In Froebel’s day, these, as clearly formulated theories, were non-existent. His work was that of a pioneer, and his theory might have been called that of “Preparation through Recapitulation.” He would, however, have allowed that play is sometimes, though not always, recreative, and he makes clear the necessity for what he calls “healthy vital energy” (gesunden Lebensmuthe), but he would never have called this mere “surplus energy,” because he thought it was not more than was required: “The genuine schoolboy should be full of life and spirit, strong in body and mind.… Would that, in judging the power of children and boys, we might never forget the words of one of our greatest German writers: that there is a greater advance from the infant to the speaking child than there is from the schoolboy to a Newton! Now, if the advance is greater, the power, too, must be greater; this we should consider.”--_E., p. 134._ Ebers, the Egyptologist, tells us that when he was a boy at Keilhau full provision was made for this abounding energy. We read of walks long and short, of botanizing and geologizing rambles, of climbing trees and cliffs for birds’ eggs, of which only one might be taken from a nest. We hear of Indian games out of Fenimore Cooper’s Leatherstocking Tales, of classic and other dramas on winter evenings, and of Homeric battles, which Froebel, he says, would have called “signs of creative imagination and individual life.” There was swimming and skating and coasting and “the spacious wrestling ground with the shooting stand and the gymnasium for every spare moment of the winter”; and a piece of ground “assigned to each pupil, where he could wield spade and pickaxe, roll stones, sow and reap.” But the great game was the Bergwacht, where the boys, divided into four parties that all might be active, actually constructed, and then attacked and defended stone fortresses. “How quickly,” says Ebers, “we learned to use the plummet, to take levels, hew the stone and wield the axe.” The weapons were blunted stakes. It was forbidden to touch the head, but it was a point of honour among the boys to yield as prisoner if touched by the pole, “and what self-denial it required!” These combats were held on fine Saturday evenings, and when all was over “the women,” probably the girls of the school community, had lighted fires and made supper ready, and the lads slept in their fortresses while two sentinels marched up and down, relieved every half-hour. On the Sunday following the boys were not required to go to church, “where we should merely have gone to sleep.”