of the playful child one has a factor whose value for mental initiative
it is hard to overestimate." Without this "passionately persistent
repetition," and without also the constant varying of apparently useless
activities, the organism, says Professor Royce, "would remain the prey
of the environment."

To Froebel, as we have seen, the human being is the climax of animal
evolution and the starting-point of psychical development. The lower
animal, he maintained, as all will now agree, is hindered by his
definite instincts, but the instincts or instinctive tendencies of the
human being are so undefined that there is room for spontaneity, for new
forms of conduct.

Professor Royce says that "a general view of the place which beings with
minds occupy in the physical world strongly suggests that their
organisms may especially have significance as places for the initiation
of more or less novel types of activity." And to Froebel the chief
significance of play lies in this spontaneity.

"Play is the highest phase of human development at this stage, because
it is spontaneous expression of what is within produced by an inner
necessity and impulse. Play is the most characteristic, most spiritual
manifestation of man at this stage, and, at the same time, is typical
of human life as a whole."

These various theories seem to reinforce rather than to contradict each
other, and it is more important to avoid running any to an extreme than
to differentiate between them. In the case of recapitulation, we must
certainly bear in mind Froebel's warning that the child "should be
treated as having in himself the present, past and future." So, as Dr.