532. Love for Children.—Frœbel, and this is perhaps his best quality, loves children tenderly. He speaks of them with touching accents, but he does not fail to mingle with his affection for them his habitual symbolism. The child is not for him simply the little real being that he has under his eyes. He sees him through mystic veils, so to speak, and, as it were, crowned with an aureole:—
“Let the child always appear to us as a living pledge of the presence, of the goodness, and of the love of God.”
533. Unity of Education.—Frœbel is always bitterly complaining of the fragmentary and scrappy character of the ordinary education. His dream was to introduce unity into it. In this respect he separates himself squarely from Rousseau. The different stages of life form an uninterrupted chain. “Let life be considered as being but one in all its phases, as forming one complete whole.”
534. Different Stages in the Development of Man.—Frœbel, in The Education of Man, considers in succession the different periods of life. The first three chapters treat of the first stages of development in man,—the nurseling, the child, the young boy. We here find pages full of charm, upon the education of the child by the mother, and upon the progress of the faculties; but pretentious considerations and whimsical interpretations too often come to spoil the psychology of Frœbel.
“The child,” he says, “scarcely knows whether he loves the flowers for themselves, for the delight which they give him, ... or for the vague intuition which they give him of the Creator.”
Farther on he speaks of introducing the child to colors, and from this exercise he at once draws moral conclusions: the child loves colors because he comes by means of them “to the knowledge of an interior unity.”
535. The Naturalism of Frœbel.—The elements of education according to Frœbel are, with religion; the artistic studies, mathematics, language, and, above all, nature. “Teachers should scarcely let a week pass without taking to the country a part of their pupils. They shall not drive them before them like a flock of sheep.... They shall walk with them as a father among his children, or a brother among his brothers, in making them observe and admire the varied richness which nature displays to their eyes at each season of the year.”
536. New Experiments in Teaching.—The institute of Keilhau did not long prosper. In 1829 it was necessary to close it for lack of pupils. Frœbel lacked the practical qualities of an administrator. In 1831 he tried in vain to open a new school at Wartensee in Switzerland. The attacks of the clerical party obliged him to abandon his project. After several other attempts he was elected director of an orphan asylum at Burgdorf; and it was there that he resolved to devote his pedagogical efforts to the education of early childhood.
The little village of Burgdorf had the honor, within a period of thirty-five years, of offering an asylum to Pestalozzi and to Frœbel, and of being the scene of their experiments in pedagogy.