sign. Remember the great historic nations which have been and are not. Then once more expand your thought and try to realize that our planet is but one of an infinite number of worlds whose life process is presumably the same, and that, as a whole, the history of the universe is that of matter diffused through space and aggregated into revolving spheres only to be after some brief span of life again diffused.

Why is Turner the greatest painter of Nature? Is it not because he paints a dissolving appearance? "Even while you look at the landscape," say his great pictures, "it is passing away." Piety and poetry speak in similar strain. "The heavens wax old as a garment, and as a vesture shall they be changed." "The great globe shall dissolve, and like an insubstantial pageant faded, leave not a wrack behind." "Nature is giddy with motion, and sun, moon, man undulate and stream.' In the alembic of thought all "things that be" melt to things that seem," and solid Nature dissolves into 'one fast-flowing energy,' one rushing metamorphosis."

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When you begin to feel as little Axel felt in presence of the flying landscape, consider with what

thoughts you seek to reassure your quaking heart. Do you not remind yourself that the sinking lights in the heaven will rise again, that the stream which rushes to the sea is but returning to its source, that the fading flower carries in its heart the seed whence new flowers shall be born, that though individual plants and animals die, their species persist? Rising to higher levels of thought, do you not declare that extinct fauna and flora are explained when we contemplate Nature as a whole and read her evolutionary history; that no great nation perishes unless the World-Spirit transcends the idea it embodies; that death is in reality the true birth of the spirit, and that though our earth shall one day return to star dust it will not be until she has fulfilled her destiny, and nurtured countless millions of immortal souls. Summing up these separate reassurances, is it not clear that you explain to yourself the phenomena of change by declaring that they imply unrealized possibility, and that in all seemingly destructive activities you recognize the segments and arcs of great circular, spiral, and vortical processes?

Now, just as you explain change to yourself, you must explain it to your boy if you would help

him to conquer and keep his poise of mind. Your explanations must, however, be limited to those infinitesimal circles of change which fall within the range of his minute experience. Froebel's AllGone Play shows you the ideal mother fulfilling this double requirement. Baby's supper is all gone! Where did it go? Little lips, little tongue, little throat, you can tell. Will it come back? Yes, for see, baby's legs are getting long, and his cheeks rosy. Vaguely at first, but with ever-increasing clearness the child learns to connect his food with his bodily health and growth, and with this synthesis makes perhaps his first solution of the enigma of change.

In the account of her girlhood days at Keilhau, Frau Schrader confesses that some of Froebel's plays seemed to her ridiculous, and that she found his idea that men might be made noble by playing such games narrow, limited, and unnatural. Every thoughtful kindergartner has probably been forced to combat a similar doubt both in herself and others. No one can get rid of it without the insight that each little play is merely the concrete example of a general method of procedure, and the point of departure for a cumulative series of experiences. The

really wonderful thing about Froebel is his acumen in discerning the nuclei of development, and his power of connecting them with the ideals which are at once their impulsion and their goal. What he says to the mother in each of his little plays is: Learn from what you do in this given instance how to act in all similar instances. What he says in the All-Gone Song is: Learn from the synthesis we have made between baby's vanishing supper and his rosy cheeks how to explain all seemingly destructive processes.

If, therefore, we aspire to be intelligent disciples of the prophet of childhood, we shall seize upon every opportunity of calling attention to the rhythmic movement through which change negates itself. We shall connect the sunset with the sunrise, point out the recurrent phases of the moon, teach children to recognize the brightest stars and the most striking constellations, and to watch for their disappearance and return. We shall call attention to the flight of migratory birds, and to their joyous reappearance. We shall show the links which bind the separate seasons into a circular chain of activity. We shall suggest that all the metamorphoses of plant life find their consummation in reproducing

the seed from which they started. We shall stir childish imagination with the mysterious transformations of the caterpillar into chrysalis and butterfly. We shall make much of family birthdays and national anniversaries, and avail ourselves of the sweet influence of our great church festivals upon the development of religious emotion and aspiration. In a word, let the idea of the All-Gone Song become really alive in our minds, and it will impel us daily to some sympathetic suggestion or interpretation of which otherwise we might never have dreamed.

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The choice of baby's vanishing supper as a typical illustration of the fact of change is a happy one, because in it the child is himself the change producer. He unmakes his food in order to make his body. Emerson has described the process of assimilation as a physical effort to make over the world into the image of the self. The snake converts whatever food the meadow yields into snake, the fox into fox, and Peter and John are busy working up all existence into Peter and John." The ideal which this effort implies can, however, not be realized upon the physical plane, and the act of assimilation points upward to man's spiritual activity in