Dangerous enterprises were of course forbidden, but the teachers of the institute neglected no means of training our bodies to endure every exertion and peril; for Froebel was still alive, and the ideal of education, for whose realization he had established the Keilhau school, had become to his assistants and followers strong and healthy realities.  But Froebel’s purpose did not require the culture of physical strength.  His most marked postulates were the preservation and development of the individuality of the boys entrusted to his care, and their training in German character and German nature; for he beheld the sum of all the traits of higher, purer manhood united in those of the true German.

Love for the heart, strength for the character, seemed to him the highest gifts with which he could endow his pupils for life.

He sought to rear the boy to unity with himself, with God, with Nature, and with mankind, and the way led to trust in God through religion, trust in himself by developing the strength of mind and body, and confidence in mankind—­that is, in others, by active relations with life and a loving interest in the past and present destinies of our fellow-men.  This required an eye and heart open to our surroundings, sociability, and a deeper insight into history.  Here Nature seems to be forgotten.  But Nature comes into the category of religion, for to him religion means:  To know and feel at one with ourselves, with God, and with man; to be loyal to ourselves, to God, and to Nature:  and to remain in continual active, living relations with God.

The teacher must lead the pupils to men as well as to God and Nature, and direct them from action to perception and thought.  For action he takes special degrees, capacity, skill, trustworthiness; for perception, consciousness, insight, clearness.  Only the practical and clear-sighted man can maintain himself as a thinker, opening out as a teacher new trains of thought, and comprehending the basis of what is already acquired and the laws which govern it.

Froebel wishes to have the child regarded as a bud on the great tree of life, and therefore each pupil needs to be considered individually, developed mentally and physically, fostered and trained as a bud on the huge tree of the human race.  Even as a system of instruction, education ought not to be a rigid plan, incapable of modification, it should be adapted to the individuality of the child, the period in which it is growing to maturity, and its environment.  The child should be led to feel, work, and act by its own experiences in the present and in its home, not by the opinions of others or by fixed, prescribed rules.  From independent, carefully directed acts and knowledge, perceptions, and thoughts, the product of this education must come forth—­a man, or, as it is elsewhere stated, a thorough German.  At Keilhau he is to be perfected, converted into a finished production without a flaw.  If the institute has fulfilled its duty to the individual, he will be: