What experience has taught me in this way has already been passed on to younger teachers in Education by Life, and there seems little more to add.

  Wonders chiefly at himself
  Who can tell him what he is.

It is for us to tell the child what he is, that he, too, like all the things he loves, is a manifestation of God.  “I am a being alive and conscious upon this earth; a descendant of ancestors who rose by gradual processes from lower forms of animal life, and with struggle and suffering became man."[27]

[Footnote 27:  The Substance of Faith Allied with Science, Sir Oliver Lodge (Methuen).]

“The colossal remains of shattered mountain chains speak of the greatness of God; and man is encouraged and lifts himself up by them, feeling within himself the same spirit and power."[28]

[Footnote 28:  The Education of Man.]

CHAPTER XI

RHYTHM

     Lo with the ancient roots of Man’s nature
     Twines the eternal passion of song.

The very existence of lullabies, not to mention their abundance in all countries, the very rockers on the cradles testify to the rhythmic nature of man in infancy.

In his Mother Songs, Froebel couples rhythm with harmony of all kinds, not only musical harmony but harmony of proportion and colour, and in urging the very early training of “the germs of all this,” he gives perhaps the chief reason for training.  “If these germs do not develop and take shape as independent formations in each individual, they at least teach how to understand and to recognise those of other people.  This is life-gain enough, it makes one’s life richer, richer by the lives of others.”

It is to the genius of M. Jacques Dalcroze that the world of to-day owes some idea of what may be effected by rhythmic training, and M. Dalcroze started his work with the same aim that Froebel set before the mother, that of making the child capable of appreciation, capable of being made “richer by the lives of others.”  But Froebel prophesied that far more than appreciation would come from proper rhythmic training, and this M. Dalcroze has amply proved.

“Through movement the mother tries to lead the child to consciousness of his own life.  By regular rhythmic movement—­this is of special importance—­she brings this power within the child’s own conscious control when she dandles him in her arms in rhythmic movements and to rhythmic sounds, cautiously following the slowly developing life in the child, arousing it to greater activity, and so developing it.  Those who regard the child as empty, who wish to fill his mind from without, neglect the means of cultivation in word and tone which should lead to a sense of rhythm and obedience to law in all human expression.  But an early development of rhythmic movement would prove most wholesome, and would remove much wilfulness, impropriety and coarseness from his life, movements, and action, and would secure for him harmony and moderation, and, later on, a higher appreciation of nature, music, poetry, and art” (Education of Man).