Froebel as a pioneer in modern psychology

by E. R. Murray

“Hence it is so very important to rouse at least the germs of all this (the perceiving of harmony in sound and form and colour) early in a human being. If they do not develop and take shape as independent formations in life, they at least teach how to understand and recognize those of other people. This is life-gain enough. It makes a person’s life richer—richer by the lives of others. And how could our earthly life be long enough to form our being with equal perfection on all sides. We can only do it by knowing and respectfully recognizing in the mirror of the lives of others what we should like to carry out ourselves. And this is as it should be, for it is by means of knowledge, regard for and respectful recognition of others, that the whole of humanity ought to represent the whole of a God-like harmonious human being.”—M., p. 162.

In what he says of the Interest in Stories, Froebel again seems to show deeper insight than either Mr. Eby or Professor Kirkpatrick. Mr. McDougall does not touch upon the subject. It is still the outcome of the child’s instinctive desire to understand himself and his surroundings. Froebel says very truly that he can only understand others in proportion as he understands himself, and can only learn to understand himself, his own life, by comparing it with that of others. The desire for stories is “a striving, a longing, a demand of the mind” (ein Streben, eine Sehnsucht, eine Forderung des Gemüthes). For the little one, the simplest story of the mother bird feeding her young ones is a help to the understanding of his own life, makes his own life objective; the mother’s “effective story will hold up a looking-glass to the child, especially if it be told at the right time.” For the boy the story does the same and also answers to his instinctive demand not only to understand the present, but the past:

“It is the innermost desire and need of a vigorous, genuine boy to understand his own life, to get a knowledge of its nature, its origin and outcome. Only the study of the life of others can furnish such points of comparison with the life he himself has experienced. In these the boy, endowed with an active life of his own, can view the latter as in a mirror and learn to appreciate its value. This is the chief reason why boys are so fond of stories, legends and tales; the more so when these are told as having actually occurred at some time, or as lying within the reach of probability, for which, however, there are scarcely any limits for a boy.”—E., p. 305.

“The existence of the present teaches him the existence of the past. That, which was before he was, he would know; he would know the reason, the past cause of what now is. Who fails to remember the keen desire that filled his heart when he beheld old walls, and towers, ruins, monuments and columns on hill and the roadside—to hear others give accounts of these things, their times and causes … thus is developed the desire and craving for tales, legends, for all kinds of stories, and later for historical accounts.”—E., p. 115.

Even the fairy story seems to have found its legitimate place under the same heading, the instinct for investigation. Froebel sees that it covers for the little child the ground occupied by myth in the primitive consciousness. It explains the otherwise inexplicable.

“Even the present in which the boy lives still contains much that at this period of development he cannot interpret, and yet would like to interpret; much that seems to him dumb, and which he would fain have speak; … and thus there is developed in him the intense desire for fables and fairy tales which impart language and reason to speechless things—the one within, the other beyond the limits of human relations. Surely all must have noticed this if they have given more than superficial attention to the life of boys at this age. Similarly, they must have noticed that if the boy’s desire is not gratified by those around him, he will spontaneously hit upon the invention and presentation of fairy tales, and either work them out in his own mind or entertain his companions with them. These fairy tales and stories will then very clearly reveal to the observer what is going on in the innermost mind of the boy, though doubtless the latter may not himself be conscious of it.”—E., p. 116.

“The child, like the man, would like to learn the significance of what happens around him. This is the foundation of the Greek choruses, especially in tragedy. This, too, is the foundation of very many productions in the realms of legends and fairy tales, and is indeed the cause of many phenomena in actual history. This is the result of the deeply-rooted consciousness, the deeply slumbering premonition of being surrounded by that which is higher and more conscious than ourselves.”—P., p. 146.

The outcome of the instinct of construction, which is also so closely connected with the instinct of investigation, is that “sense of power” which is self-consciousness. Without this there can be no self-determination, but, says Froebel, “the sense of power must precede its cultivation.” With this growing personality, too, Froebel connects what is called the instinct of Acquisition, which begins when the little child “painfully secures his bit of straw,” and the boy of six to eight shows “the tendency to appropriate what he finds in the darkness of cave and forest.”

“The same tendency that urges the boy to seek knowledge on the mountain and in the valley, attracts and holds him to the plain. Here he makes a garden, there he represents the course of the river, and studies the effect of the presence of water … here he has dammed up the water to form a pool.… He is particularly fond of busying himself with clear running water and with plastic materials. In these the boy who seeks self-knowledge beholds his soul as in a mirror. These employments are to him an element of his life, for now, because of a previously acquired sense of power he seeks to control and master new material. Everything must submit to his constructive instinct; there in that heap of earth he digs a cellar and on it he places a garden and a bench. Boards, branches and poles must be made into a hut, the deep, fresh snow must be rolled up to form the walls and ramparts of a fort, and the rough stones on the hill are heaped together to form a castle.… And thus each one soon forms for himself his own world; for the feeling of his own power requires and conditions also the possession of his own space and his own material belonging exclusively to him. Whether his kingdom, his province, his estate, as it were, be a corner of the yard, or of the house, or whether it be the space of a box, the human being must have at this stage an external point to which he refers all his activities, and this is best chosen and provided by himself.”—E., p. 106.

And here, just when he is emphasizing the fast developing consciousness of self, with its demand for its own space and its own material, Froebel brings out the strength of the social instinct in boyhood. It is here that he points out that this effort to construct has a uniting, not a separating, tendency. Continuous with the last quotation comes: