Even the baby shows trace of the collecting or acquiring instinct, but to Froebel this still falls under the head of investigation. The child who has just learned to walk is:
“attracted by the bright round smooth pebble, by the quaint brilliant leaf, by the smooth piece of wood, and he tries to get hold of these with the help of the newly acquired use of his limbs. Look at the child that can scarcely keep himself erect and that can walk only with the greatest care—he sees a twig, a bit of straw; painfully he secures it.… See the child laboriously stooping and slowly going forward under the eaves. The force of the rain has washed out of the sand small, smooth, bright pebbles, and the ever-observing child gathers them.”—E., p. 72.
The boy, still only from six to eight years old, keeps up the collecting habit with more method and with a wider range, and he demands assistance.
“Not less full of significance, nor less developing, is the boy’s inclination to descend into caves and ravines, to ramble in the shady grove and in the dark forest. It is the effort (Streben) to seek and find the new, to see and discover the hidden, the desire to bring to light and to appropriate that which lies concealed in darkness and shadow.
“From these rambles the boy returns with rich treasures of unknown stones and plants, of animals—worms, beetles, spiders and lizards, that dwell in darkness and concealment. ‘What is this? What is its name?’ etc., are the questions to be answered; and every new word enriches his world and throws light upon his surroundings. Beware of greeting him with the exclamation, ‘Fie, throw that down, that is horrid!’ or ‘Drop that, it will bite you!’ If the child obeys, he drops and throws away a considerable portion of his power.”—E., p. 104.
This quotation brings us to another mode of investigation, that of asking questions, which Froebel was not likely to miss.
“The child, your child, ye fathers, follows you wherever you go. Do not harshly repel him. Show no impatience about his ever-recurring questions. Every harshly repelling word crushes a bud of his tree of life.… Question upon question comes from the lips of the boy thirsting for knowledge—How? Why? When? What for? and every satisfactory answer opens to him a new world.”—E., p. 86.
Professor O’Shea has an interesting section on what he calls “The Sense of Location,” which he says is “at the bottom of one of the most interesting and important phenomena of adjustment—the questioning activity.” So it may be worth while to notice that Froebel, whom the Professor has dismissed with one slighting reference, has been beforehand with him here, and has dealt with this same early beginning in one of his earliest Mother Songs, viz. “It’s all Gone,” where he says to the mother:
“How can the child understand that anything is “all gone,” yet he must see sense in it or he will not be satisfied. What he saw just now is there no longer, what was above is below, what was there has vanished.”—M., p. 18.
Questioning implies language, but Froebel has no language instinct. He does, however, call speech immediate (unmittelbar), usually translated “innate,” and he does say that because others talk to him, the child’s capacity for speech will develop of necessity and will break forth spontaneously.