of choice by uttering cries of fright, pain, and anger, as it shrinks back, instead of throwing itself forward into nature. If the cruel thing is repeated, the nerves are paralyzed, or at least rendered morbid, especially when rude, untender handling outrages the sense of touch. When rough and discordant sounds assail the ear, or too sharply salient a light the eye, these organs wiH be injured, and may be rendered useless for life. The neglected and maltreated child is dull of sense and lifeless, or morbidly impulsive, possibly savagely cruel and cunning, in sheer self-defense. The pure element and first condition of perfect growth is the joy that responds to the electric touch of love. INSTINCT OF MOTION-PLAYING. Underlying and outmeasuring all this delicate development of the organs of the five senses, is the whole body's instinct of motion, which is the primal action of will. The perfectly healthy body of a little child, when it is awake, is always in motion-more or less intentionally. When asleep, there is the circulation of the blood, and pulsation of the solids of the body, corresponding to the act of breathing, which is involuntary; and any interruption of these produces disease-their suspension, death. But the motion which makes the limbs agile, and the whole body elastic, and gradually to become an obedient servant, is voluntary, intentional, and can be helped by that sympathetic action of others, which we call playing with the child. Fræbel's rich suggestions on this play are contained in his mother's cossetting songs; and I am glad to tell you that two English ladies, a poet and a musician, have translated and set to music this unique book; and that just now it has been published by Wilkie, Wood & Co., in London. It suggests all kinds of little gymnastics of the hands, fingers, feet, toes, and legs, for these are the child's first playthings; and also the first symbols of intelligent communication, giving the core and significance to all languages. I think that a baby never begins to play, in the first instance, but responds to the mother and nurse's play, and learns thereby its various members and their powers and uses; and when at last it jumps, runs, walks, by itself, which it cannot begin to do without the help of others, it is prepared to say I, with a clear sense of individuality. In analyzing the process of a child's learning to walk, we see most clearly the characteristic difference between the human person and the animals below man in the scale of relation. The little chicken runs about of itself as soon as it is out of the shell; but the human child, even after all its limbs are grown, and though he has been moving himself on all fours by means of the floor, and supporting himself by means of the furniture to which he clings, does not walk. He will only stand alone, unsupported, when he sees that there are guarding arms round about him, all ready to catch him if he should fall. He seems to know instinctively, that all the force of the earth's gravitation is against him. He does not know that he may balance it by his personal power. His body weighs upon his soul like a mountain, precisely because he is intelligent of it as an object, loves it as a means of pleasure, and dreads its power of giving pain to him. The little darling stands, perhaps between the knees of his father, whose arms are round about him; the mother opens her loving arms to receive him, and calls him to her embrace; the way is short between, and three steps will be sufficient, but where is the courageous faith to say to this mountain of a body, "be removed to another place”? It is not in himself; he cannot produce it any more than he can take himself up by his own ears. It is in the mother; for it is she, not he, who has the knowledge of the yet unexerted power which is flowing into the child from the Creator. Only by the electric touch of her faith in him does his faith in himself flash out in answer to her look and voice of cheer, and he rushes to her arms. It is the doing of the deed which gives to himself the knowledge of the power that is in him. He repeats it again and again, seeming to wish to be more and more certain of his being the cause of so great effect. Thus cause and effect are discriminated, and "to him that hath" a sense of individuality "shall be given, for evermore, a growing power over the body, to which no measure can be stated. Even on the vulgar plane of the professional tumbler, a man's power over his body seems sometimes to be absolute and miraculous. But the annals of heroism and martyrdom are full of facts that go to prove to all who consider them profoundly, that the immaterial soul is sovereign, when, by recognizing all its relations, it subjects the individual to the universal, and becomes thereby entirely spiritual (which is man reciprocating with God; becoming more and more conscious for ever). From what has been said of the soul's taking possession of the body and its several organs, by exercising the functions of tasting, hearing, seeing, smelling, touching, grasping, moving the limbs, and at last taking up the whole body into itself in the act of walking, we see that it is all done, even the last, by virtue of the social nature. Fræbel took his clue from this fact, a primal one, and never let it go, and it is of the greatest importance that it be understood clearly, that conscious individuality, which gives the sense of free personality, the starting point, as it were, of intelligent will, is perfectly consistent with and even dependent on the simultaneous development of the social principle in all its purity and power. We see a sad negative proof of this in asylums for infants abandoned by their mothers, or given up by them through stress of poverty. There is one of these in New York city, into which are received poor little things in the first weeks of their existence. Everything is done for their bodily comfort which the general human kindness can devise. They have clean, warm cradles and clothes, good milk, in short everything but that caressing motherly play, which goes from the personal heart to the personal heart. That is the one thing general charity cannot supply; it is the personal gift of God to the mother for her child, and none but she can be the sufficient medium of it, and therefore, undoubtedly it is, that almost all new-born children in foundling hospitals die; or, if they sur vive, are found to be feeble-minded or idiotic. They seem to sink into their animal natures, and belie the legend, man, written on their brows, showing none of that beautiful fearlessness and courageous affectionate ness that characterize the heartily welcomed, healthy, well-cared-for human infant. On the contrary, they show a dreary apathy, morbid fearfulness, or a belligerent self-defense, anticipative of other forms of the cruel neglect which has been their dreary experience. PLAYTHINGS-FROEBEL'S FIRST GIFT. Taking a hint from observations of this kind, together with the bitter experiences of his own childhood, Fræbel supplied to the mother or nurse some playthings for the baby, which might continue to improve the various organs of its body by making the exercise of their functions a social delight. What is called the first gift he proposes should be used in the nursery first. It consists of six soft balls, not too large to be grasped by a little hand, and the use of which in the nursery is suggested by a little first book for mothers, that has been translated from Jacob's Le jardin des Enfans. I think it is important for the Kindergartner to know what Froebel thought could be done for the development of the infant in the nursery, since if it has not been done there, she must contrive to remedy the evil in the Kindergartner. You will bear with me, therefore, if I go quite into the minutiae of this matter. It will open your eyes to observe delicately, as Fræbel did. He proposed that the red ball should be first presented. He had observed that a bright light concentrated, as in a candle, first excited the organ of sight and stimulated its action. Hence he inferred that a bright color would do the same, a neutral tint would not be seen at all probably. The red ball is not quite so salient and exciting as the light of a candle, but on that account it can be gazed at longer without producing a painful reaction. The child will have a pleasure in grasping it, and will probably carry it to its lips; but, as it is woolen, it will not be especially agreeable to the delicate organ of taste. It will all the more be looked at, therefore, and give the impression of red. Fræbel proposes that it shall be called the red ball, in order that the impression of the word red on the ear shall blend in memory with the impression of the color on the eye. As long as the child seems amused with the red ball, he would not have another color introduced, because he thought it took time for the eye to get a clear and strong impression of one color, and this should be done before it was tried with a contrasted impression. But by and by the blue ball, as the greatest contrast, may be given and named, and all the little plays suggested in the mother's book be repeated with the blue ball; and then the yellow ball should be given with its name; and then the three be given together, and the baby be asked to choose the blue, or red, or yellow one. By attaching a string to them and whirling them, or letting the infant do so, it is surprising how long the child will amuse itself with these balls, and what pleasure colors alone give, especially when combined with motion. The secondary colors may afterwards be added to the treasury for the eye, with the same carefulness to secure completeness and distinctness of impression, and to associate the color with the word that names it; for language, the special organ of social communion, should be addressed to the child from the first, though its complete attainment and use is the crown of all education. Smiles and sounds, proceeding out of the mouth, are the first languages, and begin to fix the little child's eyes and attention upon the mouth of the mother, from which issue the tones that are sweetest to hear, and especially when in musical cadence. But the child understands the words addressed to him long before he himself begins to articulate; for language is no function of the individual, but only of the consciously social being, yearning to find himself in another. There is a reciprocal communication between infants and adults that precedes the difficult art of articulation. This we call the natural language, and it is common to all nations, being mutually intelligible, as is proved by deaf mutes from remote countries who understand each other at once. But this natural language has a very narrow scope. It serves to communicate instinctive wants of body and heart, but does not serve the fine purposes of intellectual communication, nor minister any considerable intellectual development. These signs are very general, while every word in its origin has represented a particular object in nature. In analyzing any language we find that the names given to the body and its members, and to the actions and facts of life, without which no human society can exist, are the nucleus or central words which characterize it, and from which the whole national rhetoric is derived. Hence there is a value for the mind in associating the words and action of even such a little play as "here we go up, up, up, and here we go down, down, down, and here we go backwards and forwards, and here we go round, round, round," with other rhymes and plays of an analogous character that are found wherever there are mothers and children. MOVEMENT PLAYS. We have observed that the moment of first accomplishing the feat of running alone, seemed to be that of the child's beginning to realize himself to be a person, but that, even in this act, he was dependent upon his mother; that his bodily independence was the gift of her faith in that within him, which is essentially superior to the body and can command it as instrumentality. To make it instrumentality is, more and more, a delight to the child, in which his mother sympathizes; and by this sympathy aids him. All his plays involve exercise of the power of commanding his body. As soon as a child can move it from place to place, his desire to exercise his power on nature outside of himself increases, and he is prompted to measure strength with other children. If children were mere individuals they would merely quarrel, as Hobbes says; but being social beings also, they tend to unite forces and aid one another to compass desired ends. By so doing they rise to a greater sense of life, and brotherly love is evolved. But in the development of the social life, the more developed and cultivated elder must come in, to keep both parties steady to some object outside of themselves, which it takes their union to reach. Children can be taught to play together by engaging their powers of imitation and addressing their fancy. Every mother knows that in the first opening of children's social life their bodily energies are stimulated to such a degree that it is quite as much as she or one nurse can do to tend two or three children together; and by the time they are three years old, the family nursery becomes too narrow a sphere for them. It is then that they are to be received into a Kindergarten, whose very numbers will check the energy of activity a little, by presenting a greater variety of objects to be contemplated; and because social action must be orderly and rythmical, in order to be agreeable. This a properly prepared Kin dergartner knows, and by her sympathetic influence and power over the childish imagination, she will bring gradually all the laws of the child's being to the conscious understanding, beginning with this rythmical one at the center. The movement plays which Fræbel invented, express, in dramatic form, some simple fact of nature or some childish fancy, for which he gives, as accompaniment, a descriptive song set to a simple melody. The children learn both to recite and to sing the words of the song, and then the movements of the play. To them the whole reason for the play seems to be the delight it gives, the exhilaration of body, the amusement of mind. But the Kindergartner knows that it serves higher ends, and that it is at least always a lesson in order, enabling them to begin to enact upon earth "Heaven's first law." Do not say I am making too solemn a matter of these movement plays to the Kindergartner. Unless she remembers that this very serious aim underlies every play which she conducts, she will not do justice to the children. Law or order is one and the same thing with beauty; and play is nothing if it is not beautiful. When she insists upon the children governing themselves, so far as to keep their proper places in relation to each other; to forbear exerting undue force, and to seek to give the necessary aid to others by exerting sufficient force, the beautiful result justifies her will to the minds of the children, and commands their ready obedience. She must call forth by addressing it the sense of personal responsibility in each child; and this, if done tenderly and with faith, it is by no means difficult to do. The reward to the children is instant in the success of the play, and therefore not thought of as reward of merit. It is a form of obedience that really elevates the little one higher in the scale of being as an individual, without endangering the reaction of pride and self-conceit; for self is swallowed up in social joy. When I was in Germany I went to those Kindergartens taught by Frœbel's own pupils, and I found that in these the movement plays were the most prominent feature of the practice. More than one was played in the course of the three or four hours, and especially when the session was as much as four hours. It was done in a very exact though not constrained manner, and much stress seemed to be laid upon every part. The singing was not done by three or four, but all the children were encouraged to sing. Often the little timider ones were called on to repeat the rhyme alone, without singing it, and then to sing it alone with the teacher. Thus the stronger and abler were exercised (as they must be so much in real life) in waiting, sympathetically, for the weaker. A great deal of care was also exercised in regard to the form and character of the play itself. Those of Fræbel's own suggestion and invention were the preferred ones. They consisted in imitating, in rather a free and fanciful manner, the actions of the gentler animals, hares and rabbits, fishes, becs, and birds. There were plays in which children impersonated animals, evidently for the purpose of awakening their sympathies and eliciting their kindness towards them. Many of the labors of human beings, common mechanics, such as cooperage, the work of the farmer, that of the miller, trundling the wheelbarrow, sawing wood, &c., were put into form |