It is in one of his later papers[56] that Froebel generalizes and states very plainly how everything is developed under the influence of its environment.
“Taking Nature as our guide, let us endeavour to find the essential nature of material objects and the conditions under which this develops, for the process of development shows the essence of the developing object.
“Firstly, each thing and each object manifesting existence and life, develops itself in accordance with the highest and simplest, the general laws of life. Thus everything manifests these laws and their primeval cause.
“Secondly, each thing and each object in Nature develops itself according to its own individuality and the laws of its being.
“Thirdly, everything in Nature develops itself under the collective influence of all things. If any object seems to be withdrawn from this collective influence, such withdrawal is only mediate.…
“In Nature, and in everything, all things develop as members of the world-whole, the universal life, as members of a whole, each perfect in its kind, because each, while standing in the centre of the collective influence streaming upwards and inwards—nay, in a certain sense, as the receiver, yielding itself to this influence—yet also acts (as assimilative and formative) and develops itself, faithful to the indwelling laws of life universal and particular. We must see clearly the conditions of perfect development in Nature, and then employ them in human life. Thus only can we help man to attain, upon the plane of human development—which means spiritual development—a degree of perfection corresponding to that which the forms and types of Nature show upon the plane of physical development.”—P., p. 196.
When child development is in question, far from minimising, as he is supposed to do, the importance of environment, parents and teachers are told:
“We must hold fast for consideration in life this fact, that in the spontaneous occupation and playing of the child, not the germ only, but the growing point of his life also, is formed in union with his surroundings, and under their silent unremarked influence (im Vereine mit der Umgebung und unter deren stillen unbemerkten Einwirkung).”—P., p. 108.
Or, again:
“As the new-born child, like a ripe grain of seed dropped from the mother plant has life in itself, and as it spontaneously develops life in progressive connection with the common life whole; so activity and action are the first phenomena of his awakening life. This activity bears the impress of what is innermost, it is an inner activity whose purpose is manifestation of the inner through the outer, and, as leading up to this, devoted to consideration of and working with the outer to penetrating the outer and overcoming hindrances as such.”—P., p. 23.