As to metaphor, Froebel delights in this; his bent of mind is to take pleasure in all analogies, and he suggests that the mother should make more use of the metaphors implied in ordinary language. For example, he speaks of “the transferred moral meaning of such words and phrases as ‘_straight_ and _straightforward_,’ and of ‘_walking in crooked paths_.’” In using little finger plays to give a child control over his hands, the mother is told to think how important for later life is “the right handling of things, in the actual as well as in the figurative sense.” The wise mother is represented as cherishing the child’s love of light and brightness, saying, “Never shrink away from light”; and while she shows the picture she says, “Here is a boy who has broken the window and now he must go a long way to fetch the glazier unless he can content himself with a dark board that will keep out the dear bright light. You must not heedlessly stop Light’s entering your heart and mind, for if you do, you will have to buy it back by trouble and loss of time lest heart and mind become dark. Open your door and little window to the light.” Thus she makes the child “see inner things through the outer,” and uses his pleasure in light to make him hate deeds of darkness. But there is no harm in all this, the words are used as a clergyman uses the half-dozen words of his text, as a germ of thought which he cultivates, as a finger-post pointing the way in which our minds may travel. And Froebel, like the clergyman, sometimes travels far from the branching of the roads. Froebel’s curious attempts at etymology ought perhaps to be mentioned as a weak point, though they really do not affect his theories, psychological or educational, one way or another. The ball, as the child’s first object through which he gains his first perceptions of solidity, weight, mass, etc., is described as on that account “an image of the universe” (der B--all ist der Bild des Alles). The thought is worth having, the pseudo-etymology does not much matter.