“The nature of man, as man, is that he is self-conscious, and this is stamped with distinctness enough to be observed in the quite peculiar character of childish activity,[18] in his impulse to busy himself self-actively, spontaneously: an impulse which awakens simultaneously with mind, and which is in harmony with feeling and perception. If this tendency to spontaneous activity is fostered, man’s triune nature--energy, emotion and intellect--is satisfied.”--_P., p. 21._ A realization of what Sir Oliver Lodge calls “the universal struggle for self-manifestation and corporeal realization, which plays so large a part in all activity,” underlies all that Froebel has to say of the progress from unconscious activity to self-conscious volition. His view of the Universe is exactly that tentatively suggested by Professor Lodge, viz. that something akin to this universal struggle “is exhibited in a region beyond and above what is ordinarily conceived of as ‘Nature.’ The process of evolution can be regarded as the gradual unfolding of the Divine Thought or Logos, throughout the universe, by the action of Spirit upon matter.” This takes us out of the region of psychology, but Froebel’s subject was not psychology, _per se_, but child development, as a part of the whole plan of evolution, man being the most highly developed of creatures. The whole universe is an expression of the Divine, but man alone can become conscious of his origin. “All things are destined to reveal God in their external and transient being.… It is the special destiny of man, as an intelligent and rational being to become conscious of his divine essence and to render this active, to reveal it in his life, with self-determination and freedom.”--_E., p. 2._ “Made in the image of God,” meant to Froebel self-conscious and self-determined. The relation of man to God is expressed by Froebel as the relation of the thought to the thinker “_could the thought but become conscious of itself_.” In a letter of 1843, he says: “At the basis of the Kindergarten lies an idea which serves alike for all the interstellar spaces, for all systems of the sun; the fulfilment of the divine will and the manifestation of the same. _In order to become such a manifestation of the divine, man has first to attain the basis of self-consciousness_; to which end serves the early culture of the spirit of humanity in the world of childhood.”--_L., p. 133._ In a paper entitled “A Second Review of the Plays,” which really deals chiefly with evolution, we read: “We must see clearly the conditions of development in Nature and then employ them in life. Thus only can we raise man upon his own plane, that is, the spiritual plane, at least to such a degree of perfection as is shown on their plane by the types of Nature.