observation of nature, especially from plants and trees, dated from the
solitary rambles in the Forest.

As the cultivator creates nothing in the trees and plants, so the
educator creates nothing in the children,--he merely superintends the
development of inborn faculties. So far Froebel agrees with Pestalozzi;
but in one respect he was beyond him, and has thus become, according
to Michelet, the greatest of educational reformers. Pestalozzi said
that the faculties were developed by exercise. Froebel added that
the function of education was to develop the faculties by arousing
_voluntary activity_. Action proceeding from inner impulse
(_Selbsthäligkeit_) was the one thing needful, and here Froebel as
usual refers to God: "God's every thought is a work, a deed." As
God is the Creator, so must man be a creator also. Living acting,
conceiving,--these must form a triple cord within every child of man,
though the sound now of this string, now of that may preponderate, and
then again of two together.

Pestalozzi held that the child belonged to the family; Fichte on the
other hand, claimed it for society and the State. Froebel, whose mind,
like that of Frederick Maurice, delighted in harmonizing apparent
contradictions, and who taught that "all progress lay through opposites
to their reconciliations," maintained that the child belonged both to
the family and to society, and he would therefore have children spend
some hours of the day in a common life and in well-organized common
employments. These assemblies of children he would not call schools, for
the children in them ought not to be old enough for schooling. So he
invented the term _Kindergarten_, garden of children, and called the
superintendents "children's gardeners."--R.H. QUICK, in _Encyclopaedia
Britannica_, xix edition.