But, in the case of the boy a little older, though still only seven or eight, Froebel does distinctly differentiate, giving the definition of play already quoted, “spontaneous expression and practice of every kind,” and saying of work, that:
“Boys of this age should have definite domestic occupations, indeed they could be actually instructed by mechanics and farmers as has already been done by many a father with active natural insight. Boys of a somewhat advanced age should be often placed in a position to accomplish something with their own hands and their own judgment … should devote daily at least one or two hours to an occupation with outward results … after such a refreshing work bath, I cannot better designate it, the mind goes with new life to its intellectual employments.”—E., p. 236.
Of the infant, Froebel writes:
“At this stage of development the man-to-be (dem erschienenen werdenden Menschen) uses his body, his senses, his limbs, entirely for that use, practice and exercise, not at all for its results, to which he is quite indifferent, or, to speak more correctly, of which he has as yet no idea. Out of this comes what begins at this stage, the child’s play with his limbs; with his hands, fingers, lips, tongue and feet, and also with the movements of his eyes and of his face.”—E., p. 48.
Of the older child Froebel very distinctly insists that he wants more than the activity, that he wants outward result. But the result of which he speaks is one which Groos himself would not disallow. It is only the outward product of the impulse which has been gratified, a result which is present to the mind of the older child, while to the infant no such consciousness is possible.
“What at an earlier stage of childhood was action for the sake of the activity, is now, in the boy, activity for the sake of the visible result; the child’s instinct of activity has developed into an instinct for shaping or giving form, and herein lies the solution of the whole outer life or outer manifestation of boy life at this stage.”—E., p. 99.
Inquiring into the kind of pleasure derived from play, Groos finds that it rests primarily on the satisfaction of inborn impulses, which press for discharge, and he gives three special “inborn necessities which ground our pleasure in play—namely, the exercise of attention, the demand to be an efficient cause, and imagination.”
As to attention, he suggests that it lends a meaning to the vague idea of a general need for activity, speaking of “the pitiable condition of boredom” if opportunity is withheld.
Froebel, of course, has much to say about the instinct of activity, or, as he usually calls it in “The First Action of a Child,” the instinct of employment (Beschäftigungstrieb), which is noticeable “even when the so-called three months’ slumber has just ended.” He, too, frequently refers to “the ennui and pernicious lack of occupation,” to the “mischievous idleness which results from our not satisfying or misdirecting the natural longing for activity inherent in all children.” It is because Froebel’s thoughts always run on conscious revelation of the self within as the explanation of human life, that he makes so much of “the child’s instinct to employ itself” (Triebe des Kindes, sich zu beschäftigen). This also explains how so much that he says corresponds with what Groos brings forward with regard to “the joy in being a cause,” and its modifications. These modifications are (a) pleasure in the mere possession of power, (b) emulation, when a model is copied, and (c) in the case of imitative competition there is pleasure in surpassing others as well as the enjoyment of success resulting from that pleasure of overcoming difficulties which comes under the combative instinct.
Froebel is warning parents that they must provide for their children opportunity for the exercise of the impulse to formative activity by letting them help, even if their help is really a hindrance, and he says: