Read Ebook: Froebel as a pioneer in modern psychology by Murray E R Elsie Riach

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The faculty psychology and the formal discipline theory that came from it, says Professor Horne, did not admit the possibility of training one faculty, e.g. perception, by training another, e.g. reason, "it was not the mind that was trained, but its faculties."

Instead of ready-made faculties Froebel recognizes possibilities, conditions, which will remain possibilities if the necessary stimulus is not forthcoming, for in noting how the mother talks to her infant, though she is obliged to confess that there can be no understanding of her words, he says the mother's instinctive action is right:

Elsewhere he asks:

And he speaks of how the mother appeals to the infant as

So even the infant is to think, and the progress is well described in the Mother Plays as

In a lecture given many years ago, Dr. Ward sought to drive home to teachers the futility of this hard and fast line between sense training and training to think. And there are some interesting parallels between Dr. Ward's metaphors here and Froebel's writing in "The Education of Man." Dr. Ward said:

It is in describing how the little child collects pebbles, twigs, leaves, etc., that Froebel writes:

The help we are told to give at first is merely to supply the child with a name, for "through the name the form is retained in memory and defined in thought." Later the mother is told to provide "encouragement and help, that the child may weave into a whole what he has found scattered and parted." As a type of the help considered necessary we have:

Froebel's theories, then, cannot be dismissed as based on "faculty psychology," since it seems clear that wherever he found them his views on mental analysis were very similar to those now generally accepted. It is more remarkable, however, that he should have modern views about Conation and Will.

WILL AND ITS EARLY MANIFESTATIONS

It is open to doubt whether any modern psychologist has yet given a better definition of fully developed Will than that given by Froebel eighty-seven years ago:

With this definition compare what Professor Stout has to say:

"In its most complex developments, mental activity takes the form of self-conscious and deliberate volition, in which the starting-point is the idea of an end to be attained, and the desire to attain it; and the goal is the realization of this end, by the production of a long series of changes in the external world ... it belongs to the essence of will, not merely to be directed towards an end, but to ideally anticipate this and consciously aim at it."

Between these two definitions the difference is in the omission in Froebel's definition of any mention of desire, and this is supplied a little later, when, having stated that "by school here is meant neither the schoolroom, nor school-keeping, but the conscious communication of knowledge for a definite purpose, and in definite connection," he ends up with:

Now Professor Stout's whole psychology is founded on his conception of mental activity. Towards the end of his second volume he says: "The reader is already familiar with my general doctrine. It has pervaded the whole treatment of psychological topics in this work. The aim of the present chapter is to present it in a more systematic form, and to guard it against objections. Our starting-point lies in the conception of mental activity as the direction of mental process towards an end."

It is distinctly significant, therefore, to find how closely Froebel's ideas on the subject resemble Professor Stout's conception of mental activity.

"Conscious process," writes Professor Stout, "is in every moment directed towards an end, whether this end be distinctly or vaguely recognized by the conscious subject, or not recognized at all."

Froebel writes:

The same idea, that conscious process is directed to an end, though there may be no consciousness of that end, is given in another passage, where Froebel is speaking of the need for satisfying a child's normal desire for playthings.

Of the earliest mental activity Professor Stout writes:

"In its earliest and simplest form, mental activity consists in those simple reactions which without being determined by any definite idea of an end to be realized, tend on the whole to the maintenance of immediate pleasure and the avoidance of immediate pain."

The movements of the organism at this earliest stage "seem primarily adapted to the conservation and furtherance of vital process in general."

Froebel speaks of the child's efforts:

He tells the mother that, in the first stages at least, the restlessness and tears of the infant will warn her of the presence of anything in his surroundings hurtful to his development, while his laughter and movements of pleasure will show "what according to the feeling of the child is suited to the undisturbed development of his life as an immature human being."

Mr. Stout goes on to say that such simple reactions are adapted "secondarily and by way of necessary corollary to the conservation and furtherance of conscious life." He tells us that: "The primary craving with which the education of the senses begins, so far as it does not involve such practical needs as that of food, may be described as a general craving for stimulation or excitement ... this conation being in the first instance in the highest degree indeterminate."

He writes to Madame Schmidt, the cousin for whose assistance he has begged in observing children:

And, in the Mother Songs, he says:

Froebel's views as to the nature both of early and of later mental activity then bear a strong resemblance to the modern view as stated by Professor Stout.

In searching Froebel's writings to find what he has to say about the stages lying between early mental activity and fully developed will, between what he calls "natural activity of the will, and true genuine firmness of will," it soon becomes clear that it is impossible to separate what is said about will development, from what is said about intellectual development. This is a natural consequence of Froebel's constant insistence on the unity of consciousness, and it is the position of modern psychology, whether written from the analytic or the genetic point of view. Mr. Irving King writes: "The functional point of view emphasizes first of all the intimate inter-relation of all forms of mental activity and the impossibility of describing any one aspect of consciousness except with reference to consciousness as a whole." Professor Stout, in his "Analytic Psychology," has a section entitled "Conation and Cognition developed co-incidentally," while Froebel says:

Froebel speaks of his projected institution at Helba as "fundamental,"

Professor Stout's account of how the unconscious mental activity of early childhood becomes transformed into the definite and conscious activity of fully developed will is, stated briefly, something to this effect. It is of the essence of conation to seek its own satisfaction, and this is only possible as the conation becomes definite. "Blind craving gives place to open-eyed desire," as the original conation tends to define itself. So "the gradual acquisition of knowledge through experience is but another expression for the process whereby the originally blind craving becomes more distinct and more differentiated." The grouping of cognitions is not produced by the conscious needs: "It is the way in which the conation itself grows and develops."

For this account we can find a wonderfully exact parallel in one of Froebel's less well-known papers, that on "Movement Plays."

This craving for outward representation, by satisfaction of which the child gains knowledge of the ends of his activity, is an exact equivalent of Stout's blind craving which gives place to open-eyed desire as it tends to define itself. Froebel's conclusion, that only as this unconscious or blind craving for action is satisfied does the child become "conscious of the nature, direction and ends of his own activity," is but another way of stating Professor Stout's conclusion, that the grouping of cognitions, which is the gradual acquirement of knowledge through experience, is "the way in which the conation itself grows and develops." So, cognition and conation are developed simultaneously, or, to repeat Froebel's own phrase, "Thought forms itself in action, and action resolves and clears itself in thought."

Professor Stout goes on to say that in this defining process one conation springs out of another, whereby as one conation is satisfied and so comes to an end, another becomes in its turn the end of activity. He takes as illustration the child learning to walk, saying, "The mental attitude of the child learning to walk is one of conscious endeavour. When he has become habituated to the act, he performs it without attending to his movements, his mind being fixed on the attainment of other ends." Froebel proceeds in the same way, using the very same example. He has already said that at first the child:

Now, in the paper on movement, he goes on:

Another passage runs:

To say that a conation tends to define itself is only to say that unconscious ends tend to be replaced by conscious ends, and we have seen that both Froebel and Professor Stout give unconsciousness or consciousness of the end, as the difference between earlier and later forms of mental activity. Professor Stout's conclusion is that "apart from the perpetual germination of one conation out of another, the characteristic features of the mental life of human beings would be inexplicable."

Now, to be conscious of one's ends or aims is, in a certain sense, to be self-conscious, so the transition from earlier to later forms of mental activity is practically the development of self-consciousness. It is interesting, therefore, to see that just as Professor Stout gives as his explanation of human life, the perpetual germination of one conation out of another, so Froebel gives as his explanation, his meaning of life, the gradual development of self-consciousness.

Self-consciousness, involving true volition, or self-determination, is to Froebel "the end of man, for which he first was planned." It is, as he constantly put it, man's "destination."

"Who amongst us," exclaims Professor Royce, "conceives himself in his uniqueness except as the remote goal of some ideal process of coming to himself and of awakening to the truth about his own life? Only an infinite process can show me who I am."

Froebel never loses sight of this. In his Autobiography he tells how he began "unwillingly" to write something in the album of a friend who was the owner of a beautiful farm, and he concludes: "Then my thoughts grew clear and I continued, 'Thou givest man bread; let my aim be to give man himself.'" That he verily believed that the gradual development of self-consciousness is the first task in the life of the child is abundantly evident. In the very beginning of his Mother Songs he tells the mother to give her child something to push against, "to bring the child to self-knowledge as soon as possible," and at the end he says, "When a child or human being has found himself and has firm hold over himself, he is ready to walk joyfully through life."

In "The First Action of a Child," Froebel writes:

A realization of what Sir Oliver Lodge calls "the universal struggle for self-manifestation and corporeal realization, which plays so large a part in all activity," underlies all that Froebel has to say of the progress from unconscious activity to self-conscious volition. His view of the Universe is exactly that tentatively suggested by Professor Lodge, viz. that something akin to this universal struggle "is exhibited in a region beyond and above what is ordinarily conceived of as 'Nature.' The process of evolution can be regarded as the gradual unfolding of the Divine Thought or Logos, throughout the universe, by the action of Spirit upon matter."

The whole universe is an expression of the Divine, but man alone can become conscious of his origin.

In a paper entitled "A Second Review of the Plays," which really deals chiefly with evolution, we read:

"We must see clearly the conditions of development in Nature and then employ them in life. Thus only can we raise man upon his own plane, that is, the spiritual plane, at least to such a degree of perfection as is shown on their plane by the types of Nature.

It was as clear to Froebel as to Professor Lloyd Morgan that the lower animals are kept from reaching self-consciousness by the definiteness of their instincts, but to Froebel as to Browning "in completed Man begins anew a tendency to God." Like Browning again, Froebel finds that man has "somewhat to cast off, somewhat to become," he, too, "finds Progress man's distinctive mark alone, not God's, and not the beasts'; God is, they are, man partly is, and wholly hopes to be."

"Man in his first period of life on earth is to be regarded while a child in three separate relations, which are united in themselves.

" As a child of Nature, that is according to his earthly and natural conditions and connections, and in this relation bound, chained, unconscious, subject to impulses .

" As a child of God, and in this relation as a free being, destined to self-consciousness.

And the beginning of all he finds in "The First Action of the Child." In the paper to which he gives this title Froebel writes:

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