§ 25. His study of children showed him that one of their most striking characteristics was restlessness. This was, first, restlessness of body, delight in mere motion of the limbs; and, secondly, restlessness of mind, a constant curiosity about whatever came within the range of the senses, and especially a desire to examine with the hand every unknown object within reach.[177] Children’s fondness for using their hands was especially noted by Froebel; and he found that they delighted, not merely in examining by touch, but also in altering whatever they could alter, and further that they endeavoured to imitate known forms whether by drawing or whenever they could get any kind of plastic material by modelling. Besides remarking in them these various activities, he saw that children were sociable and needed the sympathy of companions. There was, too, in them a growing moral nature, passions, affections, and conscience, which needed to be controlled, responded to, cultivated. Both the restraints and the opportunities incident to a well-organised community would be beneficial to their moral nature, and prove a cure for selfishness. § 26. As all education was to be sought in rightly directed but spontaneous action, Froebel considered how the children in this community should be employed. At that age their most natural employment is play, especially as Wordsworth has pointed out, games in which they imitate and “con the parts” they themselves will have to fill in after years. Froebel agreed with Montaigne that the games of children were “their most serious occupations,” and with Locke that “all the plays and diversions of children should be directed towards good and useful habits, or else they will introduce ill ones” (_Th. c. Ed._, § 130). So he invented a course of occupations, a great part of which consisted in social games. Many of the names are connected with the “Gifts,” as he called the series of simple playthings provided for the children, the first being the ball, “the type of unity.” The “gifts” are chiefly not mere playthings but materials which the children work up in their own way, thus gaining scope for their power of doing and inventing and creating. The artistic faculty was much thought of by Froebel, and, as in the education of the ancients, the sense of rhythm in sound and motion was cultivated by music and poetry introduced in the games. Much care was to be given to the training of the senses, especially those of sight, sound, and touch. Intuition (_Anschauung_) was to be recognised as the true basis of knowledge, and though stories were to be told, and there was to be much intercourse in the way of social chat, instruction of the imparting and “learning-up” kind was to be excluded. There was to be no “dead knowledge;” in fact Froebel like Pestalozzi endeavoured to do for the child what Bacon nearly 200 years before had done for the philosopher. Bacon showed the