This placing of activity so high in the scale is at least no accident, and conscious self-determination is constantly attributed to man as “the most perfect earthly being,” and to man alone. Mr. Stout proceeds to examine the conception of self-determining process, with special reference to changes within the sphere of an individual consciousness, taking as the most convenient point of departure, such illustrative analogies as come from the physical world, and beginning with the simplest form of self-determination, the law of inertia.[61] “Conscious life,” he says, “is always in some degree self-sustaining, this indeed is an indispensable part of the connotation of all such words as activity, endeavour, conation, effort, striving, will, attention. All such terms imply that the process to which they refer, tends by its intrinsic nature in a certain direction, or toward a certain end.” Now the word “endeavour” or “effort” (Streben) is a word Froebel constantly uses in speaking of a child’s activity, and he does more than merely “imply” that this process “tends in a certain direction, or toward a certain end” when he affirms that “In every activity, in every deed of man, and of the smallest child, an aim is expressed.” Professor Stout goes on to say that in conscious states we can always distinguish between determination from within and from without, and “it is a point of vital significance that this distinction coincides with that between mental activity and mental passivity.”[62] With mental passivity Froebel has but few dealings, if indeed he has any. There is one passage in which he uses the word passive (passiv); this, however, merely states that the child, in accommodating himself to his surroundings, may outwardly appear inactive or passive, but only in order to have more scope for his inner activity (wo es äusserlich als unthätig, leidend [passiv] erscheint … um so seiner innern Thätigkeit mehr Spielraum zu verschaffen).