330 INTERNATIONAL CONGRESS OF EDUCATION. 
to later and wider study. It is significant that in the animal games 
which Froebel gives he presents types of the three kingdoms—earth, air, 
and water—and so suggests unity and completeness. 
The model for the teacher is evident. The lizard game played by the 
children in Froebel’s kindergarten in the dear, sleepy old German village, 
with a brook running through it, with lizards basking upon its banks, 
oecomes a type game for illustrating a method by sympathetically repre- 
senting the life which is nearest the child. The teacher in St. Mary’s 
Street (our type street for the slums) would make a mistake if she teaches 
“he game as it is simply because she finds it in Froebel’s collection. She 
would be nearer to his teaching if she should take the grimy child who 
doats his miniature ship, represented by a chip, its rich cargo represented 
by bits of paper, on the surface water of the gutter, and substitute for 
nim, for example, Mrs. Ormiston Chant’s beautiful game, written with no 
tess loving insight into child life, ‘“ Here we float in our golden boat, far 
away, far away.” The judicious teacher could float the child out of the 
ancanny world in which he finds himself, into a truer conception of the 
iife outside—the river, the ocean life; or, to put it in the more beautiful 
language of Froebel : ‘The play and playing of the child must be in 
harmony with his surrounding, through outward things his inner life to 
rouse, to strengthen power and mind, and lead the child to trace inner 
meanings in the outer face.” 
Froebel remembers also that the child is a child of man ; that he must 
be linked in sympathy and understanding with the industrial activities of 
life ; he presents the most primeval ones, or those which stand closest to 
human needs—the farmer, the carpenter, the miller. Other industries 
may stand nearer to some children. Those should be taken which begin 
where they are and lead out directly into related life. 
The family, the source of all that is highest and best in human relations, 
is typified in the finger games. The highest moral attributes are personi- 
Jed in the game of the ‘Knights and the Good Child,” while the evil is 
made unlovely in the same graphic way. 
As in the childhood of the race religious teaching is represented by the 
drama, so by plays and games Froebel voices aspiration in that direction, 
and teaches universal truths in this most pleasant form. He does not 
forget the artistic longings of the child, as shown in the game of the 
piano; and he awakens the creative activity and esthetic sense in the 
came of the little artist. From his deep sympathy with childhood he 
touches every spring of its nature, and seeks to put it in touch with every 
department of surrounding life. In this way he gives us an inspiration 
and a method, while leaving the details to be modified or changed as the 
external surroundings and the inner needs of the children suggest. It is 
the spirit, not the form, that is important. It is the subject matter and 
its relationships that he would emphasize. The accidental or unimpor-