“I am convinced, and I wish that all teachers, and especially all mothers, shared in the conviction, that the very earliest phenomena of child-life are _full of symbolic meaning_, that is to say, they indicate the higher, the intellectual life in the child and his individual peculiarities at the same time. Our duty is to search in everything for its ultimate basis, its point of origin, its well-spring; and to make clear the connection between the outward manifestation and its inward cause.”--_L., p. 101._ What Froebel deduced from the incident was that the child looks not only at the appearance of the swinging ball, but for the cause of the swinging phenomenon, the supporting, moving hand. So it is plain that for “full of symbolism” we should here read “full of significance.” Or, again, in his excellent sketch of early boyhood, with its desire to share the work of the father, its desire to explore, to collect, to construct, etc., Froebel concludes: “Thus it is certain that very many of the boy’s actions have an inner, an intellectual importance, that they indicate his mental tendencies and are therefore _symbolical_.”--_E., p. 118._ Here, again, _significant_ would be a better English translation than _symbolical_. Again, in accordance with his belief in instinct, Froebel declares that it is his “firm conviction that wherever we find anything that gives children ever freshly a joy belonging to real life there is at the bottom of it something important for a child’s life.” When he sees that children often enjoy going to church and joining in the singing at an age when the words can have no meaning, he says: “All the spontaneous activity of child-life is _symbolical_ (Sinnbildlich).” But there is not a word of anything that is ordinarily called “symbolical” in what follows, so far as the child is concerned. The little one is supposed to have “reached a new life-stage,” viz. “the dim anticipation that he is not alone in life, but one amid mankind.” Consequently he is attracted by “assembly life.” The most ardent believer in symbolism can make little of the very practical answers the mother is told to give to the child’s questions. He is to be answered “out of the range of his own experience, feelings and ideas, his own intellectual development and necessities.” He is to be told that when he is old enough to go to church, he will not only like to hear the organ, but will find out “why flowers bloom and birdies sing and why we still remember Christmas Day.”