This application has for a time killed philosophy, for it has identified the new ideas with the physical sciences, and led men to study the human mind in psychology and from without. Whereas the mind and its laws can, in the nature of things, be studied only through introspection. Froebel had a scientific intellect of the very first calibre; he had the conception of flux, of change, of evolution to start with; and he took up introspectively the study of the laws of the human mind, choosing that province of the universe where they are most visibly and typically exposed,--the mind of the growing child. The “laws” which he states are little more than a description of the phenomena that he observed. They are statements of the results of his experiments, and the language he employs can be translated to suit the education of almost any one. His attention was so concentrated upon fact that his terminology does not mislead. It can be translated into the language of metaphysics, of Christian theology, or of modern science, and it remains incorruptibly coherent. His method of study was the only method which can obtain results in philosophy, self-study unconsciously carried on. He observed the child, and guessed at what was going on in its mind by a comparison with what he knew of himself. He was anxious to train young children intelligently, and he found it necessary to describe and formulate his knowledge of the operation of their minds. It turns out that he made a statement of the universe more comprehensive, a philosophy more universal, than any other of which we have any record. But this is not the most important thing he did. He devised a method based upon his experiments and set agoing the kindergarten upon its course in conquest of the world. If it had not been for this, he might never have been heard of, for the world has small use for systems of philosophy, however profound, expressed in terms which have been superseded and are become inexpressive. But Froebel started a practice. He showed the way. He put in the hands of persons to whom his philosophy must ever remain a mystery, the means of working out those practical ends for which that philosophy was designed. The greatness of Froebel lies in this, that he saw the essential. What sort of an animal is man, asks the morphologist, for he is beginning to reach this point in his studies, and before he has asked it, Froebel has answered him. ‘Out of the mouth of babes and sucklings hast thou ordained strength.’ It may be said at once that the substance of everything Froebel says was known before. Solomon and Orpheus, Marcus Aurelius, Emerson, and all of us have known it. Otherwise Froebel would be unimportant. It is his correlation and his formulation of the main facts about human life that make him important. It is as a summary of wisdom, as a focus of idea, as a lens through which the rest of the ideas in the world can be viewed, that he is great. * * * * *