“Self-consciousness belongs to the nature of man, and is one with it. To become conscious of itself is the first task in the life of the child, as it is the task of the whole life of man. That this task may be accomplished the child is, even from his first appearance, surrounded by a definite place and by objects: by the air blowing around all living creatures, as well as by the arousing, human, spiritual language of words.… Thus it is with the attainment of man to consciousness and the speech required and conditioned by that attainment to consciousness.”--_P., p. 39._ It is rather interesting to notice that in her translation of this passage in which Froebel declares that self-consciousness comes to a child as a result of all his surroundings, Miss Jarvis omits the word “self.” She begins her paragraph with “Bewusstsein,” instead of “Selbstbewusstsein” as it stands in the original. To quote Mr. King, “It is generally held that these are two distinct attitudes, that consciousness may exist without an accompanying consciousness of the self as separate from the objects, activities and persons of the rest of the world.” Probably this was Miss Jarvis’s own view, and she left out the word “self” as having no place or meaning in the context. It was, however, not meaningless to Froebel himself. Mr. King continues: “The really important point is not to be able to put the finger down on some one thing that proves a developed self-consciousness, but to be able to show at every point that the process of definition is a function of the growing complexity of the child’s activities.” And, in “The First Action of a Child” Froebel writes: “The nature of man as a being intended for self-consciousness, shows itself in the quite distinctive nature of the child’s activity, even at the end of the so-called three months’ slumber, in the totality of the first childish action. This cannot be better comprehended than by the expression ‘to busy himself’ (sich beschäftigen) in the impulse of the child--an impulse awakening simultaneously with his inner life--an impulse in close union with feeling and perception, to be active for the increasing development of his life: in this lies the nature of man as a being intended to grow towards and ultimately to become self-conscious.”--_P., p. 22._ Speaking of his second plaything, intended for a child six months old, he says: “And so his play, and through his play, his surroundings--finally Nature and Universe--may become a mirror of himself and of his life. But this cannot be too early facilitated, that the child at once, from the first beginning of his self-developing feeling of life, may grow up in exchange and comparison with Nature and life, and as he impresses his life in form, and as form on things outside, so he may again perceive his life therein.”--_P., p. 95._