Then come directions as to the manner in which the toy is to be presented:
“in order to give the child the impression of the whole (den Eindrück des Ganzen). From this as the first fundamental perception (der ersten Grundanschauung) everything proceeds and must proceed.”[21]
Starting from the conception of an undifferentiated totality or objective continuum, Dr. Ward says, “Of the very beginnings of this continuum we can say nothing, absolute beginnings are beyond the pale of science. Actual presentation consists in this continuum being differentiated; every differentiation constitutes a new presentation. Hence the common-place of psychologists: ‘We are only conscious as we are conscious of change.’” …
As to absolute beginnings, Froebel too writes that these are past finding out, but he does so in order to call the mother’s attention to the importance of the very earliest steps:
“Do not say, It is much too early.… Too early? Do you know when, where and how your child’s intellectual development begins? Can you tell when and where is the boundary of existence that has not yet begun, and of its actual beginning, and how this boundary manifests itself?”—M., p. 154.
Coming now to what Froebel has to say as to how his “unorganized unity” becomes differentiated, we shall not find that his brief account differs in any really fundamental way from that of Professor Ward. Some of his expressions have a very modern sound, such as: “how the outer world begins to divide and analyse itself”; how “out of the indefinite outside and around the child comes the definite”; or again how the child gains “the three great perceptions of object, space and time, which at first were one collective perception.” (“Die drei grossen Wahrnehmungen von Gegenstand, Raum und Zeit; welche anfangs in einer Gesammtwahrnehmung in dem Kinde ruhten.”)—P., p. 37.
Commenting upon the phrase “We are only conscious as we are conscious of change,” Dr. Ward remarks that the word change does not sufficiently explain what happens in differentiation, for this implies that the increased complexity is due to the persistence of former changes; such persistence being essential to the very idea of growth or development.… At the same time he is careful to point out that neither in “retentiveness” nor in assimilation is there “any confronting of the old with the new,” any “active comparison.” Without change of impression consciousness would be a blank, but “a difference between presentations is not at all the same as the presentation of that difference. The former must precede the latter; the latter, which requires active comparison, need not follow … we must recognize objects before we can compare them.”
Froebel says that:
“All the development of the child has its foundation in almost imperceptible attainments and perceptions … the first perceptions, in the beginning almost imperceptible and evanescent, are fixed, increased and clarified by innumerable repetitions, and by change.”—P., p. 38.
Froebel, too, goes back to this very earliest stage, the stage when a baby “begins to notice.” He says that this indication of an intellect (Seelenaeusserung) begins when the child is a few weeks old, and is occasioned at first by the movement, that is change in position, of a bright object, “in and by means of the motion the child first perceives the object.”—P., p. 64.