§ 15. In reading Froebel however I am conscious that this “spring” is wanting. Before one can accept teaching one must at least understand it, and this preliminary is not always possible when we would learn from Froebel. At times he goes entirely out of sight, and whether the words we hear are the expression of deep truth or have absolutely no meaning at all, I for my part am at times totally unable to determine. But where I can understand him he seems to me singularly wise; and working in the same lines as Pestalozzi he in some respects advances far beyond his great predecessor. § 16. Both these men were devotees of science; but instead of finding in science anything antagonistic to religion they looked upon science as the expression of the mind of God. Their belief was just that which Sir Thomas Browne had uttered more than 200 years before in the _Religio Medici_: “Though we christen effects by their most sensible and nearest causes yet is God the true and infallible cause of all, whose concourse [_i.e._, concurrence, co-operation] though it be general, yet doth it subdivide itself into the particular actions of everything, and is that spirit by which each singular essence not only subsists but performs its operation.”[175] With this belief Froebel sought to trace everything back to the central Unity, to God. The author of the _De Imitatione Christi_ has said: “The man to whom all things are one, who refers all things to one and sees all things in one, he can stand firm and be at peace in God. Cui omnia unum sunt, et qui omnia ad unum trahit, et omnia in uno videt, potest stabilis esse et in Deo pacificus permanere” (_De Im. Xti._ lib. i; cap. 3, § 2). So thought Froebel, and his great longing was to refer all things to one and see all things in one. However little we may share this longing we must admit that it is a natural outcome from the Christian religion. If there is One in Whom all “live and move and have their being,” everything should be referred to Him. As Froebel says, “In Allem wirkt und schafft _Ein_ Leben, Weil das Leben All’ ein einz’ger Gott gegeben. (In everything there works and stirs _one_ life, because to all One God has given life.)” So long then as we remain Christians we must agree with Froebel that all true education is founded on Religion. Perhaps in the end we may adopt his high ideal and say with him, “Education should lead and guide man to clearness concerning himself and in himself, to peace with nature, and to unity with God; hence, it should lift him to a knowledge of himself and of mankind, to a knowledge of God and of Nature, and to the pure and holy life to which such knowledge leads.” (_E. of M._, Hailmann’s t., 5.) “The object of education is the realization of a faithful, pure, inviolate, and hence holy life” (_Ib._ 4).