ctuating force is the presentation of
symbols, largely mathematical, corresponding to the essential traits
of the Absolute. When these are presented to the child, the Whole,
or perfection, sleeping within him, is awakened. A single example
may indicate the method. Every one familiar with the kindergarten is
acquainted with the circle in which the children gather. It is not
enough that the circle is a convenient way of grouping the children. It
must be used "because it is a symbol of the collective life of mankind
in general." Froebel's recognition of the significance of the native
capacities of children, his loving attention to them, and his influence
in inducing others to study them, represent perhaps the most effective
single force in modern educational theory in effecting widespread
acknowledgment of the idea of growth. But his formulation of the notion
of development and his organization of devices for promoting it were
badly hampered by the fact that he conceived development to be the
unfolding of a ready-made latent principle. He failed to see that
growing is growth, developing is development, and consequently placed
the emphasis upon the completed product. Thus he set up a goal which
meant the arrest of growth, and a criterion which is not applicable to
immediate guidance of powers, save through translation into abstract and
symbolic formulae.

A remote goal of complete unfoldedness is, in technical philosophic
language, transcendental. That is, it is something apart from direct
experience and perception. So far as experience is concerned, it is
empty; it represents a vague sentimental aspiration rather than anything
which can be intelligently grasped and stated. This vagueness must be
compensated for by some a priori formula. Froebel made the connection
between the concrete facts of experience and the transcendental ideal of
development by regarding the former as symbols of the latter. To
regard known things as symbols, according to some arbitrary a priori
formula--and every a priori conception must be arbitrary--is an
invitation to romantic fancy to seize upon any analogies which appeal
to it and treat them as laws. After the scheme of symbolism has been
settled upon, some definite technique must be invented by which the
inner meaning of the sensible symbols used may be brought home to
children. Adults being the formulators of the symbolism are naturally
the authors and controllers of the technique. The result