EDITOR'S PREFACE.

FROEBEL seizes the rudimentary activities in the child's mind and discovers means of exercising them so as to educate them by development. He makes a systematic series of plays and games which point prophetically forward to the civilization which reveals itself in adult occupations.

The theory of evolution explains each faculty and habit of man by pointing back to some violence or danger against which the animal aroused all its energies to protect itself. The faculty or habit is a survival of that struggle. Modern educational theory sometimes borrows evolution to explain mental activities, and sometimes it supposes that it has thrown light upon methods of instruction when it has shown an activity to be the heir of a superstition which arose through some physical evil in a remote epoch-for example, when it has shown

that some religious doctrine is likewise a reminiscence of some ancient fear of Nature or some ordinance of the patriarchal stage of society. This evolution theory in education has one great defect— namely, that it does not discriminate between that class of present activities which are survivals and slowly becoming dormant through non-exercise, and on the other hand those activities which had rude beginnings and imperfectly realized their purpose, but have been perfecting themselves more and more with the progress of human civilization. According to the former diagnosis the belief in a God would be the survival of an ancient superstition, of the patriarchal family ordinance, or ancestor worship, while according to the latter it would be the result of the growth of man's insight into the purpose of Nature and man and the necessity of presupposing an Absolute Reason to explain the world of evolution in which we live.

To show that something is a survival is to discredit it. To show that it had a rude beginning, but has progressed onward to a divine realization is to make it precious.

Human life points forward as well as backward in evolution. There is not only the vanishing pro

cess which appertains to crude conditions which have been outlived, but also a process of development by which "good is educed from evil, and good is made better yet in infinite progression." This latter view is the guiding insight for education; it looks upon the child as the father of the man. Love of life and freedom is not a survival of a crude and violent life experience in prehistoric times, but it is the primordial instinct that has created the long succession of progressive human conditions, crowning the whole with a Christian civilization:

Striving to be man, the worm

Mounts through all the spires of form.

The object of the present book is to explain in language addressed to the general public the philosophy of Froebel. Its author finds it necessary for this purpose to take up the most important doctrines one after the other as they were developed in the Mutter und Kose Lieder, and show their equivalents in the different systems of thought that prevail. In some cases these systems are in harmony with Froebel, and in other cases there is profound disagreement. It is well for all students of the kindergarten to deepen their knowledge of his prin

ciples by seeing their ultimate consequences and understanding how they apply to practical questions in the instruction of the young. The teacher ought to be able to understand things in their causes and reasons, and not rely too much upon mere authority. The importance of this will be readily understood by those who have seen in recent years the unprofitable experiments made by kindergartners who have only partially understood Froebel, and who have been easily caught by some plausible doctrine brought forward as an improvement, but which is really at variance with the true theory of the kindergarten as well as with that of all sound pedagogy.

The readers of the discussions in this book will readily concede that the exposition of the results of the theory of the kindergarten, and also the defense of its practice as against systems that conflict with it, are presented with a clearness and force new in the literature of the subject. In this respect as well as in many others this book is most timely.

Froebel's doctrine of the kindergarten stands or falls with that theory of symbolism which teaches that truth can be presented in other ways than in the scientific form. It holds that the first stages

of cognition deal largely with symbols, and that only with the increasing power of analysis does the mind become able to discriminate differences as well as perceive identities. A vague perception of sameness or identity is all that the child can attain to. But when the object is brought accurately into the focus of the mind the definition grows toward completeness. The first stage of the development of the soul, therefore, is that in which feeling predominates over intellect and will.

In order to make clear how the earlier stage of the mind differs from the later I have often found it convenient to illustrate it by explaining the difference between mere facts, typical facts, and principles. Each fact depends on other facts. Everything depends on its environment. If we come to investigate what a fact really is, therefore, we see extending on all sides of it long series of relations and dependencies. A fact taken out of its relations would be no fact at all, or at least only an empty form of a fact. It is not sufficient to place us before the reality and expect that we shall know it adequately and without effort. That is the mistake of those who believe in perception rather than in apperception. Perception sees only what is externally