“The helplessness of the new-born human being in regard to all outer things is the opposite of his future ability—since life is a whole—to help himself through the enhancing of his will-power.… Helplessness and personal will, therefore, become the two points between which the child’s life turns, and the fulcrum is free activity. Herein lies for the educator a key to phenomena of child-life which seem to contradict each other. For out of the impulse to activity (Thätigkeitstriebe) and to free self-employment, or rather out of the united three—helplessness, personal will, and self-employment—soon proceed custom and habit, often indolence and too facile yielding.
“Consideration of custom, and of the spontaneous acquiring of habit in the child, especially in regard to what causes it, and to its effect upon the child, is just as important for the educator, as is the consideration and guidance of his instinct of activity. This very phenomenon that the child so early accustoms and inures himself to something, this early phenomenon of child life, the growing together and becoming one, as it were, with his surroundings, is a proof of the existence and inner working, even thus early, of the impulse for activity or employment, even where the child appears outwardly inactive and passive: in that the child accommodates himself to outer surroundings, relations and requirements in order to provide more scope for his inner activity.”—P., p. 27.
This proof may not be quite so clear to others as it was to Froebel, but at least the passage shows the close connection in his mind between instinct—the impulse towards activity and employment—and habit, and that he had noted the interaction between the two.
There are many references to the transitory nature of at least childish impulses.
“What delight a child takes in noticing what is smooth, woolly, hairy, sparkling, round, etc.… But if you do not cherish this and do not set it going in the right way, it becomes a lost thing; it grows rusty, and loses its power as a magnet loses its power when it is not sufficiently used. Power that is not at once used, effort that does not at once meet the right object—perishes.”—M., p. 181.
“Now, at last, we would fain give another direction to the energies, desires and instincts (Kräfte, Neigungen und Triebe) of the child growing into boyhood; but it is too late. For the deep meaning of child-life passing into boyhood we not only failed to appreciate, but we misjudged it; we not only failed to nurse it, but we misdirected and crushed it.”—E., p. 75.
“See parents, the first impulse to activity, the first constructive impulse (Bildungstrieb) comes from man according to the nature of the working of his mind, unconsciously, unrecognized, without his will, as man can indeed perceive in himself in later life. If, however, this inner summons to activity (diese innere Aufforderung zur Thätigkeit) meets with outer hindrance, especially such a one as the will of the parents, which cannot be set aside, the power is at once weakened in itself, and with many repetitions of this weakening, falls into inaction.”—E., p. 100.
“The neglect of inner power causes the inner power itself to vanish.”—E., p. 133.
“It is true there are few such children; but there would be more, were we not ignorantly blunting so many tendencies in our children, or starving them into inanition.”—E., p. 220.
Writing of the origin of boyish faults Froebel says: