and soul, and a body and character
steeled against every peril. "A child," he says, "who knows how to do
right in his own childish sphere, will grow naturally into an upright
manhood."

With regard to instruction, his view, briefly stated, is as follows: The
boy whose special talents are carefully developed, to whom we give the
power of absorbing and reproducing everything which is connected with
his talent, will know how to assimilate, by his own work in the world
and wider educational advantages, everything which will render him a
perfect and thoroughly educated man. With half the amount of preliminary
knowledge in the province of his specialty, the boy or youth dismissed
by us as a harmoniously developed man, to whom we have given the methods
requisite for the acquisition of all desirable branches of knowledge,
will accomplish more than his intellectual twin who has been trained
according to the ideas of the Romans (and, let us add, Hegel).

I think Froebel is right. If his educational principles were the common
property of mankind, we might hope for a realization of Jean Paul's
prediction that the world would end with a child's paradise. We enjoyed
a foretaste of this paradise in Keilhau. But when I survey our modern
gymnasia, I am forced to believe that if they should succeed in
equipping their pupils with still greater numbers of rules for the
future, the happiness of the child would be wholly sacrificed to the
interests of the man, and the life of this world would close with the
birth of overwise greybeards. I might well be tempted to devote still
more time to the educational principles of the man who, from the depths
of his full, warm heart, addressed to parents the appeal, "Come, let us
live for our children," but it would lead me beyond the allotted limits.

Many of Froebel's pedagogical principles undoubtedly appear at first
sight a pallid theorem, partly a matter of course, partly impracticable.
During our stay in Keilhau we never heard of these claims, concerning
which we pupils were the subject of experiment. Far less did we feel
that we were being educated according to any fixed method. We perceived
very little of any form of government. The relation between us and our
teachers was so natural and affectionate that it seemed as if no other
was possible.

Yet, when I compared our life at Keilhau with the principles previously
mentioned, I found that Barop, Middendorf, and old Langethal, as well
as the s