subduing, transforming, and idealizing Nature. Realizing this fact do you not begin to see the destructiveness of little children in a new light? Why do they empty drawers, tear paper, break their toys? Are they, too, trying to stamp themselves upon their environment? Must they, too, unmake in order to remake? And above all, is it your duty to see to it that the effort of the self to produce its image be not thwarted by the lack of material simple enough to lend itself readily to the transforming and creative impulse?

You must often have watched little children at play on the seashore, and you know that for a time they are content simply to fill little pails with sand, which they immediately pour out. Later, they make huts, dig wells, excavate tunnels, lay out gardens, and when several of them play together, whole villages spring up under their combined effort. Change making without aim is transfigured into creation, and individual creativeness increased by social combination. From hints like these Froebel was led to the production of the kindergarten gifts, and to use them so that they may abet the activity of the child in these several stages of development is to use them in his spirit.

So much for the All-Gone Song. Now for the picture. You will notice that it is divided into two parts. In the foreground of the lower division mother and child sit at a table on which stands a cup from which the child has just been fed. In front of the table a dog who has greedily devoured his food looks in his dish for more. Back of the mother a thirsty boy asks water of his sister, who for an answer holds up an empty glass. As he looks at the glass sly puss creeps up behind him and steals his slice of buttered bread. When he shall turn to get his bread he will find it "all gone."

Suspended from the ceiling hangs a cage, and on tiptoe beside it a little girl stands ready to give her canary fresh seed. As she opens the door she turns her head just for a second to see what her sister is doing, and lo! when she looks again at the cage she will find her bird flown. Her little brother tries to comfort her. Come with me, sister," he

says,

66

"for out in the field I know a tree in which

there is a nest full of birds."

The upper part of the picture shows us the chil

dren arrived at the field.

The older boy has

climbed the tree to get the nest. The other children

are so absorbed in watching him that not one of them notices the dog who has followed them to the field, and now stands quietly eating the bread the younger boy holds in his hand. When the little fellow turns round he too will find his bread—all gone. The elder brother has reached the nest. But what does he see? The nest is empty; the birds have all flown away. One little bird, however, flutters to the ground. "I shall have you, at any rate," says the younger boy, throwing his hat over it. "How glad I shall be to give you to my sister. Wait here, little bird, under my hat, until I pick the beautiful raspberries growing on this bush. How good they will taste! " But a frolicsome breeze blows over the hat, away flies the bird, and the boy when he returns from the raspberry bush will find his bird flown.

Froebel's explanation of this picture shows that by typical illustrations of inattention, inconsiderateness, want of forethought, and lack of self-restraint he is seeking to awaken the ideals which these tendencies contradict. In other words, he is beginning the moral education of the child by attacking the faults into which all children are betrayed. He knows that higher virtues imply lower ones, and

that the attempt to develop the higher before the lower is the parent of sham and hypocrisy. He knows that until we win inner collectedness there is no possibility of any real spiritual development, that all good is conquered evil, and all character formed by a process of overcoming. Therefore he escapes the too common error of trying to build character by beginning with the roof instead of the foundations.

For a long time I was puzzled by the excursion to the field and the attempt to rob the bird's nest, and it seemed to me that the condemnation of this proceeding was by no means sufficiently stringent. The following passage from the Education of Man cleared my vision, and showed me that it was because Froebel understood the child that he did not exaggerate his offense:

"Another source of many boyish faults lies in precipitation, carelessness, frivolity, and thoughtlessness. The boy is apt to act in obedience to a possibly praiseworthy impulse that holds captive his mind and body; but he has not yet experienced in his life the consequences of gratifying this particular impulse, and it has, indeed, not even occurred to him to consider the consequences of the action.

A boy throws stones for a long time at the small window of a house near by, trying very hard to hit it. He has no idea, nor does he realize that, if a stone strikes the window, the latter must necessarily break. At last a stone hits the window, the window breaks, and the amazed boy stands rooted to the spot.

66

Again, another boy, by no means malicious, but, on the contrary, very good natured and fond of pigeons, aimed at his neighbor's beautiful pigeon on the roof, with perfect delight and an intense desire to hit his mark. He did not consider that if the bullet should hit the mark the pigeon would be killed, and still less that this pigeon might be the mother of young ones needing her care. He fired, the bullet struck, the pigeon fell, a beautiful pair of pigeons were separated, and a number of unfledged young ones lost the mother who had fed and warmed them.

"It is certainly a very great truth—and failure to appreciate it does daily great harm-that it generally is some other human being, not unfrequently the educator himself, that first makes the child or the boy bad. This is accomplished by attributing evil or at least wrong-motives to all that the