350 INTERNATIONAL CONGRESS OF EDUCATION. 
sducational factor. Machinery releases man more and more from the 
drudgery of labor; but however wonderfully it be built to serve so won- 
erful a purpose, none has yet been found who can breathe into its 
wheel-work the spirit, the love which prompts care-taking for another 
and which satisfies the needs of fellow-men. Thus, in spite of all inven- 
tions, there still remains a remnant of noble duty which the individual 
human being must still fulfill. 
No school, no academy, however high it has reached into science or 
art, can provide mankind with the ethical nurture which is derived from 
daily participation in fellow-service, or in loving contact with nature, or 
she self-won fruits of true industry. 
By nature, by instinct, the physically and morally normal child is eager 
0 be of service. But how little is this impulse within him fostered or 
nurtured ! The practical educator does not turn his face in the direction 
»f this mellow soil, or of this fructifying environment wherein to truly 
cultivate the child. Long before Froebel, Pestalozzi, with all the might 
and impetus of his genius, pointed to this great fissure in school life ; and 
Frocbel presented the same thought in his own way in the ¢“ Mother 
Play ” book. 
{n this book we find an illustration of the little gardener, to which he 
attaches this motto : 
« Wouldst thou the childish heart unfold ? 
Close to the nurture of life him hold. 
Wouldst thou prepare him to cherish and love ? 
Show him the jov which such nurture provides. » 
In what other sphere than that of the family may the child find the soil 
for such growth, unless it be in institutions where the family training life 
's made the basic principle? The child is a complete being, and he must 
sxercise his love, his interest, and his nurture among wholesome and satis- 
tying beings, and in a loving, personal companionship. 
This was Froebel’s preéminent purpose in establishing the kindergarten, 
as he has clearly shown in the ¢ Mother Play” book. The noble, nor- 
mal family was the type for his kindergarten, which, in turn, he would 
have become a living model for the true family; and it was thus through 
nim that womankind was awakened to the privileges of spiritual mother- 
hood, and nurtured and developed to a new sphere of activity in the family 
a8 well as in the community, the school, and state. 
Let us turn to the picture of the Flower Basket,” where Froebel, 
agreeing fully with Pestalozzi, shows the inner relation between mother 
and child as the only true center and germinal point from which all 
human relationships radiate. The mother places the child in his right 
relationship to father, to sisters, to servants, to nature itself. The father 
of the house, whose business interests prevent his coming so closely in