Professor Royce says that "a general view of the place which beings with minds occupy in the physical world strongly suggests that their organisms may especially have significance as places for the initiation of more or less novel types of activity." And to Froebel the chief significance of play lies in this spontaneity.
"Play is the highest phase of human development at this stage, because it is spontaneous expression of what is within produced by an inner necessity and impulse. Play is the most characteristic, most spiritual manifestation of man at this stage, and, at the same time, is typical of human life as a whole."
These various theories seem to reinforce rather than to contradict each other, and it is more important to avoid running any to an extreme than to differentiate between them. In the case of recapitulation, we must certainly bear in mind Froebel's warning that the child "should be treated as having in himself the present, past and future." So, as Dr. Drummond says: "If we feel constrained to present him with a tent because Abraham lived in one, he no doubt enters into the spirit of the thing and accepts it joyfully. But he also annexes the ball of string and the coffee canister to fit up telephonic communication with the nursery." He may play robbers and hide and seek because he has reached a "hunting and capture" stage, but the physiologist points out that violent exercise is a necessity for his circulation and nutrition, and to practise swift flight to safety is useful even in modern times.[11] Gardening may take us back to an agricultural stage, but digging is most useful as a muscular exercise, and "watering" is scientific experiment and adds to the feeling of power, while the flowers themselves appeal to the aesthetic side of the sense-play, which is not limited to any age, though conspicuous so soon.
[Footnote 11: An up-to-date riddle asks the difference between the quick and the dead, and answers, "The quick are those who get out of the way of a motor-bus and the dead are those who do not.">[
Froebel recognised many kinds of play. He realised that much of the play of boyhood is exercise of physical power, and that it must be of a competitive nature because the boy wants to measure his power. Even in 1826 he urges the importance not only of town playgrounds but of play leaders, that the play may be full of life. Among games for boys he noted some still involving sense-play, as hiding games, colour games and shooting at a mark, which need quick hearing and sight, intellectual plays exercising thought and judgement, e.g. draughts and dramatic games. One form of play which seemed to him most important was constructive play, where there is expression of ideas as well as expression of power. This side of play covers a great deal, and will be dealt with later; its importance in Froebel's eyes lies in the fact that through construction, however simple, the child gains knowledge of his own power and learns "to master himself." Froebel wanted particularly to deepen this feeling of power, and says that the little one who has already made some experiments takes pleasure in the use of sand and clay, "impelled by the previously acquired sense of power he seeks to master the material."
In order to gain real knowledge of himself, of his power, a child needs to compare his power with that of others. This is one reason for the child's ready imitation of all he sees done by others. Another reason for this is that only through real experience or action can a child gain the ideas which he will express later, therefore he must reproduce all he sees or hears.
"In the family the child sees parents and others at work, producing, doing something; consequently he, at this stage, would like to represent what he sees. Be cautious, parents. You can at one blow destroy, at least for a long time, the impulse to activity and to formation if you repel their help as childish, useless or even as a hindrance…. Strengthen and develop this instinct; give to your child the highest he now needs, let him add his power to your work, that he may gain the consciousness of his power and also learn to appreciate its limitations."
As the child's sense of power and his self-consciousness deepen he requires possessions of his "very own." Says Froebel: "The feeling of his own power implies and demands also the possession of his own space and his own material belonging exclusively to him. Be his realm, his province, a corner of the house or courtyard, be it the space of a box or of a closet, be it a grotto, a hut or a garden, the boy at this age needs an external point, chosen and prepared by himself, to which he refers all his activity."
As ideas widen the child's purposes enlarge, and he finds the need for that co-operation which binds human beings together. And so by play enjoyed in common, the feeling of community which is present in the little child is raised to recognition of the rights of others; not only is a sense of justice developed, but also forbearance, consideration and sympathy.
"When the room to be filled is extensive, when the realm to be controlled is large, when the whole to be produced is complex, then brotherly union of similar-minded persons is in place." And we are invited to enter an "education room," where boys of seven to ten are using building blocks, sand, sawdust and green moss brought in from the forest. "Each one has finished his work and he examines it and that of others, and in each rises the desire to unite all in one whole," so roads are made from the village of one boy to the castle of another: the boy who has made a cardboard house unites with another who has made miniature ships from nut-shells, the house as a castle crowns the hill, and the ships float in the lake below, while the youngest brings his shepherd and sheep to graze between the mountain and the lake, and all stand and behold with pleasure and satisfaction the result of their hands.