-conscious humanity.
Stopford Brooke points out that Browning's Caliban, though almost brute,
shows himself human, in that, besides thinking out his natural religion,
he also dramatises and creates, "falls to make something."

'Tis solace making baubles, ay, and sport.
Tasteth, himself, no finer good i' the world
Than trying what to do with wit and strength--

What does a child gain from his ceaseless attempts at making? Froebel's
answer was that intellectually, through making he gains ideas, which,
received in words, remain mere words. "To learn through life and action
is more developing than to learn through words: expression in plastic
material, united with thought and speech, is far more developing than
mere repetition of words." Morally, it is through impressing himself on
his surroundings, that the child reaches the human attributes of
self-consciousness and self-control. One of the most important passages
Froebel ever wrote is this:

"The deepest craving of the child's life is to see itself mirrored in
some external object. Through such reflection, he learns to know his own
activity, its essence, direction and aim, and learns to determine his
activity in accordance with outer things. Such mirroring of the inner
life is essential, for through it the child comes to self-consciousness,
and learns to order, determine and master himself."

It is from the point of view of expression alone that Froebel regards
Art, and drawing, he takes to be "the first revelation of the creative
power within the child." The very earliest drawing to which he refers is
what he calls "sketching the object on itself," that is, the tracing
round the outlines of things, whereby the child learns form by
co-ordinating sight and motor perceptions, a stage on which Dr.
Montessori has also laid much stress. Besides noting how children draw
"round scissors and boxes, leaves and twigs, their own hands, and even
shadows," he sees that from experimentation with any pointed stick or
scrap of red stone or chalk, may come what Mr. E. Cooke called a
language of line, and now "the horse of lines, the man of lines" will
give much pleasure. After this it is true that "whatever a child knows
he will put into his drawing," and the teacher's business is to see that
he has abundant perceptions and images to express.

Another kind of drawing which children seem to find for themselves is
what they call making patterns. Out of this came the old-fashione