If your child’s to understand
  Action in the world without,
  You must let his tiny hand
  Imitative move about. 
  This is the reason why
  Baby will, never still,
  Imitate whatever’s by.

At this stage the child is “to move freely, and be active, to grasp and hold with his own hands.”  He is to stand “when he can sit erect and draw himself up,” not to walk till he “can creep, rise freely, maintain his balance and proceed by his own effort.”  He is not to be hindered by swaddling bands—­such as are in use in Continental countries—­nor, later on, to be “spoiled by too much assistance,” words which every mother and teacher should write upon her phylacteries.  But as soon as he can move himself the surroundings speak to the child, “outer objects invite him to seize and grasp them, and if they are distant, they invite him who would bring them nearer to move towards them.”

This use of the word “invite” is worthy of notice, and calls to mind a sentence used by a writer on Freud,[14] that “the activity of a human being is a constant function of his environment.”  We adults, who are so ready with our “Don’t touch,” must endeavour to remember how everything is shouting to a child:  “Look at me, listen to me, come and fetch me, and find out all you can about me by every means in your power.”

[Footnote 14:  The Freudian Wish, Edwin Holt.]

If we have anything to do with little children, we must face the fact that the child is, if not quite a Robinson Crusoe on his island, at least an explorer in a strange country, and a scientist in his laboratory.  But there is nothing narrow in his outlook:  the name of this chapter is deliberately chosen, the whole world is the child’s oyster, his interests are all-embracing.

From his first walk he is the geographer.  “Each little walk is a tour of discovery; each object—­the chair, the wall—­is an America, a new world, which he either goes around to see if it be an island, or whose coast he follows to discover if it be a continent.  Each new phenomenon is a discovery in the child’s small and yet rich world, e.g. one may go round the chair; one may stand before it, behind it, but one cannot go behind the bench or the wall.”

Then comes an inquiry into the physical properties of surrounding objects.  “The effort to reach a particular object may have its source in the child’s desire to hold himself firm and upright by it, but we also observe that it gives him pleasure to touch, to feel, to grasp, and perhaps also—­which is a new phase of activity—­to be able to move it....  The chair is hard or soft; the seat is smooth; the corner is pointed; the edge is sharp.”  The business of the adult, Froebel goes on to say, is to supply these names, “not primarily to develop the child’s power of speech,” but “to define his sense impressions.”

Next, the scientist must stock his laboratory with material for experiment.