“Deeper insight will be gained into the meaning and importance of the child’s actions and outward manifestations and also into the way of dealing with children which has been evolved naturally by the mother led by her pure maternal instinct.”—L., p. 248.
As to the early beginnings of the instinct in the little girl we can find just a few references, sufficient to show that it did not pass unnoticed, and it seems here legitimate to say that “the girl anticipates her destiny,” as Froebel does in speaking of doll-play, though certainly this does not cover all such play:
“The joy of the child in its doll has a far deeper human foundation than is generally supposed—a foundation by no means resting merely in the external resemblance … the girl anticipates her destiny—to foster Nature and life.”—P., p. 93.
The boy’s destiny is “to penetrate and rule Nature,” so in the “Mother Songs” Froebel describes how the boy is “cowering that no sign of life in the chicken family may escape him, while the girl starts up, all her care of things stirred, in order to beckon or call the hen or cock not to forget their chickens.”—M., p. 143.
In all his writings, Froebel refers to how much he has learned from mothers: “It was in watching your clever mother-doings that I learnt.” But, as he says of himself, it was “a necessary part of me to be irresistibly driven to search out the ultimate or primary cause of every fact of life,” and so he writes:
“The natural mother does all this instinctively without instruction or direction; but this is not enough: it is needful that she should do it consciously, as a conscious being acting upon another which is growing into consciousness, and consciously tending toward the continuous development of the human being.”—E., p. 64.
“Motherly and womanly instinct does much of its own accord; but it often makes mistakes.”—L., p. 63.
“Women’s work in education must be based not upon natural instinct, so often perverted or misunderstood, but upon intelligent knowledge.… Some mothers level the taunt at me that I, a man, understanding nothing of a mother’s instinct, should dare to presume to instruct mothers in their dealings with their own children.… How could such a thought enter my head as to attempt anything against the course of Nature? My whole strength is exerted on the contrary, to the work of getting the natural instinct and its tendencies more rightly understood, and more acknowledged; so that women may follow its leadings as truly as possible aided by the higher light of intelligent comprehension, and yet at the same time in all freedom, and with complete individuality.”—L., p. 259.
So, in what he says of this last instinct, Froebel is faithful to what he has said of all human instincts.