say what ought to be done, but can I or any other theorist realize how many stumbling stones are strewn along the path of all general principles? I think I can. I know that the science of education is one thing, and the art of education another. I know how different is the insight which merely recognizes a general truth from the prompt and unperplexed tact which solves problems in the concrete. I simply claim that to know what we must do, helps us to find out how to do it.

"Consider," says Froebel, "either the seed or the egg; watch the development alike of feeling and of thought. Out of the indefinite the definite is born." Foster the child's activity, and it will rise to productive energy; exercise productive energy, and it will blossom into original creation. Let the nurture of sympathy go hand-in-hand with the incitement to activity, and from the union of the two will spring humility and helpfulness. Divorce sympathy from activity and it collapses into that inordinate craving for approbation which has been defined as the "love of love by sin defiled." Divorce activity from sympathy and it will give rise to the lust of power. Refuse nurture to both these elementary impulses, and from the union of their

opposites, sloth and selfishness, will spring in the first generation, self-indulgence and presumption; in the second, parasitism and cowardice; in the third, fatalism; and in the fourth, the family line of these ancestral ills will end with defiance and despair.

Do I seem to be exaggerating the dangers of sloth? Is it not true that "Idleness standing in the midst of unattempted tasks is always proud," and that he who has done nothing is most ready to believe in his own ability to do everything? Is it not true that when with untried strength he is forced to confront the tasks of life he either falls into the ranks of those who through cowardice "make great refusals," or by reckless scheming involves himself in practical ruin? Is it not true that he who can not lean upon himself must lean upon others, and that he who is himself will-less must fall into the worship of blind chance or inexorable fate? What, indeed, are chance and fate but the projection of his own wayward caprice, and his own blind and hence unregulated passions?

Man is only what he makes himself to be. Man can make himself only that which ideally he is. Through activity he creates himself. In activity he

reveals himself. Recognizing these truths you will begin to question yourself anxiously as to the methods by which energy may be incited, guided, restrained, and developed. With this problem in mind turn to the picture which illustrates Froebel's Play with the Limbs. Against the baby's kicking feet the mother presses her hands. The stream has been dammed that its force may turn the mill wheel. Below the dam a little boy has set his toy mill in the stream. His thoughtful brother watches the turning toy, trying to understand how and why the water keeps it going so merrily. The general thought of the picture is that, lacking constraint, force diffuses and wastes itself. To be effective it must be pent up. The old myth makes Hercules begin his career by strangling in his cradle the serpents that attack his life. We must create a tension in order to guide the force of the child in definite directions, and by inciting him to resistance fortify in him the love of exertion, and waken in him the sense of power. Applied to the force of will this insight explains the significance of inhibition as the method of specific choice and action. We do one thing by virtue of not doing other things. We give vent to one impulse by inhibiting

a number of other impulses; we concentrate attention upon one object by repelling the seductions of other objects. To the facts that our minds are besieged by colliding sensations, and that our souls are the battleground of colliding impulses, we owe our ascent from involuntary to voluntary activity. After voluntary activity has been attained it is by freely choosing among different and opposing possibilities that will is exercised and character formed, and it is also by a series of intellectual exclusions that we rise from attention to analysis, and from analysis to still higher orders of knowing. The practical application of this insight to early education creates a procedure admirably defined by Miss Garland as the method of restricted freedom. It consists in so far limiting the range of choice as to give a specific trend to activity, and it avoids both the extreme of formalism and that yet more dangerous extreme of license which is the hideous caricature of liberty.

The evolution of energy through antagonism is a general law. But the particular form which energy will assume must be determined by individual bent and aptitude. Hence Froebel's picture

shows also the limitations of its principle. Each child in the picture is fascinated by the mysterious force of the swift-rushing stream, but each is incited to a different activity, and in this activity reveals his or her individuality.

In a letter to his cousin, Madame Schmidt, Froebel urges her to consider that "wherever healthy life buds forth, there new life only unfolds itself to meet and overcome various obstacles; nay, further, that these obstacles in a certain sense are actually necessary for strengthening and fortifying the young life." "Let us," he adds, "look closely at the buds of our trees, and see how thick and close are the coverings which lock them up, and how slowly and with what resistance these coverings are burst open before the tender little leaves appear; or let us look at the kernel, or the seed-corn, which a still stronger chain holds fettered, till the feeble germinating point can shake itself free; or, finally, let us look at the helpless infant and its birth. Obstacles," he concludes, "are not appointed by providence with the design of repelling newly uprising life, but with the purpose of strengthening it at once upon its first appearance, and