THE EDUCATION OF CHILDREN. m 



that we can do better than others. An object of this kind tends 

 to destroy that " harmony of life," that "-peacefulness of heart," 

 the attainment of which for himself and others was Froebel's 

 chief object. In our time, when the conflict of life seems to be 

 constantly increasing, this harmony and peacefulness seem to be 

 further off than ever. It is more difficult to introduce harmony 

 into complicated than into simple forms of life. We have had 

 many writers of pretty ballads, but only one Shakespeare. In 

 past generations there were many people who lived harmonious 

 but narrow lives, the men pursuing the same occupations which 

 their fathers pursued before them, and the women chiefly occu- 

 pied with household concerns, thus quietly passing through a life 

 of calm content without hurry or striving. Many of them 

 worked out in their lives the saying that " to do is better than to 

 know," though perhaps if they had heard it they would hardly 

 have understood it. But this kind of life has become impossible, 

 and the problem now is how to introduce unity into the turmoil 

 of modern life. 



Like Froebel, when a problem of the same kind presented 

 itself to him, we turn to a change in education for its solution. 

 Much may be done by training children to value things in their 

 right proportions from the first, and by encouraging them to pre- 

 serve the simplicity and reality of childhood, instead of exchang- 

 ing them for the shams and conventions of "grown-up-land." 

 Our faith ought not to be less than that of Froebel. It is true 

 that the conditions are now more complicated, but on the other 

 hand the world is now beginning to awake to the immense im- 

 portance of right education. We are now taking pains to find 

 out what is really wanted in the lives of the poor, instead of try- 

 ing to force upon them things which we think they ought to 

 want, so that many lives, which would otherwise be very narrow, 

 are gradually being widened in a wholesome way. It is going 

 out of fashion to offer to people, because they are poor, mental and 

 moral food which the givers would decline if offered to them- 

 selves. In short, there is more reality than at any former period 

 in the efforts of the rich to help the poor, and an earnest attack 

 is being made in this direction on the contradictions of life. 

 There are many among the rich who are painfully oppressed by 

 the weight of luxuries, which it appears impossible under present 

 conditions to share with others, and are making earnest endeav- 

 ors to find out the right kind of mercy which shall really bless 

 him that gives and him that takes. It is found that something 

 can be done by offering opportunities for culture, for innocent en- 

 joyment, for participation in simple pleasures, and, to those who 

 are capable of it, for deeper thought. So that here also we find 

 in wholesome education a lessening of the contradictions of life. 



