To say that a conation tends to define itself is only to say that unconscious ends tend to be replaced by conscious ends, and we have seen that both Froebel and Professor Stout give unconsciousness or consciousness of the end, as the difference between earlier and later forms of mental activity. Professor Stout’s conclusion is that “apart from the perpetual germination of one conation out of another, the characteristic features of the mental life of human beings would be inexplicable.” Now, to be conscious of one’s ends or aims is, in a certain sense, to be self-conscious, so the transition from earlier to later forms of mental activity is practically the development of self-consciousness. It is interesting, therefore, to see that just as Professor Stout gives as his explanation of human life, the perpetual germination of one conation out of another, so Froebel gives as his explanation, his meaning of life, the gradual development of self-consciousness. Self-consciousness, involving true volition, or self-determination, is to Froebel “the end of man, for which he first was planned.” It is, as he constantly put it, man’s “destination.” “To become clearly conscious of all the conditions and relations in which and by means of which man exists makes man first become man in consciousness and in action.”--_P., p. 12._ “For man is destined for consciousness, for freedom, for self-determination.”--_E., p. 136._ “Self-consciousness belongs to the nature of man, is one with it; to become conscious of itself is the first task in the life of the child as a human being, as it is the task of his whole life.”--_P., p. 40._ “Who amongst us,” exclaims Professor Royce, “conceives himself in his uniqueness except as the remote goal of some ideal process of coming to himself and of awakening to the truth about his own life? Only an infinite process can show me who I am.”[17] Froebel never loses sight of this. In his Autobiography he tells how he began “unwillingly” to write something in the album of a friend who was the owner of a beautiful farm, and he concludes: “Then my thoughts grew clear and I continued, ‘Thou givest man bread; let my aim be to give man himself.’” That he verily believed that the gradual development of self-consciousness is the first task in the life of the child is abundantly evident. In the very beginning of his Mother Songs he tells the mother to give her child something to push against, “to bring the child to self-knowledge as soon as possible,” and at the end he says, “When a child or human being has found himself and has firm hold over himself, he is ready to walk joyfully through life.” In “The First Action of a Child,” Froebel writes: