“Although in itself made up of the same objects and of the same organization, the external world comes to the child at first, out of its void, as it were, in misty, formless indistinctness, in chaotic confusion, even the child and the outer world merge into one another.”—E., p. 40.
This description reminds us of Professor James’ picturesque expression, “big, blooming, buzzing confusion,” which is so often quoted, but which does not really convey so true a picture as Dr. Ward’s account, for where there is no distinction there can surely be no confusion. But a few pages further on we find Froebel describing the infant consciousness before speech begins, as “still an unorganized, undifferentiated unity” (noch eine ungegliederte mannigfaltigkeitslose Einheit). This is identical with the expression used by Professor Stout, who, in speaking of the stage to which he gives the name “implicit apprehension,” the apprehension of an unanalysed whole, uses the phrase “distinctionless unity.” Froebel talks of the child feeling himself a whole and “so also, though unconsciously, seeking to grasp a whole, never merely a part as such.” And just as Dr. Ward claims for psychology as well as for biology “what may be called a principle of progressive differentiation or specialization,” so Froebel writes:
“The child mind develops according to the law which governs world development, viz.: that of progression from the unlimited to the limited, from the general to the special, from the whole to the part.”—P., p. 170.
In this, of course, lies the reason for Froebel’s correct apprehension of the infant mind, he was biologist first, and his mind was full of the idea of development.
“At the same time there begins in the child, as in the seed-corn, a development towards complexity.”—P., p. 172.
“Whether we are looking at a seed or an egg, whether we are watching feeling or thought, what is definite proceeds everywhere from what is indefinite and this is the way in which your child’s life is sure to show itself.”—M., p. 121.
Professor Ward goes on to discuss what is implied in this process of differentiation or mental growth, saying that if analogies are to be taken from the physical world at all, the growth of a seed or embryo, will furnish far better illustrations of the unfolding of the contents of consciousness than the building up of molecules.
It was the endeavour, and quaint enough it seems to us, to translate this psychological truth into educational practice, that led Froebel to lay so much stress on the fact that the earliest of his so-called “Gifts” are indivisible wholes:
“Let us place ourselves at the nursery table, and try to perceive what the child is impelled to do in the beginning of his self-employment. Let us sit ourselves as unnoticed as possible considering how the child, after he has examined the self-contained tangible object in its form and colour, has moved it here and there and proved its solidity, how he then tries to divide it, at least to change its form.… Thus after perception of the whole, the child desires to see it separated into parts.… Let us stop at this significant phenomenon and try to discern through it what plaything following on the self-contained ball, hard and soft, and the solid hard cube, we should for inner reason and without arbitrariness give to the child.”—P., p. 117.