she will learn something of his specific individuality. Finally, there are certain activities whose reproduction will have an educative value for all children. To indicate the most essential of these typical acts is one purpose of the Mother-Play.

Before we proceed to the study of these typical imitations a few words of caution are necessary. No imitative play should be taught the child until he is able to associate with it some definite though not necessarily adequate idea. He should not be called on to go through such games for the amusement of older people, neither should he ever be praised for playing them well. They are the scrious business of infancy, and should be treated with gravity and respect. Finally, such plays must not be so numerous as to interfere with the development of independent thought, or to confuse the mind with too many suggestions. Please say to Helen in this connection that a very few additions to the games suggested by Froebel will give her all the plays she can possibly teach the children with advantage to their development, and one of the most disastrous results of the present tendency to multiply song books is that the individual kindergartner either overloads the minds of her pupils

and gives them spiritual indigestion, or that, bewildered by variety, she sacrifices essential and typical plays to those which have no educative value.

Recognizing the fact that imitation is a search for causes we are ready to begin our study of the Weathervane. Remember that the first school of the soul is the "school of astonishment," and that, as Plato long since pointed out, the beginning of knowledge is in wonder. Since wonder expresses the tension of subject and object, it is evident that experiences lose their stimulus when they lose their novelty, and we justly esteem it a mark of high intellect to be piqued by the still unintelligible commonplace. Upon thought as upon will custom presses "with a weight heavy as frost and deep almost as life," while conversely objects which are remote, and activities which are infrequent, stimulate mental energy, and alike for the individual and the race the path to paradise is upon the ascending rounds of "the stairway of surprise."

Dream yourself back into childhood, and try to realize the wonder with which the unaccustomed soul must confront the phenomena of wind, storm, lightning, and thunder. You will readily perceive that in presence of the latter phenomena fear

blends with amazement, and that the immediate outcome of this complex emotion will probably be superstition and its recoil skepticism. Goethe relates that in very early childhood he began to settle into a serious disbelief in the benignity of Providence, incited thereto first by the shock of the Lisbon earthquake and later by the foolish conduct of those around him, "who on the occasion of a terrible thunderstorm dragged the boy and his sister into a dark passage, where the whole household, distracted with fear, tried to conciliate the angry deity by frightful groans and prayers." * Few persons nowadays act quite so insanely as this; still fear spreads by contagion from many a mother to many a child, and you must guard yourself from all unreasoning apprehension, and from all starts, outcries, and nervous frights if you wish Harold to be manly and courageous.

The phenomena of wind as distinct from storm inspire no fear, but pure and simple wonder. Hence they stimulate the keenest search for their cause. Himself incarnate motion, the child finds himself in presence of a world in movement. At the same time he feels the breath of the wind and

* Lewes, Life of Goethe.

hears its voices. The first explanation which occurs to him is not that the wind moves objects, but that moving objects cause wind. The only movement of which he knows anything is self-movement, or movement which he easily traces back to self-movement. He moves himself; hence the weathervane, the windmill, the trees move themselves. can cause wind by running, or by waving a fan, or rustling a newspaper. Hence the windmill, the trees, and other moving objects may make the strong wind he feels. So reasons the child. So reason to-day the Arizona Indians.

He

It marks an intellectual crisis when the suspicion arises that this primitive theory is false, and that the wind is not the product, but the producer, of the varied movements perceived. Historically, this crisis may be traced in many barbaric myths. As an experience of childhood it is doubtless precipitated by intercourse with grown people. With this presentiment thought mounts, from the conception of different causal energies behind different movements, to the thought of a single causal energy behind many movements. Moreover, in ascribing many effects to a single cause the mind learns to separate as well as

connect cause and effect, and to conceive cause as an invisible power. Speculations with regard to the nature of this unseen energy next begin to occupy the mind, and by a process of unconscious analogizing the wind is invested with human or quasi-human attributes. Last of all, doubting his own solutions, the child carries the burning question to his elders, whom he besets with eager inquiries as to what the wind is, and what makes the wind?

If you will study carefully Froebel's commentary on the Play of the Weathervane you will see that he points out how you may come to the aid of the infant mind, both in the earlier and the later stages of this process of spiritual evolution. Let it be stated at once that you are not limited to any particular imitation, but that the Weathervane merely stands for the wind-blown object, whatever it may be, which most allures the child's interest. He is incited to repeat its movement, and led gradually to imitate the activity of other objects set in motion by the same unseen force. This is, of course, a process involving time, but it must be remembered that no one of Froebel's plays represents a detached experience, but rather the moving