[Footnote 8:  See p. 4.]

But Froebel was more than a biologist, he was a philosopher and an idealist.  Such words have sometimes been used as terms of reproach, but wisdom can only be justified of her children.

At the back of all Froebel has to say about “The Education of the Human Being” lies his conception of what the human being is.  And it is impossible fully to understand why Froebel laid so much stress on spontaneous play unless we go deeper than the province of the biologist without in the least minimising the importance of biological knowledge to educational theory.  As the biologist defines play as “the natural manifestation of the child’s activities,” so Froedel says “play at first is just natural life.”  But to him the true inwardness of spontaneous play lies in the fact that it is spontaneous—­so far as anything in the universe can be spontaneous.  For spontaneous response to environment is self-expression, and out of self-expression comes selfhood, consciousness of self.  If we are to understand Froebel at all, we must begin with the answer he found, or accepted, from Krause and others for his first question, What is that self?

Before reaching the question of how to educate, it seemed to him necessary to consider not only the purpose or aim of education, but the purpose or aim of human existence, the purpose of all and any existence, even whether there is any purpose in anything; and that brings us to what he calls “the groundwork of all,” of which a summary is given in the following paragraphs.

In the universe we can perceive plan, purpose or law, and behind this there must be some great Mind, “a living, all-pervading, energising, self-conscious and hence eternal Unity” whom we call God.  Nature and all existing things are a revelation of God.

As Bergson speaks of the elan vital which expresses itself from infinity to infinity, so Froebel says that behind everything there is force, and that we cannot conceive of force without matter on which it can exercise itself.  Neither can we think of matter without any force to work upon it, so that “force and matter mutually condition one another,” we cannot think one without the other.

This force expresses itself in all ways, the whole universe is the expression of the Divine, but “man is the highest and most perfect earthly being in whom the primordial force is spiritualised so that man feels, understands and knows his own power.”  Conscious development of one’s own power is the triumph of spirit over matter, therefore human development is spiritual development.  So while man is the most perfect earthly being, yet, with regard to spiritual development he has returned to a first stage and “must raise himself through ascending degrees of consciousness” to heights as yet unknown, “for who has measured the limits of God-born mankind?”

Self-consciousness is the special characteristic of man.  No other animal has the power to become conscious of himself because man alone has the chance of failure.  The lower animals have definite instincts and cannot fail, i.e. cannot learn.[9] Man wants to do much, but his instincts are less definite and most actions have to be learned; it is by striving and failing that he learns to know not only his limitations but the power that is within him—­his self.