gments.

[34] "What must we furnish to the child after the
self-contained ball, after the hard sphere, every part of
which is similar, and after the single solid cube? It must be
something firm which can be easily pulled apart by the
child's strength, and just as easily put together again.
Therefore it must also be something which is simple, yet
multiform; and what should this be, after what we have
perceived up to this point, and in view of what the
surrounding world affords us, but the cube divided through
the centre by three planes perpendicular to one
another."--Froebel's _Pedagogics_.

[35] "_Unmaking_ is as important as _making_ to the child. His
destructive energy is as essential to him as his power of
construction." (W. T. Harris.)

"The child wishes to discover the inside of the thing, being
urged to this by an impulse he has not given to himself,--the
impulse which, rightly recognized and rightly guided, seeks
to know God in all his works.... Where can the child seek for
satisfaction of his impulse to research but from the thing
itself?"--Friedrich Froebel, _Education of Man_.

In the divided cube, however, he can gratify his desires, and at the
same time possess the joy of doing right and destroying nothing, for
the eight little blocks can be quickly united into their original
form, and also into many other pleasing little forms, each one
complete in itself, so that every analysis ends as it should, in
synthesis.

Froebel calls this gift specifically "the children's delight," and
indeed it is, responding so generously to their spontaneous activity,
while at the same time it suits their small capabilities, for the
possibilities of an object used for form study should not be too
varied. "It must be suggestive through its limitations," says Miss
Blow, "for the young mind may be as easily crushed by excess as by
defect."[36]

[36] "An element which slumbers like a viper under roses is
that which is now so frequently provided as a plaything for
children; it is, in a word, the already too complex and
ornate, too finished toy. The child can begin no new thing
with it, cannot produce enough variety by means of it; his
power of creative imagination, his power of giving outward
form to his own idea, are thus actually deadened."--Froebel's
_Pedagogics_.

Froebel was left motherless at a very early