Froebel, who made so much of play, to whom it was spontaneous education and self realisation, was bound to see that toys were important.  “The man advanced in insight,” he said, “even when he gives his child a plaything, must make clear to himself its purpose and the purpose of playthings and occupation material in general.  This purpose is to aid the child freely to express what lies within him, and to bring the outer world nearer to him, and thus to serve as mediator between the mind and the world.”  Froebel’s “Gifts” were an attempt to supply right play material.  True to his faith in natural impulse, Froebel watched children to see what playthings they found for themselves, or which, among those presented by adults, were most appreciated.  Soft little coloured balls seemed right material for a baby’s tender hand, and it was clear that when the child could crawl about he was ready for something which he could roll on the floor and pursue on all fours.  As early as two years old he loves to take things out of boxes and to move objects about, so boxes of bricks were supplied, graded in number and in variety of form.  Not for a moment did Froebel suggest that the child was to be limited to these selected playthings, he expressly stated the contrary, and he frequently said that spontaneity was not to be checked.  But from what has followed, from the way in which these little toys have been misused, we are tempted to speculate on whether these “Gifts” supplied that definite foundation without which, in these days, no notice would have been taken of the new ideas, or whether they have proved the sunken rock on which much that was valuable has perished.  The world was not ready to believe in the educational value of play, just pure play.  Nor is it yet.  For the new system in its “didactic” apparatus out-Froebels Froebel in his mistake of trying to systematise the material for spontaneous education.  Carefully planned, as were Froebel’s own “gifts,” the new apparatus presents a series of exercises in sense discrimination, satisfying no doubt while unfamiliar, but suffering from the defect of the “too finished and complex plaything,” in which Froebel saw a danger “which slumbers like a viper under the roses.”  The danger is that “the child can begin no new thing with it, cannot produce enough variety by its means; his power of creative imagination, his power of giving outward form to his own ideas are thus actually deadened.”

“To realise his aims, man, and more particularly the child, requires material, though it be only a bit of wood or a pebble, with which he makes something or which he makes into something.  In order to lead the child to the handling of material we give him the ball, the cube and other bodies, the Kindergarten gifts.  Each of these gifts incites the child to free spontaneous activity, to independent movement.”

Froebel would have sympathised deeply with the views of Peter as expressed by Mr. Wells in regard to Ideals, which he, however, called toys: