stages of growth, their appropriate activities, and the stimuli
necessary to evoke them. Always he bears in mind that "interference with
a growing creature is a hazardous business," and takes as his motto
"When in doubt, refrain."

To discover the natural activities of the child, the biologist relies
upon, first, observation of the child himself, secondly, upon his
knowledge of the nervous system, and thirdly, upon his knowledge of the
past history of the race. From these he comes to a very pertinent
conclusion, viz. "The general outcome of this is that the safe way of
educating children is by means of Play," play being defined as "the
natural manifestation of the child's activities; systematic in that it
follows the lines of physiological development, but without the hard
and fast routine of the time-table."[7]

[Footnote 7: It is in this connection that the Kindergarten is
stigmatised as "pretty employments devised by adults and imposed at set
times by authority," an opinion evidently gained from the way in which
the term has been misused in a type of Infant School now fast
disappearing.]

It is easy to show that although Froebel was pre-Darwinian, he had been
in close touch with scientists who were working at theories of
development, and that he was largely influenced by Krause, who applied
the idea of organic development to all departments of social science. It
was because Froebel was himself, even in 1826, the Biologist Educator
desiring to break with preconceived ideas and traditions that he wished
one of his pupils had been able to "call your work by its proper name,
and so make evident the real nature of the new spirit you have
introduced."[8]