he cannot
work for a purpose other than the pleasure of the moment; without this
stimulus concentration is impossible. In the activities of this stage he
probably assimilates more actual matter than at any other period of his
life, and it is the same with his acquirements of skill. In happy
unconsciousness he gains knowledge of his own body and of its power, of
the external world, of his mother tongue and of his relations to other
people: he makes mistakes and commits faults, but these do not
necessarily cripple or incriminate him. He is not considered a social
outcast because he once kicked or bit, or because he threw his milk over
the table; he learns to balance and adjust his muscles on a seesaw, when
a fall on soft grass is a matter of little importance, and this is
better than waiting till he is compelled hastily to cross a river on a
narrow plank. It is all a kind of joyous rehearsal of life which we call
Play. We can force a child to passivity, to formal repetitions of
second-hand knowledge, to the acquisition of that for which he has no
apparent need, but we can never _educate_ him by these things. "Children
do not play because they are young, they have their youth that they may
play," as surely as they have their legs that they may walk.

_The second principle is therefore that the method of gaining experience
lies through Play, and that by this road we can best reach work_.

The third principle is the nature of the experience that a child seeks
to gain--the life he desires to live. How can we he sure that the
surroundings we provide and the activities we encourage are in accord
with children's needs?

Let us imagine a child of about five to six years of age, one of a
family, living in a small house to which a garden is attached; inside he
has the run of the house, but keeps his own toys, picture books and
collections of treasures. We will suppose that not being at school he is
free to arrange his own day, sometimes alone, and sometimes with other
children, or with his parents. What does he do?

He is interested in inanimate things, especially in using them, and so
he plays with his toys. He builds bricks, runs engines, solves simple
puzzle pictures, asks to work with his father's gardening tools, or his
mother's cooking utensils. He is interested in the life of the garden,
in the growing things, in the snail or spider he finds, in the cat, dog
or rabbit of the family; he wants to dig, water and feed these