“Let us linger over this significant phenomenon and seek to recognize through it what we have to furnish to the child from inner grounds and without arbitrariness. This is: something firm which can be easily pulled apart by the child’s strength, and just as easily put together.”--_P., p. 117._ The time when the child wants this something to arrange is given as any time “between the ages of one and three.” It is the time when “his greatest delight consists in the quick alternation of building up and tearing down.”--_P., p. 106._ At first the little one will be satisfied with arranging and rearranging the cubes, piling them one upon another, “placing one before, behind, beside another.” Soon, however, he will try to make something definite, and “the intelligent nurse interprets the dim idea and sees whether a something, a table, a chair, etc., can be perceived in what is represented.” Then the something must have a purpose, so the chair is grannie’s chair, the table is ready for the soup, and so on. There is nothing here which is not quite a usual proceeding. Froebel’s peculiarity of treatment comes from his desire to give the blocks to the child as a whole which he can take to pieces. This is the reason of the traditional proceeding, perhaps still kept up in old-fashioned kindergartens, when the children first slip the lid out a little way, then reverse the boxes, pull out the lid and lift it off the box. The directions are Froebel’s own, and are given: “in order to furnish to the child at once clearly and definitely, the impression of the whole, of the self-contained; from this perception, as the first fundamental perception (Grundanschauung) all proceeds and must proceed.”--_P., p. 123._ It is clear that this meaning is quite lost when the same proceeding is forced on older children, who are quite accustomed to pull down and build up. Froebel emphasizes the fact that the pieces are of the same cubical form as the whole thus presented, and adds: “Thus fundamental perceptions, whole and part, form, and size, are made clear by comparison and contrast, as well as deeply impressed by repetition.”--_P., p. 119._ It is in speaking of this simplest of toys that Froebel enters a strong protest against the complex and useless toys which afford no scope for childish activity.