XXIV. FREDERICK FROEBEL

BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH.

The most illustrious disciple of Pestalozzi was Frederick Froebel, who was born in Thuringia, April 21, 1782. Owing to the early death of his mother, his childhood training was sadly neglected. At the village school, which he entered in . due time, he received religious impressions that never left him. At the age of ten years he went to live with an uncle, in whose home he found the kindness and sympathy that his earlier childhood had missed. He entered the town school of Stadt-Ilm, but the teacher, an old-time mechanical driller, failed to reach the inner nature of his gifted pupil.

At the age of fifteen Froebel became a forester's apprentice. Not receiving the instruction he had a right to expect, he was thrown upon his own resources, and by means of the books at hand he made considerable attainments in the forester's art. He was especially fond of botany. "My church religion," he wrote, "changed into a religious life in Nature, and in the last half-year I lived entirely in and with plants, which attracted me wonderfully, without however the meaning of the inner life of the plant-world yet dawning on me.”

In 1799 he entered the University of Jena, where he attended lectures on mathematics, botany, natural history, physics, chemistry, and architecture. Several years were spent in various employments without yielding him either much profit or peace of mind. In 1805 we find him in Frankfort with an architect. Then the turning point in his

life came. He was offered a position as teacher; and the ecstasy he felt, as he stood for the first time in the presence of the school, convinced him that he had found his place. To use his own expression, "The fish was in the water."

In 1808 he went to Yverdun, and spent two years with Pestalozzi. He took with him three pupils, of whom he had charge as tutor. Thus he became thoroughly acquainted with Pestalozzi's system, which in its essential features he cordially adopted, but which he also supplemented and improved. Afterward feeling the necessity of increasing his store of knowledge, he studied at the universities of Göttingen and Berlin. In 1813 he joined the Prussian army, and took an active part in the campaign against Napoleon. After the close of the war he established a school at Keilhau in 1817, in which he followed "the principle of cultivating the self-activity of the pupil by connecting manual labor with every study." After a temporary success, the enterprise, on political and religious grounds, was opposed by the Prussian government, and in 1831 Froebel was forced to abandon it.

It was during his work at Keilhau that Froebel published his great work, from which the following extracts are taken. The full title of the work is as follows: "The Education of Man, the Art of Education, Instruction and Training, Aimed at in the German Educational Institute at Keilhau, set forth by its Principal, F. W. A. Froebel." It is a work of profound thought, requiring and repaying repeated perusal. His great word," to adopt the judgment of Dr. W. T. Harris, "is inner connection. There must be an inner connection between the pupil's mind and the objects which he studies, and this shall determine what to study. There must be an inner connection in those objects among themselves which determines their succession and the order in which they are to be taken up in the course of instruction. Finally,

there is an inner connection within the soul that unites the faculties of feeling, perception, phantasy, thought, and volition, and determines the law of their unfolding. Inner connection is in fact the law of development, the principle of evolution, and Froebel is the educational reformer who has done more than all the rest to make valid in education what the Germans call the developing method.""

After a varied experience at Keilhau, extending through nearly fifteen years, Froebel came to the conclusion that a change in the methods of early instruction was necessary to a thorough educational reform. Carefully considering the ways of children, he saw that they delight in movement; that they use their senses; that they observe; that they invent and construct. All this activity he proposed to turn to account in the interest of education. This led to the founding of the kindergarten- a school which receives children at a very early age, and by systematizing their plays, directing their activity, and giving order to their ideas, develops their faculties harmoniously, and prepares them for the work of the ordinary school.

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Froebel died June 21, 1852. "The fame of knowledge," it was said over his grave, was not his ambition. ing love for mankind, for the people, left him neither rest nor quiet. After he had offered his life for his native land in the wars of freedom, he turned with the same enthusiasm which surrenders and sacrifices for the highest thought, to the aim of cultivating the people and youth. And how many brave men he has educated, who honor his memory and bless his name!"

SELECTION FROM FROEBEL.

THE EDUCATION OF MAN.

I. In all things there lives and reigns an eternal law. This all-controlling law is necessarily based on an all-pervading, energetic, living, self-conscious, and hence eternal unity. This Unity is God. All things have come from the divine Unity, from God, and have their origin in the divine Unity, in God alone. God is the sole source of all things. In all things there lives and reigns the divine Unity, God. All things live and have their being in and through the divine Unity, in and through God. All things are only through the divine effluence that lives in them. The divine effluence that lives in each thing is the essence of each thing.

2. It is the destiny and lifework of all things to unfold their essence, hence their divine being, and therefore the divine Unity itself to reveal God in their external and transient being. It is the special destiny and life-work of man, as an intelligent and rational being, to become fully, vividly, and clearly conscious of his essence, of the divine effluence in him, and therefore, of God; to become fully, vividly, and clearly conscious of his destiny and life-work; and to accomplish this, to render it (his essence) active, to reveal it in his own life with self-determination and freedom. Education consists in leading man, as a thinking, intelligent being, growing into self-consciousness, to a pure and unsullied, conscious and free representation of the inner law of divine Unity, and in teaching him ways and means thereto.

3. The knowledge of that eternal law, the insight into its origin, into its essence, into the totality, the connection, and intensity of its effects, the knowledge of life in its totality, constitute science, the science of life; and, referred by the

self-conscious, thinking, intelligent being to representation and practice through and in himself, this becomes the science of education.

The system of directions, derived from the knowledge and study of that law, to guide thinking, intelligent beings in the apprehension of their life-work and in the accomplishment of their destiny, is the theory of education. The self-active application of this knowledge in the direct development and cultivation of rational beings toward the attainment of their destiny, is the practice of education. The object of education is the realization of a faithful, pure, inviolate, and hence holy life. Knowledge and application, consciousness and realization in life, united in the service of a faithful, pure, and holy life, constitute the wisdom of life, pure wisdom.

4. By education, then, the divine essence of man should be unfolded, brought out, lifted into consciousness, and man himself raised into free, conscious obedience to the divine principle that lives in him, and to a free representation of this principle in his life. Education as a whole, by means of instruction and training, should bring to man's consciousness, and render efficient in his life, the fact that man and nature proceed from God and are conditioned by him that both have their being in God. Education should lead and guide man to clearness concerning himself and in himself, to peace with nature, and to unity with God; hence, it should lift him to a knowledge of himself and of mankind, to a knowledge of God and of nature, and to the pure and holy life to which such knowledge leads.

5. Education in instruction and training, originally and in its first principles, should necessarily be passive, following with due protection, not prescriptive, categorical, or interfering. Indeed, in its very essence, education should have these characteristics; for the undisturbed operation of the divine Unity is necessarily good can not be otherwise than