EVOLUTION
From The Mottoes and Commentaries of Mother-Play.
From The Mottoes and Commentaries of Mother-Play.
Warner - World's Best Literature - v06 to v10 - Cal to Fro
Another
pull. "Thank you, dear Aurelia, I did bow. " As he spoke, the
thought crossed his mind that his wife would not pull at his coat
so low down. It was not she, but his little daughter Bertha who
was pulling; for she often walked gravely next him, and like her
mother, pulled at the bell for bows. "That will do, my dear,"
said he, as Bertha continued to snatch and pull at his coat-tails.
"Come here, you little rogue! " and he absently put his hand
behind him to seize the little tease. He seized hold of something
round and shaggy; he felt sharp teeth on his fingers, and turned
with a start. There he saw in the lamplight a reddish monster
with a big head, shaggy hair, and a little tassel that fell back
into its hind legs in lieu of a tail. His wife and daughter were
horribly transformed; and he gazed in surprise on this indistinct
creature which seated itself before him, and glared at him in
silence.
"A strange adventure! " exclaimed Raschke.
"What are you,
unknown creature? Presumably a dog. Away with you! " The
animal retreated a few steps. Raschke continued his meditations:
"If we trace back the expression and gestures of the affections
to their original forms in this manner, one of the most active
laws would certainly prove to be the endeavor to attract or repel
the extraneous. It would be instructive to distinguish, by means
of these involuntary movements of men and animals, what is
essential and what conventional. Away, dog! Do me a favor
and go home. What does he want with me? Evidently he be-
longs to Werner's domain. The poor creature will assuredly lose
itself in the town under the dominion of an idée fixe. "
Meantime Speihahn's attacks were becoming more violent; and
now he was marching in a quite unnatural and purely conven-
tional manner on his hind legs, while his fore paws were leaning
against the professor's back, and his teeth were actually biting
into the coat.
A belated shoemaker's boy stood still and beat his leathern
apron. "Is not the master ashamed to let his poor apprentice
push him along like that? " In truth, the dog behind the man
looked like a dwarf pushing a giant along the ice.
Raschke's interest in the dog's thoughts increased. He stood
still near a lantern, examined and felt his coat. This coat had
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GUSTAV FREYTAG
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developed a velvet collar and very long sleeves, advantages that
the philosopher had never yet remarked in his greatcoat. Now
the matter became clear to him: absorbed in thought, he had
chosen a wrong coat, and the worthy dog insisted on saving his
master's garment, and making the thief aware that there was
something wrong. Raschke was so pleased with this sagacity
that he turned round, addressed some kind words to Speihahn,
and made an attempt to stroke his shaggy hair. The dog again
snapped at his hand. "You are quite right to be angry with
me,” replied Raschke; "I will prove to you that I acknowledge
my fault. " He took off the coat and hung it over his arm.
«< Yes, it is much heavier than my own. " He walked on cheer-
fully in his thin coat, and observed with satisfaction that the dog
abandoned the attacks on his back. But instead, Speihahn sprang
upon
his side, and again bit at the coat and the hand, and
growled unpleasantly.
The professor got angry with the dog, and when he came to
a bench on the promenade he laid down the coat, intending to
face the dog seriously and drive him home. In this manner he
got rid of the dog, but also of the coat. For Speihahn sprang
upon the bench with a mighty bound, placed himself astride the
coat, and met the professor, who tried to drive him away, with
hideous growling and snarling.
"It is Werner's coat," said the professor, "and it is Werner's
dog: it would be wrong to beat the poor creature because it is
becoming violent in its fidelity, and it would be wrong to leave
the dog and the coat. " So he remained standing before the dog
and speaking kindly to him: but Speihahn no longer took any
notice of the professor; he turned against the coat itself, which
he scratched, rummaged, and bit. Raschke saw that the coat
could not long endure such rage. "He is frantic or mad," said
he suspiciously. "I shall have to use force against you after all,
poor creature;" and he considered whether he should also jump
upon the seat and push the mad creature by a violent kick into
the water, or whether it would be better to open the inevitable
attack from below. He resolved on the latter course, and looked
round to see whether he could anywhere discover a stone or
stick to throw at the raging beast. As he looked, he observed
the trees and the dark sky above him, and the place seemed quite
unfamiliar. "Has magic been at work here? " he exclaimed, with
amusement. He turned politely to a solitary wanderer who was
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GUSTAV FREYTAG
passing that way:
the town we are?
a moment? "
"Indeed," angrily replied the person addressed, "those are
very suspicious questions. I want my stick myself at night. Who
are you, sir ? » The stranger approached the professor mena-
cingly.
"I am peaceable," replied Raschke, "and by no means inclined
to violent attacks. A quarrel has arisen between me and the
animal on this seat for the possession of a coat, and I should be
much obliged to you if you would drive the dog away from the
coat. But I beg you not to hurt the animal any more than is
absolutely necessary. "
"Is that your coat there? " asked the man.
"Unfortunately I cannot give you an affirmative answer," re-
plied Raschke conscientiously.
"Would you kindly tell me in what part of
And could you perhaps lend me your stick for
"There must be something wrong here," exclaimed the
stranger, again eyeing the professor suspiciously.
"There is, indeed," replied Raschke. "The dog is out of his
mind; the coat is exchanged, and I do not know where we are. "
"Close to the valley gate, Professor Raschke," answered the
voice of Gabriel, who hastily joined the group. "Excuse me, but
what brings you here? "
"Capital! " exclaimed Raschke joyously. "Pray take charge of
this coat and this dog. "
Gabriel gazed in amazement at Speihahn, who was now lying
on the coat and bending his head before his friend. Gabriel
threw down the dog and seized the coat. "Why, that is our
greatcoat! " exclaimed he.
"Yes, Gabriel," said the professor, "that was my mistake, and
the dog has shown marvelous fidelity to the coat. "
"Fidelity! " exclaimed Gabriel indignantly, as he drew a par-
cel out of the coat pocket. "It was greedy selfishness, sir; there
must be some food in this pocket. "
"Yes, true," exclaimed Raschke; "it is all the chicken's fault.
Give me the parcel, Gabriel; I must eat the fowl myself; and
we might bid each other good-night now with mutual satisfac-
tion, if you would just show me my way a little among these
trees. "
"But you must not go home in the night air without an over-
coat," said Gabriel considerately. "We are not far from our
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GUSTAV FREYTAG
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house; the best way would really be for you to come back with
me, sir. "
Raschke considered and laughed.
"You are right, Gabriel; my departure was awkward; and to-
day an animal's soul has restored a man's soul to order. "
"If you mean this dog," said Gabriel, "it would be the first
time he ever did anything good. I see he must have followed
you from our door; for I put little bones there for him of an
evening. "
"Just now he seemed not to be quite in his right mind," said
the professor.
"He is cunning enough when he pleases," continued Gabriel
mysteriously; "but if I were to speak of my experiences with this
dog -»
"Do speak, Gabriel," eagerly exclaimed the
the philosopher.
"There is nothing so valuable concerning animals as a truthful
statement from those who have carefully observed them. "
"I may say that I have done so," confirmed Gabriel, with
satisfaction; "and if you want to know exactly what he is, I can
assure you that he is possessed of the devil, he is a thief, he is
embittered, and he hates all mankind. "
"Ah, indeed! " replied the professor, somewhat disconcerted.
"I see it is much more difficult to look into a dog's heart than
into a professor's. "
Speihahn crept along silent and suppressed, and listened to the
praises that fell to his lot; while Professor Raschke, conducted by
Gabriel, returned to the house by the park. Gabriel opened the
sitting-room door, and announced-
"Professor Raschke. "
Ilse extended both her hands to him.
"Welcome, welcome, dear Professor Raschke! " and led him to
her husband's study.
"Here I am again," said Raschke cheerfully, "after wander-
ing as in a fairy tale. What has brought me back were two
animals, who showed me the right way,-a roast fowl and an
embittered dog. "
Felix sprang up; the men greeted one another warmly, shak-
ing hands, and after all misadventures, spent a happy evening.
When Raschke had gone home late, Gabriel said sadly to his
mistress, "This was the new coat; the fowl and the dog have put
it in a horrible plight. "
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FRIEDRICH FROEBEL
(1782-1852)
BY NORA ARCHIBALD SMITH
T WAS Froebel who said, "The clearer the thread that runs
through our lives backward to our childhood, the clearer
will be our onward glance to the goal;" and in the frag-
ment of autobiography he has left us, he illustrates forcibly the
truth of his own saying. The motherless baby who plays alone in
the village pastor's quiet house, the dreamy child who wanders soli-
tary in the high-walled garden; the thoughtful lad, neglected, mis-
understood, who forgets the harsh realities of life in pondering the
mysteries of the flowers, the contradictions
of existence, and the dogmas of orthodox
theology; who decides in early boyhood
that the pleasures of the senses are with-
out enduring influence and therefore on no
account to be eagerly pursued; these pre-
sentments of himself, which he summons
up for us from the past, show the vivid-
ness of his early recollections and indicate
the course which the stream of his life is
to run.
FRIEDRICH FROEBEL
The coldness and injustice of the new
mother who assumed control of the house-
hold when he was four years old, his isola-
tion from other children, the merely casual
notice he received from the busy father absorbed in his parish work,
all tended to turn inward the tide of his mental and spiritual life.
He studied himself, not only because it was the bent of his nature,
but because he lacked outside objects of interest; and to this early
habit of introspection we owe many of the valuable features of his
educational philosophy. Whoever has learned thoroughly to under-
stand one child, has conquered a spot of firm ground on which to
rest while he studies the world of children; and because the great
teacher realized this truth, because he longed to give to others the
means of development denied to himself, he turns for us the heart-
leaves of his boyhood.
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FRIEDRICH FROEBEL
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It would appear that Froebel's characteristics were strongly marked
and unusual from the beginning. Called by every one «< a moon-struck
child" in Oberweissbach, the village of his birth, he was just as
unanimously considered "an old fool" when, crowned with the ex-
perience of seventy years, he played with the village children on the
green hills of Thuringia. The intensity of his inward life, the white
heat of his convictions, his absolute blindness to any selfish idea or
aim, his enthusiasm, the exaltation of his spiritual nature, all furnish
so many cogent reasons why the people of any day or of any com-
munity should have failed to understand him, and scorned what they
could not comprehend. It is the old story of the seers and the
prophets repeated as many times as they appear; for "these colossal
souls," as Emerson said, "require a long focal distance to be seen. "
At ten years old the sensitive boy was fortunately removed from
the uncongenial atmosphere of the parental household; and in his
uncle's home he spent five free and happy years, being apprenticed
at the end of this time to a forester in his native Thuringian
woods. Then followed a year's course in the University of Jena, and
four years spent in the study of farming, in clerical work of various
kinds, and in land-surveying. All these employments, however, Froe-
bel himself felt to be merely provisional; for like the hazel wand in
the diviner's hand, his instinct was blindly seeking through these
restless years the well-spring of his life.
In Frankfort, where he had gone intending to study architecture,
Destiny touched him on the shoulder, and he turned and knew her.
Through a curious combination of circumstances he gained employ.
ment in Herr Gruner's Model School, and it was found at once that
he was what the Germans love to call "a teacher by the grace of
God. " The first time he met his class of boys he tells us that he
felt inexpressibly happy; the hazel wand had found the waters and
was fixed at last. From this time on, all the events of his life were
connected with his experience as a teacher. Impelled as soon as he
had begun his work by a desire for more effective methods, he visited
Yverdon, then the centre of educational thought, and studied with
Pestalozzi. He went again in 1808, accompanied by three pupils, and
spent two years there, alternately studying and teaching.
There was a year of lectures at Göttingen after this, and one at
the University of Berlin, accompanied by unceasing study and re-
search both in literary and scientific lines; but in the fateful year
1813 this quiet student life was broken in upon, for impelled by
strong moral conviction, Froebel joined Baron von Lützow's famous
volunteer corps, formed to harass the French by constant skirmishes
and to encourage the smaller German States to rise against Napo-
leon.
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FRIEDRICH FROEBEL
No thirst for glory prompted this action, but a lofty conception of
the office of the educator. How could any young man capable of
bearing arms, Froebel says, become a teacher of children whose
Fatherland he had refused to defend? how could he in after years
incite his pupils to do something noble, something calling for sacri-
fice and unselfishness, without exposing himself to their derision and
contempt? The reasoning was perfect, and he made practice follow
upon the heels of theory as closely as he had always done since he
became master of his fate.
After the Peace of Paris he settled down for a time to a quiet
life in the mineralogical museum at the University of Berlin, his
duties being the care, arrangement, and investigation of crystals.
Surrounded thus by the exquisite formations whose development ac-
cording to law is so perfect, whose obedience to the promptings of an
inward ideal so complete, he could not but learn from their uncon-
scious ethics to look into the depths of his own nature, and there
recognize more clearly the purpose it was intended to work out.
In 1816 he quietly gave up his position, and taking as pupils five
of his nephews, three of whom were fatherless, he entered upon his
life work, the first step in which was the carrying out of his plan
for a "Universal German Educational Institute. " He was without
money, of course, as he had always been and always would be,— his
hands wer
ere made for giving, not for getting; he slept in a barn on
a wisp of straw while arranging for his first school at Griesheim; but
outward things were so little real to him in comparison with the life
of the spirit, that bodily privations seemed scarcely worth consider-
ing. The school at Keilhau, to which he soon removed, the institu-
tions later established in Wartensee and Willisau, the orphanage in
Burgdorf, all were most successful educationally, but, it is hardly
necessary to say, were never a source of profit to their head and
founder.
Through the twenty succeeding years, busy as he was in teaching,
in lecturing, in writing, he was constantly shadowed by dissatisfac-
tion with the foundation upon which he was building. A nebulous
idea for the betterment of things was floating before him; but it was
not until 1836 that it appeared to his eyes as a "definite truth. "
This definite truth, the discovery of his old age, was of course the
kindergarten; and from this time until the end, all other work was
laid aside, and his entire strength given to the consummate flower
of his educational thought.
The first kindergarten was opened in 1837 at Blankenburg (where
a memorial school is now conducted), and in 1850 the institution at
Marienthal for the training of kindergartners was founded, Froebel
remaining at its head until his death two years after.
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FRIEDRICH FROEBEL
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With the exception of that remarkable book The Education of
Man' (1826), his most important literary work was done after 1836;
'Pedagogics of the Kindergarten,' the first great European contribu-
tion to the subject of child-study, appearing from 1837 to 1840 in the
form of separate essays, and the 'Mutter-und-Kose Lieder' (Mother-
Play) in 1843. Many of his educational aphorisms and occasional
speeches were preserved by his great disciple the Baroness von
Marenholtz-Bülow in her 'Reminiscences of Froebel'; and though
two most interesting volumes of his correspondence have been pub-
lished, there remain a number of letters, as well as essays and educa-
tional sketches, not yet rendered into English.
Froebel's literary style is often stiff and involved, its phrases
somewhat labored, and its substance exceedingly difficult to trans-
late with spirit and fidelity; yet after all, his mannerisms are of a
kind to which one easily becomes accustomed, and the kernel of his
thought when reached is found well worth the trouble of removing a
layer of husk. He had always an infinitude of things to say, and
they were all things of purpose and of meaning; but in writing, as
well as in formal speaking, the language to clothe the thought came
to him slowly and with difficulty. Yet it appears that in friendly
private intercourse he spoke fluently, and one of his students reports
that in his classes he was often "overpowering and sublime, the
stream of his words pouring forth like fiery rain. "
It is probable that in daily life Froebel was not always an agree-
able house-mate; for he was a genius, a reformer, and an unworldly
enthusiast, believing in himself and in his mission with all the ardor
of a heart centred in one fixed purpose. He was quite intolerant of
those who doubted or disbelieved in his theories, as well as of those
who, believing, did not carry their faith into w ks. The people who
stood nearest him and devoted themselves to the furthering of his
ideas slept on no bed of roses, certainly; but although he sometimes
sacrificed their private interests to his cause, it must not be forgotten
that he first laid himself and all that he had upon the same altar.
His nature was one that naturally inspired reverence and loyalty, and
drew from his associates the most extraordinary devotion and self-
sacrifice. Then, as now, women were peculiarly attracted by his
burning enthusiasm, his prophetic utterances, and his lofty views of
their sex and its mission; and then, as now, the almost fanatical zeal
of his followers is perhaps to be explained by the fact that he gives
a new world-view to his students,- one that produces much the same
effect upon the character as the spiritual exaltation called "experi-
encing religion. "
He was twice married, in each case to a superior woman of great
gifts of mind and character, and both helpmates joyfully took up a
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FRIEDRICH FROEBEL
life of privation and care that they might be associated with him and
with his work. Those memorable words spoken of our Washington, —
"Heaven left him childless that a nation might call him father," are
even more applicable to Froebel, for his wise and tender fatherhood
extends to all the children of the world. When he passed through
the village streets of his own country, little ones came running from
every doorstep; the babies clinging to his knees and the older ones
hanging about his neck and refusing to leave the dear play-master,
as they called him. So the kindergartners love to think of him
to-day, the tall spare figure, the long hair, the wise, plain, strong-
featured face, the shining eyes, and the little ones clustering about
him as they clustered about another Teacher in Galilee, centuries ago.
Froebel's educational creed cannot here be cited at length, but
some of its fundamental articles are:-
-
The education of the child should begin with its birth, and should
be threefold, addressing the mental, spiritual, and physical natures.
It should be continued as it has begun, by appealing to the heart
and the emotions as the starting-point of the human soul.
There should be sequence, orderly progression, and one continuous
purpose throughout the entire scheme of education, from kinder-
garten to university.
Education should be conducted according to nature, and should be
a free, spontaneous growth,-a development from within, never a pre-
scription from without.
The training of the child should be conducted by means of the
activities, needs, desires, and delights, which are the common herit-
age of childhood.
The child should be led from the beginning to feel that one life
thrills through every manifestation of the universe, and that he is a
part of all that is.
The object of education is the development of the human being
in the totality of his powers as a child of nature, a child of man, and
a child of God.
These principles of Froebel's, many of them the products of his
own mind, others the pure gold of educational currency upon which
he has but stamped his own image, are so true and so far-reaching
that they have already begun to modify all education and are des-
tined to work greater magic in the future. The great teacher's place
in history may be determined, by-and-by, more by the wonderful
uplift and impetus he gave to the whole educational world, than by
the particular system of child-culture in connection with which he is
best known to-day.
Judged by ordinary worldly standards, his life was an unsuccess-
ful one, full of trials and privations, and empty of reward.
His
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FRIEDRICH FROEBEL
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aro
death-blow was doubtless struck by the prohibition of kindergartens
in Prussia in 1851, an edict which remained nine years in force. His
strength had been too sorely tried to resist this final crushing mis-
fortune, and he passed away the following year. His body was borne
to the grave through a heavy storm of wind and rain that seemed to
symbolize the vicissitudes of his earthly days, while as a forecast of
the future the sun shone out at the last moment, and the train of
mourners looked back to see the low mound irradiated with glory.
In Thuringia, where the great child-lover was born, the kinder-
gartens, his best memorials, cluster thickly now; and on the face of
the cliffs that overhang the bridle-path across the Glockner mount-
ain may be seen in great letters the single word Froebel, hewn deep
into the solid rock.
个
Archibald Smitte
THE RIGHT OF THE CHILD
From Reminiscences of Friedrich Froebel,' by Baroness B. von Marenholtz-
Bülow. Copyright 1877, by Mary Mann. Reprinted by permission of
Lee & Shepard, publishers, Boston.
Α'
LL that does not grow out of one's inner being, all that is
not one's own original feeling and thought, or that at least
does not awaken that, oppresses and defaces the individual-
ity of man instead of calling it forth, and nature becomes there-
by a caricature. Shall we never cease to stamp human nature,
even in childhood, like coins? to overlay it with foreign images
and foreign superscriptions, instead of letting it develop itself
and grow into form according to the law of life planted in it by
God the Father, so that it may be able to bear the stamp of the
Divine, and become an image of God?
This theory of love is to serve as the highest goal and pole-
star of human education, and must be attended to in the germ
of humanity, the child, and truly in his very first impulses. The
conquest of self-seeking egoism is the most important task of
education; for selfishness isolates the individual from all commun-
ion, and kills the life-giving principle of love. Therefore the first
object of education is to teach to love, to break up the egoism
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FRIEDRICH FROEBEL
of the individual, and to lead him from the first stage of com-
munion in the family through all the following stages of social
life to the love of humanity, or to the highest self-conquest by
which man rises to Divine unity.
•
Women are to recognize that childhood and womanliness
(the care of childhood and the life of women) are inseparably
connected; that they form a unit; and that God and nature
have placed the protection of the human plant in their hands.
Hitherto the female sex could take only a more or less passive
part in human history, because great battles and the political
organization of nations were not suited to their powers. But at
the present stage of culture, nothing is more pressingly required
than the cultivation of every human power for the arts of peace
and the work of higher civilization. The culture of individuals,
and therefore of the whole nation, depends in great part upon
the earliest care of childhood. On that account women, as one
half of mankind, have to undertake the most important part of
the problems of the time, problems that men are not able to
solve. If but one half of the work be accomplished, then our
epoch, like all others, will fail to reach the appointed goal. As
educators of mankind, the women of the present time have the
highest duty to perform, while hitherto they have been scarcely
more than the beloved mothers of human beings.
But I will protect childhood, that it may not as in earlier
generations be pinioned, as in a strait-jacket, in garments of cus-
tom and ancient prescription that have become too narrow for
the new time. I shall show the way and shape the means, that
every human soul may grow of itself, out of its own individuality.
But where shall I find allies and helpers if not in women, who
as mothers and teachers may put my idea in execution? Only
intellectually active women can and will do it. But if these are
to be loaded with the ballast of dead knowledge that can take
no root in the unprepared ground, if the fountains of their own
original life are to be choked up with it, they will not follow my
direction nor understand the call of the time for the new task
of their sex, but will seek satisfaction in empty superficiality.
To learn to comprehend nature in the child,- is not that to
comprehend one's own nature and the nature of mankind? And
in this comprehension is there not involved a certain degree
of comprehension of all things else? Women cannot learn and
take into themselves anything higher and more comprehensive.
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FRIEDRICH FROEBEL
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It should therefore at least be the beginning, and the love of
childhood should be awakened in the mind (and in a wider sense,
this is the love of humanity), so that a new, free generation of
men can grow up by right care.
EVOLUTION
From The Mottoes and Commentaries of Mother-Play. Copyright 1895, by
D. Appleton & Co.
WHAT
HAT shall we learn from our yearning look into the heart
of the flower and the eye of the child? This truth:
Whatever develops, be it into flower or tree or man, is
from the beginning implicitly that which it has the power to
become. The possibility of perfect manhood is what you read in
your child's eye, just as the perfect flower is prophesied in the
bud, or the giant oak in the tiny acorn. A presentiment that the
ideal or generic human being slumbers, dreams, stirs in your
unconscious infant-this it is, O mother, which transfigures you
as you gaze upon him. Strive to define to yourself what is that
generic ideal which is wrapped up in your child. Surely, as your
child—or in other words, as child of man — he destined to live
in the past and future as well as in the present. His earthly
being implies a past heaven; his birth makes a present heaven;
in his soul he holds a future heaven. This threefold heaven,
which you also bear within you, shines out on you through your
child's eyes.
The beast lives only in the present. Of past and future he
knows naught. But to man belong not only the present, but also
the future and the past. His thought pierces the heaven of the
future, and hope is born. He learns that all human life is one
life; that all human joys and sorrows are his joys and sorrows,
and through participation enters the present heaven- the heaven.
of love. He turns his mind towards the past, and out of retro-
spection wrests a vigorous faith. What soul could fail to conquer
an invincible trust in the pure, the good, the holy, the ideally
human, the truly Divine, if it would look with single eye into
its own past, into the past of history? Could there be a man in
whose soul such a contemplation of the. past would fail to blossom
into devout insight, into self-conscious and self-comprehending
faith? Must not such a retrospect unveil the truth? Must not
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FRIEDRICH FROEBEL
the beauty of the unveiled truth allure him to Divine doing,
Divine living? All that is high and holy in human life meets
in that faith which is born of the unveiling of a heaven that has
always been; in that hope born of a vision of the heaven that
shall be; in that love which creates a heaven in the eternal Now.
These three heavens shine out upon you through your child's eye.
The presentiment that he carries these three heavens within him.
transfigures your countenance as you gaze upon him. Cherish
this premonition, for thereby you will help him to make his life a
musical chord wherein are blended the three notes of faith, hope,
and love. These celestial virtues will link his life with the
Divine life through which all life is one-with the God who is
the supernal fountain of life, light, and love.
Higher and more important than the cultivation of man's
outer ear, is the culture of that inner sense of harmony whereby
the soul learns to perceive sweet accord in soundless things, and
to discern within itself harmonies and discords. The importance
of wakening the inner ear to this music of the soul can scarcely
be exaggerated. Learning to hear it within, the child will strive
to give it outer form and expression; and even if in such effort
he is only partially successful, he will gain thereby the power to
appreciate the more successful effort of others. Thus enriching
his own life by the life of others, he solves the problem of devel-
opment. How else were it possible within the quickly fleeting
hours of mortal life to develop our being in all directions, to
fathom its depths, scale its heights, measure its boundaries?
What we are, what we would be, we must learn to recognize in
the mirror of all other lives. By the effort of each, and the
recognition of all, the Divine man is revealed in humanity.
Against the bright light which shines on the smooth white
wall is thrust a dark object, and straightway appears the form
which so delights the child. This is the outward fact; what is
the truth which through this fact is dimly hinted to the prophetic
mind? Is it not the creative and transforming power of light,
that power which brings form and color out of chaos, and makes
the beauty which gladdens our hearts? Is it not more than this,
-a foreshadowing, perhaps, of the spiritual fact that our darkest
experiences may project themselves in forms that will delight and
bless, if in our hearts shines the light of God? The sternest
crags, the most forbidding chasms, are beautiful in the mellow
sunshine; while the fairest landscape loses all charm, and indeed
## p. 6031 (#625) ###########################################
FRIEDRICH FROEBEL
6031
ceases to be, when the light which created it is withdrawn. Is
it not thus also with our lives? Yesterday, touched by the light
of enthusiastic emotion, all our relationships seemed beautiful
and blessed; to-day, when the glow of enthusiasm has faded, they
oppress and repulse us. Only the conviction that it is the dark-
ness within us which makes the darkness without, can restore the
lost peace of our souls. Be it therefore, O mother, your sacred
duty to make your darling early feel the working both of the
outer and inner light. Let him see in one the symbol of the
other, and tracing light and color to their source in the sun, may
he learn to trace the beauty and meaning of his life to their
source in God.
Translation of Susan E. Blow.
THE LAWS OF THE MIND
From The Letters of Froebel'
I
AM firmly convinced that all the phenomena of the child-world,
those which delight us as well as those which grieve us,
depend upon fixed laws as definite as those of the cosmos,
the planetary system, and the operations of nature; and it is
therefore possible to discover them and examine them. When
once we know and have assimilated these laws, we shall be able
powerfully to counteract any retrograde and faulty tendencies in
the children, and to encourage, at the same time, all that is
good and virtuous.
FOR THE CHILDREN
From The Letters of Froebel'
I
WISH you could have been here this evening, and seen the many
beautiful and varied forms and lovely patterns which freely
and spontaneously developed themselves from some system-
atic variations of a simple ground form, in stick-playing. No
one would believe, without seeing it, how the child soul, the
child life, develops when treated as a whole, and in the sense of
forming a part of the great connected life of the world, by some
skilled kindergarten teacher-nay, even by one who is only
simple-hearted, thoughtful, and attentive; nor how it blooms into
## p. 6032 (#626) ###########################################
6032
FRIEDRICH FROEBEL
delicious harmonies like a beautifully tinted flower. Oh, if I
could only shout aloud with ten thousand lung-power the truth
that I now tell you in silence! Then would I make the ears of
a hundred thousand men ring with it! What keenness of sensa-
tion, what a soul, what a mind, what force of will and active
energy, what dexterity and skill of muscular movement and of
perception, and what calm and patience, will not all these things
call out in the children!
How is it that parents are so blind and deaf, when they pro-
fess to be so eager to work for the welfare, the health, and peace
of their children? No! I cannot understand it; and yet a whole
generation has passed since this system first delivered its mes-
sage, first called for educational amendment, first pointed out
where the need for it lay, and showed how it could be satisfied.
If I were not afraid of being taken for an idiot or an escaped
lunatic, I would run barefoot from one end of Germany to the
other and cry aloud to all men: — "Set to work at once for your
children's sake on some universally developing plan, aiming at
unity of life purpose, and through that at joy and peace. " But
what good would it do? A Curtman and a Ramsauer, in their
stupidity or maliciousness, make it their duty to stigmatize my
work as sinful, when I am but quietly corresponding with just
my own friends and sympathizers; for they say I am destroying
all pleasure in life for the parents: "Who could be so silly as I,
amongst sane men who acknowledge that parents have a right
to enjoy life,—I who perpetually call to these parents in tones
of imperative demand, Come, let us live for our children! >»
(Kommt, laszt uns unseren Kindern leben! )
MOTIVES
From The Education of Man. By permission of Josephine Jarvis,
the translator, and A. Lovell & Co. , publishers
Ο
NLY in the measure that we are thoroughly penetrated by
the pure, spiritual, inward, human relations, and are faith-
ful to them even in the smallest detail in life, do we attain
to the complete knowledge and perception of the Divine-human
relation; only in that measure do we anticipate them so deeply,
vividly, and truly, that every yearning of our whole being is
thereby satisfied, at least receives its whole meaning, and is
-
## p. 6033 (#627) ###########################################
FRIEDRICH FROEBEL
6033
changed from a constantly unfulfilled yearning to an immediately
rewarded effort.
How we degrade and lower the human nature which we should
raise, how we weaken those whom we should strengthen, when
we hold up to them an inducement to act virtuously, even though
we place this inducement in another world! If we employ an
outward incentive, though it be the most spiritual, to call forth
better life, and leave undeveloped the inner, spontaneous, and
independent power of representing pure humanity which rests in
each man, we degrade our human nature.
But how wholly different every thing is, if man, especially in
boyhood, is made to observe the reflex action of his conduct, not
on his outward more or less agreeable position, but on his inner,
spontaneous or fettered, clear or clouded, satisfied or dissatisfied.
condition of spirit and mind! The experiences which proceed
from this observation will necessarily more and more awaken the
inner sense of man: and then true sense, the greatest treasure of
boy and man, comes into his life.
APHORISMS
SEE in every child the possibility of a perfect man.
I
The child-soul is an ever-bubbling fountain in the world of
humanity.
The plays of childhood are the heart-leaves of the whole
future life.
Childish unconsciousness is rest in God.
From each object of nature and of life, there goes a path
toward God.
Perfect human joy is also worship, for it is ordered by God.
The first groundwork of religious life is love-love to God
and man-in the bosom of the family.
Childhood is the most important stage of the total develop-
ment of man and of humanity.
Women must make of their educational calling a priestly
office.
Isolation and exclusion destroy life; union and participation
create life.
Without religious preparation in childhood, no true religion
and no union with God is possible for men.
X-378
## p. 6034 (#628) ###########################################
6034
FRIEDRICH FROEBEL
The tree germ bears within itself the nature of the whole
tree; the human being bears in himself the nature of all human-
ity; and is not therefore humanity born anew in each child?
In the children lies the seed-corn of the future.
The lovingly cared for, and thereby steadily and strongly
developed human life, also the cloudless child life, is of itself a
Christ-like one.
In all things works one creative life, because the life of all
things proceeds from one God.
Let us live with our children: so shall their lives bring peace
and joy to us; so shall we begin to be and to become wise.
What boys and girls play in earliest childhood will become
by-and-by a beautiful reality of serious life; for they expand
into stronger and lovelier youthfulness by seeking on every side
appropriate objects to verify the thoughts of their inmost souls.
This earliest age is the most important one for education, be-
cause the beginning decides the manner of progress and the end.
If national order is to be recognized in later years as a benefit,
childhood must first be accustomed to law and order, and therein
find the means of freedom. Lawlessness and caprice must rule
in no period of life, not even in that of the nursling.
The kindergarten is the free republic of childhood.
A deep feeling of the universal brotherhood of man,- what is
it but a true sense of our close filial union with God?
Man must be able to fail, in order to be good and virtuous;
and he must be able to become a slave in order to be truly
free.
My teachers are the children themselves, with all their purity,
their innocence, their unconsciousness, and their irresistible
claims; and I follow them like a faithful, trustful scholar.
A story told at the right time is like a looking-glass for the
mind.
I wish to cultivate men who stand rooted in nature, with
their feet in God's earth, whose heads reach toward and look
into the heavens; whose hearts unite the richly formed life of
earth and nature, with the purity and peace of heaven,-God's
earth and God's heaven.
## p. 6035 (#629) ###########################################
0035
FROISSART
(1337-1410? )
BY GEORGE M'LEAN HARPER
ROISSART is the artist of chivalry. On his pages are painted,
with immortal brilliancy, the splendid shows, the corona-
tions, weddings, tourneys, marches, feasts, and battles of
the English and French knighthood just before the close of the Mid-
dle Ages. "I intend," he says in the Prologue of his chronicle, "to
treat and record history and matter of great praise, to the end that
the honorable emprises and noble adventures and deeds of arms,
which have come about from the wars of France and England, may
be notably enregistered and placed in per-
petual memory, whereby chevaliers may
take example to encourage them in well-
doing. "
Chivalry, in the popular understanding,
is the fine flower of feudalism, its bloom
of poetic and heroic life. But in reality it
was artificial, having grown from an exag-
gerated respect for certain human qualities,
at the expense of others fully as essential
and indeed no less beautiful. Courage is
good; but it is not rare, and the love of
fighting for fighting's sake is made possible
only by disregarding large areas of life to
which war brings no harvest of happiness,
and over which it does not even cast the glamor of romance. The
works of civilized communities-agriculture, industry, commerce, art,
learning, religion - were nearly at a standstill in the middle of the
fourteenth century, when Europe was turned into a playground for
steel-clad barbarians.
FROISSART
This perversion of nature could not last. The wretched Hundred
Years' War had run but half its course when the misery and disgust
among the real people, who thought and wrought, drove them to such
despairing efforts as the Jacquerie in France and Wat Tyler's Rebel-
lion in England. It was the English archers, as Froissart reluctantly
## p. 6036 (#630) ###########################################
6036
FROISSART
admits, and not the knights, who won the battle of Poitiers. Gun-
powder and cannon, a few years later, doomed the man-at-arms, and
the rise of strong monarchies crowded out the feudal system. The
thunder of artillery which echoes faintly in the last pages of Frois-
sart is like a parting salvo to all the pageantry the volume holds.
From cannon-ball and musket-shot the glittering procession has found
refuge there. Into the safe retreat of these illuminated parchments,
all the banners and pennons, lances, crests, and tapestries, knights
and horses under clanking mail, had time—and but just time-to
withdraw. We find them there, fresh as when they hurried in, the
colors bright, the trumpets blowing.
Jean Froissart was born at Valenciennes in Hainault, in 1337, the
year of his birth almost coinciding with Chaucer's. He tells us in his
long autobiographical poem, 'L'Espinette Amoureuse,' that he was
fond of play when a boy, and delighted in dances, carols, and poems,
and had a liking for all those who loved dogs and birds. In the
school where he was sent, he says, there were little girls whom he
tried to please by giving them rings of glass, and pins, and apples,
and pears.
It seemed to him a most worthy thing to acquire their
favor, and he wondered when it would be his turn to fall really in
love. Much of this poem, which narrates tediously the love affair
that was not long in coming, is probably fictitious; but there is no
doubt of the accuracy of his description of himself in the opening
lines, as fond of pleasure, prone to gallantry, and susceptible to all
the bright faces of romance. From love and arms, he says, we are
often told that all joy and every honor flow. He informs us else-
where that he was no sooner out of school than he began to write,
putting into verse the wars of his time.
In 1361 he went to England, where Edward III. was reigning with
Philippa his queen, a daughter of the Count of Hainault.
His pass-
port to the favor of his great countrywoman was a book, the result
of these rhymings, covering the period from the battle of Poitiers,
1356, to the time of his voyage. This volume is not known to exist,
nor any copy of it. The Queen made him a clerk of her chamber.
He had abundant opportunity in England to gratify his curiosity and
fill his note-book, for the court was full of French noblemen, lately
come over as hostages for King Jean of France, who was captured at
the battle of Poitiers.
In 1365 he took letters of recommendation from the Queen to
David Bruce, King of Scotland, whom he followed for three months
in his progress through that realm; spending a fortnight at the castle
of William Douglas and making everywhere diligent inquiry about the
recent war of 1345. In his delightful little poem The Debate be-
tween the Horse and the Greyhound,' beginning, "Froissart from
## p. 6037 (#631) ###########################################
FROISSART
6037
Scotland was returning," we have a lifelike figure of the inquisitive
young chronicler, pushing unweariedly from inn to inn on a tired
horse and leading a footsore dog.
In
Between his thirtieth and his thirty-fourth year he was sometimes
in England and sometimes in various parts of the Continent.
August 1369, while he was abroad, his patroness Queen Philippa
died. She had encouraged him to continue his researches and writ-
ings, and he had presented her with a second volume, in prose, which
has come down to us as a part of the chronicle. He admits that his
work was an expansion of the chronicle of Jean le Bel, Canon of
Saint Lambert at Liège, for he says:- "As all great rivers are made
by the gathering together of many streams and springs, so the sciences
also are extracted and compiled by many clerks: what one knows, the
other does not. "
On hearing of the Queen's death, Froissart settled in his own coun-
try of Hainault. There he won favor from princes, as was his custom,
by giving them manuscripts of his chronicle, which was growing
apace. By the middle of 1373 we find him become a churchman and
provided with a living, in which he remained ten years, compiling
fresh history and correcting what he had already written and put in
circulation. A little later, 1376 to 1383, he made a more thorough
revision of his chronicle, going so far as to modify its spirit, which
had been favorable to English character and policy, and make it
more agreeable to partisans of France. Although Froissart was not a
Frenchman, his writings are all in the French language, which was
of course his native tongue.
About the beginning of 1384 he was made a canon of the Church,
at Chimay, a small town near the French frontier, and in this region
he observed the military movements then going on there, and re-
corded them immediately in Book ii. of his chronicle. Four years of
quiet were however too much for his mobile and energetic spirit;
and in 1388, hearing that the Count Gaston de Foix, in the Pyrenees,
was a man likely to know many details of the English wars in Gas-
cony and Guyenne, he set out to visit him, taking among other pres-
ents a book of his poetry and two couples of hounds. When he still
had ten days to travel he met a gentleman of Foix, with whom he
journeyed the rest of the way, beguiling the time with talk about the
sieges the various towns upon their route had suffered.
"At the words which he spoke I was delighted, for they pleased me much,
and right well did I retain them all; and as soon as I had dismounted at the
hostelries along the road which we traveled together, I wrote them down, at
evening as in the morning, to have a better record of them in times to come;
for there is nothing so retentive as writing. "
## p. 6038 (#632) ###########################################
6038
FROISSART
Count Gaston received him hospitably, and filled his three months'
sojourn with stories of great events. Then Froissart visited many
towns of Provence and Languedoc. These peregrinations furnished
much of the material for Book iii. Little more is known of his life,
except with respect to a visit to England which he made in 1394,
and which enabled him to collect material for a large part of Book
iv. , the last in the chronicle. He is supposed to have died at Chi-
may, later than 1400, and perhaps, as tradition asserts, in 1410.
It is an engaging picture, this, of a genial, sharp-eyed, some-
what worldly churchman, riding his gray horse over hill and dale in
quest of knowledge. We can fancy him arriving at his inn of an
evening, and at once asking the obsequious host what knight or other
great person dwells in the neighborhood. He loses no time before
calling at the castle, and is gladly admitted when he tells his well-
known name. He is ready to pay for any historical information with
a story from his own collection. He is welcome everywhere, and for
his part does not regret the time thus spent, nor the money,- sev-
eral fortunes, by his own count,- for he has the light heart of the
true traveler. It is always sunshine where he goes. The clangor
of arms and the blare of trumpets hover ever above the horizon.
Around the corner of every hill sits a fair castle by a shining river.
From town to town, from province to province, his love of listening
draws him on. To realize the charm of journeying in those days,
we must remember that the local customs and qualities were almost
undisturbed by communication; two French cities only a score of
miles apart would often differ from each other as much as Nurem-
berg does from Venice.
"And I tell you for a truth," we read, "that to make these chronicles I
have gone in my time much through the world, both to fulfill my pleasure
by seeing the wonders of the earth, and to inquire about the arms and advent-
ures that are written in this book. "
So to horse, good Canon of Chimay! Throw aside books; there is
news of fighting in the South; after the battle, soldiers will talk.
There have been deeds of courage and romance. Hasten thither,
while the tale of them is new!
If he were not so celebrated as a chronicler, Froissart would be
known as one of the last of the wandering minstrels. He had the
roving foot; he lived by charming the rich into generosity with his
recitals. And he wrote much poetry, which is little read, except
where it has some autobiographical interest. We possess the long
poems, 'L'Espinette Amoureuse,' 'Le Buisson de Jeunesse,' 'Le Dit
du Florin,' and several shorter pieces, with fragments of his once
famous versified romance Méliador. '
## p. 6039 (#633) ###########################################
FROISSART
6039
His great prose work, while professing to be a history, in distinc-
tion from the chronicles of previous writers, is however not an
orderly narration, nor is it a philosophical treatment of political
causes and effects. It is a collection of pictures and stories, without
much unity except the constant purpose of exhibiting the prowess of
knighthood. There is not much indication even of partisanship or
patriotic feeling. Froissart generally gives due meed of praise to the
best knight in every bout, the best battalion in every encounter,
regardless of sides.
The subjects treated are so numerous and disparate that no gen-
eral idea of them can be given. They cover the time from 1326 to
1394, and lead us through England, Scotland, Flanders, Hainault,
France, Italy, Spain, and Northern Africa. Among the most interest-
ing passages are the story of King Edward's campaign against the
Scots; his march through France; the battle of Crécy; the siege of
Calais; Wat Tyler's Rebellion, which Froissart the well-fed parasite
treats with an odd and inconsistent mingling of horror and contempt;
the Jacquerie, which he says was the work of peasant dogs, the scum
of the earth; the battle of Poitiers, with a fine description of the Black
Prince waiting at table on poor captured King Jean; and the rise
and fall of Philip van Artevelde.
Froissart's chronicle used to be regarded as authoritative history.
But as might have been expected from his mode of inquiry, it is full
of geographical, chronological, and other errors. Getting his infor-
mation by ear, he wrote proper names phonetically, or turned
them into something resembling French. Thus Worcester becomes
"Vaucestre," Seymour "Simon," Sutherland "Surlant," Walter Tyler
"Vautre Tuilier," Edinburgh "Hedaimbourch," Stirling "Eturmelin. "
The persons from whom he got his material were generally partisans
either of France or of England, and often told him their stories
years after the events; so that although he tried to be impartial
himself, and to offset one witness by another, he seldom heard a
judicial account of a battle or a quarrel. He seems to have con-
sulted few written records, though he might easily have seen the
State papers of England and Hainault.
It is useless to blame him, however; for the writing of mere his-
tory was not his purpose. With all his fine devotion to his life
work, a devotion which is the more admirable when we consider his
pleasure-loving nature,- with all his attention to fairness, his great
concern was not so much to instruct as to delight, first himself, sec-
ondly the great people of his age, and lastly posterity, on whom he
ever and anon cast a shrewd and longing glance. To please his con-
temporaries, he several times revised his work. Posterity has nearly
always preferred what might be called the first edition, which is the
most unconscious and entertaining, though the least precise.
## p. 6040 (#634) ###########################################
6040
FROISSART
But if we must deny him much of the value as a political his-
torian which was once attributed to him, we may still regard him as
a great authority for the general aspect of life in the fourteenth
century. Manners, customs, morals, as well as armor and dress, are
no doubt correctly portrayed in his book. We learn from it what
was deemed virtue and what vice; we learn that although religion
was sincerely professed by the upper classes, it was not very success-
fully practiced, and had amazingly little effect upon morals. We are
struck, for instance, with the absence of imagination or sympathy
which permitted people to witness the horrible tortures inflicted on
prisoners and criminals, although their minds were frequently filled
with visions of supernatural beings. Froissart unconsciously makes
himself, too, a medium for studying human character in his time, by
his negative morality, his complacent recording of crimes, his uncon-
cerned mention of horrors. Yet from his bringing up as a poet, and
his scholarly associations, and his connection with the Church, it is
likely he was a gentler man than nine-tenths of the knights and
squires and men-at-arms about him.
pull. "Thank you, dear Aurelia, I did bow. " As he spoke, the
thought crossed his mind that his wife would not pull at his coat
so low down. It was not she, but his little daughter Bertha who
was pulling; for she often walked gravely next him, and like her
mother, pulled at the bell for bows. "That will do, my dear,"
said he, as Bertha continued to snatch and pull at his coat-tails.
"Come here, you little rogue! " and he absently put his hand
behind him to seize the little tease. He seized hold of something
round and shaggy; he felt sharp teeth on his fingers, and turned
with a start. There he saw in the lamplight a reddish monster
with a big head, shaggy hair, and a little tassel that fell back
into its hind legs in lieu of a tail. His wife and daughter were
horribly transformed; and he gazed in surprise on this indistinct
creature which seated itself before him, and glared at him in
silence.
"A strange adventure! " exclaimed Raschke.
"What are you,
unknown creature? Presumably a dog. Away with you! " The
animal retreated a few steps. Raschke continued his meditations:
"If we trace back the expression and gestures of the affections
to their original forms in this manner, one of the most active
laws would certainly prove to be the endeavor to attract or repel
the extraneous. It would be instructive to distinguish, by means
of these involuntary movements of men and animals, what is
essential and what conventional. Away, dog! Do me a favor
and go home. What does he want with me? Evidently he be-
longs to Werner's domain. The poor creature will assuredly lose
itself in the town under the dominion of an idée fixe. "
Meantime Speihahn's attacks were becoming more violent; and
now he was marching in a quite unnatural and purely conven-
tional manner on his hind legs, while his fore paws were leaning
against the professor's back, and his teeth were actually biting
into the coat.
A belated shoemaker's boy stood still and beat his leathern
apron. "Is not the master ashamed to let his poor apprentice
push him along like that? " In truth, the dog behind the man
looked like a dwarf pushing a giant along the ice.
Raschke's interest in the dog's thoughts increased. He stood
still near a lantern, examined and felt his coat. This coat had
## p. 6019 (#613) ###########################################
GUSTAV FREYTAG
6019
developed a velvet collar and very long sleeves, advantages that
the philosopher had never yet remarked in his greatcoat. Now
the matter became clear to him: absorbed in thought, he had
chosen a wrong coat, and the worthy dog insisted on saving his
master's garment, and making the thief aware that there was
something wrong. Raschke was so pleased with this sagacity
that he turned round, addressed some kind words to Speihahn,
and made an attempt to stroke his shaggy hair. The dog again
snapped at his hand. "You are quite right to be angry with
me,” replied Raschke; "I will prove to you that I acknowledge
my fault. " He took off the coat and hung it over his arm.
«< Yes, it is much heavier than my own. " He walked on cheer-
fully in his thin coat, and observed with satisfaction that the dog
abandoned the attacks on his back. But instead, Speihahn sprang
upon
his side, and again bit at the coat and the hand, and
growled unpleasantly.
The professor got angry with the dog, and when he came to
a bench on the promenade he laid down the coat, intending to
face the dog seriously and drive him home. In this manner he
got rid of the dog, but also of the coat. For Speihahn sprang
upon the bench with a mighty bound, placed himself astride the
coat, and met the professor, who tried to drive him away, with
hideous growling and snarling.
"It is Werner's coat," said the professor, "and it is Werner's
dog: it would be wrong to beat the poor creature because it is
becoming violent in its fidelity, and it would be wrong to leave
the dog and the coat. " So he remained standing before the dog
and speaking kindly to him: but Speihahn no longer took any
notice of the professor; he turned against the coat itself, which
he scratched, rummaged, and bit. Raschke saw that the coat
could not long endure such rage. "He is frantic or mad," said
he suspiciously. "I shall have to use force against you after all,
poor creature;" and he considered whether he should also jump
upon the seat and push the mad creature by a violent kick into
the water, or whether it would be better to open the inevitable
attack from below. He resolved on the latter course, and looked
round to see whether he could anywhere discover a stone or
stick to throw at the raging beast. As he looked, he observed
the trees and the dark sky above him, and the place seemed quite
unfamiliar. "Has magic been at work here? " he exclaimed, with
amusement. He turned politely to a solitary wanderer who was
## p. 6020 (#614) ###########################################
6020
GUSTAV FREYTAG
passing that way:
the town we are?
a moment? "
"Indeed," angrily replied the person addressed, "those are
very suspicious questions. I want my stick myself at night. Who
are you, sir ? » The stranger approached the professor mena-
cingly.
"I am peaceable," replied Raschke, "and by no means inclined
to violent attacks. A quarrel has arisen between me and the
animal on this seat for the possession of a coat, and I should be
much obliged to you if you would drive the dog away from the
coat. But I beg you not to hurt the animal any more than is
absolutely necessary. "
"Is that your coat there? " asked the man.
"Unfortunately I cannot give you an affirmative answer," re-
plied Raschke conscientiously.
"Would you kindly tell me in what part of
And could you perhaps lend me your stick for
"There must be something wrong here," exclaimed the
stranger, again eyeing the professor suspiciously.
"There is, indeed," replied Raschke. "The dog is out of his
mind; the coat is exchanged, and I do not know where we are. "
"Close to the valley gate, Professor Raschke," answered the
voice of Gabriel, who hastily joined the group. "Excuse me, but
what brings you here? "
"Capital! " exclaimed Raschke joyously. "Pray take charge of
this coat and this dog. "
Gabriel gazed in amazement at Speihahn, who was now lying
on the coat and bending his head before his friend. Gabriel
threw down the dog and seized the coat. "Why, that is our
greatcoat! " exclaimed he.
"Yes, Gabriel," said the professor, "that was my mistake, and
the dog has shown marvelous fidelity to the coat. "
"Fidelity! " exclaimed Gabriel indignantly, as he drew a par-
cel out of the coat pocket. "It was greedy selfishness, sir; there
must be some food in this pocket. "
"Yes, true," exclaimed Raschke; "it is all the chicken's fault.
Give me the parcel, Gabriel; I must eat the fowl myself; and
we might bid each other good-night now with mutual satisfac-
tion, if you would just show me my way a little among these
trees. "
"But you must not go home in the night air without an over-
coat," said Gabriel considerately. "We are not far from our
## p. 6021 (#615) ###########################################
GUSTAV FREYTAG
6021
house; the best way would really be for you to come back with
me, sir. "
Raschke considered and laughed.
"You are right, Gabriel; my departure was awkward; and to-
day an animal's soul has restored a man's soul to order. "
"If you mean this dog," said Gabriel, "it would be the first
time he ever did anything good. I see he must have followed
you from our door; for I put little bones there for him of an
evening. "
"Just now he seemed not to be quite in his right mind," said
the professor.
"He is cunning enough when he pleases," continued Gabriel
mysteriously; "but if I were to speak of my experiences with this
dog -»
"Do speak, Gabriel," eagerly exclaimed the
the philosopher.
"There is nothing so valuable concerning animals as a truthful
statement from those who have carefully observed them. "
"I may say that I have done so," confirmed Gabriel, with
satisfaction; "and if you want to know exactly what he is, I can
assure you that he is possessed of the devil, he is a thief, he is
embittered, and he hates all mankind. "
"Ah, indeed! " replied the professor, somewhat disconcerted.
"I see it is much more difficult to look into a dog's heart than
into a professor's. "
Speihahn crept along silent and suppressed, and listened to the
praises that fell to his lot; while Professor Raschke, conducted by
Gabriel, returned to the house by the park. Gabriel opened the
sitting-room door, and announced-
"Professor Raschke. "
Ilse extended both her hands to him.
"Welcome, welcome, dear Professor Raschke! " and led him to
her husband's study.
"Here I am again," said Raschke cheerfully, "after wander-
ing as in a fairy tale. What has brought me back were two
animals, who showed me the right way,-a roast fowl and an
embittered dog. "
Felix sprang up; the men greeted one another warmly, shak-
ing hands, and after all misadventures, spent a happy evening.
When Raschke had gone home late, Gabriel said sadly to his
mistress, "This was the new coat; the fowl and the dog have put
it in a horrible plight. "
## p. 6022 (#616) ###########################################
6022
FRIEDRICH FROEBEL
(1782-1852)
BY NORA ARCHIBALD SMITH
T WAS Froebel who said, "The clearer the thread that runs
through our lives backward to our childhood, the clearer
will be our onward glance to the goal;" and in the frag-
ment of autobiography he has left us, he illustrates forcibly the
truth of his own saying. The motherless baby who plays alone in
the village pastor's quiet house, the dreamy child who wanders soli-
tary in the high-walled garden; the thoughtful lad, neglected, mis-
understood, who forgets the harsh realities of life in pondering the
mysteries of the flowers, the contradictions
of existence, and the dogmas of orthodox
theology; who decides in early boyhood
that the pleasures of the senses are with-
out enduring influence and therefore on no
account to be eagerly pursued; these pre-
sentments of himself, which he summons
up for us from the past, show the vivid-
ness of his early recollections and indicate
the course which the stream of his life is
to run.
FRIEDRICH FROEBEL
The coldness and injustice of the new
mother who assumed control of the house-
hold when he was four years old, his isola-
tion from other children, the merely casual
notice he received from the busy father absorbed in his parish work,
all tended to turn inward the tide of his mental and spiritual life.
He studied himself, not only because it was the bent of his nature,
but because he lacked outside objects of interest; and to this early
habit of introspection we owe many of the valuable features of his
educational philosophy. Whoever has learned thoroughly to under-
stand one child, has conquered a spot of firm ground on which to
rest while he studies the world of children; and because the great
teacher realized this truth, because he longed to give to others the
means of development denied to himself, he turns for us the heart-
leaves of his boyhood.
## p. 6023 (#617) ###########################################
FRIEDRICH FROEBEL
6023
It would appear that Froebel's characteristics were strongly marked
and unusual from the beginning. Called by every one «< a moon-struck
child" in Oberweissbach, the village of his birth, he was just as
unanimously considered "an old fool" when, crowned with the ex-
perience of seventy years, he played with the village children on the
green hills of Thuringia. The intensity of his inward life, the white
heat of his convictions, his absolute blindness to any selfish idea or
aim, his enthusiasm, the exaltation of his spiritual nature, all furnish
so many cogent reasons why the people of any day or of any com-
munity should have failed to understand him, and scorned what they
could not comprehend. It is the old story of the seers and the
prophets repeated as many times as they appear; for "these colossal
souls," as Emerson said, "require a long focal distance to be seen. "
At ten years old the sensitive boy was fortunately removed from
the uncongenial atmosphere of the parental household; and in his
uncle's home he spent five free and happy years, being apprenticed
at the end of this time to a forester in his native Thuringian
woods. Then followed a year's course in the University of Jena, and
four years spent in the study of farming, in clerical work of various
kinds, and in land-surveying. All these employments, however, Froe-
bel himself felt to be merely provisional; for like the hazel wand in
the diviner's hand, his instinct was blindly seeking through these
restless years the well-spring of his life.
In Frankfort, where he had gone intending to study architecture,
Destiny touched him on the shoulder, and he turned and knew her.
Through a curious combination of circumstances he gained employ.
ment in Herr Gruner's Model School, and it was found at once that
he was what the Germans love to call "a teacher by the grace of
God. " The first time he met his class of boys he tells us that he
felt inexpressibly happy; the hazel wand had found the waters and
was fixed at last. From this time on, all the events of his life were
connected with his experience as a teacher. Impelled as soon as he
had begun his work by a desire for more effective methods, he visited
Yverdon, then the centre of educational thought, and studied with
Pestalozzi. He went again in 1808, accompanied by three pupils, and
spent two years there, alternately studying and teaching.
There was a year of lectures at Göttingen after this, and one at
the University of Berlin, accompanied by unceasing study and re-
search both in literary and scientific lines; but in the fateful year
1813 this quiet student life was broken in upon, for impelled by
strong moral conviction, Froebel joined Baron von Lützow's famous
volunteer corps, formed to harass the French by constant skirmishes
and to encourage the smaller German States to rise against Napo-
leon.
## p. 6024 (#618) ###########################################
6024
FRIEDRICH FROEBEL
No thirst for glory prompted this action, but a lofty conception of
the office of the educator. How could any young man capable of
bearing arms, Froebel says, become a teacher of children whose
Fatherland he had refused to defend? how could he in after years
incite his pupils to do something noble, something calling for sacri-
fice and unselfishness, without exposing himself to their derision and
contempt? The reasoning was perfect, and he made practice follow
upon the heels of theory as closely as he had always done since he
became master of his fate.
After the Peace of Paris he settled down for a time to a quiet
life in the mineralogical museum at the University of Berlin, his
duties being the care, arrangement, and investigation of crystals.
Surrounded thus by the exquisite formations whose development ac-
cording to law is so perfect, whose obedience to the promptings of an
inward ideal so complete, he could not but learn from their uncon-
scious ethics to look into the depths of his own nature, and there
recognize more clearly the purpose it was intended to work out.
In 1816 he quietly gave up his position, and taking as pupils five
of his nephews, three of whom were fatherless, he entered upon his
life work, the first step in which was the carrying out of his plan
for a "Universal German Educational Institute. " He was without
money, of course, as he had always been and always would be,— his
hands wer
ere made for giving, not for getting; he slept in a barn on
a wisp of straw while arranging for his first school at Griesheim; but
outward things were so little real to him in comparison with the life
of the spirit, that bodily privations seemed scarcely worth consider-
ing. The school at Keilhau, to which he soon removed, the institu-
tions later established in Wartensee and Willisau, the orphanage in
Burgdorf, all were most successful educationally, but, it is hardly
necessary to say, were never a source of profit to their head and
founder.
Through the twenty succeeding years, busy as he was in teaching,
in lecturing, in writing, he was constantly shadowed by dissatisfac-
tion with the foundation upon which he was building. A nebulous
idea for the betterment of things was floating before him; but it was
not until 1836 that it appeared to his eyes as a "definite truth. "
This definite truth, the discovery of his old age, was of course the
kindergarten; and from this time until the end, all other work was
laid aside, and his entire strength given to the consummate flower
of his educational thought.
The first kindergarten was opened in 1837 at Blankenburg (where
a memorial school is now conducted), and in 1850 the institution at
Marienthal for the training of kindergartners was founded, Froebel
remaining at its head until his death two years after.
## p. 6025 (#619) ###########################################
FRIEDRICH FROEBEL
6025
With the exception of that remarkable book The Education of
Man' (1826), his most important literary work was done after 1836;
'Pedagogics of the Kindergarten,' the first great European contribu-
tion to the subject of child-study, appearing from 1837 to 1840 in the
form of separate essays, and the 'Mutter-und-Kose Lieder' (Mother-
Play) in 1843. Many of his educational aphorisms and occasional
speeches were preserved by his great disciple the Baroness von
Marenholtz-Bülow in her 'Reminiscences of Froebel'; and though
two most interesting volumes of his correspondence have been pub-
lished, there remain a number of letters, as well as essays and educa-
tional sketches, not yet rendered into English.
Froebel's literary style is often stiff and involved, its phrases
somewhat labored, and its substance exceedingly difficult to trans-
late with spirit and fidelity; yet after all, his mannerisms are of a
kind to which one easily becomes accustomed, and the kernel of his
thought when reached is found well worth the trouble of removing a
layer of husk. He had always an infinitude of things to say, and
they were all things of purpose and of meaning; but in writing, as
well as in formal speaking, the language to clothe the thought came
to him slowly and with difficulty. Yet it appears that in friendly
private intercourse he spoke fluently, and one of his students reports
that in his classes he was often "overpowering and sublime, the
stream of his words pouring forth like fiery rain. "
It is probable that in daily life Froebel was not always an agree-
able house-mate; for he was a genius, a reformer, and an unworldly
enthusiast, believing in himself and in his mission with all the ardor
of a heart centred in one fixed purpose. He was quite intolerant of
those who doubted or disbelieved in his theories, as well as of those
who, believing, did not carry their faith into w ks. The people who
stood nearest him and devoted themselves to the furthering of his
ideas slept on no bed of roses, certainly; but although he sometimes
sacrificed their private interests to his cause, it must not be forgotten
that he first laid himself and all that he had upon the same altar.
His nature was one that naturally inspired reverence and loyalty, and
drew from his associates the most extraordinary devotion and self-
sacrifice. Then, as now, women were peculiarly attracted by his
burning enthusiasm, his prophetic utterances, and his lofty views of
their sex and its mission; and then, as now, the almost fanatical zeal
of his followers is perhaps to be explained by the fact that he gives
a new world-view to his students,- one that produces much the same
effect upon the character as the spiritual exaltation called "experi-
encing religion. "
He was twice married, in each case to a superior woman of great
gifts of mind and character, and both helpmates joyfully took up a
## p. 6026 (#620) ###########################################
6026
FRIEDRICH FROEBEL
life of privation and care that they might be associated with him and
with his work. Those memorable words spoken of our Washington, —
"Heaven left him childless that a nation might call him father," are
even more applicable to Froebel, for his wise and tender fatherhood
extends to all the children of the world. When he passed through
the village streets of his own country, little ones came running from
every doorstep; the babies clinging to his knees and the older ones
hanging about his neck and refusing to leave the dear play-master,
as they called him. So the kindergartners love to think of him
to-day, the tall spare figure, the long hair, the wise, plain, strong-
featured face, the shining eyes, and the little ones clustering about
him as they clustered about another Teacher in Galilee, centuries ago.
Froebel's educational creed cannot here be cited at length, but
some of its fundamental articles are:-
-
The education of the child should begin with its birth, and should
be threefold, addressing the mental, spiritual, and physical natures.
It should be continued as it has begun, by appealing to the heart
and the emotions as the starting-point of the human soul.
There should be sequence, orderly progression, and one continuous
purpose throughout the entire scheme of education, from kinder-
garten to university.
Education should be conducted according to nature, and should be
a free, spontaneous growth,-a development from within, never a pre-
scription from without.
The training of the child should be conducted by means of the
activities, needs, desires, and delights, which are the common herit-
age of childhood.
The child should be led from the beginning to feel that one life
thrills through every manifestation of the universe, and that he is a
part of all that is.
The object of education is the development of the human being
in the totality of his powers as a child of nature, a child of man, and
a child of God.
These principles of Froebel's, many of them the products of his
own mind, others the pure gold of educational currency upon which
he has but stamped his own image, are so true and so far-reaching
that they have already begun to modify all education and are des-
tined to work greater magic in the future. The great teacher's place
in history may be determined, by-and-by, more by the wonderful
uplift and impetus he gave to the whole educational world, than by
the particular system of child-culture in connection with which he is
best known to-day.
Judged by ordinary worldly standards, his life was an unsuccess-
ful one, full of trials and privations, and empty of reward.
His
## p. 6027 (#621) ###########################################
FRIEDRICH FROEBEL
6027
aro
death-blow was doubtless struck by the prohibition of kindergartens
in Prussia in 1851, an edict which remained nine years in force. His
strength had been too sorely tried to resist this final crushing mis-
fortune, and he passed away the following year. His body was borne
to the grave through a heavy storm of wind and rain that seemed to
symbolize the vicissitudes of his earthly days, while as a forecast of
the future the sun shone out at the last moment, and the train of
mourners looked back to see the low mound irradiated with glory.
In Thuringia, where the great child-lover was born, the kinder-
gartens, his best memorials, cluster thickly now; and on the face of
the cliffs that overhang the bridle-path across the Glockner mount-
ain may be seen in great letters the single word Froebel, hewn deep
into the solid rock.
个
Archibald Smitte
THE RIGHT OF THE CHILD
From Reminiscences of Friedrich Froebel,' by Baroness B. von Marenholtz-
Bülow. Copyright 1877, by Mary Mann. Reprinted by permission of
Lee & Shepard, publishers, Boston.
Α'
LL that does not grow out of one's inner being, all that is
not one's own original feeling and thought, or that at least
does not awaken that, oppresses and defaces the individual-
ity of man instead of calling it forth, and nature becomes there-
by a caricature. Shall we never cease to stamp human nature,
even in childhood, like coins? to overlay it with foreign images
and foreign superscriptions, instead of letting it develop itself
and grow into form according to the law of life planted in it by
God the Father, so that it may be able to bear the stamp of the
Divine, and become an image of God?
This theory of love is to serve as the highest goal and pole-
star of human education, and must be attended to in the germ
of humanity, the child, and truly in his very first impulses. The
conquest of self-seeking egoism is the most important task of
education; for selfishness isolates the individual from all commun-
ion, and kills the life-giving principle of love. Therefore the first
object of education is to teach to love, to break up the egoism
## p. 6028 (#622) ###########################################
6028
FRIEDRICH FROEBEL
of the individual, and to lead him from the first stage of com-
munion in the family through all the following stages of social
life to the love of humanity, or to the highest self-conquest by
which man rises to Divine unity.
•
Women are to recognize that childhood and womanliness
(the care of childhood and the life of women) are inseparably
connected; that they form a unit; and that God and nature
have placed the protection of the human plant in their hands.
Hitherto the female sex could take only a more or less passive
part in human history, because great battles and the political
organization of nations were not suited to their powers. But at
the present stage of culture, nothing is more pressingly required
than the cultivation of every human power for the arts of peace
and the work of higher civilization. The culture of individuals,
and therefore of the whole nation, depends in great part upon
the earliest care of childhood. On that account women, as one
half of mankind, have to undertake the most important part of
the problems of the time, problems that men are not able to
solve. If but one half of the work be accomplished, then our
epoch, like all others, will fail to reach the appointed goal. As
educators of mankind, the women of the present time have the
highest duty to perform, while hitherto they have been scarcely
more than the beloved mothers of human beings.
But I will protect childhood, that it may not as in earlier
generations be pinioned, as in a strait-jacket, in garments of cus-
tom and ancient prescription that have become too narrow for
the new time. I shall show the way and shape the means, that
every human soul may grow of itself, out of its own individuality.
But where shall I find allies and helpers if not in women, who
as mothers and teachers may put my idea in execution? Only
intellectually active women can and will do it. But if these are
to be loaded with the ballast of dead knowledge that can take
no root in the unprepared ground, if the fountains of their own
original life are to be choked up with it, they will not follow my
direction nor understand the call of the time for the new task
of their sex, but will seek satisfaction in empty superficiality.
To learn to comprehend nature in the child,- is not that to
comprehend one's own nature and the nature of mankind? And
in this comprehension is there not involved a certain degree
of comprehension of all things else? Women cannot learn and
take into themselves anything higher and more comprehensive.
## p. 6029 (#623) ###########################################
FRIEDRICH FROEBEL
6029
It should therefore at least be the beginning, and the love of
childhood should be awakened in the mind (and in a wider sense,
this is the love of humanity), so that a new, free generation of
men can grow up by right care.
EVOLUTION
From The Mottoes and Commentaries of Mother-Play. Copyright 1895, by
D. Appleton & Co.
WHAT
HAT shall we learn from our yearning look into the heart
of the flower and the eye of the child? This truth:
Whatever develops, be it into flower or tree or man, is
from the beginning implicitly that which it has the power to
become. The possibility of perfect manhood is what you read in
your child's eye, just as the perfect flower is prophesied in the
bud, or the giant oak in the tiny acorn. A presentiment that the
ideal or generic human being slumbers, dreams, stirs in your
unconscious infant-this it is, O mother, which transfigures you
as you gaze upon him. Strive to define to yourself what is that
generic ideal which is wrapped up in your child. Surely, as your
child—or in other words, as child of man — he destined to live
in the past and future as well as in the present. His earthly
being implies a past heaven; his birth makes a present heaven;
in his soul he holds a future heaven. This threefold heaven,
which you also bear within you, shines out on you through your
child's eyes.
The beast lives only in the present. Of past and future he
knows naught. But to man belong not only the present, but also
the future and the past. His thought pierces the heaven of the
future, and hope is born. He learns that all human life is one
life; that all human joys and sorrows are his joys and sorrows,
and through participation enters the present heaven- the heaven.
of love. He turns his mind towards the past, and out of retro-
spection wrests a vigorous faith. What soul could fail to conquer
an invincible trust in the pure, the good, the holy, the ideally
human, the truly Divine, if it would look with single eye into
its own past, into the past of history? Could there be a man in
whose soul such a contemplation of the. past would fail to blossom
into devout insight, into self-conscious and self-comprehending
faith? Must not such a retrospect unveil the truth? Must not
## p. 6030 (#624) ###########################################
6030
FRIEDRICH FROEBEL
the beauty of the unveiled truth allure him to Divine doing,
Divine living? All that is high and holy in human life meets
in that faith which is born of the unveiling of a heaven that has
always been; in that hope born of a vision of the heaven that
shall be; in that love which creates a heaven in the eternal Now.
These three heavens shine out upon you through your child's eye.
The presentiment that he carries these three heavens within him.
transfigures your countenance as you gaze upon him. Cherish
this premonition, for thereby you will help him to make his life a
musical chord wherein are blended the three notes of faith, hope,
and love. These celestial virtues will link his life with the
Divine life through which all life is one-with the God who is
the supernal fountain of life, light, and love.
Higher and more important than the cultivation of man's
outer ear, is the culture of that inner sense of harmony whereby
the soul learns to perceive sweet accord in soundless things, and
to discern within itself harmonies and discords. The importance
of wakening the inner ear to this music of the soul can scarcely
be exaggerated. Learning to hear it within, the child will strive
to give it outer form and expression; and even if in such effort
he is only partially successful, he will gain thereby the power to
appreciate the more successful effort of others. Thus enriching
his own life by the life of others, he solves the problem of devel-
opment. How else were it possible within the quickly fleeting
hours of mortal life to develop our being in all directions, to
fathom its depths, scale its heights, measure its boundaries?
What we are, what we would be, we must learn to recognize in
the mirror of all other lives. By the effort of each, and the
recognition of all, the Divine man is revealed in humanity.
Against the bright light which shines on the smooth white
wall is thrust a dark object, and straightway appears the form
which so delights the child. This is the outward fact; what is
the truth which through this fact is dimly hinted to the prophetic
mind? Is it not the creative and transforming power of light,
that power which brings form and color out of chaos, and makes
the beauty which gladdens our hearts? Is it not more than this,
-a foreshadowing, perhaps, of the spiritual fact that our darkest
experiences may project themselves in forms that will delight and
bless, if in our hearts shines the light of God? The sternest
crags, the most forbidding chasms, are beautiful in the mellow
sunshine; while the fairest landscape loses all charm, and indeed
## p. 6031 (#625) ###########################################
FRIEDRICH FROEBEL
6031
ceases to be, when the light which created it is withdrawn. Is
it not thus also with our lives? Yesterday, touched by the light
of enthusiastic emotion, all our relationships seemed beautiful
and blessed; to-day, when the glow of enthusiasm has faded, they
oppress and repulse us. Only the conviction that it is the dark-
ness within us which makes the darkness without, can restore the
lost peace of our souls. Be it therefore, O mother, your sacred
duty to make your darling early feel the working both of the
outer and inner light. Let him see in one the symbol of the
other, and tracing light and color to their source in the sun, may
he learn to trace the beauty and meaning of his life to their
source in God.
Translation of Susan E. Blow.
THE LAWS OF THE MIND
From The Letters of Froebel'
I
AM firmly convinced that all the phenomena of the child-world,
those which delight us as well as those which grieve us,
depend upon fixed laws as definite as those of the cosmos,
the planetary system, and the operations of nature; and it is
therefore possible to discover them and examine them. When
once we know and have assimilated these laws, we shall be able
powerfully to counteract any retrograde and faulty tendencies in
the children, and to encourage, at the same time, all that is
good and virtuous.
FOR THE CHILDREN
From The Letters of Froebel'
I
WISH you could have been here this evening, and seen the many
beautiful and varied forms and lovely patterns which freely
and spontaneously developed themselves from some system-
atic variations of a simple ground form, in stick-playing. No
one would believe, without seeing it, how the child soul, the
child life, develops when treated as a whole, and in the sense of
forming a part of the great connected life of the world, by some
skilled kindergarten teacher-nay, even by one who is only
simple-hearted, thoughtful, and attentive; nor how it blooms into
## p. 6032 (#626) ###########################################
6032
FRIEDRICH FROEBEL
delicious harmonies like a beautifully tinted flower. Oh, if I
could only shout aloud with ten thousand lung-power the truth
that I now tell you in silence! Then would I make the ears of
a hundred thousand men ring with it! What keenness of sensa-
tion, what a soul, what a mind, what force of will and active
energy, what dexterity and skill of muscular movement and of
perception, and what calm and patience, will not all these things
call out in the children!
How is it that parents are so blind and deaf, when they pro-
fess to be so eager to work for the welfare, the health, and peace
of their children? No! I cannot understand it; and yet a whole
generation has passed since this system first delivered its mes-
sage, first called for educational amendment, first pointed out
where the need for it lay, and showed how it could be satisfied.
If I were not afraid of being taken for an idiot or an escaped
lunatic, I would run barefoot from one end of Germany to the
other and cry aloud to all men: — "Set to work at once for your
children's sake on some universally developing plan, aiming at
unity of life purpose, and through that at joy and peace. " But
what good would it do? A Curtman and a Ramsauer, in their
stupidity or maliciousness, make it their duty to stigmatize my
work as sinful, when I am but quietly corresponding with just
my own friends and sympathizers; for they say I am destroying
all pleasure in life for the parents: "Who could be so silly as I,
amongst sane men who acknowledge that parents have a right
to enjoy life,—I who perpetually call to these parents in tones
of imperative demand, Come, let us live for our children! >»
(Kommt, laszt uns unseren Kindern leben! )
MOTIVES
From The Education of Man. By permission of Josephine Jarvis,
the translator, and A. Lovell & Co. , publishers
Ο
NLY in the measure that we are thoroughly penetrated by
the pure, spiritual, inward, human relations, and are faith-
ful to them even in the smallest detail in life, do we attain
to the complete knowledge and perception of the Divine-human
relation; only in that measure do we anticipate them so deeply,
vividly, and truly, that every yearning of our whole being is
thereby satisfied, at least receives its whole meaning, and is
-
## p. 6033 (#627) ###########################################
FRIEDRICH FROEBEL
6033
changed from a constantly unfulfilled yearning to an immediately
rewarded effort.
How we degrade and lower the human nature which we should
raise, how we weaken those whom we should strengthen, when
we hold up to them an inducement to act virtuously, even though
we place this inducement in another world! If we employ an
outward incentive, though it be the most spiritual, to call forth
better life, and leave undeveloped the inner, spontaneous, and
independent power of representing pure humanity which rests in
each man, we degrade our human nature.
But how wholly different every thing is, if man, especially in
boyhood, is made to observe the reflex action of his conduct, not
on his outward more or less agreeable position, but on his inner,
spontaneous or fettered, clear or clouded, satisfied or dissatisfied.
condition of spirit and mind! The experiences which proceed
from this observation will necessarily more and more awaken the
inner sense of man: and then true sense, the greatest treasure of
boy and man, comes into his life.
APHORISMS
SEE in every child the possibility of a perfect man.
I
The child-soul is an ever-bubbling fountain in the world of
humanity.
The plays of childhood are the heart-leaves of the whole
future life.
Childish unconsciousness is rest in God.
From each object of nature and of life, there goes a path
toward God.
Perfect human joy is also worship, for it is ordered by God.
The first groundwork of religious life is love-love to God
and man-in the bosom of the family.
Childhood is the most important stage of the total develop-
ment of man and of humanity.
Women must make of their educational calling a priestly
office.
Isolation and exclusion destroy life; union and participation
create life.
Without religious preparation in childhood, no true religion
and no union with God is possible for men.
X-378
## p. 6034 (#628) ###########################################
6034
FRIEDRICH FROEBEL
The tree germ bears within itself the nature of the whole
tree; the human being bears in himself the nature of all human-
ity; and is not therefore humanity born anew in each child?
In the children lies the seed-corn of the future.
The lovingly cared for, and thereby steadily and strongly
developed human life, also the cloudless child life, is of itself a
Christ-like one.
In all things works one creative life, because the life of all
things proceeds from one God.
Let us live with our children: so shall their lives bring peace
and joy to us; so shall we begin to be and to become wise.
What boys and girls play in earliest childhood will become
by-and-by a beautiful reality of serious life; for they expand
into stronger and lovelier youthfulness by seeking on every side
appropriate objects to verify the thoughts of their inmost souls.
This earliest age is the most important one for education, be-
cause the beginning decides the manner of progress and the end.
If national order is to be recognized in later years as a benefit,
childhood must first be accustomed to law and order, and therein
find the means of freedom. Lawlessness and caprice must rule
in no period of life, not even in that of the nursling.
The kindergarten is the free republic of childhood.
A deep feeling of the universal brotherhood of man,- what is
it but a true sense of our close filial union with God?
Man must be able to fail, in order to be good and virtuous;
and he must be able to become a slave in order to be truly
free.
My teachers are the children themselves, with all their purity,
their innocence, their unconsciousness, and their irresistible
claims; and I follow them like a faithful, trustful scholar.
A story told at the right time is like a looking-glass for the
mind.
I wish to cultivate men who stand rooted in nature, with
their feet in God's earth, whose heads reach toward and look
into the heavens; whose hearts unite the richly formed life of
earth and nature, with the purity and peace of heaven,-God's
earth and God's heaven.
## p. 6035 (#629) ###########################################
0035
FROISSART
(1337-1410? )
BY GEORGE M'LEAN HARPER
ROISSART is the artist of chivalry. On his pages are painted,
with immortal brilliancy, the splendid shows, the corona-
tions, weddings, tourneys, marches, feasts, and battles of
the English and French knighthood just before the close of the Mid-
dle Ages. "I intend," he says in the Prologue of his chronicle, "to
treat and record history and matter of great praise, to the end that
the honorable emprises and noble adventures and deeds of arms,
which have come about from the wars of France and England, may
be notably enregistered and placed in per-
petual memory, whereby chevaliers may
take example to encourage them in well-
doing. "
Chivalry, in the popular understanding,
is the fine flower of feudalism, its bloom
of poetic and heroic life. But in reality it
was artificial, having grown from an exag-
gerated respect for certain human qualities,
at the expense of others fully as essential
and indeed no less beautiful. Courage is
good; but it is not rare, and the love of
fighting for fighting's sake is made possible
only by disregarding large areas of life to
which war brings no harvest of happiness,
and over which it does not even cast the glamor of romance. The
works of civilized communities-agriculture, industry, commerce, art,
learning, religion - were nearly at a standstill in the middle of the
fourteenth century, when Europe was turned into a playground for
steel-clad barbarians.
FROISSART
This perversion of nature could not last. The wretched Hundred
Years' War had run but half its course when the misery and disgust
among the real people, who thought and wrought, drove them to such
despairing efforts as the Jacquerie in France and Wat Tyler's Rebel-
lion in England. It was the English archers, as Froissart reluctantly
## p. 6036 (#630) ###########################################
6036
FROISSART
admits, and not the knights, who won the battle of Poitiers. Gun-
powder and cannon, a few years later, doomed the man-at-arms, and
the rise of strong monarchies crowded out the feudal system. The
thunder of artillery which echoes faintly in the last pages of Frois-
sart is like a parting salvo to all the pageantry the volume holds.
From cannon-ball and musket-shot the glittering procession has found
refuge there. Into the safe retreat of these illuminated parchments,
all the banners and pennons, lances, crests, and tapestries, knights
and horses under clanking mail, had time—and but just time-to
withdraw. We find them there, fresh as when they hurried in, the
colors bright, the trumpets blowing.
Jean Froissart was born at Valenciennes in Hainault, in 1337, the
year of his birth almost coinciding with Chaucer's. He tells us in his
long autobiographical poem, 'L'Espinette Amoureuse,' that he was
fond of play when a boy, and delighted in dances, carols, and poems,
and had a liking for all those who loved dogs and birds. In the
school where he was sent, he says, there were little girls whom he
tried to please by giving them rings of glass, and pins, and apples,
and pears.
It seemed to him a most worthy thing to acquire their
favor, and he wondered when it would be his turn to fall really in
love. Much of this poem, which narrates tediously the love affair
that was not long in coming, is probably fictitious; but there is no
doubt of the accuracy of his description of himself in the opening
lines, as fond of pleasure, prone to gallantry, and susceptible to all
the bright faces of romance. From love and arms, he says, we are
often told that all joy and every honor flow. He informs us else-
where that he was no sooner out of school than he began to write,
putting into verse the wars of his time.
In 1361 he went to England, where Edward III. was reigning with
Philippa his queen, a daughter of the Count of Hainault.
His pass-
port to the favor of his great countrywoman was a book, the result
of these rhymings, covering the period from the battle of Poitiers,
1356, to the time of his voyage. This volume is not known to exist,
nor any copy of it. The Queen made him a clerk of her chamber.
He had abundant opportunity in England to gratify his curiosity and
fill his note-book, for the court was full of French noblemen, lately
come over as hostages for King Jean of France, who was captured at
the battle of Poitiers.
In 1365 he took letters of recommendation from the Queen to
David Bruce, King of Scotland, whom he followed for three months
in his progress through that realm; spending a fortnight at the castle
of William Douglas and making everywhere diligent inquiry about the
recent war of 1345. In his delightful little poem The Debate be-
tween the Horse and the Greyhound,' beginning, "Froissart from
## p. 6037 (#631) ###########################################
FROISSART
6037
Scotland was returning," we have a lifelike figure of the inquisitive
young chronicler, pushing unweariedly from inn to inn on a tired
horse and leading a footsore dog.
In
Between his thirtieth and his thirty-fourth year he was sometimes
in England and sometimes in various parts of the Continent.
August 1369, while he was abroad, his patroness Queen Philippa
died. She had encouraged him to continue his researches and writ-
ings, and he had presented her with a second volume, in prose, which
has come down to us as a part of the chronicle. He admits that his
work was an expansion of the chronicle of Jean le Bel, Canon of
Saint Lambert at Liège, for he says:- "As all great rivers are made
by the gathering together of many streams and springs, so the sciences
also are extracted and compiled by many clerks: what one knows, the
other does not. "
On hearing of the Queen's death, Froissart settled in his own coun-
try of Hainault. There he won favor from princes, as was his custom,
by giving them manuscripts of his chronicle, which was growing
apace. By the middle of 1373 we find him become a churchman and
provided with a living, in which he remained ten years, compiling
fresh history and correcting what he had already written and put in
circulation. A little later, 1376 to 1383, he made a more thorough
revision of his chronicle, going so far as to modify its spirit, which
had been favorable to English character and policy, and make it
more agreeable to partisans of France. Although Froissart was not a
Frenchman, his writings are all in the French language, which was
of course his native tongue.
About the beginning of 1384 he was made a canon of the Church,
at Chimay, a small town near the French frontier, and in this region
he observed the military movements then going on there, and re-
corded them immediately in Book ii. of his chronicle. Four years of
quiet were however too much for his mobile and energetic spirit;
and in 1388, hearing that the Count Gaston de Foix, in the Pyrenees,
was a man likely to know many details of the English wars in Gas-
cony and Guyenne, he set out to visit him, taking among other pres-
ents a book of his poetry and two couples of hounds. When he still
had ten days to travel he met a gentleman of Foix, with whom he
journeyed the rest of the way, beguiling the time with talk about the
sieges the various towns upon their route had suffered.
"At the words which he spoke I was delighted, for they pleased me much,
and right well did I retain them all; and as soon as I had dismounted at the
hostelries along the road which we traveled together, I wrote them down, at
evening as in the morning, to have a better record of them in times to come;
for there is nothing so retentive as writing. "
## p. 6038 (#632) ###########################################
6038
FROISSART
Count Gaston received him hospitably, and filled his three months'
sojourn with stories of great events. Then Froissart visited many
towns of Provence and Languedoc. These peregrinations furnished
much of the material for Book iii. Little more is known of his life,
except with respect to a visit to England which he made in 1394,
and which enabled him to collect material for a large part of Book
iv. , the last in the chronicle. He is supposed to have died at Chi-
may, later than 1400, and perhaps, as tradition asserts, in 1410.
It is an engaging picture, this, of a genial, sharp-eyed, some-
what worldly churchman, riding his gray horse over hill and dale in
quest of knowledge. We can fancy him arriving at his inn of an
evening, and at once asking the obsequious host what knight or other
great person dwells in the neighborhood. He loses no time before
calling at the castle, and is gladly admitted when he tells his well-
known name. He is ready to pay for any historical information with
a story from his own collection. He is welcome everywhere, and for
his part does not regret the time thus spent, nor the money,- sev-
eral fortunes, by his own count,- for he has the light heart of the
true traveler. It is always sunshine where he goes. The clangor
of arms and the blare of trumpets hover ever above the horizon.
Around the corner of every hill sits a fair castle by a shining river.
From town to town, from province to province, his love of listening
draws him on. To realize the charm of journeying in those days,
we must remember that the local customs and qualities were almost
undisturbed by communication; two French cities only a score of
miles apart would often differ from each other as much as Nurem-
berg does from Venice.
"And I tell you for a truth," we read, "that to make these chronicles I
have gone in my time much through the world, both to fulfill my pleasure
by seeing the wonders of the earth, and to inquire about the arms and advent-
ures that are written in this book. "
So to horse, good Canon of Chimay! Throw aside books; there is
news of fighting in the South; after the battle, soldiers will talk.
There have been deeds of courage and romance. Hasten thither,
while the tale of them is new!
If he were not so celebrated as a chronicler, Froissart would be
known as one of the last of the wandering minstrels. He had the
roving foot; he lived by charming the rich into generosity with his
recitals. And he wrote much poetry, which is little read, except
where it has some autobiographical interest. We possess the long
poems, 'L'Espinette Amoureuse,' 'Le Buisson de Jeunesse,' 'Le Dit
du Florin,' and several shorter pieces, with fragments of his once
famous versified romance Méliador. '
## p. 6039 (#633) ###########################################
FROISSART
6039
His great prose work, while professing to be a history, in distinc-
tion from the chronicles of previous writers, is however not an
orderly narration, nor is it a philosophical treatment of political
causes and effects. It is a collection of pictures and stories, without
much unity except the constant purpose of exhibiting the prowess of
knighthood. There is not much indication even of partisanship or
patriotic feeling. Froissart generally gives due meed of praise to the
best knight in every bout, the best battalion in every encounter,
regardless of sides.
The subjects treated are so numerous and disparate that no gen-
eral idea of them can be given. They cover the time from 1326 to
1394, and lead us through England, Scotland, Flanders, Hainault,
France, Italy, Spain, and Northern Africa. Among the most interest-
ing passages are the story of King Edward's campaign against the
Scots; his march through France; the battle of Crécy; the siege of
Calais; Wat Tyler's Rebellion, which Froissart the well-fed parasite
treats with an odd and inconsistent mingling of horror and contempt;
the Jacquerie, which he says was the work of peasant dogs, the scum
of the earth; the battle of Poitiers, with a fine description of the Black
Prince waiting at table on poor captured King Jean; and the rise
and fall of Philip van Artevelde.
Froissart's chronicle used to be regarded as authoritative history.
But as might have been expected from his mode of inquiry, it is full
of geographical, chronological, and other errors. Getting his infor-
mation by ear, he wrote proper names phonetically, or turned
them into something resembling French. Thus Worcester becomes
"Vaucestre," Seymour "Simon," Sutherland "Surlant," Walter Tyler
"Vautre Tuilier," Edinburgh "Hedaimbourch," Stirling "Eturmelin. "
The persons from whom he got his material were generally partisans
either of France or of England, and often told him their stories
years after the events; so that although he tried to be impartial
himself, and to offset one witness by another, he seldom heard a
judicial account of a battle or a quarrel. He seems to have con-
sulted few written records, though he might easily have seen the
State papers of England and Hainault.
It is useless to blame him, however; for the writing of mere his-
tory was not his purpose. With all his fine devotion to his life
work, a devotion which is the more admirable when we consider his
pleasure-loving nature,- with all his attention to fairness, his great
concern was not so much to instruct as to delight, first himself, sec-
ondly the great people of his age, and lastly posterity, on whom he
ever and anon cast a shrewd and longing glance. To please his con-
temporaries, he several times revised his work. Posterity has nearly
always preferred what might be called the first edition, which is the
most unconscious and entertaining, though the least precise.
## p. 6040 (#634) ###########################################
6040
FROISSART
But if we must deny him much of the value as a political his-
torian which was once attributed to him, we may still regard him as
a great authority for the general aspect of life in the fourteenth
century. Manners, customs, morals, as well as armor and dress, are
no doubt correctly portrayed in his book. We learn from it what
was deemed virtue and what vice; we learn that although religion
was sincerely professed by the upper classes, it was not very success-
fully practiced, and had amazingly little effect upon morals. We are
struck, for instance, with the absence of imagination or sympathy
which permitted people to witness the horrible tortures inflicted on
prisoners and criminals, although their minds were frequently filled
with visions of supernatural beings. Froissart unconsciously makes
himself, too, a medium for studying human character in his time, by
his negative morality, his complacent recording of crimes, his uncon-
cerned mention of horrors. Yet from his bringing up as a poet, and
his scholarly associations, and his connection with the Church, it is
likely he was a gentler man than nine-tenths of the knights and
squires and men-at-arms about him.
