Mothers who would be and can be the best kindergartners should therefore none the less study Frœbel's science carefully and humbly.
All children are alike in having the threefold nature. I wish I had time to tell of a hundred kindergarten experiences that have come under my observation, in which the respectful, genial kindergartner has assisted in some moral development, whose occasion was very trivial to the superficial observer.
Herein lies the importance of prefacing the school with the kindergarten, that in it all the virtues and Christian graces can be unconsciously practised on the plane of play, which is the moral gymnasium of mankind.
This is the meaning of Solomon's wise saying, "Train up a child in the way he should go, and when he is old he will not depart from it." But the nature, which is the image of the Divine Nature, cannot be mechanically, but must be morally and spiritually, trained; that is, addressed and treated as free agency.
The salutation of the Brahmin to his youthful son, no less than to his equal in age, is "to the divinity which is in you I do homage." This is one of the gleams of light from the lost Paradise in which man was created, and to which we hope the kindergarten is to more than restore the race, when it shall have become the universally applied principle of culture for human beings. (See Appendix, [Note F].)
GLIMPSES OF PSYCHOLOGY.
SPIRITUALITY.
We speak of the necessity of studying childhood; we call children living books of nature, and say that we cannot succeed in educating them (which is putting them into a harmonious activity of all their powers), without knowledge, such as a musical performer has of his instrument, of these "harps of a thousand strings."
This fundamental knowledge of children is not chiefly a discrimination of their individualities; though observation of these will be made by a consummate kindergartner; it is a knowledge of what is universal in children, essential to the constitution of human beings.