“Would you know how to lead the child in this matter? Watch him, he will teach you what to do. See! he is tracing the table by passing his fingers along its edges and outlines as far as he can reach, he is sketching the object on itself. This is the first and the safest step by which he becomes aware of the outlines and forms of objects. In this way he sketches and so studies the chair, the bench, the window. But soon he advances. He draws lines across the four-cornered bit of board, across the leaf of the table, or the seat of the chair, in the dim anticipation that so he can retain the forms and relations of the surfaces. Now, already he draws the form diminished. “See! there the child has drawn table, chair and bench on a leaf of the table. Do you not see how he spontaneously trained himself for this? Objects which he could move, which were in sight, he laid on the board, and drew their form on the plane surface, following the boundaries of the objects with his hands. Soon scissors and boxes, and later leaves and twigs, even his own hand and the shadows of objects will thus be copied. “Much is developed in the child by this action, more than it is possible to express--a clear comprehension of form, the possibility of representing the form separate from the object, the possibility of retaining the form as such, and the strengthening and fitting of hand and arm for the free representation of form.”--_E., p. 77._ Here, perhaps, is the right place to introduce what Froebel had to say about the artistic tendencies of children, since Art, to him, is always expression. “Absolutely nothing can appear, nothing visible and sensible can come forth, that does not hold within itself the living spirit; that does not bear upon its surface the imprint of the living spirit of the being by whom it has been produced, and to whom it owes its existence. And this is true of the work of every human being--from the highest artist to the meanest labourer--as well as of the works of God, which are Nature, the creation, and all created things.”--_E., p. 153._ So, when Froebel comes to speak of art as a subject of the school curriculum he says: “Here, art will be considered only as the pure representation of the inner … differentiated according to the material it uses, whether motion, as such, audible in sound, or visible in lines, surfaces and colours, or massive”; and he adds: “We noticed that even at an earlier stage children have the desire to draw, but the desire also to express ideas by modelling and colouring is frequently found at this earlier stage of childhood, certainly at the very beginning of the stage of boyhood (from six years old). _This proves that art and appreciation of art constitute a general capacity or talent of man_, and should be cared for early, at latest in boyhood.