all the noblest of all growing
things, men (that is, children), be cultivated in accordance with the
laws of their own being, of God and of Nature."

To one of his students he writes: "You remember well enough how hard we
worked and how we had to fight that we might elevate the Darmstadt
creche, or rather Infant School, by improved methods and organisation
until it became a true Kindergarten.... Now what was the outcome of all
this, even during my own stay at Darmstadt? Why, the fetters which
always cripple a creche or an Infant School, and which seem to cling
round its very name--these fetters were allowed to remain unbroken.
Every one was pleased with so faithful a mistress as yourself,... yet
they withheld from you the main condition of unimpeded development, that
of the freedom necessary to every young healthy and vigorous plant....
Is there really such importance underlying the mere name of a
system?--some one might ask. Yes, there is.... It is true that any one
watching your teaching would observe _a new spirit_ infused into it,
_expressing and fulfilling the child's own wants and desires._ You would
strike him as personally capable, but you would fail to strike him as
priestess of the idea which God has now called to life within man's
bosom, and of the struggle towards the realisation of that
idea--_education by development--the destined means of raising the whole
human race...._ No man can acquire fresh knowledge, even at a school,
beyond the measure which his own stage of development fits him to
receive.... Infant Schools are nothing but a contradiction of
child-nature. Little children especially those under school age, ought
not to be schooled and taught, what they need is opportunity for
development. This idea lies in the very name of a Kindergarten.... And
the name is absolutely necessary to describe the first education of
children."

For an actual definition of what Froebel meant by his Nursery School for
Little Children or Kindergarten, it is only fair to go to the founder
himself. He has left us two definitions or descriptions, one announced
shortly before the first Kindergarten was opened, which runs:

"An institution for the fostering of human life, through the cultivation
of the human instincts of activity, of investigation and of construction
in the child, as a member of the family, of the nation and of humanity;
an institution for the self-instruction, self-education and
self-cultivation of mankin