"Notice has now become observation, and observation leads to discrimination. He sees and is curious by nature, but it belongs to us to lead him to observe and inquire."
Emily Shirreff.
1. Froebel's second gift consists of a wooden sphere, cube, and cylinder, two inches in diameter (as now made), with rods and standards for revolution.[18]
2. In the first gift the child received objects of the same shape and size but of different colors, thus learning to separate color from form. In the second gift he receives unlike objects, and learns to distinguish them from each other by their individual peculiarities. The first gift suggests unity, and leads to the detection of resemblances; the second suggests variety or manifoldness, and emphasizes contrasts.
3. The most important characteristic of the gift is contrast of form, leading to the distinction of different objects. The mediation of contrasts here suggests the connection of all objects, however widely separated.
4. The purpose of the gift is to stimulate observation and comparison by presentation of striking contrasts, and to afford new bases for the classification of objects. Spencer says that any systematic ministrations to the perceptions ought to be based upon the general truth that in the development of every faculty markedly contrasted impressions are the first to be distinguished; that hence sounds greatly differing in loudness and pitch, colors very remote from each other, and substances widely removed in hardness or texture should be the first supplied; and that in each case the progression must be by slow degrees to impressions more nearly allied.[19]
5. The geometrical forms illustrated in this gift are:—
| { Sphere. | ||
| { Cube. | ||
| Solids. | { Cylinder. | |
| { Double Cone. | } Seen in motion. | |
| { Conoid. | } | |
| Planes. | { Circles. | |
| { Squares. | ||
6. The sphere and cube are sharply contrasting forms, and the cylinder illustrates the connecting link between the two, possessing characteristics of both.
"The cylinder is the first example Froebel gives of the intermediate transition—forms connecting opposites, which he explains as the very ground plan of Nature, and on which his fundamental law of contrasts and connection of contrasts, the law of all harmonious development and creative industry, is based."[20]