rted from the external needs of the poorest people, while
Froebel desired to found the columns supporting human culture upon
theoretically reasoned grounds and upon the natural sciences. A
remarkable difference existed between the characters of the two great
men. Pestalozzi was diffident, acknowledged freely his mistakes, and
sometimes blamed himself for them bitterly; Froebel never thought
himself in the wrong, if anything went amiss always found some external
cause for the failure, and in self-confidence sometimes reached an
extravagant pitch.

[98] Either Froebel or his editor has made a blunder here. Froebel went
to Goettingen in July 1811 (see p. 84), and to Berlin in October 1812
(see p. 89).

[99] At this time, however, the symbols of the inorganic world did not
appeal to Froebel with the same force as those of the organic world. In
a letter to Madame von Holzhausen. 31st March, 1831, he writes: "It is
the highest privilege of natural forms or of natural life that they
contain agreement and perfection within themselves as a whole class,
while differing and filled with imperfection in particular individuals;
for look at the loveliest blooming fruit-tree, the sweetest rose, the
purest lily, and your eye can always detect deficiencies, imperfections,
differences in each one, regarded as a single phenomenon, a separate
bloom; and, further, the same want of perfection appears also in every
single petal: on the other hand, wherever mathematical symmetry and
precise agreement are found, _there is death_".

[100] Not a figure of speech altogether; for Froebel did really decline
a professorship of mineralogy which was offered him at this time, in
order to set forth on his educational career.

[101] That is, putting development into a formula--

Thesis-+-Antithesis
|
Synthesis.

The true synthesis is that springing from the thesis and its opposite,
the antithesis. Another type of the formula is this--

Proposition-+-Counter-proposition
|
Compromise.

Understanding by "Compromise" (_Vermittlung_) that which results from
the union of the two opposites, that which forms part of both and which
links them together. The formula expressed in terms of human life, for
example, is--

Father-+-Mother
|
Child.

Philosophic readers acquainted with Hegel and his school will recognise
a familiar friend in these formulae.

[102] Froebel travelled from Berlin to Osterode, and too