevolence of Dr. Howe won a way
+to her imprisoned spirit, and opened communication of thought with her
+by means of words; and she even learned to read in the raised type for
+the blind. The whole story is immensely interesting and important to any
+teacher. She had been taught enough of the properties of matter to be
+able to work on and with _things_, and moral science could be taught her
+through her own and others' activity; but how was she to be taught about
+God and spiritual things? Dr. Howe reserved to himself to speak to her
+of God, forbidding all others to do so, and watched for his opportunity.
+
+My sister Sophia went over to the asylum to model Laura's bust, and one
+day asked her teacher (who was with her always) to translate into spoken
+words the conversation that she saw was passing between them by means
+of the hand language. Very soon occurred the following:--
+
+_Laura._ I want to go to walk.
+
+_Teacher._ You cannot go to-day, because it rains.
+
+_Laura._ Who makes it rain?
+
+Instead of making a direct reply, the teacher went on to explain how
+moisture exhaled from the earth by the action of the sun, and was
+collected in masses which were called clouds, and when the clouds were
+so full as to be heavier than the air, it fell to the earth in drops of
+rain.
+
+Laura said, reverently, "God is very full."
+
+The teacher was startled, and said, "Who told you about God?"
+
+_Laura._ No one told me. The Doctor is going to tell me about him when I
+know more words. But I think about God all times.
+
+The teacher said to my sister, "This is very important," and went to
+tell the Doctor, who was a good deal moved, but found himself at
+somewhat of a loss. That evening he came to a little gathering at our
+house to talk about it. He said that nearly a year before, if not
+longer, Laura had come upon the word _God_ in her reading, and
+immediately stopped and asked the meaning of the word. According to his
+directions, she was then sent to him, and he was so anxious not to do
+any harm, especially not to frighten her with the idea of Infinite Power
+(which is the main element of our conception of God, even eighteen
+hundred years after Christ's manifestation of Infinite _Love_), that he
+was embarrassed, and said to her that she did not yet know other words
+enough to explain the word _God_, but when she had learned more words,
+he would tell her, and meanwhile he wished she would not ask any one
+else. But now he was pondering what was the best way to proceed. I
+suggested that perhaps Laura could teach him more than he could teach
+her about God, and asked what was the sentence in which she had found
+the word. But this he had never known. It was then suggested that
+probably the word had explained itself, for no sentence could possibly
+contain the word, not even in an exclamation, that would not suggest to
+such a perfectly clear thinking mind as Laura had always shown, the fact
+of supreme love or wisdom. The company present proved this by trying to
+make sentences. I do not know what he finally concluded to do or say to
+Laura. I think certainly that the true way would have been to have drawn
+her out, and according to what she said or seemed to need, to have
+shaped whatever teaching he had to give, taking great care not to negate
+any of her positive assertions; for we could not doubt that God was
+manifesting himself to the imagination of her heart, if not yet in the
+forms of the human understanding.
+
+If I had known how to use the hand language, I would have solicited the
+privilege of going to learn what this hermit soul could have told me
+before it was darkened by our traditional theology, which did not
+originate in children,--
+
+          "On whom those truths do rest
+           That we are toiling all our lives to find,"
+
+but in the minds of old sinners who had lost the original purity of soul
+that "sees God." "I think about God all times!" How interesting it would
+be to know exactly what she thought! That it was nothing terrific or
+painful was evident from her habitual mood, which was even joyous. So
+careful had the Doctor been to educate every bodily and mental activity,
+that she had none of that discouragement, inelasticity, and indolence of
+mind, which comes of want of success in childish effort. A genial,
+educating assistance was always around her, but careful not to weaken
+her by doing anything for her that she could learn to do for herself.
+Obstacles, therefore, only stimulated her efforts, and so delightful was
+her sense of overcoming them, that, for instance, she would laugh
+exultingly when sewing if her thread became knotted, or if in anything
+she was doing there was some little difficulty to be surmounted. Her
+faith in herself seemed never to have been broken; but she rested on the
+fulcrum of Infinite God, in whom she "lives and moves and has her
+being."
+
+The only thing we ought to do in the religious nurture of childhood is
+to _preserve_ this faith which comes from the child's seeing God even
+more clearly and certainly than it can see outward things. See to it
+that you use language so as more clearly to define and not to blot out
+the divine vision, as old Dr. Barnard's cocked hat and black silk gown
+and seat in the clouds eclipsed the sweet face with which my Creator
+seemed to own me as his child, as I told you in my last lecture.
+
+Another mistake that was made in my religious education was during a
+visit that I made to a great-aunt when I was five years old, and was
+taught to say the Lord's prayer by the servant who put me to bed. I got
+the idea that some unknown evil might happen to me in my sleep if I did
+not do this, and was also told that God would be displeased with me if I
+thought about anything else when I was saying it. But I was
+involuntarily conscious of having my mind full of images, while the
+words of the prayer were empty vocables. In order to prevent the
+intruding thoughts, I would try to rush through the words quickly, going
+back to the beginning over and over again. But this artificial duty was
+not associated with the instruction of my mother, who was in general
+very happy in what she said to me about God, dwelling on his goodness,
+referring to it everything delightful, making Sunday a day of quiet but
+constant enjoyment, letting us paint, and cut paper, with other little
+amusements, devoting herself to making us happy, while the rest of the
+week she was busy; for she kept a large school, and Sunday was, as she
+often said, her only and blessed day of rest. Long after, at a time of
+religious controversy and so-called revival, I was immensely aided by
+hearing my mother say to a young aunt of mine who affirmed that St.
+Paul, in saying that we must pray without ceasing was fanatically
+unreasonable: "Yes, if praying meant saying over prayers; but spiritual
+prayers mean a devotional attitude of mind towards God which we can have
+whatever we are doing."
+
+This sentence seemed to pour light into a shady place.
+
+"Don't you _say prayers_, mama?" I said to her when aunt was gone.
+
+"Not when I am alone," she said; "for God sees my thoughts and feelings,
+and knows that I love him, and always want his help."
+
+My mother had nothing of the martinet about her. She took it for granted
+that upon the whole we wanted to do what was right. She was not apt to
+give the worst, but the best interpretation to doubtful phenomena. She
+believed that to treat a child with generous confidence invoked
+generosity and truthfulness, and what was better than all the rest, she
+did not _talk down_ to her children, but rather drew them up to her own
+mental and moral level; and interlarded stories from Spenser's _Faerie
+Queen_ and the Scriptures with stories of the kind and noble deeds of
+real people around us. (See Appendix.)
+
+Her religion was moral inspiration to herself and consolation for all
+calamity, and always very naturally expressed. She more than corrected
+her first mistake and inadequate talk with me about my Creator, by
+telling me the story of the Pilgrim Fathers, when I was yet so very
+young that my fancy clothed her words with grotesque images, but on the
+whole did better justice to the _spirit_ of the emigration and the
+ultimate results it has worked out for the world than the exact facts
+that transpired in history. What I gained from my self-created mythology
+was that my ancestors knew themselves to be God's children, whom neither
+tyrannizing king nor priest had any right to prevent from going to him
+in prayer first hand, and that in order to do his will as their
+consciences understood it, they left home and country and all the
+comforts of civilization, and trusted themselves in a frail vessel to be
+driven over a stormy ocean by the winds, at imminent peril from the
+waves below, which would have swallowed them up, had not God, who loved
+them, approved what they were doing, guided the ship (by a power
+stronger than the wind, for it was his love) through the narrow opening
+of Plymouth Harbor to the rock where I still seem to see them streaming
+along, a procession of fair women in white robes as _sisters_ (for so I
+had interpreted the word _ancestors_, who strangely enough were all
+named _Ann_). I still seem to see these holy women kneel down in the
+snow under the trees of the forest, and thank God for their safety from
+the perils of the sea; and then go to work in the sense of his very
+present help, and gather sticks to make a fire, and build shelters from
+the weather with the branches of the trees. Among these rude buildings
+my mother took pains to tell me that they built a schoolhouse where all
+the children were to be taught to read the Bible.
+
+There is nothing for which I thank my mother and my God more than for
+this grand impression of all-inspiring love to God, and of
+all-conquering duty to posterity, thus made on my childish imagination,
+and its association with the idea of personal freedom and independent
+action. It never could have been made except by one who herself had
+faith in God, and believed that he had made all men free to come to him,
+and also that the mother was his first appointed mouthpiece. The
+fanciful images which were the effect of the shortcomings of my
+ignorance did not hide the vital truths which I was as open to accept
+then as now; namely, that God is my Father, the Father of all souls,
+from whom no one has a right to shut off another.
+
+That first schoolhouse, which I fancied that I saw the "Ann Sisters"
+building, taught me as no mere words ever could have done, that it was
+the most acceptable service to God to educate all his children to know
+him and his works. That first idea of human duty I have never outgrown,
+but still believe universal education is the true culture of the
+American people, the reasonable service they owe to him who called them
+out of the Old World to be a nation of individuals. There was nothing
+fatal, therefore, in that first false notion of God (which I received
+for a time), though it was for a time more of an evil to me than it
+would have been to a child less subjective, or of more lively perception
+of things without. Liveliness of perception brings so many things before
+the mind, and so stimulates its volatility, that it undoubtedly prevents
+the stereotyping of many a single impression and fancy that does
+injustice to spiritual truths; and false impressions, unless strongly
+associated with terror or some other morbid sensibility, do not take
+hold of a child so strongly as the images that are consistent with the
+eternal laws of mental evolution, such, for instance, as that human face
+divine with which I had instantaneously clothed my intuition of God, and
+which, notwithstanding its temporary eclipse, has haunted me all my
+life.
+
+It is very encouraging to the educator to know that the innocent soul of
+childhood has so much more affinity with truth than with falsehood,
+because the best and most careful educator cannot sequestrate children
+entirely from false impressions. But what finds no echo in the spirit
+passes off, unless the mind is shocked into passivity by fear or pain.
+When the soul is active, it has a certain superiority to passive
+impressions, and makes use of them as materials for imaginative
+production. It is, therefore, desirable to keep children employed in
+gentle activity which has successful results, and happy in the midst of
+attractive natural surroundings, by which God is working with us in the
+same purpose of educating the child, allowing us to be his partners, as
+it were, in this work, because it educates us. It is not uncommon to
+hear persons say that they would like to begin life all over again with
+the knowledge they have gained from their life-experience. This we can
+all do if we will in imagination really _live with our children_, as
+Froebel says, whose motto explains what Christ meant when he bids us to
+be converted and become little children.
+
+FOOTNOTES:
+
+[9] _Idea_ is a word I always use in the sense of _insight_, as Plato
+uses it, rather than in the sense of _notion_, as Locke uses it.
+
+[10] See note A in Appendix, and the Record of a School.
+
+
+
+
+LECTURE VI.
+
+A PSYCHOLOGICAL OBSERVATION.
+
+PART FIRST.
+
+
+I SAID in my last lecture that had I possessed the power to talk in
+Laura Bridgeman's hand, I should have begged Dr. Howe to let me have
+some conversation with her after she said that she "thought about God
+all times"; not that I felt that I could teach her, but that I might
+learn what God had taught her concerning Himself. It was a wonderful
+chance for a most important psychological observation of the innocent
+mind of childhood, and would have afforded, doubtless, a luminous
+illustration of the truth that the human soul is also a divine
+personality justifying the method initiated by Froebel of conversing
+with the children in the Socratic manner.
+
+But already in my lifetime I had had an opportunity for psychological
+observation, made under circumstances perhaps still more favorable for
+getting evidence of the importance of a very early recognition of the
+Heavenly Father's name in the formation in a healthy manner of the human
+understanding and the development of the reason, verifying the
+declaration which Froebel has made the corner-stone of his system;
+namely, that though a child is the extreme opposite of God, contrasting
+as effect to cause, as absolute want to infinite supply, all these terms
+are connected--_conciliated_--into unity, by Love and Thought, which
+must recognize each other, and whose loss of equal companionship is a
+
+          "Grief, past all balsam and relief,"
+
+as Mr. Emerson has sung.
+
+I have somewhere, very careful memoranda, made at the time, which I have
+unfortunately mislaid, but I will present from present recollection as
+well as I can the whole psychological observation, though I am aware
+that I shall leave out many little things said and done which were
+perhaps not unimportant links in the chain.
+
+Before I begin, I will observe that I tell it to the class to show the
+difference between talking to and conversing with children, and to
+illustrate several truths.
+
+First, There is an innate Idea, not as a thought but as a feeling, given
+to every child, of an all-embracing Love (named by Jesus, Father), one
+in substance with the deepest consciousness of self;
+
+Second, That this Idea becomes a child's personal and individual
+perception only when he has a realizable name for it;
+
+Third, That such a name is not an empty vocable, a mere movement of air,
+but a sign, to which the intuition of his heart gives vital meaning;
+
+Fourth, That an adequate name for GOD is the axis of the intellect, and
+the revolution of thought around it gives perfect globular form and
+solidity to the mind, balancing the centripetal force of individual
+self-assertion with the centripetal force of a Divine Love,
+comprehending all Being. Before GOD was named to and by this child of
+whom I am about to speak, you will see that he was a dreary little chaos
+"without form and void." After he had learned to utter intelligently the
+name of a Heavenly Father he was what I am going to tell you.
+
+But first I must tell you how I had this opportunity and privilege of
+being the first person to name GOD to this child when he was four and a
+half years old. He was the son of a most conscientious mother whose
+early orphan life had been saddened with religious terrors. Her earliest
+recollection, as she told me, having been the death-bed, and
+immediately after, the burial of her mother, whom she saw, when she was
+too young to comprehend death, shut up in a coffin and put into the
+ground; and she remembered how her agonizing cries at what seemed the
+frightful cruelty, were peremptorily hushed, with the declaration of the
+person taking care of her, that GOD who made the heavens and the earth
+willed it to be so and would punish her if she did not acquiesce. Little
+did the thoughtless and heartless person who thus dealt with the
+distressed little heart think, how disastrously she was emasculating the
+word GOD of good by associating it with such an image of ruthless power
+divorced from tenderness, as she unheedingly did. It was not till long
+years after that her imagination was cleared of the frightful falsehood;
+and when she came to have a child of her own, her governing thought was
+to keep him ignorant of the fact of death, and the name of GOD, until he
+should be old enough to understand them, as she said. She was a person
+of deep feeling, upright and benevolent, but her imagination, probably
+by reason of this life-long depression, was of feeble wing, and she was
+taciturn. In consequence, her child, though most tenderly cared for as
+to his body, was starved in mind and spirit. His face continued to be an
+infant's countenance, and he was strangely without that childish
+joyousness called animal spirits, and grew more and more peevish as he
+grew older; for he was sequestered to the society of his silent mother,
+who would not even be read to in his presence, lest, as she said, some
+chance word which he could not understand should excite some fear.
+
+Suddenly a hemorrhage of the lungs brought this mother to death's door.
+She had been, for a few years before her marriage, my pupil in my own
+house, and she used to say she owed to me all the happy views she had of
+God and Heaven, as well as of human life and death, and I was sent for
+in this extremity as a mother to a child.
+
+Since her marriage she had lived in a city distant from me, and I had
+seen her but little. Her child was so very timid I had made no
+acquaintance with him in transient interviews, and of me he had no
+impression but of one little story that I had told him six months before
+when I met him at the house of her husband's parents. This story I had
+half invented to explain a picture in the "Story without an end," that I
+was showing to him. (See Appendix.)
+
+When I came to the mother's bedside, she told me it was best for her to
+die, because she was utterly baffled in all her efforts to bring up her
+child. She went on to describe her timid methods; she said she feared he
+was _non compos_, for he made no progress. Among many phenomena, she
+mentioned that when she gave him playthings, he immediately broke them
+to pieces, and when she tried to prevent this, by endeavoring to make
+him understand their uses and construction, he would look drearily into
+her face and say, rather than ask, "What for?" He seemed deficient in
+will, without impulse, for, though flowers seemed rather to please him,
+if she took him into the garden and told him he might gather them, he
+would stand still, and helplessly cry; and she had to command him to do
+everything, even to play, before he would attempt it. He acted like an
+automaton. Moreover, he had no sensibility, and expressed no affection.
+
+Just at this point of her dismal story her chamber door was opened by
+the nurse, with this great boy in her arms. He had his mother's
+beautiful large brow and deep eyes, but with no speculation in them, and
+his whole figure was lifeless and so languid that the arms that had been
+about the nurse's neck, slowly lost their curve when she put him down on
+his feet. But his look rested on me, who, with an inviting smile and
+gesture, held out my hand. Immediately the large eyes filled with
+intelligent light, and with a cry of joy he sprang towards me, climbed
+up into my lap, clasped his arms round my neck, nestled upon my bosom,
+and looking up with a joyful expression of confidence said,
+"Story--little boy--drop of water!" It was, as I have said, about half a
+year before, that I had lured him to me as he held off in timidity, by
+offering to show him the picture where the child, in the "Story without
+an end" is represented beside the brook, looking at a drop of water
+hanging from a leaf, "telling the little boy a story," as I said, to
+which he had answered "Story!" and I had gone on and invented a free
+paraphrase of the story given in the book, adapted to his infantile
+capacity, and when I had finished, he said, "Story again!" and I
+repeated it again and again, so imperative was his "story again!" and
+now he again said "Story," with a confiding pressure, as he leaned on me
+then, gazing at the picture on the book in my lap, giving me the
+conviction that he understood me. It was really, as I found
+subsequently, the only rational words that had ever been addressed to
+the child's imagination.
+
+"This does not look like want of sensibility, or _mens non compos_," I
+said to the mother. "I never saw anything like it before," she said, all
+tears. The ensuing silence was immediately broken by the child's
+imperative repetition of the word "story!" I was too much affected by
+the mother's emotion to remember or invent any story, but it was an
+early, warm spring day and the windows were open. The house stood on a
+bluff of the Merrimac, within sight of the Rapids; and the sound of the
+rushing waters came in upon our silence. I said, cheerfully, "Do you
+hear the water running?" to which he responded with a joyful "yes! what
+does it run for?" "Oh, because it is glad," I replied, and again he
+responded with a joyful and satisfied "yes," and after a moment asked,
+"Where is it running to?" "Oh, into the ocean, where all the rest of the
+waters are!" and again an emphatic "yes" expressed his satisfaction.
+Perhaps he remembered that in the story I had told him of a drop of
+water it had ended with the drop falling off the leaf, and running away
+with its brothers and sisters, and falling into the ocean, out of which
+the sun had originally taken it. At any rate, he not only repeated his
+yes with the emphasis of satisfaction, but seemed to be thoughtful. I
+said, "Do you ever look out of the window and see the sun shine on the
+water, and all the little sparkles of light in the water?" "Yes," said
+he, joyfully, "what makes the sun shine on the water?" "Oh," said I, "it
+is because the sun loves the water." "Yes," said he, and began to
+embrace me in the most energetic manner.
+
+It was too much for the poor mother, who absolutely wept aloud, whether
+with joy or sorrow she could not tell, as she afterwards said.
+
+The sound of her weeping attracted his attention, and he sat up in my
+lap and turned his large eyes upon her as she lay in bed, and then upon
+me, with a look of concern and appeal. "See," said I, "poor mother. She
+is sick and sorry. She wants me to tell _her_ a story, and won't you get
+down and go into the nursery and let me tell dear mother a story to make
+her feel better? Then I will come to you and tell you one."
+
+With a cheerful "yes" he immediately got down and went into the nursery,
+but stopped at the door to say:--
+
+"When you have told mother a story, won't you come right in and tell me
+one?"
+
+I said to the mother, "You see, my dear friend, that the child has mind
+enough, heart enough, and a moral nature. He can understand and feel
+sympathy; feels the symbolism of nature; and can obey a self-denying
+motive. No fatal harm has been done after all by your delay, but he
+needs now to know he has a Heavenly Father, fully to manifest all the
+powers of a human being. You must allow me to give him that name for the
+Love he feels within and without."
+
+"Not quite yet," said she, "not until you come to stay, because he would
+ask me questions that I should not know how to answer. Children ask
+such terrible questions. I am afraid as soon as you name the Invisible
+GOD, he will be frightened. Don't you know M. D. was afraid to stay in a
+room alone because of the omnipresence of GOD, which seemed to be an
+unimaginable horror to her?"
+
+"I do not wonder," I replied. "Omnipresence of GOD! What was there in a
+child's experience to interpret this Latin abstraction? I think it would
+have been quite another thing, considering who her earthly father was,
+had she been told that our Heavenly Father was all about her though she
+could not see Him with her eyes, but could feel Him giving her love and
+joy. I cannot but wonder that anybody around her should have talked to
+her in such abstractions."
+
+"I am so unready in expression," she persisted, "and can so poorly
+express my thoughts and feelings, I am sure I should only do mischief if
+I should try to answer his questions, and I am sure he will go on asking
+them, for his mind seemed to wake up at once as soon as you began to
+talk to him. How different was that 'yes' from the dreary 'what for?'
+with which he always received the very best explanations that I could
+make of the things he played with. That 'what for?' was not an enquiry
+of intelligence, but an expression of utter want of perception, with no
+interest to hear a reply. It is best for him that I should die; then I
+shall ask his father to give him to you to bring up. Nobody ought to
+have children but people of genius!"
+
+"No, no," said I; "it does not require genius to talk with children, but
+only simplicity of heart trusted in. I interested him and gained a
+response, not because of genius, for I have none, but because I believe
+in him, and in myself, whose happiness is in loving, and that GOD has
+created us to love and commune with one another and Him. You have said
+yourself that he seemed to love flowers, though he was afraid to gather
+them, and that he loved to hear the street musicians. Beauty and music
+touch his sensibility. By saying that the waters run because they are
+glad, and the sun shines on and makes things beautiful because he loves
+them, I put his own conscious life into the music of waters and the
+light of the sun. He recognized the meaning of gladness and love because
+he himself felt glad and loving, which made a pre-existent possibility
+of recognizing the love and joy of the Creator that shine in those
+natural objects, because they are GOD'S own words of love addressed to
+His own image, who is capable of love and joy and knowledge of Him. If
+we talk to children in instinctive faith, they understand us. You have
+not done so because of your early misfortune that saddened your heart
+and took away your instinctive courage. Faith is the proper act of the
+heart (courage, you know, is a synonym of heartiness); the heart goes
+before the understanding in the process of life. Without heart one can
+do no justice to children in talking with them; with it, we awaken their
+minds and nurture their souls, and all our mistakes will be of small
+account beside the positive advantage of setting their minds in joyful
+motion 'amidst this mighty sum of things forever speaking.'"
+
+"When you come to stay," was her rejoinder, "you can say to him what you
+please, for then you will be here to take care of his mind and answer
+his questions."
+
+This was all I could gain at that moment, and I left her, to go to the
+child, who had several times opened the door and looked at me wistfully,
+with a silent appeal which was all the more proof of his quickened
+intelligence that he did not tease. His own desire to have a story had
+interpreted to him his mother's need.
+
+I have very little power of inventing a story, and to his demand for one
+I responded by taking from the bookshelves Miss Edgeworth's first story
+of Frank, and began to read to him of Frank's making a noise on the
+table and the conversation between him and his mother that ensued. But
+this did not suit my little one's mood, which was a little exalted by
+his delight at seeing me, and having had his imagination touched by the
+beautiful language of nature that I had made intelligible to him. He
+pulled the book away, and asked me to tell him a story "out of your own
+self," as he said.
+
+Thus urged, I began: "Once there was a little worm about as long as the
+nail of my thumb, and no larger round than a big darning-needle. This
+little worm lived in a little house that he had made for himself in the
+ground, just big enough to hold him, when he rolled himself up like a
+little ball with his head sticking out. There were no windows nor doors
+in his house, but one on top, which was his door to go in at, and his
+window to look out of. When he had made this house he was tired and
+crawled into it and curled himself up and went to sleep, and slept all
+night. In the morning the sun rose and spread his beams all over the
+world, and one of the bright sunbeams shone into the window of the
+little worm's house and touched his eyes and waked him, and he popped up
+his head and looked out and saw it was very pleasant in the garden, and
+he thought he would go out. He squirmed himself up out of his hole, and
+because he had no feet he crept along the garden path. The warm beams of
+the sun put their arms all round his cold, little body and made it warm
+as could be, and the sunbeam went into his little mites of eyes, and
+filled him all full of light, and the songs of the birds went into his
+little mites of ears and filled him all up with music, and the sweet
+smell of hundreds of flowers went up that little mite of a nose and
+filled him up with their perfumes. And so that little worm went creeping
+along as glad as he could be that he was alive.
+
+"Now in the house that stood in that garden lived a little boy about
+four years old; and when the morning came, the sunbeams had gone into
+the window of his nursery and waked him, and he was washed and dressed
+and had his breakfast of bread and milk, and then his mama took him to
+the door that led down the steps of the piazza into the garden, and
+told him he might go down the path and have a good run to make himself
+warm. So down he ran. But now if that little boy should put his strong
+foot on that dear little worm, it would break him all to pieces--"
+
+"Oh, he shall not, he must not!" cried the child in a spasm of distress.
+"Aunt Lizzie, don't let him break the dear little worm to pieces!"
+
+"No indeed," said I, "that little boy would not not do such a cruel
+thing for the world! He saw the little worm creeping along, so glad to
+be alive, and he ran on the other side of the path; and the little worm
+nibbled a little blade of grass, and drank a little dew for his
+breakfast, and then he felt tired, and went creeping back, full of good
+food, to the little hole that was his home, and curled himself up like a
+little ball and went to sleep."
+
+"Now tell me that story all over again!" said the child.
+
+I did so more than once at his entreaty, and always when I came to the
+possible catastrophe of crushing the worm, the same terror seemed to
+seize him, and he would cry out:--
+
+"Oh, he must not, he shall not!" and I always tranquillized him again,
+and gratified his sense of justice by my assurance of the little boy's
+consideration of the little worm's right to his life and happiness.
+
+Of course, I told his mother of the effect of this story, and the
+evidence it gave of the child's sound moral nature and innate sense of
+justice. And I begged her to let me lose no time in referring to the
+presence of the Heavenly Father, that the intuition of his heart might
+become the possession of his mind. I said I did not believe that he
+would ask any question. He would suppose that I alone knew, for, as I
+observed to her, he had never for the whole six months referred to the
+little boy with the drop of water, and yet had vividly remembered the
+whole story, as his greeting me had shown, and I had the proof of it,
+for I had just told it to him again at his request. I told her if I
+proved to be mistaken, and he should ask her any question she could not
+answer to her own satisfaction, she could say she would write to me and
+ask me, and I felt sure he would wait. But I told her I believed what I
+was thinking of saying to him would keep his thoughts busy while I was
+gone (for I was going only for a week to prepare for a stay with her for
+an indefinite time). At last I gained her consent, and the child was put
+into my bed, that I might have the conversation the first thing in the
+morning.
+
+When I awoke, I found him awake, close by me, and his great eyes seemed
+to devour me.
+
+"How long you did sleep!" said he; "I have been seeing you sleep."
+
+Said I, "What do you see with?"
+
+"My eyes," he replied, and to the questions, What do you hear, smell,
+taste, touch with? he made the appropriate answers.
+
+"But what do you _love_ with?" I asked.
+
+He jumped up upon his knees and crossed his arms on his breast, paused a
+moment wonderingly, and then exclaimed, "With my arms!" and throwing his
+arms round my neck, hugged me. I was taken a little aback, but in a
+moment said:--
+
+"Have you a great deal of love?"
+
+"Oh, a great deal, a great deal!" he exclaimed.
+
+"Where is it? where do you keep it?" said I.
+
+He started up again on his knees, again crossed his arms upon his
+breast, and said, "Where do I?"
+
+Placing my hand on his heart, I said, "Is it not in there?"
+
+His whole expression was affirmative, he looked delighted, but did not
+speak.
+
+"Are you good?" said I.
+
+"Sometimes," he said.
+
+"What are you when you are not good?"
+
+"I cry."
+
+He had evidently been told it was naughty to cry.
+
+I said, "Why are you not good all the time?"
+
+"Why ain't I?" said he, after a moment's pause.
+
+"Oh," said I, "I think you have not goodness enough to be good with all
+the time."
+
+He looked assent, delighted and earnest. I answered his unuttered
+feeling with the question,--
+
+"Should you like to have goodness enough to be good with all the time?"
+
+"How can I?"
+
+"Oh," said I, "you have a good friend who has a whole sky full of
+goodness. He gave you all the goodness and love you have in there (I
+touched his breast), and will give you more and more if you want him to,
+always and always, enough to be good with all the time."
+
+He looked perfectly blest, did not speak, but laid himself down close by
+me, took my arm and put it over him, and said, as he nestled up to me,--
+
+"Talk to me some more."
+
+I went on: "Your good friend gives you all your joy to be glad with, and
+all your love and goodness. They always go together. And now listen to
+me: the next time you are going to cry (I used his own practical
+expression instead of saying the next time you are naughty), stop and
+think. I have a good friend who has a whole sky full of goodness and he
+will give me goodness enough to be good with all the time, and I guess
+you will not cry." He responded only with huggings and kissings and
+exclamations of "I love you a whole sky full," and as I did not want to
+overdo or say anything to mar the impression I had made, I took
+advantage of a noise I heard, to change the subject, and said:--
+
+"What is that noise?"
+
+He jumped out of bed, went to the window, and said:--
+
+"It is the carpenters making a house," and after a pause, asked, "Who
+made all the other houses?"
+
+"Carpenters," said I; "don't you see they make houses out of boards?"
+
+"Who made the boards?"
+
+"The boards are made out of trees. People cut down the trees, and then
+they saw them up into great logs, and then they split up the logs and
+smooth them out into pieces we call boards."
+
+"Who made the trees?" said he.
+
+I understood very well where the tyrannizing unity of his personality
+was leading his understanding, but did not wish, just then, to risk
+giving outward form or connection to his thought of the Divine Cause, so
+I said:--
+
+"The trees grow out of the ground; don't you see old trees and young
+trees and little baby trees growing out of the ground?"
+
+For this information he did not give me that hearty "_yes_" with which
+he had received my communication of spiritual facts, but came back to
+bed again. I persisted, however, in talking playful nonsense for half an
+hour, until his nurse came to take him up to dress him. As soon as she
+appeared at the door, he started up on his knees again, crossed his arms
+over his breast, and in a loud, joyful voice cried out:--
+
+"Mrs. Doyle! I have a good friend up in the sky who has a whole sky full
+of goodness, and he will give me as much goodness as I want to be good
+with _all the time_," emphasizing the last three words.
+
+The nurse, a good-hearted Roman Catholic, who, like all the servants,
+had been forbidden to talk to the child about GOD or any kindred
+subject, looked at me startled, yet gratified, and said:--
+
+"What will his mother say?"
+
+I replied, "His mother will be very glad; she only wanted to wait till
+she thought he could understand. But I have told him enough for the
+present; don't talk to him about it; but if he says anything to you,
+come and tell me."
+
+"Yes," said she, "and I thank GOD you have come to teach the poor child
+something."
+
+I then said to her aside, "His mother is very anxious lest he be
+frightened; for she was frightened about GOD and death when she was a
+little child, and has suffered from it all her life long. She has been a
+double orphan ever since she can remember."
+
+I said this to her for several reasons: one was my extreme desire to see
+what the one simple truth would do for the child, and this was the
+reason I gave _good friend_ for GOD's name. Of course, the mother craved
+to know exactly what had passed on this important occasion, and was
+immensely relieved and gratified at what I told her, and wanted it all
+to be written down; and thus it happened that I made memoranda of this
+and subsequent conversations, and even of those held in her presence,
+for they continued to be no less interesting than they began.
+
+Observe these points in the child's speech to the nurse: he interpolated
+the words _up in the sky_. I had given no place to the good friend,
+though I had said he had a whole sky full of goodness and love; and the
+sky being the glorious symbol of unboundedness, elevation, purity, and
+power to the human imagination, in all nations and times, as is proved
+by the earliest idolaters who worshipped the heavens, and the host of
+stars, and verifying the more spiritual conceptions of the Hebrew
+Psalmist, and of Job, who did not confound (nor did this child) the sign
+with the Living GOD who created it to signify His Being. Another thing:
+Observe it was not even as the giver of love and joy, but as the giver
+of _goodness_ that the Person of Persons had seized the imagination of
+the child so powerfully. It was wonderful to see that very day, the
+effect upon his understanding of this conversation. The night before,
+when I told him the story of the little worm, I found his vocabulary so
+small that I could give my imagination a very narrow scope. But in the
+course of the day (in which, for the first time in his life) he talked
+incessantly, asking innumerable questions about his _good friend_, he
+seemed to have no difficulty in talking. I am very sorry I have not my
+written memoranda, because I should like to tell you everything in
+order; but I remember he wanted to know how his _good friend_ "looked."
+I replied by asking him, "How does love look?" He laughed, and said,
+"Love does not look, but feels." "Well," said I, "so your good friend
+does not look, but feels. Don't you feel him now, putting love and
+goodness into you?" He laughed assent, and said, "Where is he?"
+
+"Wherever love and goodness are," said I; "in you, in me, and in mother,
+in everybody who _loves_." I was encouraged to believe he would
+comprehend this language, unimaginable and inconceivable as such truth
+is to the mere understanding, for I had in my remembrance a conversation
+I once overheard between two children, one five and the other not three
+years old, at which I had not ceased to wonder since I heard it. I was
+sitting drawing with their mother in a recess of a room that hid us from
+the children's sight, when our attention was diverted by hearing the
+younger one say:--
+
+"Can GOD see me now, when I am all wrapped up in this shawl?"
+
+The elder one replied very earnestly, "O yes! GOD can see everybody,
+everywhere."
+
+"But I don't see how He can see me when I am all wrapped up in this
+shawl. It is dark," persisted the little three-year-old. There was a
+pause, when Eliza, in a very anxious voice, said:--
+
+"Amelia, can you see mama in your eye?" (She meant imagination.)
+
+Amelia replied after a moment, "Yes, I can see mama in my eye, just how
+she looks."
+
+"Well," said Eliza, "I suppose that is the way GOD sees everything,
+because He knows everything."
+
+I cannot conceive a more perfect proof that the soul of a child is a
+"sparkle of GOD," and its mind the intuition of the eternal reason--its
+image, than was given by this original illustration of the truth of
+truths made by a child of five years old. The mother made an exclamation
+of wonder, and said:--
+
+"I am sure I never could have given so profound an answer as that," and
+I continue to think it the most wonderful thing I ever heard of so young
+a child's saying, and had I not heard it myself, I doubt if I could have
+believed it was said. But it has given me courage to think that children
+might have very early a definite conception of the invisible GOD without
+materializing it.
+
+The omnipresence and invisibility of GOD were mysteries that attracted
+my little pupil's mind and taxed it, but did not distress nor perplex
+it. Of the reality of GOD's being, the intimacy of his own relations
+with Him, he never seemed to have a doubt; his delight in the thought of
+Him was boundless. At the end of the first day he said a thing which
+struck his parents with astonishment. The evening of the day on which I
+arrived, his father had made tea for me in the parlor, and as the child
+did not want to leave me a moment, he was set up at the table in his
+high-chair opposite me, to eat his bread and milk with us. While the
+father talked of one thing and another, the child's eye and mine
+occasionally met, and he would immediately make some gesture of
+lovingness and an inarticulate sound, ee ee ee! At last his father
+checked him with the words "Don't make those silly noises, Foster!" I
+interposed, and playfully said:--
+
+"Now please don't come between me and Foster. I understand his silly
+noises and just what he means to say to me. How can you expect he will
+talk any sense when you have never given him any help to think?" The
+father laughed at my "transcendentalism," as he called it. But the
+second night, when we were all again in the same relative position, the
+demeanor of the child was wholly changed; he sat silently eating as if
+wrapped in thought. By and by he said in a very decided tone, "Some
+things live, and some things only keep."
+
+With a look of astonishment his father exclaimed, "What an extraordinary
+generalization!" "The consequence," said I, "of being talked to as if he
+were a rational being one day!"
+
+The next day I went to Boston for a day or two, to make arrangements for
+returning to stay an indefinite time, which was such a disappointment to
+the poor little thing that he screamed in the most passionate manner, so
+that his mother could no longer doubt his sensibility or will. He was so
+angry with the stage-coachman who took me away, that his father had
+great difficulty in persuading him that he was not a bad man, but, on
+the contrary, a kind one, whom Aunt Lizzie had asked to come to take her
+to the railroad. At last he somewhat reluctantly agreed that he might be
+a good man.
+
+"But I shall never like him," he said, and left his father, to go and
+caress his mother, who was weeping, as he divined, with the same regret
+as his own, and he was apparently comforted by her saying, that she,
+too, was sorry Aunt Lizzie had to go away for a little while, but she
+had promised to come back in a day or two and stay all summer.
+
+It turned out as I had surmised, that he had asked no questions while I
+was gone, and had said very little except to wonder that I stayed so
+long, though I was gone only two days.
+
+When I came back I had immediate evidence that he had been thinking
+while I was gone, and to some purpose. You remember that on that first
+morning of our conversation, he had asked me who made the trees, and I
+had said, "The trees grow out of the ground," which did not seem to give
+him the satisfaction that my reference of his emotions, sensibilities,
+and thoughts, to an invisible personality had given him. Now, as soon as
+the embraces of welcome and expressions of joy had subsided a little, he
+burst into the subject which had so possessed his mind, and with a sort
+of triumphant air, as if he was sure of a satisfactory response, he
+asked:--
+
+"What did our good friend want the trees to grow out cf the ground for?"
+
+I said, "Do you think the trees are pretty? Do you like to look at
+them?"
+
+"Yes, I think they are beautiful."
+
+"Well," said I, "I guess that was one reason; you know he loves us all,
+and so he likes to please us. Do you like to please those you love?"
+
+"Yes!" and a passionate embrace and kiss was the expressive reply.
+
+I then went on to call his attention to the fruits that grow on some of
+the trees, and which serve us with delicious food, and the uses of wood
+to build houses with, etc. This conversation naturally introduced other
+kindred subjects of inquiry as to why our good friend had arranged
+things so and so. The tyrannizing instinct of his own mind, of which he
+had become conscious through the exercise of it, that my naming of the
+Spirit Father had so happily started, had made objective to him the
+Unity of all life, and he was sure that the good friend was at the
+bottom of everything outward as well as inward, even trifles; for I one
+day heard him say, as he was lying on the floor at play, "Heavenly
+Father, I wish you would not let my leg feel so cold." This was later
+on, in the winter time, however.
+
+I cannot sufficiently regret that I have lost my original memoranda.
+They were transcribed from notes that his mother made, who was watching
+every word said, with the most intense interest. She always had pencil
+and paper at her side, because the danger of hemorrhage caused her to
+avoid speaking. She wrote down with care the very words, as if they
+were, as indeed they were, a divine Revelation. Whatever he accepted or
+expressed with joy, she felt was true, knowing as well as she did the
+past emptiness of his understanding, and the dreariness of his feeling
+as an individual. But I can perhaps remember enough to show you the
+method I took, which was truly the very method of conversation that
+Froebel proposes we should have with children, prompted by the Wisdom of
+love, which so profoundly respects its object that it gives it
+opportunity to be itself by not obtruding. The reason that we do not get
+the lesson that childhood can give us is that we thrust our finite minds
+between the child and the Divine, instead of limiting ourselves to
+putting the child into the point of view to see for itself what of
+course though essentially one, is perhaps of different aspect to each. I
+made it a point to be very quiet, and to exhibit no surprise at his
+questions or mistakes, but to lead him by my questions to the answers,
+and the corrections of mistakes which must needs arise from
+one-sidedness. The entire respect with which I listened to what he said
+gave him complete possession of and confidence in his own mind. One
+laugh at any incongruity he uttered (as Dr. Seguin would tell you) would
+have shut him up perhaps forever. How often children's thinking is thus
+nipped in the bud!
+
+The circumstances in this instance were favorable to real conversation.
+In addition to my love of psychological observation in general, and my
+love and interest in this child in particular, was that which I felt in
+the mother, whose own childhood had been so shadowed by her human
+environment that it had not taught her what only childhood can teach
+with its uneclipsed vision of the Father's face, of which Christ speaks
+and warns the adult not to offend (or, as the revised version translates
+it, _cause to stumble_). On her account, as well as on my own and the
+child's, I was careful not to put my thoughts into his head, but merely
+lead him to the standpoint from which he could see the truth for
+himself. It is because these conditions made for once an opportunity for
+a genuine conversation between intuitive childhood and such maturity of
+experience as I had attained, realizing Froebel's ideal of the
+conversation of the kindergarten, that I am desirous to give it to you
+as a hint of how you should proceed--though, of course, you would
+probably never have so exceptional an opportunity; because the children
+that come to you will generally have minds already misty with
+half-defined ideas of GOD, received from the vague, half-defined minds
+of the imperfectly educated adults, conveyed to the children either in
+that careless or dogmatic manner in which they are usually talked to,
+not with.
+
+Another advantage I had with this child was, that besides the arrested
+development arising from his mother's timid plan with him, he inherited
+from both parents, and perhaps from remoter ancestry, an individuality
+of mind that was not at all imaginative; which did not, however, exclude
+him from spiritual truth, for that is not the work of imagination, but
+is discerned by the spiritual sense, being as objective as what is
+discerned by the five senses (a transcendental objective, not a material
+one). The respectful interest with which I treated him gave him a happy
+confidence in his own thought, which was my opportunity for observing
+the natural order of mental development. In short, the conversation we
+had was a genuine one as between equals, unless, indeed, he was the
+superior in giving to me the divine laws of the spiritual order. He
+often surprised me by his next question, and was so disarmed of all fear
+by my consideration and tenderness, that he revealed that which is
+always the individual's secret, and I gained as much as he did by the
+conversations, and certainly I gained certainty in what was previously
+only conjecture on my part. I was sometimes obliged to say I did not
+know, and remember his asking me with surprise, "Don't you know
+everything?" "Oh, no!" said I. "Only our good friend knows everything
+and gives us our thoughts all the time. Doesn't he give new thoughts to
+you every day?"
+
+"Yes, he gives me a great many new thoughts all the time," he replied
+with animation. On another occasion, when I had become perfectly
+exhausted in answering his questions, I said to him:--
+
+"I am very tired, but I will answer that question, provided you will not
+ask me another before dinner."
+
+As he walked away he said, "Oh, I wish I had asked another question
+instead of that!"
+
+"Well," said I, "what? Perhaps I will answer that one."
+
+Turning back, he said eagerly, "Will our good friend answer all my
+questions when I go into the sky?"
+
+I said, "Yes, every one; for he knows everything, and can never be
+tired."
+
+The expression of complete satisfaction with which he went away from me
+was most expressive.
+
+You will observe his expression of "when I go into the sky," and
+consider it together with the words that he interpolated saying, "I have
+a good friend up in the sky," in repeating to Mrs. Doyle that first
+morning when I had told him that his good friend who gave him thoughts,
+and joy, and goodness, and love, had a sky full of goodness. The sky is
+the natural symbol of the unbounded and infinite and the essentially
+spiritual, and the conception of GOD into which I had led him, and which
+I named his good friend, pervaded all space.
+
+The subsequent questions of how GOD looked, and upon His whereabouts,
+and the conversation on this, by identifying Him with the Love that he
+felt within himself, had revealed to him _Immortality_ before he had
+defined mortality.
+
+The GOD he felt within him in his conscious Love and without him in all
+manifestations of beauty and power, gave him assurance that he would be
+sometime wherever GOD was. I have lost the connection and place in the
+narrative of another conversation I had with him on the omnipresence of
+GOD. He often had said his thoughts were in his head, and his feelings
+were in his bosom. One day he was sitting in my lap close to a table,
+with his feet bare, and I put my hand under the table and pinched his
+toe. He said:--
+
+"What are you pinching my toe for?"
+
+I said, "How do you know I pinched your toe? you cannot see what I am
+doing under the table."
+
+"I think you pinched my toe, because I felt it."
+
+"I thought all your thoughts were in your head, and all your feelings in
+your bosom, not in your toes."
+
+"My feelings are all over my body," said he; "and when you pinched my
+toe, the feeling ran right into my head and turned into a thought."
+
+"So you see," said I, "that you live all over your body and in any part
+of it, just as your Heavenly Father lives all over the world and in
+everything at once."
+
+"Yes," said he, "I did not know how that was before."
+
+The date of this conversation was some weeks, perhaps months, from the
+beginning of our intercourse, as I know from the use of the word
+_Heavenly Father_, which came after a time to take the place of _good
+friend_, and it was preceded by some other conversations. He was always
+overflowing with expressions of love to me. When I gave him anything, he
+would embrace me, and I would ask, "Which do you love best, me or the
+thing given?" (an apple perhaps, or whatever it might be). He would
+always say, "You, you." Once he said, "I love you more than all the
+apples in the world." Once when he was kissing my hand, I said, "Which
+do you love best, me or my hand?"
+
+"I love both," he said.
+
+I persisted, and said, "Supposing my hand was cut off, would you love me
+as well?"
+
+"I should love you a great deal more," said he, energetically; "for it
+would hurt you so to have your poor hand cut off. Would it not hurt you
+dreadfully?"
+
+"I suppose it would, but by and by it would get well and what I want to
+know is, whether you would love me as well without my hand as with it?"
+
+He still declared he should love me more. I then said, "So you see my
+hand is not me. It is only one of the things the Heavenly Father gave me
+to make things with, and He gave me my feet to walk with, and eyes to
+see with; but my eyes and ears and tongue are not me; and if I should
+lose them all, still I would be all of myself, and you could love me?"
+
+"Yes," said he; "but I don't want you to lose any of those things, for I
+love them all together."
+
+My object in these conversations was to see if he would separate in
+thought the finite material body from the conscious soul or _himself_,
+as I preferred to say, for to speak of one's self as a _soul_ makes what
+is essentially subjective as objective as we desire to make the body,
+the use of which is to reveal to others the feelings and thoughts of the
+individual that otherwise the finite apprehension could not seize. I was
+endeavoring to prepare him to minister to his mother, when I could
+persuade her to let him know the fact of death, by appreciating and
+defining that crisis of life as a step onward into the deep
+consciousness of immortality, which I believed would lift her out of the
+abyss into which her own consciousness seemed to fall at the utterance
+of the word, in spite of all the intellectual views of immortality which
+she had for many years cultivated, but which somehow did not meet her
+exigency, when she felt herself on the brink of the separation of body
+and mind. No intellectual process can give what the faith of childhood
+has in its own immortality of which those who had the care of her
+infancy had robbed her.
+
+It was delightful to see how she enjoyed the child who had long been a
+burden to her. She wanted him in her presence all the time with his
+playthings, and to hear all our conversation, and that I should tell
+her what we said in the little time that he could not be with her. She
+declared that she never had known what the enjoyment of life was till
+she had it in her sympathy with him. All the pleasures of intellect, and
+also of personal affections of the happiest kind, were pale beside the
+joy of this child--in his communion with GOD, who was in all his
+thoughts, and had taken him from his dreariness and growing peevishness,
+into that joy of childhood which Ruskin speaks of as so entirely out of
+proportion to the occasions of its expression, and which still had no
+painful excitement in it, but was simply a spontaneous outflow, not only
+quickening his thoughts but informing his affections with generosity and
+gratitude. The self that lost all sense of boundary, in its joy in the
+unbounded, spread out to embrace all about it. He said one thing to me
+which will, I think, explain to you what I mean. Of course, I was the
+first person on whom the flood of his heart poured itself out, though he
+did not stop with me, but also expressed his love to all with whom he
+came into near or remote relation. When saying to me how much he loved
+me, what a skyful of love he had for me, I said, "Yes, darling, I know
+you love me as much as you can," he replied scornfully, "I love you a
+great deal more than I can!" Was not that a wonderful expression of the
+immortal essence of his love,--of Love Divine?
+
+Without its being suggested to him to thank others for kindnesses, he
+did so without a single exception. He would be taken to drive in the
+carriage with his mother, and standing at the window, would shout with
+delight at the things he saw on the way, and when he got home would
+often run back to the gate to say, "Thank you, horsey!" and all his
+habits of timidity were forgotten when the street musicians came by, and
+he was allowed to take out pennies to them. Callers at the house, from
+whom he used to shrink when they would have spoken to him, were in
+wonder at his hospitable welcome and fearless but intelligent
+interpositions in the conversation, which they thought indicated
+precocity instead of backwardness. The length, breadth, and depth of all
+the words Christ let fall in the last part of his life, of which I had
+had some insight before, became doubly intelligible to me. I saw into
+the beauty and meaning of mankind's being created in successive
+generations, and I was thus prepared to enter into and appreciate
+Froebel's ideas and methods, with which I did not become acquainted till
+a quarter of a century later.
+
+I want you to observe that in what I did there was simply the
+spontaneous wisdom of love--love, not fondness, not desire of
+reciprocation, but self-forgetting and reverent of its object. Only this
+gives the creative method, or is the essence of creativeness, whether
+human or divine.
+
+You remember, in the memoir of Froebel with which I began this course of
+lectures, it was said that he posed his elder brother with his
+questionings of GOD's wisdom in the arrangement of the social sphere.
+Unable to answer him, the instinct of his love led him to divert the
+child's attention into a department of nature where apparent discords
+were seen to be harmonized for the production of beauty and use, that
+the poor little perplexed and bewildered child might enjoy himself
+legitimately. He gave him the clue to the labyrinth and the strength to
+conquer the Minotaur. He had no idea of educating, but only of
+comforting. Thus, unconscious of any theory of education, he solved the
+problem practically, first for the child Froebel himself, later for
+mankind to whom the man Froebel has revealed it with such ample
+illustrations as to make an era in human history that, as we hope, shall
+retrieve the past. Childhood understood, leading in the promised
+millennium of peace on earth and good will among men, will make mankind
+forget the Babel confusion of its first experimenting, and enter into
+the mutual understanding of the Pentecostal miracle.
+
+
+
+
+LECTURE VII.
+
+A PSYCHOLOGICAL OBSERVATION.
+
+PART SECOND.
+
+
+IN our little F.'s case, as it became perfectly plain to his mother that
+he conceived clearly of God's embracing unbounded space as well as time
+in His Infinite Essence, she became desirous of knowing how he would
+receive the fact of death, so painfully and prematurely forced upon her
+own soul,--whether his mind would leap the gulf in which hers seemed to
+sink at the utterance of the word.
+
+But the difficulty for him seemed to be to conceive of death at all. I
+tried to approach the subject in such a manner that he should have the
+initiative, as it were, in any conversation upon it. There was a poor
+old man who occasionally passed the house in the clothes of a pauper,
+supporting his steps with a stick. One day when he did so, F. asked me,
+"What makes men old?" and before I had time to answer, added, "Mary [the
+name of a former servant] used to say _many days_, when I asked her. Do
+many days make men old?"
+
+"Yes," said I, "just as many days make your clothes and shoes old. That
+old man has walked on his poor old legs so long that they are quite worn
+out, and he has looked so long with his eyes that they are dim, and
+listened so long with his ears that they have grown dull, and his back
+has grown weak, and his whole body is so worn out that it will not do
+what his thoughts tell it to do, as your little fresh legs and eyes and
+ears and as your whole body does."
+
+He received this intimation quietly, but raised no question as to the
+ultimate result; and as often as the old man walked by, he would ask the
+same question and receive the same answer.
+
+At last I took down from the book-closet Mrs. Trimmer's story of the
+robins and read it to him, and he became very much interested in the
+little nest and its inhabitants. After a while, the children in the
+story had birds of their own in a cage, which they took care of
+assiduously, but at length on one occasion went away and left them for
+many days uncared for, so that they died; I read right on through the
+page on which it was told that on going to the cage when they came home,
+they found the birds lying on their backs with their beaks wide open,
+stark dead! I paused in my reading, and he repeated, "stark dead! what
+do those words mean? What was the matter with the birds?" I laid the
+book down, and said, "You know that some things live, and some things
+only keep." "Yes," said he. I continued, "You know that living beings
+feel pain or pleasure, one or the other, all the time, and that things
+that only keep do not feel at all."
+
+"Yes," said he.
+
+"Well, things that live and feel--living beings--always eat and drink;
+they continue to live by eating and drinking, and God tells them to eat
+by making it pleasant for them to taste things. Now these little birds
+lived by eating and drinking, and if they had been free, they would have
+found food and drink somewhere in the world; but those children had shut
+them up in a cage; and when they were so thoughtless as to go away and
+forget the birds that they had undertaken to take care of, the little
+birds grew hungry, and you know it is not pleasant to feel even a little
+hungry, but they grew hungrier and hungrier till their poor little
+bodies were as full of pain as they could be. Now our Heavenly Father
+could not possibly have them suffer so much pain, and so He told them
+to come to Him, and their life went right out of their bodies, and then
+their bodies were just like everything else that only keeps; they could
+feel no more pain."
+
+"What a dear, dear, dear Heavenly Father it is!" said the child; "what
+nice ways He has about everything!"
+
+"Yes," said I, "He has the ways of love."
+
+He asked no questions at this time, nor made any generalization. I took
+up the book, and read on about the children's burying the bodies of the
+birds, etc.
+
+Thus the death of the body was first presented to his imagination as
+only a relief from pain of the life that inhabited it. He was immensely
+interested, and the subject became the most common topic of
+conversation.
+
+There were some books in the house which had pictures of hunts, and one
+was of a stag-hunt, the stag at bay, the dogs seizing him, the huntsmen
+firing. These books had been carefully kept from him. I now took them
+down, and showed them to him, interested him in the timid stag running
+for its life, and its ingenious devices to elude the dogs by swimming
+across streams, and at last when the dogs had seized it, or the huntsman
+fired the cruel shot which tore the breast or side of the poor beast,
+the final release, God's call of the life to Himself! At which the child
+would utter exclamations of delight: that final escape was _the best of
+all_.
+
+This story was so interesting, it absorbed his attention, and he did not
+generalize. But it took its place among the good deeds of God's love,
+that when life became too painful in the body it was taken away to enjoy
+itself with God.
+
+His mother, in whose presence were all the conversations, was intensely
+interested; but still as he did not think of human death, she hardly
+felt that he had conceived the idea.
+
+I told him about the metamorphoses of insects, and their depositing
+their life in eggs as soon as they were born. When the old man came by,
+as he did nearly every day, we commented on the wearing out of his
+body, but he did not think of death as a relief for him.
+
+At last one day it happened that stretching out of the window for some
+purpose, he nearly lost his balance, and it was only by my timely
+seizing him that he escaped falling out. I said, "F., what if you had
+fallen out on those rocks and been broken all to pieces!" He shrieked
+with horror, "I don't want to! I don't want to!" "But what if you had!"
+said I, calmly. "You came very near it. What should you have done?"
+"What could I?" he screamed. "What could I do, all broken to pieces!"
+"Why, don't you think," said I, smiling, "that your Heavenly Father
+would have taken you right into His own bosom?"
+
+A heavenly smile spread over his face and a look of perfect satisfaction
+and acquiescence, and he said after a moment's pause, "I forgot my
+Heavenly Father. Oh, what a dear, dear, dear Heavenly Father He is!"
+Then, after another moment, he said in a distressed voice, "But must I
+be broken all to pieces when I go to the Heavenly Father?"
+
+"Oh, dear, no!" said I; "but when we are broken all to pieces, or
+starved, or are very sick, He takes us; but generally people grow to be
+old like the old man, and all their bodies get worn out, and they get
+very tired and kind of go to sleep, and the Heavenly Father takes them,
+so they do not wake up again in their old bodies, which are buried as
+the children buried the bodies of the robins."
+
+He expressed himself very happy, and asked a great many questions, and
+it seemed as if he had already known of the fact of death. At all
+events, he now accepted it as the common destiny, without any painful
+feeling, and it seemed to give new realization to his mother's feeling
+that her own was indeed nothing but a morbid feeling, and that normal
+nature did not shrink from death. The subsequent questions were
+innumerable. I read to him Krummacher's parable of the caterpillar and
+butterfly in the garden of Thirza, after the death of Abel, as it was
+paraphrased by Mr. Alcott when he read it in his school, in which I was
+assisting him at the very time that I was called away to the child's
+mother. And it was the study I had made of childhood in his school which
+had enabled me to pursue with so much confidence the method I took with
+the child, though it was in my own childhood I conceived the plan; and I
+remember speaking of it to Dr. Channing in 1824, and how much interested
+he was in the idea, though he told me that in his own case he was
+indebted to the symbolism of nature, especially the ocean seen from the
+beach at Newport, for clearing his mind of the effects of the teaching
+and preaching which he had heard. These grand objects, and later the
+beauty of some manifestations he had seen of love giving courage and
+power to the weak, kindled his ideal, and gave form and substance to his
+consciousness of God.
+
+For a time there was nothing but delight expressed in the fact of death,
+the relief from all suffering, the enlargement of life and joy and new
+knowledge of God and His ways. At last a little incident showed him the
+shadow which attends death in this world.
+
+We often went to call on the family of the physician who attended his
+mother. One day when we went, the Doctor, who was very fond of F., took
+him into his lap while I was playing with the baby in his mother's arms.
+They always called it "baby." I said to Mrs. D., "Has not baby any
+name?" The mother replied, "His name is Edward." F. looked up at the
+Doctor with a bright, joyous expression, and said, "Where is your other
+Edward?" The Doctor's face changed instantaneously; he clasped the child
+close to him, and said, "Oh, he has gone to his Heavenly Father," with a
+burst of grief. F. stretched himself back, looked into the agitated
+face, and said with a look of the greatest concern, "Are you sorry that
+he has gone to the Heavenly Father?" "Oh, very, very sorry," said the
+poor father. "Should not you be sorry if he should take away your dear
+mother?" and putting the child down, he immediately left the room. Mrs.
+D. said, "The Doctor has never got over the death of that child, and we
+never name him in his presence."
+
+I immediately left the house, and we walked some distance in silence,
+and as I found F. did not incline to speak, I said, "F., did the Doctor
+look glad when you spoke to him about his other Edward?" He pressed
+himself close up to me, and said eagerly, "No, no! he looked very sorry.
+What made him sorry? Did he not like to have his other Edward with the
+Heavenly Father?" "Oh, yes! he liked that, but then he wanted to have
+him in his own arms. You see he cannot see him now, and he wants to kiss
+him." "Yes," said F., "he hugged me!" I continued: "You see, the Doctor
+is very strong and well, and I suppose he will live in his body a good
+many years, and he has Mrs. D. and Julia and the rest, but he wants that
+other Edward, too, every day of his life." F. replied sympathizingly,
+"He was large, and white, and bright, and when I go into the sky, I
+shall look all over to see where he is." I said, after a little while,
+"Shall you say anything more to the Doctor about his other Edward?" "No,
+indeed!" said he. "I never shall say another word about him. Do you
+think I want to make the poor Doctor sorry?" I told his mother, when I
+got home, of the whole affair, and we agreed that it was well he should
+see the sad side of death for the survivors.
+
+It was soon a question with F. how we were to live without the body, and
+he asked me. I told him I did not know exactly how it was to be, but I
+supposed God would let new eyes, ears, and whatever limbs we should
+need, grow out of us, made of the finest stuff like air, which we could
+not see because it was so delicate, or even feel, as we did the air when
+it moved, but which souls could use just as they pleased. He said, "I
+have seen some pictures of souls that had gone out of their bodies, and
+I did not know before what they were." Surprised, I asked him how they
+looked. He said, "They were nothing but heads with wings."
+
+The delightful thing was to see the effect of all this earnest prattle
+upon the mother; and one day, after I had returned from a visit to a
+friend in the town, she told me she had had a conversation with F. on
+her own approaching death that was very satisfactory.
+
+She said she had his bread and milk put on a little table opposite her
+easy-chair, and when he was happily engaged, she said, "F., I think our
+Heavenly Father will soon take me to Himself." He looked up with an
+expression of great feeling, and said tenderly: "Do you? Then you will
+get rid of that poor, sick body, and your cough;" and he added
+presently, "Perhaps he will give you _wings_!" She said nothing could be
+likened to the impression of peace and sweetness which these simple
+words made upon her. Soon after, he said, "But what will be done with
+your poor old body?" (She said he spoke as if it was of not much
+importance.) She replied, "Your father and Aunt Lizzy will take it to
+Cambridge in a carriage, and put it into the ground; and the grass will
+grow over the place, and sometimes you can come to the place; and I
+guess I shall look out of heaven and see you." But in a few minutes he
+began to cry, and said, "I want to go with you into the sky." She said,
+"Oh, you have a nice little body, which gives you a great deal of
+pleasure, and you must stay here with poor, dear father! What would he
+do when he has no wife any longer, without his little boy to make him
+happy, and take care of him when he grows old?" After a little more of
+such remonstrance he said, "Well, I will stay with him!" It was curious
+that in talking with me he never referred to this subject of his
+mother's approaching death, which evidently had touched him tenderly,
+and I did not introduce the subject.
+
+It was also a curious circumstance, that after this matter of death
+was, as it were, settled satisfactorily, and the mind of his mother
+freed from all trouble on the point, _the love of this life_, to which
+she had hitherto been more than indifferent, sprang up in her with great
+energy, and she proposed to break up the house, and go to Florida for
+cure! Her husband and I could not share the hope, but we could not but
+sympathize in the new joy in life, that she seemed to have received from
+her now happy child, with whom she had learnt _to live_ in the spirit.
+Things were so arranged that she made her husband's father's house,
+about thirty miles distant, the first goal of her journey. She reached
+with great fatigue this first stage, and stopped to rest, and never
+mentioned Florida afterwards. She breathed on another year, during which
+time I only saw her in weekly visits, having returned to Mr. Alcott's
+school in Boston. Her disease was not very painful, but so lingering
+that every trace of her former beauty was lost in the ghastly
+emaciation.
+
+There were in the house two little cousins, younger than F., taken care
+of exclusively by a very sweet mother, and this gave him the most
+desirable social intercourse and play that took the place of our
+discourses at the right moment, and called into action very sweet traits
+of character. My weekly visit of a day or two was a great affair to the
+children. I told them stories, innumerable variations of _The Story
+without an End_, and of _Pilgrim's Progress_, modified to their infant
+minds. I always repeated the stories in precisely the same words (which
+is a great point in telling stories to children, and impresses them on
+the memory), and they became very familiar with the ends of my
+paragraphs, and would take them from my lips, and repeat them as a
+chorus. Thus when I had got Pilgrim laid away in the upper chamber of
+the House Beautiful, whose white draperies I minutely described, they
+would all interrupt me, and sing out, "And the name of that chamber was
+Peace." So of the last words of other paragraphs that I purposely made
+epigrammatic.
+
+The substantial character of the child's piety and sense of immortality,
+which I have described as bubbling up at the name _Heavenly_ Father,
+spoken at the right time, and in the right way, was exhibited
+unmistakably in his after life, and began to express itself at once in
+his association with his little cousins, which proved a very timely
+thing for him, bringing out his moral character by means of what he
+constantly did to make them happy, and keep them good, but he never said
+anything to them about the Heavenly Father. That subject seemed reserved
+for me.
+
+It was amusing to see how fatherly he was to the little one, and he
+continued this fatherly manner all his after life to all the children
+with whom he came in contact, and even during his childhood it was
+singularly unmixed with any tyranny or managing spirit. He would play as
+they wanted to with them. He seemed to be drawn to children because he
+could so easily understand their innocence, and make them happy by his
+companionship, and because he enjoyed _them_.
+
+All his subsequent life he exhibited an exquisite sensibility to beauty,
+which he continued to accept as the Creator's _smile of consent_; the
+_very good_ pronounced on everything which He had made. In the last part
+of his mother's life, she became so frightfully emaciated, that it was
+evidently painful for him to look at her; but he _said_ nothing about
+it; and it was sweet to see the delicacy with which he tried to conceal
+this pain from _her_, when he was admitted into the room to see her,
+which, at length, came to be only in the middle of the day, when she was
+seated in an easy-chair, with a broad white footstool at her feet. He
+would come into the room, looking on the floor, and seat himself on the
+footstool, with his back partly turned to her, and, drawing down her
+hands, cover them with kisses: he refused, as it were, to recognize her,
+under that ghastly mask, which, however, did not shut off from his
+_remembrance_, her former loveliness; for, as soon as she was really
+dead, and he began to think of her _in heaven_, she became his standard
+of beauty. During the little more than a year that he continued under my
+care, "_not_ so beautiful as my mother," or "_as_ beautiful as my
+mother" were words very frequently in his mouth. As she approached her
+death, she was so careful lest he should have any of the _shock_ which
+her own mother's death gave to her, that she readily consented that he
+should go for the last few days with the other children to stay with a
+kind neighbor. He was therefore not present at her death; neither was I.
+It was an event greatly longed for by herself, at last, and its
+approach, which she knew before any one else discerned any special
+change, seemed to gladden her. Her last breath was peaceful; her last
+words, "Give my love to F."
+
+I told him of the event the morning after the funeral, from which I
+returned with his father, in the dusk of the evening, calling for the
+child to go home and sleep with me, which he always was delighted to do.
+He was put to bed in the room where his mother had died, and I went in
+with him, to explain her absence, if he should notice it. But he was
+tired, and so occupied with my presence, he did _not_,--not even when he
+woke in the morning. At last, I said to him, "Do you see what room we
+are in?" He rose up and looked around, and said, "Why, it is my mother's
+chamber! Where is my mother?" I paused a moment to see if he would
+divine the truth, and then said, "The dear Heavenly Father has taken her
+at last!" He fell back on the pillow, with a single exclamation of _not
+painful wonder_, and a countenance sublime with the mingled expression
+of awe, love, and joyful satisfaction. The fact of her absent body
+seemed to be a more palpable proof of the truth of her deathless soul,
+than even her form and word, which had represented it to his senses. He
+was "silent, as we grow when feeling most," as if he realized that he
+was in the presence of the "substance of things hoped for, the evidence
+of things unseen." You may be sure I respected this sacred silence,
+which seemed to me to last several minutes, but possibly it was only
+_one_. At last he said gently, "Was the window open?" I replied, "I
+don't know; I only know our Heavenly Father, who is everywhere, you
+know, took her to himself. He does not mind about windows, you know."
+"_No, indeed!_ I know that very well," he said, with a little laugh (as
+if he wondered at his momentary lapse of thought). Soon he asked, "Did
+He give her a new body right away?" "I do not know anything more about
+that than _you_ do," I replied; "I only know He will do better things
+for her than we can think of." "Do you think," said he, "that she looks
+beautiful as she used to?" but, before I could reply, he suddenly added,
+"I want to _go_ to my mother. I want to see her _now_," and began to
+cry.
+
+I kissed him, and began gently to recall the conversation that she had
+had with him the day she told him she expected soon to leave him; and,
+after a while, he said spontaneously, as he had done when he talked with
+her he "would stay with his father to comfort him for the loss of her."
+His father told me afterwards, that when he saw _him_, he went over the
+same ground again, beginning with saying that he wanted to go to her;
+but when his father represented to him how solitary he should be with no
+wife or son to show their love to him, F. closed the conversation with
+the words, "Well, I will stay with you till I grow up" (as if it was
+quite within his option to do so or not).
+
+Very soon after this I took him away with me to Salem, where he remained
+in our family for a year or more, I think. My father's family were
+living at the corner of an old burial ground, two sides of the house
+being bordered by it. The day we arrived we went directly to my sister
+Sophia's room, which looked out upon this burial ground. He was
+immediately attracted to the window by the trees, and exclaimed
+joyfully, "Oh, Aunt Lizzy, what a beautiful green garden this is! What
+are those things?" (referring to the tomb stones.) I replied: "That
+green garden is where people lay away, underground, the _poor old
+worn-out dead bodies_ of their friends, who are with our Father in
+Heaven, and those things are called tombstones; they are put there with
+the names carved on them of the persons whose bodies are buried in those
+spots." He at once seemed greatly interested and pleased, and became
+still more so after he had seen some burials; his emotions of joy at the
+thought of the enfranchised spirits entering on their heavenly life,
+being tempered with tender sympathy for the bereaved friends in their
+mourning-robes, whom he sometimes saw weeping at the earthly parting. He
+was always very anxious to know how the buried ones had died, from what
+particular sickness or danger they had escaped; and one day when my
+sister Mary came back from a walk, he joyfully told her that he had
+found out another way in which souls went to heaven. She, of course,
+asked him, "What way?" and he said, "Why, sometimes ships that go to sea
+are driven by the wind against some rocks and broken to pieces, and all
+the men's bodies are drowned, and they go to heaven through the water."
+Another time, he ran to her in great excitement, and said: "Oh, Aunt
+Mary! I saw a little baby's body buried in the green garden; some
+carriages came, and there was a hole dug already, and people got out of
+the carriages, and one man had a little box in his arms in which the
+baby's body was; and they put some ropes around it, and let it down; and
+then they filled up the hole with the dirt, and I saw the little baby
+fly up, fly up, fly up!" and he accompanied the words with a circular
+gesture of his arm. Whether the subjective conception was so vivid, that
+it reproduced itself to his imagination in an objective form, as the
+Sistine Madonna is said to have done to Raphael; or it was what is
+called "a spiritual manifestation"; it was evidently a reality to him,
+and no comment was made, except that my sister said, "_I never saw a
+soul fly up_."
+
+I should say here that this child was not imaginative, and we never saw
+in him the smallest untruthfulness in speech or act, nor tendency to
+exaggeration. In this he resembled both his parents. Afterwards, he
+became something of a scientist, and studied medicine for his
+profession. He was a good classical scholar in college, and before his
+early death, had completed in manuscript the history of one of the
+mechanical arts. I think he was not of a visionary temperament. (See
+Appendix E.)
+
+His life with us in Salem was perfectly delightful. He had no faults,
+though a certain pertinacity (which was an expression of inherited
+firmness of character) sometimes required a little disciplinary
+conversation, nothing more. I never knew of his being subjected to any
+punishment, or requiring any, in all his childhood. He had not the usual
+impetuosity of children; perhaps the effect of his early depression of
+spirits.
+
+My sister Mary had a day-school in the house, made up of children
+between six and twelve years of age; he was allowed to have his
+playthings in the school-room, and loved to listen to her oral
+instruction of the children in natural history and science, especially
+in the stories that she told or read to them about human beings, in whom
+he was always more interested than in animals. I taught him how to read
+by the word method in _The Story without an End_, a slower and more
+laborious way both for him and me than the mixed method detailed in my
+_Kindergarten Guide_, of which I have lately published a primer under
+the title of _After Kindergarten, what?_
+
+But had I then known of Froebel's method of employing childish play,
+organized by the adult with single aim to intellectual development, I
+should not have taught him to read so early, but something more
+profitable; I then shared what Professor Agassiz called "_the American
+insanity_ of teaching children to read before they have learned the
+things signified by words," which he, like Froebel, believed would
+produce habits of mind positively injurious, dropping a veil between the
+observer and nature, preventing all freshness of thought, and destroying
+the mind's elasticity and _originality_. But I had not (at that time)
+presumed to question the time-honored tradition, that _the beginning of
+education_ was _learning to read_.
+
+When, later, my studies with a great philologist gave me a little light
+upon the subject, and showed me that English had the misfortune to be
+written by an inadequate alphabet, whose result was to confuse the
+phonography entirely, by obscuring the original principle of having but
+one letter for one sound, and a letter for every different sound, I
+realized the positive disadvantage of children's being forced through a
+process which baffles all their natural instincts of classification; and
+it was then I invented a method of separating English words into
+classes, the phonographic ones to be first made familiar, and the
+exceptions classified. Yet I could not be insensible to the
+unnaturalness of beginning with spending so much of the time of very
+young children upon this work of the _imperfect mind of man_, as
+languages are, rather than on the works of Infinite Wisdom. I was
+therefore well prepared to accept Froebel's method of first sharpening
+the senses by examination of things that charm children, and of
+developing the understanding by first making things according to the
+laws which constitute the mind, and then naming them in all perceptible
+relations. First let us form a mind which can apprehend nature as the
+standard of truth, before we undertake to _in_form it with what embodies
+the confusions and errors of men; as, for instance, in a considerable
+degree the written English language does. For language stands in the
+same relation to man as nature does in relation to God. The eternal word
+of Truth makes _things_ before it is made flesh. The confusion of
+tongues was the inevitable consequence of the fall of man out of that
+communion with God in which children are born, and our written language
+is an image of this confusion, especially the English, whose so-called
+orthography is the most anomalous of all languages; and the acquisition,
+therefore, ought to be postponed, at least until the understanding is
+fairly developed by some recognition of so much of the Word of God as is
+alive in the things we see and can handle. The time comes when the
+children can understand that exceptions prove the rule, and then those
+irregularities and anomalies of English writing may be made even
+entertaining lessons to children; because if its laws and rules are
+apprehended first, there is something amusing to them in contradictions
+of law that so many words seem to be. It is the pleasure in the
+grotesque; children enjoy the _funny_, as they call it, but it is a
+different enjoyment from that of the beautiful, and the latter is the
+highest element for human activity. A predominance of the _funny_ even
+demoralizes intellectually as well as morally, but it has its own
+subordinate place in healthy child life.
+
+My little friend had a slate and pencil, and immediately inclined to
+draw from real objects, but we did not know how to give him any other
+help than to guess at what were the things he was trying to represent.
+If we could not guess, I remember he would blush, and go away, saying he
+would "_fix it a little_." I had the instinct that he could only be
+effectually encouraged by success, and I would endeavor to divine what
+he meant, by looking to see what were the surrounding objects when I saw
+him drawing, and would point out to him with congratulation any part in
+which he had at all succeeded, letting the rest go. But without adequate
+and legitimate guidance he necessarily became discouraged with his
+failures. What children do not succeed in, becomes distasteful to them,
+and they turn their attention from what has disappointed them, and thus
+their natural tastes die, or are starved out. As they have no knowledge
+of materials, nor judgment in using them, they undertake _the
+impossible_, and being baffled, lose courage to undertake the possible.
+So young artists accumulate difficulties by their unwise choice of
+subjects, not realizing the limitations of their own powers. It is the
+part of the educated kindergartner to supply this want of judgment and
+analysis until the pupil catches the secret of gradualism and the law of
+opposites. Froebel's plan of giving the squared slate and paper to
+ensure straightness of line in children's drawing is like the leading
+strings by which the mother helps the child to develop his limbs for
+walking, which cannot be done without his own personal effort. So
+Froebel's plan of having the kindergartner suggest a symmetrical drawing
+of lines in opposites, vivifies the sense of symmetry into a thought,
+whence springs a plan of making still another symmetry. For by
+suggesting opposites, and then the connecting of them, the child
+delightedly sees orderly forms that grow under his hands, and feels that
+he is acting from his own individual personality (which _he is_, though
+the thought was suggested by the words of another). What he _does_ gives
+him confidence in his own mind, whose fanciful movement suggests other
+symmetries; for though fancy is a spontaneous play of the free will
+among impressions passively received, it is amenable to the laws whose
+exponents are presented to it by nature's works and human suggestion.
+
+F. liked to watch my sister Sophia at her drawing and painting, but its
+very perfection discouraged efforts on his own part. It is bad not to
+_do_ really at once what we conceive of ideally. It was only in the
+moral and religious sphere that we really lived with him, and he was
+properly educated by us. We always answered all his questions about what
+we were doing, and how, and why (I wish now I had asked him more
+questions).
+
+My sister Sophia had a rare talent for talking with children, whose
+purity and innocence she comprehended by a sympathetic intuition, and to
+whose imagination her Christian faith gave ample scope, for it was
+hampered by no human creeds. We had a circle of acquaintances who were
+only too much inclined to pet him, and who, knowing something of the
+history of his mind, liked to talk with him. His mother had been very
+much beloved by this circle, and I used to tell him that _for her_ sake,
+they cared for and attended to _him_, which interested him immensely,
+and perhaps prevented his considering himself as a person of too much
+importance comparatively. He would talk of going to see his "MOTHER'S
+FRIENDS." If new persons spoke to him kindly, he would ask me
+immediately if they knew and loved his mother; at all events, the
+element of personal EGOTISM did not appear, and the affection he at
+first poured out on me, now freely flowed out in every direction. I
+remember his saying to me, one day, with an accent of great
+self-gratulation, "I think I have a great many friends," and in a moment
+after added, "my mother was so beautiful!" (as if that were the reason
+of it). A young husband and wife became inmates of our house, and
+brought a beautiful infant. This was a perennial fountain of delight to
+F. The singular beauty of the little one was a constant subject of
+observation. One day he was looking at her, as she lay on her mother's
+lap, and presently he burst out, "Oh, Ellen, your little bright eyes are
+shining themselves into a _sun_!" He was equally delighted with the
+musical sound of her crowing. His ear for sounds was fastidiously
+delicate. One day my mother was in the garden, looking at some wild
+flowers which had been brought to her for transplanting. As she looked
+at them she said to F., "Run into the house, and get my--" He
+interrupted her eagerly with, "Don't say that ugly _word_! I know what
+you mean," and he ran into the house, and brought back Bigelow's _Plants
+around Boston_ (_Bigelow_ was the ugly word). But let me hasten from
+these details, to redeem my promise of telling you how _prayer_ became a
+thought of his mind, and his spontaneous practice.
+
+It was very early a question of great interest to his mother, and also
+to me, whether prayer _would_ become spontaneous with him; that is,
+whether he would think of speaking to God _in human words_. His intense
+realization of God's _presence_ seemed to be a cause of his _not_ doing
+so, and I feared to put GOD _at a distance_ by suggesting what, in
+ordinary cases, is a means of bringing Him near. If prayer be defined as
+a communion of the finite and Infinite, as personal as that of
+_children_ with earthly parents, _his_ whole conscious life was a
+prayer; for truly God was in all his thoughts from the day he first
+accepted Him so joyfully as the Substance and Giver of _goodness and
+love_, which involved to the natural logic of his innocent mind the
+corollary that He was the Giver of everything outward, as well as
+inward, which gave him any happiness. I did not dare to meddle with the
+natural evolution of thought in so happy an instance, but watched to
+learn the true method of life of the little child, as Christ suggested
+to his disciples to do. One day when his grandmother, who was at the
+house on a visit, dropped her needle, she called to F., "Come, and look
+with _your little sharp eyes_ for my needle." He did so, with his usual
+alacrity in service, and soon found it. Then he ran to me, and said,
+"When I go into the sky, I shall thank my good Friend for giving me such
+sharp eyes." I said, "What do you wait so long for?" He gave me a glance
+of recognition, as it were, and laughed (as if he had been convicted of
+saying something silly); but he said no more _then_. From that moment,
+however, he often came to me to say, "When I go into the sky, I shall
+thank my Heavenly Father for giving me" this or that; and I would always
+answer him as before, "Why do you _wait_?" which would always bring out
+the same complete expression of satisfaction on his face, showing that
+he loved to renew the occasion for my uniform reply, "Why do you wait
+_till then_?"
+
+On one of these occasions he turned from me, and said very tenderly, "_I
+thank you, God_." One day, after he went to Salem, he had been suffering
+from a bad earache, and my sister had relieved it by putting a little
+tuft of cotton dipped in arnica into his ear. Then she asked him to go
+to the window and look out into "the green garden," and she took up a
+pencil to draw. Very soon he began, "GOD, I thank you for making this
+green garden to put away the dead bodies _in_. GOD, I thank you for
+making these beautiful trees grow out of the ground. GOD, I thank you
+for making all the pretty wild flowers grow." He paused between each
+complete sentence, and my sister, having a pencil in her hand, wrote
+down his words till she had covered a sheet of letter paper with his
+thanksgivings; for he went on naming everything he could think of; and
+it was quite wonderful to hear the minuteness of his grateful
+appreciation of life.
+
+One sentence was: "I thank you, GOD, for making medicine to put into my
+ear when it aches." He also thanked GOD for his father, and his father's
+letters to him, for his mother in heaven, for many friends whom he
+loved, naming them. I hope that sometime I shall find my sister's paper,
+which I have mislaid with the other memoranda of this interesting
+psychological observation. The pauses between the thanksgivings became
+longer and longer, and at last, after one for which he seemed to have
+searched his inmost mind, in despair of finding anything else, he closed
+with, "My dear GOD, I love you very much."
+
+You will observe that in all this spontaneous act of devotion, there was
+no _petition_. In the fulness of his happy life, and, as I think, in the
+faith that God was giving him everything needful, and more, he never
+thought of _asking_ for anything.
+
+Temptation to wrong-doing had not yet revealed the need that the
+progressing spirit always feels of _more_ goodness and love, which I had
+taken care to represent that God gave whenever the soul acknowledged to
+itself its need and aspired for more of this, its vital substance. For
+it is my opinion that prayer should always be for spiritual good only,
+in order that our religion should be pure from self-seeking, and
+generously self-forgetting in its aspirations for perfection.
+
+A little while after this incident, my sister was reading to him, and
+came to a sentence in which were the words "morning and evening prayer."
+He immediately stopped her and asked her, "What does that mean, that
+word _prayer_?" She said, "Many grown up people, when they wake in the
+morning, and find that God has taken care of them in the night when they
+could not take care of themselves, and given them a new day after their
+good sleep, feel very thankful, and love to tell God so, just as you did
+the other day when you thanked God for so many things; and besides,
+remembering that there are a good many things they ought to do, and that
+He gives _the love and goodness_, they like to ask Him beforehand to
+give them what they shall need _to be good with_ when the time comes to
+want it; and at night, after they have got through the day, they like to
+thank Him for all the joys of the day, and they ask Him to take care of
+them through the night that is coming, when they shall be asleep and
+cannot take care of themselves; and this loving talk with God is called
+the morning and evening prayer." I think she added that when she was
+little she used to say, when she was going to bed:--
+
+          "Now I lay me down to sleep;
+           I pray the Lord my soul to keep;
+           If I should die before I wake,
+           I pray the Lord my soul to take;"
+
+and that was her evening prayer. "I think it is a very good way," said
+he, "and I mean to do so this very night when I go to bed." And it was
+true that when he went to bed, he remembered and made a similar
+thanksgiving to his former one in kind, and closed with this little
+verse. And again in the morning he began the first thing to thank God
+for the new day, etc. Nor did he forget afterwards, night and morning,
+to give thanks and utter prayers spontaneously, and seemed to enjoy it.
+
+One morning he waked me with his loud singing, and as soon as I opened
+my eyes, said to me, "Aunt Lizzy, I am _singing_ my morning prayer." I
+said, "There was a wonderful little shepherd boy once, whose name was
+David, who loved God as you do, and who always sang his prayers."
+Immediately he wanted to know all about him, and I told him the story of
+David in his childhood and up to the time he was sent for to sing to
+King Saul; and I ended with saying that I would read to him some of
+David's _psalms_ (as these sung prayers were called); and this I did,
+and the eloquence of the sweet singer of Israel seemed to vivify his
+idea of the Heavenly Father, and of His connection with the soul within
+us all and the world without. Especially I tried on him the effect of
+the Psalm beginning, "The heavens are telling of the glory of God,"
+whose rhythm had charmed my own childhood, even before I fully
+comprehended it; and he liked to hear it, too. Before this, I had read
+considerably from the Bible to him, for he had one day said that he
+wondered how the world began to be in the first place, and I had said:
+"_Yes_, everybody wonders about that. But there is a book (pointing to
+the Bible) where one of the first men told about how it seemed to him,
+and I will read it to you." So I opened the book and began the first
+chapter of Genesis, without introductory comment. When I came to the
+words "_And there was light_," he sprang up and shouted, "Directly when
+He said 'Let there be light,' there _was_ light _directly_!"
+
+I wished Longinus could have heard the confirmation of his great
+criticism. Immediately he ran into my father's study, which was across
+the entry, and burst out, "Dr. Peabody, when it was all dark and there
+was nothing made, God said, '_Let there be light, and there was light_'
+directly! directly!" This was not enough; he ran to find my mother and
+sister, and again repeated the simply sublime words.
+
+Then he came back to me to hear the rest, and I finished the chapter
+which he wanted me to read to him again and again, day after day. I read
+afterwards the parable of Jotham, which he liked to hear very much. I
+cannot help thinking how much more I might have made of that very
+parable for his moral culture had I then known of Froebel's _gospel of
+work_. I can hardly bear to think how stupid I was; the effect of not
+having had the kindergarten education myself.
+
+But he was too soon taken away from my observation, not without my
+acquiescence, however; for it was to go to his father, who, I thought,
+needed his companionship. And as it was at a distance that he lived,
+and, as afterwards my own life was full of vicissitude for many years, I
+lost the run of him entirely. There was a mutual misunderstanding
+between his father and me, for several years, from his thinking I wanted
+to be free from the care of him, and I thinking he did not desire my
+personal influence on him, and we were both mistaken, as we found out
+afterwards. When he went to Harvard College, he came to see me, and the
+interview was very interesting. He had a sweet, though it had become a
+dim, remembrance of a happy time with us, succeeded, as he told me, by a
+_lack-love_ experience of years of a dark, gloomy time at a
+boarding-school, to which he was sent when he was eight years old,
+because, as he said, his grandmother thought he ought not to be living
+with his solitary father at a hotel. But the boarding-school proved more
+than a heart solitude, as the boys were rough and cruel to him in their
+unguided play. While he was with me, on the occasion of this call, it
+happened that my sister Sophia's children came into the room where we
+were. They had a very vivid idea of him from their mother, she having
+often spoken of him to them, and telling them of his joy in learning he
+had a Heavenly Father, when he had never thought or been told of it.
+When I said to them, "This is F.," one of them said, "Is this F.? I
+thought he was a little boy," looking at him wonderingly, surprised to
+see a grown-up man. I told him they were well acquainted with his
+childhood. It touched him very much, and the conversation that ensued
+touching on several things I have told, brought back the old time more
+distinctively, and he said he should often come to recall it by my help,
+and to learn more of his mother, whose beautiful face haunted his
+dreams. But just afterwards I left Boston for some years, and did not
+see him again until after his return from Vienna, where he went after
+leaving college, and remained till he had completed his medical studies.
+I promised then to show him his mother's letters to me, written in her
+girlhood, and to tell him how much the early experience of his own
+childhood had ministered to her a heavenly consolation. But again
+inexorable circumstances interfered. He became a practising physician in
+Worcester, and I went to Concord to live, and we procrastinated a
+promised visit until at last Death mocked our slow affections. I saw him
+last wrapped in the flag of his country, for when the war broke out in
+1861, nothing would do but he must go to it; and he went as one of the
+surgeons of the 15th Regiment, which was terribly cut up. For a year and
+a half he did an incredible amount of work, for he would always have his
+hospital on the field of battle, and the 15th was in a great many
+battles, and left but few survivors, most of whom are maimed or halt. He
+took care of those wounded ones who could not be taken from the
+battle-field, wrote letters for them, and never took a furlough, as
+every other officer and surgeon did. In the last letter that he wrote to
+his father, he said that this year and a half was in one sense the
+happiest time of his life; for it was the only time when he seemed to be
+of any use. He was killed at last, walking up through the main street of
+Fredericksburg, Virginia, in the van of the regiment, as was his wont,
+and his death was instantaneous. His patriotism and his bravery were
+the fruits of his piety. Every year his father and I met to decorate his
+grave until his father's death in 1883-4. He is buried at Mt. Auburn by
+his mother's side, whose body was removed from the tomb in the old
+burial ground of Cambridge. I have a photograph of him taken at the same
+age as his mother when she died,--thirty-one years. It was the year
+before he went to the war, a drooping head, pensive as if marked for
+early death. But when I saw him dead, his brow was lifted, his whole
+countenance had become grand and heroic, and it was plain that he had
+found his ideal vocation. His funeral was celebrated in the city of
+Worcester with military honors, the wounded soldiers of his regiment
+following the hearse in carriages, and the sidewalks of the city
+thronged with the multitude of spectators. A discourse upon the text,
+"No man can do more than lay down his life for his friends," was
+pronounced over him at the church, and the beautiful hymn sung, "Nearer
+my God to Thee," which seemed to me the most appropriate conceivable,
+though he had never been far from Him, after he knew a name for Him.
+
+After the funeral his father's relatives and friends gathered together,
+and we talked of him. I told my recollections of his childhood, and all
+of them expressed the feeling that the life he had led was in perfect
+harmony with such an early acquaintance made with the Heavenly Father.
+
+
+
+
+LECTURE VIII.
+
+RELIGIOUS NURTURE.
+
+
+FROEBEL speaks of the child as a trinity, meaning a unity in threefold
+relation (with God, with man, and with nature), and says that education,
+to be perfect, or even healthy, must help him to be conscious of all
+these relations _at once_, in order to ensure the equipoise of heart and
+intellect with his spiritual power (or freedom to will), in which
+inheres his just self-respect and natural religion.
+
+Nature (that is, the material universe, as I have said before) is God's
+expression of mathematical and all correlative laws, the apprehension of
+which builds up the intellect of the individual who, through his sense
+perceptions, on which he reflects and generalizes, gains _knowledge_ of
+his surroundings, beginning with that part of nature which is within his
+own skin.
+
+It was the grand intuition of Oken which has been splendidly illustrated
+by Dr. J. Garth Wilkinson in his _Human Body in its Connections with
+Man_, that the human body is the metropolis of material nature, in which
+may be found in _vital order_ all the elements of the material universe
+which are, outside of the human body, in a more or less chaotic state.
+This development of the individual intellect needs more or less aid from
+the human environment, simultaneously with that nurture of the _heart_
+which means man's conscious relation to man. But though morality, which
+is the performance of man's duty to man, is not religion, which is man's
+consciousness of relation to God, it leads to it inversely, because it
+shows the heart its need of a Father of us all, in order to be happy.
+All three processes, the intellectual, the moral, and the religious,
+must go on together, to make a perfect education, for in proportion as
+integral education is wanting in those about the child, his intellect
+will be starved, confused, or darkened with error; and immorality and
+irreligion will more or less transpire in the individual.
+
+Froebel perfectly realized the deficiency of this integral education to
+be the cause of all the evil that is the present experience of mankind,
+in spite of Church and State and the optimism which in form of hope
+"springs eternal in the human breast" (for the pessimist is the
+exception, not the rule among men, the great mass of whom are pursuing
+some ideal aim, even though it be a low one, their moral sentiment
+having been perverted and their religion having become a superstitious
+idolatry either of material forms or of logical formulas).
+
+The system of education which Froebel discovered, or invented, in
+consequence of realizing this, is what we are endeavoring to learn and
+apply, that we may bring out of the moral chaos around us the lost
+equipoise of the threefold nature in our children, by ourselves plunging
+into infant life in imagination and realizing its innocent heart and
+unfallen spiritual state, watching it in its own attempts to understand
+and use its material surroundings and its human environment, to the end
+of guiding it by our own experience and matured knowledge, from the
+errors and misfortunes it inevitably falls into if left to its own
+ignorant experimenting unrevised.
+
+The playthings and means of occupation Froebel invented are to develop
+the intellect, and are a perfect miniature of nature, and to use them in
+playing with the child is an art and a science that the kindergartner
+must add to her moral affections and religion, which are also her
+indispensable qualifications.
+
+I wish to say this very emphatically, all the more because this part of
+your education (the art and science that develop the intellect) is not
+my part of your training course, but the moral and religious nurture;
+and therefore I must leave the exhaustive analysis of the gifts in their
+relation to the unfolding intellect as well as of the "schools of work"
+(as the series of embroideries, foldings, drawings, weavings, pea-work,
+etc., are called, and which require your study the whole year) to your
+accomplished trainers to do justice to.
+
+But before I turn to my specific department, I would say that this
+intellectual part of the training, which it was the special genius of
+Froebel to discover, is of equal importance; for it is the duty of man
+to worship God with the _mind_, as well as with the _heart_ and _might_,
+though that is a part of the great commandment, which seems to have been
+systematically overlooked by many of the churches, if not virtually
+denied.
+
+To worship God _with the mind_ means to develop the intellect; as to
+worship Him with the _heart_ keeps pure the moral sentiments and
+quickens moral action; and to worship Him with the _might_ lifts the
+will, quickened by the heart and enlightened by the mind into oneness
+with the Holy Spirit, more and more forever. And here let me recall to
+you what I said of Froebel's authority in my second lecture, and beware
+of deviating from the path he has pointed out (he was nearly fifty years
+in inventing his technique); and be very careful about adding to his
+_Gifts_ or _Schools of Work_, though I would not have you mechanical
+followers. There will be legitimate outgrowths of his method. He
+himself, in one of his _Pedagogies_, published after his death by
+Wichard Lange, has suggested a "school of drawing" upon _the curve_,
+which Miss Marwedel has developed, leading the child naturally through
+vegetable formation; and Mr. Edward A. Spring, the sculptor, has also
+suggested and partly carried some children through animal forms, from
+the worm to the "human face divine"; and we hope both these "schools"
+may be published and used. In the musical line, also, in which Froebel
+was personally rather deficient, Mr. Daniel Bachellor, now of
+Philadelphia, has suggested a series of exercises by means of the
+correspondence of tones and colors, that makes the children as creative
+in the discovery of melodies, as they are of the harmonies of color in
+their weaving and painting.
+
+There is unquestionably danger that the kindergartner may degenerate
+into mechanical imitation and rote-work in this part of her guidance of
+the children, nevertheless in some of the charity kindergartens I have
+seen there was danger of doing injustice to the technique.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+On this last day of communion with you on the Froebel education, I would
+like to speak with some comprehensiveness and particularity on the
+subject of religious nurture. Mark me, I say religious _nurture_, not
+religious teaching. The religion that integrates human education is not
+to be taught. It is the primeval consciousness of filial relation to
+GOD, who alone can reveal Himself; for human language has no adequate
+expression of GOD, founded as it is on the material universe, which is
+the finite opposite of Creative Being. Every individual child is a
+momentum of GOD's creativeness which the human Providence of education
+must take as its _datum_. Only childhood symbolizes GOD as "the sum of
+all being," realizing itself in joy incommensurable. Ruskin has happily
+said the joy of childhood is out of all proportion to the occasions that
+call forth its expression, and in order to make GOD the central
+conscious truth of the child's intellect, we must give the name father
+or mother to GOD, which is intelligible to the heart, and which will
+identify its filial aspiration with the parental bounty, as another, yet
+the same.
+
+But what I want you to observe is, that language being limited in
+meaning by its origin in material nature, you should talk about GOD as
+little as possible, after having given Him the name that will excite the
+child's worshipful aspiration, and limit yourselves carefully to
+regulating moral manifestations, leading children to act kindly,
+generously, truthfully, in your own assured faith that GOD is present to
+inspire the truth, generosity, and loving _will_ that is practically
+prayed for with _good resolution_. (Good resolutions are the special
+prayers of faith, as children should be taught expressly.)
+
+Kindergartners cannot carry out this course quite irrespective of the
+theory of human nature declared in their creeds. But the heart is
+generally larger than the creed, as was once strikingly evidenced to me
+by Louisa Frankenberg, a dear, devout old German kindergartner, who had
+learned the art of kindergartning from Froebel himself, in the very
+beginning of his own experimenting; but she was such a bigot to the
+Lutheran Church that she could not theoretically admit as a Christian
+any one who did not swear by its dogma of total depravity. Yet I
+remember hearing her exclaim, "Oh, Froebel's method is so beautiful!
+because the affectionate plays and innocent occupations take the
+children entirely away from the depravity of their hearts." She said
+this with a gush of love and faith that showed how much the unbounded
+human heart is beyond being totally eclipsed by shadows cast by the
+limited human intellect. It is neither feeling or thinking, but
+righteous doing, that gives us victory.[11]
+
+The child in the first era of his life has no individual consciousness
+of separation from GOD, and for a certain time it is obvious to all
+observers that this august unconsciousness even prevents the immediate
+development of an intellectual conception of him. The child in its
+infancy (infant, you remember, means _not speaking_) does not see nature
+as object, but feels it also to be himself, and hence he has no
+language, for language is the expression of his intellect. Hence the
+infant's sublime unconsciousness of danger and absolute fearlessness,
+and its impulse to spring upward out of its mother's arms, the laws of
+gravity notwithstanding! It stands, as Wordsworth has sung,--
+
+  "Glorious in the might of heaven-born freedom on its being's height,"
+
+and only gradually do
+
+  "Shades of the prison-house begin to close around the growing boy."
+
+For, as the same poet has it in that ode which is as much inspired as
+anything in the sacred oracles of the Hebrew or the Christian:--
+
+              "Earth fills her lap with pleasures of her own;
+          Yearnings she hath in her own natural kind,
+          And even with something of a mother's mind,
+                  And no unworthy aim,
+          The homely nurse doth all she can
+          To make her foster-child, her innate man,
+              Forget the glories he hath known
+                  And that Imperial Palace whence he came.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+              Hence, in a season of calm weather,
+          Though inland far we be,
+          Our souls have sight of that immortal sea
+              Which brought us hither;
+              Can in a moment travel thither,
+          And see the children sport upon the shore,
+          And hear the mighty waters rolling evermore."
+
+The "not unworthy aim" of the "humble nurse" is to give the child the
+sense of "having life in himself" as an individual free agent, so that
+he may come into intellectual consciousness of the laws of GOD by going
+counter to them, which reveals to him that he is separating from GOD in
+his activity. This separation is _sin_, which is a short word for
+separation, and the first step in the development of individuality, and
+therefore pardonable, because it is finite.
+
+Now the true religious nurture is to keep the child in the mood of
+ineffable joy in which he was created, while he is evolving his sense of
+individuality and free agency by experimenting freely, but more or less
+painfully, so that he shall not lose sight of the central Sun, to which
+everything he is slowly learning through his senses and his reflection
+is related; and this must be begun by giving a name to the central Sun
+that shall express the character of his inmost consciousness of joy and
+love, which is his vision of GOD, and needs to be recognized as GOD in
+the understanding.
+
+In the Old Testament we see that it is the _name_ of the Lord which is
+set forth as the only means of escaping that idolatry which is
+destructive of progressive spiritual religion. The name of the Lord, or
+Ruler, with the Hebrews was JEHOVAH, a word made up of the three tenses
+of the substantive verb _to be_, "was, is, and shall be," and which
+Philo, the Alexandrian Jewish philosopher, translates THE ETERNAL. It
+was understood by the worshippers to be the ineffable Creative Reality,
+so that when they came to the word in their sacred ritual they did not
+speak it, but reverently bowed their heads in a moment's silence, or
+paraphrased it, THE LORD GOD.
+
+But Jesus, the bright, consummate flower of the Hebrew race, used the
+name Father (_my_ and _our_ Father), which you may observe was original
+with him. That word expressed the whole of his theology. He made no
+disquisitions on GOD'S being, but simply recognized the vital relation
+of mankind to its Creator by this word, which any child who has come to
+see that he and his mother are two can understand and will love.
+
+Froebel has proved by his nursery method that the child shall get _this
+idea_ and name of GOD from his mother; and at all events when children
+come to the kindergarten they will generally already have heard some
+name for GOD, adequate or inadequate. Now all you have to do--but that
+is a great deal, indeed the greatest thing--is not to cloud the child's
+intuitive knowledge of GOD by your inadequate words as was done in the
+case of M. D., who was afraid of the omnipresence of GOD, as I mentioned
+in my narrative of F. H., and in the case of his unfortunate mother at
+her mother's funeral. In the case of little F. the mistake was not to
+have given any name before his sense perceptions had made "a prison
+house for the growing boy." But you have seen how the shades were
+dispelled by my taking it for granted with him that a Heavenly Father
+existed, which he joyfully accepted at once, for I knew that
+
+          "In the embers was something that did live,
+           And Nature yet remembers
+           What was so fugitive."
+
+The naming of GOD in the kindergarten should be in music, which is the
+natural language of spirituality (or aspiration), lifting the soul above
+the cold level of the intellect that cognizes the correlations of the
+natural universe. Froebel finds support of his faith in the efficacy of
+song, that puts devout expression into the works of nature, in the
+historical fact that the civilizing literature of all nations begins in
+religious hymns. The different characteristics and the different
+destinies of nations are seen in germ in the national songs, which are
+in large degree and sometimes exclusively addressed to _the Powers
+above_. The Li-king of the Chinese, the Rig Veda of the old Aryans, the
+Puranas of the Hindus, the Garthas of the Iranians, the recently
+discovered early poetry of the Egyptians, and even the magical formulas
+of the Babylonians, all express with more or less exaltation of spirit
+the primeval intuition of Supreme Being, and use the particulars of
+material nature as words of GOD pointing to that unity of all life that
+is the music of the spheres. Is it not heard in the voice of the healthy
+infant, which is the most exquisite music on earth, and later seen in
+the pictures made by the imagination before language that is coined by
+the human understanding has introduced prosaic, that is, analytic
+definitions, and drawn the human individual away from feeding its heart
+on the fruits of the Tree of Life (which are music and poetry) to the
+fruits of the tree of knowledge, which are evil as well as good. The
+kindergarten exercises should begin and end with spiritual songs and
+hymns; indeed, they should come in any time at the call of the children,
+who, it will be found, will oftener call for hymns of praise than for
+any other songs.
+
+The hymns of the kindergarten repertory should be entirely free from all
+that is didactic and denominationally doctrinal. Their object is not to
+teach any science, whether intellectual, moral, or theological; but to
+express childish joy in existence, or quicken the original childish
+faith, which in all ages and nations has expressed itself in music and
+the dance. Nor should the singing of hymns in kindergarten be ever
+perfunctory or a thing of course. A good kindergartner begins the day
+with bringing all the children into company for preliminary
+conversation, and asking each in turn what is in his mind; or the class
+as a whole may be asked some general question, perhaps about the
+weather, which always has something beneficial that can be brought to
+the attention; then they could be asked, "Could you have made this
+weather? Who made it? and would you not like to thank the Heavenly
+Father for it?" Something similar to this should precede all the hymns
+to rouse their sense of free activity, and prevent routine, and then
+they will sing with the heart and understanding also. I remember going
+one day into a kindergarten with Mr. Alcott when such a preliminary
+conversation was going on, which was followed by this song of the
+weather, the children making the illustrative gesticulations with their
+arms. They began with the weather of the day, and continued with several
+varieties, for it is not often the whole song is sung at one time. The
+intense delight of the children when themselves personifying the
+weather, poured itself out in the chorus, which they had first learned
+to sing with a will,--
+
+          "Wonderful, Lord, are all thy works,
+              Wheresoever falling.
+           All, their various voices raise;
+           Speaking forth their Maker's praise
+              Wheresoever falling."
+
+(See Appendix, Note F.)
+
+Mr. Alcott, with his eyes full of tears, turned to me, and said, "This
+must have an immense influence upon character." In religious
+conversation children have the advantage of us in their as yet
+uneclipsed original vision of GOD, and we have an advantage of them in
+knowledge of outside things and the adaptation of means to ends. By this
+knowledge of ours we can generally guide them to accomplish their
+purposes when they are such as will really give them pleasure and do no
+harm to any one else. They get our knowledge by confidingly doing as we
+direct, and a confidence in the method which brings about the results
+they have instinctively foreseen. We save their minds from getting lost
+or bewildered in the chaos of particulars by winning their attention to
+the orderly connections of things, and leading them to realize how they
+connect little things in order to make larger things, and how opposites
+are connected in the world around about them. To recognize their own
+little plans and open their eyes to GOD's methods and plans; and because
+they cause new effects, they realize that all effects have causes, and
+in the last analysis realize one personal cause. They must believe in
+themselves as a preliminary to believing in GOD. Let them with things
+create order; and you will have influence with them in proportion to
+their feeling that you respect their free will, and divine in a genial
+way what they want; and this you can do if you inform yourself of what
+is _universal_ in human desire, keeping your eyes open to what
+modifications _their_ individuality suggests; and it is your cognizance
+of these individualities which makes your part of the enjoyment. If
+there are no two leaves alike, much more are there no two human
+individuals precisely alike, and human intercourse is made refreshing by
+these various individualities playing over the surface of the universal
+race-consciousness. If you respect the individuality of a child, and let
+it have fair play, you gain its confidence. Nothing is so delightful as
+to feel oneself understood. It is much more delightful than to be
+admired. But to give a child's individuality fair play in a company of
+children, you must open children's eyes to one another's
+individualities, and you will find that if you suggest their respecting
+each other's rights in the plays, there is something within them that
+will justify you. The consciousness of individuality is the correlated
+opposite to the conscience of universality. Justice is an intuition. The
+opposite poles of a human being are self-assertion or personal
+consciousness on the one side, and generosity or _race_ consciousness on
+the other.
+
+We have seen that the maternal instinct, which the kindergartner is to
+make her own by cultivating it, cherishes the indispensable innocent
+self-assertion (which is only changed into selfishness by lack of that
+social cherishing which keeps generosity wide awake to balance
+self-assertion). We must sympathize with the play instincts of the
+child, so that it may get knowledge of its body in its parts and its
+powers of locomotion, manipulation and speech, giving self-respect to
+the consciousness of power, while the simultaneous knowledge of
+limitation is prevented from becoming fear by experience of the
+motherly providence, which is the first comprehensible form of that love
+which in due time calls forth ideal worship of the Infinite GOD, if GOD
+has been adequately named in natural sympathetic conversation with an
+earnest self-persuasion but without sanctimonious affectation. Unless
+you have unaffected spontaneity of faith yourselves, you should not dare
+to talk about GOD to the child.
+
+The religious nurture which Froebel proposes therefore consists simply
+in so living with children as to preserve their primeval joy by tenderly
+and reverently respecting it, as that human instinct prompts which is in
+the highest power in the mother. Sympathetic tenderness is the first of
+all means for moral culture. The child's faith in GOD must be cherished
+into self-reliance. There is a self-distrust that is really a distrust
+of GOD, and no harm we can do a child is so great as to lead it to doubt
+its own spontaneity. The common religious teacher--even a conscientious
+mother--sometimes does this, and so far from nurturing the child's
+conscious union with GOD, starts a morbid self-consciousness, the
+opposite of religious peace. In order not to make this mistake, let the
+mother and kindergartner read and ponder Froebel's _Mother Love_ and
+_Cossetting Songs_.[12]
+
+If you ask me what aid the moral culture derives from the religious
+nurture, I reply, the name Heavenly Father, given to the inmost
+consciousness, keeps the heart happy and the will self-respecting, by
+preventing those indefinite fears, incident to a sense of helplessness,
+which engenders selfishness. Hope and Faith are correlatives, and
+conscious or necessary means of goodness (which is enacted thereby),
+not agonies of will in the absence of this support. In the majority of
+cases moral discouragement is the secret of children's naughtiness; and,
+as Dr. Channing used to say, "there is nothing fatal to child or man but
+discouragement," which often exists close beside manifestations of pride
+and self-will.
+
+When I kept school, in my earlier life, I became the confidante of many
+cases of wrong-doing and conscious wrong feeling. Sometimes the
+confidentialness was altogether spontaneous on the part of the children,
+and in other cases I took the initiative, drawing out the confidence, by
+intervening on occasion to console and help, especially when I saw that
+the sensibility had been wounded, or there was moral puzzle. And my
+experience and observation in this line justified the faith in which I
+began to keep school; viz., that children are all _but perfectly_ good,
+in all cases, and are never so grateful for anything else, when they
+find themselves naughty, as for spiritual and moral help, given as _God
+gives_, "upbraiding not."
+
+When they are not grateful for moral help, it is the fault or mistake of
+the grown-up counsellor. Even in the worst cases I always took it for
+granted that nevertheless they loved goodness better than the naughty
+self which for the hour had got the victory over the better self.
+Spiritual being, whether finite or infinite, is only to be discerned by
+aspiring faith. Yet I do not think it right or wise to suggest to little
+children that _their_ wrong-doings, which are more weaknesses than
+presumptions, are _sins against God_. Children can comprehend their
+relations to each other, and the violation of each other's rights to
+happiness, and can be easily led to sympathize with the pain or
+inconvenience of those they make suffer, which touches their sense of
+justice and generosity; they can appreciate wrong and its consequences
+to their equals and to themselves in the _present life_. But GOD is too
+great to be injured by them; and to bring GOD to their imagination as
+personally angry with them, overwhelms thought, and annihilates all
+sense of responsibility, with all self-respect. Children can comprehend
+perfectly that wrong-doing, in particular cases, is an injury to
+themselves, as well as a harm to their neighbor; also that they forfeit,
+for the time being, their privilege of being, as it were, in partnership
+with GOD in making others happy, as well as being companions with Him in
+making things grow; and an occasional hint of this, when they are very
+happy and successful, is well. But to suggest that they are forfeiting
+this privilege of divine companionship and partnership, is quite painful
+enough, be this forfeiture ever so partial. Old sinners are to be
+disciplined, perhaps, by that love of GOD which speaks in the thunder,
+the earthquake, and fire, breaking through the crust of selfish habit to
+awaken attention to the still, small voice of conscience, in which alone
+the Lord is _in person_. But the naughty child, at his worst, needs only
+to think of God as sorry for him, and "waiting to be gracious," like the
+father of the prodigal son.
+
+I can illustrate this by anecdotes of a child to whose moral life I was
+obliged to call in the aid of the religious sentiment, and even of the
+specific Christian revelation of pardon for all past wrong repented. It
+was the case of a very sensitive child of nine years of age, whose
+mother was gifted with the finest imagination and moral instincts, but
+was married to a cold, Dombey-like husband, whom she unfortunately
+thought superior to herself, whom she idealized, and endeavored to make
+her children satisfactory to his worldly ideal. The result in their
+characters was more or less disastrous to each, ending with the suicide
+of one. This child's conscience of the duty of satisfying both parents I
+soon found to be abnormal; and her sense of her father's contempt for
+her intellect, and her mother's painstaking that she should satisfy him,
+so worked on her sensibility that it suspended her reasoning powers; and
+no matter what it was she failed in, whether in missing an answer to a
+question in arithmetic, or in failure of good temper when tormented,
+she fell into despair. I endeavored to show her that a mistake in any
+school exercise was no crime, but only made an occasion for her learning
+more thoroughly the thing in hand, and to show her that, unless she had
+fortitude to bear failures, and courage and hope to overcome them, I
+could not help her out of them; and I never rebuked any naughty
+manifestation of a moral character of any one in her presence, but she
+would burst into tears, and tell me how much naughtier she was. One
+Monday morning I asked my children, as I was wont to do, if there was
+anything interesting that they had heard at church or Sunday-school the
+day before, when, almost with a shriek, she cried out, "Oh, don't ask me
+that." I said gently, "Come with me into my chamber," which she did,
+crying all the while. "Mr. Greenwood preached about the prayers, and he
+said we should not look about the church, or think of anything else,
+while the service was being read; and I always do, and I can't help it,
+because I am so bad." I took her into my arms, and said, "It is a sure
+proof that you are not bad, that you are so distressed at the thought of
+doing wrong. Bad people do not care, and so they grow worse and worse;
+but your conscience seems to forget the Heavenly Father, who did not
+give it to you to discourage you, but to help you to see what way you
+must not go, and to remind you that He is close by to help your good
+resolution, which is the prayer of your will."
+
+"But I read in a hymn that GOD sets down everything we do wrong in a
+book; and at the judgment day He will read it all out to the assembled
+universe. I told a lie once."
+
+"Did you?" said I, tenderly. "Tell me all about how you came to." "I
+cannot," said she, "because then I should have to tell something bad
+about somebody else, which I must not." "How long ago was it?" "It was
+when we were living at ----." I saw by this that it was several years
+before.
+
+She had a little brother, of whom she was very fond. I took hold of a
+locket that she wore about her neck, that contained the hair of the lady
+for whom she was named, and the memory of whose great virtues had been
+impressed on her imagination, and said:--
+
+"What if Edward should take this locket and break it, and take out the
+hair and throw it in the fire?" With a great deal of energy she said:--
+
+"He never would do such a naughty thing."
+
+"He might do it without being naughty; he would not know that you never
+could get any more of Miss ----'s hair; and he would do it from innocent
+curiosity--and what if he should do it, what would you do?"
+
+"Why, I should tell him he was a very naughty boy, meddling with other
+people's things, and that he had done something that he could never make
+up, for there was no more of that hair."
+
+"Well," said I, "and I suppose you would say that, very likely crying,
+and if he seeing that he had given you such pain, should begin to cry,
+and should cry all the rest of the day, and cry himself to sleep, and
+when he waked in the morning should begin to cry again, and should cry
+all day for weeks--what would you do?"
+
+"Why, I should tell him I was sorry to lose my locket, but I could bear
+it, and he must forget about it, for he did not know what a mischief he
+was doing, and I should take him out to walk, and amuse him, and do
+everything to make him forget it."
+
+"Why should you do all this?"
+
+"Because I love him," she said.
+
+"Do you believe you love him better than GOD loves you?"
+
+With a look of surprise, she said, "Does GOD love us the same way we
+love?"
+
+"There is but one kind of love," I said, "and I really think He would
+like to have you forget that _lie_ you told so long ago, without
+thinking how wrong it was, because you were thinking of something else,
+just as Edward was only thinking he wanted to see what was under the
+glass of the locket."
+
+She looked at me wistfully.
+
+"Did you ever read about Jesus Christ in the New Testament?" said I.
+
+"Yes, and I hate to."
+
+"Why?"
+
+"Because you know everybody says we must be like Him, and He never did
+anything wrong, and I cannot be like Him, for I do wrong of all
+kinds--beside that _lie_, and you know how cross I am."
+
+"O," said I, "I do not wonder you feel discouraged if you think that you
+must be as good as Jesus Christ right away, to begin with; but Jesus
+Christ came into the world to say a word that is the most important word
+in the New Testament, and if He had not said it, He would have done us
+more harm than good with His perfect example, discouraging us entirely."
+
+"What was that word?" she asked, with the most eager interest.
+
+"_Pardon_," said I, "for all past wrong-doing that you are sorry for."
+
+"Oh, Miss Peabody, I never thought of the meaning of that word before."
+
+"Yes, darling," said I, "and that is the reason of all your trouble. Now
+think of it always; and thank GOD that He sent Jesus to say it. That
+_lie_ of yours GOD has pardoned long ago, just as you would have
+pardoned little Edward. We all do wrong things when we are children, and
+learn by doing them not to do them again. Now from to-day begin all your
+life over again. When you miss in your lessons, instead of crying, just
+let it go, and ask me to help you try again. So in making other
+mistakes, and when you feel cross, which comes in your case because you
+are so easily discouraged,--for that makes you have dyspepsia,--just
+forget it as soon as possible and go and do something pleasant, and
+think that GOD loves you, and only lets you do wrong to show you that
+you need to be getting wisdom all the time, and you will grow stronger
+continually, and the older you grow, the better you will understand."
+
+I never knew a moral crisis in any child's life so marked as this was.
+She had a very hard path in life to walk and suffered much, but she
+never again lost the hope by which we live, and at length, full of
+years, joined "the Choir Invisible," from which commanding standpoint
+she doubtless sees the end from the beginning, and how GOD's redeeming
+Providence completes His creation of a free agent. What I insist upon
+is, that a child should never be left to doubt, but should always be
+helped to feel _sure_ that GOD is loving him better than he loves
+himself; is sorry far more than angry with him when he has done wrong,
+and therefore it is that He will not let him succeed in doing wrong, but
+has so arranged things that the wrong always gets checked; that GOD is
+especially good precisely because He "makes the ways of the transgressor
+hard." Never let the Infinite Power appear to the naughty child's
+imagination as punishing, but only as encouraging, inspiring, helping!
+It is recorded as characteristic of the highest manifestation of GOD and
+Educator of man, who appeared to His most spiritual disciple as the
+"Eternal Word made flesh," that He did not "quench the smoking flax or
+bruise the broken reed," but distilled upon humanity--especially in its
+flowering stage--the gentle dews of blessing,--taking little children in
+His arms to bless them.
+
+You may ask, But what if a child proves in some instances incorrigible
+to the method of love? What shall we do then? I think it will be
+sufficient to ask any _Christian_, What did Jesus do when the Jews
+proved insensible and incorrigible to his long-suffering, brotherly
+love, making it the occasion of their own capital crime? Did he abandon
+the method of love when they nailed him to the cross, or even doubt it?
+Let us dwell on this a little. Was it not the special trial of Jesus
+Christ's human life, the last temptation through which he was
+constrained by his apparent failure of accomplishing the work of
+redeeming Israel, by leading them of their own selves to judge and do
+what is right to cry out, My God! my God! why hast thou forsaken me? For
+instead of their _coming to him_ to get the waters of life he offered,
+they had made it the very act of their _religion_ to murder him as a
+blasphemer. I ask, Did he, even then, exchange his method of _forbearing
+love for cursing_? Did he not, _even then_, hold fast to the principle
+of brotherliness by commending his spirit (which was his work) into the
+hands of the Father, with the words: "Forgive them, for _they know not
+what they do_"; showing that he felt that this ignorance was infinitely
+more pitiable than his own apparently forgotten bodily agonies? And, in
+this great _humane_ act of forbearance, and _divine_ act of faith did he
+not reveal in its fulness the loving character of God, whom he had
+always called _Father_, and with whom he proved himself _one_ by this
+very token, which converted the Jewish thief and the Roman centurion on
+the spot; and which, step by step, is slowly but surely (by inspiring
+his disciples with the same spirit and method of dealing with their
+fellow-beings) _converting the world_? The moment of despair of an
+immediate spiritual good we are trying to do, is often the moment of our
+doing a higher and greater good.
+
+As Jesus resigned his own finite will, as the son of David, which was
+fixed on bringing the Jewish nation to fulfil its national mission of
+"_blessing_ all the families of the earth," which he understood to be
+the motive inspiration of Abraham's emigration from Babylonian
+civilization into the wilderness; and as he accepted the will of his
+Father, which seemed to be that the privilege to do this patriotic duty
+was not granted to him as he had grown up thinking, _the will was
+lifted_, and he found himself doing _more_--becoming the Saviour, not of
+the _nation_ of the Jews merely, _but of all men_, and so sat down on
+the right hand of GOD. For he proved himself to the _heart of all
+humanity_, GOD's Son, _loving_, not for the sake of men's
+_reciprocation_ and appreciation of himself, but for the sake of _the
+salvation_ of humanity. Therefore Christ's method is the one for every
+man and woman on all planes of activity, however humble. I have heard
+more than one mother say, that when they had tried every method they
+knew of to influence their child to give up some wrong object on which
+the irrefragable free will was bent, and all tender and violent measures
+had failed, the _irrepressible_ tears of their despairing love had most
+unexpectedly melted the hardness of self-will at _once_, and _effected
+the cure_. LOVE, _when it is understood_, is _irresistible_. Our sacred
+oracles teach us that the origin of evil is in a doubt of GOD's love. In
+Eden it was a suspicion that He had some selfish ends in forbidding even
+one thing in a world of free gifts.
+
+The conquest of evil, on the other hand, they represent, was in Jesus
+Christ's trusting _God's love_, in a lost world, amidst the physical
+agonies of his cross, and the moral anguish of a disappointment of the
+grandest aim that ever one born of woman had set to himself for his
+life-work. In faithfully trying to do the lesser good just at hand, he
+developed the power to _save all men from their sins; not merely his own
+people_.
+
+To the training class of kindergartners I would say, _your_ special work
+is rather to _prevent_, than to conquer sin, in the objects of your
+care; therefore you should, in your own imagination, associate yourself
+with _God creating_, first leading children to realize that all He has
+made is _very good_ and must be kept so, which is giving the religious
+nurture.
+
+That great word of Froebel, _man is a creative_ being, has said in the
+world of education, whether religious, moral, or intellectual, "Let
+there be light," and is never to be forgotten in its uttermost meaning.
+
+In this truth you will find an infinite resource of hope and successful
+energy. You may think that you apprehend and accept the scope of this
+pregnant word, because you do not reject it as a proposition; but
+partial knowledge is often deluding, and _not doubting_ is far from
+_efficient conviction_, which a comprehensive and penetrating
+understanding of a principle gives. Let me illustrate this illusion of
+thinking we comprehend when we do not, by some of Froebel's gifts.
+
+Think of the four last gifts of Froebel in their wholeness of form, _as
+cubes_. When these cubes are uncovered and you recognize them as eight,
+or twenty-seven, or thirty-six wooden, solid, six-sided, eight-cornered,
+twelve-edged units, and see the relations of their properties in nature,
+it may seem to you as if you exhaustively knew the cube; but you do not
+if you have omitted to notice one property inherent in it, more
+important because pregnant with more consequences than any other
+property,--I mean its _divisibility_ by means of which its possible
+transformations are innumerable, every transformation presenting the
+symmetry of the original in a new variety of beauty, so that if you will
+give to a child one of these divisible cubes and suggest to him the clue
+of the law of connecting contrasts, which is the law of all production,
+he will never tire (except physically) of making the new combinations,
+and seeking through each and all, that sense of a _whole_ which was the
+first impression. It is by reason of its divisibility, that the cube can
+be transformed infinitely. Now you may conceive the nature of man as a
+whole, and observe a great many of his attributes, and yet not see the
+greatest,--_his creativeness_, whose consequences are infinite.
+
+Educational science has, in fact, generally omitted to do this in the
+past, and treated a child according to the attributes it recognized;
+but, because before Froebel's day man had not been recognized by the
+reflective mind as a creative being, it had not been realized that he
+can be transformed, or transform himself as well as his surroundings,
+infinitely, ever producing something _new_, and hence that there may be,
+in the lapse of ages, as much variety in human production as there is in
+God's workings in the Universe.
+
+It is, in short, because education has not hitherto conceived of man as
+_creative_, that there has been so much dead uniformity and lifeless
+repetition on the plane of humanity; and that a general characteristic
+of educational systems hitherto has been a mechanical running of the
+human being into certain fixed moulds, not only irrespective of
+individual tendencies, but antagonistic to the universal creative
+impulse, which is the profoundest characteristic of man, and which, not
+being understood, has, in a great measure, proved only a source of
+disorder, and given a bad name with people of genius to educational art
+(although it is the highest of all the high arts), its material, if you
+will forgive the verbal ambiguity, being living spirit.
+
+Richard Wagner has said that "were it not for education, all men would
+be geniuses, for they are endowed at birth with the passionate pursuit
+of the new, needing only liberty and opportunity for self-direction."
+
+_Liberty and opportunity!_ There could not be a better description of
+Froebel's principle and method of education.
+
+To give liberty and opportunity to the creative principle of the child
+is just the work you have to do; but observe, this is not to leave him
+to the caprices of an uneducated will. There is neither _liberty_ nor
+_opportunity in that_!
+
+"Eternal vigilance is the price of liberty," _moral_ as well as
+political; and before the child is old enough to appreciate this, and
+_be vigilant for himself_, the educator must do so _for him_, genially,
+but firmly intervening to secure to his mind that _pause before action_
+on the moral, the artistic, and intellectual plane, that the Friends
+recognize to be necessary before acting on the spiritual plane.
+
+The ways of caprice are multitudinous,--the way of life is _one_ for
+each individual, and is pointed out to the _pausing_ attentive mind by
+the Father, who speaks to us, within, forever; but whose voice can only
+be heard when listened to by _intention_; even on the intellectual
+plane, we do not let the will go storming on, without the guidance of
+law, which is the voice of the very present Creator heard in the silence
+of _reflection_ on perceived facts and truths.
+
+There is a right and a wrong way of doing everything,--_always_. The
+right way will always produce a thing of use or of beauty, whose
+reaction on the mind of the producer _cultivates_ his mind, or _grows
+the human understanding_; but this right way is only to be discovered in
+that pause between impulse and action which is the characteristic
+discrimination of man from all other animals, and must be _secured for
+the child_ by the care of his educators--even when he is only playing,
+or the play will tire instead of exhilarate.
+
+Hence it is not _enough_, though it is indispensable, to guide
+children's activity while it is still irreflective to spontaneously make
+forms of beauty and use with its playthings and materials of occupation;
+but after they have made something, you are to make them stop and look
+back (not every time, but often), and _go over in thought_, and put into
+words, what they have done, and lead them to observe all the properties
+and relations of the thing that are obvious to the childish sense; and
+when you have thus secured an impression of the means by which order is
+attained, you have given an experimental knowledge of there being a
+spiritual order; that is, a world of individual laws and a law-giver
+independent of human will and meant to lift it into the divine. Those of
+you who are _Friends_ will agree with me that human beings can manifest
+no _spiritual_ beauty or moral power, except so far as they listen to
+the Shepherd of souls in the holy pause of the hours of worship, a
+voice always suggesting loving activity. And cannot you see, that no
+artistic production, no intellectual work, is possible without
+listening, in the pause of reflection for the word of the law of beauty
+or use, that the Creator of the intellect gives? and which makes art and
+science the worship of GOD _with the mind_?
+
+The most important, the crowning work of the kindergartner, is to secure
+to the child this moment of reflection in the midst of his play and work
+on all planes of life; and you do so by sympathetically playing with him
+and gently guiding his unthinking, impulsive activity, and asking him
+what he has done and is _going to do_, and not letting him do anything
+till he seeks to do the symmetrical or, at least, the useful thing. It
+is not every movement that will produce the satisfactory result. It is
+thus that the child learns that there is a greater mind than his own, or
+even than his teacher's mind, present with him guiding the intellect,
+for artistic principles flow into the mind from an Eternal source, _no
+less_ than do moral and spiritual principles. In short, the true method
+of the intellect is the perpetual _gift_ of a very present GOD, as much
+as the true method of the heart and soul.
+
+Man, then, in the last analysis, is a creative being; and the Froebel
+education has for its final object, to give him the dominion over
+everything in the earth; put all the cosmic forces into his hands,--as
+well as to bring him into the communion of love with his fellows; thus
+lifting his whole nature to the height of sitting down with our Elder
+brother on the throne, with the Universal Father.
+
+You should keep this great idea before you, and it will enable you to
+_use the technique_ that you have been learning, with a certain freedom
+as well as fidelity, guiding these playful exercises in such an order as
+you may find agreeable and salutary for them; and to check caprice, you
+must insist that, in these appointed times, they do the appointed
+things, OR DO NOTHING, for they will generally conclude to do the thing
+in hand, rather than DO NOTHING while all their companions are doing
+their work; and when they are doing nothing, they will have time for
+reflection, and to hear the inward voice of law, with the opportunity
+voluntarily to accept it. Thus does GOD give to all his children "to
+have life in themselves," and to bring out their whole likeness to
+Himself, which proves that they are not his bond slaves,--like the lower
+animals,--but SONS. If there are not in the universe two leaves that are
+alike, still less are there two souls that are alike. But leaves and
+souls, after all, are alike in more than they are different. You can
+provide action for all the instincts that children have in common, and
+create a common consciousness to a certain extent, which is the _common
+sense_; but what is peculiar to each, and makes the independent
+individual, is his _own secret_, and you can only help THAT to flower
+and fruitage by giving him the conditions of free, _independent action_,
+opening the inward eye and sharpening the inward ear for communication
+with Him who alone can adequately guide the will to the satisfaction of
+all the sensibilities of the heart, and the powers of intellect, and all
+the creative energies: but the religious and moral principles I shall
+endeavor to _define_ are _general_, not peculiar to, but inclusive of,
+the kindergarten plan of education. To have these principles clear and
+disengaged from the accidental associations of the various denominations
+of the church, all of which (and also with many of those outside of any
+visible church) _unite in that faith in God_, and that _disinterested
+love of humanity_, which was historically enacted on earth by Jesus
+Christ, and _into_ which every child born on the earth should be brought
+before he is old enough to appreciate those _intellectual_ distinctions
+which make different _creeds_; because then the kindergartner will be
+able to meet children on the high plane of life where their _angels_
+(does not that mean their spiritual instincts or ideals?) behold the
+face of the Father, and only then will the kindergartner practically
+enter into Froebel's method of _living with the children_, and communing
+with their innocence.
+
+I see a great deal of this practical application in the kindergartens
+kept by the well-trained kindergartners; and especially when they are
+_mothers_, who unquestionably make the best kindergartners (other things
+being equal), because it is easier for mothers to _divine_ the
+consciousness of their children. In the opening hour of the
+kindergarten, when the kindergartner interchanges the songs and hymns
+which the children choose, or at least agree to, with real free
+conversation, in which each child has a chance to tell what is uppermost
+in his little mind, the very most important work of the kindergartner is
+done. It has been my privilege to listen to much of this in the
+kindergartens kept severally by the mothers, who make the children feel
+that they are interested in whatever they say, however apparently
+trivial is the subject, and who answer genially, connecting it with
+something else, and so organizing the reflective powers of the children,
+that everything they think is seen to be a part of the process of moral,
+religious, and even intellectual growth.
+
+The possibility of doing this will prove to any one who has any heart
+and imagination that it is no mere poetic phrase, but a profound
+spiritual truth, that "Heaven lies about us in our infancy," that
+children do "come from GOD who is their home, trailing clouds of glory,"
+and for a time
+
+                "are still attended
+          By the vision splendid,"
+
+although too often
+
+          "The man beholds it die away,
+           And fade into the light of common day."
+
+Of course _all_ the opening conversation need not be on the moral and
+religious planes, but some of it should lead into explanations of
+nature and of the common life of this work-day world, improving
+dexterity and common sense; but one can hardly talk with children about
+anything, in a genuine way, that does not bring out of them some
+religious or moral expression. I think it is in connection with these
+conversations to which the children furnish by their spontaneous
+confidences the vital points, round which the thoughts of the whole
+little company shall revolve, that the teacher can connect her own
+story-telling.
+
+For such genuine conversation the necessary prerequisite on the part of
+the teacher is a real faith in children's being the _breath of God_ in
+their Essence.
+
+Then she will not have any _will-work_ of her own, but listen to hear
+what the child is attending to, be it nothing but a bit of string,
+which, of course, must have a certain length that can be measured, and
+with which other things may be measured, and which is made of material
+that has passed perhaps through the hands of many manufacturers, and
+which in its elements at least was a growth of nature, all whose works
+bear witness to the being of GOD; for GOD's throne may be reached from
+the ground of childish play as certainly and readily as from many a
+pulpit and cathedral, if not more so.
+
+A child whose affection for his companions and for the personages of a
+story told by the kindergartner, and who sees the connection of some
+little playful or other experience that he tells as his story for the
+morning, is _engaged in a service of God_, more vitally bearing on his
+growth in grace than any mere repetition of prayers. A play bringing out
+little kindnesses, sweet courtesies, gentle self-adjustments to his
+companions, the asking and giving of forgiveness for little
+discourtesies or grave wrong-doings, brings the child nearer GOD than
+any spoken words of worship can, the joy attending such innocent
+sweetness being the proof of the vital union of his soul with a very
+present GOD.
+
+So the work of the good Samaritan, though he was doubtless _thinking_
+only of the _individual_ he was comforting, and not at all of God, was
+recognized by Christ as a _real act of worship_; for it was the
+fulfilment of the second commandment _like unto the first_.
+
+The time will come, I confidently believe, when all religionists of
+whatever denomination will recognize that the favorite doctrines and
+formalities which distinguish them from each other are a mere
+superficial crust of that true spiritual life which is to be lived when
+the grown-up shall all become as little children, who feel that,
+
+          "In their work and in their play,
+           God is with them all the day."
+
+In speaking of the ceremonies of the Temple worship, which Moses made
+symbolical of all the virtues of life, moral and religious, but which in
+Paul's day had fallen into such a _mere_ ritual that this great Apostle
+said that the _Holy Ghost was not bodily exercise_, but a hopeful,
+faithful _charity of thought_, _feeling_, _and deed_; and this is what
+children can be guided into from the beginning, provided the
+kindergartner knows how to converse and play _with_ them instead of
+talking to them and coercing them _ever so kindly_ into acting out _her_
+will. The play of childhood is the most genuine and intense life that is
+lived, body, heart, and will _conspiring_ entirely; and it is by
+respecting the child's _will_ and _heart_ that you really help instead
+of _hindering_ this unification of his threefold nature, which
+corresponds to the Trinity of the Supreme Being and prevents _that_ from
+becoming a bewildering tritheism in his conception.
+
+A child cannot be _just_ unless he is _loving_, nor attain the freedom
+of moral dignity unless he asserts himself; and there is no way to
+nurture this self-respect except to express respect to him, by being as
+courteous to him as you are to any adult, always asking him to explain
+himself and his own motives, when he seems to be in the wrong, before
+you condemn him.
+
+I think I have gained some of the deepest insights I have ever had into
+_Divine Truth_, by discovering what was the motive thought of some
+child, who did what seemed inexplicable, till he told me, or I had
+divined, his secret reason.
+
+It is not mothers alone who can charm out of children their secret, as
+those know who have seen some maiden kindergartners talk _with_ their
+pupils in the opening exercises; but those who are not mothers will
+always do well to observe carefully those who are. On the other hand,
+mothers have to guard themselves against exaggerating their own
+children's natures _comparatively_. I have known some of the best
+mothers in the world _do that_, so as to be practically of bad influence
+over children not their own.
+
+Mothers who would be and can be the best kindergartners should therefore
+none the less study Froebel's science carefully and humbly.
+
+_All_ children are alike in having the _threefold nature_. I wish I had
+time to tell of a hundred kindergarten experiences that have come under
+my observation, in which the respectful, genial kindergartner has
+assisted in some moral development, whose occasion was very trivial to
+the superficial observer.
+
+Herein lies the importance of prefacing the school with the
+kindergarten, that in it all the virtues and Christian graces can be
+unconsciously practised on the plane of play, which is the moral
+gymnasium of mankind.
+
+This is the meaning of Solomon's wise saying, "Train up a child in the
+way he should go, and when he is old he will not depart from it." But
+the nature, which is the image of the Divine Nature, cannot be
+_mechanically_, but must be morally and spiritually, trained; that is,
+addressed and treated as free agency.
+
+The salutation of the Brahmin to his youthful son, no less than to his
+equal in age, is "to the divinity which is in you I do homage." This is
+one of the gleams of light from the lost Paradise in which man was
+created, and to which we hope the kindergarten is to more than restore
+the race, when it shall have become the universally applied principle of
+culture for human beings. (See Appendix, Note F.)
+
+FOOTNOTES:
+
+[11] See George Macdonald's _Vicar's Daughter_.
+
+[12] This unique book was the text-book Froebel used in his
+training-school. Its profound meaning, and how it points to the divine
+philosophy of the instinctive play, that is the first phenomenon of
+human life with mother and child, some of you have heard Miss Blow and
+Miss Fisher luminously explain in a course of lectures much longer than
+mine, and which I hope they may be persuaded to publish in book form.
+
+
+
+
+GLIMPSES OF PSYCHOLOGY.
+
+
+SPIRITUALITY.
+
+WE speak of the necessity of studying childhood; we call children living
+books of nature, and say that we cannot succeed in educating them (which
+is putting them into a harmonious activity of all their powers), without
+knowledge, such as a musical performer has of his instrument, of these
+"harps of a thousand strings."
+
+This fundamental knowledge of children is not chiefly a discrimination
+of their individualities; though observation of these will be made by a
+consummate kindergartner; it is a knowledge of what is universal in
+children, essential to the constitution of human beings.
+
+Froebel never wrote out, in systematic form, the psychology which
+underlies and gives the rational ground to all the details of his
+method. But there are pregnant sentences in all his writings, and in his
+sayings handed down by tradition, which give such insights, that it can
+be divined with some completeness.
+
+We propose to give such glimpses as occur to us from time to time--not
+always in our own words, but as often as we can in Froebel's, and also
+in the words of other thinkers, whose guesses at this kind of truth
+light up their writings on many subjects.
+
+We must, in the first place, attend to one important fact; there is, in
+the experience of childhood, somewhat pre-existent to all impressions
+made by the universe, and consequently to all operations of the
+understanding--perceiving, comparing, judging--for these are
+intentional acts of the pre-existent soul breathed into his body and
+bidden to "have dominion."--_Genesis 1._
+
+What is this pre-existent soul, this mysterious depth of personality?
+
+Washington Allston, in his posthumous lectures on Art, has finely said:
+"Man does not live by science; he feels, acts, and judges right in a
+thousand things, without the consciousness of any rule by which he so
+feels, acts, and judges. Happily for him, he has a surer guide than
+human science in that _unknown power within him_, without which he had
+been without any knowledge." Again, he speaks of "those intuitive
+powers, which are above and beyond both the understanding and the
+senses; which, nevertheless, are so far from precluding knowledge, as,
+on the contrary, to require--as their effective condition--the widest
+intimacy with things external, without which their very existence must
+remain unknown."
+
+He does not, however, merely assert this pre-existence of the soul to
+the understanding, but speaks of the evidence of it that we all can
+appreciate. "Suppose," he says, "we analyze a certain combination of
+sounds and colors, so as to ascertain the exact relative qualities of
+the one, and the collocation of the other, and then compare them, what
+possible resemblance can the understanding perceive between these sounds
+and colors? And yet a something within us responds to both--a _similar
+emotion_. And so it is with a thousand things, nay, with myriads of
+objects, that have no other affinity but with that mysterious harmony,
+which began with our being, which slept with our infancy, and which
+their presence only seems to have awakened. If we cannot go back to our
+own childhood, we may see its illustration in those about us who are now
+in that unsophisticated state. Look at them in the fields, among the
+birds and flowers; their happy faces speak the harmony within them; the
+divine instrument which these objects have touched, gives them a joy,
+which perhaps only childhood, in its first fresh consciousness, can
+know, yet what do children _understand_ of the theory of colors, or
+musical quantities?"
+
+That this mysterious power, this feeling soul, is the _human_
+characteristic, is suggested in another paragraph of these lectures.
+"What, for instance, can we suppose to be the effect of the purple haze
+of a summer sunset on the cows or sheep, or even on the more delicate
+inhabitants of the air? From what we know of their habits, we cannot
+suppose more than the mere physical enjoyment of its genial temperature?
+But how is it with the man, whom we shall suppose an object in the same
+scene, stretched on the same bank with the ruminating cattle, and
+basking in the same light that flickers from the skimming birds? Does he
+feel nothing more than the genial warmth?"--Vol. I. p. 84.
+
+This feeling of beauty, this power which appreciates harmony, this
+creative unity, in fine, this æsthetic soul, distinct from and above the
+understanding (which certain philosophers seem to think is all of man,
+over and above his body), is not all of the soul,--but the moral and
+even merely social sentiment has the same pre-existence. Allston bears
+witness to this also. He says: "With respect to Truth and Goodness,
+whose pre-existent ideas, being living constituents of an immortal
+spirit, need but the slightest breath of some _outward condition_ of the
+true and good--a simple problem or a kind act--to awaken them, as it
+were, from their unconscious sleep.... We may venture to assert that no
+philosopher, however ingenious, could communicate to a child the
+abstract idea of Right, had the child nothing beyond or above the
+understanding. He might, indeed, be taught, like inferior animals,--a
+dog, for instance,--that if he took certain forbidden things, he would
+be punished, and thus do right through _fear_. Still he would desire the
+forbidden thing belonging to another, nor could he conceive why he
+should not appropriate to himself--and thus allay his appetite--what
+was another's, could he do so undetected; nor attain to any higher
+notion of Right than that of the strongest. But the child _has_
+something higher than the mere power of apprehending consequences
+(external?). The simplest exposition, whether of right or wrong, is
+instantly responded to by something within him, which, thus awakened,
+becomes to him a living voice, and the good and the true must
+thenceforth answer its call. We do not say that these ideas of Beauty,
+Truth, and Goodness will, strictly speaking, always act. Though
+indestructible, they may be banished for a time by the perverted Will,
+and mockeries of the brain, like the fume-born phantoms from the
+witches' cauldron in Macbeth, may take their places and assume their
+functions. We have examples of this in every age, and perhaps in none
+more startling than the present. But we mean only that they cannot be
+(absolutely?) forgotten; nay, they are but too often recalled with
+unwelcome distinctness....
+
+"From the dim present, then, we would appeal to that fresher time, ere
+the young spirit had shrunk from the overbearing pride of the
+(vitiated?) understanding, and confidently ask, if the emotions we then
+felt from the Beautiful, the True, and the Good, did not seem, in some
+way, to refer to a common origin? And we would also ask, if it was
+frequent that the influence from one was singly felt? if it did not
+rather bring with it, however remotely, a sense of something--though
+widely differing,--yet still akin to it? when we have basked in the
+beauty of a summer sunset, was there nothing in the sky, that spoke to
+the soul of Truth and Goodness? And when the opening intellect first
+received the truth of the great law of gravitation, and felt itself
+mounting through the profound of space, to travel with the planets in
+their unerring rounds,--did never then the kindred ideas of Goodness and
+Beauty chime in, as it were, with the fabled music (not fabled to the
+soul), which led you on as one entranced? And again, when, in the
+passive quiet of your moral nature, so predisposed, in youth, to all
+things genial, you have looked around on this marvellous, ever-teeming
+earth, ever teeming alike for mind and body, and have felt upon you the
+flow, as from ten thousand streams of innocent enjoyment, did you not
+then almost hear them shout in confluence, and almost see them gushing
+upwards, as if they would prove their _unity_ in one harmonious
+fountain?"
+
+It is of the last consequence that the kindergartner should take into
+her mind that this æsthetic soul exists in children as a primary fact;
+for, unless she believes in it, she will not respect it, and take
+advantage of it in what she does for them. It is to be respected and
+brought out into the understanding of children, by means of the
+beautiful things which she leads them to do and make, and with which she
+surrounds them; for, as Allston says, this consciousness "requires as
+its effective condition, the widest intimacy with things external." When
+children are continually in squalid surroundings, these seem at length
+to strike in and paralyze the spontaneous action of the æsthetic being,
+who is pre-existent to consciousness of the power which compares and
+judges and makes up a theory of colors. And, as has been shown, this
+feeling of beauty, this power of appreciating harmony and unity, this
+æsthetic nature, distinct from and above the understanding, which some
+people idly think to be all of man beside his body, is not all of the
+soul, for the moral sentiment has the same pre-existence.
+
+We have brought together these paragraphs taken from Allston's lectures
+on Art, for the consideration of practical kindergartners, all the more
+confidently, because they were not written as theory of education, but
+were parts of a practical inquiry after the standard of judgment for
+pictorial and plastic artists and the spectator of their works. He
+sought to deliver them from the benumbing effect of inadequate
+science,--for science must always be inadequate, as Newton so forcibly
+expressed, when he defined it "gathering a few pebbles on the shores of
+the infinite ocean of truth." The object of the lecturer was what the
+kindergartner's first object should be,--to awaken the self-respect of
+the eternal soul within us all, making the life of our individuality--our
+personality--which, in its mysterious depth and independent
+pre-existence to the finite understanding, is the image of the Divine
+Personality, whose spoken word is the material universe, but clothed in
+flesh becomes MAN. It is no part of the kindergartner's duty to
+give--she can only awaken--the feelings of harmony, beauty, unity, and
+conscience. She is to present the right order of proceeding, in all that
+the child shall do, thereby assisting him to form his own understanding
+so that his bodily organization may be properly developed; to let in
+upon his soul _nature_ in its beauteous forms and order, and his
+fellow-creatures, in their legitimate claims upon him. Then he shall
+come forth from the sleep of unconscious infancy, into a progressive
+consciousness of all his relations, with the blessings and duties that
+belong to them. This forming of the understanding, this marrying of
+finite thought to infinite love, is Froebel's Education; and cannot be
+accomplished, unless the kindergartner clearly sees what God has done
+for the child absolutely, and what for an ineffable purpose,--most
+gracious to the human race,--He has left to be done by human providence,
+whether of the mother or kindergartner, or some other fellow-creature.
+
+It makes a heaven-wide difference whether the soul of a child is
+regarded as a piece of blank paper to be written upon, or as a living
+power, to be quickened by sympathy, to be educated by truth.
+
+
+UNDERSTANDING.
+
+WE have spoken of the evidences of the æsthetic being found in the
+mysterious depths of human personality, pre-existent to the individual
+understanding (which is a growth in time); and that, without there were
+this æsthetic being, underlying all _individual_ consciousness, there
+would be no standard of human virtue or art.
+
+This æsthetic person has also (previous to the development of the
+understanding, which makes the synthesis of himself and nature) an
+impulsive force, instinct with the desire to change his conditions. Man
+does not appear in the world merely as sensibility to enjoyment and
+suffering; but as veritable force, as well, whose action must produce an
+effect either orderly or disorderly.
+
+The material universe is composed of forces, limiting in a measure
+personal force. All material forces are uniform and necessary and
+correlative in their action, which is impressed upon them from without
+themselves. Man alone is self-active, and may clash with the other
+forces to his own pain, and he will often do so, until by knowledge of
+them he can harmonize with them, and make them his own instrumentality
+to satisfy his æsthetic nature. We call this self-activity of man, which
+is in such vital union with his sensibility, the human will, and it
+makes the personal life of every one to learn this self-activity of his,
+in its differences from and relations to all other forces, as he can
+only do perfectly by keeping in intellectual and sympathetic social
+relation with other æsthetic persons. In every individual case, he finds
+himself in these relations with fellow-beings who have more or less of
+the knowledge he has not; and some of them have all the responsibility
+of his actions until he has begun to know himself in discrimination from
+the material universe and its fixed relations and laws, which serve as a
+fulcrum for his own effective action among them. The one central unity
+whose æsthetic being and will are inclusive of himself and fellow-beings
+as subject, on the one hand, and of the material universe as object, on
+the other, is God.
+
+The absoluteness of man as a force, is no less certain because he is
+finite and not omnipotent. God is the omnipotent maker of the material
+universe, but man is not absolutely made; he is a cause, that is,
+_created to make_, if we may credit the ancient prophet, whose hymn of
+creation is the most wonderful expression of human genius, unless it be
+surpassed by the proem of St. John's Gospel, which is a correspondent
+poem, with God for its theme instead of man and nature.
+
+It was not till the embryo man had become, in one instance at least, the
+fully developed man, that this hymn of the Creator was possible. God's
+word (revelation of himself) was in the world, embodied in the things
+made from the beginning; but until it was embodied in a man, free to
+will, it was truth in the form of law only (_regulative_), not yet in
+the completer form of love (_creative_). In short, before St. John could
+sing that divine song, he must have seen God in a man, full of grace and
+truth, dwelling among men as a fellow-man, and overflowing with a power
+at once sympathetic and causal.
+
+God created man, male and female (that is, giving and receiving
+equally), to be keepers of each other, and to educate each other. They
+may tempt and fail each other by presumption as Eve, and want of
+self-respect as Adam, are represented to have done, at the beginning; or
+may save and redeem one another, as the cherished son of Mary
+historically did in a measure, and is doing forevermore, by inspiring
+all who know him, to educate and redeem each other.
+
+In coming into relation with infant man, to educate him, it is
+indispensable to appreciate his freedom of willing, which is a primeval
+fact, as much as his susceptibility of suffering and enjoyment. The
+educator ought to embody God in a measure, and treat the will of the
+child that is to be educated, on the same grand system of respecting
+individual freedom, as must needs flow from Infinite love. Let him
+clothe law in love, and instead of rousing fear of opposition, awaken
+the hope of becoming a beauty-creating and man-blessing power.
+
+This is the _rationale_ of Froebel's method of government. He assumes
+that the child is--not to be made by education a sensibility, but--an
+infinite sensibility already, and to be vivified into individual
+consciousness thereof, by the knowledge of nature to which you are to
+give him the clue;--not to be made by your government of him, a power of
+creating effects, but already an immeasurable power of creating effects
+(that is, causal)--which you are to make him feel responsible for, by
+helping him to get experimental knowledge of the laws that obtain in
+God's creation.
+
+For it is knowledge of laws that is the first thing attainable--not
+knowledge of objects. A child's senses are the avenues of the knowledge
+of objects; his self-activity is the avenue of the knowledge of laws. He
+must have experimental knowledge of laws before he can begin to have
+knowledge of objects, because his impulsive activity is the means of
+developing his organs of sense, by which he becomes capable of receiving
+impressions from objects of nature; and his own effective action
+produces the objects outside of his organs which first command his
+interested attention, and rouse his powers of analysis, or by which his
+powers of analysis are roused through your educating intervention.
+
+It is the maternal nursing of body and mind which educates the free
+force within to produce transient effects, and finally objects,
+agreeable to the sensibility. Even before the will is educated to
+causality, it exerts itself, because exertion is agreeable to human
+sensibility; but when left uneducated, the will brings about effects
+that prove disagreeable ultimately, if not immediately, to the æsthetic
+being, paralyzing it more or less, if the organization be feeble; and
+perverting it when it is strong; in either case, whether crushing or
+exasperating it, producing selfishness, the germ of all evil.
+
+Thus evil begins in the social sphere, in the disorderly action or in
+the neglect of those who have in charge the æsthetic free force of the
+child, compelling it to revolve on its own axis in a vain endeavor to
+obtain the satisfaction of its æsthetic nature, which it ought to obtain
+through the generous cherishing action of others' love, carrying it
+round the central sun in human companionship. The soul instinctively
+expects love, and to do so, and to act out love intentionally, is its
+salvation, its eternal life. There is no signature of immortality so
+sure as the immeasurable craving for love on the one hand, and the
+immeasurable impulse to love on the other hand, which characterizes man;
+for the satisfaction of the craving is no greater joy than the
+satisfaction of loving.
+
+It is because death _seems_ the cessation of relation with our kind,
+that it is the king of terrors. When the disease or decay of the body
+curtails relations and makes us solitary, or incapable of enjoying
+relations, death is not dreaded, but craved as relief. To whomever it
+seems the beginning of wider relations, it is hailed as the revealing
+angel of God. Isolation is the horror of horrors. It was one of the
+primal intuitions that "it is not good for man to be alone." The nurse
+should remember this, and not leave the baby to feel lonely. Every
+mother and real nurse knows that when the baby begins to be uneasy and
+gives a cry of dissatisfaction,--to come near with a smile, to make
+one's presence felt by a caressing tone, or to take the infant in their
+arms, will comfort it, bringing back the joyful sense of life--a word
+which signifies active relation;--and, in its highest sense, spiritual
+relation. _Life_, _love_, and _liberty_ are identical words in their
+radical elements. There is no love without liberty, nor fulness of life
+without love.
+
+The liberty of man, or his freedom to will, though it gives him the
+power to dash himself against antagonizing law, is the proof of infinite
+love to man in the Creator,--a love which must needs outmeasure all the
+evil he can do himself or others; for evil provokes others' love for our
+victims, and is self-limited, by reason of the pain it brings, sooner or
+later, on him who does it, and the desire for infinite love which it
+defines and stimulates.
+
+Man and nature are the contrasts which God connects and harmonizes. He
+presents nature to the mind as immutable law, but before the
+understanding is formed to apprehend law, He emparadises the child in
+the love of the mother. In short, the human race embodies love to the
+soul, before the universe (which embodies law) is yet apprehended. The
+heart that apprehends love, is older than the mind which apprehends law;
+and it is because it is so, that man _feels free_. When man becomes mere
+law to man, instead of love, he feels he is enslaved.
+
+These are the most practical truths for the kindergartner. If these
+propositions are truths (and their evidence is the explanation they give
+of the mysteries of sin and redemption, both of which are unquestionable
+facts of human history, according to the testimony of all nations), then
+let her see to it, that in her relation with the children of her charge,
+she never so presents the law, as to obscure the love, which it is the
+primal duty of men to embody and manifest to each other.
+
+But, on the other hand, do not keep back the law; for the law, too, is
+one expression of the Creator's being. What is law? It is the order of
+the beauteous forms of things, which, when appreciated as God's order,
+becomes a stepping stone to his throne. For God proposes to share his
+throne with us, if we may trust another primeval intuition of the human
+mind, viz., that God commands man, male and female, that is, men in
+equal social relation, to "have dominion" over all creation, below man.
+
+The human being not only craves liberty and love instinctively, but law
+also; he "feels the weight of chance desires," and "longs for a repose
+that ever is the same." This is the _rationale_ of Froebel's method in
+the occupations; he suggests the child's action, sometimes by
+interrogation merely, instead of directing it peremptorily. He asks the
+child, when he has done one thing, what is the opposite? which itself
+suggests the combination of opposites, that immediately produces a
+symmetrical effect. The child enjoys the symmetry all the more, if he
+feels as if he personally produced it. This is the secret of his love of
+repetition. He wants to see if by the same means he can again produce
+the same effect. He does the thing again and again, till he feels that
+he does it all of himself. He does not want you to help him even with
+your words (and you never should help him _except_ with words). If a
+child acts from a suggestion, he feels free,--but if he produces the
+same effect, or a similar effect, without your suggestion, he has a
+still more self-respecting sense of power; and his will becomes more
+consciously free the more he chooses to put on the harness of order.
+
+The kindergartner will sometimes have a child put under her care whose
+will has been exasperated by arbitrary and capricious treatment, or who
+has been made to act against his inclination till he has reacted, out of
+pure _contrariness_, as we say. This contrariness proves that he has
+been outraged; perhaps in some instances the effect has been produced by
+not feeding his mind with knowledge of law. The very violence of the
+evil may show that he is an exceptionally fine child, with an enormous
+sense of power that he does not know what to do with because the proper
+educational influence has failed him. In other cases obstinacy may be a
+reaction against the vicious will of another, who, instead of offering
+him the bread of law, has presented to him the stone of his own
+stumbling. It is indispensable to give the child law, as well as love;
+but when you are doubtful whether you can genially suggest the law,--at
+all events express the love; and never substitute for the law your own
+will. The law which produces a good or beautiful effect, is God's will;
+your will is not creative of the child's will like God's; its best
+effect is to stimulate the antagonism of the child's, when the latter is
+feeble, which it sometimes is by reason of physical mal-organization, or
+by having been crushed by overbearing management, or vitiated by selfish
+caprice.
+
+I may be told that if Froebel's education is wholly of a genial, coaxing
+character, it fails of being an image of the Divine Providence, which is
+an alternation of attractions and antagonisms, speaking now in the music
+of nature, and now in thunders and lightnings, not only cherishing the
+heart with love, but stimulating the will with law; and be warned not to
+enervate the character, by producing an æsthetic luxury of sentiment, by
+which the personal being shall stagnate in the worst kind of
+selfishness--the passive kind. This objection might be pertinent, if the
+kindergarten were to be protracted beyond the era to which Froebel
+limits it. Certainly the time comes, when the finite will should be
+antagonized, if need be, by the law of universal humanity. The purest,
+most loving, most disinterested will known to human history, recognized
+that there might be a _wiser_ will, not to be doubted as still more
+loving; and said, "Not my will, but Thine be done,"--"Into Thy hands I
+commend my spirit" (my free causal power). But let the kindergartner
+remember she is not infinitely wise and good, and beware of enacting the
+sovereign judge. There is no doubt that an exclusively cherishing
+tenderness should be the law of the nursery, with no antagonism
+whatever, because at that age it is a wise self-assertion which we wish
+to develop. We therefore act _for_ the infant, having secured his acting
+_with_ us by our genial encouragement. But this is no argument for
+continuing to act for him, when he can act with consciousness of an
+individual life. We must not prolong babyhood into the kindergarten; or,
+at least, we must begin to engraft personal consciousness upon it, by
+_playing_ little antagonisms merely. And so, it is no argument against
+the play of kindergarten that it does mature men. Let the children play
+with complete earnestness, but, as Plato says, "according to laws," and
+they will all the more likely seek laws when they come into wider
+relations.
+
+The development of the consciousness of man is serial. In the nursery we
+coax the child to exercise the various muscles by playfully duplicating
+their action; we make him _make believe_ walk, impressing his senses, as
+it were, with the whole operation as an object. The child first
+experiences the pleasure of movement, then desires to move for the sake
+of renewing this pleasure; then enjoys your helping him to do what he
+has not yet the bodily strength and skill to accomplish; and finally
+wills to take up his body and make his first independent step. This is
+the first crisis in the history of his individuality, and every mother
+knows it is the cheer of her magnetizing faith that enables him to pass
+through it. He then repeats the action intentionally, simply because he
+can; enjoying the exertion he makes all the more if, by your care, he
+has not begun to walk too soon and experienced the pain of numerous
+falls, from want of guardian arms and supporting hands. Such pains
+disturb and haunt his fancy, and dishearten him. Courage and serene joy
+give strength and enterprise to activity.
+
+The nursery and kindergarten education are the preliminary processes
+which foreshadow all the processes of the Divine Providence. Therefore,
+even in the nursery we _play_ antagonizing processes. We heighten the
+child's enjoyment by making him conscious of isolation a moment, to
+restore, as it were, with a shout, the delightful sense of relation; for
+the baby likes to have a handkerchief thrown over his head unexpectedly,
+and suddenly withdrawn again and again. So we sometimes pretend to let
+him fall, and just when he is about to cry with alarm, catch him again
+and kiss him.
+
+Froebel in his nursery plays has several of this nature; and as children
+grow older they play antagonisms spontaneously, which are beneficial
+just so far as they elicit the consciousness of individual power; but
+are harmful if, proceeding too far, they show its limitations painfully,
+and make the child feel himself a victim.
+
+In the kindergarten season various sensibilities are manifest that have
+not shown themselves in the nursery, and which are premonitions of the
+destined dominion over material nature, which at first so much dominates
+the child, and would destroy his body if you did not intervene with your
+loving care. These are to be mothered in the kindergartner's heart till
+they become conscious desires, informing and directing his will, which
+is encouraged and strengthened--if it is never superseded by your
+will--until he shall begin to realize his personal responsibility. Then,
+as he took his body into his own keeping when he began to run alone, so
+now he will take his character into his own hands to educate, and he
+will do it all the more certainly and energetically, if he feels you to
+be an all-helping, all-cherishing, all-inspiring friend, which you must
+needs be if you are open to feel and wise to know God's love to you, in
+making you His vicegerent to give glimpses, at least, of the
+immeasurable love of God, in giving the inexorable laws of nature, for
+the fulcrum of the power that He pours into His children in the form of
+will; and which obeys Him just in proportion as it keeps its freedom to
+alter and alter and alter, till there is no longer any evil to be
+conscious of, and men shall have got the dominion over nature, which
+consists in using it for all generous purposes, in a universal mutual
+understanding with one another. To be in the progressive attainment of
+this high destiny, is the growing happiness of man; a happiness which
+must ever have in it that element of _victory_, which distinguishes the
+eternal life of Christ from the nirwana of Buddha.
+
+
+MORAL SENTIMENT.
+
+WE have been asked by one of the students of Froebel's art and science,
+what books we should recommend to help her to a fuller knowledge of the
+subjects on which we gave a few hints in our first and second paper of
+_Glimpses_.
+
+In reply, we would first say, that it is a needed preparation for any
+study of books on intellectual and moral philosophy, to look back on our
+own moral history and mental experience, and ask ourselves what was the
+process of our moral growth, and the circumstances of the formation of
+our opinions; that is, what action of our relatives, guardians, and
+companions, had the best--and what the worst--practical effects upon our
+characters; what aided and what hindered us? Every fault in our
+characters has its history, having generally originated in the action of
+others upon us; sometimes their intentional action, which may have been
+merely mistaken, or may have been wilfully selfish and malignant; and
+sometimes an influence unconsciously exerted. On the other hand, much of
+our life that has blest ourselves and others, can be referred to
+spontaneous manifestations of others, having no special reference to
+ourselves; generous sentiments uttered in felicitous words, generous
+acts recorded in history, or done in the privacy of domestic life; great
+truths bodied forth in imaginative poetry, over which our young hearts
+mused till the fire burned.
+
+This empirical knowledge of the great nature which we share, is a living
+nucleus that will give vital meaning to any true words with which
+scientific treatises on the mind are written; and a power to judge
+whether the writer is talking about facts of life, or mere abstractions,
+out of which have died all spiritual substance, leaving only "a heap of
+empty boxes." In no department of study are we more liable to take words
+for things than in this. Abstraction is the source of all the false
+philosophy and theology which has distracted the world. Generalizations
+are of no aid--but a delusion and a snare--unless the mental and moral
+phenomena, from which they are derived, have been the writer's
+experiences, personal or sympathetic. Such experiences are as
+substantial as material things, to say the least; and even they do not
+do justice to the whole truth, which is--if we may so express it--the
+vital experience of God. Hence is the Living Word to which human
+abstractions can never do justice; being, indeed, but the refuse of
+thought, "a weight to be laid aside" and forgotten, like a work done, as
+we stretch forward to the prize of truth, which is our "high calling."
+
+In Book II. chapter vii. of Campbell's _Philosophy of Rhetoric_, there
+is a section headed, "Why is it that nonsense so often escapes being
+detected, both by the writer and reader?" It explains with great
+perspicuity the uses and abuses of our faculty of abstraction, which is
+not a spiritual, but merely an intellectual faculty. I would commend
+this essay (and indeed, for several reasons, the whole book) to a
+student of intellectual philosophy. A great deal may be learned upon
+this subject, also, from an Essay on Language, printed a second time
+with some other papers, by Phillips & Sampson, Boston, in 1857, and
+probably still to be found in old bookstores, if it be not reprinted by
+its author, R. L. Hazard.
+
+On the subject of my second paper of _Glimpses_ the same author has
+written two books, one published by D. Appleton, in New York, in 1864,
+_The Freedom of the Mind in Willing; or, Every Being that wills, a
+Creative First Cause_; and in 1869, Lee & Shepard, Boston, published, as
+supplement, _Two Letters on Causation and Freedom in Willing, addressed
+to John Stuart Mill, with an Appendix on the Existence of Matter, and
+our Notions of Infinite Space_.[13]
+
+
+INDIVIDUAL FREEDOM TO WILL.
+
+IF the spontaneous will of man, and its heart with its latent love,
+hope, and sense of beauty and justice, are without date,
+
+                        "An eye among the blind,
+          That deaf and silent reads the eternal deep,
+          Haunted forever by the eternal mind,"
+
+yet there is no doubt that the human understanding, as well as the body,
+begins in time, and gradually identifies the individual for
+communication with other individuals of its kind. The beginning of the
+human understanding is in the impressions of an environing universe,
+against which the sensibility reacts, and by this activity develops the
+organs of sense, which are the connection of those two great contrasts,
+the soul and the outward universe. For perceptions of sense are the
+instrumentality by which the will vivifies the heart, so disposing the
+particulars of the surrounding universe as to give the definite form of
+_thoughts_ to consciousness. The human being has no absolute knowledge
+like the lower animals, who are passive instrumentality of God to
+certain finite ends below the plane of spirituality. Created for the
+infinite ends of intelligence, and free communion with one another and
+God, men need to become conscious of the whole process of their own
+being, and do so by a gradual conversation with God, who is forever
+saying, by the universe, which is his speech, I AM. And here education
+begins its offices, by helping man to reply THOU ART, which he does by
+his legitimate art. But no one man can utter the _thou art_ of humanity
+adequately. It takes all humanity forever and ever to do so; and it does
+not do so but just so far as the men who compose it are in mutual
+understanding and communion with each other. Therefore each child must
+be taken by the hand by those already conscious, and led to realize his
+own consciousness by learning that of his fellows.
+
+In the action and reaction of the individual with his special
+environment, he comes to distinguish himself from that which gives him
+pleasure and pain, and he will be attracted to the former, and repelled
+from the latter; and thus come to discriminate outward things from each
+other. The observation and discrimination of the particulars of nature
+is _thinking_. Sensuous impressions are the raw material of thoughts,
+but discrimination and classification of things according to their
+similarities, is the _operation_ of thought.
+
+Education has an office in both the accumulation of sensuous impressions
+and the operation of thinking. The mother and nurse of each child must
+so order the objects about him, that his organs shall be properly
+impressed, and not overtaxed, because only so can they grow to be a good
+instrumentality for receiving even more delicate impressions. A tender
+sympathy for the unconscious little one, who is gradually coming to
+identify himself, and love,--such as only a mother can have in the
+greatest perfection,--are the special qualifications of the educator at
+this stage. Such a knowledge of nature's laws and order, as may enable
+the educator to lead the child's activity according to law and order,
+can alone help the child to reproduce, on his finite plane, an image of
+God's creative action. The educator who should succeed the nurse is the
+kindergartner, who, without lacking the sympathetic affection of the
+nurse, must add a knowledge of nature both material and spiritual, so
+that she may bring these opposites into their right connection with each
+other.
+
+She will therefore lead the child to _produce_ something that shall
+serve as a ground for the operation of thinking. Instead of letting the
+blind will spend its energy in wild and aimless motion, she will present
+a desirable aim to attain, which will produce an effect that shall
+satisfy the heart, and produce an object that shall engage the
+attention, and stimulate to a reproduction of it, until it is thoroughly
+known, not only in its natural properties, but in the law of its being,
+which was the child's own method of producing the thing.
+
+The genesis of the understanding, then, is, first, sensuous impression,
+which, reproducing itself intentionally, becomes, secondly, perception;
+and, thirdly, an adapting of means to ends, and thereby rising into
+judgment and knowledge. To get understanding precedes getting knowledge,
+which is the special work of the understanding when it is developed.
+
+There is another faculty of the individual, besides understanding, and
+which is to be discriminated from it--fancy. Vivid and clear sensuous
+impressions are the foundation of fancy, as well as of understanding.
+But the will, acting among these impressions in a wild and sovereign
+way, is fancy; while the will arranging impressions according to the
+order of nature, is understanding. Froebel has provided for the
+development of the understanding the occupations, as he calls the
+regular _production_ of forms, transient and permanent. Nothing can be
+produced which satisfies the æsthetic sense, except by following the
+laws of creation. To analyze these productions will give experimental
+understanding of those laws. In superintending the occupations, the
+kindergartner must, therefore, see that the child does things in the
+right order, and gives an account of what he does in the right words;
+for words, the first works of human art, have a great deal to do with
+the development of the understanding, lifting man into a sphere above
+that of the mere animal. After a thing is made, or an effect produced
+and named, it must be made a subject for analysis; and it can easily be
+made so, because children's attention is easily conciliated to what they
+themselves have done or produced. Putting their own action into a thing,
+makes it interesting to them; and they can make an exhaustive analysis
+of it, because, in addition to its appearances, they know the law of its
+being, which was their own method, and the cause of its being, which was
+their own _motive_. From analyzing their own works, children can, in due
+time, be led to analyze works of nature. And here the kindergartner has
+great room for the exercise of judgment, in the selection of suitable
+objects.
+
+Froebel advised that objects for lessons should be taken from the
+vegetable creation; and that children should be interested in planting
+seeds and watching growth, becoming acquainted with its general
+conditions, observing which are within the scope of their own powers to
+provide, and which are beyond human power; thus leading the
+understanding through nature, outward and inward, to God.
+
+If we see that the work done is artistic, and that the objects of nature
+analyzed are beautiful, this culture of the understanding may refine and
+elevate the taste, and beautify the fancy.
+
+For the fancy is to be carefully cherished by the kindergartner. It is
+not amenable to direct influence perhaps, but not beyond an indirect
+influence. The soundness of the understanding is conducive to a
+beautiful play of fancy, which is a peculiarly human faculty; for we
+have not a particle of evidence that any animal below man has this kind
+of thinking, which delights in transcending the facts of nature in its
+creations, and sometimes sets the laws of nature at defiance. But we
+must defer to another paper the many things we have to say in regard to
+the imagination and its culture.
+
+
+CONSCIENCE.
+
+WE have given a few hints by way of answering the questions on
+psychology, which must come up, to be considered by a kindergartner who
+is intent on understanding the "harp of a thousand strings," from which
+it is her duty to bring out the music.
+
+We have found that the human being comes into the world with an æsthetic
+nature, which is to be vivified by the presentation of the beauties of
+nature and art, in such a way as to insure reaction of the will in
+creations of fancy; for only so can sensibility to beauty be prevented
+from degenerating into sensuality. If the fancy remains wholly
+subjective, it loses its childish health and leads astray. It should
+have objective embodiment in song, dance, and artistic manipulation of
+some sort. Now, artistic manipulation of any kind necessitates the
+examination of natural elements and the discovery of the laws of
+production, which are, of course, identical with the organic laws of
+nature that bear witness to an intelligent Creator.
+
+To excite the human understanding to appreciate names, and classify
+things for _use_ and giving pleasure, it is necessary to present things
+to children gradually, first singly, and then in simple rhythmical
+combinations, so that they may have time to find themselves personally,
+and not be overwhelmed with a multitude of impressions. A real lover of
+children will quickly find out that they like to take time "playing with
+things," as they call it; and that there is a special pleasure in
+discovering differences in things; that a new distinct perception of any
+relation of things delights the child, as the discovery of a principle
+delights the adult mind. The fanciful plays of the kindergarten, whether
+sedentary or moving, cultivate the imagination, the understanding, and
+the physical powers in harmony, and more than this, they cultivate the
+heart and conscience, because the moving plays have for their
+indispensable condition numbers of their equals, and everything they
+make is intended for others. The presentation of persons, as having the
+same needs and desires of enjoyment as themselves, proves sufficient to
+call into consciousness the heart and conscience, just as immediately
+and inevitably as the presentation of nature and art calls into activity
+the understanding and imagination.
+
+Because nature and human kind are so _vast_ that, as a whole they daunt
+the young mind, even to the point of checking its growth, it is
+necessary that some one, who has had time to analyze it in some degree,
+should call attention to points; and it is the consummate art of
+education to know what points to touch, so that the mind shall make out
+the octave; for, unless it does so, it will not act to purpose. As
+exercise of the limbs is necessary to physical development, and the act
+of perceiving, understanding, and fancying, with actual manipulation of
+nature, is necessary to intellectual development; so is kindness and
+justice acted out, to the development of the social and moral nature or
+conscience.
+
+But there is something else in man than relations to external nature and
+fellow-man. This self-determining being, who moves, perceives,
+understands, fancies, loves, and feels moral responsibility to the race
+in which he finds himself a living member, is only consciously happy
+when he is magnanimous, which he can only be, if he feels himself a free
+power in the bosom of infinite love; in short, a son of the Father of
+all men! "We are the offspring of God" is the inspiration alike of
+heathen poet and Christian apostle.
+
+As the psychological condition of the human love which is man's social
+happiness, is that sense of individual want and imperfection which
+stimulates the will to seek the mother and brother; so the psychological
+condition of the piety which makes man's beatitude, is the sense of
+social imperfection, in respect both to moral purity and happiness,
+stimulating the will to seek a Father of all spirits. The more we love,
+the more we feel the need of God. But is God nothing but "an infinite
+sigh at the bottom of the heart," as Feuerbach, the holiest of infidels,
+sadly says? or, as in thinking, we discover the entity we name I; so in
+loving, do we not discover God, or rather does not God reveal Himself to
+us, as Essential Substance? Wordsworth declares that
+
+          "Serene will be our days and bright,
+             And happy will our nature be,
+           When love is an unerring light,
+             And joy its own security;
+           And blest are they, who in the main,
+           This faith even now do entertain,
+           Live in the spirit of this creed,
+           Yet find _another strength_ according to their need."
+
+"That other strength" is to be found, as he had already sung in that
+same great song, in Duty--"daughter of the voice of God,"
+
+                              "Victory and Law
+          When empty terrors overawe;
+          From vain temptations doth set free,
+          And calms the weary strife of frail humanity!"
+
+Conscience, then, is the soul's witness, first of the relation of the
+individual to the human race; and ultimately, of the relation of the
+human race to God; and it must be inspired with knowledge of the sonship
+of the human race to the Universal Father, or human life is bottomless
+despair. But with that knowledge which God must give (since man cannot
+reach it with his own understanding) he shall be able, even on the
+cross, to love the most ignorant brother infinitely; and infinitely to
+trust that the Father of all will justify his spirit in acting
+accordingly.
+
+FOOTNOTES:
+
+[13] In the first of these last two books, Mr. Hazard has made an
+examination of Edwards on the Will, and the only satisfactory reply to
+his argument for Necessity ever made. Very early in life, the task of
+answering Edwards was given him, by the late William E. Channing, D.D.,
+who read his first edition of _Language_, and was so much struck with
+the metaphysical genius displayed in it, that he sought out the
+anonymous author on purpose to make this suggestion. He found him a
+clerk in his father's great manufactory, to whose business he afterwards
+succeeded, and he was engaged in it until he was an old man. All his
+books are a proof that _business_ may be as good a disciplinarian of the
+higher intellect as scholastic education, to say the least.
+
+
+
+
+APPENDIX.
+
+
+NOTE A, TO LECTURE I.
+
+IN 1872 the first training school for kindergartners was founded in
+England by the Manchester Kindergarten Assoc.
+
+To the prospectus is subjoined the following statement:--
+
+The aim of the kindergarten system of training, intended for young
+children up to the age of seven, when school-teaching _proper_ should
+begin, is to prepare for all subsequent education. A short examination
+of the system will show that it is in idea far superior to any other
+method of early training, while experience proves that its pupils acquit
+themselves well even under plans most dissimilar. The theory of the
+kindergarten is that every exertion of the faculties, whether of body or
+mind, will be healthful and pleasurable, so long as such exertion takes
+place without compulsion, without appeal to selfish motives, with no
+more than necessary restraint. The experience of parents and teachers
+may be appealed to as proving that children enjoy their employments
+most, and learn best, when associated in numbers.
+
+The kindergarten, therefore, gathers children together in numbers, which
+vary with class and other circumstances, and proceeds to exercise, on a
+plan most carefully reasoned out, all limbs and muscles of the body by
+marching, gymnastics, and regulated games; to practise all the senses,
+and tastes that depend directly upon the senses, by drawing, singing,
+modelling in clay, and many most beautiful "occupations," which in
+addition arouse invention--one of the highest human faculties. The
+intellectual powers, being in a rudimentary condition, are less directly
+called into action; but the faculties of number and form, along with
+skill of hand, are so developed that the learning of "the three R's"
+becomes incredibly easy. Above all, good feeling is exercised and evil
+feeling checked, by happy social life, in which the tender plants of the
+kindergarten see that each one's happiness depends upon all, and that of
+all on each.
+
+Sedulous attention is paid to the effect of each employment upon
+children of different temperaments. Sanitary conditions are most
+carefully observed, and unflagging interest is secured by frequent
+changes of occupation.
+
+Wherever the kindergarten has been fairly tried, its results have been
+lively enjoyment by the little pupils of their "school" hours, and
+readiness to receive not as drudgery, but with delight, all
+opportunities of acquiring knowledge. This readiness, it is believed,
+would less often change into a hatred of lessons, if the subsequent
+school-teaching did not too commonly despise those indications of
+natural taste and fitness which Froebel, in his system, has carefully
+interpreted and obeyed. The kindergartens for the poor, already
+established at Queen Street, Salford, and in the Workpeople's Hall,
+Pendleton,--where visitors are at all times most heartily
+welcomed,--will convince any one that this system is able to give a
+truly humanizing and religious training to children of the least favored
+class, gathered in large numbers even out of very neglected homes. By
+inspecting these schools also, intelligent persons will form an idea of
+the ingenuity and beauty of the processes by which this natural and
+simple training is effected. Thus too will be understood, that the
+kindergarten system, which in relation to its pupils is the simplest and
+easiest possible because it travels along, not athwart, their natural
+tastes, is, as respects its professors, very far removed indeed from
+every-day facility and _rule of thumb_. It demands in those who aspire
+to teach, a sincere love of children and an earnest devotion to duties
+which bring much pleasure when well performed, and it demands besides
+that they be willing to give up sufficient time and labor to become
+thoroughly instructed in the principles, and sufficiently practised in
+the use, of a machinery which, while beautifully simple in idea, is
+complicated in detail. A great and increasing demand for teachers
+thoroughly trained in this system exists, as well for families as for
+kindergarten schools proper, and for infant schools commonly so called.
+To supply this demand is the purpose of the training school.
+
+
+NOTE B, TO PAGE 81.
+
+_Letter from Michelet to the Baroness Marenholtz von Bülow._
+
+                                                      MARCH 27, 1859.
+
+By a stroke of genius Froebel has found what the wise men of all times
+have sought in vain,--the solution of the problem of human education.
+And again: Your first explanation made it clear to me that Froebel has
+laid the necessary basis for a new education for the present and future.
+Froebel looks at human beings in a new light, and finds the means to
+develop them according to natural laws, as heretofore has never been
+done. I am your most faithful advocate, and speak constantly with
+friends and acquaintances about this great work that you have
+undertaken. Several journalists and writers will mention it in their
+papers. Dispose of all my power to aid you. The ambassador of Hayti,
+Monsieur Ardoin, minister of instruction, is ready to return to Port au
+Prince, and wishes to make your acquaintance. He will come to see you
+to-morrow. For the inhabitants of that island, in process of
+reorganization, Froebel's method may do a great deal. I have asked
+several persons to aid in this work. Niffner and Dolfus are writing, at
+present, a great work on education, and will be happy to give a place to
+your cause. I send you a letter for Isodore Cohen; you must see him.
+You, personally, can do more than all speeches, recommendations, and
+writings together. I shall come to you shortly to hear more about
+Froebel. I would like to have a comparison drawn between him and
+Pestalozzi. Your written communications interest me highly. Let me have
+some German works about Froebel. I read German and know how to guess at
+incomprehensible things. I would like to know about the continuation of
+his method for more advanced years, especially for girls, and await
+impatiently the appearance of your manual. The more I investigate the
+heads of children of different ages, the more important Froebel's method
+appears to me, as it begins in early childhood, when the most important
+changes in the brain take place. All my sympathies are with your work.
+
+
+_Letter from the Abbe Miraud, author of voluminous works, one of them
+being "La Democratic et la Catholicisme."_
+
+                                                          JULY, 1858.
+
+We have to fulfil a great mission in common. I shall be most happy to
+procure for Froebel's theory, _which I accept fully_, a hearing. To
+appreciate this theory in all its grandeur, richness, and utility, the
+shade of pantheism it seems to contain is no hindrance to me; it seems
+inseparable from the German mind. I accept the obligation to work for
+the ideas of Froebel according to my ability, of course within the
+limits of orthodox Catholicism, to which I am devoted from faith and
+reason. You must certainly go with me to Rome, that we may work together
+there. If you resolve to do so, I will meet you at Orleans. You would
+find in Rome a good opportunity for _propaganda_. My friends there would
+aid us, but without your presence nothing can be done. Italy needs a
+regeneration by education. Let us work where the most rapid diffusion is
+certain.
+
+
+_Mons. A. Guyard, a Parisian author writes:_
+
+                                                        JUNE 14, 1857.
+
+The more I hear you about Froebel's method, the more my interest
+increases, and the deeper my conviction becomes that by this means a
+basis is laid for a new education for the salvation of humanity. Accept
+my warmest and most sincere wishes for the propagation of Froebel's
+method. He is great, perhaps the greatest philosopher of our time, and
+has found in you what all philosophers need, that is, a woman who
+understands him, who clothes him with flesh and blood, and makes him
+alive. I think, I believe, indeed, that an idea in order to bear fruit,
+must have a father and a mother. Hitherto, all ideas have had only
+fathers. As Froebel's ideas are so likely to find mothers, they will
+have an immense success. When the ideas of the future have become alive
+in devoted women, the face of the world will be changed.
+
+
+          _Lamarche of Paris, philanthropist and writer on
+          social and religious subjects, after listening to
+          the lectures upon Froebel given by Madam
+          Marenholtz in Paris, wrote  on:_--
+
+                                               PARIS, March 4, 1856.
+
+Your last lecture has unmistakably shown that Froebel's method, in a
+religious point of view, surpasses everything that has hitherto been
+done in education. And this is the main point from which a method of
+education is to be judged for its aim is to awaken love to God and
+man--the foundation upon which Christianity rests. Education has
+hitherto done little to awaken this love of man in the young soul, from
+which all piety flows. This is the reason we find so much skepticism and
+indifference in human society, and which is the source of most of the
+existing misery, and of the want of order and lawfulness. These sad
+results are the condemnations of those methods of education that
+suppress the human faculties, or force them into wrong channels, or
+arbitrarily superimpose something instead of aiding free development. It
+is the sad mistake of our moralists who, without faith in a Heavenly
+Father, do not understand human nature, and replace _revealed_ religion
+with human tenets.... Froebel has found the missing truth, in first
+awakening the child's senses and capacities by the simplest means, and
+making him feel in nature the loving Creator, before he taxes his
+intellect with religious dogmas, which are beyond the intellect of
+childhood, and only confuse it. To lead it through the love of God, the
+Heavenly Father of us all, to the love of the neighbor, by acting and
+doing, is the natural and simple way which Froebel has pointed out, and
+we shall owe it to him, if before our children are four or five years
+old, before they can read books, they learn the great law of humanity,
+_Love to God and the neighbor_.
+
+Again: Froebel's discovery, or invention, furnishes the means to follow
+the natural order of all development for human beings, by which alone
+they will come to the knowledge of, and at last to union with, their
+Heavenly Father. This is the way which Christianity prescribed eighteen
+hundred years ago, but into which education has not understood how to
+lead us, because it has put statutes instead of actual experience, and
+has not let the study of nature, as the work of God, _precede_ statutes.
+Froebel leads education again into the path intended by GOD, which, in
+the course of universal development, will lead to the happiness of the
+individual, as well as of the whole of society. In the human being
+itself are the rich mines, the development of which our false modes of
+education have hitherto made impossible. May mothers have faith in GOD,
+the Heavenly Father of their children, and that he has given them the
+capacity for good, which will crush the head of the serpent, and bring
+the kingdom of God upon earth.
+
+
+NOTE C, TO PAGE 84.
+
+In the second part of my _Guide to Kindergarten and Moral Training of
+Infancy_, published by E. Steiger, 25 Park Place, New York, is an
+account of how I actually first began to teach to read on this method,
+that may be of practical aid to one teaching _After Kindergarten--what?_
+The first kindergartner who tried the method, in the course of the first
+half-hour led her children to write on their slates (in imitation of
+what she wrote on the blackboard, letter by letter, giving the power,
+not the name, of each as she wrote) words enough to involve the whole
+alphabet; namely, _cars_, _go_, _bells_, _sing_, _dizzy_, _old_, _hen_,
+_fixes_, _vest_, _jelly_, _jars_, _puss_, _kitty_. The words were in a
+column, and after they were written, the children recognized each word,
+pronouncing it right when she pointed to it on the blackboard. But she
+was surprised the next day to find they remembered every one, and they
+had so clear an idea of the correspondence of the letters and sounds,
+that, long before they had finished writing at her dictation the words
+of the first vocabulary, they read at sight any word of it, no matter
+how many syllables it had. In fact, at the end of the first week she
+wrote and asked me for the groups of exceptions, and, beginning with the
+smallest group, which is most exceptional, in a few weeks they could all
+read.
+
+But I would not advise this rapid acquisition of the whole language in
+so short a time. It is better to pause on the meaning of the words,--not
+asking them to define them by other words, but asking them to make
+sentences in which they put the word, which will show whether or not
+they understand its meaning. A great deal more than mere pronunciation
+may be taught children while learning to read.
+
+
+NOTE D, TO PAGE 102.
+
+History of Printing, an unfinished manuscript of which he found in the
+Antiquarian Library of Worcester.
+
+
+NOTE E, TO PAGE 110.
+
+The story, as I paraphrased it, was this. The drop of water speaks,
+"Once I lived with hundreds, and hundreds, and hundreds of brothers and
+sisters, in the great ocean. There we all took hold of hands, and played
+with each other; and the winds played with us, and took us up on their
+backs, making us into little waves and great waves. But sometimes, when
+the winds were not there, we would spread ourselves out smooth like a
+looking-glass, and look up into the sky; and the moon and the stars
+would look down upon us, and the ocean would look just like the sky.
+
+"And we wanted to go up into the sky; and so, when the sun sent down his
+sunbeams, and the moon sent down her moonbeams, and the stars sent down
+their starbeams, some of us would jump up on their backs, and ride up
+into the sky. But soon they would be tired of us, and shake us off; and
+down we fell, and then we would catch hold of hands, and make ourselves
+into clouds; and when the clouds got to be so heavy that the air could
+not hold them up, we would let go of hands, and fall down in drops of
+rain. But sometimes the clouds would stay up, and sail round; and one
+day the cloud that I was in, bumped up against a mountain, and we all
+fell out, down into the little holes of the mountain, and I soon found I
+was alone in the dark; but I saw a light a little ways off, and so I ran
+along and came to the light, which was outside the mountain. And as I
+stood there, I saw a great many of my sisters and brothers standing at
+just such holes as I was looking out of; and when we saw each other, we
+burst out laughing, and ran to each other, and took hold of hands, and
+made a little brook that ran down the sides of the mountain into a
+meadow full of flowers; and we ran about the meadow, watering the roots
+of all the flowers to make them grow, for we wanted to do as much good
+as we could; and then we thought we would run on, and see if we could
+not find our old home in the ocean, where we left hundreds of brothers
+and sisters; but as I got rather tired, I thought I would stop and rest
+awhile on this flower-leaf. But now I am rested. So good by; I will jump
+off, and run home as fast as I can with the rest."
+
+This story I had to tell over and over again at the time, which I did in
+the same words; and now, when I again repeated it in the same words, he
+liked to hear it over and over again, looking at the picture in the book
+while I told it.
+
+
+NOTE F, TO PAGE 167.
+
+I here insert the version of the Lord's Prayer and the _Song of the
+Weather_, which have been found so effective in the religious nurture,
+and which, if used in the simple, unsanctimonious manner I have so
+earnestly suggested, will preclude the necessity of talking to the
+children in prose. These songs explain themselves to the child's heart
+and imagination.
+
+          OUR FATHER, who in Heaven art,
+            Thy name we dearly love;
+          We'd do thy will with all our heart,
+            As done in heaven above.
+          Give us this day our daily bread,
+            Forgive the wrong we do,
+          And we'll not mind when treated ill,
+            That we may be like you.
+          Help us avoid temptation's snare;
+            Deliver us from evil ways;
+          For thine's the kingdom and the power,
+            All glory and all praise.
+
+
+SONG OF THE WEATHER.
+
+          THIS is the way the snow comes down,
+              Softly, softly falling.
+          God, he giveth his snow like wool,
+          Fair, and white, and beautiful.
+          This is the way the snow comes down,
+              Softly, softly falling.
+
+          _Chorus._
+
+          Wonderful, Lord, are all thy works,
+              Wheresoever falling;
+          All their various voices raise,
+          Speaking forth their Maker's praise.
+          Wonderful, Lord, are all thy works,
+              Wheresoever falling.
+
+          This is the way the rain comes down,
+              Swiftly, swiftly falling;
+          So he sendeth his welcome rain.
+          On the field, and hill, and plain,
+          This is the way the rain comes down,
+              Swiftly, swiftly falling.
+
+          (_Repeat the chorus._)
+
+          This is the way the frost comes down,
+              Widely, widely falling;
+          So it spreadeth all through the night,
+          Shining, cold, and pure, and bright,
+          This is the way the frost comes down,
+              Widely, widely falling.
+
+          (_Chorus._)
+
+          This is the way the hail comes down,
+              Loudly, loudly falling;
+          So it flieth beneath the cloud,
+          Swift, and strong, and wild, and loud,
+          This is the way the hail comes down,
+              Loudly, loudly falling.
+
+          (_Chorus._)
+
+          This is the way the cloud comes down,
+              Darkly, darkly falling;
+          So it covers the shining blue,
+          Till no ray can glisten through,
+          This is the way the cloud comes down,
+              Darkly, darkly falling.
+
+          (_Chorus._)
+
+          This is the way sunshine comes down,
+              Sweetly, sweetly falling;
+          So it chaseth the cloud away,
+          So it waketh the lovely day,
+          This is the way sunshine comes down,
+              Sweetly, sweetly falling.
+
+          (_Chorus._)
+
+          This is the way rainbow comes round,
+              Brightly, brightly falling;
+          So it smileth across the sky,
+          Making fair the heavens on high,
+          This is the way rainbow comes down,
+              Brightly, brightly falling.
+
+          _Chorus._
+
+          Wonderful, Lord, are all thy works,
+              Wheresoever falling;
+          All their various voices raise,
+          Speaking forth their Maker's praise.
+          Wonderful, Lord, are all thy works,
+              Wheresoever falling.
+
+(The appropriate gesture is spreading the arms, and, when it is the rain
+or the hail, the children enjoy making the patter on the table,--gently
+for the rain, and louder for the hail.)
+
+
+  Butler & Tanner, The Selwood Printing Works, Frome, and London.
+
+
+
+
+THE COMMITTEE OF THE
+
+Manchester Kindergarten Association
+
+Beg to Announce that the
+
+TRAINING CLASSES FOR TEACHERS
+
+Meet in the AFTERNOON at
+
+Thorney Abbey, Alexandra Park, Manchester,
+
+For THEORETICAL instruction in the following subjects:--
+
+  Drawing                                     J. CLEGG, Esq.
+  Music                                       MISS WICHERN.
+  Theory and Application of the Kindergarten
+        System                                MISS SNELL.
+  Physiology and Laws of Health               MISS CLEGHORN.
+  Science of Education                        W. H. HERFORD, Esq., B.A.
+  Natural History and Physiography            F. J. WEBB, Esq.
+  Elements of Geometry                        MISS SNELL.
+  Botany                                      MISS HERFORD.
+
+=Practical Instruction is afforded at the Model Kindergarten in the
+Forenoon.=
+
+FEES FOR THE ABOVE.
+
+    THE WHOLE COURSE (per Term of Ten Weeks) 5 GUINEAS.
+    SEPARATE CLASSES (per term of Ten Hours) 2½ GUINEAS.
+
+_Students are expected to take the whole Course of Two Years; when
+withdrawal before the end of the course is necessary a Term's notice is
+required._
+
+A LIMITED NUMBER OF STUDENTS CAN BE RECEIVED AS BOARDERS BY THE HEAD
+MISTRESS.
+
+    CHARGE FOR BOARD AND LODGING 44 GUINEAS PER ANNUM.
+    WEEKLY BOARDERS              33    "          "
+
+=Satisfactory References Required.=
+
+
+
+
+Froebel Society,
+
+17, BUCKINGHAM STREET, STRAND.
+
+
+President:
+
+MISS SHIRREFF.
+
+
+Vice-Presidents:
+
+    OSCAR BROWNING, Esq., M.A.
+    Rev. Canon DANIEL, M.A.
+    J. G. FITCH, Esq., H.M. _Inspector of Training Colleges._
+    Prof. G. CAREY FOSTER, B.A.
+    Dr. J. H. GLADSTONE, F.R.S.
+    Lady GOLDSMID.
+    Mrs. W. GREY.
+    Fräulein HEERWART.
+    Prof. MEIKLEJOHN, M.A.
+    Rev. R. H. QUICK, M.A.
+    A. SONNENSCHEIN, Esq.
+
+
+Council:
+
+          Miss M. E. BAILEY.
+          Miss BAKER.
+          Miss BELCHER.
+          Rev. A. BOURNE.
+          Hon. Mrs. BUXTON.
+          E. COOKE, Esq.
+          Miss S. CROMBIE.
+          Mrs. FIELDEN.
+          Miss FRANKS.
+          Mrs. GREEN.
+          Mrs. LAW.
+          Miss E. LORD.
+          Miss LYSCHINSKA.
+          Miss E. A. MANNING.
+          Mme. MICHAELIS.
+          H. K. MOORE, Esq., B.Mus., B.A.
+          J. S. PHILLPOTTS, Esq.
+          Miss KATE PHILLIPS.
+          Mrs. ROMANES.
+          Rev. T. W. SHARPE, H.M.I.S.
+          Miss SIM.
+          F. STORR, Esq., B.A.
+          Miss KATE THORNBURY.
+          Miss WARD.
+
+
+Hon. Treasurer:
+
+          A. R. PRICE, Esq.
+
+
+Hon. Secretary:
+
+          C. G. MONTEFIORE, Esq.
+
+
+Secretary:
+
+          Miss BAYLEY.
+
+
+
+
+The Froebel Society
+
+
+WAS formed in 1874 for the purpose of promoting co-operation among those
+engaged in Kindergarten work, of spreading the knowledge and practice of
+the system, and of maintaining a high standard of efficiency among
+Kindergarten Teachers.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+AN EXAMINATION OF STUDENTS
+
+Will be held in London in the month of July, for the Higher and (this
+year only) for the Elementary Certificate. In December next there will
+be an Examination for the Elementary Certificate only.
+
+Under certain conditions the Council are prepared to hold the
+Examinations at local centres.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+A Registry for Kindergarten Teachers
+
+Has been opened at the Office of the Society. A small fee is charged to
+those who apply.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Arrangements have been made by the Council for the INSPECTION AND
+REGISTRATION OF KINDERGARTENS upon certain conditions.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+The Calendar of the Froebel Society, price 1/-,
+
+Contains the Syllabus for the Examinations, and the Examination Papers
+of 1886.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Further information can be obtained from the Secretary, at the Office of
+the Society,
+
+          17, BUCKINGHAM STREET, STRAND.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+The Office is open daily from 11 a.m. to 4 p.m., except on Thursdays.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Transcriber's Notes:
+
+In the introduction and last two pages which use an ornamental font in
+the original, Froebel is presented without the oe-ligature. This was
+retained.
+
+Book uses both "Mütterspiele und Köse-Lieder" and "Die Mutter Spiele und
+Kose Lieder" for Froebel's work: "Mutter- und Kose-Lieder." Also
+referenced as "_Mother Love_ and _Cossetting Songs_."
+
+Mrs. Kraus-Boelte is spelled without an oe-ligature except in a single
+footnote where a ligature was used.
+
+Obvious punctuation errors repaired.
+
+Page 32, "Bulow" changed to "Bülow" (Marenholtz-Bülow has happily
+remarked)
+
+Page 42, word "it" removed from text. Original read: (forth by
+addressing it the)
+
+Page 44, "her's" changed to "hers" (for _hers_ they realize)
+
+Page 50, "combinanations" changed to "combinations" (color and its
+combinations)
+
+Page 50, "develope" changed to "develop" (office, to develop)
+
+Page 209, "beuause" changed to "because" (of it, because, in addition)
+
+Page 223-224, the word "Chorus" sometimes appeared in parentheses and
+sometimes did not. This was retained.
+
+
+
+
+
+
+End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of Education in The Home, The
+Kindergarten, and The Primary School, by Elizabeth P. Peabody
+
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+
+The Project Gutenberg EBook of Education in The Home, The Kindergarten,
+and The Primary School, by Elizabeth P. Peabody
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+Title: Education in The Home, The Kindergarten, and The Primary School
+
+Author: Elizabeth P. Peabody
+
+Release Date: March 25, 2011 [EBook #35677]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK EDUCATION IN THE HOME ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by David Edwards, Emmy and the Online Distributed
+Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net (This file was
+produced from images generously made available by The
+Internet Archive)
+
+
+
+
+
+
+</pre>
+
+
+<div class="figcenter" style="width: 376px;">
+<img src="images/cover.jpg" width="376" height="600" alt="Cover" title="" />
+</div>
+
+
+
+
+
+<h2>LECTURES<br />
+
+<span class='small'>IN THE</span><br />
+
+TRAINING SCHOOLS<br />
+
+<span class='small'>FOR</span><br />
+
+Kindergarten Teachers.</h2>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h1>EDUCATION<br />
+
+<span class='small'>IN</span><br />
+
+THE HOME, THE KINDERGARTEN,<br />
+
+<span class='small'>AND</span><br />
+
+THE PRIMARY SCHOOL.</h1>
+
+<div class='author'><span class='small'>BY</span><br />
+
+ELIZABETH P. PEABODY.</div>
+
+
+<div class='center'><br /><br /><i>WITH AN INTRODUCTION</i><br />
+
+<span class='small'>BY</span><br />
+
+<span class='big'>E. ADELAIDE MANNING.</span><br />
+
+<br /><br />&mdash;&mdash;&mdash;<br />
+"Come, let us live <i>with</i> our children."&mdash;<span class="smcap">Fr&#339;bel.</span><br />
+&mdash;&mdash;&mdash;<br /><br /><br /><br />
+
+<br />
+LONDON:<br />
+<span class='big'>SWAN SONNENSCHEIN, LOWREY &amp; CO.,</span><br />
+PATERNOSTER SQUARE.<br />
+1887.<br />
+</div>
+
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" /><p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_v" id="Page_v">[v]</a></span></p>
+
+<h2>INTRODUCTION.</h2>
+
+
+<div class='unindent'><span class="smcap">Among</span> those who in the last twenty years have helped to
+spread a knowledge of the educational principles of Froebel
+beyond the limits of his native country, Miss Elizabeth Peabody's
+name deserves to be specially remembered. It is
+mainly owing to her enthusiastic efforts that the value of the
+Kindergarten was early recognised in the United States, and
+that its first American promoters were encouraged to maintain,
+amid many difficulties, a standard of real efficiency for
+the teachers of Froebel's system. Miss Peabody had long
+occupied herself, theoretically and practically, with educational
+subjects. Not satisfied by merely intellectual methods
+of instruction, and impatient of the superficiality which was
+too often approved, she made it her great aim to train
+character, and, by a simultaneous development of children's
+mental capacities and of their moral nature, to prepare them
+for the responsible duties of life. It was not surprising that
+when Miss Peabody, holding such views of education, came
+in contact with the ideas and the work of Froebel, she at
+once experienced the delight always attached to the discovery
+that the problems exercising our own minds have been successfully
+solved by some one who has started from principles
+such as ours, and who has cultivated the same ideal. She
+found that Froebel had carried into practice that very kind
+of training of which she had realized the immense importance,
+and that he had placed in a clear light truths which
+she had already more dimly perceived. Eager to inform
+herself about the new system, Miss Peabody travelled, in
+1868, to Europe, on purpose to visit in Germany the Kindergartens
+established by Froebel, who was no longer living,
+and by his best pupils. On her return to America, she<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_vi" id="Page_vi">[vi]</a></span>
+devoted herself for many years to the introduction and
+improvement of Kindergartens and of training institutions,
+and to enlightening, by her writings and addresses, mothers
+and educators respecting the value and simplicity of Froebel's
+methods. Miss Peabody has the satisfaction of witnessing
+a good measure of success from her generous exertions, in
+the increasing number of advocates of the Kindergarten in
+America, in its adoption as a first department of many State
+primary schools, and in the numerous private and charity
+Kindergartens founded from North to South, and from New
+York to San Francisco. Advanced now in years, this warm-hearted
+lady is engaged in other lines of philanthropic work,
+but she retains, and still manifests, her earnest interest in
+the educational progress which she has laboured so actively
+to secure.</div>
+
+<p>Ever since Miss Peabody's zeal was kindled for Froebel's
+ideal as to young children's education, her help and criticism
+have been sought by the trainers of Kindergarten students in
+America, and by all who, with serious purpose, have thus
+worked for the movement. Hence she has often delivered
+lectures at the opening of the session at Normal Colleges,
+and on other occasions when she saw an opportunity of
+exercising influence in favour of rational principles of education.
+This book, which appeared only lately at Boston,
+consists of a few of such lectures. It is now, with Miss
+Peabody's consent, published in England, where many
+parents and teachers will be glad to profit by the author's
+wise and loving study of little children, and her sympathetic
+insight into Froebel's methods for their development. During
+the last few years various thoughtful writers on education
+have drawn attention here to the subject of infant management,
+and it is remarkable how widely the principles of
+Froebel and Pestalozzi are now recognised and accepted.
+But books are still greatly needed which, especially addressed
+to those who have charge of children, urge in a convincing<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_vii" id="Page_vii">[vii]</a></span>
+manner how essential it is that the first few years should be
+rightly guided, and indicate certain defined educational aims.
+I think that Miss Peabody's lectures are likely to prove very
+useful in this direction. Though her readers will perhaps
+contest some of her psychological deductions, they cannot
+fail to be impressed and benefited by the high tone of her
+reasoning, by her evidently tender and reverent love of
+children, and by her excellent suggestions in regard to their
+harmonious development.</p>
+
+<p>Amongst its other merits, this book tends to correct the
+still too prevalent notion, that the Kindergarten is a peculiar&mdash;an
+almost magical&mdash;institution, which provides a sure
+remedy for children's imperfections, apart from their home
+conditions. Doubtless, in the case of poor neglected little
+ones, the contrast between their treatment at the Kindergarten
+and their ordinary experience, is necessarily striking
+and decided, because the parents are careless and ignorant.
+But Froebel's view of the Kindergarten was, that it should
+be a supplementary help to the loving and judicious mother,
+who, owing to her many household and other duties, might
+be unable to give, through the whole day, to her younger
+children the regular attention which their awakening faculties
+need. It was to be a portion of the home pattern and
+web of training, not a patch of a new texture. He saw that
+a child requires to have about it, as Miss Peabody says,
+"love and thought in practical operation," and this not now
+and then, but always. And as the mother may have at times
+to transfer her children to the charge of others, he organised
+the Kindergarten&mdash;a higher nursery, under refined and
+motherly influences, for those that have passed out of babyhood.
+There, on the same principles as at home, they may
+be gently tended for two or three hours of the day, and
+developed in body, mind, and character. Froebel's object
+also was to provide companionship for these children, adapted
+to their age and attainments, which could only be done by<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_viii" id="Page_viii">[viii]</a></span>
+including some from outside the family circle. But again,
+he desired to give the opportunity to inexperienced mothers
+of observing the patient and resourceful guidance carried
+out by even young teachers, who had been trained to study
+children, and had learnt how to occupy them suitably. Here
+we see another link with the home. Now Miss Peabody
+entered so much into Froebel's ideas that she helps to
+remove the Kindergarten out of its supposed exceptional
+sphere, and to show that the teachers represent temporarily
+the mother, doing that which the mother also aims, or ought
+to aim, at doing, for the children's good.</p>
+
+<p>These Lectures are also useful in presenting a high ideal
+of Kindergarten teaching. Miss Peabody sees that the work
+of educating requires special qualifications in those who
+undertake it, and that such as are not fitted for it, had better
+take up a different career. At the same time placing, as
+always, character above intellect, she considers that most
+women, whose religious and moral nature is well cultivated,
+and who take pains to develop their mental powers, may
+hope for success in devoting themselves to the training of
+young children. Her writings are calculated to inspire the
+teacher with hearty zest for her labour, and yet with an
+abiding feeling that even years of practice leave her far
+behind her ever advancing standard. Miss Peabody encourages
+no exaggerated estimate of Froebel's thoughts and
+methods. She freely recognises that he gained many truths
+from fellow-students of children's nature and faculties; but
+she claims for him the originality which belongs to those who
+with unselfish aims bestow close attention on a subject of
+deep human interest. To teachers, therefore, as well as to
+all who love children, she says&mdash;and with this quotation I
+will close my few introductory remarks&mdash;"You will not be
+wise if you do not look out of Froebel's window."</p>
+
+<div class='sig'>
+E. A. MANNING.<br />
+</div>
+
+
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" /><p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_1" id="Page_1">[1]</a></span></p>
+
+<h2><a name="LECTURE_I" id="LECTURE_I"></a>LECTURE I.</h2>
+
+<div class='chaptertitle'>THE KINDERGARTNER.<br /><br /></div>
+
+
+<div class='unindent'><span class="smcap">Whoever</span> proposes to become a kindergartner according
+to the idea of Fr&#339;bel, must at once dismiss from her mind
+the notion that it requires less ability and culture to educate
+children of three, than those of ten or fifteen years of age.
+It demands more; for, is it not plain that to superintend
+and guide accurately the <i>formation</i> of the human understanding
+itself, requires a finer ability and a profounder insight
+than to listen to recitations from books ever so learned and
+scientific? To form the human understanding is a work of
+time, demanding a knowledge of the laws of thought, will,
+and feeling, in their interaction upon the threshold of consciousness,
+which can be acquired only by the study of children
+themselves in their every act of life&mdash;a study to be
+pursued in the spirit that reveals what Jesus Christ <i>meant</i>,
+when he said: "He that receiveth a little child in my name,
+receiveth <i>me, and Him that sent me</i>;" "Woe unto him
+who offends one of these little ones, for their spirits behold
+the face of my Father who is in heaven."</div>
+
+<p>Not till children who have been themselves educated
+according to Fr&#339;bel's principles, grow up, will there be
+found any adult persons who can keep kindergartens without
+devoting themselves to a special study of child-nature in the
+spirit of devout humility. For we are all suffering the ignorance
+and injury inevitable from having begun our own lives
+in the confusions of accidental and disorderly impressions,
+without having had the clue of reason put into our hands by
+that human providence of education, which, to be true, must<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_2" id="Page_2">[2]</a></span>
+reflect point by point the Divine Providence, that according
+to the revelations of history is educating the whole race, and
+which may find hints for its procedure in observing the
+spontaneous play of children fresh from the hands of the
+Creator.</p>
+
+<p>The education of children by a genial training of their
+spontaneous playful activities to the production of order and
+beauty within the humble sphere of childish fancy and affection,
+was a fresh idea with Fr&#339;bel; but, like every universal
+idea, it was not absolutely new in the world. Plato says, in
+his great book on <i>Laws</i>:&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>"Play has the mightiest influence on the maintenance and
+non-maintenance of laws; and if children's plays are conducted
+according to laws and rules, and they always pursue
+their amusements in conformity with order, while finding
+pleasure therein, it need not be feared that when they are
+grown up they will break laws whose objects are more
+serious."</p>
+
+<p>And again, in his <i>Republic</i>, he says:&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>"From their earliest years, the plays of children ought to
+be subject to strict laws. For if their plays, and those who
+mingle with them, are arbitrary and lawless, how can they
+become virtuous men, law-abiding and obedient? On the
+contrary, when children are early trained to submit to laws
+in their plays, love for these laws enters into their souls
+with the music accompanying them, and helps their development."</p>
+
+<p>You will observe Plato's association of music with the
+laws that are to regulate play. Music, with the Greeks,
+had indeed a broader meaning than attaches to the word
+with us, who confine it to that subtle expression of the sense
+of law and harmony which is made in the element of sound,
+and addressed to the imagination through the ear. All
+knowledge and art inspired by the sacred Nine, they named
+<i>music</i>. Singing was no more music than dancing, drawing,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_3" id="Page_3">[3]</a></span>
+the harmonizing of colors, plastic art, poetry, and science,
+which is nothing less than thinking according to the rhythmic
+laws of nature. To learn to commune with the Muses,
+daughters of Memory and Jove, who were led by the god
+Apollo, symbolizing the moral harmony of the universe,
+and expressing the mind of the Father of gods and men, by
+oracle, was learning <i>music</i> or how to live divinely; a process
+which may commence before children leave the nursery, if
+their plays are regulated according to artistic principles.</p>
+
+<p>It is common to speak of the Greeks, as if they were of
+exceptional organization. I think their organization was
+only exceptional, because it was more carefully treated in
+infancy than ours is apt to be. I do not believe that in
+Greece, or anywhere in the world, there were ever more
+beautiful little children than there are in America; and the
+beauty would not be so transient as it unquestionably is
+with us, if truly cultivated persons took our children in hand
+from babyhood for the care of their bodies and minds, instead
+of leaving this work to the most ignorant class of the
+community, such as the general run of the servants who
+have the education of them during their earliest infancy.
+Even many parents who take care of their own children
+do not make it an object to study physiology or psychology,
+and seem to think that there is nothing in little children
+which requires special study, except indeed at the very first,
+when the child is put into the mother's arms more helpless
+than the lowest form of animal life (for the very insect is
+endowed by nature, as the child is not, with enough absolute
+knowledge&mdash;we call it instinct&mdash;to fulfil its small circle of
+relations without help of its parents). It seems mysterious,
+at first sight, that the child, whose duty and whose destiny
+it is to have dominion over nature, should be endowed least
+of all creatures with any absolute knowledge of it. But the
+mystery is solved when we consider that the happiness which
+is distinctively human, is only to be found in the discovery<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_4" id="Page_4">[4]</a></span>
+and enjoyment of ever-widening relations to our kind, with
+the fulfilment of the duties belonging to them. It is the
+absolute helplessness of the human infant which challenges
+the maternal instinct to rush to his rescue, lest he should
+die at once. And to continue to study his manifestations
+of pleasure and discontent with obedient respectfulness, is
+the perfection of the maternal nursing. But when the child
+has got on so far as to know the simplest uses of its own
+body, and especially after it has learned enough words to
+express its simplest wants and sensations, even parents
+seem to think it can get on by itself, so that children from
+about two to five years of age are left to self-education, as
+it were; this virtual abandonment being crossed by a capricious
+and arbitrary handling of them&mdash;mind and body&mdash;on
+the part of those around them, which is even worse than the
+neglect; for when are children more unable, than between
+three and five years old, to guide their own thoughts and
+action? How would a garden of flowers fare, to be planted,
+and then left to grow with so little scientific care taken by
+the gardener, as is bestowed upon children between one and
+five years old?</p>
+
+<p>Fr&#339;bel, in the very word kindergarten, proclaimed that
+gospel for children which holds within it the promise of the
+coming of the kingdom, in which God's will is to be done on
+earth as it is in heaven&mdash;a consummation which we daily
+pray for with our lips, but do not do the first thing to bring
+about, by educating our children in the way of order, which
+is no less earth's than "heaven's first law," and makes
+earth heaven so far as it is fulfilled.</p>
+
+<p>A kindergarten means a guarded company of children,
+who are to be treated as a gardener treats his plants; that
+is, in the first place, studied to see what they are, and what
+conditions they require for the fullest and most beautiful
+growth; in the second place, put into or supplied with these
+conditions, with as little handling of their individuality as<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_5" id="Page_5">[5]</a></span>
+possible, but with an unceasing genial and provident care to
+remove all obstructions, and favor all the circumstances of
+growth. It is because they are living organisms that they
+are to be <i>cultivated</i>&mdash;not <i>drilled</i> (which is a process only
+appropriate to insensate stone).</p>
+
+<p>I think there is perhaps no better way of making apparent
+what this kindergartning is, which makes such an importunate
+demand on your consideration, than to tell you
+how the idea germinated and grew in the mind of Fr&#339;bel
+himself; for thus we shall see that it would be unreasonable
+to expect that it could be improvised by every teacher; but
+that here, as elsewhere in human life, God has sent into the
+world a gifted person to guide his fellows, according to the
+law enunciated by St. John in the 38th verse of the 4th
+chapter of his Gospel.</p>
+
+<p>We have the materials of this history on Fr&#339;bel's own
+authority, in an autobiographical letter that he wrote to the
+Duke of Meiningen, whose interest in him was excited by
+an incident so characteristic of Fr&#339;bel, that I will relate it.
+Having heard of a cruel and stupid opposition made to the
+ardent educator by the unthinking officials of a region where
+he was making a martyr of himself, the duke made inquiries,
+which resulted in his offering him the situation of head-tutor
+to his only son. But Fr&#339;bel astonished him with a refusal
+of the place, sending the duke word that it would be impossible
+to educate, in a perfect manner, a child so isolated by
+conventional rank and circumstances that he must inevitably
+conceive himself to be intrinsically superior to other children.
+The duke was so much struck that a poor man, struggling
+with every difficulty, should refuse one of the highest posts
+in a royal household, with all its emoluments, from a purely
+conscientious scruple of this kind, that his curiosity was
+piqued. He sent for Fr&#339;bel, and they had a conversation
+upon the principles and spirit of a truly human education,
+by which Fr&#339;bel convinced him that a noble moral development<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_6" id="Page_6">[6]</a></span>
+was indispensable to a truly intellectual one, so that
+the duke was actually persuaded to send his son as an equal
+with other boys to a neighboring school. One day, some
+little time after, the boy came home <i>roaring</i>, on account of a
+beating he had received from one of his playmates. The
+duke, in a transport of rage, asked the name of the offender,
+and said that he should be immediately expelled from the
+school. Then was Fr&#339;bel's advice justified. The young
+prince dried his tears, refused to tell the boy's name, and
+declared that "the beating was all fair!" It is quite consistent
+with these facts, that the duke should ask Fr&#339;bel
+how his idea grew in his mind. Fr&#339;bel's answer is still extant.
+I have not been able to get the original text, but I
+can give you the substance of it, as it was given to me.</p>
+
+<p>Friedrich Fr&#339;bel was the son of a laborious pastor of
+seven villages in Thuringia. He lost his mother before
+his remembrance, and fell into the care of hard-worked
+domestic servants, with no light upon his infant life except
+what came from the love and sympathy of two older brothers,
+who cherished him when they were at home from boarding-school.
+The parsonage was in the shadow of the church,
+and into it no ray of sunshine ever came; and the child was
+kept drearily in the house. He tells of seeing workmen
+building a part of the church that had become dilapidated,
+and how he longed to imitate them; and traces to this desire
+of employing the time that hung so heavily on his hands, his
+discovery of the building instinct, so universal in childhood,
+and which he thought should always have simple materials
+afforded it with which to express itself. At last his father
+married again, and at first the stepmother petted the young
+child of her husband, and awakened in him a hope of a satisfying
+love, which he reciprocated with all the energies of
+his long-starved heart. But when the merely instinctive
+woman had a child of her own, a certain jealousy arose in
+her, and she repulsed poor little Friedrich, and "no longer"&mdash;as<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_7" id="Page_7">[7]</a></span>
+he pathetically remarks&mdash;"called him <i>thou</i>," (du) which
+is an endearing expression in German, but <i>he</i> (er), which
+has a rough association. It is plain that the child was endowed
+with an immense sensibility to, or more than ordinary
+presentiment of the Divine Order of Nature, and with the
+extreme tendency to reflection always involved in this gift.
+As he was so poorly developed physically, he became in his
+joyless early life perhaps morbidly nervous. Disappointed
+in his timid efforts to please, all the sweet bells of his
+nature were jangled, and he was miserable&mdash;he knew not
+why. He says he always found himself doing the wrong
+thing&mdash;the too much, or the too little&mdash;and was complained
+of to his father, who treated him as a naughty boy. But
+sometimes the pastor took him out of his stepmother's
+way, to accompany himself in his parochial visits, in
+which Fr&#339;bel says he seemed continually to be settling
+family quarrels. This made on the child's mind an impression
+of things that was rather ludicrously expressed, when
+he one day asked of his oldest brother, who happened to
+come home from boarding-school, why it was that God had
+not made people all men, or all women, so that there should
+not be so much quarrelling in the world. In order to divert
+him from such premature consideration of social questions,
+the posed elder brother undertook to teach him botany according
+to the sexual system, revealing to him the law of
+contrasts conciliated with each other for the production of
+harmony and beauty. The child was delighted with what
+he was shown; but still his exceptionally moral genius
+importunately asked, why may not human differences be
+thus harmonized, to produce happiness and goodness? The
+presentiment of the great truth which was felt in his heart,
+though not yet caught by his mind, was signalized by another
+anecdote that he tells of himself. There was a rumor among
+the peasants of North Germany (it was about the year 1792)
+that the world was coming to an end; but Fr&#339;bel declares<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_8" id="Page_8">[8]</a></span>
+that he could not make himself feel alarmed. He says he
+was sure it could not be true, because the will of God had
+not yet been brought about in human life. This extraordinary
+reflection of a child of ten years old was preceded,
+probably, by a happy change that came over him in consequence
+of the visit of his maternal uncle to his father's
+house; who, seeing that the child was not happy, invited
+him to go home with him to live with his grandmother. His
+uncle's house was bright and sunny, and he was received by
+his grandmother with joy and tenderness. Immediately the
+freedom of the fields was given him, provided only that he
+should come home punctually to the meals. He soon became
+so healthy and happy, that his uncle put him into a
+day school in the neighborhood, to the child's great delight.
+The school was opened, the first day he went into it, with
+a little sermon of the master's upon the text: "Seek first
+the kingdom of heaven and its righteousness, and all other
+things shall be added unto you." It must have been a wise
+and good discourse, for it left a life-long impression upon
+the mind of the little Fr&#339;bel. There was a law then, for
+human beings as well as for plants; human beings might
+consciously realize in happiness and virtue, the harmony and
+beauty unconsciously manifested by the vegetable world. For
+God was the Ever-present Friend and Lawgiver! He tells
+the duke how happy he felt himself in his new circumstances
+and opportunities, and blessed with this inspiring faith.
+After school, he went out to play with his schoolmates; but,
+alas! poor starveling of nature as he was, he found he could
+not play with his athletic companions, and had to sit on one
+side and look on; and then and there he distinctly came to
+a conclusion, which is a first principle of the kindergarten,
+that every child should have free exercise of his limbs in
+play, in order to get entire command of all the physical
+strength and agility they are capable of.</p>
+
+<p>After a few years of this happy home and school life,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_9" id="Page_9">[9]</a></span>
+which he continually reflected upon in contrast with what he
+had suffered for so many years, the good grandmother died,
+and he was sent back to his stepmother. The question now
+came up, whether he should study for the university, where
+his brothers had gone; but the stepmother, in the interest
+of her younger child, opposed his father's spending the
+money, and he went to a farmer to learn practical agriculture.
+But he was physically so incompetent to the labor of
+a farm life, that it did not pay; and being sent home by the
+farmer, he was finally apprenticed to a forester, where he
+found genial occupation in wood-lore, and in studying geometry
+for the purpose of surveying. Here he became a thorough
+and ardent mathematician. But his friend the forester
+died, or was removed, which brought this occupation to a
+premature close. At that moment, however, a maternal
+relation died, and left him a little money, so that he went
+to the University of Jena, where he devoted himself principally
+to the physical sciences; and by and by we find him
+curator of the Mineralogical Museum of Berlin. Here he
+made a great impression on the mind of a young lady who
+frequented the museum, by the "sermons" that he found
+"in stones," for he read them out to her, showing that in
+inorganic nature, so called, could be traced not only laws of
+decay, that threw into stronger light those laws of life that
+he had learned to see in vegetation, but those of crystallization.
+Everywhere he read God's revelation of the processes
+of life and death, which also make human development and
+happiness, or its deterioration and misery.</p>
+
+<p>The trumpet call of patriotism, to rescue Germany from
+French despotism, made by the good Queen Louise of Prussia,
+called him from these peaceful studies to partake in the great
+national act of delivering his country; and he obeyed it by
+volunteering his service. Though his regiment was never
+called into battle, he always rejoiced in the effects upon
+himself of learning the military drill, as well as in the life-long<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_10" id="Page_10">[10]</a></span>
+friendships he made in camp. After the war was over,
+a legacy received at the death of his uncle Hoffman gave
+him the means to enter an architect's office, to which he had
+a great attraction. He was boarding at Frankfort-on-the-Main,
+where Middendorf and other of his late military
+friends were boarding, who had just engaged themselves as
+teachers in the city, waiting to perfect this arrangement.
+It was a moment when there was a great uprising of education
+in Germany, and that system was beginning to germinate,
+which has turned out to make Prussia the effective
+power in Europe that she has lately proved herself to be;
+and whose first principle is, that the primary is the most
+important stage of education. In connection with this general
+movement, there was about to be established a new
+school in Frankfort; and Gr&uuml;ner, its principal, who was one
+of the boarders, talked over with Fr&#339;bel and the others the
+new plan. Whatever Fr&#339;bel said was so striking and vital,
+that Gr&uuml;ner at last exclaimed: "Plainly this is your vocation!
+Give up the architecture, and come in with us, and help to
+build men." Strange to say, though Fr&#339;bel had all his life
+been meditating upon the secret of human education, this
+was the first time it occurred to him to make it his own business.
+The more he thought of Gr&uuml;ner's suggestion, the
+more he liked it; and the issue was, that he took one of the
+younger classes in the new school. Immediately afterwards
+he wrote to his brother that at last he had found his element&mdash;he
+"felt like a bird in air, a fish in water." But the
+teachers were hampered in their action by the proprietors of
+the school; and after a season Gr&uuml;ner said to Fr&#339;bel, "You
+should lead; not be led. I release you from your engagement.
+Set up independently, and carry out your own ideas
+unhindered."</p>
+
+<p>When his purpose of leaving was known, one of the parents
+who patronized the school, gave him his two sons to
+educate, just as he should think best; and because he now<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_11" id="Page_11">[11]</a></span>
+heard of Pestalozzi, he took them to Yverdun, where he
+remained as pupil with them, for a season. But he was not
+quite satisfied with Pestalozzi's methods. He saw there was
+a process to be attended to, anterior to the observation of
+objects; namely, to employ and discipline the activity of
+children yet too young to attend except to what they are
+themselves doing. Education was to begin, as he saw, in
+doing, and thence proceed to knowing. In returning from
+Yverdun, his elder brother, and his younger brother's widow,
+offered him their children to add to the two young Frankforters;
+and the widow offered, besides, a small house that
+she owned in Keilhau, if he would fit it up. He and Middendorf
+and another friend united together and accepted this
+offer; and, with their own hands repaired the house, living
+in the outbuildings meanwhile and subsisting on rations most
+carefully economized. They then, for one thing, went to
+work on the land, which they taught the children to cultivate,
+and deduced their lessons out of the objects into which they
+were putting their life and labor. To these six children
+three cultivated men devoted themselves; and Fr&#339;bel also
+wrote to the lady that used to study with him in the Mineralogical
+Museum of Berlin, and she took her fortune, and left
+her rank, to help the poor schoolmaster in his life work, as
+the most devoted of wives.</p>
+
+<p>Working on the land was not all that they did. They
+began with it, because the children of the city had been
+rather starved of the gratification of that instinct to work in
+the earth, which very soon appears in all children&mdash;though,
+as Fr&#339;bel says, it will die out by being left uncultivated.
+He found that his pupils had been already injured by their
+artificial city life, and in many ways they had things to
+unlearn. It was not a perfectly easy thing to determine how
+much liberty to give to individual tendencies that had been
+exaggerated by the reactions of disorder, or of an artificial
+order. Fr&#339;bel thought the educator should give full play<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_12" id="Page_12">[12]</a></span>
+to all that is universal in human nature without pampering
+human idiosyncrasy, to do which was the vicious point of
+Rousseau's system that Fr&#339;bel has happily avoided. It was
+natural that he should first bring before his pupils the processes
+of vegetable growth, because it was in observing them
+that he had himself first found the laws of God. But he was
+older than any child in the kindergarten when he learned
+that lesson. Observation of anything outward is not the
+first thing in human development, but exertion of powers
+from within, which provokes the reaction of the outward and
+makes it known.</p>
+
+<p>I cannot follow out, in this introductory lecture, all his
+studies of the nature of man in these children, and all his
+experiments of cultivation. But I hope to do so in those
+which follow. The school founded in Keilhau exists to this
+day; but Fr&#339;bel ever found himself going back till at last
+he came to the infant in the mother's arms. Then he went
+into the huts of the peasantry to observe the mother's instinctive
+ways, reason upon them, purify them of her individual
+caprices and selfishness, and eliminate everything
+inconsistent with the divine idea and method of procedure,
+indicated by the instinct to the intelligence. He did not
+confine himself to Keilhau, where Middendorf steadily lived,
+though always keeping in relation with it; but went at times
+to other places, and once, for a year or two, left all, to go to
+the University of G&ouml;ttingen to study philology. There he
+made himself acquainted with Greek, Latin, and Sanskrit,
+studying out those laws of mind exemplified in the formation
+and decay of languages. For it was the secret of a perfect
+development that he sought, and how to keep his pupils at
+the height they "were competent to gain." After half a
+century of the study of childhood in the living subject, and
+elaboration of the means of discipline, he settled in his old
+age into the conviction, that the most important period of
+human education was before the child was seven years old.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_13" id="Page_13">[13]</a></span>
+And his last years were spent in preparing teachers for kindergartens
+at Rudolstadt and at Hamburg&mdash;which he did by
+teaching before them as well as by lecturing to them. Now
+it is what he discovered and elaborated, and has left, not in
+logical formulas, though he has certainly stated principles in
+words and embodied them in songs, but in processes of work
+and play, that is to be taught in our training schools. It
+took a Newton to discover gravitation and other principles
+of nature, but men without genius can comprehend and apply
+these principles, which they could not, like him, discover.
+So it took a Fr&#339;bel's genius to discover the first principles
+of education, and his sensibility to apply them without
+mistake; but intelligent and heartful young women can learn
+them and apply them, if&mdash;and only if&mdash;they will study
+devoutly and faithfully what he has taught; and in doing so
+they will find themselves&mdash;<i>not</i> becoming artificial, but more
+profoundly natural than ever; for the true educational
+process is but the mother's instinct and method, clearly
+understood in all its bearings, and acted out. To be a
+kindergartner is the perfect development of womanliness&mdash;a
+working with God at the very fountain of artistic and intellectual
+power and moral character. It is therefore the
+highest finish that can be given to a woman's education, to
+be educated for a kindergartner; and it is from the most
+advanced classes of high and normal schools, public and
+private, that the pupils of our training schools should come,
+and from the most refined circles of private life&mdash;remembering
+that these are not identical with wealthy and fashionable
+ones, for in the latter we often find the vulgar and coarse.
+The refinement of feeling and thought which is always
+attended with gentle and courteous manners is a religious
+quality, that not seldom glorifies humble homes whose inmates
+escape the sometimes hardening effect of poverty by "seeing
+Him who is invisible," while those "the imagination of
+whose hearts are evil continually," and even the merely<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_14" id="Page_14">[14]</a></span>
+frivolous, betray that they have "faculties that they have
+never used" though they dwell in palaces.</p>
+
+<p>Ever since the normal teaching of kindergartners was
+begun in America, in 1868, letters have been received from
+teachers, already at work in the old routine of primary
+instruction, asking for knowledge of the plays and occupations
+invented by Fr&#339;bel; in order that, by means of
+them, they may give such prestige to their infant schools
+as the name of kindergarten may. But this superficial,
+inappreciative use of Fr&#339;bel's processes, is as fatal to his
+reform as was <i>judaizing</i> to the primitive Christian Church.
+Fr&#339;bel's method is a radical change of direction. It changes
+the educator's point of view. Instead of looking down upon
+the child, the kindergartner must clear her mind of all foregone
+arbitrary conclusions, and humbly look up to the
+innocent soul, which in its turn sees nothing but the face
+of the Father in heaven&mdash;(for thus Christ explains children's
+being "of the kingdom of heaven"). This is difficult
+for her to do, because&mdash;not seldom&mdash;a shadow has fallen
+on the original innocence of the children confided to her
+care, from those human beings in relation to them, who
+have not done for them what every human being needs
+by reason of the essential dependence of individuals upon
+their race.</p>
+
+<p>The child is doubtless an embryo angel; but no less
+certainly a possible devil. If the immortal will, impassioned
+by the heart, which never rests permanently satisfied
+till the mind recognizes God, be puzzled, it may be turned
+in a wrong direction by what it meets, and then the manifestation
+will be ugly and more or less hateful. Evil is the
+inevitable effect of an ignorant, disorderly action of the will;
+of its not adopting the laws of order, by which God creates
+the universe, and of which the universe is the unconscious
+exponent. But knowledge of the laws of order must come
+to guide the will, from outside the child's conscious individuality,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_15" id="Page_15">[15]</a></span>
+<i>through the human providence of education</i>, in which
+the heavenly Father veils His infinite power, in order that
+the child may be free to make the choice of good, that shall
+lift him from the state, of merely instinctive being, into that
+union of Love and Thought, which characterizes a spirit
+<i>creative</i>, <i>i.e.</i>, causing effects.</p>
+
+<p>Perhaps you will say that if human influence must embody
+Divine Providence, in order to educate, then children never
+will be educated. Well! Except in one instance I admit
+that children never have been educated up to the ideal standard.
+But the one instance of the perfectly Divine Son of
+the perfectly holy Mother; and the partial successes of such
+fitful good education as history and tradition report, forbid
+us to despair of making human education a worthy image
+of Divine Providence. <i>To despair of this</i> is want of the
+proper action of human free will,&mdash;Faith.</p>
+
+<p>The first qualification of the true kindergartner, then, is
+Faith, which can be based only on the abiding conviction
+that God is with us "<i>to will and to do</i>," if we will only have
+the courage to take for granted that if <i>we are willing</i>, He
+will make of us divine guides to others. That He is calling
+them to be so, whoever feels a strong love of children,
+sympathy with their life, and sensibility to their beauty, may
+have a reasonable assurance; and that such as shall faithfully
+qualify themselves for the work will not fail of the
+divine help. But observe my proviso. Their love must not
+be a passing emotion, grounded on the children's superficial
+beauty. It must be a love that involves patience, that can
+stand the manifestation of ugly temper, and perverse will,
+and never lose sight of the embryo angel that wears for the
+moment the devilish mask. In children, evil is actual, but
+always superficial and temporary, if the educator does not
+become party to it by losing her own temper and idea. Also
+she must have resources by means of a cultivated understanding
+and imagination, to command the child's imagination
+and heart.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_16" id="Page_16">[16]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>It may be said that everybody cannot have, at will, imagination
+and culture. This is true; but such persons should
+not undertake to keep a kindergarten. Let them do something
+else; keep shop, cultivate vegetables, work the sewing
+machine; even keep those schools for older children, in
+which books are the main teachers. There are multitudes
+of things to be done; the greatest variety of functions to be
+performed in human life. But of all things to do, the cultivation
+of human beings at that period of life when they are
+utterly at the mercy of those who teach them, is the most
+sacred. Why rush into that, impelled by any motive below
+the highest?</p>
+
+<p>On the other hand, I do not wish to produce any artificial
+sentimentality on this subject. It is my belief that the
+average woman is sufficiently gifted by nature to make a
+good kindergartner, if she will give her nature fair play, by
+cultivating religious and moral sentiment; and will take
+pains to develop her intellect by the study of nature's laws
+in at least one department of science&mdash;that of vegetable
+physiology for instance, the materials of which are everywhere.
+One who <i>could not</i> be educated to become a kindergartner,
+should never dare to become a mother; for she
+would not know even how to choose the assistance necessary
+to her for the work that ought to be done for every child by
+somebody. While I would discourage, and if possible effectually
+frighten every one from professing kindergartning
+who is morally disqualified by sordid aims, or by making it
+a means to another end than itself, I welcome the young
+and ardent to this beautiful womanly work, which, to do
+well, requires of them to do the very best thing for their
+own intellect and heart, and which, more certainly than anything
+else, will give them the secret of Power and Beauty.</p>
+
+<p>It was my privilege, a year or two since, to pass a week
+in one of the schools of the feeble-minded; and I there saw
+six women, some of them quite young girls, devoted to the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_17" id="Page_17">[17]</a></span>
+terrible work of waking up Will and Perception in those
+poor prisoners of mal-organization, so many of them frightful
+to look upon. They were doing their work under the
+strongest sense of humanity and religion. It would have
+been impossible to do it at all, as they were doing it, had
+they had no other inspiration than the pay they were receiving.
+The main reward was in their having some success in
+waking up the mind. In their countenances something angelic
+was dawning; and this was not my fancy merely, for
+I heard the same remark made again and again, by persons
+who went there as I did. I do not think one of these women
+wished to leave the good work; and if acting on a mind-cherishing
+principle was so interesting, and productive of
+such reactive effects, in such sad circumstances, how much
+more may be expected from working upon children fairly
+gifted! The charm of the sadder work was, that, like
+kindergartning, it stimulated to profound study of the laws
+of mental nature, in order to work reverently among them,
+instead of arbitrarily, in defiance or irreverence of them.
+To do this made these women feel that they were working
+with God; and this made them practical saints. But why
+cannot we believe that God is present, and acting with us,
+and wooing us to act with Himself, in the joyous paradise
+of life, as well as in chambers of disease, and among the
+wretched? Is He not the God of the living and joyful, as
+well as of the dying and sad? Why is the church-yard only
+a grave-yard? Why should it not always be a kindergarten?</p>
+
+<p>One of the pleasantest observations that I made of the
+kindergartens of Germany&mdash;and I went to the very best
+ones, those kept by the kindergartners whom Fr&#339;bel had
+trained&mdash;was the happy absorption of the teachers in the
+children; their sympathy with them; the utter companionship
+between them. I never saw a punishment; I never
+heard a Don't (or its German equivalent); but when anything
+went wrong, there was always a pause, and sometimes<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_18" id="Page_18">[18]</a></span>
+questions were asked; and all seemed to wait till the inward
+guide had been brought out into consciousness (whether the
+thing in hand was social action or artistic work). Perhaps
+it might be harder work to govern American children. Their
+vivacious temperament, their lively energies, need "conscious
+law" as a curb, rather than as a spur. But all the
+more is it necessary for the American kindergartner to vivify
+the invisible guide; she should present order to the mind,
+by her genial questioning and conversation over the work in
+hand, rather than exert an arbitrary power which might
+stimulate the reaction of obstinacy or the subterfuges of
+cunning. To <i>govern</i> is not the whole thing. The question
+is <i>how</i> we govern; whether we so govern as to make a
+cringing slave, a cunning hypocrite, or an intelligent, law-abiding,
+self-respecting, <i>willing</i> servant of God. I have
+seen a magnetic teacher produce a marvellous obedience, and
+apparent order, by his imposing presence and keen satire.
+He imagined that he governed by moral power; but as soon
+as he was out of the schoolroom, the children were the victims
+of their own impulses, to which seemed given a stronger
+spring by the enforced repression. There is no order which
+is more than skin deep, unless it be the free, glad obedience
+of the child to a law, which he perceives to be creative because
+it enables him to do something real. Nothing short of
+the union of love and thought can produce spiritual power,
+<i>i.e.</i>, creativeness. It is only spiritual power that inaugurates
+order&mdash;the Eternal Beauty may be inaugurated in childhood
+and among childish toys.</p>
+
+<p>There is reason, on their own account, why we want our
+pupils, in this art of kindergartning, to be in their disposition
+and circumstances above merely pecuniary motive for entering
+on the work; and that is, because it will be long before
+the work will pay much in money. I need not adduce any
+other proof of this than our experience in Boston; where, for
+four years, the rarely gifted, thoroughly educated, religiously<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_19" id="Page_19">[19]</a></span>
+devoted Alma Kriege poured out her young energies on
+classes of less than a score of children; bringing her a pittance
+so small that she had to fill up the rest of her hours,
+which ought to have been given to recreation and culture,
+with other work, in order to pay for rent and necessary
+bread. Our rich and cultivated people will not forego a little
+more upholstery than is necessary, or a style of dress
+that makes the laundry bill&mdash;to say nothing of the mantua-maker's
+and milliner's&mdash;larger than the school bill, in order
+to give the required remuneration to the kindergartner for
+spending herself on their children in exhausting study and
+labor. But the truth is, people do not really believe that
+anything better can be done for children than to kill the time
+between the mother's arms and the season when they are to
+be taught to read; and so this precious interval, when the
+habits of thought and affection are forming, is given up to be
+filled by chance, risking life-long difficulties for the child.</p>
+
+<p>Now, what is to reform this state of things? Nothing but
+the self-sacrificing work of kindergartners, who, for the sake
+of enlightening these benighted parents, will do their work
+faithfully, steadily refusing to undertake the care of those
+whom their parents will not trust to Fr&#339;bel's system. The
+refusal will not seldom force the truth on the parents&mdash;who,
+when they know it, will be glad to know it. I do not say to
+any particular person, it is your duty to wear yourself out
+and half starve, for the sake of keeping a kindergarten. It
+is only you who are sufficiently free from other obligations, to
+give yourselves the privilege and luxury of working with
+God, on the paradisaical ground of childhood, who should
+enter this field. If you can make it your object to study
+how to avoid offending those who are beholding the face of
+the Father in heaven, by not hindering, but bringing them
+to Christ, which means helping them to grow as He did, in
+grace as in stature, and in favor with God and man, till like
+Him they become redeemers of their brethren from bondage,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_20" id="Page_20">[20]</a></span>
+and can help to make earth the kingdom of heaven; then you
+may hope, in your day and generation, to initiate kindergartning,
+and make the way smooth for those that follow.
+When the true thing is initiated, it will pay even in money;
+for parents will see that it is invaluable.</p>
+
+<p>It is twenty-two years since Fr&#339;bel died. He had made a
+band of kindergartners, and set them at work. They all began
+with small pecuniary reward. It was at first a starving
+business. In Europe it is more difficult than it is here, to
+induce women of culture and position to undertake any work
+which is paid for with money. Fr&#339;bel's genius had overcome
+this prejudice in a few instances. The ladies of one
+wealthy family in Hamburg became his pupils, one of whom
+introduced it into England, though under some great disadvantages.
+The Baroness Marenholtz-B&uuml;low is the most important
+person inspired by Fr&#339;bel; and the circumstances of
+her introduction to him are even picturesque. Being in feeble
+health, she went into an obscure village for rest and
+retirement; and one day asked the woman with whom she
+boarded, if anything interesting was going on among the
+villagers. The woman replied that there was "one queer
+thing, a natural fool who played about among the children,
+who followed him, and were very much taken up with him."
+The Baroness hardly heeded this singular assertion; but
+some time after, being abroad for exercise, she saw a white-haired
+man under a tree, with a group of children around
+him; and, thinking this might be the "natural fool," she
+drew near, and was soon arrested by what she heard, and
+joined the little throng herself. Subsequent interviews with
+Fr&#339;bel&mdash;for it was he&mdash;made a new era in her life, and she
+corresponded with him closely till his death. She has since
+been his chief apostle. After years of earnest work, with
+tongue and pen, she succeeded in getting rid of the injunction
+against his schools, made by the Prussian Government,
+which was jealous of what claimed to be an improvement on<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_21" id="Page_21">[21]</a></span>
+their world-renowned Reform. Since this injunction was
+taken off, she has worked, by means of a normal school
+which she helped to found in Berlin, in which she lectured
+gratuitously many years, fighting earnestly against just such
+deteriorations of the system as have already begun to appear
+in this country. Some of the pseudo-kindergartens use the
+plays and occupations there, as here, in the most superficial
+way. When children work by patterns, or are shown&mdash;instead
+of being told in words&mdash;how to do things, they merely
+imitate, with as little accompaniment of intellectual action as
+a monkey; and neither the mind nor the character will be
+developed, but rather dissipated and weakened. Others,
+especially in this country, use the plays in the intervals between
+lessons or reading,&mdash;which, being taught before the
+mind has been regularly developed by success in doing things,
+and before the meaning of words has been learned in an adequate
+manner, are confused with a chaos of unrelated particulars,
+that it will take years of self-education, by and by, to
+grow out of; and, in short, only a few vigorous natures fortunately
+situated ever surmount the difficulty.</p>
+
+<p>But the work of the Baroness has not been in vain; and
+she writes in a late letter that a government decree has just
+been made in Austria, ordering that all the children between
+four and six years of age should be sent to kindergartens;
+and that every normal school must give kindergarten training,
+and every teacher, whether of that or the following
+stages of education, must be made acquainted with Fr&#339;bel's
+principles and practices. This great step is the final result
+of the agitation of the subject for the last few years in
+Europe, which began in the first Philosophers' Congress at
+Prague, in 1867. The dying out of the teachers instructed
+by Fr&#339;bel himself was manifestly producing a deteriorating
+effect in the quality of kindergartners; and his most intelligent
+and devoted disciples proposed to the Congress an
+effort for the revival of his science and art in its pristine
+purity and power.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_22" id="Page_22">[22]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>It is most desirable that such falsification and deterioration
+do not get ahead in America. But there is impending
+danger of it, and it can only be prevented by establishing
+and keeping up adequate training-schools, and so informing
+public opinion, that it shall not be tolerated in the community
+to call by the sacred name of kindergarten anything short of
+it. There will necessarily be infant schools of an inferior
+quality for a long time, because it will take time to make
+common an adequate education in the art of kindergartning;
+but let such be <i>called</i> play-schools. <i>Pretenders</i> in this profession
+should be frowned upon by all good people, as pretenders
+in the clerical profession are. They do more harm
+than bad clergymen can, because the subjects of their teaching
+are more helpless and undefended, and can do nothing
+for themselves.</p>
+
+<p>The experience I have had in my apostolate in this cause,
+has brought me to the conclusion that in America the best
+way to proceed is, to induce the public authorities to have
+kindergartning taught in the State and city normal schools,
+and to open public kindergartens as fast as there are adequate
+teachers for them.</p>
+
+<p>Everything depends on the quality of the first kindergartners
+we train&mdash;their spiritual, moral and intellectual quality&mdash;which
+must be such as to operate in two ways: first, to
+do for the children the right thing; secondly, to educate the
+community to require it done as a general thing. Many
+characteristics of America give great encouragement. We
+are not dragged back, as they are in Europe, by old customs,
+whose roots are intertwined with the heart-strings of inherited
+sentiment. Our patriotic hearts fasten themselves
+on the great future that our fathers died to inaugurate. We
+must justify their ideal of universal equality, by an equal
+education, an equal opportunity for development of all our
+people. "The spirit that makes all things new," as the
+heart of childhood craves, and its hand is eager to enact, is<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_23" id="Page_23">[23]</a></span>
+"<i>every</i> word that proceedeth out of the mouth of God," to
+make alive the human heart. Therefore we leave behind us&mdash;more
+and more&mdash;those conventions of the Old World that
+have made even the great work of educating rank as inferior
+to that which wields the sword of war. Some people
+groan at seeing how the growing facilities of getting money,
+which our institutions give to every man and woman of
+energy, is effacing the old distinctions of rank. But if our
+Culture may be made universal, by employing part of this
+money in making public education adequate, what ground
+will be left for <i>distinction of rank</i>? What pretext for exclusion
+will there be, when there are none rude and uncultivated
+to be excluded? That any distinction of ranks came among
+the children of God is incidental to free agency. Children
+know nothing of them&mdash;till we profane their golden age of
+innocence by revealing them. (Appendix, <a href="#Note_A">Note A</a>.)<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_25" id="Page_25">[25]</a></span></p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2>LECTURE II.</h2>
+
+<div class='chaptertitle'>THE NURSERY.<br /><br /></div>
+
+
+<div class='unindent'><span class="smcap">It</span> is my object to inspire, if I can, an enthusiasm for educating
+children strictly on Fr&#339;bel's method, and no other;
+and I wish to justify myself by giving reasons for this; for
+I know that, at first sight, Americans start back from putting
+faith in any leader; immediately exclaiming, that they must
+be free to follow the light of their own minds.</div>
+
+<p>This sounds large and liberal, certainly; and no one sees
+the danger of yielding to any individual authority more than
+I do; but it is certain that nothing may make us so narrow,
+as a bigoted adherence to the rule of following the light of
+our own mind condignly. The light of our own individual
+mind may be darkness; it must, in any case, be that of a farthing
+candle, compared with Eternal Reason, "the light that
+lighteth every man that cometh into the world." The question
+is, do we distinguish between that greater light and our
+own idiosyncrasy, with a becoming and discriminating humility?
+I once heard a lady, whose name was Gurley, say
+to a witty gentleman, that she believed "in the total depravity
+of human nature from the experience of her own
+heart." Ah! but that is not quite fair, he replied, "for how
+do you know what is human nature and what is Gurleyism?"
+Here is tersely suggested the danger of the individualistic
+philosophy, which has developed itself into a
+new kind of bigotry in these later days, not less denunciatory
+in its <i>animus</i> than any other; and which shuts up its
+votaries in a dungeon from the light of Universal experience.
+I acknowledge the legitimacy of the philosophy of<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_26" id="Page_26">[26]</a></span>
+individualism, as a protest against the glittering generality
+which theological philosophy had become, at the time when
+it arose; and as affirmation that God makes every man separately
+an eye, and if he would see into the Infinite Over-soul,
+he must look with it out of his own window. But this
+is only the way to begin to search for truth. If he is not self-intoxicated,
+every man soon learns that his window does not
+command the whole horizon, that God not only has given a
+window to him, but to every other man; that we are all free to
+look out of each others' windows, some being higher up in the
+tower of the common humanity than our own, commanding
+wider views; in fine that it is with <i>all</i> the sons of man that
+"wisdom dwells," and they must inter-communicate with
+mutual reverence if they would know her well. Fr&#339;bel had
+not been so wise, had he not, with reverent humility, sought
+what God says immediately to mothers and babes. You will
+not be wise if you do not look out of Fr&#339;bel's window.</p>
+
+<p>The story I told you, in my last lecture, of the growth of
+Fr&#339;bel's mind from his boyhood, suggested the fact that the
+common motherly instinct, purified of individual passion and
+caprice, and, understanding itself as the presence of the Living
+God overshadowing her, is the social atmosphere necessary
+to be breathed by every child who is to grow in wisdom
+and stature, and in favor with God and man.</p>
+
+<p>Fr&#339;bel learned this primal fact or truth, first negatively,
+as it were, by lacking it in his own childish experience; and
+he verified it positively afterwards, by studying the method
+of unsophisticated mothers, at that earliest period of their
+children's lives, when, in order to keep them alive merely,
+the nurse must take the rule of her nursing from the needs
+which her heart divines, aided by the nursling's own expression
+of want and content&mdash;its tears and smiles.</p>
+
+<p>Let us then determine first, as he did, the nursery art,
+which is preliminary to that of the Kindergarten.</p>
+
+<p>By the primal miracle (<i>i.e.</i>, wonder working) of nature, the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_27" id="Page_27">[27]</a></span>
+mother finds in her arms a fellow-being, who has an immeasurable
+susceptibility of suffering, and an immeasurable
+desire of enjoyment, and an equally immeasurable force intent
+on compassing this desire, already in activity, but with
+no knowledge at all of the material conditions in which he
+is placed, to which he is subject, and by which he is limited
+in the exercise of this immense nature.</p>
+
+<p>As I have said before, every form of animal existence <i>but</i>
+the human, is endowed with some absolute knowledge, enabling
+it to fulfil its limited sphere of relationship as unerringly
+as the magnetized needle turns to the pole, and, even
+with more or less of enjoyment; yet with no forethought.
+But the knowledge that is to guide the blind will of the human
+being, even to escape death in the first hour of its bodily
+life, exists substantially outside of its own individuality in
+the mother, or whoever supplies the mother's place.</p>
+
+<p>And throughout the existence of the human being, the
+forethought that is to enable him to appreciate his ever
+multiplying relations with his own kind, and which grows
+wider and sweeter as he fulfils the duties they involve, is
+essentially outside of himself as a mere individual; being
+found first in those who are in relation with him in the family,
+afterwards in social, national, cosmopolitan relationship;
+till at last he realizes himself to be in sonship with God, in
+whom all humanity, nations, families, individuals, "live and
+move and have their being." There is no absolute isolation
+or independency possible for a spiritual being. This is a
+truth involved in the very meaning of the word spirit, and
+revealed to every family on earth, by the ever recurring fact
+of the child born into the arms of a love that emparadises
+both parties, on which he lives more or less a pensioner
+throughout his whole existence, so far as he lives humanly,
+finding fullness of life at last in the clear vision and conscious
+communion of an Infinite Father, who has been revealing
+Himself all along, in the love of parent and child,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_28" id="Page_28">[28]</a></span>
+brother and sister, husband and wife, friend, fellow-citizen and
+fellow-man. Christ said, that little children see the Father
+face to face, but surely not with the eyes of the body or of
+the understanding! They see him with the heart. And
+is it not true, that we never quite forget the child's vision
+in turning our eyes on lower things? for what but remembrance
+of our Heavenly Father's face is hope, "that springs
+eternal in the human breast?" What but this remembrance
+are the ideals of beauty, that haunt the savage and the
+sage? the sense of law that gives us our moral dignity,
+and in the saddest case, what but this are the pangs of
+remorse, in which, as Emerson has sung in his wonderful
+sphinx song, "lurks the joy that is sweetest?"</p>
+
+<p>Fr&#339;bel has authority with me, because, in this great faith,
+making himself a little child, he received little children in
+the name (that is, as germinating forms) of the Divine humanity,
+with a simple sincerity, such as few seem to have
+done since Jesus claimed little children as the pure elements
+of the kingdom he came to establish on earth; and exhorted
+that, as they were such, they should be brought to him as
+the motherly instinct prompted, and declared that they
+were not to be forbidden (that is, hindered as all false education
+hinders.)</p>
+
+<p>As an American then, and more&mdash;as a human being, I acknowledge
+no authority except the union of love and thought
+in practical operation. But whenever I see this union in any
+one, to a greater degree than I have it in myself, I bow before
+that person, and <i>feel</i> (which is the subtlest kind of knowing)
+that I am larger wiser, freer, more effective for good,
+by following and obeying him as a master for the time
+being.</p>
+
+<p>Therefore, after the study I have made of Fr&#339;bel, and of
+the method with little children that he was fifty years discovering
+and elaborating into practical processes, whose <i>rationale</i>
+and creative influence I perceive; I feel, as it were,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_29" id="Page_29">[29]</a></span>
+<i>Divinely authorized</i> to present him to you as an authority
+which you can reverently trust; and so be delivered from the
+uncertainties of your own narrow and crude notions, inexperienced
+and ignorant as you undoubtedly are, however
+talented.</p>
+
+<p>It is quite necessary for me to say, and for you to accept
+this now, or our short time together will be wasted. There
+is a time for criticism undoubtedly, and nothing is true that
+can not make itself good against "honest doubt." But as
+Sterne has said, "of all the cants that are canted in this canting
+world, though the cant of hypocrisy may be the worst,
+the cant of criticism is the most provoking. I would go
+fifty miles on foot to kiss the hand of that man, whose generous
+heart will give up the reins into his author's hands,
+for the time being, and let him lead him where he will." I
+am quoting from memory, and may forget the exact words;
+but the idea is, that the mood of self-surrendering reverence
+is the mood for profitable study, for it is to "become a little
+child," which Christ told his disciples was the condition of
+any one's becoming the greatest in the kingdom of Divine
+Truth.</p>
+
+<p>Let us begin, then, with reverently considering the new
+born child, as Fr&#339;bel did; for that is to be "the light of all
+our seeing."</p>
+
+<p>A child is a living soul, from the very first; not a mere
+animal force, but a person, open to God on one side by his
+heart, which appreciates love, and on the other side to be
+opened to nature, by the reaction upon his sensibility of
+those beauteous forms of things that are the analysis of
+God's creative wisdom; and which, therefore, gives him a
+growing understanding, whereby his mere active force shall
+be elevated into a rational, productive will. For heart and
+will are, at first, blind to outward things and therefore inefficient,
+until the understanding shall be developed according
+to the order of nature.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_30" id="Page_30">[30]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>But during this process of its development, adult wisdom
+must supply the place of the child's wisdom, which is not,
+as yet, grown; that is&mdash;an educator must point out the
+way, genially, not peremptorily; for in following the educator's
+indications, the child must still act in a measure
+from himself. As he is irrefragably free, he will not always
+obey; he will try other paths&mdash;perhaps the contrary one&mdash;by
+way of testing whether he has life in himself. But unless
+he shall go a right way, he will accomplish nothing satisfactory
+and reproductive; and it is Fr&#339;bel's idea to give him
+something to do, within the possible sphere of his affection
+and fancy, which shall be an opportunity of his making an
+experience of success, that shall stimulate him to desire,
+and thereby make him receptive of the guidance of creative
+law, which is the only true object for the obedience of a spiritual
+being.</p>
+
+<p>To the new born child, his own body is the whole universe;
+and the first impression he gets of it seems to come
+from his need of nutriment. But it is the mother, not the
+child, that responds to this want, by presenting food to the
+organ of taste, and producing a pleasurable impression which
+arouses the soul to <i>intend itself</i> into the organ, which is developed
+to receive impression more and more perfectly, by
+the child's seeking for a repetition of the pleasure. For a
+time, whatever uneasiness a child feels, he attempts to remove
+by the exercise of this organ, through which he has
+gained his first pleasant impression of objective nature.
+Therefore is it, that his lips and tongue become his first
+means of examining the outward world into which he has
+been projected by his Creator.</p>
+
+<p>The ear seems to be the next organ of which the child becomes
+conscious, or through which he receives impressions
+of personal pleasure and pain; and here it is noticeable,
+that <i>rhythmical</i> sound seems, from the very first, to give most
+pleasure; and is wonderfully effective to soothe the nerves,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_31" id="Page_31">[31]</a></span>
+and remove uneasiness. All mothers and nurses sing to
+babies, as well as rock them, (which is <i>rhythmical</i> motion,)
+and this pleasant impression on the ear diverts the child
+from intending himself exclusively into the organ of tasting.
+He now stretches himself into his ears, whose powers are
+developed by gently exercising their function of hearing.</p>
+
+<p>The child seems to taste and hear, before he begins to see
+anything more definite than the difference between light and
+darkness. By and by a salient point of light, it may be
+the light of a candle, catches and fixes his eye, and gives a
+distinct visual impression, which is evidently pleasurable, for
+the child's eye follows the light, showing that the soul intends
+itself into the organ of sight. Soon after, gay colors
+fix its gaze and evidently give pleasure. The eye for color
+is developed gradually, like the ear for music, by exercise,
+which being pleasurable becomes spontaneous.</p>
+
+<p>The whole body is the organ of touch; but as the hands
+are made convenient for grasping, to which the infant has
+an instinctive tendency, and the tips of the fingers are especially
+handy for touching, they become, by the intension of
+the mind into them, the special organ for examining things
+by touch, and getting impressions of qualities obvious to no
+other sense. When, as it sometimes happens, by malformation
+or maltreatment of them, the eyes fail to perform their
+functions, it is wonderful how much more the soul intends
+itself into the special organs of touch, developing them to
+such a degree, that a cultivated blind person seems almost
+to see with the tips of the fingers. This fact proves what
+I have been trying to impress on your minds, that the soul
+which spontaneously desires and wills enjoyment, takes possession
+and becomes conscious of its organs of sensuous
+perception, partly by an original impulse, given to it by the
+Creator, and partly, (which I want you especially to observe,)
+by the genial, sympathetic, intelligent, careful co-working
+of the mother and nurse; who, by what we call<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_32" id="Page_32">[32]</a></span>
+nursery play, gives a needed help to the child to accomplish
+this feat in a healthy and pleasurable manner. And we shall
+be better convinced of the virtue of this nursery play, if
+we consider the case of the neglected children of the very
+poor, so pathetically described by Charles Lamb. See essays
+on Popular Fallacies, No. 12.</p>
+
+<p>Madame Marenholtz-<ins title="Transcriber's Note: original reads 'Bulow'">B&uuml;low</ins> has happily remarked, in her
+preface to Jacob's Manual, <i>Le jardin des Enfans</i>, that "to
+develop and train the senses is not to pamper them." The
+organs of tasting and smelling do not require so much
+exercise by the duplicate action of the mother, as those of
+seeing and hearing. The former have for their end to build
+up the body; the latter to lead the child's mind out of the
+body, to that part of nature which connects him with other
+persons. The functions of both are equally worthy; but
+those of the latter belong to the child as a social and intellectual
+being. It is the mother's office to temper the exercises
+of each sense, so that they may limit and balance each
+other. And in order to limit those which are building up
+the body, so that they shall not absorb the child, the action
+of the others must be helped out. "Our bodies feel&mdash;where'er
+they be&mdash;against or with our will;" but to see and
+hear all that children can, requires exertion of will and this
+is coaxed out by the sympathetic action of others. Yet the
+functions of tasting or smelling are not to be banned. The
+Creator has made them delightful; and if others do their
+proper part, their exercise will never become harmful. To
+enjoy tasting and smelling is no less innocent than to enjoy
+seeing and hearing. There is no function of mind or body
+but may be performed Divinely. Milton shows insight into
+this truth by making Raphael sit and eat at table with man
+in Paradise; and he says some wonderful things upon the
+point, which will bear much study. And have we not in
+sacred tradition a symbol, still more venerable, of the
+truth, that the fire of spirit burns without consuming, and<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_33" id="Page_33">[33]</a></span>
+may transform the body without leaving visible residue?
+There are in Brown's philosophy (which does not penetrate
+into <i>all</i> the mysteries of the rational soul and immortal spirit)
+some very instructive chapters on the social and moral relations
+of the grosser senses, (as taste, smell and touch are
+sometimes called.) It is the part of rational education to
+understand all these things thoroughly, and adjust the spontaneous
+activities by subordinating them to the end of a
+harmonious and beneficent social life. The Lord's Supper
+may be made to illustrate this general human duty.</p>
+
+<p>There is doubtless marked difference in the original energy
+of life, in different children. Young&mdash;but not too young,
+happy, healthy, loving parents, have the most vigorous,
+lively and harmoniously organized children; but in all cases,
+the impulse of life must be met and cherished by the tender,
+attractive, inspiring force of motherly love; which with caressing
+tone and invoking smile, peers into the infant's eyes,
+and importunately calls forth the new person, who, as her
+instinctive motherly faith and love assure her, is there;
+and whom she yearns to make conscious of himself in self-enjoyment.
+The time comes when the little body has become
+so far subject to the new soul, that an answering
+smile of recognition signalizes the arrival upon the shores of
+mortal being of "that light which never was on sea or land,"
+another immortal intelligence! It is only the smile of the
+intelligent human face, that can call forth this smile of the
+child in the first instance; but let this glad mutual recognition
+of souls take place once, and both parties will seek to
+repeat the delight, again and again. Few persons, indeed,
+get so chilled by the sufferings and disappointments, and
+so hardened by the crimes of human life, but on the sight
+of a little child, they are impelled to invoke this answering
+smile by making themselves, for the moment, little children
+again; seeking and finding that communion with our kind
+which is the Alpha and Omega of life.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_34" id="Page_34">[34]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>Do not say that I am wandering, fancifully, from the
+serious work which we are upon: I am only beginning at
+the beginning. We can only understand the child, and what
+we are to do for it in the Kindergarten, by understanding
+the first stage of its being&mdash;the pre-intellectual one in the
+nursery. The body is the first garden in which God plants
+the human soul, "to dress and to keep it." The loving
+mother is the first gardener of the human flower. Good
+nursing is the first word of Fr&#339;bel's gospel of child-culture.</p>
+
+<p>The process of taking possession of the organs, that I have
+just described, is never performed perfectly unless children
+are nursed genially. If bitter and disagreeable things are
+presented to the organ of the taste, they are rejected with
+the whole force of a will, which is too blind in its ignorance
+to find the thing it wants, but vindicates its irrefragable
+freedom of choice by uttering cries of fright, pain and
+anger, as it shrinks back, instead of throwing itself forward
+into nature. If the cruel thing is repeated, the nerves are
+paralyzed, or at least rendered morbid, especially when rude
+untender handling outrages the sense of touch. When
+rough and discordant sounds assail the ear, or too sharply
+salient a light, the eye, these organs will be injured, and
+may be rendered useless for life. The neglected and maltreated
+child is dull of sense, and lifeless, or morbidly
+impulsive, possibly savagely cruel and cunning, in sheer
+self-defence. The pure element and first condition of perfect
+growth, is the joy that responds to the electric touch
+of love.</p>
+
+<p>Underlying and outmeasuring all this delicate development
+of the organs of the five senses, is the whole body's
+instinct of motion, which is the primal action of will. The
+perfectly healthy body of a little child, when it is awake, is
+always in motion&mdash;more or less intentionally. When asleep,
+there is the circulation of the blood, and pulsation of the
+solids of the body, corresponding to the act of breathing,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_35" id="Page_35">[35]</a></span>
+which is involuntary; and any interruption of these produces
+disease&mdash;their suspension, death. But the motion which
+makes the limbs agile, and the whole body elastic, and gradually
+to become an obedient servant, is voluntary, intentional,
+and can be helped by that sympathetic action of others,
+which we call <i>playing with the child</i>. Fr&#339;bel's rich suggestions
+on this play are contained in his mother's cossetting
+songs; and I am glad to tell you that two English
+ladies, a poet and a musician, have translated and set to music
+this unique book; and that just now it has been published
+by Wilkie, Wood &amp; Co., in London. It suggests all kinds
+of little gymnastics of the hands, fingers, feet, toes and legs,
+for these are the child's first play things; and also the first
+symbols of intelligent communication, giving the core and
+significance to all languages.<a name="FNanchor_1_1" id="FNanchor_1_1"></a><a href="#Footnote_1_1" class="fnanchor">[1]</a></p>
+
+<p>I think that a baby never <i>begins</i> to play, in the first instance,
+but responds to the mother and nurse's play, and
+learns thereby its various members and their powers and
+uses; and when at last it jumps, runs, walks by itself, which
+it cannot begin to do without the help of others, it is prepared
+to say <i>I</i>, with a clear sense of individuality.</p>
+
+<p>In analyzing the process of a child's learning to walk, we
+see most clearly the characteristic difference between the
+human person and the animals below man in the scale of
+relation. The little chicken runs about of itself, as soon
+as it is out of the shell; but the human child, even after all
+its limbs are grown, and though he has been moving himself
+on all fours by means of the floor, and supporting himself
+by means of the furniture to which he clings, <i>does not
+walk</i>. He will only stand alone, unsupported, when he sees
+that there are guarding arms round about him, all ready to
+catch him if he should fall. He seems to know instinctively,
+that all the force of the earth's gravitation is against
+him. He does not know that he may balance it by his personal
+power. His body weighs upon his soul like a mountain,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_36" id="Page_36">[36]</a></span>
+precisely because he is intelligent of it as an object,
+loves it as a means of pleasure, and dreads its power of giving
+pain to him. The little darling stands, perhaps between
+the knees of his father, whose arms are round about him;
+the mother opens her loving arms to receive him, and calls
+him to her embrace; the way is short between, and three
+steps will be sufficient, but where is the courageous faith to
+say to this mountain of a body, "be removed to another
+place?" It is not in himself; he cannot produce it any more
+than he can take himself up by his own ears. It is in the
+mother; for it is she, not he, who has the knowledge of the
+yet unexerted power which is flowing into the child from
+the Creator. Only by the electric touch of her faith in him
+does his faith in himself flash out in answer to her look and
+voice of cheer, and he rushes to her arms. It is the doing
+of the deed which gives to himself the knowledge of the
+power that is in him. He repeats it again and again, seeming
+to wish to be more and more certain of his being the
+cause of so great effect. Thus cause and effect are discriminated,
+and "to him that hath" a sense of individuality,
+"shall be given," forevermore, a growing power over the
+body, to which no measure can be stated. Even on the
+vulgar plane of the professional tumbler, a man's power
+over his body seems, sometimes, to be absolute and miraculous.
+But the annals of heroism and martyrdom are full
+of facts that go to prove to all who consider them profoundly,
+that the immaterial soul is sovereign, when, by recognizing
+all its relations, it subjects the individual to the
+universal, and becomes thereby entirely spiritual, (which is
+man reciprocating with God; becoming more and more conscious
+forever.<a name="FNanchor_2_2" id="FNanchor_2_2"></a><a href="#Footnote_2_2" class="fnanchor">[2]</a>)</p>
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_37" id="Page_37">[37]</a></span></p>
+<p>From what has been said of the soul's taking possession
+of the body and its several organs, by exercising the functions
+of tasting, hearing, seeing, smelling, touching, grasping,
+moving the limbs, and at last taking up the whole body
+into itself in the act of walking, we see that it is all done,
+even the last, by virtue of the social nature.</p>
+
+<p>Fr&#339;bel took his clue from this fact, a primal one, and
+never let it go, and it is of the greatest importance that it
+be understood clearly, that conscious individuality, which
+gives the sense of free personality, the starting point, as it
+were, of intelligent will, is perfectly consistent with and
+even dependent on the simultaneous development of the
+social principle in all its purity and power.</p>
+
+<p>We see a sad negative proof of this, in asylums for infants
+abandoned by their mothers, or given up by them
+through stress of poverty. There is one of these in New
+York city, into which are received poor little things in the
+first weeks of their existence. Every thing is done for their
+bodily comfort which the general human kindness can devise.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_38" id="Page_38">[38]</a></span>
+They have clean warm cradles and clothes, good milk,
+in short everything but that caressing motherly play, which
+goes from the personal heart to the personal heart. That
+is one thing general charity cannot supply; it is the personal
+gift of God to the mother for her child, and none but she can
+be the sufficient medium of it, and therefore, undoubtedly
+it is, that almost all new-born children in foundling hospitals
+die; or, if they survive, are found to be feeble-minded
+or idiotic. They seem to sink into their animal natures,
+and belie the legend man written on their brows, showing none
+of that beautiful fearlessness and courageous affectionateness
+that characterise the heartily welcomed, healthy, well-cared-for
+human infant. On the contrary, they show a dreary apathy,
+morbid fearfulness, or a belligerent self-defence, anticipative
+of other forms of the cruel neglect which has been their
+dreary experience.</p>
+
+<p>Taking a hint from observations of this kind, together
+with the bitter experiences of his own childhood, Fr&#339;bel
+supplied to the mother or nurse some playthings for the
+baby, which might continue to improve the various organs
+of its body, by making the exercise of their functions a social
+delight.</p>
+
+<p>What is called the first gift, he proposes should be used in
+the nursery first. It consists of six soft balls, not too large
+to be grasped by a little hand, and the use of which in the
+nursery, is suggested by a little first book for mothers, that
+has been translated from Jacob's <i>Le jardin des Enfans</i>.<a name="FNanchor_3_3" id="FNanchor_3_3"></a><a href="#Footnote_3_3" class="fnanchor">[3]</a> I
+think it is important for the Kindergartner to know what
+Fr&#339;bel thought could be done for the development of the
+infant in the nursery, since if it has not been done there, she
+must contrive to remedy the evil in the Kindergarten. You
+will bear with me, therefore, if I go quite into the minuti&aelig;<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_39" id="Page_39">[39]</a></span>
+of this matter. It will open your eyes to observe delicately,
+as Fr&#339;bel did.</p>
+
+<p>He proposed that the red ball should be first presented.
+He had observed that a bright light concentrated, as in a
+candle, first excited the organ of sight and stimulated its
+action. Hence he inferred that a bright color would do the
+same, a neutral tint would not be seen at all probably. The
+red ball is not quite so salient and exciting as the light of
+a candle, but on that account it can be gazed at longer,
+without producing a painful re-action. The child will have
+a pleasure in grasping it, and will probably carry it to his
+lips; but as it is woolen, it will not be especially agreeable
+to the delicate organ of taste. It will all the more be
+looked at therefore, and give the impression of red. Fr&#339;bel
+proposes that it shall be called the red ball, in order that
+the impression of the word <i>red</i> on the ear, shall blend in
+memory with the impression of the color on the eye. As
+long as the child seems amused with the red ball, he would
+not have another color introduced, because he thought it
+took time for the eye to get a clear and strong impression
+of one color, and this should be done before it was tried with
+a contrasted impression. But by and by the blue ball, as
+the greatest contrast, may be given and named; and all the
+little plays suggested in the mother's book be repeated with
+the blue ball; and then the yellow ball should be given with
+its name; and then the three be given together, and the baby
+be asked to choose the blue, or red, or yellow one. By attaching
+a string to them, and whirling them, or letting the
+infant do so, it is surprising how long the child will amuse
+itself with these balls, and what pleasure colors alone give,
+especially when combined with motion.</p>
+
+<p>The secondary colors may afterwards be added to the
+treasury for the eye, with the same carefulness to secure
+completeness and distinctness of impression; and to associate
+the color with the word that names it; for language, the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_40" id="Page_40">[40]</a></span>
+special organ of social communion, should be addressed to
+the child from the first, though its complete attainment and
+use is the crown of all education.</p>
+
+<p>Smiles and sounds, proceeding out of the mouth, are the
+first languages, and begin to fix the little child's eyes and
+attention upon the mouth of the mother, from which issue
+the tones that are sweetest to hear, and especially when in
+musical cadence. But the child understands the words addressed
+to him long before he himself begins to articulate; for
+language is no function of the individual, but only of the
+consciously social being, yearning to find himself in another.</p>
+
+<p>There is a reciprocal communication between infants and
+adults that precedes the difficult act of articulation. This
+we call the natural language, and it is common to all nations,
+being mutually intelligible, as is proved by deaf mutes
+from remote countries who understand each other at once.
+But this natural language has a very narrow scope. It
+serves to communicate instinctive wants of body and heart,
+but does not serve the fine purposes of intellectual communication,
+nor minister any considerable intellectual development.
+These signs are very general, while every word in
+its origin has represented a particular object in nature. In
+analyzing any language, we find that the names given to the
+body and its members, and to the actions and facts of life,
+without which no human society can exist, are the nucleus
+or central words that characterize it, and from which the
+whole national rhetoric is derived. Hence there is a value
+for the mind in associating the words and action of even
+such a little play as "here we go up, up, up, and here we go
+down, down, down, and here we go backwards and forwards,
+and here we go round, round, round," with other rhymes
+and plays of an analogous character that are found wherever
+there are mothers and children.</p>
+
+<p>We have observed that the moment of first accomplishing
+the feat of running alone, seemed to be that of the child's<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_41" id="Page_41">[41]</a></span>
+beginning to realize himself to be a person, but that even,
+in this act, he was dependent upon his mother; that his
+bodily independence was the gift of her faith in that within
+him, which is essentially superior to the body and can command
+it as instrumentality. To make it instrumentality
+is, more and more, a delight to the child, in which his
+mother sympathises; and by this sympathy aids him. All
+his plays involve exercise of the power of commanding his
+body. As soon as a child can move it from place to place, his
+desire to exercise power on nature outside of himself increases,
+and he is prompted to measure strength with other children.
+If children were mere individuals they would merely quarrel,
+as Hobbes says; but being social beings also, they tend to
+unite forces and aid one another to compass desired ends.
+By so doing, they rise to a greater sense of life, and brotherly
+love is evolved. But in the development of the social
+life, the more developed and cultivated elder must come in,
+to keep both parties steady to some object outside of themselves,
+which it takes their union to reach. Children can
+be taught to play together, by engaging their powers of imitation,
+and addressing their fancy. Every mother knows,
+that in the first opening of children's social life, their bodily
+energies are stimulated to such a degree, that it is quite as
+much as she or one nurse can do, to tend two or three children
+together; and by the time they are three years old, the
+family nursery becomes too narrow a sphere for them. It
+is then that they are to be received into a Kindergarten,
+whose very numbers will check the energy of activity a little,
+by presenting a greater variety of objects to be contemplated;
+and because social action must be orderly and
+rhythmical, in order to be agreeable. This, a properly prepared
+Kindergartner knows, and by her sympathetic influence
+and power over the childish imagination, she will
+bring gradually all the laws of the child's being to the conscious<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_42" id="Page_42">[42]</a></span>
+understanding, beginning with this rhythmical one
+at the center.</p>
+
+<p>The movement plays which Fr&#339;bel invented, express, in
+dramatic form, some simple fact of nature or some childish
+fancy, for which he gives, as accompaniment, a descriptive
+song set to a simple melody. The children learn both to recite
+and to sing the words of the song, and then the movements
+of the play. To them the whole reason for the play seems
+to be the delight it gives, the exhilaration of body, the
+amusement of mind. But the Kindergartner knows that
+it serves higher ends, and that it is at least always a lesson
+in order, enabling them to begin to enact upon earth "Heaven's
+first law."</p>
+
+<p>Do not say I am making too solemn a matter of these
+movement plays, to the Kindergartner. Unless she remembers
+that this very serious aim underlies every play which
+she conducts, she will not do justice to the children. Law
+or order is one and the same thing with beauty; and play
+is hindrance if it is not beautiful. When she insists upon the
+children governing themselves, so far as to keep their
+proper places in relation to each other; to forbear exerting
+undue force, and to seek to give the necessary aid to others
+by exerting sufficient force, the beautiful result justifies
+her will to the minds of the children, and commands their
+ready obedience. She must call forth by <ins title="Transcriber's Note: original reads 'addressing it the'">addressing the</ins>
+sense of personal responsibility in each child; and this, if
+done tenderly and with faith, it is by no means difficult to
+do. The reward to the children is instant in the success of
+the play, and therefore not thought of as reward of merit.
+It is a form of obedience that really elevates the little one
+higher in the scale of being as an individual, without danger
+of the re-action of pride and self-conceit; for self is swallowed
+up in social joy.</p>
+
+<p>When I was in Germany, I went, as I believe I told you,
+to those Kindergartens, which were taught by Fr&#339;bel's own<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_43" id="Page_43">[43]</a></span>
+pupils, and I found that in these the movement plays were
+the most prominent feature of the practice. More than one
+was played in the course of the three or four hours, and especially
+when the session was as much as four hours. It
+was done in a very exact though not constrained manner,
+and much stress seemed to be laid upon every part. The
+singing was not done by three or four, but all the children
+were encouraged to sing. Often the little timider ones
+were called on to repeat the rhyme alone, without singing
+it, and then to sing it alone with the teacher. Thus the
+stronger and abler were exercised (as they must be so much
+in real life) in waiting, sympathetically, for the weaker. A
+great deal of care was also exercised in regard to the form
+and character of the play itself. Those of Fr&#339;bel's own
+suggestion and invention were the preferred ones. They
+consisted in imitating, in rather a free and fanciful manner,
+the actions of the gentler animals, hares and rabbits, fishes,
+bees and birds. There were plays in which children impersonated
+animals, evidently for the purpose of awakening
+their sympathies and eliciting their kindness towards them.
+Many of the labors of human beings, common mechanics,
+such as cooperage, the work of the farmer, that of the
+miller, trundling the wheelbarrow, sawing wood, &amp;c., were
+put into form by simple rhymes. The children sometimes
+personated machinery, sometimes great natural movements.
+In one instance I saw the solar system performed by a company
+of children that had been in the Kindergarten four
+years, but none of them were over seven years old. Mere
+movement is in itself so delightful and salutary for children
+that a very little action of the imitative or fanciful power is
+necessary, just to take the rudeness out of bodily exercise
+without destroying its exhilaration.</p>
+
+<p>My Kindergarten Guide, the revised edition of which is
+published by E. Steiger, of New York, contains some of
+the principal plays, set to Fr&#339;bel's own music. I would<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_44" id="Page_44">[44]</a></span>
+gladly have printed all that Madame Ronge published in
+her Guide, which is out of print, but for the expense.</p>
+
+<p>But it is by no means merely a moral discipline that is
+aimed at in the Kindergarten, as you will see when the
+bearings upon their habits of thought, of all that the children
+do, are pointed out to you, in the various occupations,
+which are sedentary sports, though the moral discipline is
+the paramount idea, and never must be lost sight of one
+moment by the Kindergartner. We mean by moral discipline,
+exercising the children to <i>act</i> to the end of making
+<i>others</i> happy, rather than of merely enjoying <i>themselves</i>.
+If the individual enjoyment is not a social enjoyment, it is
+disorderly and vitiating. But the individual is lifted into
+the higher order for which he is created, by merely enjoying,
+whenever his enjoyment is <i>social</i>. I am of course
+speaking of that season of life under seven years of age,
+when the mind is yet undeveloped to the comprehension of
+humanity as a whole; when the good, the true and the
+beautiful are nothing as abstractions, and can only be realized
+to their experience and brought within the sphere of
+their senses, by being embodied in persons whom they love,
+reverence or trust. The words <i>good</i>, <i>beautiful</i>, <i>kind</i>, <i>true</i>,
+get their meaning for children by their intercourse with
+such persons. Specific knowledge of God cannot be opened
+up in them by any words, unless these words have first got
+their meaning by being associated with human beings who
+bear traces that they can appreciate of His ineffable perfections.
+To liken God's love to the mother's love, brings
+home a conception of it to children, for <i><ins title="Transcriber's Note: original reads 'her's'">hers</ins></i> they realize every
+day.</p>
+
+<p>The connecting link between the nursery and Kindergarten
+is the First Gift of Fr&#339;bel's series, being used in both.
+The nursery use will have taught the names of the six
+colors, red, orange, yellow, green, blue and purple, and made
+it a favorite play thing. It is all the better if the child has<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_45" id="Page_45">[45]</a></span>
+had no other playthings prepared for him. He has doubtless
+used the chairs, footstools, and whatever else he could
+lay his hands on, to embody his childish fancies; and it is
+to be hoped he has been allowed to play out of doors with
+the earth, and has made mud pies to his heart's content&mdash;not
+tormented with any sense of the&mdash;at his age&mdash;artificial
+duty of keeping his clothes clean. That duty is to be reserved
+for the Kindergarten age, and will come duly, by
+proper development of the mental powers.</p>
+
+<p>In the Kindergarten, the ball-plays are to become more skillful,
+and the teacher must see that the child learns to throw
+the ball so that it may bound back into his own hands; so
+that it may bound into the hands of another who is in such
+position as to catch its reflex motion. The children must
+learn to toss it up and catch it again themselves. When
+standing in two rows they can throw it back and forwards
+to each other. When standing in a circle, the balls may be
+made to circulate with rapidity, passing from hand to hand,
+the children singing the accompanying song.</p>
+
+<p>"Who'll buy my eggs?" is a good play to exercise them
+in counting. And all these movement plays with the ball
+are admirable for exercising the body, giving it agility,
+grace of movement, precision of eye and touch. These
+things will accrue all the more surely if it is kept play, and
+no constraining sense of duty is called on. As most of
+these plays are not solitary, they become the occasion for
+children's learning to adjust themselves to each other, and
+the teacher must watch that hilarity do not become violence
+or rudeness to each other, but furtherance of one another's
+fun; and occasionally, in enforcing this harmony, a child must
+be removed from the play, and made to stand in a corner
+alone, or even outside the room, till the desire of rejoining
+his companions shall quicken him to be sufficiently considerate
+of them to make pleasant play possible. All children
+in playing together learn justice and social graces, more or<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_46" id="Page_46">[46]</a></span>
+less, because they find that without fair play their sport is
+spoilt; but this play must be supervised by the Kindergartner,
+in order that there may not be injustice, selfishness
+and quarreling. A Kindergartner, who is not a martinet,
+and who is herself a good play-fellow, will magnetize the
+children, and inspire such general good will that unpleasantness
+will be foreclosed in a great measure; but a company
+of children are generally of such variety of temperament
+and different degrees of bodily strength, have so often come
+from such inadequate nursery life, that the regulating
+Kindergartner has a good deal to do to prevent discords and
+secure their kindness to each other, and the reasonable little
+self-sacrifices of common courtesy. But she will find a word
+is often enough; the question, Is that right? Would you
+like to have any one else do so? It is sometimes necessary
+to bring all the play to a full stop, in order to bring the
+common conscience to pronounce upon the fairness of what
+some one is doing. I would suggest that the question be
+asked not of the class, but of the individual culprit, whether
+what is being done wrong, is right or wrong? The child,
+with the eyes of the class upon him, will generally be eager
+to confess and reform, because the moral sense is quite as
+strong as self-love, and especially when re-inforced by the
+presence of others. It is not worth while to make too much
+of little faults, and the first indication of turning to the right
+must be accepted; the child is grateful for being believed in
+and trusted, and the wrong doing is a superficial thing; the
+moral sentiment is the substantial being of the child.</p>
+
+<p>Of all the materials used in Kindergarten, the colored balls
+are most purely <i>playthings</i>; and there are none of the plays
+so liable to be riotous as the ball plays. There is the greatest
+difficulty in keeping children from being <i>too</i> noisy, and
+it is not wise to make too much of a point of it. The ball
+seems a thing of life. It is very difficult for them to get
+good command of it. It excites them to run after it; and<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_47" id="Page_47">[47]</a></span>
+shouts and laughter are irrepressible. But there are reasonable
+limits. The Kindergartner, in conversation before
+hand, should make them see that they may get too
+noisy, and tire each other, and she will easily induce them
+to agree to stop short when she shall ring the bell, and be
+willing to stand still while she counts twenty-five, or watches
+the second hand of her watch go around a quarter, a half, or
+a whole minute, as may be agreed upon. This can be made
+a part of the play, and to pause and be perfectly still in this
+way, will give them some conception of the length of a minute,
+and teach self-command, as well as make a pleasant
+variety.</p>
+
+<p>The ball plays should always be accompanied and alternated,
+in the Kindergarten, with conversations upon the
+ball, naming the colors, telling which are primary, which
+secondary, and illustrating the difference by giving them
+pieces of glass of pure carmine, blue and yellow, and letting
+them put two upon each other, and hold them towards the
+window, and so realize the combinations of the secondary
+colors. Ask them, afterwards, to tell what colors make
+orange, or purple, or green; and what color connects the
+orange and green; or the purple and orange, or the green
+and purple.</p>
+
+<p>One of the other exercises, on the day of using the First
+Gift may be sewing with the colored threads on the cards;
+and the colors may be arranged so as to illustrate the connections,
+&amp;c., just learned. The use of the First Gift need
+only be once a week. It will then be a fresh pleasure every
+time during the whole of the Kindergarten course, even if
+it should last three years. After the children have become
+perfectly familiar with the primary and secondary colors,
+their combinations and connections, the lessons on colors
+may be varied, by telling them that tints of the primary
+colors and of the secondary colors, are made by adding
+white to them; and shades of them, (which will, of course,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_48" id="Page_48">[48]</a></span>
+be darker,) by adding black to them. This may be illustrated
+by flowers, as may various combinations of colors. A
+very little child, whom it was hard to train even to the hilarious
+and gay plays, and whose attention could not easily
+be fixed, surprised a teacher one day by his aptitude in detecting
+what color had been mixed with red to make a very
+glorious pink in a phlox. This child liked to sew, but was very
+impatient of putting his needle into any special holes. It
+proved to be the pleasure of handling the colored yarns,
+and he was always eager to change them and form new combinations.
+It may not be irrelevant to say here, in regard
+to ball playing, from which I have digressed to colors, that
+the ball is the last plaything of men as well as the first with
+children.</p>
+
+<p>The object teaching upon the ball is strictly inexhaustible.
+Children learn practically, by means of it, the laws of
+motion. Beware of any strictly scientific teaching of these
+laws <i>in terms</i>. You may make children familiar with the
+phenomena of the laws of incidence and reflection, by simply
+telling them that if they strike the ball straight against the
+wall opposite, it will bound straight back to them, and then
+ask them whether it returns to them when they strike it in
+a slanting direction. By and by this knowledge can be
+used to give meaning to a scientific expression. It is a first
+principle that the object, motion, or action, should precede
+the <i>word</i> that names them. This is Fr&#339;bel's uniform
+method, and the reason is, that when the scientific study
+does come, it shall be substantial mental life, and not mere
+superficial talk. It is the laws of <i>things</i> that are the laws
+of <i>thought</i>; and thought must precede all attempt at logic,
+or logic will be deceptive, not reasonable. Most erroneous
+speculation has its roots in mistakes about words, which it is
+fatal to divorce from what they express of nature, or to use
+without taking in their full meaning.</p>
+
+<p>In the easy mood of mind that attends the lively play of<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_49" id="Page_49">[49]</a></span>
+childhood, impressions are made clearly; and it should be
+the care of the educator to have all the child's notions associated
+with significant words, as can only be done by his becoming
+their companion in the play, and talking about it,
+as children always incline to do. It is half the pleasure of
+their play, to represent it in words, as they are playing. In
+the nursery, the mothers play with the child, and all her
+dealings with it, are expressed in words that are important
+lessons in language; and together with language, we give
+a lesson in manners, by first trotting a child gently, and then
+jouncingly, to the words, "This is the way the gentle folks
+go, this is the way the gentle folks go; and this is the way
+the country folks go, this is the way the country folks go&mdash;bouncing
+and jouncing and jumping so." To describe what
+they are doing in little rhymes when playing ball, makes it
+a mental as well as physical play of faculty, and Fr&#339;bel
+published a hundred little rhymes, and the music for as
+many ball plays.</p>
+
+<p>It is not an unimportant lesson for children to learn, that
+the same things seem different in different circumstances.
+The fact that white light is composed of different colored
+rays can be illustrated by giving the children prisms to
+hold up in the sunshine; and by calling their attention to
+the splendid colors of the sky at sunset and sunrise, when
+the clouds act as prisms, and to the rainbow. Children of
+the Kindergarten age, will be so much engaged with the
+beautiful phenomenon, they will not be likely to ask questions
+as to how the light is separated by the prism and
+clouds; they will rest in the fact. But if, by chance, analytic
+reflection has supervened, and they do, then a large
+ball on which all the six colors are arranged in lines meridian-wise,
+to which a string is attached at one pole, or both poles,
+can be given them, and they be told to whirl it very swiftly.
+This will present the phenomenon of the merging of the colors
+to the eye by motion, so that the ball looks whitish<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_50" id="Page_50">[50]</a></span>
+from which you can proceed to speak of light as being composed
+of multitudinous little balls, of the colors of the rainbow,
+in motion, and so looking white.</p>
+
+<p>If some uncommon little investigator should persist to
+ask why things seem to be other than they are, he must be
+plainly told, that the reason is in something about his eyes,
+which he cannot understand now, but will learn by and by,
+when he goes to school and learns <i>optics</i>.</p>
+
+<p>Children are only to be <i>entertained</i> in the Kindergarten,
+with the facts of nature that develop the organs of perception,
+but a skillful teacher who reads Tyndall's charming
+books and the photographic journals, may bring into the
+later years of the Kindergarten period many pretty phenomena
+of light and colors, which shall increase the stock
+of facts, on which the scientific mind, when it shall be developed,
+may work, or which the future painter may make
+use of in his art.</p>
+
+<p>When Allston painted his great picture of Uriel, whose
+background was the sun, he thought out carefully the means
+of producing the dazzling effect, and drew lines of all the
+rainbow colors in their order, side by side, after having put
+on his canvass a ground of the three primary colors mixed.
+When the picture was first exhibited at Somerset House,
+the effect was dazzling, and it was bought at once by Lord
+Egremont, in a transport of delight; and for twice the sum
+the artist put upon it, that is, six hundred guineas. I do
+not know whether time may not have dimmed its brilliancy,
+since paint is of the earth, earthy; but to paint the sun
+at high noon, and have it a success, even for a short time,
+is a great feat; and art, in this instance, took counsel of
+science deliberately, according to the artist's confession.
+But perfect sensuous impressions of color and its <ins title="Transcriber's Note: original reads 'combinanations'">combinations</ins>,
+were the basis of both the science and the art.</p>
+
+<p>This lecture is getting too long, and I will close by saying,
+that the First Gift has, for its most important office, to <ins title="Transcriber's Note: original reads 'develope'">develop</ins><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_51" id="Page_51">[51]</a></span>
+the organ of sight, which grows by seeing. Colors
+arouse <i>intentional</i> seeing by the delightful impression they
+make. I believe that <i>color-blindness</i>, (which our army examinations
+have proved to be as common as <i>want of ear for
+music</i>,) may be cured by intentional exercise of the organ
+of sight in a systematic way; just as <i>ear for music</i> may be
+developed in those who are not born with it. Lowell Mason
+proved, by years of experiment in the public schools, that
+the musical ear may be formed, in all cases, by beginning
+gently with little children, giving graduated exercises, so
+agreeable to them as to arouse their will to <i>try to hear</i>, in
+order to reproduce.</p>
+
+<p>That you may receive a sufficiently strong impression of
+the fact, that the organs of perception actually grow by exercise
+<i>with intention</i>, I will relate to you a fact that came
+under my own observation.</p>
+
+<p>A young friend of mine became a pupil of Mr. Agassiz,
+who gave him, among his first exercises, two fish scales to
+look at through a very powerful microscope, asking him to
+find out and tell all their differences. At first they appeared
+exactly alike, but on peering through the microscope, all
+the time that he dared to use his eyes, for a month, he found
+them full of differences; and he afterwards said, that "it
+was the best month's work he ever did, to form <i>the scientific
+eye</i> which could detect differences ever after, <i>at a glance</i>,"
+and proved to him an invaluable talent, and gave him exceptional
+authority with scientists.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_53" id="Page_53">[53]</a></span></p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2>LECTURE III.</h2>
+
+<div class='chaptertitle'>DISCIPLINE.<br /><br /></div>
+
+
+<div class='unindent'><span class="smcap">Since</span> the kindergartner is to receive the child from the
+nursery, and half of the work in the kindergarten is what
+ought to have been done in the nursery, I will give another
+lecture upon what Fr&#339;bel thought the nursery ought to do for
+religious nurture; since, if it has not been done in the nursery,
+it must be done in the kindergarten.</div>
+
+<p>We have seen that the soul takes possession of the organs
+of sense gradually, by tasting, hearing, seeing, smelling, and
+touching that which is agreeable; and that the continuous
+exercise of the organs develops them up to a certain though
+indefinite limit to finer susceptibility of impression. We
+have seen that by exercising the limbs, the soul takes possession
+of them in particular and in general. Thus the nursery
+plays, improvised instinctively by all mothers, Fr&#339;bel
+has enlarged, describing in his <i>Mother's Book</i> various duplicate
+movements of the limbs, especially of the hands, that,
+with the accompanying songs, have for their end, besides
+physical health, to make the mind discriminate various parts
+of the body and know their several forms and functions.
+This is the beginning of human education.</p>
+
+<p>"Patty-cake" teaches a child that he has hands and fingers;
+"This little pig goes to market, this one stays at
+home," that he has toes. It is the child's own body that
+first furnishes the objects of his attention to be associated
+with words. From the beginning it is the instinct of the
+maternal nurse to talk to the child, which attracts him to
+observe the organs of speech; and this prompts the sympathetic<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_54" id="Page_54">[54]</a></span>
+use of his own organs. Speech is a function distinctively
+human, which, beginning in the nursery, is carried on carefully
+in the kindergarten, creating the sphere of the intellectual
+life; for words support the operation of thinking.</p>
+
+<p>From all that I said of the <i>modus operandi</i> of the child's
+taking possession of his body in the nursery period, you see
+that childish action is involved in the mother's action. It is
+<i>her</i> wisdom, such as it may be, which must be the guide of
+the child's will, as it is brought gradually out of the blindness
+of ignorance; and it is she, not the child, who is responsible
+for the perfection of this part of the child's life.</p>
+
+<p>And is not this, on the whole, the common sense of mankind?
+Does any sane person hold a baby, up to three years
+old, and often, indeed, much later, responsible for the state
+of its temper, or for the rightfulness of its action?</p>
+
+<p>Nevertheless, the child is a moral person all this time, and
+it is of the last importance to his subsequent moral life
+whether or not his temper has been kept sweet, and his action
+according to law, or discordant. Discordant action
+must have a bad reactionary effect upon the temper, and
+interrupt or retard the growth of the several organs of sense
+and of motion. Hence the mother or nurse must not neglect
+to use her power wisely as well as gently to prevent these
+evils, by duplicate movements that are rhythmic, and calculated
+to bring about some end that the child's mind may
+easily grasp.</p>
+
+<p>It is instinctive with every one, as soon as he begins to
+play with a child, whether it be reasonable or not, to talk to
+it about its being good or bad, although a little child cannot be
+good or bad, but only orderly or disorderly; and there is no
+little danger to his moral and spiritual future in anticipating
+by our words the workings of his conscience before it has
+the conditions for its development. One of these conditions
+is such a sense of individuality as enables the child to say
+"I," with which it presently combines such perception of<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_55" id="Page_55">[55]</a></span>
+relationship to others as will say, "I ought,"&mdash;a phrase that
+occurs in all languages, and means something very different
+from "I will." It is of the greatest importance to keep this
+distinction in mind, for an imposed or artificial conscience
+almost certainly forecloses the natural or inspired conscience,&mdash;a
+truth largely illustrated by the history both of families
+and of nations, from which we learn that periods of corruption
+and wild license invariably follow periods of extreme
+restraint and asceticism. And all conscientious action and
+moral judgment in children also presupposes <i>thinking</i>, which
+is a process that does not begin until after much repetition of
+impressions, being a reflective act, which associates impressions
+with specific things and actions (as the etymology of
+the word suggests). Mere reception of impressions is passive;
+but to compare impressions of difference or similarity
+(which individualizes <i>things</i>) is <i>active</i>. Therefore thinking
+and putting thoughts into words includes comparison and
+inference, and really <i>produces</i> the human understanding, which
+we do not bring into the world with us, as we do our heart
+and will. Before there is a possibility of conscience or any
+moral judgment properly so called, the child's affections (or
+feeling of relation with other persons) must be cultivated by
+the mother's genial care, directing mental activity towards
+fellow-beings, instead of leaving the heart to turn back and
+stagnate upon self. The more impressible a child is, the
+more important is the mother's or kindergartner's providential
+care of his affections during this irresponsible, pre-intellectual
+period of his life.</p>
+
+<p>I think the most frightfully selfish beings I have ever
+known were endowed with great natural sensibility, which
+was left to concentrate upon self, because the claims made
+by the sensibility of others were not early enough presented
+to the imagination of their hearts. By the growth of personal
+affections, the individual intensifies the feeling of individuality,
+which first comes to him by his having taken such<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_56" id="Page_56">[56]</a></span>
+possession of his body as enabled him to run alone; and this
+growth, whether intentionally directed towards that combination
+of his soul and body, which he begins to call himself or
+"I," or directed toward others, to whom he clings at first as
+part of himself (their embrace of him being necessary to his
+comfort), is cherished by the duplicate action of the mother.
+She moulds his heart in her heart, as she has moulded his
+bodily activity by her care and cheering sympathy, when
+helping out the power of his limbs in walking and manipulation.
+She half creates the child's generous and devout affections,
+if she is herself faithful to their proper objects, starting
+him on the way of a brotherly humanity and a filial adoration
+of the common Father, long before the understanding has
+completely discerned the objects of these human and divine
+affections, which must be blended in order to continue vital
+and pure. But the moral and religious is the most delicate
+region of the child's life, the <i>holy of holies</i>, into which "fools
+incontinently rush, though angels fear to tread." She can
+only be the mother of the soul as well as of the body of her
+child, on condition of being herself rich in love of others and
+in piety to God.</p>
+
+<p>Fr&#339;bel suggests this in the introductory poems of <i>Die
+Mutter Spiele und Kose Lieder</i>. The first five of these are
+the mother's communings with herself upon the emotions that
+arise in her heart, as she nurses her baby in her arms, and
+realizes that to her and her husband has been sent a living
+witness of the "very present God," who is the author of
+their being, and has united them by a love that makes that
+being a blessing to themselves, which they are bound to extend
+beyond themselves. The rhymed introduction of the
+several little child-songs that follow are suggestions to her of
+the meaning of her instincts, and of the bearing on the
+development of the child's heart and mind of the little gymnastics
+described. And just as she could not be the educator
+of her child into his individual body if she were a paralytic<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_57" id="Page_57">[57]</a></span>
+herself, so, if she be not affectionate and generous herself,
+she cannot educate him into the social body of which he is a
+living member; nor unless she loves God herself, can she
+inspire him to recognize the Parental Spirit of whom we are
+(as heathen poet and Christian apostle alike aver) the veritable
+children. "We are the offspring of God," said St.
+Paul, quoting from the Greek poet Aratus in the Sermon on
+Mars' Hill, which is a model of all reformatory instruction,
+whether religious or secular. I think all true instruction,
+proceeding from the known to the unknown, is both secular
+and religious, on the principle that to those who have the
+seed, can be given the increase.</p>
+
+<p>In the first of these mother-songs of Fr&#339;bel, the mother
+finds that the baby she holds in her arms, though another
+than herself, is in a certain sense one with herself; thus is
+unveiled (revealed) to her the Divine Fountain of Being, the
+Person of Persons, from whom she and her little one have
+severally come; and her feelings of wonder and gratitude
+awaken the sense of responsibility to make her child grow
+conscious as she is of the common Father,&mdash;and thankful
+as she is for life in such close relation with herself,&mdash;who
+is the first form in which God reveals Himself to the child;
+for when he first looks away from his body so far as to perceive
+that his mother is another than himself, she fills the
+whole sphere of his perception!</p>
+
+<p>Rousseau affirms that every child, if left to its own natural
+growth, would think its mother was its creator. And William
+Godwin in his <i>Enquirer</i> (or some volume of his
+writings) has quite an eloquent paper, setting forth that the
+natural religion of a child is to worship its earthly parents.
+I have made some observations and had a personal experience
+which makes me doubt this, though I do not doubt that
+the characteristics of parents nearly always determine the
+character of the child's religion. But the question of who is
+his own creator does not naturally come up to a child, even<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_58" id="Page_58">[58]</a></span>
+when he begins to ask who made the things about him.
+His own consciousness is of "being increate," and when
+brought to know that his body grows old and must die, the
+fear that this causes is because he imaginatively associates
+his undying self, which is a "presence not to be put by" with
+the perishing body. What the soul, by virtue of its inherent
+immortality, fears and hates, is loneliness, absolute isolation!
+And when we think of the body, which we identify with ourselves
+from the moment that we have taken it up and walked
+by its instrumentality, as put away alone in the ground, the
+undying person that the soul is, shudders, and can only be
+comforted by learning to conceive itself wholly detached from
+the decay, and housed within the bosom of Him who is the
+Alpha and Omega of our life; of Him whom we have learnt
+to know with the spirit and understanding also, by the process
+of living in human relations. For we know ourselves
+as individuals first by means of the body, and we know
+ourselves as a component part of the social whole of humanity
+by means of genial intercourse with our kindred, it being
+revealed to us that we are substantially social, as well as
+distinctly individual, by our instinctive horror of separation
+from them. Later in life only, there are pleasures of solitude
+for those few who by imaginative act make nature
+populous with personifications, and consequently the refracting
+atmosphere of the Divine Personality. The baby that
+finds itself alone cries for and is comforted by the embrace
+which restores the sense of union with its mother. Seldom
+is a baby in such a wretched state of feeling that a tender
+embrace and kiss will not completely comfort it.</p>
+
+<p>What a proof it is that God is <i>Love</i>, that the very embrace
+that symbolizes to the baby's heart the sense of human companionship,
+gives its mind that impression of objective
+nature which is the first momentum of the human understanding!
+The gentle pressure of one sensitive body upon
+another produces counter-pressure, a resistance that is positively<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_59" id="Page_59">[59]</a></span>
+pleasurable, whereby the impenetrability of matter
+becomes a delightful instead of a frightful revelation to the
+mind of the Immutable Reality of the loving Creator, as the
+complement of our own changeful individuality! It is
+the first syllable of that word (or speech of God) made
+intelligible by the various qualities and forms of matter, the
+Truth which He is forever addressing to man. How gracious
+it is, that He should so inextricably mingle the first impression
+of matter with that perception of the <i>otherness</i> of
+person that makes Love possible! Thus love and the sense
+of individuality are correlative creations and twin births.
+Later, the sense of individuality becomes a positive self-love
+(which in its healthy degree is innocent), and the perception
+of <i>otherness of person</i>, with whom it is delightful to be in
+free union, becomes the basis of the self-forgetting generosity
+of mankind. These opposite principles are at first
+mere and perhaps equal sources of satisfaction, having no
+moral character whatever. Afterwards, they become respectively
+hard selfishness or a weak and base servility, or they
+may rise into a majestic self-respect, and that sublimest
+love which is to make the human race, as a whole, the <i>image
+of God</i>, not only king over material nature, but one with the
+perfect Son of Man, also Son of God, who, with a humility and
+dignity equally venerable, is able to say, "I and my Father
+are One!"</p>
+
+<p>But you will say that I am getting quite beyond the
+nursery.</p>
+
+<p>In the earlier years, the growth of the religious life is
+merely germinal. And as it is involved within the mothers
+at the beginning, it must be cherished <i>sympathetically</i> by her
+removing all occasion for self-care and self-defence, and
+thus prevent the sense of individuality from degenerating
+through fear into inordinate self-will and self-love. The
+child should be treated with unvarying tenderness and consideration,
+without having his senses pampered into morbid<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_60" id="Page_60">[60]</a></span>
+excess by over-indulgence, but above all things, never wounding
+nor frightening his heart, nor repressing the simple and
+healthy expression of his feelings and thoughts. For enforced
+repression tends to produce ugly temper, baseness, or
+subtlety, according to the child's temperament, which is
+also in imperfect social harmony, if not absolutely quarrelsome.
+It must be her work, therefore, not only to complete
+the child's organic education, but to take him, as it were,
+into her own affectionate spirit by using the methods which
+Fr&#339;bel has suggested to the mother for the discipline of her
+infants. (I use this word <i>discipline</i> in its true sense of
+teaching; not in the sense of <i>punishment</i>. That the word
+<i>discipline</i> should ever have come to mean punishment is a
+severe commentary on the ideas and modes of education
+that have hitherto prevailed in Christendom.)</p>
+
+<p>The kindergartner, as well as the mother, must be
+thoroughly grounded in the faith that God has done His
+part in the original endowment of children; and that He is
+truly present with her, helping her to remedy the effects of
+the mother's shortcomings. She will certainly succeed in her
+work if she studies His laws with an earnest purpose to
+carry them out, first in the government of herself, and then
+in leading the children to self-government. Wordsworth in
+his <i>Ode to Duty</i>, sings:&mdash;</p>
+
+<div class='poem'>
+"There are who ask not if Thine eye<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 0.5em;">Be on them, who, in love and truth,</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 0.5em;">Where no misgiving is, rely</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 0.5em;">Upon the genial sense of youth.</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 0.5em;"><i>Glad hearts!</i> without reproach or blot,</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 0.5em;">Who do Thy work, and know it not!</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 0.5em;">And blest are they who in the main</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 0.5em;">This happy faith still entertain,</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 0.5em;">Live in the spirit of this creed,</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 0.5em;">Yet find another strength according to their <i>need</i>.</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 0.5em;">May joy be theirs while life shall last,</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 0.5em;">And <i>Thou</i>, if they should totter, teach them to stand fast."</span><br />
+</div>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_61" id="Page_61">[61]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>Little children certainly, of all persons, are oftenest found
+in this condition when</p>
+
+<div class='poem'>
+"Love is an unerring light,<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 0.5em;">And joy its own security."</span><br />
+</div>
+
+<p>And that "other strength," which must come by reflection
+on and study of the unfolding nature of the child in the felt
+presence of the Inspirer of Duty, will certainly be needed by
+the kindergartner who will receive children not always from
+the hands of natural and faithful mothers, but of uncultured
+servant-maids. (It is but justice to the latter to say that
+there are occasionally found among the Irish nurses those
+who could teach many mothers. The Irish nature is not
+altogether bad material for the production of good motherly
+nurses; but it must not be left <i>wild</i>; it needs a great deal
+of discipline; and I hope the time may come when schools
+for the education of children's nurses, such as Fr&#339;bel
+established in Hamburg, which still exist, may be founded
+in all our cities.) Though I think the education of <i>mothers</i> is
+still more important and the first thing to aim at, as it would
+render nursery maids comparatively unnecessary. It is so short
+a period of a mother's life when she <i>has</i> young children, and
+the book of nature which these few years open to her <i>is so
+rich</i>, that, for her own being's sake as well as for the
+children's, it seems to me a terrible loss for her to delegate
+her maternal cares to others during the nursery period. On
+the other hand, when the age for the kindergarten comes,
+the mother needs to be relieved of the increasing care; and
+children, in their turn, need other influences than can be had
+in a family, especially in families where parents have work
+to do outside of their homes. It is, indeed, "a consummation
+devoutly to be wished," that the time may come when
+labor may be so organized that no mothers may be obliged to
+leave their children's souls uncared for in order to get the
+wherewithal to sustain their bodies<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_62" id="Page_62">[62]</a></span>.</p>
+
+<p>The deepest reason why a child should be taken care of in
+its earliest infancy <i>by its mother</i> rather than by a person
+comparatively uninterested in its personality, is this, that
+<i>only</i> a mother can respect a child's personality sufficiently.
+All others regard the child for its manifested qualities; but
+with the mother, it is the child itself that she loves, quite
+irrespective of any qualities that he manifests. Phenomenally,
+a little child is a complex of self-assertion and
+generosity (or a desire for union with its kind); a desire or
+a feeling of finiteness in strange contrast with that instinct
+to "have dominion" which gives vitality to self-assertion.
+We call this primal desire for union his heart, and this
+primal self-assertion his will. The will expresses itself in
+efforts to change its environments, putting what is at rest in
+motion, knocking down, tearing up, because it does not yet
+know how to put in order, or to change things artistically.
+The child acts without external motive,&mdash;doing things
+merely because it <i>can</i>. Even after a child is old enough to
+think and talk, and has done some act for which you see no
+reason or motive, when you ask him why he did it, he not
+unfrequently will say, "<i>because</i>." I remember when I was
+a child of six or seven, that I would give this answer with a
+perfect sense of satisfaction that it was <i>an answer</i>; and
+when it would sometimes be said, "<i>because</i> is no reason,"
+or "<i>because</i> is an old woman's reason," I recollect my
+feeling of surprise. I seemed to myself to have given the
+most substantial reason. The word meant to me a great
+deal. And I now think I was truly philosophical in this, for
+I affirmed the primal truth, that a self-determining person in
+spontaneous action, if only of some instinct, is a first <i>cause</i><a name="FNanchor_4_4" id="FNanchor_4_4"></a><a href="#Footnote_4_4" class="fnanchor">[4]</a>&mdash;an
+<i>absolute cause</i>&mdash;to the extent of consciousness. It was
+an intuition.</p>
+
+<p>Now to retain the sense of this causal personality is at the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_63" id="Page_63">[63]</a></span>
+root of all stability of character, all nobleness of manifestation.
+But self-assertion in an ignorant child is more apt
+than otherwise to be disorderly, discordant, and perhaps
+destructive; it therefore provokes resistance in the unthinking,
+but challenges the thoughtful to give guidance. It is of
+life-and-death importance to the child whether this force
+shall meet mere hard resistance, which shall utterly crush it
+or increase it by reaction, or whether it shall meet with a
+genial sympathetic guidance to which it will voluntarily and
+gladly surrender itself. A mother <i>loves</i> this little ignorant
+force of self-will and wants it to have free course. She cannot
+help desiring to have her child have its own way. She
+does not want it to be opposed by others. She will, as far
+as possible, further or humor it, as we say. And when she
+finds it necessary to control it, she will try to do it by
+awakening the child's affectionateness, and so captivating its
+fancy as to make it feel it is doing as it likes, though it be
+something different from what it was impelled to do at first;
+in short, she inspires him to will the better thing, and so
+educates the blind instinct of self-assertion into a harmonizing
+and beneficent power, and preserves the child's dignity
+and nobleness instead of crushing its personality. We hear
+of "breaking the child's will." A child's will should never be
+broken, but opened up into harmony with God's will through
+a lower harmony with the will of its loving and loved
+mother or kindergartner. But a mother will be more sure
+than any one else to bring about this result, because she
+acts from an impulse of the heart deeper than all thought,
+while the kindergartner by thought must cultivate in herself
+the impulse.</p>
+
+<p>There are those who deprecate motherly indulgence as if
+it were the greatest evil. Doubtless it will become a great
+evil if it be not properly subordinated to the wisdom which
+appreciates the divinity of order, or if it is alternated with
+capricious severities; in short, if the indulgence proceeds<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_64" id="Page_64">[64]</a></span>
+from indolence or self-love instead of love of the child.
+The indulgence that really comes from the last is a recognition
+(unconscious, it may be) of the divine possibilities of
+the child,&mdash;a spark of the divine creativeness! Of the two
+evils, extreme indulgence is not so deadly a mistake as extreme
+severity. Indulged children return from afar. The
+prodigal of the Gospel story may have been over-indulged,
+perhaps, in being allowed to take his portion of goods, and
+go off by himself, out of the reach of his father's counsel
+and authority, and left to his own uneducated self-will. But
+the sinner, when he <i>came to himself</i> (observe that expression),
+recognized the self-forgetting, fatherly love in that very
+indulgence; and it was the immeasurableness of that love
+that revived his self-respect and hope, and saved him; for
+the hope was not disappointed. Love giveth, "upbraiding
+not."</p>
+
+<p>The one fatal thing is to wound the child's heart. It is
+better to give up the point of controlling its will to righteousness
+for the moment, than to do that; and a parent is the
+least likely of all persons to wound his child's heart.</p>
+
+<p>When nothing can be done without wounding, the parent
+who trusts his own heart will leave the rebel to the consequences
+which God holds in his gracious hands for the final
+salvation of every one of his children.</p>
+
+<p>Besides, to <i>choose</i> to give up one's own will is the only
+complete and salutary giving up, enabling the soul to mount
+up spiritually like the eagle and renew its strength. There
+are families in which the act of disobedience is absolutely
+unknown, in earlier or in later life; where there is no
+necessity for uttered commands, because expressed wishes
+are enough. The most perfect, if not the only real,
+obedience I have ever seen, has been that of strong men to
+an unexacting, tender mother.</p>
+
+<p>This is a subject on which I feel very strongly, for it
+seems to me that the greatest social disorders that exist in<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_65" id="Page_65">[65]</a></span>
+the nations among which the "order that reigns in Warsaw"<a name="FNanchor_5_5" id="FNanchor_5_5"></a><a href="#Footnote_5_5" class="fnanchor">[5]</a>
+is foremost, is the consequence of <i>unreasoning obedience</i> to
+wills <i>not</i> infinitely wise and good. The worth and duty of
+obedience is precisely in ratio with the validity of the command;
+and a command is valid only so far as it is inspired by
+a disinterested and proper respect for the being who is commanded.
+Children should only obey their parents, <i>in the
+Lord</i>; and parents should never "provoke their children to
+wrath."</p>
+
+<p>I may be told that the important element of self-assertion
+(which gives strength to character) may be weakened by
+being always disarmed, and killed by the mother's sympathy;
+and that to provoke it into conscious strength, direct
+antagonism is necessary. But the best antagonism is that
+quiet, inevitable one, that comes from the inexorableness of
+material nature which the child must needs feel, the more
+disorderly he is, but which he sees is insensate and impersonal;
+whose antagonism, therefore, does not grieve his
+heart, and disappoint his hope as human oppression does,
+making him sad or bitter, but stimulates his mind to conquer
+and subdue it, or develops a dignified patience. The
+appointed domain for kingly man is not the brotherhood,
+but material nature; and gradually he is to learn that
+nature's inexorable laws are the expression of a Supreme
+Personality as benignant as it is august, who takes up His
+human child into Himself, not without his concurring will;
+for mankind mounts on the nature which he gradually subdues
+into a stepping-stone, by knowledge, and the use of it.
+The mother must remember that though the first, she is not
+the only instrumentality by which the Divine Providence
+works. The time comes when she is compelled to deliver
+her cherished darling up to other influences; when the child
+bursts out of the nursery, not only self-asserting and<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_66" id="Page_66">[66]</a></span>
+affectionate, but putting forth energies, and seeking satisfaction
+of sensibilities that cannot be met within that narrow
+precinct.</p>
+
+<p>The kindergarten must, then, succeed by complementing
+the nursery; and the child begin to take his place in the
+company of his equals, to learn his place in their companionship,
+and still later to learn wider social relations and their
+involved duties. No nursery, therefore, not even a perfect
+one, can supersede the necessity of a kindergarten, where
+children shall come into cognizance of the moral laws which
+are to restrain and guide their self-assertion, and quicken
+and enlarge their social affections, leading them to self-denials
+for the sake of opportunities for themselves of useful
+and creative art, beneficence, and heroism.</p>
+
+<p>The time for transition from the nursery to the kindergarten
+is definitely indicated by two facts. Firstly, Divine
+Providence has so arranged general family events that every
+mother must give up having the child live, as it were, entirely
+within <i>her</i> life, because she has other children to nurse, or
+other social duties to do. And, secondly, every child's
+growth in bodily strength and conscious individuality makes
+him too strong a force of will for so narrow a scope of relation
+as is afforded by one family. While hitherto, to be outside
+of the single family influence was an evil, it would now
+be an evil to confine the child entirely to it, narrowing his
+heart and mind, and deforming his character. He needs to
+be brought into relation with equals who have other personal
+characteristics, other relations with nature and the human
+race than his own family. The instinct of the growing child, at
+this period, to get out of doors to play with other children, is
+unmistakable. To check it vexes or depresses him. In getting
+possession, first of his body, and then of his personal
+and social consciousness, he has become an object to himself,
+and feels himself a power among other powers affecting each
+other. But he is still more or less consciously a prisoner (if<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_67" id="Page_67">[67]</a></span>
+not a slave) of nature, by reason of his ignorance of the
+laws of the universe,&mdash;<i>that body</i> outside of his own body,&mdash;which
+he is destined, in alliance with others, to take possession
+of, by action <i>upon</i> and <i>within</i> it, giving him knowledge
+of it, and enabling him to make it into instrumentality for
+the expression and embodiment of great ideas and a noble
+will.</p>
+
+<p>All government worthy of the name begins in self-government,
+a free subordination of the individual in order to form
+the social whole. Subordination is something higher than
+subjection. We subject mere animals; intelligent moral
+agents must be subordinated. It is still the mother's part
+rather to inspire; the kindergartner's part is to subordinate,
+not to check childish, spontaneous talk, though, of course, it
+must be regulated so far as not to let the children interrupt
+each other <i>impolitely</i>, and to keep it to some main subject.
+Some kindergartners begin the session by asking each in turn
+what is interesting to him. Mrs. Kraus-Boelte generally
+receives each one as he or she comes in. They go to her for
+the morning kiss, and have something to say, in which she
+expresses due sympathy, and later recurs to and connects
+with what others say, and thus produces general conversation.
+Mrs. Van Kirk is very happy in her introductory conversations.</p>
+
+<p>In playing with the gifts, the teacher dictates certain movements
+and arrangements, for the purpose of the children's
+getting into the habit of listening and quickly catching the
+directions given; and the children should be encouraged to
+follow <i>her words</i> in what they do, rather than to imitate
+each other. In their spontaneous work they often make
+a new symmetrical form, which is really beautiful; and then
+it is well to call on the child to direct his companions how to
+make it; for children delight in the dignity of <i>directing</i>, and
+learn to be very precise in the use of all the words expressing
+relation of all kinds,&mdash;prepositions, adjectives, and adverbs,&mdash;<i>precisely</i><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_68" id="Page_68">[68]</a></span>
+as well as nouns and verbs. Language does not
+merely transfer the outward inward, but soon begins to
+transfer the inward outward. Love, and other sentiments of
+the soul, good and bad, are named, as well as sensible objects.
+Even the instinctive search after proximate causes leads children
+to infer the substantiality of <i>wind</i> and the other invisible
+forms of matter; and the spiritual senses inherent in the
+"Me," which is the most essential of all substances, verifies
+the ideal world to children, as truly as the bodily senses verify
+the material world, and even <i>more so</i>; for children live in
+God before they <i>exist</i> out of God. The Italian philosopher
+Gioberti says that the soul is a <i>spiritual activity</i>; that is, it
+sees God as the first act of its life. God says, "<i>Be thou</i>" and
+the soul&mdash;before it is put into the sleep of nature (the deep
+sleep that came upon Adam)&mdash;looks back and says, "<i>Thou
+art</i>." We have the memory of this primeval vision, and act
+in our sense of holiness (wholeness?), right, justice, pure
+love from the uncalculating delight of loving, the ideals of
+beauty, and the sense of accountability to God and man,
+which forever haunt us, sometimes giving us pain, as <i>remorse</i>,
+whose sting is in the comparison of our outward manifested
+self with our inward sense of "being increate" (as Milton
+expresses it). It is this supernatural pre-intellectual <i>soul</i>
+which distinguishes man from the animal creation, and is
+symbolized by his form, which looks upward to the symbol
+of infinity made by the sky, with which the human being
+instinctively <i>communes</i>, and towards which the child wants
+to fly,&mdash;and delights in and loves the birds, beyond all other
+forms of animal life, because they <i>can</i> fly. Gioberti goes on,
+in his psychology, to say that when the soul, which has
+recognized its Divine Source as the first act of its life, is put
+to sleep in nature, it is gradually waked up by the individual
+forms of nature, which are so many syllables of the Divine
+Word that are echoed in human words, which describe matter
+and its evolutions; then the understanding begins, and<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_69" id="Page_69">[69]</a></span>
+(which is the point I want you to observe especially at this
+moment) the words of even a very young child soon bring to
+its understanding spiritual realities. And it is the office of
+education to see that the relations of things,&mdash;the laws of
+order among things,&mdash;the adjustment of external cause and
+effect, be <i>accurately worded</i>; and especially that the <i>spiritual</i>
+consciousness gets a happy symbolization; that is, that the
+best words are used to <i>do justice</i> to the Ideas of God and the
+sentiments of the heart of man.</p>
+
+<p>A materialistic educator (or no less a mere dogmatist in
+religion, who does not see that the logical formulas and
+abstract terms of scientific theology cannot possibly <i>wake up</i>
+the primeval vision) may do an all but infinite mischief to
+the character and heart, by the words he uses in talking to
+children; and the theologian a greater mischief than the
+materialist, because the forms and evolutions of matter are,
+as I have said, <i>syllables of the Word</i> that was in the beginning
+with God and, in a certain sense, <i>God</i>, while the
+abstractions of the human mind are the refuse of finite spirit,
+infinitely superficial, mere limitations of thought which
+become stumbling-blocks to the mind when not used as stepping-stones
+to new outlooks, or rather, inlooks. Never
+should children be talked to in the language of theological
+science, but wholly in imaginative symbolization, and the
+symbols should be chosen with great care, and we should be
+on our guard against rousing the faculty of abstraction
+which is a sleeping danger in the nature, whose premature
+development is injurious in strict proportion to ignorance
+and sensitiveness. The symbols of the spiritual should be
+human because human consciousness involves substance
+outside the physical, and, therefore, did the Word which had
+not been comprehended in its creation of "everything which
+it had made," though "without it nothing was made," take
+flesh and dwell among us, in order that we might apprehend
+the glory of God and perfection of man with our whole<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_70" id="Page_70">[70]</a></span>
+nature. That it would do so, was the insight of the Hebrew
+genius, whenever by worthy soul-action the law-giver, king,
+and whoever entered into "the liberty of prophesying" was
+raised to the height of his nature. Now a child is "on its
+being's height," "mighty prophet," "seer blest,"</p>
+
+<div class='poem'>
+"On whom those truths do rest<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 0.5em;">That we are toiling all our lives to find,"</span><br />
+</div>
+
+<div class='unindent'>and therefore a child can supply a substantial meaning to
+any name for God adequate to awaken the living echo of
+the soul that</div>
+
+<div class='poem'>
+"Cometh from afar<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 0.5em;">Trailing clouds of glory from God,"</span><br />
+</div>
+
+<div class='unindent'>whose voice sent it forth, as Gioberti says, "to suffer and
+to be for a season on earth."</div>
+
+<p>I hope you follow me in my thought, for I think I am
+looking into the child, which is the thing that ought to be
+done if one undertakes to teach it. That the child really
+knows God before God is even named to him is not a speculative
+theory with me but a fact of my experience. It is
+one of my earliest remembrances, that I was sitting in the
+lap of a young lady, whose name and countenance I have
+forgotten, who was caressing me, and calling me sweet,
+beautiful, darling, etc., when all at once she seized me into a
+closer embrace and exclaimed, rather than asked, Who made
+you?</p>
+
+<p>I remember my pleased surprise at the question, that I feel
+very sure had never been addressed to my consciousness
+before. At once a Face arose to my imagination,&mdash;only a
+Face and head,&mdash;close to me, and looking upon me with the
+most benignant smile, in which the kindness rather predominated
+over the intelligence; but it looked at me as if meaning,
+"Yes, I made you, as you know very well." I was so
+thoroughly satisfied, that I replied to the question decisively,
+"A man."<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_71" id="Page_71">[71]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>The lady said to another who sat near us, "Only think!
+this great girl does not know who made her!"</p>
+
+<p>I remember I was no less sure of my knowledge, notwithstanding
+she said this. Though it was the first time I had
+thought God and given the name "man" to the thought, it
+seemed not new to me. I had felt God before.</p>
+
+<p>I <i>was</i> a rather large girl, more than four years old, as I
+know from the fact that we were living in a certain house, to
+which we went on my fourth birthday. My next recollection
+is of going into a room of this house, where my mother
+was sitting, working at an embroidery frame that hung
+against the wall. I went up to her and said, "Mamma,
+Eliza asked me who made me, and I told her a man, and
+she said he didn't!" I stated this reply as a grievance and
+outrage.</p>
+
+<p>Since I came to the age of reflection, I have always regretted
+the conversation that followed. It was not judicious,
+and seems to me a little out of character for my
+mother, who was of strong religious sentiment and quick
+imagination, and all other conversation on religious subjects
+that I remember of hers was very good. She was rather
+thrown off her guard by my unexpected theology and lost
+her presence of mind. I was her oldest child, and she had
+waited to see some enquiry raised before speaking on the
+subject. I had seemed more stupid than I was, for I belong
+by nature rather to the reflective than perceptive class, and
+so had very little language. At this distance of time I cannot,
+of course, remember the details of the conversation, but
+I came out of it with another image of God in my mind,
+conveying not half so much of the truth as did that kind
+Face, close up to mine, and seeming to be so wholly occupied
+with His creature. The new image was of an old man,
+sitting away up on the clouds, dressed in a black silk gown
+and cocked hat, the costume of our old Puritan minister.
+He was looking down upon the earth, and spying round<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_72" id="Page_72">[72]</a></span>
+among the children to see who was doing wrong, in order to
+punish offenders by touching them with a long rod he held
+in his hand, thus exposing them to everybody's censure.
+Of course my mother said no such thing to me, but what she
+did say, by subtle associations with the words she used,
+gave me this image, which I need not say rather checked
+than promoted my spiritual advancement.</p>
+
+<p>This experience has been of value to me as a teacher
+since, for it has effectually saved me from being didactic
+and dogmatic in my religious teaching of children. The
+Socratic method is the true way of bringing into the definite
+conscious thought God's revelation of Himself to the soul.
+That image of authority and power to punish did not, I think,
+help, but rather puzzled my moral sense of which I was already
+conscious. For I remember that I used to muse very much
+in my childhood upon the mental phenomenon of feeling
+myself to be two persons. I was clearly conscious of an
+inward conversation on all occasions of a question of right
+and wrong, when a higher and lower law distinctly uttered
+themselves. The lower self often prevailed by the argument
+that the thing to be done was <i>transient</i>, I would do it
+only this <i>once</i>, and never again; and often I thus sinned
+against the very present God, which I think I might not
+have done so presumptuously, had I associated the thought
+of this strange other me with that kind face of Love Divine.
+When later in life I did learn that the remonstrating voice
+was unquestionably God, because He is the Love that I saw
+in my childish vision, the war between self-love and conscience
+ceased. But this was not till a great body of death
+had been accumulated, which I have never shuffled off
+except in moments of hope.</p>
+
+<p>But to take up the thread of my discourse again. I would
+very earnestly say that the Socratic or conversational
+method is the only way of bringing into a child's definite
+consciousness God's revelation of Himself to souls. But<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_73" id="Page_73">[73]</a></span>
+this requires a mutual understanding of words, and if we are
+careful, we may produce this in the kindergarten.</p>
+
+<p>Fr&#339;bel intimates that a general impression of there being
+an invisible Friend and Protector may be given by the
+baby's seeing the mother in the attitude of devotion, and he
+would have recognition of God called forth by her naming
+the unseen Father at moments when the child's heart is
+overflowing with joy and love, or seeking to know where
+some beautiful thing comes from. The child feels already
+at such times the presence of the Infinite Cause, the Infinite
+Source of joy and goodness, and the name of Heavenly
+Father given to this presence will not be an empty vocable.
+Using with the name of Father the word "our," with which
+the Lord's Prayer begins, suggests that He is the Father of
+all alike, and all human beings will thus be united together
+with Him in the child's imagination.<a name="FNanchor_6_6" id="FNanchor_6_6"></a><a href="#Footnote_6_6" class="fnanchor">[6]</a></p>
+
+<p>This idea of one personal but comprehensive Being, the
+centre of the social organization, is a quickening of the
+immortal personality, which has a date in time no less
+certainly than the quickening of the body, and is our sense
+of identity.<a name="FNanchor_7_7" id="FNanchor_7_7"></a><a href="#Footnote_7_7" class="fnanchor">[7]</a></p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_75" id="Page_75">[75]</a></span></p>
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2>LECTURE IV.</h2>
+
+<div class='chaptertitle'>THE KINDERGARTEN.<br /><br /></div>
+
+
+<div class='unindent'><span class="smcap">In</span> my last lecture I spoke of the ideal nursery; for only
+there, hitherto, has the divine method of education ever been
+completely carried out, the unquestionable teacher there being
+<i>the child</i>, "trailing clouds of glory from God who is our
+home"; its sweet content and inspiring smile indicating
+when its nurse is treating it aright; while all that is wrong,
+whether proceeding from mere ignorance or selfish wilfulness
+on the part of the adult, is indicated by its cries of fright
+and anger, which it behooves her to heed.</div>
+
+<p>How is it that, with the spectacle forever before our eyes
+of the mother and infant, mutually emparadised in child's
+play (that mutually educating communion of trust and love,
+by which the child is put into gradual possession of his body,
+and joyous consciousness of his individuality),&mdash;how is it, I
+say, that we find education has lost its <i>ideal</i>, and as soon as
+the child leaves the nursery for the schoolroom, an antagonism
+has begun, "with its blessedness at strife," and which
+leaves us all such scarred and bewildered creatures as we
+find ourselves to be, as soon as we come to reflect?</p>
+
+<p>But I must remember that what we have to speak of
+especially is the kindergarten, which follows hard upon the
+nursery.</p>
+
+<p>When the child's growing activities begin to require a larger
+social sphere than the nursery,&mdash;<i>i.e.</i>, at about three years
+old,&mdash;it was Fr&#339;bel's plan to gather the children of several
+families into what he called a "Child Garden," and to extend
+the nursery law of <i>cherishing</i> (which is the dealing with<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_76" id="Page_76">[76]</a></span>
+living organisms that children are), by exercising them for
+several hours of every day in rehearsing in plays, in the first
+place, all the sweet charities of life. This employs their
+physical forces, and makes them experimentally know that
+human happiness and goodness are social and generous.</p>
+
+<p>For the so-called "movement plays" are social exercises,
+gently calling out moral sentiments, as well as intellectual
+powers. They can only be beautiful and enjoyable when
+they give mutual pleasure; and this involves that mutual
+reference and kind consideration of each other which leave
+no room for selfish feeling or action. Moral education is the
+alpha and omega of a kindergarten, but it cannot be given
+by precept. To <i>do</i> the will of God,&mdash;<i>i.e.</i>, to obey the moral
+law,&mdash;"doing to others as we would have others do to us,"
+<i>even in play</i>, is the only way for children to know vitally the
+doctrine of moral life.</p>
+
+<p>Fr&#339;bel has suggested a variety of these movement plays,
+all of them conceived with the greatest care as to their intellectual
+as well as moral effect. They always have a fanciful
+aim, within the scope of the child's knowledge and affection,
+and to play them begins to develop the understanding also.</p>
+
+<p>A gentle intellectual exercise, involved in learning by rote,
+reciting, and singing the songs that direct the plays, takes
+the rudeness out and puts intelligence into that exhilaration
+of the animal spirits which healthy children crave, and prevents
+it from exhausting the body or disordering the mind;
+the joyous association of the children with each other aiding
+this effect. In the sedentary plays, which are called "occupations,"
+and in which the child is genially drawn into producing
+symmetrical effects to the eye, by making things (albeit
+only little toys) which begin their artistic life, Fr&#339;bel has
+had equal regard to the moral as to the intellectual influences.
+When the child has gone beyond the age in which he is satisfied
+with making transient forms and gathering the materials
+back into boxes, and desires to make something that will last,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_77" id="Page_77">[77]</a></span>
+a legitimate sense of property arises. He feels that what he
+has made is <i>his own</i>, for the thought and work which he
+knows that he has put into it are his own. Fr&#339;bel, therefore,
+would have him, before he begins to <i>make</i> anything, pause
+and appropriate it intentionally to some object of his love,
+reverence, or pity. This will check the otherwise rampant
+propensity to hoard, and prevent the passions of avarice,
+vanity, and jealousy from making their appearance. In our
+common school life, the pride of <i>showing off</i> their powers,
+and excelling others, is regularly cultivated in children by
+competition, as a stimulus to industry. But this is as unnecessary
+as it is deleterious. For disinterested desire to confer
+pleasure, and express gratitude and love of others, is found
+by experience to be a surer stimulus to industry than the
+baser passions, and has the additional value of cultivating
+positive sweetness and active benevolence. It is desirable,
+and really produces the greatest practical humility, for children
+to regard themselves as embryo powers of beneficence,
+learning to do the Heavenly Father's business from the beginning,
+like the child Jesus. Then may they grow "in favor
+with God and men," as they grow "in stature," and all their
+knowledge will prove a divine wisdom unto the salvation of
+others and themselves. To go into a truly ordered and well
+governed child-garden, and see all the little children busy
+making things for the Christmas tree, or for birthday and
+new year's gifts, for all the friends they know or fancy, we
+shall see sufficient proofs that love is the truest quickener of
+industry, and love-inspired industry the true sweetener of the
+disposition and temper.</p>
+
+<p>Moreover, such industry is the special desideratum to temper
+the spirit of the present age, which is so keen and energetic
+that it hurries our young men into pursuits in their
+amusements which take on the character of gambling; and
+hence gambling in business, gambling in politics, where even
+human beings, instead of being regarded as <i>brothers to be<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_78" id="Page_78">[78]</a></span>
+kept</i>, are used as dice, to be recklessly thrown in our game.
+The only preventive or cure for this passion for gambling is
+industry, and the only industry that is attractive is artistic;
+and why should not all industry become artistic, now that
+the great cosmic forces are suborned, by our advancing
+civilization, as the legitimate slaves of men, to do all the hard
+work for men? I have already set forth this view of the
+subject in the <i>Plea for Fr&#339;bel's Kindergarten as the Primary
+Art-School</i>, which I appended to Cardinal Wiseman's
+lecture on the relation of the arts of design with the arts of
+production (which I published in 1869, under the title of
+<i>The Artist and the Artisan Identified,&mdash;the Proper Object of
+American Education</i>).</p>
+
+<p>Before I leave these general remarks for more specific explanation
+of Fr&#339;bel's method of intellectual development, I
+would make one more observation. It is in the social and
+moral character of the kindergarten that Fr&#339;bel has shown
+himself so much superior to Rousseau, whose method was to
+cultivate individualities exclusively, the teacher pretending
+to know no more than the child, but taking his idiosyncrasy
+for his only guide in discovery and invention. In the first
+place, Rousseau's method has been found an impracticable
+one, for it requires a separate teacher for every child; and in
+the only instance, perhaps, in which it was ever carried
+out with perfect fidelity, that of Maria Edgeworth's eldest
+brother (we have in her memoirs of her father all the facts),
+the ultimate effect was to make a monstrosity. He was utterly
+strange, so odd and unsocial, nobody but his father, who
+educated him, could have any practicable relation with him.
+He might be said to be conscientiously unsocial, and therefore
+immoral; and, though not ungifted, he was an utter
+failure in human life. We see similar effects produced measurably,
+in all cases where the main object is to cultivate the
+individual rather than the universal characteristics of humanity.
+Fr&#339;bel was tender, and gave freedom to individualities,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_79" id="Page_79">[79]</a></span>
+but he took great care not to <i>pamper</i> them. They are the
+results of the free-will, irrefragable, and will take care of
+themselves sufficiently, if not cruelly snubbed, but tenderly
+respected.</p>
+
+<p>What is to be <i>intentionally</i> cultivated in earliest infancy,
+are the <i>general</i> affections and faculties, which relate us to
+our kind, insuring <i>common</i> sense and <i>common</i> conscience
+with a reasonable self-respect. Therefore, what is done in
+the kindergarten is necessary for all children, their idiosyncrasies
+being left free to play on the surface and give variety
+and piquancy to life, freedom and dignity to the individual.</p>
+
+<p>All minds seem to be divided into two classes. In one
+class, the primal tendency is to observe single objects; and
+these are the so-called smart children, interesting the spectator
+by their vivacity and precocity. In the other class,
+children seem to be dull in sense, unobserving, but dreamy,
+as if they had an over-mastering <i>presentiment</i> of that connection
+of things which binds them into wholes. It has
+been remarked that this latter class turns out the great men,&mdash;the
+poets, the philosophers, the inventors, high artists, great
+statesmen, and law-givers,&mdash;while the precocious children
+disappoint expectation; probably because they have accumulated
+such a chaos of single impressions of disconnected
+things, that it quite overwhelms the classifying and generalizing
+powers of the intellect. Fr&#339;bel's method equally
+meets the respective wants of both these classes of minds,
+supplying by specific culture the <i>other</i> side of their practical
+endowment. By its discipline of production, it gives the
+lively and restless ones the wand of the Fairy-Order, in
+discovering to them the connections of things, and the conditions
+as well as laws of organization; while for those of
+the dreamy, poetic, philosophic temperament, it sharpens
+the senses to individual things, supplying the definite and
+sensuous impressions, and suggesting the corresponding
+words that enable them to give an account of their own<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_80" id="Page_80">[80]</a></span>
+thinking, and illustrate to others the struggling ideal; which,
+like conscience and the love of order and rhythm, is perhaps
+the yet persistent vision of that Heavenly Father's face, which
+Jesus Christ has told us we are created beholding.</p>
+
+<p>Jesus evidently is quoting a familiar proverb, when he
+says "for their angels behold the face of my Father who is
+in heaven." Does it not refer to the Persian mythology
+current in Judea after the captivity? However neglected and
+eclipsed, that primeval vision can never be quite lost. It
+persists in the love of order and beauty; in the desire to be
+loved <i>infinitely</i>; in hope "that springs eternal in the human
+breast"; in the ideals of imagination, that haunt both the
+savage and the sage, and, at worst, in <i>remorse</i>, in which,
+as Emerson says, "there is a certain <i>sweetness</i>," whether it
+be gentle as in what the Quakers call "the reproof of
+truth," or felt as the reproachful strivings within us of our
+neglected infinite nature.</p>
+
+<p>This brings me to speak of Fr&#339;bel's superiority to Pestalozzi.
+The kindergarten is not mainly <i>object-teaching</i>,
+though of course a constant object-teaching is <i>involved</i>; all
+the materials of their work and all the surroundings of the
+children become objects of examination in their individualities
+of form, size, number, etc., and in their possible connections
+with each other and with the <i>child</i>. If Fr&#339;bel
+proposes to give the fruits of the tree of <i>life</i>, before he gives
+those of the tree of knowledge, it is only that the latter may
+prove, <i>not a curse</i>, but a blessing. The world's history and
+the present state of civilization in the foremost nations of
+the world shows us that knowledge may be <i>a power</i> without
+being <i>a good</i> (a snakish subtlety not Divine Wisdom).
+It begins to be realized in Europe as well as in America,
+that Fr&#339;bel's idea of education, in making <i>character</i> the
+first thing, and knowledge the <i>hand-maiden</i> of goodness, is
+the desideratum of the age, and promise of the millennium.</p>
+
+<p>I should like to read you some letters of eminent men in<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_81" id="Page_81">[81]</a></span>
+France, addressed to Fr&#339;bel's most earnest disciple and
+apostle, the Baroness Marenholtz-B&uuml;low, which I have translated
+from the appendix of her <i>Work in Relation to Education</i>
+(see Appendix, <a href="#Note_B">Note B</a>).</p>
+
+<p>In an address to the school committee of Boston in 1868
+I gave the call addressed in 1867 by the Philosophers'
+Congress in Prague to the convention of teachers in Berlin,
+and the call of the latter to the second convention of this congress
+at Frankfort-on-the-Main in 1869. The burden of all
+these papers is the paramount necessity of religious and moral
+education, begun in earliest infancy, in order that the modern
+intellectual activity may not land us in licentious vices and
+heartless atheism, <i>our nearest dangers</i>. They all accept
+Fr&#339;bel's method of education by work and experience
+(beginning with the work and experience of the child of
+three years old) as the first condition of the regeneration of
+the human race.</p>
+
+<p>It is the office of the kindergartner to awaken the intellect,
+which the child does not bring into the world, like its heart
+and will, full-grown. The infant suffers and enjoys as
+keenly, and wills as energetically, at first as ever in its life,
+but apparently begins and lives for some time, unconscious
+of a world without as a <i>not me</i>. It is purely subjective, <i>i.e.</i>,
+feeling its material environment to be a part of itself. As
+Emerson says:&mdash;</p>
+
+<div class='poem'>
+"The babe, by its mother,<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1.5em;">Lies bathed in joy;</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 0.5em;">Glide its hours uncounted;</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1.5em;">The sun is its toy!</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 0.5em;">Shines the peace of all being,</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1.5em;">Without cloud, in its eyes;</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 0.5em;">And the sum of the world</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1.5em;">In soft miniature lies!"</span><br />
+</div>
+
+<p>Only by intentional help of those around the child can it
+grow into individual consciousness of its relations with<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_82" id="Page_82">[82]</a></span>
+nature in that order which produces the sound intellect.
+For the intellect is a growth in time, that carries on the
+nursery exercises of the limbs and affections by the movement
+plays, and adds those sedentary plays with the series
+of gifts, which are symbols of all nature in miniature, that
+objective revelation of God to which the receptive mind
+answers by thoughts. Thinking is that reaction of the
+individual mind upon nature which, when it is put into
+words, produces progressively an image of God, which is the
+human mind.</p>
+
+<p>The kindergartner's conversation with the children upon
+their playthings is therefore her most important and delicate
+work, and one which she cannot do instinctively, but
+only if she scientifically understands the child on the one
+hand, and nature in some department on the other. It is
+impossible in this lecture, perhaps, to demonstrate my meaning.
+By following out Fr&#339;bel's own method of playing
+with the gifts, as suggested in Mrs. Kraus-Boelte's guide or
+in <i>The Florence Handbook</i>, the whole process of the formation
+of the human understanding by the order of objective
+nature will become patent, and enable the kindergartner to
+avoid any great mistakes in her guidance of the children's
+minds, which guidance should always be tentative, and
+respectful, to say the least, of their freedom to will. Then
+we shall have not mechanical work, but orderly, creative
+work from the children, whose spontaneity is not to be
+choked; but when it seems to be going in a wrong direction,
+interrogatively guided. Like Ariel, she must do her spiriting
+gently, lest she violate the legitimate individuality, and
+we have Caliban instead of the germ of Prospero.</p>
+
+<p>I here pause to display two kinds of work actually done
+by children under seven years of age at Frau Marquadt's
+kindergarten in Dresden. They enable me to show that
+those sedentary plays, with which Fr&#339;bel would have
+children amused, must needs develop and educate the perceptive<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_83" id="Page_83">[83]</a></span>
+faculty and understanding in a substantial manner;
+for these things were done without patterns, and therefore
+from <i>thought</i>,&mdash;the thought being sometimes suggested by
+the dictation of the child-gardener, requiring of the child only
+one single act of reflection. But much of this work was
+invented by the children themselves, their wildest fancies
+being controlled to produce symmetry, by following the one
+rhythmical law of always making an opposite to everything
+they do. After showing and explaining the <i>modus operandi</i>
+of the work exhibited, I went on to say:&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>I believe nobody disputes, after they see what kindergarten
+is, that it is the gospel of salvation for children.
+The exercises put them into complete possession, not only
+of their limbs, especially the characteristic limb of man, the
+hand, just when they are the most flexible, and therefore most
+easily trained; and of their organs of sense (by which they
+gradually make the universe their instrumentality), but also
+of <i>accurate speech</i>, enabling them to express their impressions
+of individual things, as well as of what they <i>do</i> with
+things and in the order of its doing. Thus they are prepared
+for entering upon more abstract subjects, by means of
+books and schools of instruction. A child well "gardened"
+and exercised in the intelligent use of his mother tongue
+enters upon the process of learning to read, for instance,
+with all the more advantage from being accustomed to hear
+and use language with precision and fluency; and is ready
+to learn to cipher all the more quickly, because of the
+concrete arithmetic and geometry he has mastered experimentally
+with the playthings and in the occupations, all his
+habits of delicate observation and nice calculation formed by
+the embroidery and other fanciful work giving the basis for
+intelligent classifications. Even the few years of experience
+of some genuine kindergartens in this country has already
+proved this. I can give an instance in detail of the almost
+miraculous rapidity with which a class of seven-year-old<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_84" id="Page_84">[84]</a></span>
+children learned to read in the primer called <i>After Kindergarten&mdash;What?</i>
+(<a href="#Note_C">Note C</a>, in Appendix.) All the
+time given to "child-gardening" is therefore more than
+saved at the next stage, when instruction begins. Other
+advantages accruing are incalculable, for the children themselves
+have become intelligent and conscientious co-operators
+with their elders, instead of passive receivers or antagonists.
+When Miss Youmans' <i>First Lessons in Botany</i> (a book
+made to teach botany in nature on Prof. Henslow's method)
+was introduced into the New York primary schools, with
+great expectations of a brilliant success, it was found that
+the children did not take hold as expected of this science of
+observation. "I see now," said Miss Youmans to me, "the
+indispensableness of kindergartens to develop the faculties;
+more than half the children are intellectually demoralized by
+neglect or injudicious teaching before they are seven years
+old." Everything, however, depends upon the single-minded
+self-devotion and affectionate character of the
+kindergartner, and it is obvious that her education must be
+as special as that of a teacher of instrumental and vocal
+music; for as little as music can be taught by the ear, or
+drawing by the eye, without studying the underlying principles
+of harmony and symmetry, can kindergartning be
+taught empirically. Its foundation is in both a scientific and
+sympathetic study and understanding of the child's perceptive
+powers and the material world. Not merely what is to
+be taught, as is the case with a university professor, but
+the free-willing and deep-feeling beings that are to be
+taught must be studied generally and individually above all
+things else. Hence, there must be special schools for teaching
+child-gardening, or a special department made in the
+already existing normal schools.</p>
+
+<p>The burden of thinking out the steps of procedure in the
+schoolroom is too great a one to be laid on the teacher who
+has to exercise the general care. It must all be at the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_85" id="Page_85">[85]</a></span>
+tongue's tip and fingers' ends beforehand. It took Fr&#339;bel a
+lifetime, with all his genius and wisdom, to discover all the
+steps of this order of exercises, in correspondence with the
+true evolution of the faculties; but "one man dies, and other
+men enter into the fruits of his labors." Besides, it is as
+cruel to study the philosophy of education at the expense of
+the living children's minds, as it would be to study anatomy
+and medicine at the expense of their living bodies. All kindergartners
+should observe and practise for awhile under
+the direction and criticism of those who are already experts
+and adepts; and the latter should be careful that their assistants
+try no rash experiments, but at first reverently observe
+successful work. It is the highest interest of all teachers to
+learn this method, because it develops themselves. It not
+only makes the best mothers, but the most perfectly accomplished
+women. It is entering into the secret of creation
+and redemption, which is the flower and fruit of human
+culture.<a name="FNanchor_8_8" id="FNanchor_8_8"></a><a href="#Footnote_8_8" class="fnanchor">[8]</a></p>
+
+<p>When people ask me if kindergartning is not a method
+especially adapted to German children, I reply that it seems
+to me to encounter as great obstacles in that nationality as
+in any other. It is not a <i>national</i> method, but the <i>human</i>
+method; and I would remark in this place that it strikes me
+as especially desirable for Irish children. The natural predominance
+in them of fancy needs the check of accurate
+perception, associated with accurate expression; accurate
+perception, first, of the individuality of objects, their form,
+size, color, direction, their mutual resemblances and contrasts,
+and the no less accurate perception of their relations
+to each other and to the child. These things can only be made
+objects of perception by children's being accustomed to <i>make</i>
+things, which employ the activities that otherwise will play<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_86" id="Page_86">[86]</a></span>
+at random and divert their attention from the matter in
+hand. In my observations of Irish servants, I am struck
+with their never seeming to see what is before their eyes, or
+to hear what is said to them, on account of the predominance
+of their creative faculties. Accurate perception of the things
+children play with, and successful manipulation of them to
+produce effects, would also help them to moral integrity; for
+order moralizes just in proportion as disorder demoralizes.
+Successful action cures idle dissipation, while unsuccessful
+efforts discourage and paralyze industry. Fr&#339;bel wishes the
+child to be started at something he can certainly accomplish,
+though perhaps not without direction in words. When the
+child sees an effect produced by himself, he will repeat it
+until he can produce the effect without direction, and, if
+asked, will be delighted to show another child how he has
+done it. It is a necessary step to put his action into words,
+and raises it from mere mechanical into intellectual work;
+from Chinese imitation into European and American invention.
+By and by, when he has learned a little steadiness of
+attention by doing successfully what pleases his fancy, he
+will make some motion of his own, and proceed according to
+the law of symmetry (whose virtue he has learned) to discover
+and make new forms of beauty and use; but he should
+still be carefully overlooked, and saved, by timely suggestions,
+from making mistakes. These suggestions he will
+crave and not resist, <i>if they are not peremptory</i>, but are put
+in the form of a question, which seems to respect his power
+to choose, which is his <i>personality</i>, the image of God within
+him. In proceeding in this way, both teacher and child are
+led more and more to realize that there is a mysterious third
+Being present, who is neither the teacher nor the child, but
+in whom they meet, through whom they communicate, and
+who gives the law they both must respect; that there is, in
+short, One "in whom they live and move and have their being";
+that is the God who "worketh in them to will and to<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_87" id="Page_87">[87]</a></span>
+do"; that He enables them to create beauty, not at random,
+but with a certain freedom which is not lawlessness. He is
+the Creator of the Beauty they do not make, and of the Good
+they love, and gives the Laws which they obey, and in obeying
+become powers of good and inventors of beauty; for the
+laws of order are truly God's thought revealed to their
+thought. To be active powers of good and beauty is to be
+religious, and also to be free from superstition; to love God
+instead of being afraid of Him; to make their lives a reasonable
+service, and thus become free from priestcraft and spiritual
+tyranny. Inefficiency, still more than ignorance, is the
+mother of fetich worship, and reduces man to slavery; and
+to be surrounded by natural and artistic beauty does not cultivate
+the mind, unless it is already an active power. Reverie
+is not thinking. But the mind can only become active
+by the electric touch of a sympathetic mind which is already
+in motion. It is the destiny of men to become one in that
+same sense that the Divine Father and Son are one. God
+has made human communion a moral necessity, and does
+nothing for man, except by the instrumentality of man. "By
+man came death, by man also cometh the resurrection from
+the dead." In short, education, that "mysterious communion
+of wisdom and innocence," is presupposed in reasonable
+religion. I once heard an eloquent man, who was speaking
+of education, say, "The Archangel is born upon earth; we
+may know him by the many difficulties that he has found and
+surmounted, and his consequent power to educate; for <i>education</i>
+is the highest function of humanity in earth and heaven,
+cementing the links of the chain of love which binds us all to
+one another and to God." We are always either educating
+or hindering the development of our fellow-creatures; we are
+always being uplifted or being dragged down by our fellow-creatures.
+Education is always mutual. The child teaches
+his parents (as G&#339;the has said) what his parents omitted to
+teach him. Every child is a new thought of God, whose<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_88" id="Page_88">[88]</a></span>
+individuality is significant and interesting to others, though
+it is his own limitation; and to appreciate a child's individuality
+is the advantage the teacher gets in exchange for the
+general laws which he leads the child to appreciate. It is
+this variety of individuals that makes the work of education
+fascinating, and takes from it all wearisome monotony.
+Those persons who feel that education is wearisome work
+have not learned the secret of it. I have never seen a good
+kindergartner who was not as fond of the work as a painter
+of his painting, a sculptor of his modelling. Teachers who
+are not conscious of learning from their pupils, may be pretty
+sure they teach them very little.</p>
+
+<p>It is because kindergartning is this true education, which
+is mutual delight to the adult and the child, that I have faith
+it will prevail, and its prevalence is my hope for humanity.
+By the infinite mercy of God, no human being is hopeless of
+redemption into God's perfect image at last; but humanity
+will not be redeemed as a whole,&mdash;will not become the image
+of God, or live the life of God,&mdash;until little children are suffered
+to go unto Christ while they are yet of the kingdom of
+heaven, and are blessed from the first and continually, by
+those who shall take them in their arms to bless them. Those
+are only perfect kindergartners who are "hidden in Christ,"
+receiving every child in his name, and humbly learning of
+them the secrets of greatness in the kingdom of heaven,
+which is to be established on earth. Kindergartning is not
+a craft, it is a religion; not an avocation, but a vocation
+from on High.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_89" id="Page_89">[89]</a></span></p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2>LECTURE V.</h2>
+
+<div class='chaptertitle'>LANGUAGE.<br /><br /></div>
+
+
+<div class='unindent'><span class="smcap">Teaching</span>, which in the common sense of the word is the
+suggestion of thoughts by words, is not the kindergartner's
+special work, but the <i>a priori</i> process of drawing out into the
+individual consciousness of a child those latent powers whose
+free activity gives him conscious relations, first, with his
+kind; secondly, with material nature, including his own body;
+and, thirdly, with God. He is unconsciously in this threefold
+relation already, but to become conscious of these relations
+severally, in his own growth builds up the human understanding,
+which is not born with him like his sensibility and force
+of will. The human understanding, a creation in time of the
+free will, creates language as the element of a life not
+shared with animals; an intellectual life using the symbolism
+of nature as a means of intercommunication, and which is
+correspondent and bearing a relation to its creator, man,
+similar to the relation of the material universe to God, being in
+both instances an image, as in a mirror, of what is necessary
+and immutable in the self-consciousness, though without entity
+itself. Hence, as the material universe expresses the wisdom
+of God, human languages express the imperfect wisdom of
+man. Language is the element in which the intellectual
+nature makes a sphere wherein to live and move and have
+its being. What breath is to the material body, making man
+alive in nature, language is to the social body, making it
+alive in history.</div>
+
+<p>A word is both spiritual and material, being an articulate
+form of the voice which, as G&#339;the has happily said, is the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_90" id="Page_90">[90]</a></span>
+nearest spiritual of our bodily powers, taking significance
+from the articulating organs, which are symbolical, like
+everything else in material nature, which, as I said
+before, is but an image, as reflected in a mirror, without
+absolute entity, but bearing witness of an entity progressively
+apprehended by the finite spirits of men, who are the
+children of the Infinite Spirit inheriting creative power
+forevermore.</p>
+
+<p>The <i>in</i>articulate sound of the voice is the scream of pain
+or the shout of joy, mutually intelligible to all human hearts;
+and this aerial basis of language continues to be more or less
+intelligible to all souls, when modulated as in poetry into
+melody and rhythm by emotion and character. The first
+human language was, perhaps, music of the deepest character,
+of which phase there is historic trace in the spoken
+Chinese, which has been perishing for ages on the lips of a
+nation whose origin is lost in the depths of antiquity. This
+spoken language is monosyllabic, and even the initial consonant
+often only a semivowel, while the whole word takes
+its significance from the <i>tone</i> of the vowel; thus <i>lu</i> in a low
+tone would have one meaning, <span class="smcap">lu</span> in the tone of a musical
+third another meaning, and so on as the tone ascends through
+the octave. The inception of such a language implies an
+original equipoise of a brain not yet despoiled of its first
+vigor through moral delinquency which is incident to the
+freedom to will of a finite spirit, and consequently the
+Chinese language was inevitably lost. It would be interesting
+to enquire if those rare individuals among the Chinese
+who are expert in the spoken Chinese, are not of finest
+musical temperament.</p>
+
+<p>Not till after thinking had begun could articulation by the
+organs of speech begin. Thinking is the free individual act
+which associates the mind's activity and the sensibility of the
+heart with material things, and must precede the use of words.</p>
+
+<p>A time comes to every intelligent child when it wonders<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_91" id="Page_91">[91]</a></span>
+how words should express thoughts. Victorious analysis has
+never yet penetrated the whole mystery of language to the
+complete satisfaction of men, though I think philologists and
+metaphysicians are on the way to it, and have reached some
+fundamental facts. For instance, that <i>in</i>significant sounds
+and articulations could not make significant words, and that
+vocal sounds (vowels) get their meaning from feeling, while
+articulations get theirs from the symbolism of the organs of
+speech.</p>
+
+<p>The organs of speech are, first, the throat,&mdash;as the guttural
+organ is called in English because through it we take our
+food and send forth our voice,&mdash;is <i>out of sight</i>, <i>covered up</i>,
+<i>hidden</i>, the <i>central</i> point where the voice starts; secondly, the
+lips, which are obvious, movable, parallel; thirdly, our teeth,
+against which the voice strikes, are hard, stiff, and dead in
+comparison with the flexible lips, and the tongue which connects
+all together, the voice rolling over it and hardly articulated.
+Hence the hard <i>c</i> and <i>g</i>, and the rough aspirate <i>h</i> are
+factors in all words signifying the beginning of self-originating
+motion (observe <i>go</i> and <i>kick</i>, or <i>cause to go</i>), the causal,
+the central, covered, hidden; while the labials, <i>p</i>, <i>b</i>, <i>f</i>, <i>v</i>, are
+factors in all words expressing obviously moving phenomena;
+and the dentals, <i>d</i>, <i>t</i>, <i>s</i>, <i>z</i>, found in words expressive of stiff,
+hard, dead phenomena (the word <i>death</i> is all but identical
+with the word <i>teeth</i>); separation and number being expressed
+by <i>s</i> and <i>z</i>, which are made by throwing the vocal breath out
+between the separated teeth. The liquids <i>r</i> and <i>l</i>, <i>r</i> being
+also a factor of words expressing indefinite beginning, (as
+<i>original</i>, <i>auroral</i>, <i>arise</i>, etc.) are made by the voice moving
+over the tongue more or less energetically, to express movements
+whose difference of energy is exemplified in the words
+<i>fry</i> and <i>fly</i>, <i>grow</i> and <i>glow</i>, <i>M</i> closes the lips without preventing
+the continuous sound of the voice from being heard; and
+<i>n</i>, negating limitation by throwing the breath (or voice) out
+at the nose, symbolize respectively the positive and negative
+aspects of Infinity.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_92" id="Page_92">[92]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>Of course I am giving only a hint in order to define what
+I mean when I say significant words are not made out of
+insignificant sounds, and that articulated sounds get their
+meaning from the symbolism of the organs of speech.</p>
+
+<p>The historical origin of language is lost in the depths of
+antiquity, when the human race was yet in that equipoise of
+mind, heart, and self-activity, which in the process of evolution
+is only progressively recovered by the free agent, it being the
+office of education to restore it.</p>
+
+<p>The infant (that is, the <i>non-speaking</i> child) in vision of
+the Eternal, only gradually becomes aware of the succession
+of time. For, as Mr. Emerson sings in his Sphinx song,&mdash;</p>
+
+<div class='poem'>
+"The babe by its mother<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 0.5em;">Lies bathed in joy,</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 0.5em;"><i>Glide its hours uncounted</i>."</span><br />
+</div>
+
+<div class='unindent'>And Wordsworth says of "the little child,&mdash;"</div>
+
+<div class='poem'>
+"On whom those truths do rest,<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 0.5em;">That we are toiling all our lives to find;"</span><br />
+<br />
+<br />
+<br />
+"By the vision splendid<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 0.5em;">The youth is still attended;"</span><br />
+</div>
+
+<div class='unindent'>and</div>
+
+<div class='poem'>
+"Shades of the prison-house begin to close<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 0.5em;">Upon the growing boy,</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 0.5em;">Yet he beholds the light and whence it flows;</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 0.5em;">He sees it in his joy:</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 0.5em;">At length the man perceives it die away,</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 0.5em;">And fade into the light of common day."</span><br />
+</div>
+
+<p>But this fall from the Ideal is not what Calvinistic theology
+declares it to be, reprobation either intellectual or spiritual!</p>
+
+<div class='poem'>
+"Oh, joy that in our embers<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 0.5em;">Is something that doth live,</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 0.5em;">That nature yet remembers</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 0.5em;">What was so fugitive."</span><br />
+</div>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_93" id="Page_93">[93]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>True education shall lead out the imprisoned spirit, growingly
+conscious of individuality, by means of the symbolism
+of the prison-house itself which is that correlation of necessary
+forces we call the material universe.</p>
+
+<p>The material universe, as I have already said, is the symbolization
+of everything in God except his creativeness
+which is the spiritual essence that he shares with Humanity,
+his only-begotten Son. It is the body of God, and human
+language is the body of individualized Humanity, whose imperfections
+correspond with its various partial developments
+and short-comings. And it is ever growing towards perfection
+in the form of poetry, bearing witness to the creativeness
+(or genius) of man forevermore. As breath is to the
+material body, keeping men alive in nature, so language is to
+the social body, keeping individuals alive in history and
+literature; and as the material universe is symbolical of God's
+wisdom, so the echoes of the universe tossed from the lips
+of men are symbolic images of the wisdom of man. Language,
+in short, being of both natures, spiritual and material,
+makes an elemental sphere for the intellectual life, beyond
+the material; in short, makes a metaphysical world, in which
+the finite and infinite spirits commune with other finite spirits
+and with the Infinite One; for by words every minutest shade
+of individual consciousness may be communicated from one
+finite mind to another, making not only an immortal communion
+of men possible, but a communion of God and
+Humanity also that shall have no end. Heaven and earth
+pass away, but the Word of the Lord endureth forever.</p>
+
+<p>But I must not be tempted into philosophizing farther upon
+language at present, precisely because it takes us into the
+deepest mysteries of speculative thought, and our business
+with it now is practical, and concerns the nursery and kindergarten
+processes of culture.</p>
+
+<p>Looking at it superficially, speech is an imitative art, and
+so far as our experience goes, is always taught by elders to<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_94" id="Page_94">[94]</a></span>
+the young generation empirically. This teaching of the
+mother-tongue in the nursery is an immensely important
+thing, because it carries on the development of the understanding
+towards the fulness of Reason (which is seeing
+particular things in their proportionate relation to the
+whole).</p>
+
+<p>In the whole course of a child's education, nothing is done
+which so much involves the totality of his activity as his
+learning to talk. For to talk presupposes observation, discrimination,
+memory, fancy, understanding. The first three
+(observation, discrimination, and memory) are nearly passive
+reactions from sensuous impressions. But fancy and understanding
+are creative acts of the human spirit, almost defying
+analysis. In fancy, the mind acts quite reckless and
+even defiant of nature's laws and order. In understanding,
+it observes and uses them subjectively. That children delight
+in using words to name things in the order of nature,
+and to express qualities and relations in connection, making
+an echo-picture within of what they see without, is not so
+wonderful as the exaltation of delight produced by a story
+which is, as it were, triumphant over nature's laws, and
+reckless of its order; and the shocks of laughter with which
+they catch at a grotesque and impossible combination of
+images made in their fancy by means of words. The predominance
+of fanciful talk to children which seems to be
+instinctive with all peoples, everywhere, is an indication
+that fancy is as legitimate an activity as understanding, to
+say the least. It seems to me to be an evidence of our being
+begotten directly by the creative spirit, sons of a divine
+Father, who is the complex of Infinite Love, Infinite Wisdom,
+and Infinite Power, of which our human feeling, power of
+thinking, and executive ability are the shadow, or rather a
+living image.</p>
+
+<p>Both fancy and understanding are developed in time by
+words. We all know how children are waked up and delighted<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_95" id="Page_95">[95]</a></span>
+by Mother Goose absurdities, and still more by fairy
+stories that seem to set at naught the facts and override the
+laws of nature. It is a stubborn fact, of which materialistic
+positivists afford us no explanation, and which I commend
+to the consideration of Mr. Mansell, and whoever else talks
+of the limitations of religious thought. And I think it will
+be found that children who are talked to by Mother Goose
+and fairy-story tellers learn to talk more quickly than others,
+and have more vivacity of mind generally, with a power of
+entering into the minds of others commensurate with their
+sensibility, and justifying the human sympathies which are
+often a burden to the unimaginative, who are nevertheless
+kind. A great deal of the misunderstanding of others which
+causes unnecessary pain and social bitterness, checking generous
+furtherance of one another's good purposes, arises from
+want of saliency of imagination, preventing us from being
+able to put ourselves in another's place. And of course it is
+not without the highest reason that the Father of our Spirits
+has given fancy the advantage of the first start in our mental
+process. That fancy precedes understanding in our psychological
+history cannot be denied by any nice observer. I
+have known some parents who would not use Mother Goose
+or fairy stories with their children, but substituted therefor
+amusing experiments in physics,&mdash;the metamorphosis of
+insects and the classification of plants according to their differences.
+Their children became scientific when they grew
+up, were fine mathematicians, and were interested in mechanical
+inventions and natural history; but took comparatively
+little interest in political and moral problems, though not at
+all wanting in the social and patriotic affections, which also
+characterized their parents, who were themselves brought up
+on the imaginative system not well modified by studies of
+nature's phenomena, which was probably the reason of their
+strong reaction from the imaginative method.</p>
+
+<p>But I have known as intimately some other parents who<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_96" id="Page_96">[96]</a></span>
+made predominant, perhaps extreme use of Mother Goose and
+fairy literature. Their children much earlier and more completely
+got command of all the resources of language, had a
+tendency to art, especially literary art, in their own activity,
+and were earlier interested in human history, and all varieties
+of human experience reflected in the literature of nations; but
+perhaps were slower in attaining practical ability for life's
+labors. Each direction of education has its advantages and
+disadvantages in the religious relation, and I think it is the
+better way to mingle them, especially at the early period of
+the kindergarten, where the objective point is to cultivate
+the understanding, which needs that we should appreciate the
+facts and order of external nature as the exponent of God's
+wisdom. This will chasten and give substantiality to the
+creative action of the human fancy, which is never to be
+snubbed, but gently entreated to be reasonable, or we shall
+have Caliban instead of Ariel or Prospero, as I have said
+before.</p>
+
+<p>I cannot find out whether Fr&#339;bel has anywhere expressed
+himself distinctly on this point. There are certainly no
+grotesque images and no fairy stories in the mother's prattle
+with her children over pictures, and in the out-door walks
+which are suggested in the <i>M&uuml;tterspiele und K&ouml;se-Lieder</i>;
+but children are led to recognize the poetical symbolism of
+nature, and its invisible and impalpable substances and
+forces; the invisible forces of air, heat, and light are used to
+lead them out from the world of matter towards the more
+substantial spiritual world where the soul meets and communes
+with God, the omnipresent Spirit to be apprehended
+only by the spirit within us, whose organs are ideas.<a name="FNanchor_9_9" id="FNanchor_9_9"></a><a href="#Footnote_9_9" class="fnanchor">[9]</a></p>
+
+<p>In the kindergarten, as in the nursery, children learn language
+by using it empirically. To utilize their love of talking
+as they play is what is first to be done by the kindergartner.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_97" id="Page_97">[97]</a></span>
+The things seen and done give a clear definition
+and precise significance to the words used, which become the
+stepping-stones of the mind, by which it mounts up from the
+sensuous ground of the understanding into the heaven of
+invention and imaginative art, plastic and heroic; and thence
+to communion with God. But before children are put to
+reading, before proceeding from things through thoughts, and
+from spiritual experiences through ideas to their vocal signs,
+and from vocal signs to their written or printed representations,
+it is wise to consider the signs themselves. I do not
+mean to go deeply into etymologies or anything that is
+abstract. It is not doing so, for instance, to ask children
+what is the difference between the words <i>see</i> and <i>look</i>. (Can
+you see without looking? Can you look without seeing?)
+It gives precision to the understanding to discriminate what
+are often called synonymes, but which seldom mean precisely
+the same thing, unless, in our <i>potpourri</i> of a language they
+are mere translations, as for instance <i>morsel</i> and <i>bit</i>, respective
+derivatives from the Latin <i>morsum</i> and the English <i>bitten</i>.
+The little English-speaking child should not be troubled with
+the derivation of <i>morsel</i>, but is pleased to be called to notice
+that of <i>bit</i>. We must be guided here by Fr&#339;bel's rule of
+proceeding from the known to the unknown, and not
+endeavor to plunge children into the unknown without a
+clue.</p>
+
+<p>That children understand and use figurative language
+readily, shows that without going out of their childish world
+we can define symbolic expression to some degree, and this
+is a means of regulating fancy. But I must take another
+opportunity to speak of the method of doing this.<a name="FNanchor_10_10" id="FNanchor_10_10"></a><a href="#Footnote_10_10" class="fnanchor">[10]</a> I can
+now only affirm that unless children could signify by words
+not merely their impressions of material things and their
+correlations, but their feelings and thoughts, it would be
+impossible for the religious education to be begun in the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_98" id="Page_98">[98]</a></span>
+nursery, or to be carried on in the kindergarten, as Fr&#339;bel
+proposes it shall be.</p>
+
+<p>It is only by naming to the child his own intuition of
+creative being or cause, or rather by leading the child to
+name it, that the understanding is started upon the religious
+thinking which is necessary to keep pure from superstition
+his religious feeling, while his blind sense of God is changing
+from an undefined intuition of the heart into a definite
+thought of the mind, which change Fr&#339;bel would have take
+place very early. But this is the most delicate region of
+consciousness to enter, and we must take great care that we
+do not profane instead of consecrating the process by what
+we do and say. Words that are adequate and living names
+for the spiritual intuition of a very present God, generate
+spiritual thoughts in natural relation with them. And this
+reminds me of a circumstance in the mental history of Laura
+Bridgeman, illustrative of what I mean.</p>
+
+<p>This poor child was deprived, when two years old, of her
+sight and hearing, and partially of taste and smell, by the
+scarlet fever, which left her but one avenue of knowledge
+of material things,&mdash;the sense of touch. But through that
+the practical benevolence of Dr. Howe won a way to her
+imprisoned spirit, and opened communication of thought
+with her by means of words; and she even learned to read in
+the raised type for the blind. The whole story is immensely
+interesting and important to any teacher. She had been
+taught enough of the properties of matter to be able to work
+on and with <i>things</i>, and moral science could be taught her
+through her own and others' activity; but how was she to be
+taught about God and spiritual things? Dr. Howe reserved
+to himself to speak to her of God, forbidding all others to do
+so, and watched for his opportunity.</p>
+
+<p>My sister Sophia went over to the asylum to model Laura's
+bust, and one day asked her teacher (who was with her
+always) to translate into spoken words the conversation that<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_99" id="Page_99">[99]</a></span>
+she saw was passing between them by means of the hand
+language. Very soon occurred the following:&mdash;</p>
+
+<p><i>Laura.</i> I want to go to walk.</p>
+
+<p><i>Teacher.</i> You cannot go to-day, because it rains.</p>
+
+<p><i>Laura.</i> Who makes it rain?</p>
+
+<p>Instead of making a direct reply, the teacher went on to
+explain how moisture exhaled from the earth by the action
+of the sun, and was collected in masses which were called
+clouds, and when the clouds were so full as to be heavier
+than the air, it fell to the earth in drops of rain.</p>
+
+<p>Laura said, reverently, "God is very full."</p>
+
+<p>The teacher was startled, and said, "Who told you about
+God?"</p>
+
+<p><i>Laura.</i> No one told me. The Doctor is going to tell me
+about him when I know more words. But I think about
+God all times.</p>
+
+<p>The teacher said to my sister, "This is very important,"
+and went to tell the Doctor, who was a good deal moved, but
+found himself at somewhat of a loss. That evening he came to
+a little gathering at our house to talk about it. He said that
+nearly a year before, if not longer, Laura had come upon the
+word <i>God</i> in her reading, and immediately stopped and
+asked the meaning of the word. According to his directions,
+she was then sent to him, and he was so anxious not to do any
+harm, especially not to frighten her with the idea of Infinite
+Power (which is the main element of our conception of God,
+even eighteen hundred years after Christ's manifestation of
+Infinite <i>Love</i>), that he was embarrassed, and said to her that
+she did not yet know other words enough to explain the word
+<i>God</i>, but when she had learned more words, he would tell her,
+and meanwhile he wished she would not ask any one else.
+But now he was pondering what was the best way to proceed.
+I suggested that perhaps Laura could teach him more than
+he could teach her about God, and asked what was the
+sentence in which she had found the word. But this he had<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_100" id="Page_100">[100]</a></span>
+never known. It was then suggested that probably the word
+had explained itself, for no sentence could possibly contain
+the word, not even in an exclamation, that would not suggest
+to such a perfectly clear thinking mind as Laura had always
+shown, the fact of supreme love or wisdom. The company
+present proved this by trying to make sentences. I do not
+know what he finally concluded to do or say to Laura. I
+think certainly that the true way would have been to
+have drawn her out, and according to what she said or
+seemed to need, to have shaped whatever teaching he had to
+give, taking great care not to negate any of her positive
+assertions; for we could not doubt that God was manifesting
+himself to the imagination of her heart, if not yet in the
+forms of the human understanding.</p>
+
+<p>If I had known how to use the hand language, I would
+have solicited the privilege of going to learn what this hermit
+soul could have told me before it was darkened by our
+traditional theology, which did not originate in children,&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>
+"On whom those truths do rest<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 0.5em;">That we are toiling all our lives to find,"</span><br />
+</p>
+
+<p>but in the minds of old sinners who had lost the original
+purity of soul that "sees God." "I think about God all
+times!" How interesting it would be to know exactly what
+she thought! That it was nothing terrific or painful was
+evident from her habitual mood, which was even joyous. So
+careful had the Doctor been to educate every bodily and
+mental activity, that she had none of that discouragement,
+inelasticity, and indolence of mind, which comes of want of
+success in childish effort. A genial, educating assistance
+was always around her, but careful not to weaken her by doing
+anything for her that she could learn to do for herself.
+Obstacles, therefore, only stimulated her efforts, and so delightful
+was her sense of overcoming them, that, for instance,
+she would laugh exultingly when sewing if her thread became<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_101" id="Page_101">[101]</a></span>
+knotted, or if in anything she was doing there was
+some little difficulty to be surmounted. Her faith in herself
+seemed never to have been broken; but she rested on the
+fulcrum of Infinite God, in whom she "lives and moves and
+has her being."</p>
+
+<p>The only thing we ought to do in the religious nurture of
+childhood is to <i>preserve</i> this faith which comes from the
+child's seeing God even more clearly and certainly than it
+can see outward things. See to it that you use language so
+as more clearly to define and not to blot out the divine vision,
+as old Dr. Barnard's cocked hat and black silk gown and seat
+in the clouds eclipsed the sweet face with which my Creator
+seemed to own me as his child, as I told you in my last
+lecture.</p>
+
+<p>Another mistake that was made in my religious education
+was during a visit that I made to a great-aunt when I was
+five years old, and was taught to say the Lord's prayer by
+the servant who put me to bed. I got the idea that some
+unknown evil might happen to me in my sleep if I did not do
+this, and was also told that God would be displeased with
+me if I thought about anything else when I was saying it.
+But I was involuntarily conscious of having my mind full of
+images, while the words of the prayer were empty vocables.
+In order to prevent the intruding thoughts, I would try to
+rush through the words quickly, going back to the beginning
+over and over again. But this artificial duty was not associated
+with the instruction of my mother, who was in general
+very happy in what she said to me about God, dwelling on
+his goodness, referring to it everything delightful, making
+Sunday a day of quiet but constant enjoyment, letting us
+paint, and cut paper, with other little amusements, devoting
+herself to making us happy, while the rest of the week she
+was busy; for she kept a large school, and Sunday was, as
+she often said, her only and blessed day of rest. Long
+after, at a time of religious controversy and so-called revival,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_102" id="Page_102">[102]</a></span>
+I was immensely aided by hearing my mother say to a
+young aunt of mine who affirmed that St. Paul, in saying
+that we must pray without ceasing was fanatically unreasonable:
+"Yes, if praying meant saying over prayers; but spiritual
+prayers mean a devotional attitude of mind towards
+God which we can have whatever we are doing."</p>
+
+<p>This sentence seemed to pour light into a shady place.</p>
+
+<p>"Don't you <i>say prayers</i>, mama?" I said to her when
+aunt was gone.</p>
+
+<p>"Not when I am alone," she said; "for God sees my
+thoughts and feelings, and knows that I love him, and
+always want his help."</p>
+
+<p>My mother had nothing of the martinet about her. She
+took it for granted that upon the whole we wanted to do
+what was right. She was not apt to give the worst, but the
+best interpretation to doubtful phenomena. She believed
+that to treat a child with generous confidence invoked generosity
+and truthfulness, and what was better than all the rest,
+she did not <i>talk down</i> to her children, but rather drew them
+up to her own mental and moral level; and interlarded
+stories from Spenser's <i>Faerie Queen</i> and the Scriptures with
+stories of the kind and noble deeds of real people around us.
+(See <a href="#APPENDIX">Appendix</a>.)</p>
+
+<p>Her religion was moral inspiration to herself and consolation
+for all calamity, and always very naturally expressed.
+She more than corrected her first mistake and inadequate
+talk with me about my Creator, by telling me the story of
+the Pilgrim Fathers, when I was yet so very young that my
+fancy clothed her words with grotesque images, but on the
+whole did better justice to the <i>spirit</i> of the emigration and
+the ultimate results it has worked out for the world than
+the exact facts that transpired in history. What I gained
+from my self-created mythology was that my ancestors knew
+themselves to be God's children, whom neither tyrannizing
+king nor priest had any right to prevent from going to him<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_103" id="Page_103">[103]</a></span>
+in prayer first hand, and that in order to do his will as their
+consciences understood it, they left home and country and all
+the comforts of civilization, and trusted themselves in a frail
+vessel to be driven over a stormy ocean by the winds, at
+imminent peril from the waves below, which would have
+swallowed them up, had not God, who loved them, approved
+what they were doing, guided the ship (by a power stronger
+than the wind, for it was his love) through the narrow opening
+of Plymouth Harbor to the rock where I still seem to see
+them streaming along, a procession of fair women in white
+robes as <i>sisters</i> (for so I had interpreted the word <i>ancestors</i>, who
+strangely enough were all named <i>Ann</i>). I still seem to see
+these holy women kneel down in the snow under the trees of
+the forest, and thank God for their safety from the perils of
+the sea; and then go to work in the sense of his very present
+help, and gather sticks to make a fire, and build shelters
+from the weather with the branches of the trees. Among
+these rude buildings my mother took pains to tell me that
+they built a schoolhouse where all the children were to be
+taught to read the Bible.</p>
+
+<p>There is nothing for which I thank my mother and my God
+more than for this grand impression of all-inspiring love to
+God, and of all-conquering duty to posterity, thus made on
+my childish imagination, and its association with the idea of
+personal freedom and independent action. It never could
+have been made except by one who herself had faith in God,
+and believed that he had made all men free to come to him,
+and also that the mother was his first appointed mouthpiece.
+The fanciful images which were the effect of the shortcomings
+of my ignorance did not hide the vital truths which I was as
+open to accept then as now; namely, that God is my Father,
+the Father of all souls, from whom no one has a right to shut
+off another.</p>
+
+<p>That first schoolhouse, which I fancied that I saw the
+"Ann Sisters" building, taught me as no mere words ever<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_104" id="Page_104">[104]</a></span>
+could have done, that it was the most acceptable service to
+God to educate all his children to know him and his works.
+That first idea of human duty I have never outgrown, but
+still believe universal education is the true culture of the
+American people, the reasonable service they owe to him
+who called them out of the Old World to be a nation of individuals.
+There was nothing fatal, therefore, in that first false
+notion of God (which I received for a time), though it was
+for a time more of an evil to me than it would have been to
+a child less subjective, or of more lively perception of things
+without. Liveliness of perception brings so many things
+before the mind, and so stimulates its volatility, that it
+undoubtedly prevents the stereotyping of many a single
+impression and fancy that does injustice to spiritual truths;
+and false impressions, unless strongly associated with terror
+or some other morbid sensibility, do not take hold of a child
+so strongly as the images that are consistent with the eternal
+laws of mental evolution, such, for instance, as that human
+face divine with which I had instantaneously clothed
+my intuition of God, and which, notwithstanding its temporary
+eclipse, has haunted me all my life.</p>
+
+<p>It is very encouraging to the educator to know that the
+innocent soul of childhood has so much more affinity with
+truth than with falsehood, because the best and most careful
+educator cannot sequestrate children entirely from false
+impressions. But what finds no echo in the spirit passes off,
+unless the mind is shocked into passivity by fear or pain.
+When the soul is active, it has a certain superiority to passive
+impressions, and makes use of them as materials for imaginative
+production. It is, therefore, desirable to keep children
+employed in gentle activity which has successful results, and
+happy in the midst of attractive natural surroundings, by
+which God is working with us in the same purpose of
+educating the child, allowing us to be his partners, as it were,
+in this work, because it educates us. It is not uncommon to<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_105" id="Page_105">[105]</a></span>
+hear persons say that they would like to begin life all over
+again with the knowledge they have gained from their life-experience.
+This we can all do if we will in imagination
+really <i>live with our children</i>, as Fr&#339;bel says, whose motto
+explains what Christ meant when he bids us to be converted
+and become little children.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_107" id="Page_107">[107]</a></span></p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2>LECTURE VI.</h2>
+
+<div class='chaptertitle'>A PSYCHOLOGICAL OBSERVATION.</div>
+
+<div class='center'><br /><span class="smcap">Part First.</span><br /><br /></div>
+
+
+<div class='unindent'><span class="smcap">I said</span> in my last lecture that had I possessed the power
+to talk in Laura Bridgeman's hand, I should have begged
+Dr. Howe to let me have some conversation with her after
+she said that she "thought about God all times"; not that
+I felt that I could teach her, but that I might learn what
+God had taught her concerning Himself. It was a wonderful
+chance for a most important psychological observation of
+the innocent mind of childhood, and would have afforded,
+doubtless, a luminous illustration of the truth that the
+human soul is also a divine personality justifying the method
+initiated by Fr&#339;bel of conversing with the children in the
+Socratic manner.</div>
+
+<p>But already in my lifetime I had had an opportunity for
+psychological observation, made under circumstances perhaps
+still more favorable for getting evidence of the importance
+of a very early recognition of the Heavenly Father's
+name in the formation in a healthy manner of the human
+understanding and the development of the reason, verifying
+the declaration which Fr&#339;bel has made the corner-stone of
+his system; namely, that though a child is the extreme
+opposite of God, contrasting as effect to cause, as absolute
+want to infinite supply, all these terms are connected&mdash;<i>conciliated</i>&mdash;into
+unity, by Love and Thought, which must recognize
+each other, and whose loss of equal companionship is a</p>
+
+<div class='center'>
+"Grief, past all balsam and relief,"<br />
+</div>
+
+<div class='unindent'>as Mr. Emerson has sung.</div><p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_108" id="Page_108">[108]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>I have somewhere, very careful memoranda, made at
+the time, which I have unfortunately mislaid, but I will
+present from present recollection as well as I can the
+whole psychological observation, though I am aware that
+I shall leave out many little things said and done which
+were perhaps not unimportant links in the chain.</p>
+
+<p>Before I begin, I will observe that I tell it to the class to
+show the difference between talking to and conversing with
+children, and to illustrate several truths.</p>
+
+<p>First, There is an innate Idea, not as a thought but as a
+feeling, given to every child, of an all-embracing Love
+(named by Jesus, Father), one in substance with the deepest
+consciousness of self;</p>
+
+<p>Second, That this Idea becomes a child's personal and
+individual perception only when he has a realizable name
+for it;</p>
+
+<p>Third, That such a name is not an empty vocable, a mere
+movement of air, but a sign, to which the intuition of his
+heart gives vital meaning;</p>
+
+<p>Fourth, That an adequate name for <span class="smcap">God</span> is the axis of
+the intellect, and the revolution of thought around it gives
+perfect globular form and solidity to the mind, balancing
+the centripetal force of individual self-assertion with the
+centripetal force of a Divine Love, comprehending all Being.
+Before <span class="smcap">God</span> was named to and by this child of whom I am
+about to speak, you will see that he was a dreary little chaos
+"without form and void." After he had learned to utter
+intelligently the name of a Heavenly Father he was what I
+am going to tell you.</p>
+
+<p>But first I must tell you how I had this opportunity and
+privilege of being the first person to name <span class="smcap">God</span> to this child
+when he was four and a half years old. He was the son of
+a most conscientious mother whose early orphan life had
+been saddened with religious terrors. Her earliest recollection,
+as she told me, having been the death-bed, and immediately<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_109" id="Page_109">[109]</a></span>
+after, the burial of her mother, whom she saw, when she
+was too young to comprehend death, shut up in a coffin and
+put into the ground; and she remembered how her agonizing
+cries at what seemed the frightful cruelty, were peremptorily
+hushed, with the declaration of the person taking care of
+her, that <span class="smcap">God</span> who made the heavens and the earth willed it
+to be so and would punish her if she did not acquiesce.
+Little did the thoughtless and heartless person who thus
+dealt with the distressed little heart think, how disastrously
+she was emasculating the word <span class="smcap">God</span> of good by associating
+it with such an image of ruthless power divorced from
+tenderness, as she unheedingly did. It was not till long
+years after that her imagination was cleared of the frightful
+falsehood; and when she came to have a child of her own,
+her governing thought was to keep him ignorant of the fact
+of death, and the name of <span class="smcap">God</span>, until he should be old
+enough to understand them, as she said. She was a
+person of deep feeling, upright and benevolent, but her
+imagination, probably by reason of this life-long depression,
+was of feeble wing, and she was taciturn. In consequence,
+her child, though most tenderly cared for as to his body,
+was starved in mind and spirit. His face continued to be
+an infant's countenance, and he was strangely without that
+childish joyousness called animal spirits, and grew more and
+more peevish as he grew older; for he was sequestered
+to the society of his silent mother, who would not even
+be read to in his presence, lest, as she said, some chance
+word which he could not understand should excite some
+fear.</p>
+
+<p>Suddenly a hemorrhage of the lungs brought this mother
+to death's door. She had been, for a few years before her
+marriage, my pupil in my own house, and she used to say
+she owed to me all the happy views she had of God and
+Heaven, as well as of human life and death, and I was sent
+for in this extremity as a mother to a child.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_110" id="Page_110">[110]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>Since her marriage she had lived in a city distant from me,
+and I had seen her but little. Her child was so very timid I
+had made no acquaintance with him in transient interviews,
+and of me he had no impression but of one little story that
+I had told him six months before when I met him at the
+house of her husband's parents. This story I had half invented
+to explain a picture in the "Story without an end,"
+that I was showing to him. (See <a href="#APPENDIX">Appendix</a>.)</p>
+
+<p>When I came to the mother's bedside, she told me it was
+best for her to die, because she was utterly baffled in all her
+efforts to bring up her child. She went on to describe her
+timid methods; she said she feared he was <i>non compos</i>, for
+he made no progress. Among many phenomena, she mentioned
+that when she gave him playthings, he immediately
+broke them to pieces, and when she tried to prevent this, by
+endeavoring to make him understand their uses and construction,
+he would look drearily into her face and say, rather
+than ask, "What for?" He seemed deficient in will, without
+impulse, for, though flowers seemed rather to please him, if she
+took him into the garden and told him he might gather them,
+he would stand still, and helplessly cry; and she had to command
+him to do everything, even to play, before he would
+attempt it. He acted like an automaton. Moreover, he had
+no sensibility, and expressed no affection.</p>
+
+<p>Just at this point of her dismal story her chamber door
+was opened by the nurse, with this great boy in her arms.
+He had his mother's beautiful large brow and deep eyes, but
+with no speculation in them, and his whole figure was lifeless
+and so languid that the arms that had been about the nurse's
+neck, slowly lost their curve when she put him down on his
+feet. But his look rested on me, who, with an inviting smile
+and gesture, held out my hand. Immediately the large eyes
+filled with intelligent light, and with a cry of joy he sprang
+towards me, climbed up into my lap, clasped his arms round
+my neck, nestled upon my bosom, and looking up with a<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_111" id="Page_111">[111]</a></span>
+joyful expression of confidence said, "Story&mdash;little boy&mdash;drop
+of water!" It was, as I have said, about half a year
+before, that I had lured him to me as he held off in timidity,
+by offering to show him the picture where the child, in the
+"Story without an end" is represented beside the brook,
+looking at a drop of water hanging from a leaf, "telling
+the little boy a story," as I said, to which he had answered
+"Story!" and I had gone on and invented a free paraphrase
+of the story given in the book, adapted to his infantile
+capacity, and when I had finished, he said, "Story again!"
+and I repeated it again and again, so imperative was his
+"story again!" and now he again said "Story," with a confiding
+pressure, as he leaned on me then, gazing at the
+picture on the book in my lap, giving me the conviction that
+he understood me. It was really, as I found subsequently,
+the only rational words that had ever been addressed to the
+child's imagination.</p>
+
+<p>"This does not look like want of sensibility, or <i>mens non
+compos</i>," I said to the mother. "I never saw anything like it
+before," she said, all tears. The ensuing silence was immediately
+broken by the child's imperative repetition of the
+word "story!" I was too much affected by the mother's
+emotion to remember or invent any story, but it was an early,
+warm spring day and the windows were open. The house
+stood on a bluff of the Merrimac, within sight of the Rapids;
+and the sound of the rushing waters came in upon our silence.
+I said, cheerfully, "Do you hear the water running?" to
+which he responded with a joyful "yes! what does it run
+for?" "Oh, because it is glad," I replied, and again he
+responded with a joyful and satisfied "yes," and after a
+moment asked, "Where is it running to?" "Oh, into the
+ocean, where all the rest of the waters are!" and again an
+emphatic "yes" expressed his satisfaction. Perhaps he
+remembered that in the story I had told him of a drop
+of water it had ended with the drop falling off the leaf, and<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_112" id="Page_112">[112]</a></span>
+running away with its brothers and sisters, and falling into
+the ocean, out of which the sun had originally taken it. At
+any rate, he not only repeated his yes with the emphasis of
+satisfaction, but seemed to be thoughtful. I said, "Do you
+ever look out of the window and see the sun shine on the
+water, and all the little sparkles of light in the water?"
+"Yes," said he, joyfully, "what makes the sun shine on
+the water?" "Oh," said I, "it is because the sun loves the
+water." "Yes," said he, and began to embrace me in the
+most energetic manner.</p>
+
+<p>It was too much for the poor mother, who absolutely wept
+aloud, whether with joy or sorrow she could not tell, as she
+afterwards said.</p>
+
+<p>The sound of her weeping attracted his attention, and he
+sat up in my lap and turned his large eyes upon her as she
+lay in bed, and then upon me, with a look of concern and
+appeal. "See," said I, "poor mother. She is sick and
+sorry. She wants me to tell <i>her</i> a story, and won't you get
+down and go into the nursery and let me tell dear mother a
+story to make her feel better? Then I will come to you and
+tell you one."</p>
+
+<p>With a cheerful "yes" he immediately got down and went
+into the nursery, but stopped at the door to say:&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>"When you have told mother a story, won't you come right
+in and tell me one?"</p>
+
+<p>I said to the mother, "You see, my dear friend, that the
+child has mind enough, heart enough, and a moral nature.
+He can understand and feel sympathy; feels the symbolism
+of nature; and can obey a self-denying motive. No fatal
+harm has been done after all by your delay, but he needs
+now to know he has a Heavenly Father, fully to manifest all
+the powers of a human being. You must allow me to give
+him that name for the Love he feels within and without."</p>
+
+<p>"Not quite yet," said she, "not until you come to stay,
+because he would ask me questions that I should not know<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_113" id="Page_113">[113]</a></span>
+how to answer. Children ask such terrible questions. I am
+afraid as soon as you name the Invisible <span class="smcap">God</span>, he will be
+frightened. Don't you know M. D. was afraid to stay in a
+room alone because of the omnipresence of <span class="smcap">God</span>, which seemed
+to be an unimaginable horror to her?"</p>
+
+<p>"I do not wonder," I replied. "Omnipresence of <span class="smcap">God</span>!
+What was there in a child's experience to interpret this Latin
+abstraction? I think it would have been quite another thing,
+considering who her earthly father was, had she been told
+that our Heavenly Father was all about her though she could
+not see Him with her eyes, but could feel Him giving her love
+and joy. I cannot but wonder that anybody around her
+should have talked to her in such abstractions."</p>
+
+<p>"I am so unready in expression," she persisted, "and
+can so poorly express my thoughts and feelings, I am sure I
+should only do mischief if I should try to answer his questions,
+and I am sure he will go on asking them, for his mind
+seemed to wake up at once as soon as you began to talk to
+him. How different was that 'yes' from the dreary 'what
+for?' with which he always received the very best explanations
+that I could make of the things he played with. That
+'what for?' was not an enquiry of intelligence, but an expression
+of utter want of perception, with no interest to hear
+a reply. It is best for him that I should die; then I shall ask
+his father to give him to you to bring up. Nobody ought to
+have children but people of genius!"</p>
+
+<p>"No, no," said I; "it does not require genius to talk with
+children, but only simplicity of heart trusted in. I interested
+him and gained a response, not because of genius, for I have
+none, but because I believe in him, and in myself, whose
+happiness is in loving, and that <span class="smcap">God</span> has created us to love
+and commune with one another and Him. You have said
+yourself that he seemed to love flowers, though he was
+afraid to gather them, and that he loved to hear the street
+musicians. Beauty and music touch his sensibility. By<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_114" id="Page_114">[114]</a></span>
+saying that the waters run because they are glad, and the
+sun shines on and makes things beautiful because he loves
+them, I put his own conscious life into the music of waters
+and the light of the sun. He recognized the meaning of
+gladness and love because he himself felt glad and loving,
+which made a pre-existent possibility of recognizing the love
+and joy of the Creator that shine in those natural objects,
+because they are <span class="smcap">God's</span> own words of love addressed to His
+own image, who is capable of love and joy and knowledge
+of Him. If we talk to children in instinctive faith, they
+understand us. You have not done so because of your early
+misfortune that saddened your heart and took away your
+instinctive courage. Faith is the proper act of the heart
+(courage, you know, is a synonym of heartiness); the heart
+goes before the understanding in the process of life. Without
+heart one can do no justice to children in talking with
+them; with it, we awaken their minds and nurture their souls,
+and all our mistakes will be of small account beside the positive
+advantage of setting their minds in joyful motion 'amidst
+this mighty sum of things forever speaking.'"</p>
+
+<p>"When you come to stay," was her rejoinder, "you can
+say to him what you please, for then you will be here to take
+care of his mind and answer his questions."</p>
+
+<p>This was all I could gain at that moment, and I left her, to
+go to the child, who had several times opened the door and
+looked at me wistfully, with a silent appeal which was all the
+more proof of his quickened intelligence that he did not tease.
+His own desire to have a story had interpreted to him his
+mother's need.</p>
+
+<p>I have very little power of inventing a story, and to his
+demand for one I responded by taking from the bookshelves
+Miss Edgeworth's first story of Frank, and began to read to
+him of Frank's making a noise on the table and the conversation
+between him and his mother that ensued. But this
+did not suit my little one's mood, which was a little exalted<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_115" id="Page_115">[115]</a></span>
+by his delight at seeing me, and having had his imagination
+touched by the beautiful language of nature that I had made
+intelligible to him. He pulled the book away, and asked
+me to tell him a story "out of your own self," as he said.</p>
+
+<p>Thus urged, I began: "Once there was a little worm about
+as long as the nail of my thumb, and no larger round than a
+big darning-needle. This little worm lived in a little house
+that he had made for himself in the ground, just big enough
+to hold him, when he rolled himself up like a little ball with
+his head sticking out. There were no windows nor doors in
+his house, but one on top, which was his door to go in at,
+and his window to look out of. When he had made this
+house he was tired and crawled into it and curled himself up
+and went to sleep, and slept all night. In the morning the
+sun rose and spread his beams all over the world, and one of
+the bright sunbeams shone into the window of the little
+worm's house and touched his eyes and waked him, and he
+popped up his head and looked out and saw it was very
+pleasant in the garden, and he thought he would go out.
+He squirmed himself up out of his hole, and because he
+had no feet he crept along the garden path. The warm
+beams of the sun put their arms all round his cold, little
+body and made it warm as could be, and the sunbeam
+went into his little mites of eyes, and filled him all full of
+light, and the songs of the birds went into his little mites of
+ears and filled him all up with music, and the sweet smell of
+hundreds of flowers went up that little mite of a nose and
+filled him up with their perfumes. And so that little worm
+went creeping along as glad as he could be that he was alive.</p>
+
+<p>"Now in the house that stood in that garden lived a little
+boy about four years old; and when the morning came, the
+sunbeams had gone into the window of his nursery and
+waked him, and he was washed and dressed and had his
+breakfast of bread and milk, and then his mama took him
+to the door that led down the steps of the piazza into the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_116" id="Page_116">[116]</a></span>
+garden, and told him he might go down the path and have
+a good run to make himself warm. So down he ran. But
+now if that little boy should put his strong foot on that dear
+little worm, it would break him all to pieces&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, he shall not, he must not!" cried the child in a
+spasm of distress. "Aunt Lizzie, don't let him break the
+dear little worm to pieces!"</p>
+
+<p>"No indeed," said I, "that little boy would not not do
+such a cruel thing for the world! He saw the little worm creeping
+along, so glad to be alive, and he ran on the other side of
+the path; and the little worm nibbled a little blade of grass,
+and drank a little dew for his breakfast, and then he felt
+tired, and went creeping back, full of good food, to the little
+hole that was his home, and curled himself up like a little
+ball and went to sleep."</p>
+
+<p>"Now tell me that story all over again!" said the child.</p>
+
+<p>I did so more than once at his entreaty, and always when
+I came to the possible catastrophe of crushing the worm, the
+same terror seemed to seize him, and he would cry out:&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, he must not, he shall not!" and I always tranquillized
+him again, and gratified his sense of justice by my
+assurance of the little boy's consideration of the little
+worm's right to his life and happiness.</p>
+
+<p>Of course, I told his mother of the effect of this story, and
+the evidence it gave of the child's sound moral nature and
+innate sense of justice. And I begged her to let me lose no
+time in referring to the presence of the Heavenly Father,
+that the intuition of his heart might become the possession
+of his mind. I said I did not believe that he would ask any
+question. He would suppose that I alone knew, for, as I
+observed to her, he had never for the whole six months referred
+to the little boy with the drop of water, and yet had
+vividly remembered the whole story, as his greeting me had
+shown, and I had the proof of it, for I had just told it to
+him again at his request. I told her if I proved to be mistaken,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_117" id="Page_117">[117]</a></span>
+and he should ask her any question she could not
+answer to her own satisfaction, she could say she would write
+to me and ask me, and I felt sure he would wait. But I told
+her I believed what I was thinking of saying to him would
+keep his thoughts busy while I was gone (for I was going
+only for a week to prepare for a stay with her for an indefinite
+time). At last I gained her consent, and the child was
+put into my bed, that I might have the conversation the first
+thing in the morning.</p>
+
+<p>When I awoke, I found him awake, close by me, and his
+great eyes seemed to devour me.</p>
+
+<p>"How long you did sleep!" said he; "I have been seeing
+you sleep."</p>
+
+<p>Said I, "What do you see with?"</p>
+
+<p>"My eyes," he replied, and to the questions, What do you
+hear, smell, taste, touch with? he made the appropriate
+answers.</p>
+
+<p>"But what do you <i>love</i> with?" I asked.</p>
+
+<p>He jumped up upon his knees and crossed his arms on his
+breast, paused a moment wonderingly, and then exclaimed,
+"With my arms!" and throwing his arms round my neck,
+hugged me. I was taken a little aback, but in a moment
+said:&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>"Have you a great deal of love?"</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, a great deal, a great deal!" he exclaimed.</p>
+
+<p>"Where is it? where do you keep it?" said I.</p>
+
+<p>He started up again on his knees, again crossed his arms
+upon his breast, and said, "Where do I?"</p>
+
+<p>Placing my hand on his heart, I said, "Is it not in there?"</p>
+
+<p>His whole expression was affirmative, he looked delighted,
+but did not speak.</p>
+
+<p>"Are you good?" said I.</p>
+
+<p>"Sometimes," he said.</p>
+
+<p>"What are you when you are not good?"</p>
+
+<p>"I cry."<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_118" id="Page_118">[118]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>He had evidently been told it was naughty to cry.</p>
+
+<p>I said, "Why are you not good all the time?"</p>
+
+<p>"Why ain't I?" said he, after a moment's pause.</p>
+
+<p>"Oh," said I, "I think you have not goodness enough to
+be good with all the time."</p>
+
+<p>He looked assent, delighted and earnest. I answered his
+unuttered feeling with the question,&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>"Should you like to have goodness enough to be good
+with all the time?"</p>
+
+<p>"How can I?"</p>
+
+<p>"Oh," said I, "you have a good friend who has a whole
+sky full of goodness. He gave you all the goodness and
+love you have in there (I touched his breast), and will give
+you more and more if you want him to, always and always,
+enough to be good with all the time."</p>
+
+<p>He looked perfectly blest, did not speak, but laid himself
+down close by me, took my arm and put it over him, and
+said, as he nestled up to me,&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>"Talk to me some more."</p>
+
+<p>I went on: "Your good friend gives you all your joy to
+be glad with, and all your love and goodness. They always
+go together. And now listen to me: the next time you are
+going to cry (I used his own practical expression instead of
+saying the next time you are naughty), stop and think. I
+have a good friend who has a whole sky full of goodness
+and he will give me goodness enough to be good with all the
+time, and I guess you will not cry." He responded only with
+huggings and kissings and exclamations of "I love you a
+whole sky full," and as I did not want to overdo or say anything
+to mar the impression I had made, I took advantage
+of a noise I heard, to change the subject, and said:&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>"What is that noise?"</p>
+
+<p>He jumped out of bed, went to the window, and said:&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>"It is the carpenters making a house," and after a pause,
+asked, "Who made all the other houses?"<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_119" id="Page_119">[119]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"Carpenters," said I; "don't you see they make houses
+out of boards?"</p>
+
+<p>"Who made the boards?"</p>
+
+<p>"The boards are made out of trees. People cut down
+the trees, and then they saw them up into great logs, and
+then they split up the logs and smooth them out into pieces
+we call boards."</p>
+
+<p>"Who made the trees?" said he.</p>
+
+<p>I understood very well where the tyrannizing unity of his
+personality was leading his understanding, but did not wish,
+just then, to risk giving outward form or connection to his
+thought of the Divine Cause, so I said:&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>"The trees grow out of the ground; don't you see old
+trees and young trees and little baby trees growing out of
+the ground?"</p>
+
+<p>For this information he did not give me that hearty "<i>yes</i>"
+with which he had received my communication of spiritual
+facts, but came back to bed again. I persisted, however,
+in talking playful nonsense for half an hour, until his nurse
+came to take him up to dress him. As soon as she appeared
+at the door, he started up on his knees again, crossed his
+arms over his breast, and in a loud, joyful voice cried out:&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>"Mrs. Doyle! I have a good friend up in the sky who has
+a whole sky full of goodness, and he will give me as much
+goodness as I want to be good with <i>all the time</i>," emphasizing
+the last three words.</p>
+
+<p>The nurse, a good-hearted Roman Catholic, who, like
+all the servants, had been forbidden to talk to the child about
+<span class="smcap">God</span> or any kindred subject, looked at me startled, yet
+gratified, and said:&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>"What will his mother say?"</p>
+
+<p>I replied, "His mother will be very glad; she only wanted
+to wait till she thought he could understand. But I have
+told him enough for the present; don't talk to him about it;
+but if he says anything to you, come and tell me."<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_120" id="Page_120">[120]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"Yes," said she, "and I thank <span class="smcap">God</span> you have come to
+teach the poor child something."</p>
+
+<p>I then said to her aside, "His mother is very anxious
+lest he be frightened; for she was frightened about <span class="smcap">God</span> and
+death when she was a little child, and has suffered from it all
+her life long. She has been a double orphan ever since she
+can remember."</p>
+
+<p>I said this to her for several reasons: one was my extreme
+desire to see what the one simple truth would do for
+the child, and this was the reason I gave <i>good friend</i> for
+<span class="smcap">God</span>'s name. Of course, the mother craved to know exactly
+what had passed on this important occasion, and was immensely
+relieved and gratified at what I told her, and wanted
+it all to be written down; and thus it happened that I made
+memoranda of this and subsequent conversations, and even
+of those held in her presence, for they continued to be no less
+interesting than they began.</p>
+
+<p>Observe these points in the child's speech to the nurse:
+he interpolated the words <i>up in the sky</i>. I had given no
+place to the good friend, though I had said he had a whole
+sky full of goodness and love; and the sky being the glorious
+symbol of unboundedness, elevation, purity, and power
+to the human imagination, in all nations and times, as is
+proved by the earliest idolaters who worshipped the heavens,
+and the host of stars, and verifying the more spiritual conceptions
+of the Hebrew Psalmist, and of Job, who did not
+confound (nor did this child) the sign with the Living <span class="smcap">God</span>
+who created it to signify His Being. Another thing:
+Observe it was not even as the giver of love and joy, but as
+the giver of <i>goodness</i> that the Person of Persons had seized
+the imagination of the child so powerfully. It was wonderful
+to see that very day, the effect upon his understanding
+of this conversation. The night before, when I told him the
+story of the little worm, I found his vocabulary so small that
+I could give my imagination a very narrow scope. But in<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_121" id="Page_121">[121]</a></span>
+the course of the day (in which, for the first time in his life)
+he talked incessantly, asking innumerable questions about
+his <i>good friend</i>, he seemed to have no difficulty in talking.
+I am very sorry I have not my written memoranda, because
+I should like to tell you everything in order; but I remember
+he wanted to know how his <i>good friend</i> "looked."
+I replied by asking him, "How does love look?" He
+laughed, and said, "Love does not look, but feels."
+"Well," said I, "so your good friend does not look, but
+feels. Don't you feel him now, putting love and goodness
+into you?" He laughed assent, and said, "Where
+is he?"</p>
+
+<p>"Wherever love and goodness are," said I; "in you, in
+me, and in mother, in everybody who <i>loves</i>." I was encouraged
+to believe he would comprehend this language,
+unimaginable and inconceivable as such truth is to the mere
+understanding, for I had in my remembrance a conversation
+I once overheard between two children, one five and the
+other not three years old, at which I had not ceased to wonder
+since I heard it. I was sitting drawing with their
+mother in a recess of a room that hid us from the children's
+sight, when our attention was diverted by hearing the younger
+one say:&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>"Can <span class="smcap">God</span> see me now, when I am all wrapped up in this
+shawl?"</p>
+
+<p>The elder one replied very earnestly, "O yes! <span class="smcap">God</span> can
+see everybody, everywhere."</p>
+
+<p>"But I don't see how He can see me when I am all wrapped
+up in this shawl. It is dark," persisted the little three-year-old.
+There was a pause, when Eliza, in a very anxious voice,
+said:&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>"Amelia, can you see mama in your eye?" (She meant
+imagination.)</p>
+
+<p>Amelia replied after a moment, "Yes, I can see mama in
+my eye, just how she looks."<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_122" id="Page_122">[122]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"Well," said Eliza, "I suppose that is the way <span class="smcap">God</span> sees
+everything, because He knows everything."</p>
+
+<p>I cannot conceive a more perfect proof that the soul of a
+child is a "sparkle of <span class="smcap">God</span>," and its mind the intuition
+of the eternal reason&mdash;its image, than was given by
+this original illustration of the truth of truths made by a
+child of five years old. The mother made an exclamation of
+wonder, and said:&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>"I am sure I never could have given so profound an answer
+as that," and I continue to think it the most wonderful thing
+I ever heard of so young a child's saying, and had I not
+heard it myself, I doubt if I could have believed it was said.
+But it has given me courage to think that children might have
+very early a definite conception of the invisible <span class="smcap">God</span> without
+materializing it.</p>
+
+<p>The omnipresence and invisibility of <span class="smcap">God</span> were mysteries
+that attracted my little pupil's mind and taxed it, but did
+not distress nor perplex it. Of the reality of <span class="smcap">God</span>'s being,
+the intimacy of his own relations with Him, he never seemed
+to have a doubt; his delight in the thought of Him was
+boundless. At the end of the first day he said a thing which
+struck his parents with astonishment. The evening of the
+day on which I arrived, his father had made tea for me in the
+parlor, and as the child did not want to leave me a moment,
+he was set up at the table in his high-chair opposite me, to eat
+his bread and milk with us. While the father talked of one
+thing and another, the child's eye and mine occasionally met,
+and he would immediately make some gesture of lovingness
+and an inarticulate sound, ee ee ee! At last his father checked
+him with the words "Don't make those silly noises, Foster!"
+I interposed, and playfully said:&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>"Now please don't come between me and Foster. I understand
+his silly noises and just what he means to say to me.
+How can you expect he will talk any sense when you have
+never given him any help to think?" The father laughed at<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_123" id="Page_123">[123]</a></span>
+my "transcendentalism," as he called it. But the second
+night, when we were all again in the same relative position,
+the demeanor of the child was wholly changed; he sat silently
+eating as if wrapped in thought. By and by he said in a
+very decided tone, "Some things live, and some things only
+keep."</p>
+
+<p>With a look of astonishment his father exclaimed, "What
+an extraordinary generalization!" "The consequence,"
+said I, "of being talked to as if he were a rational being one
+day!"</p>
+
+<p>The next day I went to Boston for a day or two, to make
+arrangements for returning to stay an indefinite time, which
+was such a disappointment to the poor little thing that he
+screamed in the most passionate manner, so that his mother
+could no longer doubt his sensibility or will. He was so
+angry with the stage-coachman who took me away, that his
+father had great difficulty in persuading him that he was not
+a bad man, but, on the contrary, a kind one, whom Aunt
+Lizzie had asked to come to take her to the railroad. At
+last he somewhat reluctantly agreed that he might be a good
+man.</p>
+
+<p>"But I shall never like him," he said, and left his father,
+to go and caress his mother, who was weeping, as he divined,
+with the same regret as his own, and he was apparently comforted
+by her saying, that she, too, was sorry Aunt Lizzie had
+to go away for a little while, but she had promised to come
+back in a day or two and stay all summer.</p>
+
+<p>It turned out as I had surmised, that he had asked no
+questions while I was gone, and had said very little except to
+wonder that I stayed so long, though I was gone only two days.</p>
+
+<p>When I came back I had immediate evidence that he had
+been thinking while I was gone, and to some purpose. You
+remember that on that first morning of our conversation, he
+had asked me who made the trees, and I had said, "The trees
+grow out of the ground," which did not seem to give him the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_124" id="Page_124">[124]</a></span>
+satisfaction that my reference of his emotions, sensibilities,
+and thoughts, to an invisible personality had given him.
+Now, as soon as the embraces of welcome and expressions
+of joy had subsided a little, he burst into the subject which
+had so possessed his mind, and with a sort of triumphant air,
+as if he was sure of a satisfactory response, he asked:&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>"What did our good friend want the trees to grow out cf
+the ground for?"</p>
+
+<p>I said, "Do you think the trees are pretty? Do you like
+to look at them?"</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, I think they are beautiful."</p>
+
+<p>"Well," said I, "I guess that was one reason; you know
+he loves us all, and so he likes to please us. Do you like to
+please those you love?"</p>
+
+<p>"Yes!" and a passionate embrace and kiss was the expressive
+reply.</p>
+
+<p>I then went on to call his attention to the fruits that grow
+on some of the trees, and which serve us with delicious food,
+and the uses of wood to build houses with, etc. This conversation
+naturally introduced other kindred subjects of inquiry
+as to why our good friend had arranged things so and
+so. The tyrannizing instinct of his own mind, of which he
+had become conscious through the exercise of it, that my
+naming of the Spirit Father had so happily started, had made
+objective to him the Unity of all life, and he was sure that
+the good friend was at the bottom of everything outward as
+well as inward, even trifles; for I one day heard him say, as
+he was lying on the floor at play, "Heavenly Father, I wish
+you would not let my leg feel so cold." This was later on,
+in the winter time, however.</p>
+
+<p>I cannot sufficiently regret that I have lost my original
+memoranda. They were transcribed from notes that his
+mother made, who was watching every word said, with the
+most intense interest. She always had pencil and paper at
+her side, because the danger of hemorrhage caused her to<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_125" id="Page_125">[125]</a></span>
+avoid speaking. She wrote down with care the very words,
+as if they were, as indeed they were, a divine Revelation.
+Whatever he accepted or expressed with joy, she felt was
+true, knowing as well as she did the past emptiness of his
+understanding, and the dreariness of his feeling as an individual.
+But I can perhaps remember enough to show you
+the method I took, which was truly the very method of conversation
+that Fr&#339;bel proposes we should have with children,
+prompted by the Wisdom of love, which so profoundly respects
+its object that it gives it opportunity to be itself by not
+obtruding. The reason that we do not get the lesson that
+childhood can give us is that we thrust our finite minds
+between the child and the Divine, instead of limiting ourselves
+to putting the child into the point of view to see for
+itself what of course though essentially one, is perhaps of different
+aspect to each. I made it a point to be very quiet,
+and to exhibit no surprise at his questions or mistakes, but
+to lead him by my questions to the answers, and the corrections
+of mistakes which must needs arise from one-sidedness.
+The entire respect with which I listened to what he said gave
+him complete possession of and confidence in his own mind.
+One laugh at any incongruity he uttered (as Dr. Seguin
+would tell you) would have shut him up perhaps forever.
+How often children's thinking is thus nipped in the bud!</p>
+
+<p>The circumstances in this instance were favorable to real
+conversation. In addition to my love of psychological observation
+in general, and my love and interest in this child
+in particular, was that which I felt in the mother, whose own
+childhood had been so shadowed by her human environment
+that it had not taught her what only childhood can teach with
+its uneclipsed vision of the Father's face, of which Christ
+speaks and warns the adult not to offend (or, as the revised
+version translates it, <i>cause to stumble</i>). On her account, as
+well as on my own and the child's, I was careful not to put
+my thoughts into his head, but merely lead him to the standpoint<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_126" id="Page_126">[126]</a></span>
+from which he could see the truth for himself. It is
+because these conditions made for once an opportunity for a
+genuine conversation between intuitive childhood and such
+maturity of experience as I had attained, realizing Fr&#339;bel's
+ideal of the conversation of the kindergarten, that I am
+desirous to give it to you as a hint of how you should proceed&mdash;though,
+of course, you would probably never have so
+exceptional an opportunity; because the children that come to
+you will generally have minds already misty with half-defined
+ideas of <span class="smcap">God</span>, received from the vague, half-defined minds of
+the imperfectly educated adults, conveyed to the children
+either in that careless or dogmatic manner in which they are
+usually talked to, not with.</p>
+
+<p>Another advantage I had with this child was, that besides
+the arrested development arising from his mother's timid plan
+with him, he inherited from both parents, and perhaps from
+remoter ancestry, an individuality of mind that was not at all
+imaginative; which did not, however, exclude him from
+spiritual truth, for that is not the work of imagination, but is
+discerned by the spiritual sense, being as objective as what
+is discerned by the five senses (a transcendental objective,
+not a material one). The respectful interest with which I
+treated him gave him a happy confidence in his own thought,
+which was my opportunity for observing the natural order of
+mental development. In short, the conversation we had was
+a genuine one as between equals, unless, indeed, he was the
+superior in giving to me the divine laws of the spiritual order.
+He often surprised me by his next question, and was so disarmed
+of all fear by my consideration and tenderness, that he
+revealed that which is always the individual's secret, and I
+gained as much as he did by the conversations, and certainly
+I gained certainty in what was previously only conjecture on
+my part. I was sometimes obliged to say I did not know,
+and remember his asking me with surprise, "Don't you know
+everything?" "Oh, no!" said I. "Only our good friend<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_127" id="Page_127">[127]</a></span>
+knows everything and gives us our thoughts all the time.
+Doesn't he give new thoughts to you every day?"</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, he gives me a great many new thoughts all the
+time," he replied with animation. On another occasion,
+when I had become perfectly exhausted in answering his
+questions, I said to him:&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>"I am very tired, but I will answer that question, provided
+you will not ask me another before dinner."</p>
+
+<p>As he walked away he said, "Oh, I wish I had asked
+another question instead of that!"</p>
+
+<p>"Well," said I, "what? Perhaps I will answer that one."</p>
+
+<p>Turning back, he said eagerly, "Will our good friend
+answer all my questions when I go into the sky?"</p>
+
+<p>I said, "Yes, every one; for he knows everything, and
+can never be tired."</p>
+
+<p>The expression of complete satisfaction with which he
+went away from me was most expressive.</p>
+
+<p>You will observe his expression of "when I go into the sky,"
+and consider it together with the words that he interpolated
+saying, "I have a good friend up in the sky," in repeating
+to Mrs. Doyle that first morning when I had told him
+that his good friend who gave him thoughts, and joy, and
+goodness, and love, had a sky full of goodness. The sky is
+the natural symbol of the unbounded and infinite and the
+essentially spiritual, and the conception of <span class="smcap">God</span> into which
+I had led him, and which I named his good friend, pervaded
+all space.</p>
+
+<p>The subsequent questions of how <span class="smcap">God</span> looked, and upon
+His whereabouts, and the conversation on this, by identifying
+Him with the Love that he felt within himself, had revealed
+to him <i>Immortality</i> before he had defined mortality.</p>
+
+<p>The <span class="smcap">God</span> he felt within him in his conscious Love and
+without him in all manifestations of beauty and power, gave
+him assurance that he would be sometime wherever <span class="smcap">God</span> was.
+I have lost the connection and place in the narrative of<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_128" id="Page_128">[128]</a></span>
+another conversation I had with him on the omnipresence of
+<span class="smcap">God</span>. He often had said his thoughts were in his head, and
+his feelings were in his bosom. One day he was sitting in
+my lap close to a table, with his feet bare, and I put my
+hand under the table and pinched his toe. He said:&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>"What are you pinching my toe for?"</p>
+
+<p>I said, "How do you know I pinched your toe? you cannot
+see what I am doing under the table."</p>
+
+<p>"I think you pinched my toe, because I felt it."</p>
+
+<p>"I thought all your thoughts were in your head, and all
+your feelings in your bosom, not in your toes."</p>
+
+<p>"My feelings are all over my body," said he; "and when
+you pinched my toe, the feeling ran right into my head and
+turned into a thought."</p>
+
+<p>"So you see," said I, "that you live all over your body
+and in any part of it, just as your Heavenly Father lives all
+over the world and in everything at once."</p>
+
+<p>"Yes," said he, "I did not know how that was before."</p>
+
+<p>The date of this conversation was some weeks, perhaps
+months, from the beginning of our intercourse, as I know
+from the use of the word <i>Heavenly Father</i>, which came after
+a time to take the place of <i>good friend</i>, and it was preceded
+by some other conversations. He was always overflowing
+with expressions of love to me. When I gave him anything,
+he would embrace me, and I would ask, "Which do you love
+best, me or the thing given?" (an apple perhaps, or whatever
+it might be). He would always say, "You, you." Once he
+said, "I love you more than all the apples in the world."
+Once when he was kissing my hand, I said, "Which do you
+love best, me or my hand?"</p>
+
+<p>"I love both," he said.</p>
+
+<p>I persisted, and said, "Supposing my hand was cut off,
+would you love me as well?"</p>
+
+<p>"I should love you a great deal more," said he, energetically;
+"for it would hurt you so to have your poor hand cut
+off. Would it not hurt you dreadfully?"<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_129" id="Page_129">[129]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"I suppose it would, but by and by it would get well
+and what I want to know is, whether you would love me
+as well without my hand as with it?"</p>
+
+<p>He still declared he should love me more. I then said,
+"So you see my hand is not me. It is only one of the
+things the Heavenly Father gave me to make things with,
+and He gave me my feet to walk with, and eyes to see with;
+but my eyes and ears and tongue are not me; and if I
+should lose them all, still I would be all of myself, and you
+could love me?"</p>
+
+<p>"Yes," said he; "but I don't want you to lose any of
+those things, for I love them all together."</p>
+
+<p>My object in these conversations was to see if he would
+separate in thought the finite material body from the conscious
+soul or <i>himself</i>, as I preferred to say, for to speak of
+one's self as a <i>soul</i> makes what is essentially subjective as
+objective as we desire to make the body, the use of which
+is to reveal to others the feelings and thoughts of the individual
+that otherwise the finite apprehension could not seize.
+I was endeavoring to prepare him to minister to his mother,
+when I could persuade her to let him know the fact of death,
+by appreciating and defining that crisis of life as a step
+onward into the deep consciousness of immortality, which I
+believed would lift her out of the abyss into which her own
+consciousness seemed to fall at the utterance of the word,
+in spite of all the intellectual views of immortality which she
+had for many years cultivated, but which somehow did not
+meet her exigency, when she felt herself on the brink of the
+separation of body and mind. No intellectual process can
+give what the faith of childhood has in its own immortality
+of which those who had the care of her infancy had robbed
+her.</p>
+
+<p>It was delightful to see how she enjoyed the child who had
+long been a burden to her. She wanted him in her presence
+all the time with his playthings, and to hear all our conversation,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_130" id="Page_130">[130]</a></span>
+and that I should tell her what we said in the little time
+that he could not be with her. She declared that she never
+had known what the enjoyment of life was till she had it in
+her sympathy with him. All the pleasures of intellect, and
+also of personal affections of the happiest kind, were pale
+beside the joy of this child&mdash;in his communion with <span class="smcap">God</span>, who
+was in all his thoughts, and had taken him from his dreariness
+and growing peevishness, into that joy of childhood
+which Ruskin speaks of as so entirely out of proportion to
+the occasions of its expression, and which still had no painful
+excitement in it, but was simply a spontaneous outflow, not
+only quickening his thoughts but informing his affections
+with generosity and gratitude. The self that lost all sense
+of boundary, in its joy in the unbounded, spread out to embrace
+all about it. He said one thing to me which will, I
+think, explain to you what I mean. Of course, I was the
+first person on whom the flood of his heart poured itself out,
+though he did not stop with me, but also expressed his love to
+all with whom he came into near or remote relation. When
+saying to me how much he loved me, what a skyful of love
+he had for me, I said, "Yes, darling, I know you love me as
+much as you can," he replied scornfully, "I love you a great
+deal more than I can!" Was not that a wonderful expression
+of the immortal essence of his love,&mdash;of Love Divine?</p>
+
+<p>Without its being suggested to him to thank others for
+kindnesses, he did so without a single exception. He would
+be taken to drive in the carriage with his mother, and standing
+at the window, would shout with delight at the things he
+saw on the way, and when he got home would often run
+back to the gate to say, "Thank you, horsey!" and all his
+habits of timidity were forgotten when the street musicians
+came by, and he was allowed to take out pennies to them.
+Callers at the house, from whom he used to shrink when they
+would have spoken to him, were in wonder at his hospitable
+welcome and fearless but intelligent interpositions in the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_131" id="Page_131">[131]</a></span>
+conversation, which they thought indicated precocity instead
+of backwardness. The length, breadth, and depth of all the
+words Christ let fall in the last part of his life, of which I
+had had some insight before, became doubly intelligible to
+me. I saw into the beauty and meaning of mankind's being
+created in successive generations, and I was thus prepared
+to enter into and appreciate Fr&#339;bel's ideas and methods,
+with which I did not become acquainted till a quarter of a
+century later.</p>
+
+<p>I want you to observe that in what I did there was simply
+the spontaneous wisdom of love&mdash;love, not fondness, not
+desire of reciprocation, but self-forgetting and reverent of
+its object. Only this gives the creative method, or is the
+essence of creativeness, whether human or divine.</p>
+
+<p>You remember, in the memoir of Fr&#339;bel with which I began
+this course of lectures, it was said that he posed his elder
+brother with his questionings of <span class="smcap">God</span>'s wisdom in the arrangement
+of the social sphere. Unable to answer him, the
+instinct of his love led him to divert the child's attention into
+a department of nature where apparent discords were seen to
+be harmonized for the production of beauty and use, that
+the poor little perplexed and bewildered child might enjoy
+himself legitimately. He gave him the clue to the labyrinth
+and the strength to conquer the Minotaur. He had no
+idea of educating, but only of comforting. Thus, unconscious
+of any theory of education, he solved the problem
+practically, first for the child Fr&#339;bel himself, later for mankind
+to whom the man Fr&#339;bel has revealed it with such
+ample illustrations as to make an era in human history that,
+as we hope, shall retrieve the past. Childhood understood,
+leading in the promised millennium of peace on earth and
+good will among men, will make mankind forget the Babel
+confusion of its first experimenting, and enter into the
+mutual understanding of the Pentecostal miracle.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_133" id="Page_133">[133]</a></span></p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2>LECTURE VII.</h2>
+
+<div class='chaptertitle'>A PSYCHOLOGICAL OBSERVATION.</div>
+
+<div class='center'><br /><span class="smcap">Part Second.</span><br /><br /></div>
+
+
+<div class='unindent'><span class="smcap">In</span> our little F.'s case, as it became perfectly plain to his
+mother that he conceived clearly of God's embracing unbounded
+space as well as time in His Infinite Essence, she
+became desirous of knowing how he would receive the fact
+of death, so painfully and prematurely forced upon her own
+soul,&mdash;whether his mind would leap the gulf in which hers
+seemed to sink at the utterance of the word.</div>
+
+<p>But the difficulty for him seemed to be to conceive of
+death at all. I tried to approach the subject in such a manner
+that he should have the initiative, as it were, in any conversation
+upon it. There was a poor old man who occasionally
+passed the house in the clothes of a pauper, supporting
+his steps with a stick. One day when he did so, F. asked
+me, "What makes men old?" and before I had time to
+answer, added, "Mary [the name of a former servant] used
+to say <i>many days</i>, when I asked her. Do many days make
+men old?"</p>
+
+<p>"Yes," said I, "just as many days make your clothes and
+shoes old. That old man has walked on his poor old legs so
+long that they are quite worn out, and he has looked so long
+with his eyes that they are dim, and listened so long with
+his ears that they have grown dull, and his back has grown
+weak, and his whole body is so worn out that it will not do
+what his thoughts tell it to do, as your little fresh legs and
+eyes and ears and as your whole body does."<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_134" id="Page_134">[134]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>He received this intimation quietly, but raised no question
+as to the ultimate result; and as often as the old man walked
+by, he would ask the same question and receive the same
+answer.</p>
+
+<p>At last I took down from the book-closet Mrs. Trimmer's
+story of the robins and read it to him, and he became very
+much interested in the little nest and its inhabitants.
+After a while, the children in the story had birds of
+their own in a cage, which they took care of assiduously,
+but at length on one occasion went away and left them for
+many days uncared for, so that they died; I read right
+on through the page on which it was told that on going
+to the cage when they came home, they found the birds lying
+on their backs with their beaks wide open, stark dead! I
+paused in my reading, and he repeated, "stark dead! what
+do those words mean? What was the matter with the birds?"
+I laid the book down, and said, "You know that some
+things live, and some things only keep." "Yes," said he.
+I continued, "You know that living beings feel pain or
+pleasure, one or the other, all the time, and that things that
+only keep do not feel at all."</p>
+
+<p>"Yes," said he.</p>
+
+<p>"Well, things that live and feel&mdash;living beings&mdash;always
+eat and drink; they continue to live by eating and drinking,
+and God tells them to eat by making it pleasant for them to
+taste things. Now these little birds lived by eating and
+drinking, and if they had been free, they would have found
+food and drink somewhere in the world; but those children
+had shut them up in a cage; and when they were so thoughtless
+as to go away and forget the birds that they had undertaken
+to take care of, the little birds grew hungry, and you
+know it is not pleasant to feel even a little hungry, but they
+grew hungrier and hungrier till their poor little bodies were
+as full of pain as they could be. Now our Heavenly Father
+could not possibly have them suffer so much pain, and so He<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_135" id="Page_135">[135]</a></span>
+told them to come to Him, and their life went right out of
+their bodies, and then their bodies were just like everything
+else that only keeps; they could feel no more pain."</p>
+
+<p>"What a dear, dear, dear Heavenly Father it is!" said
+the child; "what nice ways He has about everything!"</p>
+
+<p>"Yes," said I, "He has the ways of love."</p>
+
+<p>He asked no questions at this time, nor made any generalization.
+I took up the book, and read on about the children's
+burying the bodies of the birds, etc.</p>
+
+<p>Thus the death of the body was first presented to his
+imagination as only a relief from pain of the life that inhabited
+it. He was immensely interested, and the subject
+became the most common topic of conversation.</p>
+
+<p>There were some books in the house which had pictures of
+hunts, and one was of a stag-hunt, the stag at bay, the dogs
+seizing him, the huntsmen firing. These books had been
+carefully kept from him. I now took them down, and
+showed them to him, interested him in the timid stag running
+for its life, and its ingenious devices to elude the dogs by
+swimming across streams, and at last when the dogs had
+seized it, or the huntsman fired the cruel shot which tore the
+breast or side of the poor beast, the final release, God's
+call of the life to Himself! At which the child would utter
+exclamations of delight: that final escape was <i>the best of all</i>.</p>
+
+<p>This story was so interesting, it absorbed his attention,
+and he did not generalize. But it took its place among the
+good deeds of God's love, that when life became too painful
+in the body it was taken away to enjoy itself with God.</p>
+
+<p>His mother, in whose presence were all the conversations,
+was intensely interested; but still as he did not think of
+human death, she hardly felt that he had conceived the
+idea.</p>
+
+<p>I told him about the metamorphoses of insects, and their
+depositing their life in eggs as soon as they were born.
+When the old man came by, as he did nearly every day, we<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_136" id="Page_136">[136]</a></span>
+commented on the wearing out of his body, but he did not
+think of death as a relief for him.</p>
+
+<p>At last one day it happened that stretching out of the
+window for some purpose, he nearly lost his balance, and it
+was only by my timely seizing him that he escaped falling
+out. I said, "F., what if you had fallen out on those
+rocks and been broken all to pieces!" He shrieked with
+horror, "I don't want to! I don't want to!" "But what
+if you had!" said I, calmly. "You came very near it. What
+should you have done?" "What could I?" he screamed.
+"What could I do, all broken to pieces!" "Why, don't you
+think," said I, smiling, "that your Heavenly Father would
+have taken you right into His own bosom?"</p>
+
+<p>A heavenly smile spread over his face and a look of perfect
+satisfaction and acquiescence, and he said after a moment's
+pause, "I forgot my Heavenly Father. Oh, what a dear,
+dear, dear Heavenly Father He is!" Then, after another
+moment, he said in a distressed voice, "But must I be broken
+all to pieces when I go to the Heavenly Father?"</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, dear, no!" said I; "but when we are broken all to
+pieces, or starved, or are very sick, He takes us; but generally
+people grow to be old like the old man, and all their bodies
+get worn out, and they get very tired and kind of go to sleep,
+and the Heavenly Father takes them, so they do not wake up
+again in their old bodies, which are buried as the children
+buried the bodies of the robins."</p>
+
+<p>He expressed himself very happy, and asked a great many
+questions, and it seemed as if he had already known of the
+fact of death. At all events, he now accepted it as the
+common destiny, without any painful feeling, and it seemed
+to give new realization to his mother's feeling that her own
+was indeed nothing but a morbid feeling, and that normal
+nature did not shrink from death. The subsequent questions
+were innumerable. I read to him Krummacher's parable of
+the caterpillar and butterfly in the garden of Thirza, after<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_137" id="Page_137">[137]</a></span>
+the death of Abel, as it was paraphrased by Mr. Alcott when
+he read it in his school, in which I was assisting him at the
+very time that I was called away to the child's mother. And
+it was the study I had made of childhood in his school which
+had enabled me to pursue with so much confidence the
+method I took with the child, though it was in my own childhood
+I conceived the plan; and I remember speaking of it to
+Dr. Channing in 1824, and how much interested he was in
+the idea, though he told me that in his own case he was indebted
+to the symbolism of nature, especially the ocean
+seen from the beach at Newport, for clearing his mind of the
+effects of the teaching and preaching which he had heard.
+These grand objects, and later the beauty of some manifestations
+he had seen of love giving courage and power to
+the weak, kindled his ideal, and gave form and substance to
+his consciousness of God.</p>
+
+<p>For a time there was nothing but delight expressed in the
+fact of death, the relief from all suffering, the enlargement
+of life and joy and new knowledge of God and His ways.
+At last a little incident showed him the shadow which attends
+death in this world.</p>
+
+<p>We often went to call on the family of the physician who
+attended his mother. One day when we went, the Doctor,
+who was very fond of F., took him into his lap while I was
+playing with the baby in his mother's arms. They always
+called it "baby." I said to Mrs. D., "Has not baby any
+name?" The mother replied, "His name is Edward."
+F. looked up at the Doctor with a bright, joyous expression,
+and said, "Where is your other Edward?" The Doctor's
+face changed instantaneously; he clasped the child close to
+him, and said, "Oh, he has gone to his Heavenly Father,"
+with a burst of grief. F. stretched himself back, looked
+into the agitated face, and said with a look of the greatest
+concern, "Are you sorry that he has gone to the Heavenly
+Father?" "Oh, very, very sorry," said the poor father.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_138" id="Page_138">[138]</a></span>
+"Should not you be sorry if he should take away your dear
+mother?" and putting the child down, he immediately left
+the room. Mrs. D. said, "The Doctor has never got over
+the death of that child, and we never name him in his
+presence."</p>
+
+<p>I immediately left the house, and we walked some distance
+in silence, and as I found F. did not incline to speak, I said,
+"F., did the Doctor look glad when you spoke to him about
+his other Edward?" He pressed himself close up to me, and
+said eagerly, "No, no! he looked very sorry. What made
+him sorry? Did he not like to have his other Edward with
+the Heavenly Father?" "Oh, yes! he liked that, but then
+he wanted to have him in his own arms. You see he cannot
+see him now, and he wants to kiss him." "Yes," said F.,
+"he hugged me!" I continued: "You see, the Doctor is
+very strong and well, and I suppose he will live in his body
+a good many years, and he has Mrs. D. and Julia and the
+rest, but he wants that other Edward, too, every day of his
+life." F. replied sympathizingly, "He was large, and white,
+and bright, and when I go into the sky, I shall look all over
+to see where he is." I said, after a little while, "Shall you
+say anything more to the Doctor about his other Edward?"
+"No, indeed!" said he. "I never shall say another word
+about him. Do you think I want to make the poor Doctor
+sorry?" I told his mother, when I got home, of the whole
+affair, and we agreed that it was well he should see the sad
+side of death for the survivors.</p>
+
+<p>It was soon a question with F. how we were to live without
+the body, and he asked me. I told him I did not know
+exactly how it was to be, but I supposed God would let new
+eyes, ears, and whatever limbs we should need, grow out of
+us, made of the finest stuff like air, which we could not see
+because it was so delicate, or even feel, as we did the air
+when it moved, but which souls could use just as they
+pleased. He said, "I have seen some pictures of souls that<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_139" id="Page_139">[139]</a></span>
+had gone out of their bodies, and I did not know before
+what they were." Surprised, I asked him how they looked.
+He said, "They were nothing but heads with wings."</p>
+
+<p>The delightful thing was to see the effect of all this earnest
+prattle upon the mother; and one day, after I had returned
+from a visit to a friend in the town, she told me she had had
+a conversation with F. on her own approaching death that
+was very satisfactory.</p>
+
+<p>She said she had his bread and milk put on a little table
+opposite her easy-chair, and when he was happily engaged,
+she said, "F., I think our Heavenly Father will soon take
+me to Himself." He looked up with an expression of great
+feeling, and said tenderly: "Do you? Then you will get
+rid of that poor, sick body, and your cough;" and he added
+presently, "Perhaps he will give you <i>wings</i>!" She said
+nothing could be likened to the impression of peace and
+sweetness which these simple words made upon her. Soon
+after, he said, "But what will be done with your poor old
+body?" (She said he spoke as if it was of not much importance.)
+She replied, "Your father and Aunt Lizzy will
+take it to Cambridge in a carriage, and put it into the ground;
+and the grass will grow over the place, and sometimes you
+can come to the place; and I guess I shall look out of heaven
+and see you." But in a few minutes he began to cry, and
+said, "I want to go with you into the sky." She said, "Oh,
+you have a nice little body, which gives you a great deal of
+pleasure, and you must stay here with poor, dear father!
+What would he do when he has no wife any longer, without
+his little boy to make him happy, and take care of him when
+he grows old?" After a little more of such remonstrance he
+said, "Well, I will stay with him!" It was curious that in
+talking with me he never referred to this subject of his
+mother's approaching death, which evidently had touched
+him tenderly, and I did not introduce the subject.</p>
+
+<p>It was also a curious circumstance, that after this matter<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_140" id="Page_140">[140]</a></span>
+of death was, as it were, settled satisfactorily, and the mind
+of his mother freed from all trouble on the point, <i>the love of
+this life</i>, to which she had hitherto been more than indifferent,
+sprang up in her with great energy, and she proposed to
+break up the house, and go to Florida for cure! Her husband
+and I could not share the hope, but we could not but sympathize
+in the new joy in life, that she seemed to have received
+from her now happy child, with whom she had learnt
+<i>to live</i> in the spirit. Things were so arranged that she made
+her husband's father's house, about thirty miles distant, the
+first goal of her journey. She reached with great fatigue this
+first stage, and stopped to rest, and never mentioned Florida
+afterwards. She breathed on another year, during which
+time I only saw her in weekly visits, having returned to Mr.
+Alcott's school in Boston. Her disease was not very painful,
+but so lingering that every trace of her former beauty was
+lost in the ghastly emaciation.</p>
+
+<p>There were in the house two little cousins, younger than
+F., taken care of exclusively by a very sweet mother, and
+this gave him the most desirable social intercourse and play
+that took the place of our discourses at the right moment,
+and called into action very sweet traits of character. My
+weekly visit of a day or two was a great affair to the children.
+I told them stories, innumerable variations of <i>The
+Story without an End</i>, and of <i>Pilgrim's Progress</i>, modified
+to their infant minds. I always repeated the stories in precisely
+the same words (which is a great point in telling stories
+to children, and impresses them on the memory), and
+they became very familiar with the ends of my paragraphs,
+and would take them from my lips, and repeat them as a
+chorus. Thus when I had got Pilgrim laid away in the upper
+chamber of the House Beautiful, whose white draperies I
+minutely described, they would all interrupt me, and sing
+out, "And the name of that chamber was Peace." So of
+the last words of other paragraphs that I purposely made
+epigrammatic.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_141" id="Page_141">[141]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>The substantial character of the child's piety and sense
+of immortality, which I have described as bubbling up at the
+name <i>Heavenly</i> Father, spoken at the right time, and in the
+right way, was exhibited unmistakably in his after life, and
+began to express itself at once in his association with his
+little cousins, which proved a very timely thing for him,
+bringing out his moral character by means of what he constantly
+did to make them happy, and keep them good, but
+he never said anything to them about the Heavenly Father.
+That subject seemed reserved for me.</p>
+
+<p>It was amusing to see how fatherly he was to the little
+one, and he continued this fatherly manner all his after life
+to all the children with whom he came in contact, and even
+during his childhood it was singularly unmixed with any tyranny
+or managing spirit. He would play as they wanted to
+with them. He seemed to be drawn to children because he
+could so easily understand their innocence, and make them
+happy by his companionship, and because he enjoyed <i>them</i>.</p>
+
+<p>All his subsequent life he exhibited an exquisite sensibility
+to beauty, which he continued to accept as the Creator's
+<i>smile of consent</i>; the <i>very good</i> pronounced on everything
+which He had made. In the last part of his mother's life,
+she became so frightfully emaciated, that it was evidently
+painful for him to look at her; but he <i>said</i> nothing about it;
+and it was sweet to see the delicacy with which he tried to
+conceal this pain from <i>her</i>, when he was admitted into the
+room to see her, which, at length, came to be only in the
+middle of the day, when she was seated in an easy-chair,
+with a broad white footstool at her feet. He would come
+into the room, looking on the floor, and seat himself on the
+footstool, with his back partly turned to her, and, drawing
+down her hands, cover them with kisses: he refused, as it
+were, to recognize her, under that ghastly mask, which,
+however, did not shut off from his <i>remembrance</i>, her former
+loveliness; for, as soon as she was really dead, and he began<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_142" id="Page_142">[142]</a></span>
+to think of her <i>in heaven</i>, she became his standard of
+beauty. During the little more than a year that he continued
+under my care, "<i>not</i> so beautiful as my mother," or "<i>as</i>
+beautiful as my mother" were words very frequently in his
+mouth. As she approached her death, she was so careful
+lest he should have any of the <i>shock</i> which her own mother's
+death gave to her, that she readily consented that he should
+go for the last few days with the other children to stay with
+a kind neighbor. He was therefore not present at her death;
+neither was I. It was an event greatly longed for by herself,
+at last, and its approach, which she knew before any
+one else discerned any special change, seemed to gladden
+her. Her last breath was peaceful; her last words, "Give
+my love to F."</p>
+
+<p>I told him of the event the morning after the funeral,
+from which I returned with his father, in the dusk of the
+evening, calling for the child to go home and sleep with me,
+which he always was delighted to do. He was put to bed in
+the room where his mother had died, and I went in with him,
+to explain her absence, if he should notice it. But he was
+tired, and so occupied with my presence, he did <i>not</i>,&mdash;not
+even when he woke in the morning. At last, I said to him,
+"Do you see what room we are in?" He rose up and
+looked around, and said, "Why, it is my mother's chamber!
+Where is my mother?" I paused a moment to see if he
+would divine the truth, and then said, "The dear Heavenly
+Father has taken her at last!" He fell back on the pillow,
+with a single exclamation of <i>not painful wonder</i>, and a countenance
+sublime with the mingled expression of awe, love,
+and joyful satisfaction. The fact of her absent body
+seemed to be a more palpable proof of the truth of her
+deathless soul, than even her form and word, which had represented
+it to his senses. He was "silent, as we grow when
+feeling most," as if he realized that he was in the presence
+of the "substance of things hoped for, the evidence of<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_143" id="Page_143">[143]</a></span>
+things unseen." You may be sure I respected this sacred
+silence, which seemed to me to last several minutes, but possibly
+it was only <i>one</i>. At last he said gently, "Was the
+window open?" I replied, "I don't know; I only know
+our Heavenly Father, who is everywhere, you know, took her
+to himself. He does not mind about windows, you know."
+"<i>No, indeed!</i> I know that very well," he said, with a little
+laugh (as if he wondered at his momentary lapse of thought).
+Soon he asked, "Did He give her a new body right away?"
+"I do not know anything more about that than <i>you</i> do," I
+replied; "I only know He will do better things for her than
+we can think of." "Do you think," said he, "that she looks
+beautiful as she used to?" but, before I could reply, he suddenly
+added, "I want to <i>go</i> to my mother. I want to see
+her <i>now</i>," and began to cry.</p>
+
+<p>I kissed him, and began gently to recall the conversation
+that she had had with him the day she told him she expected
+soon to leave him; and, after a while, he said spontaneously,
+as he had done when he talked with her he "would stay with
+his father to comfort him for the loss of her." His father told
+me afterwards, that when he saw <i>him</i>, he went over the same
+ground again, beginning with saying that he wanted to go
+to her; but when his father represented to him how solitary
+he should be with no wife or son to show their love to him,
+F. closed the conversation with the words, "Well, I will stay
+with you till I grow up" (as if it was quite within his option
+to do so or not).</p>
+
+<p>Very soon after this I took him away with me to Salem,
+where he remained in our family for a year or more, I think.
+My father's family were living at the corner of an old burial
+ground, two sides of the house being bordered by it. The
+day we arrived we went directly to my sister Sophia's room,
+which looked out upon this burial ground. He was immediately
+attracted to the window by the trees, and exclaimed
+joyfully, "Oh, Aunt Lizzy, what a beautiful green garden<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_144" id="Page_144">[144]</a></span>
+this is! What are those things?" (referring to the tomb
+stones.) I replied: "That green garden is where people lay
+away, underground, the <i>poor old worn-out dead bodies</i> of
+their friends, who are with our Father in Heaven, and those
+things are called tombstones; they are put there with the
+names carved on them of the persons whose bodies are buried
+in those spots." He at once seemed greatly interested and
+pleased, and became still more so after he had seen some
+burials; his emotions of joy at the thought of the enfranchised
+spirits entering on their heavenly life, being tempered with
+tender sympathy for the bereaved friends in their mourning-robes,
+whom he sometimes saw weeping at the earthly parting.
+He was always very anxious to know how the buried
+ones had died, from what particular sickness or danger they
+had escaped; and one day when my sister Mary came back
+from a walk, he joyfully told her that he had found out another
+way in which souls went to heaven. She, of course,
+asked him, "What way?" and he said, "Why, sometimes
+ships that go to sea are driven by the wind against some
+rocks and broken to pieces, and all the men's bodies are
+drowned, and they go to heaven through the water." Another
+time, he ran to her in great excitement, and said: "Oh,
+Aunt Mary! I saw a little baby's body buried in the green
+garden; some carriages came, and there was a hole dug
+already, and people got out of the carriages, and one man
+had a little box in his arms in which the baby's body was;
+and they put some ropes around it, and let it down; and then
+they filled up the hole with the dirt, and I saw the little baby
+fly up, fly up, fly up!" and he accompanied the words with a
+circular gesture of his arm. Whether the subjective conception
+was so vivid, that it reproduced itself to his imagination in
+an objective form, as the Sistine Madonna is said to have
+done to Raphael; or it was what is called "a spiritual manifestation";
+it was evidently a reality to him, and no comment
+was made, except that my sister said, "<i>I never saw a
+soul fly up</i>."<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_145" id="Page_145">[145]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>I should say here that this child was not imaginative, and
+we never saw in him the smallest untruthfulness in speech
+or act, nor tendency to exaggeration. In this he resembled
+both his parents. Afterwards, he became something of a
+scientist, and studied medicine for his profession. He was
+a good classical scholar in college, and before his early death,
+had completed in manuscript the history of one of the
+mechanical arts. I think he was not of a visionary temperament.
+(See <a href="#Note_E">Appendix E</a>.)</p>
+
+<p>His life with us in Salem was perfectly delightful. He
+had no faults, though a certain pertinacity (which was an
+expression of inherited firmness of character) sometimes
+required a little disciplinary conversation, nothing more. I
+never knew of his being subjected to any punishment, or
+requiring any, in all his childhood. He had not the usual
+impetuosity of children; perhaps the effect of his early depression
+of spirits.</p>
+
+<p>My sister Mary had a day-school in the house, made up of
+children between six and twelve years of age; he was
+allowed to have his playthings in the school-room, and loved
+to listen to her oral instruction of the children in natural
+history and science, especially in the stories that she told or
+read to them about human beings, in whom he was always
+more interested than in animals. I taught him how to read
+by the word method in <i>The Story without an End</i>, a slower
+and more laborious way both for him and me than the mixed
+method detailed in my <i>Kindergarten Guide</i>, of which I have
+lately published a primer under the title of <i>After Kindergarten,
+what?</i></p>
+
+<p>But had I then known of Fr&#339;bel's method of employing
+childish play, organized by the adult with single aim to intellectual
+development, I should not have taught him to read so
+early, but something more profitable; I then shared what
+Professor Agassiz called "<i>the American insanity</i> of teaching
+children to read before they have learned the things signified<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_146" id="Page_146">[146]</a></span>
+by words," which he, like Fr&#339;bel, believed would produce
+habits of mind positively injurious, dropping a veil between
+the observer and nature, preventing all freshness of thought,
+and destroying the mind's elasticity and <i>originality</i>. But I
+had not (at that time) presumed to question the time-honored
+tradition, that <i>the beginning of education</i> was <i>learning to read</i>.</p>
+
+<p>When, later, my studies with a great philologist gave me a
+little light upon the subject, and showed me that English had
+the misfortune to be written by an inadequate alphabet,
+whose result was to confuse the phonography entirely, by
+obscuring the original principle of having but one letter for
+one sound, and a letter for every different sound, I realized
+the positive disadvantage of children's being forced through
+a process which baffles all their natural instincts of classification;
+and it was then I invented a method of separating
+English words into classes, the phonographic ones to be first
+made familiar, and the exceptions classified. Yet I could not
+be insensible to the unnaturalness of beginning with spending
+so much of the time of very young children upon this work
+of the <i>imperfect mind of man</i>, as languages are, rather than
+on the works of Infinite Wisdom. I was therefore well prepared
+to accept Fr&#339;bel's method of first sharpening the
+senses by examination of things that charm children, and of
+developing the understanding by first making things according
+to the laws which constitute the mind, and then naming them
+in all perceptible relations. First let us form a mind which
+can apprehend nature as the standard of truth, before we
+undertake to <i>in</i>form it with what embodies the confusions
+and errors of men; as, for instance, in a considerable degree
+the written English language does. For language stands in
+the same relation to man as nature does in relation to God.
+The eternal word of Truth makes <i>things</i> before it is made
+flesh. The confusion of tongues was the inevitable consequence
+of the fall of man out of that communion with God in
+which children are born, and our written language is an image<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_147" id="Page_147">[147]</a></span>
+of this confusion, especially the English, whose so-called
+orthography is the most anomalous of all languages; and the
+acquisition, therefore, ought to be postponed, at least until
+the understanding is fairly developed by some recognition of
+so much of the Word of God as is alive in the things we see
+and can handle. The time comes when the children can
+understand that exceptions prove the rule, and then those
+irregularities and anomalies of English writing may be made
+even entertaining lessons to children; because if its laws and
+rules are apprehended first, there is something amusing to
+them in contradictions of law that so many words seem to be.
+It is the pleasure in the grotesque; children enjoy the <i>funny</i>,
+as they call it, but it is a different enjoyment from that of
+the beautiful, and the latter is the highest element for human
+activity. A predominance of the <i>funny</i> even demoralizes
+intellectually as well as morally, but it has its own subordinate
+place in healthy child life.</p>
+
+<p>My little friend had a slate and pencil, and immediately
+inclined to draw from real objects, but we did not know how
+to give him any other help than to guess at what were the
+things he was trying to represent. If we could not guess, I
+remember he would blush, and go away, saying he would
+"<i>fix it a little</i>." I had the instinct that he could only be
+effectually encouraged by success, and I would endeavor to
+divine what he meant, by looking to see what were the surrounding
+objects when I saw him drawing, and would point
+out to him with congratulation any part in which he had at
+all succeeded, letting the rest go. But without adequate and
+legitimate guidance he necessarily became discouraged with
+his failures. What children do not succeed in, becomes distasteful
+to them, and they turn their attention from what has
+disappointed them, and thus their natural tastes die, or are
+starved out. As they have no knowledge of materials, nor
+judgment in using them, they undertake <i>the impossible</i>, and
+being baffled, lose courage to undertake the possible. So<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_148" id="Page_148">[148]</a></span>
+young artists accumulate difficulties by their unwise choice of
+subjects, not realizing the limitations of their own powers.
+It is the part of the educated kindergartner to supply this
+want of judgment and analysis until the pupil catches the
+secret of gradualism and the law of opposites. Fr&#339;bel's
+plan of giving the squared slate and paper to ensure straightness
+of line in children's drawing is like the leading strings
+by which the mother helps the child to develop his limbs for
+walking, which cannot be done without his own personal
+effort. So Fr&#339;bel's plan of having the kindergartner suggest
+a symmetrical drawing of lines in opposites, vivifies the
+sense of symmetry into a thought, whence springs a plan of
+making still another symmetry. For by suggesting opposites,
+and then the connecting of them, the child delightedly sees
+orderly forms that grow under his hands, and feels that he is
+acting from his own individual personality (which <i>he is</i>,
+though the thought was suggested by the words of another).
+What he <i>does</i> gives him confidence in his own mind, whose
+fanciful movement suggests other symmetries; for though
+fancy is a spontaneous play of the free will among impressions
+passively received, it is amenable to the laws whose
+exponents are presented to it by nature's works and human
+suggestion.</p>
+
+<p>F. liked to watch my sister Sophia at her drawing and
+painting, but its very perfection discouraged efforts on his
+own part. It is bad not to <i>do</i> really at once what we conceive
+of ideally. It was only in the moral and religious
+sphere that we really lived with him, and he was properly
+educated by us. We always answered all his questions
+about what we were doing, and how, and why (I wish now I
+had asked him more questions).</p>
+
+<p>My sister Sophia had a rare talent for talking with children,
+whose purity and innocence she comprehended by a
+sympathetic intuition, and to whose imagination her Christian
+faith gave ample scope, for it was hampered by no<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_149" id="Page_149">[149]</a></span>
+human creeds. We had a circle of acquaintances who
+were only too much inclined to pet him, and who, knowing
+something of the history of his mind, liked to talk with him.
+His mother had been very much beloved by this circle, and I
+used to tell him that <i>for her</i> sake, they cared for and attended
+to <i>him</i>, which interested him immensely, and perhaps
+prevented his considering himself as a person of too much
+importance comparatively. He would talk of going to see
+his "<span class="smcap">mother's friends</span>." If new persons spoke to him
+kindly, he would ask me immediately if they knew and loved
+his mother; at all events, the element of personal <span class="smcap">egotism</span>
+did not appear, and the affection he at first poured out on
+me, now freely flowed out in every direction. I remember
+his saying to me, one day, with an accent of great self-gratulation,
+"I think I have a great many friends," and in
+a moment after added, "my mother was so beautiful!" (as
+if that were the reason of it). A young husband and wife
+became inmates of our house, and brought a beautiful infant.
+This was a perennial fountain of delight to F. The
+singular beauty of the little one was a constant subject of
+observation. One day he was looking at her, as she lay on
+her mother's lap, and presently he burst out, "Oh, Ellen,
+your little bright eyes are shining themselves into a <i>sun</i>!"
+He was equally delighted with the musical sound of her
+crowing. His ear for sounds was fastidiously delicate.
+One day my mother was in the garden, looking at some wild
+flowers which had been brought to her for transplanting.
+As she looked at them she said to F., "Run into the house,
+and get my&mdash;" He interrupted her eagerly with, "Don't
+say that ugly <i>word</i>! I know what you mean," and he ran
+into the house, and brought back Bigelow's <i>Plants around
+Boston</i> (<i>Bigelow</i> was the ugly word). But let me hasten
+from these details, to redeem my promise of telling you how
+<i>prayer</i> became a thought of his mind, and his spontaneous
+practice.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_150" id="Page_150">[150]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>It was very early a question of great interest to his
+mother, and also to me, whether prayer <i>would</i> become spontaneous
+with him; that is, whether he would think of speaking
+to God <i>in human words</i>. His intense realization of God's
+<i>presence</i> seemed to be a cause of his <i>not</i> doing so, and I
+feared to put <span class="smcap">God</span> <i>at a distance</i> by suggesting what, in ordinary
+cases, is a means of bringing Him near. If prayer
+be defined as a communion of the finite and Infinite, as personal
+as that of <i>children</i> with earthly parents, <i>his</i> whole conscious
+life was a prayer; for truly God was in all his
+thoughts from the day he first accepted Him so joyfully as
+the Substance and Giver of <i>goodness and love</i>, which involved
+to the natural logic of his innocent mind the corollary
+that He was the Giver of everything outward, as well
+as inward, which gave him any happiness. I did not dare
+to meddle with the natural evolution of thought in so happy
+an instance, but watched to learn the true method of life of
+the little child, as Christ suggested to his disciples to do.
+One day when his grandmother, who was at the house on a
+visit, dropped her needle, she called to F., "Come, and look
+with <i>your little sharp eyes</i> for my needle." He did so, with
+his usual alacrity in service, and soon found it. Then he
+ran to me, and said, "When I go into the sky, I shall thank
+my good Friend for giving me such sharp eyes." I said,
+"What do you wait so long for?" He gave me a glance of
+recognition, as it were, and laughed (as if he had been convicted
+of saying something silly); but he said no more <i>then</i>.
+From that moment, however, he often came to me to say,
+"When I go into the sky, I shall thank my Heavenly
+Father for giving me" this or that; and I would always
+answer him as before, "Why do you <i>wait</i>?" which would
+always bring out the same complete expression of satisfaction
+on his face, showing that he loved to renew the
+occasion for my uniform reply, "Why do you wait <i>till
+then</i>?"<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_151" id="Page_151">[151]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>On one of these occasions he turned from me, and said
+very tenderly, "<i>I thank you, God</i>." One day, after he went
+to Salem, he had been suffering from a bad earache, and my
+sister had relieved it by putting a little tuft of cotton dipped
+in arnica into his ear. Then she asked him to go to the
+window and look out into "the green garden," and she took
+up a pencil to draw. Very soon he began, "<span class="smcap">God</span>, I thank
+you for making this green garden to put away the dead bodies
+<i>in</i>. <span class="smcap">God</span>, I thank you for making these beautiful trees grow
+out of the ground. <span class="smcap">God</span>, I thank you for making all the
+pretty wild flowers grow." He paused between each complete
+sentence, and my sister, having a pencil in her hand,
+wrote down his words till she had covered a sheet of letter
+paper with his thanksgivings; for he went on naming everything
+he could think of; and it was quite wonderful to hear
+the minuteness of his grateful appreciation of life.</p>
+
+<p>One sentence was: "I thank you, <span class="smcap">God</span>, for making medicine
+to put into my ear when it aches." He also thanked
+<span class="smcap">God</span> for his father, and his father's letters to him, for his
+mother in heaven, for many friends whom he loved, naming
+them. I hope that sometime I shall find my sister's paper,
+which I have mislaid with the other memoranda of this interesting
+psychological observation. The pauses between the
+thanksgivings became longer and longer, and at last, after
+one for which he seemed to have searched his inmost mind,
+in despair of finding anything else, he closed with, "My
+dear <span class="smcap">God</span>, I love you very much."</p>
+
+<p>You will observe that in all this spontaneous act of devotion,
+there was no <i>petition</i>. In the fulness of his happy life,
+and, as I think, in the faith that God was giving him everything
+needful, and more, he never thought of <i>asking</i> for
+anything.</p>
+
+<p>Temptation to wrong-doing had not yet revealed the need
+that the progressing spirit always feels of <i>more</i> goodness and
+love, which I had taken care to represent that God gave<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_152" id="Page_152">[152]</a></span>
+whenever the soul acknowledged to itself its need and aspired
+for more of this, its vital substance. For it is my opinion that
+prayer should always be for spiritual good only, in order that
+our religion should be pure from self-seeking, and generously
+self-forgetting in its aspirations for perfection.</p>
+
+<p>A little while after this incident, my sister was reading to
+him, and came to a sentence in which were the words "morning
+and evening prayer." He immediately stopped her and
+asked her, "What does that mean, that word <i>prayer</i>?" She
+said, "Many grown up people, when they wake in the morning,
+and find that God has taken care of them in the night when
+they could not take care of themselves, and given them a new
+day after their good sleep, feel very thankful, and love to tell
+God so, just as you did the other day when you thanked God
+for so many things; and besides, remembering that there are
+a good many things they ought to do, and that He gives <i>the
+love and goodness</i>, they like to ask Him beforehand to give
+them what they shall need <i>to be good with</i> when the time comes
+to want it; and at night, after they have got through the day,
+they like to thank Him for all the joys of the day, and they
+ask Him to take care of them through the night that is
+coming, when they shall be asleep and cannot take care of
+themselves; and this loving talk with God is called the morning
+and evening prayer." I think she added that when she
+was little she used to say, when she was going to bed:&mdash;</p>
+
+<div class='poem'>
+"Now I lay me down to sleep;<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 0.5em;">I pray the Lord my soul to keep;</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 0.5em;">If I should die before I wake,</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 0.5em;">I pray the Lord my soul to take;"</span><br />
+</div>
+
+<div class='unindent'>and that was her evening prayer. "I think it is a very good
+way," said he, "and I mean to do so this very night when I
+go to bed." And it was true that when he went to bed, he
+remembered and made a similar thanksgiving to his former
+one in kind, and closed with this little verse. And again in<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_153" id="Page_153">[153]</a></span>
+the morning he began the first thing to thank God for the
+new day, etc. Nor did he forget afterwards, night and
+morning, to give thanks and utter prayers spontaneously,
+and seemed to enjoy it.</div>
+
+<p>One morning he waked me with his loud singing, and as
+soon as I opened my eyes, said to me, "Aunt Lizzy, I am
+<i>singing</i> my morning prayer." I said, "There was a wonderful
+little shepherd boy once, whose name was David, who
+loved God as you do, and who always sang his prayers."
+Immediately he wanted to know all about him, and I told
+him the story of David in his childhood and up to the time
+he was sent for to sing to King Saul; and I ended with saying
+that I would read to him some of David's <i>psalms</i> (as
+these sung prayers were called); and this I did, and the
+eloquence of the sweet singer of Israel seemed to vivify his
+idea of the Heavenly Father, and of His connection with the
+soul within us all and the world without. Especially I tried
+on him the effect of the Psalm beginning, "The heavens are
+telling of the glory of God," whose rhythm had charmed my
+own childhood, even before I fully comprehended it; and he
+liked to hear it, too. Before this, I had read considerably
+from the Bible to him, for he had one day said that he wondered
+how the world began to be in the first place, and I had
+said: "<i>Yes</i>, everybody wonders about that. But there is a
+book (pointing to the Bible) where one of the first men told
+about how it seemed to him, and I will read it to you." So
+I opened the book and began the first chapter of Genesis,
+without introductory comment. When I came to the words
+"<i>And there was light</i>," he sprang up and shouted, "Directly
+when He said 'Let there be light,' there <i>was</i> light <i>directly</i>!"</p>
+
+<p>I wished Longinus could have heard the confirmation of
+his great criticism. Immediately he ran into my father's
+study, which was across the entry, and burst out, "Dr.
+Peabody, when it was all dark and there was nothing made,
+God said, '<i>Let there be light, and there was light</i>' directly!<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_154" id="Page_154">[154]</a></span>
+directly!" This was not enough; he ran to find my mother
+and sister, and again repeated the simply sublime words.</p>
+
+<p>Then he came back to me to hear the rest, and I finished
+the chapter which he wanted me to read to him again and
+again, day after day. I read afterwards the parable of
+Jotham, which he liked to hear very much. I cannot help
+thinking how much more I might have made of that very parable
+for his moral culture had I then known of Fr&#339;bel's <i>gospel
+of work</i>. I can hardly bear to think how stupid I was; the
+effect of not having had the kindergarten education myself.</p>
+
+<p>But he was too soon taken away from my observation, not
+without my acquiescence, however; for it was to go to his
+father, who, I thought, needed his companionship. And as
+it was at a distance that he lived, and, as afterwards my
+own life was full of vicissitude for many years, I lost the
+run of him entirely. There was a mutual misunderstanding
+between his father and me, for several years, from his thinking
+I wanted to be free from the care of him, and I thinking
+he did not desire my personal influence on him, and we were
+both mistaken, as we found out afterwards. When he went
+to Harvard College, he came to see me, and the interview
+was very interesting. He had a sweet, though it had become
+a dim, remembrance of a happy time with us, succeeded, as
+he told me, by a <i>lack-love</i> experience of years of a dark,
+gloomy time at a boarding-school, to which he was sent when
+he was eight years old, because, as he said, his grandmother
+thought he ought not to be living with his solitary father
+at a hotel. But the boarding-school proved more than a
+heart solitude, as the boys were rough and cruel to him in
+their unguided play. While he was with me, on the occasion
+of this call, it happened that my sister Sophia's children
+came into the room where we were. They had a very vivid
+idea of him from their mother, she having often spoken of
+him to them, and telling them of his joy in learning he had
+a Heavenly Father, when he had never thought or been told<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_155" id="Page_155">[155]</a></span>
+of it. When I said to them, "This is F.," one of them
+said, "Is this F.? I thought he was a little boy," looking at
+him wonderingly, surprised to see a grown-up man. I told
+him they were well acquainted with his childhood. It
+touched him very much, and the conversation that ensued
+touching on several things I have told, brought back the
+old time more distinctively, and he said he should often
+come to recall it by my help, and to learn more of his
+mother, whose beautiful face haunted his dreams. But just
+afterwards I left Boston for some years, and did not see him
+again until after his return from Vienna, where he went
+after leaving college, and remained till he had completed his
+medical studies. I promised then to show him his mother's
+letters to me, written in her girlhood, and to tell him how
+much the early experience of his own childhood had ministered
+to her a heavenly consolation. But again inexorable
+circumstances interfered. He became a practising physician
+in Worcester, and I went to Concord to live, and we procrastinated
+a promised visit until at last Death mocked our
+slow affections. I saw him last wrapped in the flag of his
+country, for when the war broke out in 1861, nothing would
+do but he must go to it; and he went as one of the surgeons
+of the 15th Regiment, which was terribly cut up. For a
+year and a half he did an incredible amount of work, for he
+would always have his hospital on the field of battle, and the
+15th was in a great many battles, and left but few survivors,
+most of whom are maimed or halt. He took care of those
+wounded ones who could not be taken from the battle-field,
+wrote letters for them, and never took a furlough, as every
+other officer and surgeon did. In the last letter that he
+wrote to his father, he said that this year and a half was in
+one sense the happiest time of his life; for it was the only
+time when he seemed to be of any use. He was killed at
+last, walking up through the main street of Fredericksburg,
+Virginia, in the van of the regiment, as was his wont, and<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_156" id="Page_156">[156]</a></span>
+his death was instantaneous. His patriotism and his bravery
+were the fruits of his piety. Every year his father and
+I met to decorate his grave until his father's death in 1883-4.
+He is buried at Mt. Auburn by his mother's side, whose body
+was removed from the tomb in the old burial ground of
+Cambridge. I have a photograph of him taken at the same
+age as his mother when she died,&mdash;thirty-one years. It
+was the year before he went to the war, a drooping head,
+pensive as if marked for early death. But when I saw him
+dead, his brow was lifted, his whole countenance had become
+grand and heroic, and it was plain that he had found his
+ideal vocation. His funeral was celebrated in the city of
+Worcester with military honors, the wounded soldiers of his
+regiment following the hearse in carriages, and the sidewalks
+of the city thronged with the multitude of spectators. A
+discourse upon the text, "No man can do more than lay
+down his life for his friends," was pronounced over him at
+the church, and the beautiful hymn sung, "Nearer my God
+to Thee," which seemed to me the most appropriate conceivable,
+though he had never been far from Him, after he knew
+a name for Him.</p>
+
+<p>After the funeral his father's relatives and friends gathered
+together, and we talked of him. I told my recollections
+of his childhood, and all of them expressed the feeling
+that the life he had led was in perfect harmony with such
+an early acquaintance made with the Heavenly Father.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_157" id="Page_157">[157]</a></span></p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2>LECTURE VIII.</h2>
+
+<div class='chaptertitle'>RELIGIOUS NURTURE.<br /><br /></div>
+
+
+<div class='unindent'><span class="smcap">Fr&#339;bel</span> speaks of the child as a trinity, meaning a unity
+in threefold relation (with God, with man, and with nature),
+and says that education, to be perfect, or even healthy,
+must help him to be conscious of all these relations <i>at once</i>,
+in order to ensure the equipoise of heart and intellect with
+his spiritual power (or freedom to will), in which inheres his
+just self-respect and natural religion.</div>
+
+<p>Nature (that is, the material universe, as I have said
+before) is God's expression of mathematical and all correlative
+laws, the apprehension of which builds up the intellect
+of the individual who, through his sense perceptions, on
+which he reflects and generalizes, gains <i>knowledge</i> of his
+surroundings, beginning with that part of nature which is
+within his own skin.</p>
+
+<p>It was the grand intuition of Oken which has been
+splendidly illustrated by Dr. J. Garth Wilkinson in his
+<i>Human Body in its Connections with Man</i>, that the human
+body is the metropolis of material nature, in which may be
+found in <i>vital order</i> all the elements of the material universe
+which are, outside of the human body, in a more or less
+chaotic state. This development of the individual intellect
+needs more or less aid from the human environment, simultaneously
+with that nurture of the <i>heart</i> which means man's
+conscious relation to man. But though morality, which is
+the performance of man's duty to man, is not religion, which
+is man's consciousness of relation to God, it leads to it inversely,
+because it shows the heart its need of a Father of us<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_158" id="Page_158">[158]</a></span>
+all, in order to be happy. All three processes, the intellectual,
+the moral, and the religious, must go on together, to make
+a perfect education, for in proportion as integral education
+is wanting in those about the child, his intellect will be
+starved, confused, or darkened with error; and immorality
+and irreligion will more or less transpire in the individual.</p>
+
+<p>Fr&#339;bel perfectly realized the deficiency of this integral
+education to be the cause of all the evil that is the present
+experience of mankind, in spite of Church and State and the
+optimism which in form of hope "springs eternal in the
+human breast" (for the pessimist is the exception, not the
+rule among men, the great mass of whom are pursuing some
+ideal aim, even though it be a low one, their moral sentiment
+having been perverted and their religion having become a
+superstitious idolatry either of material forms or of logical
+formulas).</p>
+
+<p>The system of education which Fr&#339;bel discovered, or
+invented, in consequence of realizing this, is what we are
+endeavoring to learn and apply, that we may bring out of
+the moral chaos around us the lost equipoise of the threefold
+nature in our children, by ourselves plunging into infant
+life in imagination and realizing its innocent heart and unfallen
+spiritual state, watching it in its own attempts to
+understand and use its material surroundings and its human
+environment, to the end of guiding it by our own experience
+and matured knowledge, from the errors and misfortunes it
+inevitably falls into if left to its own ignorant experimenting
+unrevised.</p>
+
+<p>The playthings and means of occupation Fr&#339;bel invented
+are to develop the intellect, and are a perfect miniature of
+nature, and to use them in playing with the child is an art
+and a science that the kindergartner must add to her moral
+affections and religion, which are also her indispensable
+qualifications.</p>
+
+<p>I wish to say this very emphatically, all the more because<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_159" id="Page_159">[159]</a></span>
+this part of your education (the art and science that develop
+the intellect) is not my part of your training course, but the
+moral and religious nurture; and therefore I must leave the
+exhaustive analysis of the gifts in their relation to the unfolding
+intellect as well as of the "schools of work" (as the
+series of embroideries, foldings, drawings, weavings, pea-work,
+etc., are called, and which require your study the
+whole year) to your accomplished trainers to do justice to.</p>
+
+<p>But before I turn to my specific department, I would say
+that this intellectual part of the training, which it was the
+special genius of Fr&#339;bel to discover, is of equal importance;
+for it is the duty of man to worship God with the <i>mind</i>, as
+well as with the <i>heart</i> and <i>might</i>, though that is a part of the
+great commandment, which seems to have been systematically
+overlooked by many of the churches, if not virtually
+denied.</p>
+
+<p>To worship God <i>with the mind</i> means to develop the intellect;
+as to worship Him with the <i>heart</i> keeps pure the moral
+sentiments and quickens moral action; and to worship Him
+with the <i>might</i> lifts the will, quickened by the heart and enlightened
+by the mind into oneness with the Holy Spirit,
+more and more forever. And here let me recall to you what
+I said of Fr&#339;bel's authority in my second lecture, and beware
+of deviating from the path he has pointed out (he
+was nearly fifty years in inventing his technique); and
+be very careful about adding to his <i>Gifts</i> or <i>Schools of Work</i>,
+though I would not have you mechanical followers. There
+will be legitimate outgrowths of his method. He himself, in
+one of his <i>Pedagogies</i>, published after his death by Wichard
+Lange, has suggested a "school of drawing" upon <i>the curve</i>,
+which Miss Marwedel has developed, leading the child naturally
+through vegetable formation; and Mr. Edward A.
+Spring, the sculptor, has also suggested and partly carried
+some children through animal forms, from the worm to the
+"human face divine"; and we hope both these "schools"<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_160" id="Page_160">[160]</a></span>
+may be published and used. In the musical line, also, in
+which Fr&#339;bel was personally rather deficient, Mr. Daniel
+Bachellor, now of Philadelphia, has suggested a series of
+exercises by means of the correspondence of tones and colors,
+that makes the children as creative in the discovery of
+melodies, as they are of the harmonies of color in their
+weaving and painting.</p>
+
+<p>There is unquestionably danger that the kindergartner
+may degenerate into mechanical imitation and rote-work in
+this part of her guidance of the children, nevertheless in some
+of the charity kindergartens I have seen there was danger
+of doing injustice to the technique.</p>
+
+<hr style="width: 45%;" />
+
+<p>On this last day of communion with you on the Fr&#339;bel
+education, I would like to speak with some comprehensiveness
+and particularity on the subject of religious nurture.
+Mark me, I say religious <i>nurture</i>, not religious teaching.
+The religion that integrates human education is not to be
+taught. It is the primeval consciousness of filial relation to
+<span class="smcap">God</span>, who alone can reveal Himself; for human language has
+no adequate expression of <span class="smcap">God</span>, founded as it is on the material
+universe, which is the finite opposite of Creative Being.
+Every individual child is a momentum of <span class="smcap">God</span>'s creativeness
+which the human Providence of education must take as its
+<i>datum</i>. Only childhood symbolizes <span class="smcap">God</span> as "the sum of all
+being," realizing itself in joy incommensurable. Ruskin has
+happily said the joy of childhood is out of all proportion to
+the occasions that call forth its expression, and in order to
+make <span class="smcap">God</span> the central conscious truth of the child's intellect,
+we must give the name father or mother to <span class="smcap">God</span>, which is
+intelligible to the heart, and which will identify its filial aspiration
+with the parental bounty, as another, yet the same.</p>
+
+<p>But what I want you to observe is, that language being<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_161" id="Page_161">[161]</a></span>
+limited in meaning by its origin in material nature, you
+should talk about <span class="smcap">God</span> as little as possible, after having
+given Him the name that will excite the child's worshipful
+aspiration, and limit yourselves carefully to regulating moral
+manifestations, leading children to act kindly, generously,
+truthfully, in your own assured faith that <span class="smcap">God</span> is present to
+inspire the truth, generosity, and loving <i>will</i> that is practically
+prayed for with <i>good resolution</i>. (Good resolutions are
+the special prayers of faith, as children should be taught expressly.)</p>
+
+<p>Kindergartners cannot carry out this course quite irrespective
+of the theory of human nature declared in their
+creeds. But the heart is generally larger than the creed, as
+was once strikingly evidenced to me by Louisa Frankenberg,
+a dear, devout old German kindergartner, who had learned
+the art of kindergartning from Fr&#339;bel himself, in the very
+beginning of his own experimenting; but she was such a
+bigot to the Lutheran Church that she could not theoretically
+admit as a Christian any one who did not swear by its dogma
+of total depravity. Yet I remember hearing her exclaim, "Oh,
+Fr&#339;bel's method is so beautiful! because the affectionate
+plays and innocent occupations take the children entirely
+away from the depravity of their hearts." She said this with
+a gush of love and faith that showed how much the unbounded
+human heart is beyond being totally eclipsed by shadows cast
+by the limited human intellect. It is neither feeling or thinking,
+but righteous doing, that gives us victory.<a name="FNanchor_11_11" id="FNanchor_11_11"></a><a href="#Footnote_11_11" class="fnanchor">[11]</a></p>
+
+<p>The child in the first era of his life has no individual consciousness
+of separation from <span class="smcap">God</span>, and for a certain time it
+is obvious to all observers that this august unconsciousness
+even prevents the immediate development of an intellectual
+conception of him. The child in its infancy (infant, you remember,
+means <i>not speaking</i>) does not see nature as object,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_162" id="Page_162">[162]</a></span>
+but feels it also to be himself, and hence he has no language,
+for language is the expression of his intellect. Hence the
+infant's sublime unconsciousness of danger and absolute fearlessness,
+and its impulse to spring upward out of its mother's
+arms, the laws of gravity notwithstanding! It stands, as
+Wordsworth has sung,&mdash;</p>
+
+<div class='center'>
+"Glorious in the might of heaven-born freedom on its being's height,"<br />
+</div>
+
+<div class='unindent'>and only gradually do</div>
+
+<div class='center'>
+"Shades of the prison-house begin to close around the growing boy."<br />
+</div>
+
+<div class='unindent'>For, as the same poet has it in that ode which is as much
+inspired as anything in the sacred oracles of the Hebrew or
+the Christian:&mdash;</div>
+
+<div class='poem'>
+<span style="margin-left: 2em;">"Earth fills her lap with pleasures of her own;</span><br />
+Yearnings she hath in her own natural kind,<br />
+And even with something of a mother's mind,<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 4em;">And no unworthy aim,</span><br />
+The homely nurse doth all she can<br />
+To make her foster-child, her innate man,<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 2em;">Forget the glories he hath known</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 4em;">And that Imperial Palace whence he came.</span><br />
+<br />
+*&nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp;*&nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp;*&nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp;*&nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp;*<br />
+<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 2em;">Hence, in a season of calm weather,</span><br />
+Though inland far we be,<br />
+Our souls have sight of that immortal sea<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 2em;">Which brought us hither;</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 2em;">Can in a moment travel thither,</span><br />
+And see the children sport upon the shore,<br />
+And hear the mighty waters rolling evermore."<br />
+</div>
+
+<div class='unindent'>The "not unworthy aim" of the "humble nurse" is to give
+the child the sense of "having life in himself" as an individual
+free agent, so that he may come into intellectual consciousness
+of the laws of <span class="smcap">God</span> by going counter to them,
+which reveals to him that he is separating from <span class="smcap">God</span> in his
+activity. This separation is <i>sin</i>, which is a short word for<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_163" id="Page_163">[163]</a></span>
+separation, and the first step in the development of individuality,
+and therefore pardonable, because it is finite.</div>
+
+<p>Now the true religious nurture is to keep the child in the
+mood of ineffable joy in which he was created, while he is
+evolving his sense of individuality and free agency by experimenting
+freely, but more or less painfully, so that he shall
+not lose sight of the central Sun, to which everything he is
+slowly learning through his senses and his reflection is related;
+and this must be begun by giving a name to the central Sun
+that shall express the character of his inmost consciousness
+of joy and love, which is his vision of <span class="smcap">God</span>, and needs to be
+recognized as <span class="smcap">God</span> in the understanding.</p>
+
+<p>In the Old Testament we see that it is the <i>name</i> of the
+Lord which is set forth as the only means of escaping that
+idolatry which is destructive of progressive spiritual religion.
+The name of the Lord, or Ruler, with the Hebrews was
+<span class="smcap">Jehovah</span>, a word made up of the three tenses of the substantive
+verb <i>to be</i>, "was, is, and shall be," and which
+Philo, the Alexandrian Jewish philosopher, translates <span class="smcap">The
+Eternal</span>. It was understood by the worshippers to be the
+ineffable Creative Reality, so that when they came to the
+word in their sacred ritual they did not speak it, but reverently
+bowed their heads in a moment's silence, or paraphrased
+it, <span class="smcap">The Lord God</span>.</p>
+
+<p>But Jesus, the bright, consummate flower of the Hebrew
+race, used the name Father (<i>my</i> and <i>our</i> Father), which you
+may observe was original with him. That word expressed
+the whole of his theology. He made no disquisitions on
+<span class="smcap">God's</span> being, but simply recognized the vital relation of
+mankind to its Creator by this word, which any child who
+has come to see that he and his mother are two can
+understand and will love.</p>
+
+<p>Fr&#339;bel has proved by his nursery method that the child
+shall get <i>this idea</i> and name of <span class="smcap">God</span> from his mother; and
+at all events when children come to the kindergarten they<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_164" id="Page_164">[164]</a></span>
+will generally already have heard some name for <span class="smcap">God</span>,
+adequate or inadequate. Now all you have to do&mdash;but
+that is a great deal, indeed the greatest thing&mdash;is not to
+cloud the child's intuitive knowledge of <span class="smcap">God</span> by your inadequate
+words as was done in the case of M. D., who was
+afraid of the omnipresence of <span class="smcap">God</span>, as I mentioned in my
+narrative of F. H., and in the case of his unfortunate
+mother at her mother's funeral. In the case of little F.
+the mistake was not to have given any name before his
+sense perceptions had made "a prison house for the growing
+boy." But you have seen how the shades were dispelled
+by my taking it for granted with him that a Heavenly
+Father existed, which he joyfully accepted at once, for I
+knew that</p>
+
+<div class='poem'>
+"In the embers was something that did live,<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 0.5em;">And Nature yet remembers</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 0.5em;">What was so fugitive."</span><br />
+</div>
+
+<p>The naming of <span class="smcap">God</span> in the kindergarten should be in
+music, which is the natural language of spirituality (or
+aspiration), lifting the soul above the cold level of the
+intellect that cognizes the correlations of the natural universe.
+Fr&#339;bel finds support of his faith in the efficacy
+of song, that puts devout expression into the works of
+nature, in the historical fact that the civilizing literature
+of all nations begins in religious hymns. The different
+characteristics and the different destinies of nations are seen
+in germ in the national songs, which are in large degree and
+sometimes exclusively addressed to <i>the Powers above</i>. The
+Li-king of the Chinese, the Rig Veda of the old Aryans,
+the Puranas of the Hindus, the Garthas of the Iranians,
+the recently discovered early poetry of the Egyptians, and
+even the magical formulas of the Babylonians, all express
+with more or less exaltation of spirit the primeval intuition
+of Supreme Being, and use the particulars of material nature<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_165" id="Page_165">[165]</a></span>
+as words of <span class="smcap">God</span> pointing to that unity of all life that is the
+music of the spheres. Is it not heard in the voice of the
+healthy infant, which is the most exquisite music on earth,
+and later seen in the pictures made by the imagination
+before language that is coined by the human understanding
+has introduced prosaic, that is, analytic definitions, and
+drawn the human individual away from feeding its heart
+on the fruits of the Tree of Life (which are music and
+poetry) to the fruits of the tree of knowledge, which are
+evil as well as good. The kindergarten exercises should
+begin and end with spiritual songs and hymns; indeed,
+they should come in any time at the call of the children,
+who, it will be found, will oftener call for hymns of praise
+than for any other songs.</p>
+
+<p>The hymns of the kindergarten repertory should be entirely
+free from all that is didactic and denominationally
+doctrinal. Their object is not to teach any science, whether
+intellectual, moral, or theological; but to express childish
+joy in existence, or quicken the original childish faith, which
+in all ages and nations has expressed itself in music and the
+dance. Nor should the singing of hymns in kindergarten
+be ever perfunctory or a thing of course. A good kindergartner
+begins the day with bringing all the children into
+company for preliminary conversation, and asking each in
+turn what is in his mind; or the class as a whole may be
+asked some general question, perhaps about the weather,
+which always has something beneficial that can be brought
+to the attention; then they could be asked, "Could you
+have made this weather? Who made it? and would you
+not like to thank the Heavenly Father for it?" Something
+similar to this should precede all the hymns to
+rouse their sense of free activity, and prevent routine,
+and then they will sing with the heart and understanding
+also. I remember going one day into a kindergarten with
+Mr. Alcott when such a preliminary conversation was<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_166" id="Page_166">[166]</a></span>
+going on, which was followed by this song of the
+weather, the children making the illustrative gesticulations
+with their arms. They began with the weather of the
+day, and continued with several varieties, for it is not often
+the whole song is sung at one time. The intense delight of
+the children when themselves personifying the weather,
+poured itself out in the chorus, which they had first learned
+to sing with a will,&mdash;</p>
+
+<div class='poem'>
+"Wonderful, Lord, are all thy works,<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 2em;">Wheresoever falling.</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 0.5em;">All, their various voices raise;</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 0.5em;">Speaking forth their Maker's praise</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 2em;">Wheresoever falling."</span><br />
+</div>
+
+<div class='unindent'>(See Appendix, <a href="#Note_F">Note F</a>.)</div>
+
+<p>Mr. Alcott, with his eyes full of tears, turned to me, and
+said, "This must have an immense influence upon character."
+In religious conversation children have the advantage
+of us in their as yet uneclipsed original vision of <span class="smcap">God</span>, and
+we have an advantage of them in knowledge of outside things
+and the adaptation of means to ends. By this knowledge
+of ours we can generally guide them to accomplish their
+purposes when they are such as will really give them pleasure
+and do no harm to any one else. They get our knowledge
+by confidingly doing as we direct, and a confidence in
+the method which brings about the results they have instinctively
+foreseen. We save their minds from getting lost or
+bewildered in the chaos of particulars by winning their
+attention to the orderly connections of things, and leading
+them to realize how they connect little things in order to
+make larger things, and how opposites are connected in the
+world around about them. To recognize their own little
+plans and open their eyes to <span class="smcap">God</span>'s methods and plans; and
+because they cause new effects, they realize that all effects
+have causes, and in the last analysis realize one personal
+cause. They must believe in themselves as a preliminary<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_167" id="Page_167">[167]</a></span>
+to believing in <span class="smcap">God</span>. Let them with things create order; and
+you will have influence with them in proportion to their feeling
+that you respect their free will, and divine in a genial
+way what they want; and this you can do if you inform yourself
+of what is <i>universal</i> in human desire, keeping your eyes
+open to what modifications <i>their</i> individuality suggests; and
+it is your cognizance of these individualities which makes
+your part of the enjoyment. If there are no two leaves
+alike, much more are there no two human individuals precisely
+alike, and human intercourse is made refreshing by
+these various individualities playing over the surface of the
+universal race-consciousness. If you respect the individuality
+of a child, and let it have fair play, you gain its
+confidence. Nothing is so delightful as to feel oneself understood.
+It is much more delightful than to be admired. But
+to give a child's individuality fair play in a company of
+children, you must open children's eyes to one another's
+individualities, and you will find that if you suggest their
+respecting each other's rights in the plays, there is something
+within them that will justify you. The consciousness of
+individuality is the correlated opposite to the conscience
+of universality. Justice is an intuition. The opposite
+poles of a human being are self-assertion or personal consciousness
+on the one side, and generosity or <i>race</i> consciousness
+on the other.</p>
+
+<p>We have seen that the maternal instinct, which the kindergartner
+is to make her own by cultivating it, cherishes the
+indispensable innocent self-assertion (which is only changed
+into selfishness by lack of that social cherishing which keeps
+generosity wide awake to balance self-assertion). We must
+sympathize with the play instincts of the child, so that it may
+get knowledge of its body in its parts and its powers of
+locomotion, manipulation and speech, giving self-respect to
+the consciousness of power, while the simultaneous knowledge
+of limitation is prevented from becoming fear by<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_168" id="Page_168">[168]</a></span>
+experience of the motherly providence, which is the first
+comprehensible form of that love which in due time calls
+forth ideal worship of the Infinite <span class="smcap">God</span>, if <span class="smcap">God</span> has been
+adequately named in natural sympathetic conversation with
+an earnest self-persuasion but without sanctimonious affectation.
+Unless you have unaffected spontaneity of faith yourselves,
+you should not dare to talk about <span class="smcap">God</span> to the child.</p>
+
+<p>The religious nurture which Fr&#339;bel proposes therefore
+consists simply in so living with children as to preserve their
+primeval joy by tenderly and reverently respecting it, as that
+human instinct prompts which is in the highest power in the
+mother. Sympathetic tenderness is the first of all means for
+moral culture. The child's faith in <span class="smcap">God</span> must be cherished
+into self-reliance. There is a self-distrust that is really a
+distrust of <span class="smcap">God</span>, and no harm we can do a child is so great
+as to lead it to doubt its own spontaneity. The common
+religious teacher&mdash;even a conscientious mother&mdash;sometimes
+does this, and so far from nurturing the child's conscious
+union with <span class="smcap">God</span>, starts a morbid self-consciousness, the
+opposite of religious peace. In order not to make this mistake,
+let the mother and kindergartner read and ponder
+Fr&#339;bel's <i>Mother Love</i> and <i>Cossetting Songs</i>.<a name="FNanchor_12_12" id="FNanchor_12_12"></a><a href="#Footnote_12_12" class="fnanchor">[12]</a></p>
+
+<p>If you ask me what aid the moral culture derives from
+the religious nurture, I reply, the name Heavenly Father,
+given to the inmost consciousness, keeps the heart happy and
+the will self-respecting, by preventing those indefinite fears,
+incident to a sense of helplessness, which engenders selfishness.
+Hope and Faith are correlatives, and conscious or
+necessary means of goodness (which is enacted thereby), not<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_169" id="Page_169">[169]</a></span>
+agonies of will in the absence of this support. In the majority
+of cases moral discouragement is the secret of children's
+naughtiness; and, as Dr. Channing used to say, "there is
+nothing fatal to child or man but discouragement," which
+often exists close beside manifestations of pride and self-will.</p>
+
+<p>When I kept school, in my earlier life, I became the confidante
+of many cases of wrong-doing and conscious wrong
+feeling. Sometimes the confidentialness was altogether
+spontaneous on the part of the children, and in other cases I
+took the initiative, drawing out the confidence, by intervening
+on occasion to console and help, especially when I saw
+that the sensibility had been wounded, or there was moral
+puzzle. And my experience and observation in this line justified
+the faith in which I began to keep school; viz., that
+children are all <i>but perfectly</i> good, in all cases, and are never
+so grateful for anything else, when they find themselves
+naughty, as for spiritual and moral help, given as <i>God gives</i>,
+"upbraiding not."</p>
+
+<p>When they are not grateful for moral help, it is the fault
+or mistake of the grown-up counsellor. Even in the worst
+cases I always took it for granted that nevertheless they loved
+goodness better than the naughty self which for the hour had
+got the victory over the better self. Spiritual being, whether
+finite or infinite, is only to be discerned by aspiring faith.
+Yet I do not think it right or wise to suggest to little children
+that <i>their</i> wrong-doings, which are more weaknesses than
+presumptions, are <i>sins against God</i>. Children can comprehend
+their relations to each other, and the violation of each
+other's rights to happiness, and can be easily led to sympathize
+with the pain or inconvenience of those they make suffer,
+which touches their sense of justice and generosity; they
+can appreciate wrong and its consequences to their equals
+and to themselves in the <i>present life</i>. But <span class="smcap">God</span> is too great
+to be injured by them; and to bring <span class="smcap">God</span> to their imagination
+as personally angry with them, overwhelms thought, and<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_170" id="Page_170">[170]</a></span>
+annihilates all sense of responsibility, with all self-respect.
+Children can comprehend perfectly that wrong-doing, in particular
+cases, is an injury to themselves, as well as a harm
+to their neighbor; also that they forfeit, for the time being,
+their privilege of being, as it were, in partnership with <span class="smcap">God</span>
+in making others happy, as well as being companions with
+Him in making things grow; and an occasional hint of this,
+when they are very happy and successful, is well. But to
+suggest that they are forfeiting this privilege of divine companionship
+and partnership, is quite painful enough, be this
+forfeiture ever so partial. Old sinners are to be disciplined,
+perhaps, by that love of <span class="smcap">God</span> which speaks in the thunder,
+the earthquake, and fire, breaking through the crust of selfish
+habit to awaken attention to the still, small voice of conscience,
+in which alone the Lord is <i>in person</i>. But the
+naughty child, at his worst, needs only to think of God as
+sorry for him, and "waiting to be gracious," like the father
+of the prodigal son.</p>
+
+<p>I can illustrate this by anecdotes of a child to whose
+moral life I was obliged to call in the aid of the religious
+sentiment, and even of the specific Christian revelation
+of pardon for all past wrong repented. It was the case
+of a very sensitive child of nine years of age, whose mother
+was gifted with the finest imagination and moral instincts,
+but was married to a cold, Dombey-like husband, whom she
+unfortunately thought superior to herself, whom she idealized,
+and endeavored to make her children satisfactory to his worldly
+ideal. The result in their characters was more or less disastrous
+to each, ending with the suicide of one. This child's
+conscience of the duty of satisfying both parents I soon found
+to be abnormal; and her sense of her father's contempt for her
+intellect, and her mother's painstaking that she should satisfy
+him, so worked on her sensibility that it suspended her reasoning
+powers; and no matter what it was she failed in,
+whether in missing an answer to a question in arithmetic, or<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_171" id="Page_171">[171]</a></span>
+in failure of good temper when tormented, she fell into despair.
+I endeavored to show her that a mistake in any school
+exercise was no crime, but only made an occasion for her
+learning more thoroughly the thing in hand, and to show her
+that, unless she had fortitude to bear failures, and courage
+and hope to overcome them, I could not help her out of them;
+and I never rebuked any naughty manifestation of a moral
+character of any one in her presence, but she would burst
+into tears, and tell me how much naughtier she was. One
+Monday morning I asked my children, as I was wont to do,
+if there was anything interesting that they had heard at
+church or Sunday-school the day before, when, almost with
+a shriek, she cried out, "Oh, don't ask me that." I said
+gently, "Come with me into my chamber," which she did,
+crying all the while. "Mr. Greenwood preached about the
+prayers, and he said we should not look about the church, or
+think of anything else, while the service was being read; and
+I always do, and I can't help it, because I am so bad." I
+took her into my arms, and said, "It is a sure proof that you
+are not bad, that you are so distressed at the thought of doing
+wrong. Bad people do not care, and so they grow worse
+and worse; but your conscience seems to forget the Heavenly
+Father, who did not give it to you to discourage you, but to
+help you to see what way you must not go, and to remind you
+that He is close by to help your good resolution, which is the
+prayer of your will."</p>
+
+<p>"But I read in a hymn that <span class="smcap">God</span> sets down everything we
+do wrong in a book; and at the judgment day He will read it
+all out to the assembled universe. I told a lie once."</p>
+
+<p>"Did you?" said I, tenderly. "Tell me all about how you
+came to." "I cannot," said she, "because then I should
+have to tell something bad about somebody else, which I must
+not." "How long ago was it?" "It was when we were
+living at &mdash;&mdash;." I saw by this that it was several years before.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_172" id="Page_172">[172]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>She had a little brother, of whom she was very fond. I
+took hold of a locket that she wore about her neck, that contained
+the hair of the lady for whom she was named, and the
+memory of whose great virtues had been impressed on her
+imagination, and said:&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>"What if Edward should take this locket and break it,
+and take out the hair and throw it in the fire?" With a great
+deal of energy she said:&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>"He never would do such a naughty thing."</p>
+
+<p>"He might do it without being naughty; he would not know
+that you never could get any more of Miss &mdash;&mdash;'s hair; and
+he would do it from innocent curiosity&mdash;and what if he should
+do it, what would you do?"</p>
+
+<p>"Why, I should tell him he was a very naughty boy, meddling
+with other people's things, and that he had done something
+that he could never make up, for there was no more
+of that hair."</p>
+
+<p>"Well," said I, "and I suppose you would say that, very
+likely crying, and if he seeing that he had given you such
+pain, should begin to cry, and should cry all the rest of the
+day, and cry himself to sleep, and when he waked in the
+morning should begin to cry again, and should cry all day
+for weeks&mdash;what would you do?"</p>
+
+<p>"Why, I should tell him I was sorry to lose my locket,
+but I could bear it, and he must forget about it, for he did
+not know what a mischief he was doing, and I should take
+him out to walk, and amuse him, and do everything to make
+him forget it."</p>
+
+<p>"Why should you do all this?"</p>
+
+<p>"Because I love him," she said.</p>
+
+<p>"Do you believe you love him better than <span class="smcap">God</span> loves you?"</p>
+
+<p>With a look of surprise, she said, "Does <span class="smcap">God</span> love us the
+same way we love?"</p>
+
+<p>"There is but one kind of love," I said, "and I really
+think He would like to have you forget that <i>lie</i> you told so<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_173" id="Page_173">[173]</a></span>
+long ago, without thinking how wrong it was, because you
+were thinking of something else, just as Edward was only
+thinking he wanted to see what was under the glass of the
+locket."</p>
+
+<p>She looked at me wistfully.</p>
+
+<p>"Did you ever read about Jesus Christ in the New Testament?"
+said I.</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, and I hate to."</p>
+
+<p>"Why?"</p>
+
+<p>"Because you know everybody says we must be like Him,
+and He never did anything wrong, and I cannot be like Him,
+for I do wrong of all kinds&mdash;beside that <i>lie</i>, and you know
+how cross I am."</p>
+
+<p>"O," said I, "I do not wonder you feel discouraged if
+you think that you must be as good as Jesus Christ right
+away, to begin with; but Jesus Christ came into the world
+to say a word that is the most important word in the New
+Testament, and if He had not said it, He would have done
+us more harm than good with His perfect example, discouraging
+us entirely."</p>
+
+<p>"What was that word?" she asked, with the most eager
+interest.</p>
+
+<p>"<i>Pardon</i>," said I, "for all past wrong-doing that you are
+sorry for."</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, Miss Peabody, I never thought of the meaning of
+that word before."</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, darling," said I, "and that is the reason of all your
+trouble. Now think of it always; and thank <span class="smcap">God</span> that He
+sent Jesus to say it. That <i>lie</i> of yours <span class="smcap">God</span> has pardoned
+long ago, just as you would have pardoned little Edward.
+We all do wrong things when we are children, and learn by
+doing them not to do them again. Now from to-day begin
+all your life over again. When you miss in your lessons, instead
+of crying, just let it go, and ask me to help you try
+again. So in making other mistakes, and when you feel<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_174" id="Page_174">[174]</a></span>
+cross, which comes in your case because you are so easily discouraged,&mdash;for
+that makes you have dyspepsia,&mdash;just forget
+it as soon as possible and go and do something pleasant, and
+think that <span class="smcap">God</span> loves you, and only lets you do wrong to show
+you that you need to be getting wisdom all the time, and
+you will grow stronger continually, and the older you grow,
+the better you will understand."</p>
+
+<p>I never knew a moral crisis in any child's life so marked
+as this was. She had a very hard path in life to walk and
+suffered much, but she never again lost the hope by which
+we live, and at length, full of years, joined "the Choir Invisible,"
+from which commanding standpoint she doubtless
+sees the end from the beginning, and how <span class="smcap">God</span>'s redeeming
+Providence completes His creation of a free agent. What I
+insist upon is, that a child should never be left to doubt, but
+should always be helped to feel <i>sure</i> that <span class="smcap">God</span> is loving him
+better than he loves himself; is sorry far more than angry
+with him when he has done wrong, and therefore it is that He
+will not let him succeed in doing wrong, but has so arranged
+things that the wrong always gets checked; that <span class="smcap">God</span> is
+especially good precisely because He "makes the ways of the
+transgressor hard." Never let the Infinite Power appear to
+the naughty child's imagination as punishing, but only as
+encouraging, inspiring, helping! It is recorded as characteristic
+of the highest manifestation of <span class="smcap">God</span> and Educator of
+man, who appeared to His most spiritual disciple as the
+"Eternal Word made flesh," that He did not "quench the
+smoking flax or bruise the broken reed," but distilled upon
+humanity&mdash;especially in its flowering stage&mdash;the gentle
+dews of blessing,&mdash;taking little children in His arms to bless
+them.</p>
+
+<p>You may ask, But what if a child proves in some instances
+incorrigible to the method of love? What shall we do then?
+I think it will be sufficient to ask any <i>Christian</i>, What did
+Jesus do when the Jews proved insensible and incorrigible<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_175" id="Page_175">[175]</a></span>
+to his long-suffering, brotherly love, making it the occasion
+of their own capital crime? Did he abandon the method of
+love when they nailed him to the cross, or even doubt it?
+Let us dwell on this a little. Was it not the special trial of
+Jesus Christ's human life, the last temptation through which
+he was constrained by his apparent failure of accomplishing
+the work of redeeming Israel, by leading them of their
+own selves to judge and do what is right to cry out, My
+God! my God! why hast thou forsaken me? For instead of
+their <i>coming to him</i> to get the waters of life he offered, they
+had made it the very act of their <i>religion</i> to murder him
+as a blasphemer. I ask, Did he, even then, exchange his
+method of <i>forbearing love for cursing</i>? Did he not, <i>even then</i>,
+hold fast to the principle of brotherliness by commending
+his spirit (which was his work) into the hands of the Father,
+with the words: "Forgive them, for <i>they know not what they
+do</i>"; showing that he felt that this ignorance was infinitely
+more pitiable than his own apparently forgotten bodily
+agonies? And, in this great <i>humane</i> act of forbearance, and
+<i>divine</i> act of faith did he not reveal in its fulness the loving
+character of God, whom he had always called <i>Father</i>, and
+with whom he proved himself <i>one</i> by this very token, which
+converted the Jewish thief and the Roman centurion on the
+spot; and which, step by step, is slowly but surely (by
+inspiring his disciples with the same spirit and method of
+dealing with their fellow-beings) <i>converting the world</i>? The
+moment of despair of an immediate spiritual good we are
+trying to do, is often the moment of our doing a higher and
+greater good.</p>
+
+<p>As Jesus resigned his own finite will, as the son of David,
+which was fixed on bringing the Jewish nation to fulfil its
+national mission of "<i>blessing</i> all the families of the earth,"
+which he understood to be the motive inspiration of Abraham's
+emigration from Babylonian civilization into the
+wilderness; and as he accepted the will of his Father, which<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_176" id="Page_176">[176]</a></span>
+seemed to be that the privilege to do this patriotic duty was
+not granted to him as he had grown up thinking, <i>the will was
+lifted</i>, and he found himself doing <i>more</i>&mdash;becoming the
+Saviour, not of the <i>nation</i> of the Jews merely, <i>but of all men</i>,
+and so sat down on the right hand of <span class="smcap">God</span>. For he proved
+himself to the <i>heart of all humanity</i>, <span class="smcap">God</span>'s Son, <i>loving</i>,
+not for the sake of men's <i>reciprocation</i> and appreciation of
+himself, but for the sake of <i>the salvation</i> of humanity. Therefore
+Christ's method is the one for every man and woman on
+all planes of activity, however humble. I have heard more
+than one mother say, that when they had tried every method
+they knew of to influence their child to give up some wrong
+object on which the irrefragable free will was bent, and
+all tender and violent measures had failed, the <i>irrepressible</i>
+tears of their despairing love had most unexpectedly melted
+the hardness of self-will at <i>once</i>, and <i>effected the cure</i>. <span class="smcap">Love</span>,
+<i>when it is understood</i>, is <i>irresistible</i>. Our sacred oracles teach
+us that the origin of evil is in a doubt of <span class="smcap">God</span>'s love. In
+Eden it was a suspicion that He had some selfish ends in
+forbidding even one thing in a world of free gifts.</p>
+
+<p>The conquest of evil, on the other hand, they represent,
+was in Jesus Christ's trusting <i>God's love</i>, in a lost world,
+amidst the physical agonies of his cross, and the moral anguish
+of a disappointment of the grandest aim that ever one
+born of woman had set to himself for his life-work. In faithfully
+trying to do the lesser good just at hand, he developed
+the power to <i>save all men from their sins; not merely his own
+people</i>.</p>
+
+<p>To the training class of kindergartners I would say, <i>your</i>
+special work is rather to <i>prevent</i>, than to conquer sin, in the
+objects of your care; therefore you should, in your own
+imagination, associate yourself with <i>God creating</i>, first leading
+children to realize that all He has made is <i>very good</i> and
+must be kept so, which is giving the religious nurture.</p>
+
+<p>That great word of Fr&#339;bel, <i>man is a creative</i> being, has<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_177" id="Page_177">[177]</a></span>
+said in the world of education, whether religious, moral, or
+intellectual, "Let there be light," and is never to be forgotten
+in its uttermost meaning.</p>
+
+<p>In this truth you will find an infinite resource of hope and
+successful energy. You may think that you apprehend and
+accept the scope of this pregnant word, because you do not
+reject it as a proposition; but partial knowledge is often
+deluding, and <i>not doubting</i> is far from <i>efficient conviction</i>,
+which a comprehensive and penetrating understanding of a
+principle gives. Let me illustrate this illusion of thinking
+we comprehend when we do not, by some of Fr&#339;bel's gifts.</p>
+
+<p>Think of the four last gifts of Fr&#339;bel in their wholeness
+of form, <i>as cubes</i>. When these cubes are uncovered and
+you recognize them as eight, or twenty-seven, or thirty-six
+wooden, solid, six-sided, eight-cornered, twelve-edged units,
+and see the relations of their properties in nature, it may
+seem to you as if you exhaustively knew the cube; but you do
+not if you have omitted to notice one property inherent in it,
+more important because pregnant with more consequences
+than any other property,&mdash;I mean its <i>divisibility</i> by means
+of which its possible transformations are innumerable, every
+transformation presenting the symmetry of the original in a
+new variety of beauty, so that if you will give to a child one
+of these divisible cubes and suggest to him the clue of the
+law of connecting contrasts, which is the law of all production,
+he will never tire (except physically) of making the
+new combinations, and seeking through each and all, that
+sense of a <i>whole</i> which was the first impression. It is by
+reason of its divisibility, that the cube can be transformed
+infinitely. Now you may conceive the nature of man as a
+whole, and observe a great many of his attributes, and yet
+not see the greatest,&mdash;<i>his creativeness</i>, whose consequences
+are infinite.</p>
+
+<p>Educational science has, in fact, generally omitted to do
+this in the past, and treated a child according to the attributes<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_178" id="Page_178">[178]</a></span>
+it recognized; but, because before Fr&#339;bel's day man had
+not been recognized by the reflective mind as a creative
+being, it had not been realized that he can be transformed,
+or transform himself as well as his surroundings, infinitely,
+ever producing something <i>new</i>, and hence that there may be,
+in the lapse of ages, as much variety in human production
+as there is in God's workings in the Universe.</p>
+
+<p>It is, in short, because education has not hitherto conceived
+of man as <i>creative</i>, that there has been so much dead
+uniformity and lifeless repetition on the plane of humanity;
+and that a general characteristic of educational systems
+hitherto has been a mechanical running of the human being
+into certain fixed moulds, not only irrespective of individual
+tendencies, but antagonistic to the universal creative impulse,
+which is the profoundest characteristic of man, and which,
+not being understood, has, in a great measure, proved only a
+source of disorder, and given a bad name with people of
+genius to educational art (although it is the highest of all
+the high arts), its material, if you will forgive the verbal
+ambiguity, being living spirit.</p>
+
+<p>Richard Wagner has said that "were it not for education,
+all men would be geniuses, for they are endowed at birth
+with the passionate pursuit of the new, needing only
+liberty and opportunity for self-direction."</p>
+
+<p><i>Liberty and opportunity!</i> There could not be a better
+description of Fr&#339;bel's principle and method of education.</p>
+
+<p>To give liberty and opportunity to the creative principle
+of the child is just the work you have to do; but observe,
+this is not to leave him to the caprices of an uneducated will.
+There is neither <i>liberty</i> nor <i>opportunity in that</i>!</p>
+
+<p>"Eternal vigilance is the price of liberty," <i>moral</i> as well
+as political; and before the child is old enough to appreciate
+this, and <i>be vigilant for himself</i>, the educator must do so <i>for
+him</i>, genially, but firmly intervening to secure to his mind
+that <i>pause before action</i> on the moral, the artistic, and intellectual<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_179" id="Page_179">[179]</a></span>
+plane, that the Friends recognize to be necessary
+before acting on the spiritual plane.</p>
+
+<p>The ways of caprice are multitudinous,&mdash;the way of life
+is <i>one</i> for each individual, and is pointed out to the <i>pausing</i>
+attentive mind by the Father, who speaks to us, within, forever;
+but whose voice can only be heard when listened to
+by <i>intention</i>; even on the intellectual plane, we do not let
+the will go storming on, without the guidance of law, which
+is the voice of the very present Creator heard in the silence
+of <i>reflection</i> on perceived facts and truths.</p>
+
+<p>There is a right and a wrong way of doing everything,&mdash;<i>always</i>.
+The right way will always produce a thing of use
+or of beauty, whose reaction on the mind of the producer
+<i>cultivates</i> his mind, or <i>grows the human understanding</i>;
+but this right way is only to be discovered in that pause between
+impulse and action which is the characteristic discrimination
+of man from all other animals, and must be <i>secured
+for the child</i> by the care of his educators&mdash;even when he is
+only playing, or the play will tire instead of exhilarate.</p>
+
+<p>Hence it is not <i>enough</i>, though it is indispensable, to
+guide children's activity while it is still irreflective to spontaneously
+make forms of beauty and use with its playthings
+and materials of occupation; but after they have made
+something, you are to make them stop and look back (not
+every time, but often), and <i>go over in thought</i>, and put into
+words, what they have done, and lead them to observe all
+the properties and relations of the thing that are obvious
+to the childish sense; and when you have thus secured an
+impression of the means by which order is attained, you
+have given an experimental knowledge of there being a spiritual
+order; that is, a world of individual laws and a law-giver
+independent of human will and meant to lift it into the
+divine. Those of you who are <i>Friends</i> will agree with me that
+human beings can manifest no <i>spiritual</i> beauty or moral
+power, except so far as they listen to the Shepherd of souls<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_180" id="Page_180">[180]</a></span>
+in the holy pause of the hours of worship, a voice always suggesting
+loving activity. And cannot you see, that no artistic
+production, no intellectual work, is possible without listening,
+in the pause of reflection for the word of the law of beauty
+or use, that the Creator of the intellect gives? and which
+makes art and science the worship of <span class="smcap">God</span> <i>with the mind</i>?</p>
+
+<p>The most important, the crowning work of the kindergartner,
+is to secure to the child this moment of reflection
+in the midst of his play and work on all planes of life; and
+you do so by sympathetically playing with him and gently
+guiding his unthinking, impulsive activity, and asking him
+what he has done and is <i>going to do</i>, and not letting him do
+anything till he seeks to do the symmetrical or, at least, the
+useful thing. It is not every movement that will produce the
+satisfactory result. It is thus that the child learns that there
+is a greater mind than his own, or even than his teacher's
+mind, present with him guiding the intellect, for artistic
+principles flow into the mind from an Eternal source, <i>no
+less</i> than do moral and spiritual principles. In short, the
+true method of the intellect is the perpetual <i>gift</i> of a very
+present <span class="smcap">God</span>, as much as the true method of the heart and
+soul.</p>
+
+<p>Man, then, in the last analysis, is a creative being; and
+the Fr&#339;bel education has for its final object, to give him the
+dominion over everything in the earth; put all the cosmic
+forces into his hands,&mdash;as well as to bring him into the
+communion of love with his fellows; thus lifting his whole
+nature to the height of sitting down with our Elder brother
+on the throne, with the Universal Father.</p>
+
+<p>You should keep this great idea before you, and it will
+enable you to <i>use the technique</i> that you have been learning,
+with a certain freedom as well as fidelity, guiding these playful
+exercises in such an order as you may find agreeable and
+salutary for them; and to check caprice, you must insist
+that, in these appointed times, they do the appointed things,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_181" id="Page_181">[181]</a></span>
+<span class="smcap">or do nothing</span>, for they will generally conclude to do the
+thing in hand, rather than <span class="smcap">do nothing</span> while all their companions
+are doing their work; and when they are doing nothing,
+they will have time for reflection, and to hear the inward
+voice of law, with the opportunity voluntarily to accept it.
+Thus does <span class="smcap">God</span> give to all his children "to have life in
+themselves," and to bring out their whole likeness to Himself,
+which proves that they are not his bond slaves,&mdash;like
+the lower animals,&mdash;but <span class="smcap">sons</span>. If there are not in the universe
+two leaves that are alike, still less are there two souls
+that are alike. But leaves and souls, after all, are alike in
+more than they are different. You can provide action for all
+the instincts that children have in common, and create a common
+consciousness to a certain extent, which is the <i>common
+sense</i>; but what is peculiar to each, and makes the independent
+individual, is his <i>own secret</i>, and you can only help
+<span class="smcap">that</span> to flower and fruitage by giving him the conditions of
+free, <i>independent action</i>, opening the inward eye and sharpening
+the inward ear for communication with Him who alone
+can adequately guide the will to the satisfaction of all the
+sensibilities of the heart, and the powers of intellect, and all
+the creative energies: but the religious and moral principles I
+shall endeavor to <i>define</i> are <i>general</i>, not peculiar to, but inclusive
+of, the kindergarten plan of education. To have these
+principles clear and disengaged from the accidental associations
+of the various denominations of the church, all of which
+(and also with many of those outside of any visible church)
+<i>unite in that faith in God</i>, and that <i>disinterested love of humanity</i>,
+which was historically enacted on earth by Jesus
+Christ, and <i>into</i> which every child born on the earth should
+be brought before he is old enough to appreciate those <i>intellectual</i>
+distinctions which make different <i>creeds</i>; because then
+the kindergartner will be able to meet children on the high
+plane of life where their <i>angels</i> (does not that mean their
+spiritual instincts or ideals?) behold the face of the Father,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_182" id="Page_182">[182]</a></span>
+and only then will the kindergartner practically enter into
+Fr&#339;bel's method of <i>living with the children</i>, and communing
+with their innocence.</p>
+
+<p>I see a great deal of this practical application in the kindergartens
+kept by the well-trained kindergartners; and especially
+when they are <i>mothers</i>, who unquestionably make the
+best kindergartners (other things being equal), because it is
+easier for mothers to <i>divine</i> the consciousness of their children.
+In the opening hour of the kindergarten, when the
+kindergartner interchanges the songs and hymns which the
+children choose, or at least agree to, with real free conversation,
+in which each child has a chance to tell what is uppermost
+in his little mind, the very most important work of
+the kindergartner is done. It has been my privilege to listen
+to much of this in the kindergartens kept severally by the
+mothers, who make the children feel that they are interested
+in whatever they say, however apparently trivial is the subject,
+and who answer genially, connecting it with something
+else, and so organizing the reflective powers of the children,
+that everything they think is seen to be a part of the process
+of moral, religious, and even intellectual growth.</p>
+
+<p>The possibility of doing this will prove to any one who has
+any heart and imagination that it is no mere poetic phrase,
+but a profound spiritual truth, that "Heaven lies about us in
+our infancy," that children do "come from <span class="smcap">God</span> who is their
+home, trailing clouds of glory," and for a time</p>
+
+<div class='poem'>
+<span style="margin-left: 3em;">"are still attended</span><br />
+By the vision splendid,"<br />
+</div>
+
+<div class='unindent'>although too often</div>
+
+<div class='poem'>
+"The man beholds it die away,<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 0.5em;">And fade into the light of common day."</span><br />
+</div>
+
+<p>Of course <i>all</i> the opening conversation need not be on the
+moral and religious planes, but some of it should lead into<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_183" id="Page_183">[183]</a></span>
+explanations of nature and of the common life of this work-day
+world, improving dexterity and common sense; but one
+can hardly talk with children about anything, in a genuine
+way, that does not bring out of them some religious or moral
+expression. I think it is in connection with these conversations
+to which the children furnish by their spontaneous confidences
+the vital points, round which the thoughts of the
+whole little company shall revolve, that the teacher can connect
+her own story-telling.</p>
+
+<p>For such genuine conversation the necessary prerequisite
+on the part of the teacher is a real faith in children's being
+the <i>breath of God</i> in their Essence.</p>
+
+<p>Then she will not have any <i>will-work</i> of her own, but listen
+to hear what the child is attending to, be it nothing but a bit
+of string, which, of course, must have a certain length that
+can be measured, and with which other things may be measured,
+and which is made of material that has passed perhaps
+through the hands of many manufacturers, and which in its
+elements at least was a growth of nature, all whose works
+bear witness to the being of <span class="smcap">God</span>; for <span class="smcap">God</span>'s throne may
+be reached from the ground of childish play as certainly and
+readily as from many a pulpit and cathedral, if not more so.</p>
+
+<p>A child whose affection for his companions and for the personages
+of a story told by the kindergartner, and who sees
+the connection of some little playful or other experience that
+he tells as his story for the morning, is <i>engaged in a service
+of God</i>, more vitally bearing on his growth in grace than any
+mere repetition of prayers. A play bringing out little kindnesses,
+sweet courtesies, gentle self-adjustments to his companions,
+the asking and giving of forgiveness for little discourtesies
+or grave wrong-doings, brings the child nearer <span class="smcap">God</span>
+than any spoken words of worship can, the joy attending
+such innocent sweetness being the proof of the vital union of
+his soul with a very present <span class="smcap">God</span>.</p>
+
+<p>So the work of the good Samaritan, though he was doubtless<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_184" id="Page_184">[184]</a></span>
+<i>thinking</i> only of the <i>individual</i> he was comforting, and
+not at all of God, was recognized by Christ as a <i>real act of
+worship</i>; for it was the fulfilment of the second commandment
+<i>like unto the first</i>.</p>
+
+<p>The time will come, I confidently believe, when all religionists
+of whatever denomination will recognize that the
+favorite doctrines and formalities which distinguish them
+from each other are a mere superficial crust of that true spiritual
+life which is to be lived when the grown-up shall all
+become as little children, who feel that,</p>
+
+<div class='poem'>
+"In their work and in their play,<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 0.5em;">God is with them all the day."</span><br />
+</div>
+
+<p>In speaking of the ceremonies of the Temple worship,
+which Moses made symbolical of all the virtues of life, moral
+and religious, but which in Paul's day had fallen into such a
+<i>mere</i> ritual that this great Apostle said that the <i>Holy Ghost
+was not bodily exercise</i>, but a hopeful, faithful <i>charity of
+thought</i>, <i>feeling</i>, <i>and deed</i>; and this is what children can be
+guided into from the beginning, provided the kindergartner
+knows how to converse and play <i>with</i> them instead of talking
+to them and coercing them <i>ever so kindly</i> into acting out <i>her</i>
+will. The play of childhood is the most genuine and intense
+life that is lived, body, heart, and will <i>conspiring</i> entirely;
+and it is by respecting the child's <i>will</i> and <i>heart</i> that you
+really help instead of <i>hindering</i> this unification of his threefold
+nature, which corresponds to the Trinity of the Supreme
+Being and prevents <i>that</i> from becoming a bewildering tritheism
+in his conception.</p>
+
+<p>A child cannot be <i>just</i> unless he is <i>loving</i>, nor attain the
+freedom of moral dignity unless he asserts himself; and there
+is no way to nurture this self-respect except to express respect
+to him, by being as courteous to him as you are to any
+adult, always asking him to explain himself and his own<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_185" id="Page_185">[185]</a></span>
+motives, when he seems to be in the wrong, before you condemn
+him.</p>
+
+<p>I think I have gained some of the deepest insights I have
+ever had into <i>Divine Truth</i>, by discovering what was the
+motive thought of some child, who did what seemed inexplicable,
+till he told me, or I had divined, his secret reason.</p>
+
+<p>It is not mothers alone who can charm out of children their
+secret, as those know who have seen some maiden kindergartners
+talk <i>with</i> their pupils in the opening exercises; but
+those who are not mothers will always do well to observe
+carefully those who are. On the other hand, mothers have
+to guard themselves against exaggerating their own children's
+natures <i>comparatively</i>. I have known some of the best
+mothers in the world <i>do that</i>, so as to be practically of bad
+influence over children not their own.</p>
+
+<p>Mothers who would be and can be the best kindergartners
+should therefore none the less study Fr&#339;bel's science carefully
+and humbly.</p>
+
+<p><i>All</i> children are alike in having the <i>threefold nature</i>. I
+wish I had time to tell of a hundred kindergarten experiences
+that have come under my observation, in which the respectful,
+genial kindergartner has assisted in some moral development,
+whose occasion was very trivial to the superficial
+observer.</p>
+
+<p>Herein lies the importance of prefacing the school with the
+kindergarten, that in it all the virtues and Christian graces
+can be unconsciously practised on the plane of play, which
+is the moral gymnasium of mankind.</p>
+
+<p>This is the meaning of Solomon's wise saying, "Train
+up a child in the way he should go, and when he is old he
+will not depart from it." But the nature, which is the image
+of the Divine Nature, cannot be <i>mechanically</i>, but must be
+morally and spiritually, trained; that is, addressed and
+treated as free agency.</p>
+
+<p>The salutation of the Brahmin to his youthful son, no less<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_186" id="Page_186">[186]</a></span>
+than to his equal in age, is "to the divinity which is in you
+I do homage." This is one of the gleams of light from the
+lost Paradise in which man was created, and to which we
+hope the kindergarten is to more than restore the race, when
+it shall have become the universally applied principle of culture
+for human beings. (See Appendix, <a href="#Note_F">Note F</a>.)<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_189" id="Page_189">[189]</a></span></p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2>GLIMPSES OF PSYCHOLOGY.</h2>
+
+
+<h3>SPIRITUALITY.</h3>
+
+<p><span class="smcap">We</span> speak of the necessity of studying childhood; we call
+children living books of nature, and say that we cannot succeed
+in educating them (which is putting them into a harmonious
+activity of all their powers), without knowledge,
+such as a musical performer has of his instrument, of these
+"harps of a thousand strings."</p>
+
+<p>This fundamental knowledge of children is not chiefly a
+discrimination of their individualities; though observation of
+these will be made by a consummate kindergartner; it is a
+knowledge of what is universal in children, essential to the
+constitution of human beings.</p>
+
+<p>Fr&#339;bel never wrote out, in systematic form, the psychology
+which underlies and gives the rational ground to all the
+details of his method. But there are pregnant sentences in
+all his writings, and in his sayings handed down by tradition,
+which give such insights, that it can be divined with some
+completeness.</p>
+
+<p>We propose to give such glimpses as occur to us from time
+to time&mdash;not always in our own words, but as often as we
+can in Fr&#339;bel's, and also in the words of other thinkers,
+whose guesses at this kind of truth light up their writings on
+many subjects.</p>
+
+<p>We must, in the first place, attend to one important fact;
+there is, in the experience of childhood, somewhat pre-existent
+to all impressions made by the universe, and consequently
+to all operations of the understanding&mdash;perceiving, comparing,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_190" id="Page_190">[190]</a></span>
+judging&mdash;for these are intentional acts of the pre-existent
+soul breathed into his body and bidden to "have
+dominion."&mdash;<i>Genesis 1.</i></p>
+
+<p>What is this pre-existent soul, this mysterious depth of
+personality?</p>
+
+<p>Washington Allston, in his posthumous lectures on Art,
+has finely said: "Man does not live by science; he feels,
+acts, and judges right in a thousand things, without the consciousness
+of any rule by which he so feels, acts, and judges.
+Happily for him, he has a surer guide than human science in
+that <i>unknown power within him</i>, without which he had been
+without any knowledge." Again, he speaks of "those intuitive
+powers, which are above and beyond both the understanding
+and the senses; which, nevertheless, are so far
+from precluding knowledge, as, on the contrary, to require&mdash;as
+their effective condition&mdash;the widest intimacy with
+things external, without which their very existence must remain
+unknown."</p>
+
+<p>He does not, however, merely assert this pre-existence of
+the soul to the understanding, but speaks of the evidence of
+it that we all can appreciate. "Suppose," he says, "we
+analyze a certain combination of sounds and colors, so as to
+ascertain the exact relative qualities of the one, and the collocation
+of the other, and then compare them, what possible
+resemblance can the understanding perceive between these
+sounds and colors? And yet a something within us responds
+to both&mdash;a <i>similar emotion</i>. And so it is with a
+thousand things, nay, with myriads of objects, that have no
+other affinity but with that mysterious harmony, which began
+with our being, which slept with our infancy, and which their
+presence only seems to have awakened. If we cannot go
+back to our own childhood, we may see its illustration in
+those about us who are now in that unsophisticated state.
+Look at them in the fields, among the birds and flowers;
+their happy faces speak the harmony within them; the divine<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_191" id="Page_191">[191]</a></span>
+instrument which these objects have touched, gives them a
+joy, which perhaps only childhood, in its first fresh consciousness,
+can know, yet what do children <i>understand</i> of the theory
+of colors, or musical quantities?"</p>
+
+<p>That this mysterious power, this feeling soul, is the <i>human</i>
+characteristic, is suggested in another paragraph of these
+lectures. "What, for instance, can we suppose to be the
+effect of the purple haze of a summer sunset on the cows or
+sheep, or even on the more delicate inhabitants of the air?
+From what we know of their habits, we cannot suppose more
+than the mere physical enjoyment of its genial temperature?
+But how is it with the man, whom we shall suppose an object
+in the same scene, stretched on the same bank with the ruminating
+cattle, and basking in the same light that flickers from
+the skimming birds? Does he feel nothing more than the
+genial warmth?"&mdash;Vol. I. p. 84.</p>
+
+<p>This feeling of beauty, this power which appreciates harmony,
+this creative unity, in fine, this &aelig;sthetic soul, distinct
+from and above the understanding (which certain philosophers
+seem to think is all of man, over and above his body),
+is not all of the soul,&mdash;but the moral and even merely social
+sentiment has the same pre-existence. Allston bears witness
+to this also. He says: "With respect to Truth and Goodness,
+whose pre-existent ideas, being living constituents of an immortal
+spirit, need but the slightest breath of some <i>outward
+condition</i> of the true and good&mdash;a simple problem or a kind
+act&mdash;to awaken them, as it were, from their unconscious
+sleep.... We may venture to assert that no philosopher,
+however ingenious, could communicate to a child the abstract
+idea of Right, had the child nothing beyond or above the understanding.
+He might, indeed, be taught, like inferior
+animals,&mdash;a dog, for instance,&mdash;that if he took certain
+forbidden things, he would be punished, and thus do right
+through <i>fear</i>. Still he would desire the forbidden thing belonging
+to another, nor could he conceive why he should not<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_192" id="Page_192">[192]</a></span>
+appropriate to himself&mdash;and thus allay his appetite&mdash;what
+was another's, could he do so undetected; nor attain to any
+higher notion of Right than that of the strongest. But the
+child <i>has</i> something higher than the mere power of apprehending
+consequences (external?). The simplest exposition,
+whether of right or wrong, is instantly responded to by something
+within him, which, thus awakened, becomes to him a
+living voice, and the good and the true must thenceforth
+answer its call. We do not say that these ideas of Beauty,
+Truth, and Goodness will, strictly speaking, always act.
+Though indestructible, they may be banished for a time by
+the perverted Will, and mockeries of the brain, like the fume-born
+phantoms from the witches' cauldron in Macbeth, may
+take their places and assume their functions. We have examples
+of this in every age, and perhaps in none more startling
+than the present. But we mean only that they cannot
+be (absolutely?) forgotten; nay, they are but too often recalled
+with unwelcome distinctness....</p>
+
+<p>"From the dim present, then, we would appeal to that
+fresher time, ere the young spirit had shrunk from the overbearing
+pride of the (vitiated?) understanding, and confidently
+ask, if the emotions we then felt from the Beautiful,
+the True, and the Good, did not seem, in some way, to refer
+to a common origin? And we would also ask, if it was frequent
+that the influence from one was singly felt? if it did
+not rather bring with it, however remotely, a sense of something&mdash;though
+widely differing,&mdash;yet still akin to it? when
+we have basked in the beauty of a summer sunset, was there
+nothing in the sky, that spoke to the soul of Truth and Goodness?
+And when the opening intellect first received the
+truth of the great law of gravitation, and felt itself mounting
+through the profound of space, to travel with the planets
+in their unerring rounds,&mdash;did never then the kindred ideas
+of Goodness and Beauty chime in, as it were, with the fabled
+music (not fabled to the soul), which led you on as one entranced?<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_193" id="Page_193">[193]</a></span>
+And again, when, in the passive quiet of your
+moral nature, so predisposed, in youth, to all things genial,
+you have looked around on this marvellous, ever-teeming
+earth, ever teeming alike for mind and body, and have felt
+upon you the flow, as from ten thousand streams of innocent
+enjoyment, did you not then almost hear them shout in confluence,
+and almost see them gushing upwards, as if they
+would prove their <i>unity</i> in one harmonious fountain?"</p>
+
+<p>It is of the last consequence that the kindergartner should
+take into her mind that this &aelig;sthetic soul exists in children
+as a primary fact; for, unless she believes in it, she will not
+respect it, and take advantage of it in what she does for them.
+It is to be respected and brought out into the understanding
+of children, by means of the beautiful things which she leads
+them to do and make, and with which she surrounds them;
+for, as Allston says, this consciousness "requires as its effective
+condition, the widest intimacy with things external."
+When children are continually in squalid surroundings, these
+seem at length to strike in and paralyze the spontaneous action
+of the &aelig;sthetic being, who is pre-existent to consciousness
+of the power which compares and judges and makes up
+a theory of colors. And, as has been shown, this feeling of
+beauty, this power of appreciating harmony and unity, this
+&aelig;sthetic nature, distinct from and above the understanding,
+which some people idly think to be all of man beside his
+body, is not all of the soul, for the moral sentiment has the
+same pre-existence.</p>
+
+<p>We have brought together these paragraphs taken from
+Allston's lectures on Art, for the consideration of practical
+kindergartners, all the more confidently, because they were
+not written as theory of education, but were parts of a practical
+inquiry after the standard of judgment for pictorial and
+plastic artists and the spectator of their works. He sought
+to deliver them from the benumbing effect of inadequate
+science,&mdash;for science must always be inadequate, as Newton<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_194" id="Page_194">[194]</a></span>
+so forcibly expressed, when he defined it "gathering a few
+pebbles on the shores of the infinite ocean of truth." The
+object of the lecturer was what the kindergartner's first object
+should be,&mdash;to awaken the self-respect of the eternal
+soul within us all, making the life of our individuality&mdash;our
+personality&mdash;which, in its mysterious depth and independent
+pre-existence to the finite understanding, is the image
+of the Divine Personality, whose spoken word is the material
+universe, but clothed in flesh becomes <span class="smcap">man</span>. It is no part
+of the kindergartner's duty to give&mdash;she can only awaken&mdash;the
+feelings of harmony, beauty, unity, and conscience.
+She is to present the right order of proceeding, in all that
+the child shall do, thereby assisting him to form his own
+understanding so that his bodily organization may be properly
+developed; to let in upon his soul <i>nature</i> in its beauteous
+forms and order, and his fellow-creatures, in their legitimate
+claims upon him. Then he shall come forth from the
+sleep of unconscious infancy, into a progressive consciousness
+of all his relations, with the blessings and duties that
+belong to them. This forming of the understanding, this
+marrying of finite thought to infinite love, is Fr&#339;bel's Education;
+and cannot be accomplished, unless the kindergartner
+clearly sees what God has done for the child absolutely,
+and what for an ineffable purpose,&mdash;most gracious
+to the human race,&mdash;He has left to be done by human providence,
+whether of the mother or kindergartner, or some
+other fellow-creature.</p>
+
+<p>It makes a heaven-wide difference whether the soul of a
+child is regarded as a piece of blank paper to be written upon,
+or as a living power, to be quickened by sympathy, to be
+educated by truth.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_195" id="Page_195">[195]</a></span></p>
+
+
+<h3>UNDERSTANDING.</h3>
+
+<p><span class="smcap">We</span> have spoken of the evidences of the &aelig;sthetic being
+found in the mysterious depths of human personality, pre-existent
+to the individual understanding (which is a growth
+in time); and that, without there were this &aelig;sthetic being,
+underlying all <i>individual</i> consciousness, there would be no
+standard of human virtue or art.</p>
+
+<p>This &aelig;sthetic person has also (previous to the development
+of the understanding, which makes the synthesis of
+himself and nature) an impulsive force, instinct with the
+desire to change his conditions. Man does not appear in the
+world merely as sensibility to enjoyment and suffering; but
+as veritable force, as well, whose action must produce an
+effect either orderly or disorderly.</p>
+
+<p>The material universe is composed of forces, limiting in a
+measure personal force. All material forces are uniform and
+necessary and correlative in their action, which is impressed
+upon them from without themselves. Man alone is self-active,
+and may clash with the other forces to his own pain,
+and he will often do so, until by knowledge of them he can
+harmonize with them, and make them his own instrumentality
+to satisfy his &aelig;sthetic nature. We call this self-activity
+of man, which is in such vital union with his sensibility,
+the human will, and it makes the personal life of every one
+to learn this self-activity of his, in its differences from and
+relations to all other forces, as he can only do perfectly by
+keeping in intellectual and sympathetic social relation with
+other &aelig;sthetic persons. In every individual case, he finds
+himself in these relations with fellow-beings who have more
+or less of the knowledge he has not; and some of them have
+all the responsibility of his actions until he has begun to
+know himself in discrimination from the material universe
+and its fixed relations and laws, which serve as a fulcrum
+for his own effective action among them. The one central<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_196" id="Page_196">[196]</a></span>
+unity whose &aelig;sthetic being and will are inclusive of himself
+and fellow-beings as subject, on the one hand, and of the
+material universe as object, on the other, is God.</p>
+
+<p>The absoluteness of man as a force, is no less certain because
+he is finite and not omnipotent. God is the omnipotent
+maker of the material universe, but man is not absolutely
+made; he is a cause, that is, <i>created to make</i>, if we may
+credit the ancient prophet, whose hymn of creation is the
+most wonderful expression of human genius, unless it be
+surpassed by the proem of St. John's Gospel, which is a
+correspondent poem, with God for its theme instead of man
+and nature.</p>
+
+<p>It was not till the embryo man had become, in one instance
+at least, the fully developed man, that this hymn of the Creator
+was possible. God's word (revelation of himself) was
+in the world, embodied in the things made from the beginning;
+but until it was embodied in a man, free to will, it was
+truth in the form of law only (<i>regulative</i>), not yet in the
+completer form of love (<i>creative</i>). In short, before St. John
+could sing that divine song, he must have seen God in a man,
+full of grace and truth, dwelling among men as a fellow-man,
+and overflowing with a power at once sympathetic and
+causal.</p>
+
+<p>God created man, male and female (that is, giving and
+receiving equally), to be keepers of each other, and to educate
+each other. They may tempt and fail each other by
+presumption as Eve, and want of self-respect as Adam, are
+represented to have done, at the beginning; or may save
+and redeem one another, as the cherished son of Mary historically
+did in a measure, and is doing forevermore, by inspiring
+all who know him, to educate and redeem each other.</p>
+
+<p>In coming into relation with infant man, to educate him, it
+is indispensable to appreciate his freedom of willing, which
+is a primeval fact, as much as his susceptibility of suffering
+and enjoyment. The educator ought to embody God in a<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_197" id="Page_197">[197]</a></span>
+measure, and treat the will of the child that is to be educated,
+on the same grand system of respecting individual
+freedom, as must needs flow from Infinite love. Let him
+clothe law in love, and instead of rousing fear of opposition,
+awaken the hope of becoming a beauty-creating and man-blessing
+power.</p>
+
+<p>This is the <i>rationale</i> of Fr&#339;bel's method of government.
+He assumes that the child is&mdash;not to be made by education
+a sensibility, but&mdash;an infinite sensibility already, and to be
+vivified into individual consciousness thereof, by the knowledge
+of nature to which you are to give him the clue;&mdash;not
+to be made by your government of him, a power of creating
+effects, but already an immeasurable power of creating effects
+(that is, causal)&mdash;which you are to make him feel responsible
+for, by helping him to get experimental knowledge
+of the laws that obtain in God's creation.</p>
+
+<p>For it is knowledge of laws that is the first thing attainable&mdash;not
+knowledge of objects. A child's senses are the
+avenues of the knowledge of objects; his self-activity is the
+avenue of the knowledge of laws. He must have experimental
+knowledge of laws before he can begin to have
+knowledge of objects, because his impulsive activity is the
+means of developing his organs of sense, by which he becomes
+capable of receiving impressions from objects of
+nature; and his own effective action produces the objects
+outside of his organs which first command his interested
+attention, and rouse his powers of analysis, or by which his
+powers of analysis are roused through your educating intervention.</p>
+
+<p>It is the maternal nursing of body and mind which educates
+the free force within to produce transient effects, and
+finally objects, agreeable to the sensibility. Even before
+the will is educated to causality, it exerts itself, because exertion
+is agreeable to human sensibility; but when left uneducated,
+the will brings about effects that prove disagreeable<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_198" id="Page_198">[198]</a></span>
+ultimately, if not immediately, to the &aelig;sthetic being, paralyzing
+it more or less, if the organization be feeble; and perverting
+it when it is strong; in either case, whether crushing
+or exasperating it, producing selfishness, the germ of all
+evil.</p>
+
+<p>Thus evil begins in the social sphere, in the disorderly
+action or in the neglect of those who have in charge the
+&aelig;sthetic free force of the child, compelling it to revolve on
+its own axis in a vain endeavor to obtain the satisfaction of
+its &aelig;sthetic nature, which it ought to obtain through the
+generous cherishing action of others' love, carrying it round
+the central sun in human companionship. The soul instinctively
+expects love, and to do so, and to act out love intentionally,
+is its salvation, its eternal life. There is no signature
+of immortality so sure as the immeasurable craving for
+love on the one hand, and the immeasurable impulse to love
+on the other hand, which characterizes man; for the satisfaction
+of the craving is no greater joy than the satisfaction
+of loving.</p>
+
+<p>It is because death <i>seems</i> the cessation of relation with our
+kind, that it is the king of terrors. When the disease or
+decay of the body curtails relations and makes us solitary,
+or incapable of enjoying relations, death is not dreaded, but
+craved as relief. To whomever it seems the beginning of
+wider relations, it is hailed as the revealing angel of God.
+Isolation is the horror of horrors. It was one of the primal
+intuitions that "it is not good for man to be alone." The
+nurse should remember this, and not leave the baby to feel
+lonely. Every mother and real nurse knows that when the
+baby begins to be uneasy and gives a cry of dissatisfaction,&mdash;to
+come near with a smile, to make one's presence felt by
+a caressing tone, or to take the infant in their arms, will
+comfort it, bringing back the joyful sense of life&mdash;a word
+which signifies active relation;&mdash;and, in its highest sense,
+spiritual relation. <i>Life</i>, <i>love</i>, and <i>liberty</i> are identical words<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_199" id="Page_199">[199]</a></span>
+in their radical elements. There is no love without liberty,
+nor fulness of life without love.</p>
+
+<p>The liberty of man, or his freedom to will, though it gives
+him the power to dash himself against antagonizing law, is
+the proof of infinite love to man in the Creator,&mdash;a love
+which must needs outmeasure all the evil he can do himself
+or others; for evil provokes others' love for our victims, and
+is self-limited, by reason of the pain it brings, sooner or
+later, on him who does it, and the desire for infinite love
+which it defines and stimulates.</p>
+
+<p>Man and nature are the contrasts which God connects and
+harmonizes. He presents nature to the mind as immutable
+law, but before the understanding is formed to apprehend
+law, He emparadises the child in the love of the mother.
+In short, the human race embodies love to the soul, before
+the universe (which embodies law) is yet apprehended. The
+heart that apprehends love, is older than the mind which
+apprehends law; and it is because it is so, that man <i>feels
+free</i>. When man becomes mere law to man, instead of
+love, he feels he is enslaved.</p>
+
+<p>These are the most practical truths for the kindergartner.
+If these propositions are truths (and their evidence is the
+explanation they give of the mysteries of sin and redemption,
+both of which are unquestionable facts of human history,
+according to the testimony of all nations), then let her see to
+it, that in her relation with the children of her charge, she
+never so presents the law, as to obscure the love, which it is
+the primal duty of men to embody and manifest to each
+other.</p>
+
+<p>But, on the other hand, do not keep back the law; for
+the law, too, is one expression of the Creator's being. What
+is law? It is the order of the beauteous forms of things,
+which, when appreciated as God's order, becomes a stepping
+stone to his throne. For God proposes to share his throne
+with us, if we may trust another primeval intuition of the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_200" id="Page_200">[200]</a></span>
+human mind, viz., that God commands man, male and
+female, that is, men in equal social relation, to "have
+dominion" over all creation, below man.</p>
+
+<p>The human being not only craves liberty and love instinctively,
+but law also; he "feels the weight of chance
+desires," and "longs for a repose that ever is the same."
+This is the <i>rationale</i> of Fr&#339;bel's method in the occupations;
+he suggests the child's action, sometimes by interrogation
+merely, instead of directing it peremptorily. He asks the
+child, when he has done one thing, what is the opposite?
+which itself suggests the combination of opposites, that immediately
+produces a symmetrical effect. The child enjoys
+the symmetry all the more, if he feels as if he personally
+produced it. This is the secret of his love of repetition.
+He wants to see if by the same means he can again produce
+the same effect. He does the thing again and again, till he
+feels that he does it all of himself. He does not want you
+to help him even with your words (and you never should
+help him <i>except</i> with words). If a child acts from a suggestion,
+he feels free,&mdash;but if he produces the same effect, or a
+similar effect, without your suggestion, he has a still more
+self-respecting sense of power; and his will becomes more
+consciously free the more he chooses to put on the harness
+of order.</p>
+
+<p>The kindergartner will sometimes have a child put under
+her care whose will has been exasperated by arbitrary and
+capricious treatment, or who has been made to act against
+his inclination till he has reacted, out of pure <i>contrariness</i>,
+as we say. This contrariness proves that he has been outraged;
+perhaps in some instances the effect has been produced
+by not feeding his mind with knowledge of law. The
+very violence of the evil may show that he is an exceptionally
+fine child, with an enormous sense of power that he
+does not know what to do with because the proper educational
+influence has failed him. In other cases obstinacy<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_201" id="Page_201">[201]</a></span>
+may be a reaction against the vicious will of another, who,
+instead of offering him the bread of law, has presented to
+him the stone of his own stumbling. It is indispensable to
+give the child law, as well as love; but when you are doubtful
+whether you can genially suggest the law,&mdash;at all events
+express the love; and never substitute for the law your own
+will. The law which produces a good or beautiful effect, is
+God's will; your will is not creative of the child's will like
+God's; its best effect is to stimulate the antagonism of the
+child's, when the latter is feeble, which it sometimes is by
+reason of physical mal-organization, or by having been
+crushed by overbearing management, or vitiated by selfish
+caprice.</p>
+
+<p>I may be told that if Fr&#339;bel's education is wholly of a
+genial, coaxing character, it fails of being an image of the
+Divine Providence, which is an alternation of attractions and
+antagonisms, speaking now in the music of nature, and now
+in thunders and lightnings, not only cherishing the heart
+with love, but stimulating the will with law; and be warned
+not to enervate the character, by producing an &aelig;sthetic
+luxury of sentiment, by which the personal being shall stagnate
+in the worst kind of selfishness&mdash;the passive kind.
+This objection might be pertinent, if the kindergarten were
+to be protracted beyond the era to which Fr&#339;bel limits it.
+Certainly the time comes, when the finite will should be
+antagonized, if need be, by the law of universal humanity.
+The purest, most loving, most disinterested will known to
+human history, recognized that there might be a <i>wiser</i> will,
+not to be doubted as still more loving; and said, "Not my
+will, but Thine be done,"&mdash;"Into Thy hands I commend
+my spirit" (my free causal power). But let the kindergartner
+remember she is not infinitely wise and good, and
+beware of enacting the sovereign judge. There is no doubt
+that an exclusively cherishing tenderness should be the law
+of the nursery, with no antagonism whatever, because at<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_202" id="Page_202">[202]</a></span>
+that age it is a wise self-assertion which we wish to develop.
+We therefore act <i>for</i> the infant, having secured his acting
+<i>with</i> us by our genial encouragement. But this is no argument
+for continuing to act for him, when he can act with
+consciousness of an individual life. We must not prolong
+babyhood into the kindergarten; or, at least, we must begin
+to engraft personal consciousness upon it, by <i>playing</i> little
+antagonisms merely. And so, it is no argument against the
+play of kindergarten that it does mature men. Let the
+children play with complete earnestness, but, as Plato says,
+"according to laws," and they will all the more likely seek
+laws when they come into wider relations.</p>
+
+<p>The development of the consciousness of man is serial.
+In the nursery we coax the child to exercise the various
+muscles by playfully duplicating their action; we make him
+<i>make believe</i> walk, impressing his senses, as it were, with the
+whole operation as an object. The child first experiences
+the pleasure of movement, then desires to move for the sake
+of renewing this pleasure; then enjoys your helping him to
+do what he has not yet the bodily strength and skill to accomplish;
+and finally wills to take up his body and make his
+first independent step. This is the first crisis in the history
+of his individuality, and every mother knows it is the cheer
+of her magnetizing faith that enables him to pass through it.
+He then repeats the action intentionally, simply because he
+can; enjoying the exertion he makes all the more if, by your
+care, he has not begun to walk too soon and experienced the
+pain of numerous falls, from want of guardian arms and
+supporting hands. Such pains disturb and haunt his fancy,
+and dishearten him. Courage and serene joy give strength
+and enterprise to activity.</p>
+
+<p>The nursery and kindergarten education are the preliminary
+processes which foreshadow all the processes of the
+Divine Providence. Therefore, even in the nursery we <i>play</i>
+antagonizing processes. We heighten the child's enjoyment<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_203" id="Page_203">[203]</a></span>
+by making him conscious of isolation a moment, to restore,
+as it were, with a shout, the delightful sense of relation; for
+the baby likes to have a handkerchief thrown over his head
+unexpectedly, and suddenly withdrawn again and again. So
+we sometimes pretend to let him fall, and just when he is
+about to cry with alarm, catch him again and kiss him.</p>
+
+<p>Fr&#339;bel in his nursery plays has several of this nature; and
+as children grow older they play antagonisms spontaneously,
+which are beneficial just so far as they elicit the consciousness
+of individual power; but are harmful if, proceeding too
+far, they show its limitations painfully, and make the child
+feel himself a victim.</p>
+
+<p>In the kindergarten season various sensibilities are manifest
+that have not shown themselves in the nursery, and
+which are premonitions of the destined dominion over material
+nature, which at first so much dominates the child, and
+would destroy his body if you did not intervene with your
+loving care. These are to be mothered in the kindergartner's
+heart till they become conscious desires, informing
+and directing his will, which is encouraged and strengthened&mdash;if
+it is never superseded by your will&mdash;until he shall
+begin to realize his personal responsibility. Then, as he
+took his body into his own keeping when he began to run
+alone, so now he will take his character into his own hands
+to educate, and he will do it all the more certainly and energetically,
+if he feels you to be an all-helping, all-cherishing,
+all-inspiring friend, which you must needs be if you are open
+to feel and wise to know God's love to you, in making you
+His vicegerent to give glimpses, at least, of the immeasurable
+love of God, in giving the inexorable laws of nature, for the
+fulcrum of the power that He pours into His children in the
+form of will; and which obeys Him just in proportion as it
+keeps its freedom to alter and alter and alter, till there is no
+longer any evil to be conscious of, and men shall have got
+the dominion over nature, which consists in using it for all<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_204" id="Page_204">[204]</a></span>
+generous purposes, in a universal mutual understanding with
+one another. To be in the progressive attainment of this
+high destiny, is the growing happiness of man; a happiness
+which must ever have in it that element of <i>victory</i>, which
+distinguishes the eternal life of Christ from the nirwana of
+Buddha.</p>
+
+
+<h3>MORAL SENTIMENT.</h3>
+
+<p><span class="smcap">We</span> have been asked by one of the students of Fr&#339;bel's
+art and science, what books we should recommend to help
+her to a fuller knowledge of the subjects on which we gave a
+few hints in our first and second paper of <i>Glimpses</i>.</p>
+
+<p>In reply, we would first say, that it is a needed preparation
+for any study of books on intellectual and moral philosophy,
+to look back on our own moral history and mental
+experience, and ask ourselves what was the process of our
+moral growth, and the circumstances of the formation of our
+opinions; that is, what action of our relatives, guardians,
+and companions, had the best&mdash;and what the worst&mdash;practical
+effects upon our characters; what aided and what hindered
+us? Every fault in our characters has its history,
+having generally originated in the action of others upon us;
+sometimes their intentional action, which may have been
+merely mistaken, or may have been wilfully selfish and malignant;
+and sometimes an influence unconsciously exerted.
+On the other hand, much of our life that has blest ourselves
+and others, can be referred to spontaneous manifestations of
+others, having no special reference to ourselves; generous
+sentiments uttered in felicitous words, generous acts recorded
+in history, or done in the privacy of domestic life;
+great truths bodied forth in imaginative poetry, over which
+our young hearts mused till the fire burned.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_205" id="Page_205">[205]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>This empirical knowledge of the great nature which we
+share, is a living nucleus that will give vital meaning to any
+true words with which scientific treatises on the mind are
+written; and a power to judge whether the writer is talking
+about facts of life, or mere abstractions, out of which have
+died all spiritual substance, leaving only "a heap of empty
+boxes." In no department of study are we more liable to
+take words for things than in this. Abstraction is the source
+of all the false philosophy and theology which has distracted
+the world. Generalizations are of no aid&mdash;but a delusion
+and a snare&mdash;unless the mental and moral phenomena, from
+which they are derived, have been the writer's experiences,
+personal or sympathetic. Such experiences are as substantial
+as material things, to say the least; and even they do
+not do justice to the whole truth, which is&mdash;if we may so
+express it&mdash;the vital experience of God. Hence is the
+Living Word to which human abstractions can never do
+justice; being, indeed, but the refuse of thought, "a weight
+to be laid aside" and forgotten, like a work done, as we
+stretch forward to the prize of truth, which is our "high
+calling."</p>
+
+<p>In Book II. chapter vii. of Campbell's <i>Philosophy of Rhetoric</i>,
+there is a section headed, "Why is it that nonsense so
+often escapes being detected, both by the writer and reader?"
+It explains with great perspicuity the uses and abuses of
+our faculty of abstraction, which is not a spiritual, but merely
+an intellectual faculty. I would commend this essay (and
+indeed, for several reasons, the whole book) to a student of
+intellectual philosophy. A great deal may be learned upon
+this subject, also, from an Essay on Language, printed a
+second time with some other papers, by Phillips &amp; Sampson,
+Boston, in 1857, and probably still to be found in old bookstores,
+if it be not reprinted by its author, R. L. Hazard.</p>
+
+<p>On the subject of my second paper of <i>Glimpses</i> the
+same author has written two books, one published by D.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_206" id="Page_206">[206]</a></span>
+Appleton, in New York, in 1864, <i>The Freedom of the
+Mind in Willing; or, Every Being that wills, a Creative First
+Cause</i>; and in 1869, Lee &amp; Shepard, Boston, published, as
+supplement, <i>Two Letters on Causation and Freedom in Willing,
+addressed to John Stuart Mill, with an Appendix on the
+Existence of Matter, and our Notions of Infinite Space</i>.<a name="FNanchor_13_13" id="FNanchor_13_13"></a><a href="#Footnote_13_13" class="fnanchor">[13]</a></p>
+
+
+<h3>INDIVIDUAL FREEDOM TO WILL.</h3>
+
+<p><span class="smcap">If</span> the spontaneous will of man, and its heart with its latent
+love, hope, and sense of beauty and justice, are without date,</p>
+
+<div class='poem'>
+<span style="margin-left: 7em;">"An eye among the blind,</span><br />
+That deaf and silent reads the eternal deep,<br />
+Haunted forever by the eternal mind,"<br />
+</div>
+
+<div class='unindent'>yet there is no doubt that the human understanding, as well
+as the body, begins in time, and gradually identifies the individual
+for communication with other individuals of its
+kind. The beginning of the human understanding is in the
+impressions of an environing universe, against which the
+sensibility reacts, and by this activity develops the organs
+of sense, which are the connection of those two great contrasts,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_207" id="Page_207">[207]</a></span>
+the soul and the outward universe. For perceptions
+of sense are the instrumentality by which the will vivifies
+the heart, so disposing the particulars of the surrounding
+universe as to give the definite form of <i>thoughts</i> to consciousness.
+The human being has no absolute knowledge like the
+lower animals, who are passive instrumentality of God to
+certain finite ends below the plane of spirituality. Created
+for the infinite ends of intelligence, and free communion with
+one another and God, men need to become conscious of the
+whole process of their own being, and do so by a gradual
+conversation with God, who is forever saying, by the universe,
+which is his speech, <span class="smcap">I am</span>. And here education begins
+its offices, by helping man to reply <span class="smcap">Thou art</span>, which he does
+by his legitimate art. But no one man can utter the <i>thou art</i>
+of humanity adequately. It takes all humanity forever and
+ever to do so; and it does not do so but just so far as the
+men who compose it are in mutual understanding and communion
+with each other. Therefore each child must be
+taken by the hand by those already conscious, and led to
+realize his own consciousness by learning that of his fellows.</div>
+
+<p>In the action and reaction of the individual with his special
+environment, he comes to distinguish himself from that which
+gives him pleasure and pain, and he will be attracted to the
+former, and repelled from the latter; and thus come to discriminate
+outward things from each other. The observation
+and discrimination of the particulars of nature is <i>thinking</i>.
+Sensuous impressions are the raw material of thoughts, but
+discrimination and classification of things according to their
+similarities, is the <i>operation</i> of thought.</p>
+
+<p>Education has an office in both the accumulation of sensuous
+impressions and the operation of thinking. The mother
+and nurse of each child must so order the objects about
+him, that his organs shall be properly impressed, and not
+overtaxed, because only so can they grow to be a good instrumentality
+for receiving even more delicate impressions.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_208" id="Page_208">[208]</a></span>
+A tender sympathy for the unconscious little one, who is
+gradually coming to identify himself, and love,&mdash;such as
+only a mother can have in the greatest perfection,&mdash;are the
+special qualifications of the educator at this stage. Such a
+knowledge of nature's laws and order, as may enable the
+educator to lead the child's activity according to law and
+order, can alone help the child to reproduce, on his finite
+plane, an image of God's creative action. The educator
+who should succeed the nurse is the kindergartner, who,
+without lacking the sympathetic affection of the nurse, must
+add a knowledge of nature both material and spiritual, so
+that she may bring these opposites into their right connection
+with each other.</p>
+
+<p>She will therefore lead the child to <i>produce</i> something that
+shall serve as a ground for the operation of thinking. Instead
+of letting the blind will spend its energy in wild and
+aimless motion, she will present a desirable aim to attain,
+which will produce an effect that shall satisfy the heart, and
+produce an object that shall engage the attention, and stimulate
+to a reproduction of it, until it is thoroughly known, not
+only in its natural properties, but in the law of its being,
+which was the child's own method of producing the thing.</p>
+
+<p>The genesis of the understanding, then, is, first, sensuous
+impression, which, reproducing itself intentionally, becomes,
+secondly, perception; and, thirdly, an adapting of means to
+ends, and thereby rising into judgment and knowledge. To
+get understanding precedes getting knowledge, which is the
+special work of the understanding when it is developed.</p>
+
+<p>There is another faculty of the individual, besides understanding,
+and which is to be discriminated from it&mdash;fancy.
+Vivid and clear sensuous impressions are the foundation of
+fancy, as well as of understanding. But the will, acting
+among these impressions in a wild and sovereign way, is
+fancy; while the will arranging impressions according to the
+order of nature, is understanding. Fr&#339;bel has provided for<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_209" id="Page_209">[209]</a></span>
+the development of the understanding the occupations, as he
+calls the regular <i>production</i> of forms, transient and permanent.
+Nothing can be produced which satisfies the &aelig;sthetic
+sense, except by following the laws of creation. To analyze
+these productions will give experimental understanding of
+those laws. In superintending the occupations, the kindergartner
+must, therefore, see that the child does things in the
+right order, and gives an account of what he does in the right
+words; for words, the first works of human art, have a great
+deal to do with the development of the understanding, lifting
+man into a sphere above that of the mere animal. After a
+thing is made, or an effect produced and named, it must be
+made a subject for analysis; and it can easily be made so,
+because children's attention is easily conciliated to what they
+themselves have done or produced. Putting their own action
+into a thing, makes it interesting to them; and they can
+make an exhaustive analysis of it, <ins title="Transcriber's Note: original reads 'beuause'">because</ins>, in addition to its
+appearances, they know the law of its being, which was their
+own method, and the cause of its being, which was their own
+<i>motive</i>. From analyzing their own works, children can, in
+due time, be led to analyze works of nature. And here the
+kindergartner has great room for the exercise of judgment,
+in the selection of suitable objects.</p>
+
+<p>Fr&#339;bel advised that objects for lessons should be taken
+from the vegetable creation; and that children should be
+interested in planting seeds and watching growth, becoming
+acquainted with its general conditions, observing which are
+within the scope of their own powers to provide, and which
+are beyond human power; thus leading the understanding
+through nature, outward and inward, to God.</p>
+
+<p>If we see that the work done is artistic, and that the objects
+of nature analyzed are beautiful, this culture of the
+understanding may refine and elevate the taste, and beautify
+the fancy.</p>
+
+<p>For the fancy is to be carefully cherished by the kindergartner.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_210" id="Page_210">[210]</a></span>
+It is not amenable to direct influence perhaps, but
+not beyond an indirect influence. The soundness of the
+understanding is conducive to a beautiful play of fancy,
+which is a peculiarly human faculty; for we have not a particle
+of evidence that any animal below man has this kind of
+thinking, which delights in transcending the facts of nature
+in its creations, and sometimes sets the laws of nature at
+defiance. But we must defer to another paper the many
+things we have to say in regard to the imagination and its
+culture.</p>
+
+
+<h3>CONSCIENCE.</h3>
+
+<p><span class="smcap">We</span> have given a few hints by way of answering the questions
+on psychology, which must come up, to be considered
+by a kindergartner who is intent on understanding the "harp
+of a thousand strings," from which it is her duty to bring
+out the music.</p>
+
+<p>We have found that the human being comes into the world
+with an &aelig;sthetic nature, which is to be vivified by the presentation
+of the beauties of nature and art, in such a way
+as to insure reaction of the will in creations of fancy; for
+only so can sensibility to beauty be prevented from degenerating
+into sensuality. If the fancy remains wholly subjective,
+it loses its childish health and leads astray. It should
+have objective embodiment in song, dance, and artistic manipulation
+of some sort. Now, artistic manipulation of any
+kind necessitates the examination of natural elements and
+the discovery of the laws of production, which are, of course,
+identical with the organic laws of nature that bear witness
+to an intelligent Creator.</p>
+
+<p>To excite the human understanding to appreciate names,
+and classify things for <i>use</i> and giving pleasure, it is necessary
+to present things to children gradually, first singly, and<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_211" id="Page_211">[211]</a></span>
+then in simple rhythmical combinations, so that they may
+have time to find themselves personally, and not be overwhelmed
+with a multitude of impressions. A real lover of
+children will quickly find out that they like to take time
+"playing with things," as they call it; and that there is a
+special pleasure in discovering differences in things; that a
+new distinct perception of any relation of things delights the
+child, as the discovery of a principle delights the adult mind.
+The fanciful plays of the kindergarten, whether sedentary or
+moving, cultivate the imagination, the understanding, and
+the physical powers in harmony, and more than this, they
+cultivate the heart and conscience, because the moving plays
+have for their indispensable condition numbers of their equals,
+and everything they make is intended for others. The presentation
+of persons, as having the same needs and desires
+of enjoyment as themselves, proves sufficient to call into
+consciousness the heart and conscience, just as immediately
+and inevitably as the presentation of nature and art calls
+into activity the understanding and imagination.</p>
+
+<p>Because nature and human kind are so <i>vast</i> that, as a whole
+they daunt the young mind, even to the point of checking its
+growth, it is necessary that some one, who has had time to
+analyze it in some degree, should call attention to points;
+and it is the consummate art of education to know what
+points to touch, so that the mind shall make out the octave;
+for, unless it does so, it will not act to purpose. As
+exercise of the limbs is necessary to physical development,
+and the act of perceiving, understanding, and fancying, with
+actual manipulation of nature, is necessary to intellectual
+development; so is kindness and justice acted out, to the
+development of the social and moral nature or conscience.</p>
+
+<p>But there is something else in man than relations to external
+nature and fellow-man. This self-determining being,
+who moves, perceives, understands, fancies, loves, and feels
+moral responsibility to the race in which he finds himself a<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_212" id="Page_212">[212]</a></span>
+living member, is only consciously happy when he is magnanimous,
+which he can only be, if he feels himself a free
+power in the bosom of infinite love; in short, a son of the
+Father of all men! "We are the offspring of God" is the
+inspiration alike of heathen poet and Christian apostle.</p>
+
+<p>As the psychological condition of the human love which
+is man's social happiness, is that sense of individual want
+and imperfection which stimulates the will to seek the mother
+and brother; so the psychological condition of the piety
+which makes man's beatitude, is the sense of social imperfection,
+in respect both to moral purity and happiness, stimulating
+the will to seek a Father of all spirits. The more we
+love, the more we feel the need of God. But is God nothing
+but "an infinite sigh at the bottom of the heart," as Feuerbach,
+the holiest of infidels, sadly says? or, as in thinking,
+we discover the entity we name I; so in loving, do we not
+discover God, or rather does not God reveal Himself to us,
+as Essential Substance? Wordsworth declares that</p>
+
+<div class='poem'>
+"Serene will be our days and bright,<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1.5em;">And happy will our nature be,</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 0.5em;">When love is an unerring light,</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1.5em;">And joy its own security;</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 0.5em;">And blest are they, who in the main,</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 0.5em;">This faith even now do entertain,</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 0.5em;">Live in the spirit of this creed,</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 0.5em;">Yet find <i>another strength</i> according to their need."</span><br />
+</div>
+
+<p>"That other strength" is to be found, as he had already
+sung in that same great song, in Duty&mdash;"daughter of the
+voice of God,"</p>
+
+<div class='poem'>
+<span style="margin-left: 6em;">"Victory and Law</span><br />
+When empty terrors overawe;<br />
+From vain temptations doth set free,<br />
+And calms the weary strife of frail humanity!"<br />
+</div>
+
+<p>Conscience, then, is the soul's witness, first of the relation
+of the individual to the human race; and ultimately, of the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_213" id="Page_213">[213]</a></span>
+relation of the human race to God; and it must be inspired
+with knowledge of the sonship of the human race to the
+Universal Father, or human life is bottomless despair. But
+with that knowledge which God must give (since man cannot
+reach it with his own understanding) he shall be able,
+even on the cross, to love the most ignorant brother infinitely;
+and infinitely to trust that the Father of all will justify
+his spirit in acting accordingly.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_214" id="Page_214">[214]</a></span></p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="APPENDIX" id="APPENDIX"></a>APPENDIX.</h2>
+
+
+<p><span class="smcap"><a name="Note_A" id="Note_A"></a>Note A, to <a href="#LECTURE_I">Lecture I</a>.</span></p>
+
+<p><span class="smcap">In</span> 1872 the first training school for kindergartners was
+founded in England by the Manchester Kindergarten Assoc.</p>
+
+<p>To the prospectus is subjoined the following statement:&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>The aim of the kindergarten system of training, intended
+for young children up to the age of seven, when school-teaching
+<i>proper</i> should begin, is to prepare for all subsequent
+education. A short examination of the system will show
+that it is in idea far superior to any other method of early
+training, while experience proves that its pupils acquit themselves
+well even under plans most dissimilar. The theory of
+the kindergarten is that every exertion of the faculties,
+whether of body or mind, will be healthful and pleasurable,
+so long as such exertion takes place without compulsion,
+without appeal to selfish motives, with no more than necessary
+restraint. The experience of parents and teachers may
+be appealed to as proving that children enjoy their employments
+most, and learn best, when associated in numbers.</p>
+
+<p>The kindergarten, therefore, gathers children together in
+numbers, which vary with class and other circumstances,
+and proceeds to exercise, on a plan most carefully reasoned
+out, all limbs and muscles of the body by marching, gymnastics,
+and regulated games; to practise all the senses, and
+tastes that depend directly upon the senses, by drawing,
+singing, modelling in clay, and many most beautiful "occupations,"
+which in addition arouse invention&mdash;one of the
+highest human faculties. The intellectual powers, being in
+a rudimentary condition, are less directly called into action;<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_215" id="Page_215">[215]</a></span>
+but the faculties of number and form, along with skill of
+hand, are so developed that the learning of "the three R's"
+becomes incredibly easy. Above all, good feeling is exercised
+and evil feeling checked, by happy social life, in which
+the tender plants of the kindergarten see that each one's
+happiness depends upon all, and that of all on each.</p>
+
+<p>Sedulous attention is paid to the effect of each employment
+upon children of different temperaments. Sanitary conditions
+are most carefully observed, and unflagging interest is
+secured by frequent changes of occupation.</p>
+
+<p>Wherever the kindergarten has been fairly tried, its results
+have been lively enjoyment by the little pupils of their
+"school" hours, and readiness to receive not as drudgery,
+but with delight, all opportunities of acquiring knowledge.
+This readiness, it is believed, would less often change into
+a hatred of lessons, if the subsequent school-teaching did
+not too commonly despise those indications of natural taste
+and fitness which Fr&#339;bel, in his system, has carefully interpreted
+and obeyed. The kindergartens for the poor, already
+established at Queen Street, Salford, and in the Workpeople's
+Hall, Pendleton,&mdash;where visitors are at all times most
+heartily welcomed,&mdash;will convince any one that this system
+is able to give a truly humanizing and religious training to
+children of the least favored class, gathered in large numbers
+even out of very neglected homes. By inspecting
+these schools also, intelligent persons will form an idea of
+the ingenuity and beauty of the processes by which this
+natural and simple training is effected. Thus too will be
+understood, that the kindergarten system, which in relation
+to its pupils is the simplest and easiest possible because it
+travels along, not athwart, their natural tastes, is, as respects
+its professors, very far removed indeed from every-day
+facility and <i>rule of thumb</i>. It demands in those who aspire
+to teach, a sincere love of children and an earnest devotion
+to duties which bring much pleasure when well performed,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_216" id="Page_216">[216]</a></span>
+and it demands besides that they be willing to give up
+sufficient time and labor to become thoroughly instructed in
+the principles, and sufficiently practised in the use, of a
+machinery which, while beautifully simple in idea, is complicated
+in detail. A great and increasing demand for
+teachers thoroughly trained in this system exists, as well
+for families as for kindergarten schools proper, and for
+infant schools commonly so called. To supply this demand
+is the purpose of the training school.</p>
+
+
+<div class='center'><span class="smcap"><a name="Note_B" id="Note_B"></a>Note B, to <a href="#Page_81">Page 81</a>.</span><br />
+<br />
+<i>Letter from Michelet to the Baroness Marenholtz von B&uuml;low.</i></div>
+
+<div class='right'><br />
+<span class="smcap">March 27, 1859.</span><br />
+</div>
+
+<p>By a stroke of genius Fr&#339;bel has found what the wise
+men of all times have sought in vain,&mdash;the solution of the
+problem of human education. And again: Your first
+explanation made it clear to me that Fr&#339;bel has laid the
+necessary basis for a new education for the present and
+future. Fr&#339;bel looks at human beings in a new light, and
+finds the means to develop them according to natural laws,
+as heretofore has never been done. I am your most faithful
+advocate, and speak constantly with friends and acquaintances
+about this great work that you have undertaken.
+Several journalists and writers will mention it in their papers.
+Dispose of all my power to aid you. The ambassador of
+Hayti, Monsieur Ardoin, minister of instruction, is ready
+to return to Port au Prince, and wishes to make your
+acquaintance. He will come to see you to-morrow. For
+the inhabitants of that island, in process of reorganization,
+Fr&#339;bel's method may do a great deal. I have asked several
+persons to aid in this work. Niffner and Dolfus are writing,
+at present, a great work on education, and will be happy to
+give a place to your cause. I send you a letter for Isodore
+Cohen; you must see him. You, personally, can do more<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_217" id="Page_217">[217]</a></span>
+than all speeches, recommendations, and writings together.
+I shall come to you shortly to hear more about Fr&#339;bel. I
+would like to have a comparison drawn between him and
+Pestalozzi. Your written communications interest me highly.
+Let me have some German works about Fr&#339;bel. I read
+German and know how to guess at incomprehensible things.
+I would like to know about the continuation of his method
+for more advanced years, especially for girls, and await
+impatiently the appearance of your manual. The more I
+investigate the heads of children of different ages, the more
+important Fr&#339;bel's method appears to me, as it begins in
+early childhood, when the most important changes in the
+brain take place. All my sympathies are with your work.</p>
+
+
+<div class='center'><br /><i>Letter from the Abbe Miraud, author of voluminous works,
+one of them being "La Democratic et la Catholicisme."</i><br /><br /></div>
+
+<div class='right'>
+<span class="smcap">July, 1858.</span><br />
+</div>
+
+<p>We have to fulfil a great mission in common. I shall
+be most happy to procure for Fr&#339;bel's theory, <i>which I
+accept fully</i>, a hearing. To appreciate this theory in all its
+grandeur, richness, and utility, the shade of pantheism it
+seems to contain is no hindrance to me; it seems inseparable
+from the German mind. I accept the obligation to work
+for the ideas of Fr&#339;bel according to my ability, of course
+within the limits of orthodox Catholicism, to which I am
+devoted from faith and reason. You must certainly go with
+me to Rome, that we may work together there. If you
+resolve to do so, I will meet you at Orleans. You would
+find in Rome a good opportunity for <i>propaganda</i>. My
+friends there would aid us, but without your presence nothing
+can be done. Italy needs a regeneration by education.
+Let us work where the most rapid diffusion is certain.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_218" id="Page_218">[218]</a></span></p>
+
+
+<div class='center'><br /><i>Mons. A. Guyard, a Parisian author writes:</i><br /><br /></div>
+
+<div class='right'>
+<span class="smcap">June 14, 1857.</span><br />
+</div>
+
+<p>The more I hear you about Fr&#339;bel's method, the more
+my interest increases, and the deeper my conviction becomes
+that by this means a basis is laid for a new education for
+the salvation of humanity. Accept my warmest and most
+sincere wishes for the propagation of Fr&#339;bel's method. He
+is great, perhaps the greatest philosopher of our time, and
+has found in you what all philosophers need, that is, a woman
+who understands him, who clothes him with flesh and blood,
+and makes him alive. I think, I believe, indeed, that an
+idea in order to bear fruit, must have a father and a mother.
+Hitherto, all ideas have had only fathers. As Fr&#339;bel's
+ideas are so likely to find mothers, they will have an immense
+success. When the ideas of the future have become alive
+in devoted women, the face of the world will be changed.</p>
+
+
+<div class='hang1'>
+<i>Lamarche of Paris, philanthropist and writer on social and
+religious subjects, after listening to the lectures upon Fr&#339;bel
+given by Madam Marenholtz in Paris, wrote on:</i>&mdash;<br /><br />
+</div>
+
+<div class='right'>
+<span class="smcap">Paris</span>, March 4, 1856.<br />
+</div>
+
+<p>Your last lecture has unmistakably shown that Fr&#339;bel's
+method, in a religious point of view, surpasses everything
+that has hitherto been done in education. And this is the
+main point from which a method of education is to be judged
+for its aim is to awaken love to God and man&mdash;the foundation
+upon which Christianity rests. Education has hitherto
+done little to awaken this love of man in the young soul,
+from which all piety flows. This is the reason we find so
+much skepticism and indifference in human society, and
+which is the source of most of the existing misery, and of
+the want of order and lawfulness. These sad results are
+the condemnations of those methods of education that suppress
+the human faculties, or force them into wrong channels,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_219" id="Page_219">[219]</a></span>
+or arbitrarily superimpose something instead of aiding free
+development. It is the sad mistake of our moralists who,
+without faith in a Heavenly Father, do not understand
+human nature, and replace <i>revealed</i> religion with human
+tenets.... Fr&#339;bel has found the missing truth, in first
+awakening the child's senses and capacities by the simplest
+means, and making him feel in nature the loving Creator,
+before he taxes his intellect with religious dogmas, which
+are beyond the intellect of childhood, and only confuse it.
+To lead it through the love of God, the Heavenly Father of
+us all, to the love of the neighbor, by acting and doing, is
+the natural and simple way which Fr&#339;bel has pointed out,
+and we shall owe it to him, if before our children are four
+or five years old, before they can read books, they learn the
+great law of humanity, <i>Love to God and the neighbor</i>.</p>
+
+<p>Again: Fr&#339;bel's discovery, or invention, furnishes the
+means to follow the natural order of all development for
+human beings, by which alone they will come to the knowledge
+of, and at last to union with, their Heavenly Father.
+This is the way which Christianity prescribed eighteen hundred
+years ago, but into which education has not understood
+how to lead us, because it has put statutes instead of actual
+experience, and has not let the study of nature, as the work
+of God, <i>precede</i> statutes. Fr&#339;bel leads education again into
+the path intended by <span class="smcap">God</span>, which, in the course of universal
+development, will lead to the happiness of the individual, as
+well as of the whole of society. In the human being itself
+are the rich mines, the development of which our false modes
+of education have hitherto made impossible. May mothers
+have faith in <span class="smcap">God</span>, the Heavenly Father of their children,
+and that he has given them the capacity for good, which
+will crush the head of the serpent, and bring the kingdom of
+God upon earth.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_220" id="Page_220">[220]</a></span></p>
+
+
+<h3><span class="smcap"><a name="Note_C" id="Note_C"></a>Note C, to <a href="#Page_84">Page 84</a>.</span></h3>
+
+<p>In the second part of my <i>Guide to Kindergarten and
+Moral Training of Infancy</i>, published by E. Steiger, 25 Park
+Place, New York, is an account of how I actually first began
+to teach to read on this method, that may be of practical aid
+to one teaching <i>After Kindergarten&mdash;what?</i> The first
+kindergartner who tried the method, in the course of the
+first half-hour led her children to write on their slates (in
+imitation of what she wrote on the blackboard, letter by
+letter, giving the power, not the name, of each as she wrote)
+words enough to involve the whole alphabet; namely, <i>cars</i>,
+<i>go</i>, <i>bells</i>, <i>sing</i>, <i>dizzy</i>, <i>old</i>, <i>hen</i>, <i>fixes</i>, <i>vest</i>, <i>jelly</i>, <i>jars</i>, <i>puss</i>,
+<i>kitty</i>. The words were in a column, and after they were
+written, the children recognized each word, pronouncing it
+right when she pointed to it on the blackboard. But she was
+surprised the next day to find they remembered every one,
+and they had so clear an idea of the correspondence of the
+letters and sounds, that, long before they had finished writing
+at her dictation the words of the first vocabulary, they read
+at sight any word of it, no matter how many syllables it had.
+In fact, at the end of the first week she wrote and asked me
+for the groups of exceptions, and, beginning with the smallest
+group, which is most exceptional, in a few weeks they could
+all read.</p>
+
+<p>But I would not advise this rapid acquisition of the whole
+language in so short a time. It is better to pause on the
+meaning of the words,&mdash;not asking them to define them by
+other words, but asking them to make sentences in which
+they put the word, which will show whether or not they understand
+its meaning. A great deal more than mere pronunciation
+may be taught children while learning to read.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_221" id="Page_221">[221]</a></span></p>
+
+
+<h3><span class="smcap">Note D, to <a href="#Page_102">Page 102</a>.</span></h3>
+
+<p>History of Printing, an unfinished manuscript of which he
+found in the Antiquarian Library of Worcester.</p>
+
+
+<h3><span class="smcap"><a name="Note_E" id="Note_E"></a>Note E, to <a href="#Page_110">Page 110</a>.</span></h3>
+
+<p>The story, as I paraphrased it, was this. The drop of
+water speaks, "Once I lived with hundreds, and hundreds,
+and hundreds of brothers and sisters, in the great ocean.
+There we all took hold of hands, and played with each
+other; and the winds played with us, and took us up on their
+backs, making us into little waves and great waves. But
+sometimes, when the winds were not there, we would spread
+ourselves out smooth like a looking-glass, and look up into
+the sky; and the moon and the stars would look down upon
+us, and the ocean would look just like the sky.</p>
+
+<p>"And we wanted to go up into the sky; and so, when
+the sun sent down his sunbeams, and the moon sent down
+her moonbeams, and the stars sent down their starbeams,
+some of us would jump up on their backs, and ride up into
+the sky. But soon they would be tired of us, and shake us
+off; and down we fell, and then we would catch hold of
+hands, and make ourselves into clouds; and when the clouds
+got to be so heavy that the air could not hold them up, we
+would let go of hands, and fall down in drops of rain. But
+sometimes the clouds would stay up, and sail round; and
+one day the cloud that I was in, bumped up against a mountain,
+and we all fell out, down into the little holes of the
+mountain, and I soon found I was alone in the dark; but I
+saw a light a little ways off, and so I ran along and came to
+the light, which was outside the mountain. And as I stood
+there, I saw a great many of my sisters and brothers standing
+at just such holes as I was looking out of; and when we
+saw each other, we burst out laughing, and ran to each other,
+and took hold of hands, and made a little brook that ran<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_222" id="Page_222">[222]</a></span>
+down the sides of the mountain into a meadow full of
+flowers; and we ran about the meadow, watering the roots
+of all the flowers to make them grow, for we wanted to do
+as much good as we could; and then we thought we would
+run on, and see if we could not find our old home in the
+ocean, where we left hundreds of brothers and sisters; but
+as I got rather tired, I thought I would stop and rest awhile
+on this flower-leaf. But now I am rested. So good by; I
+will jump off, and run home as fast as I can with the rest."</p>
+
+<p>This story I had to tell over and over again at the time,
+which I did in the same words; and now, when I again
+repeated it in the same words, he liked to hear it over and
+over again, looking at the picture in the book while I told it.</p>
+
+
+<h3><span class="smcap"><a name="Note_F" id="Note_F"></a>Note F, to <a href="#Page_167">Page 167</a>.</span></h3>
+
+<p>I here insert the version of the Lord's Prayer and the <i>Song
+of the Weather</i>, which have been found so effective in the
+religious nurture, and which, if used in the simple, unsanctimonious
+manner I have so earnestly suggested, will preclude
+the necessity of talking to the children in prose. These songs
+explain themselves to the child's heart and imagination.</p>
+
+<div class='poem'>
+<span class="smcap">Our Father</span>, who in Heaven art,<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Thy name we dearly love;</span><br />
+We'd do thy will with all our heart,<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">As done in heaven above.</span><br />
+Give us this day our daily bread,<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Forgive the wrong we do,</span><br />
+And we'll not mind when treated ill,<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">That we may be like you.</span><br />
+Help us avoid temptation's snare;<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Deliver us from evil ways;</span><br />
+For thine's the kingdom and the power,<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">All glory and all praise.</span><br />
+</div>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_223" id="Page_223">[223]</a></span></p>
+
+
+<div class='center'><br />SONG OF THE WEATHER.</div>
+
+<div class='poem'>
+<span class="smcap">This</span> is the way the snow comes down,<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 2em;">Softly, softly falling.</span><br />
+God, he giveth his snow like wool,<br />
+Fair, and white, and beautiful.<br />
+This is the way the snow comes down,<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 2em;">Softly, softly falling.</span><br />
+<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 5em;"><i>Chorus.</i></span><br />
+<br />
+Wonderful, Lord, are all thy works,<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 2em;">Wheresoever falling;</span><br />
+All their various voices raise,<br />
+Speaking forth their Maker's praise.<br />
+Wonderful, Lord, are all thy works,<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 2em;">Wheresoever falling.</span><br />
+<br />
+This is the way the rain comes down,<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 2em;">Swiftly, swiftly falling;</span><br />
+So he sendeth his welcome rain.<br />
+On the field, and hill, and plain,<br />
+This is the way the rain comes down,<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 2em;">Swiftly, swiftly falling.</span><br />
+<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 3.5em;">(<i>Repeat the chorus.</i>)</span><br />
+<br />
+This is the way the frost comes down,<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 2em;">Widely, widely falling;</span><br />
+So it spreadeth all through the night,<br />
+Shining, cold, and pure, and bright,<br />
+This is the way the frost comes down,<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 2em;">Widely, widely falling.</span><br />
+<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 5em;">(<i>Chorus.</i>)</span><br />
+<br />
+This is the way the hail comes down,<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 2em;">Loudly, loudly falling;</span><br />
+So it flieth beneath the cloud,<br />
+Swift, and strong, and wild, and loud,<br />
+This is the way the hail comes down,<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 2em;">Loudly, loudly falling.</span><br />
+<br />
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_224" id="Page_224">[224]</a></span><span style="margin-left: 5em;">(<i>Chorus.</i>)</span><br />
+<br />
+This is the way the cloud comes down,<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 2em;">Darkly, darkly falling;</span><br />
+So it covers the shining blue,<br />
+Till no ray can glisten through,<br />
+This is the way the cloud comes down,<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 2em;">Darkly, darkly falling.</span><br />
+<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 5em;">(<i>Chorus.</i>)</span><br />
+<br />
+This is the way sunshine comes down,<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 2em;">Sweetly, sweetly falling;</span><br />
+So it chaseth the cloud away,<br />
+So it waketh the lovely day,<br />
+This is the way sunshine comes down,<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 2em;">Sweetly, sweetly falling.</span><br />
+<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 5em;">(<i>Chorus.</i>)</span><br />
+<br />
+This is the way rainbow comes round,<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 2em;">Brightly, brightly falling;</span><br />
+So it smileth across the sky,<br />
+Making fair the heavens on high,<br />
+This is the way rainbow comes down,<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 2em;">Brightly, brightly falling.</span><br />
+<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 5em;"><i>Chorus.</i></span><br />
+<br />
+Wonderful, Lord, are all thy works,<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 2em;">Wheresoever falling;</span><br />
+All their various voices raise,<br />
+Speaking forth their Maker's praise.<br />
+Wonderful, Lord, are all thy works,<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 2em;">Wheresoever falling.</span><br />
+</div>
+
+<p>(The appropriate gesture is spreading the arms, and, when
+it is the rain or the hail, the children enjoy making the patter
+on the table,&mdash;gently for the rain, and louder for the hail.)</p>
+
+
+<div class='center small'><br /><br /><br /><br />
+Butler &amp; Tanner, The Selwood Printing Works, Frome, and London.<br />
+</div>
+
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" /><p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_225" id="Page_225">[225]</a></span></p>
+<div class='bbox'>
+<div class='center'><span class='small'>THE COMMITTEE OF THE</span><br />
+
+<b>Manchester Kindergarten Association</b><br />
+
+<span class='small'>Beg to Announce that the</span><br />
+
+<span class='big'>TRAINING CLASSES FOR TEACHERS</span><br />
+
+<span class='small'>Meet in the <span class="smcap">Afternoon</span> at</span><br />
+
+<b>Thorney Abbey, Alexandra Park, Manchester,</b><br />
+
+<span class='small'>For <span class="smcap">Theoretical</span> instruction in the following subjects:&mdash;</span>
+<br /><br /></div>
+
+
+<div class='center'>
+<table border="0" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" summary="Classes">
+<tr><td align='left'>Drawing</td><td align='right'>J. CLEGG, Esq.</td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'>Music</td><td align='right'>MISS WICHERN.</td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'>Theory and Application of the Kindergarten System</td><td align='right'>MISS SNELL.</td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'>Physiology and Laws of Health</td><td align='right'>MISS CLEGHORN.</td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'>Science of Education</td><td align='right'>W. H. HERFORD, Esq., B.A.</td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'>Natural History and Physiography</td><td align='right'>F. J. WEBB, Esq.</td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'>Elements of Geometry</td><td align='right'>MISS SNELL.</td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'>Botany</td><td align='right'>MISS HERFORD.</td></tr>
+</table></div>
+
+<div class='center'><br /><br />&mdash;&mdash;&mdash;&mdash;&mdash;&mdash;&mdash;<br /><b><span class='small'>Practical Instruction is afforded at the Model Kindergarten in the Forenoon.</span></b><br />
+&mdash;&mdash;&mdash;&mdash;&mdash;&mdash;&mdash;<br /><br />
+
+<b>FEES FOR THE ABOVE.</b><br /></div>
+
+
+
+<div class='center'>
+<table border="0" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" summary="">
+<tr><td align='left'><span class="smcap">The Whole Course</span> (per Term of Ten Weeks)</td><td align='right'>5 <span class="smcap">Guineas</span>.</td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'><span class="smcap">Separate Classes</span> (per term of Ten Hours)&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;</td><td align='right'>2&frac12; <span class="smcap">Guineas</span>.</td></tr>
+</table></div>
+
+<div class='center'><br /><i>Students are expected to take the whole Course of Two Years;
+when withdrawal before the end of the course is necessary a Term's notice
+is required.</i><br />
+&mdash;&mdash;&mdash;&mdash;&mdash;&mdash;&mdash;<br /><br />
+
+<b>A LIMITED NUMBER OF STUDENTS CAN BE RECEIVED AS BOARDERS BY THE HEAD MISTRESS.</b></div>
+
+
+
+<div class='center'>
+<table border="0" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" summary="Board and lodging">
+<tr><td align='left'>CHARGE FOR BOARD AND LODGING</td><td align='left'>&nbsp;44 GUINEAS PER ANNUM.</td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'>WEEKLY BOARDERS</td><td align='left'>&nbsp;33 GUINEAS PER ANNUM.</td></tr>
+</table></div>
+
+<div class='center'><br /><br />
+<b>Satisfactory References Required.</b>
+</div></div>
+
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" /><p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_226" id="Page_226">[226]</a></span></p>
+
+<div class='heading center'>Froebel Society,</div>
+
+<div class='center'>17, BUCKINGHAM STREET, STRAND.<br />
+
+
+<br /><br /><b>President:</b><br />
+
+<span class="smcap">Miss SHIRREFF.</span><br />
+
+<br />
+<br /><b>Vice-Presidents:</b></div>
+
+
+
+<div class='center'>
+<table border="0" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" summary="Vice Presidents">
+<tr><td align='left'><span class="smcap">Oscar Browning</span>, Esq., M.A.</td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'>Rev. Canon <span class="smcap">Daniel</span>, M.A.</td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'><span class="smcap">J. G. Fitch</span>, Esq., H.M. <i>Inspector of Training Colleges.</i></td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'>Prof. <span class="smcap">G. Carey Foster</span>, B.A.</td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'>Dr. <span class="smcap">J. H. Gladstone</span>, F.R.S.</td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'>Lady <span class="smcap">Goldsmid</span>.</td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'>Mrs. <span class="smcap">W. Grey</span>.</td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'>Fr&auml;ulein <span class="smcap">Heerwart</span>.</td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'>Prof. <span class="smcap">Meiklejohn</span>, M.A.</td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'>Rev. <span class="smcap">R. H. Quick</span>, M.A.</td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'><span class="smcap">A. Sonnenschein</span>, Esq.</td></tr>
+</table></div>
+
+
+<div class='center'><br /><br /><b>Council:</b></div>
+
+
+
+<div class='center'>
+<table border="0" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" summary="Council">
+<tr><td align='left'>Miss <span class="smcap">M. E. Bailey</span>.</td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'>Miss <span class="smcap">Baker</span>.</td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'>Miss <span class="smcap">Belcher</span>.</td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'>Rev. <span class="smcap">A. Bourne</span>.</td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'>Hon. Mrs. <span class="smcap">Buxton</span>.</td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'><span class="smcap">E. Cooke</span>, Esq.</td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'>Miss <span class="smcap">S. Crombie</span>.</td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'>Mrs. <span class="smcap">Fielden</span>.</td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'>Miss <span class="smcap">Franks</span>.</td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'>Mrs. <span class="smcap">Green</span>.</td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'>Mrs. <span class="smcap">Law</span>.</td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'>Miss <span class="smcap">E. Lord</span>.</td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'>Miss <span class="smcap">Lyschinska</span>.</td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'>Miss <span class="smcap">E. A. Manning</span>.</td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'>Mme. <span class="smcap">Michaelis</span>.</td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'><span class="smcap">H. K. Moore</span>, Esq., B.Mus., B.A.</td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'><span class="smcap">J. S. Phillpotts</span>, Esq.</td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'>Miss <span class="smcap">Kate Phillips</span>.</td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'>Mrs. <span class="smcap">Romanes</span>.</td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'>Rev. <span class="smcap">T. W. Sharpe</span>, H.M.I.S.</td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'>Miss <span class="smcap">Sim</span>.</td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'><span class="smcap">F. Storr</span>, Esq., B.A.</td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'>Miss <span class="smcap">Kate Thornbury</span>.</td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'>Miss <span class="smcap">Ward</span>.</td></tr>
+</table></div>
+
+
+
+<div class='center'><br /><br /><b>Hon. Treasurer:</b><br />
+
+
+<span class="smcap">A. R. Price</span>, Esq.<br />
+
+
+
+<br /><br /><b>Hon. Secretary:</b><br />
+
+
+<span class="smcap">C. G. Montefiore</span>, Esq.<br />
+<br />
+
+
+<br /><b>Secretary:</b><br />
+
+
+Miss <span class="smcap">Bayley</span>.<br />
+</div>
+
+
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" /><p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_227" id="Page_227">[227]</a></span></p>
+
+<div class='heading'>The Froebel Society</div>
+
+
+<div class='blockquot'><span class="smcap">Was</span> formed in 1874 for the purpose of promoting co-operation
+among those engaged in Kindergarten work, of spreading the
+knowledge and practice of the system, and of maintaining a
+high standard of efficiency among Kindergarten Teachers.</div>
+
+<hr style="width: 45%;" />
+
+<div class='heading2'>AN EXAMINATION OF STUDENTS</div>
+
+<div class='blockquot'>Will be held in London in the month of July, for the Higher
+and (this year only) for the Elementary Certificate. In December
+next there will be an Examination for the Elementary Certificate
+only.
+
+<p>Under certain conditions the Council are prepared to hold
+the Examinations at local centres.</p></div>
+
+<hr style="width: 45%;" />
+
+<div class='heading2'>A Registry for Kindergarten Teachers</div>
+
+<div class='blockquot'>Has been opened at the Office of the Society. A small fee is
+charged to those who apply.</div>
+
+<hr style="width: 45%;" />
+
+<div class='blockquot'><p>Arrangements have been made by the Council for the
+INSPECTION AND REGISTRATION OF KINDERGARTENS
+upon certain conditions.</p></div>
+
+<hr style="width: 45%;" />
+
+<div class='heading2'>The Calendar of the Froebel Society, price 1/-,</div>
+
+<div class='blockquot'>Contains the Syllabus for the Examinations, and the Examination
+Papers of 1886.</div>
+
+<hr style="width: 45%;" />
+
+<div class='blockquot'><p>Further information can be obtained from the Secretary, at
+the Office of the Society,</p></div>
+
+<div class='center'>
+<span class="smcap">17, Buckingham Street, Strand.</span><br />
+</div>
+
+<hr style="width: 45%;" />
+
+<div class='blockquot'>The Office is open daily from 11 a.m. to 4 p.m., except
+on Thursdays.</div>
+
+<hr style="width: 45%;" />
+
+<div class="footnotes"><h3>FOOTNOTES:</h3>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_1_1" id="Footnote_1_1"></a><a href="#FNanchor_1_1"><span class="label">[1]</span></a> An American translation has been published by Lee &amp; Shepard, Boston.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_2_2" id="Footnote_2_2"></a><a href="#FNanchor_2_2"><span class="label">[2]</span></a> Since this lecture was written and delivered in Boston, I have
+received from Europe a French version of the Baroness Crombrugghe's
+translation of Fr&#339;bel's <i>Education of Man</i>, and find that the
+first chapters analyze the first and second stages of development so
+much, in the way that I have done, that it gives me, on the one
+hand, confidence in myself as a true interpreter of Fr&#339;bel, and on
+the other, new confidence in Fr&#339;bel as a scientific observer and recorder
+of what I have been accused of founding on a merely sentimental
+knowledge. But scientific knowledge, or that gained by
+the exercise of the understanding, and sentimental knowledge, or
+what is gained by the intuitions of the heart, must necessarily correspond
+if the understanding is sound and the heart has been kept
+diligently to the issues of life. Mr. Emerson calls the intellect sensibility,
+and there is a fine meaning in this. Is there not analogous
+instruction in calling the heart apprehension? What are love, justice,
+beauty, &amp;c., but apprehensions of the primal relations established
+by God? Can the understanding have sensibility to them,
+unless apprehension of them exists from the beginning?
+</p><p>
+In the June, July and August numbers of the <i>Kindergarten Messenger</i>,
+for 1874, will be found translations of the first chapters of
+Fr&#339;bel's book, above mentioned. I began in February to print the
+translation of the introduction, which will be finished in the May
+number, and then will follow the first chapter, entitled "The Nursling,"
+and in the following numbers the subsequent chapters, on
+the child's development during the Kindergarten era. This work
+of Fr&#339;bel's was published at an earlier period of his career than
+1840, when he began to devote himself almost entirely to the first
+stage of education, which, as he grew older, he felt to be the most
+important, because it enfolds the germs of all later developments.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_3_3" id="Footnote_3_3"></a><a href="#FNanchor_3_3"><span class="label">[3]</span></a> It is sold for ten cents by Hammett, publisher, in Brattle street,
+Boston.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_4_4" id="Footnote_4_4"></a><a href="#FNanchor_4_4"><span class="label">[4]</span></a> See Hazard's <i>Man a Creative First Cause</i>. A book published since
+this lecture was first given.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_5_5" id="Footnote_5_5"></a><a href="#FNanchor_5_5"><span class="label">[5]</span></a> "Order reigns in Warsaw" was the form of words in which the
+subjugation of the Poles to Russians in 1849 was announced in France.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_6_6" id="Footnote_6_6"></a><a href="#FNanchor_6_6"><span class="label">[6]</span></a> See Frederic Denison Maurice's book on the Lord's Prayer, published
+by Hurd &amp; Houghton.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_7_7" id="Footnote_7_7"></a><a href="#FNanchor_7_7"><span class="label">[7]</span></a> See Appendix, <a href="#Note_A">note A</a>.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_8_8" id="Footnote_8_8"></a><a href="#FNanchor_8_8"><span class="label">[8]</span></a> For details of manipulating the gifts and occupations, see <i>The
+Florence Handbook</i>, published by Milton Bradley; or Mrs. Kraus-B&#339;lte's
+<i>Manual in Eight Parts</i>, which is being published by Steiger.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_9_9" id="Footnote_9_9"></a><a href="#FNanchor_9_9"><span class="label">[9]</span></a> <i>Idea</i> is a word I always use in the sense of <i>insight</i>, as Plato uses it,
+rather than in the sense of <i>notion</i>, as Locke uses it.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_10_10" id="Footnote_10_10"></a><a href="#FNanchor_10_10"><span class="label">[10]</span></a> See <a href="#Note_A">note A</a> in Appendix, and the Record of a School.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_11_11" id="Footnote_11_11"></a><a href="#FNanchor_11_11"><span class="label">[11]</span></a> See George Macdonald's <i>Vicar's Daughter</i>.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_12_12" id="Footnote_12_12"></a><a href="#FNanchor_12_12"><span class="label">[12]</span></a> This unique book was the text-book Fr&#339;bel used in his training-school.
+Its profound meaning, and how it points to the divine philosophy
+of the instinctive play, that is the first phenomenon of human life
+with mother and child, some of you have heard Miss Blow and Miss
+Fisher luminously explain in a course of lectures much longer than
+mine, and which I hope they may be persuaded to publish in book form.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_13_13" id="Footnote_13_13"></a><a href="#FNanchor_13_13"><span class="label">[13]</span></a> In the first of these last two books, Mr. Hazard has made an examination
+of Edwards on the Will, and the only satisfactory reply to
+his argument for Necessity ever made. Very early in life, the task of
+answering Edwards was given him, by the late William E. Channing,
+D.D., who read his first edition of <i>Language</i>, and was so much
+struck with the metaphysical genius displayed in it, that he sought out
+the anonymous author on purpose to make this suggestion. He found
+him a clerk in his father's great manufactory, to whose business he
+afterwards succeeded, and he was engaged in it until he was an old
+man. All his books are a proof that <i>business</i> may be as good a disciplinarian
+of the higher intellect as scholastic education, to say the
+least.</p></div></div>
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<div class='tnote'><h3>Transcriber's Notes</h3>
+<p>In the introduction and last two pages which use an ornamental font in the original, Fr&oelig;bel is presented
+without the oe-ligature. This was retained.</p>
+
+<p>Book uses both "M&uuml;tterspiele und K&ouml;se-Lieder" and "Die Mutter Spiele und Kose Lieder" for Fr&oelig;bel's work:
+"Mutter- und Kose-Lieder." Also referenced as "<i>Mother Love</i> and <i>Cossetting Songs</i>."</p>
+
+<p>Mrs. Kraus-Boelte is spelled without an oe-ligature except in a single footnote where a ligature was used.</p>
+
+<p>Obvious punctuation errors repaired.</p>
+
+
+<p><a href="#Page_223">Page 223</a>-<a href="#Page_224">224</a>, the word "Chorus" sometimes appeared in parentheses and sometimes did not. This was
+retained.</p>
+
+</div>
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+<pre>
+
+
+
+
+
+End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of Education in The Home, The
+Kindergarten, and The Primary School, by Elizabeth P. Peabody
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+</pre>
+
+</body>
+</html>
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