Professor Stout, true to what he calls the tendency of the moderns to see in the little child what is writ large in the adult, allows “purely intellectual curiosity” on the part of the infant. We have no right to call an infant passive and therefore amused even when the mother shakes the rattle for his edification. He may be striving hard to accommodate his organs of sight, he may be recalling previous sounds similar and dissimilar, he may be watching and comparing different movements and different positions. He has so much to learn “with the world so new and all,” and, to judge from his seriousness, it is at times a most momentous inquiry. The baby to whom the activity of throwing is new, and who spends full twenty minutes in throwing a tram ticket on the floor of the car--which the patient mother restores each time--throwing, too, with such force and evident purpose, cannot properly be said to be playing. Nor can the infant who stares with such concentration at the lighted lamp and who, when the mother moves out of the direct range of the light, strives with all its feeble strength to readjust its position to that entrancing brightness. Of the very young child, Froebel writes: “The first voluntary employments of the child are observation of its surroundings, spontaneous taking in of the outer world, and play, which is independent outward expression … it is evident therefore how important is the training … and also the kind of voluntary playful occupation of the child.… For as the life of man is continuous one can recognize even in the first baby life, though only in the slightest traces and most delicate germs, all the mental activities which in later life become predominant.”--_P., p. 29._ When Groos reaches the pedagogical standpoint, he says: “We have repeatedly found in the course of this inquiry that even the most serious work may include a certain playfulness, especially when enjoyment of being a cause and of conquest are prominent. Between flippant trifling, and conscientious study there is a wide chasm which nothing can bridge, but not all play is such trifling. Who would forbid the teacher’s making the effort to induce in his pupils a psychological condition like that of the adult worker, who is not oppressed by the _shall_ and _must_ in the pursuit of his calling, because the very exertion of his physical and mental powers in work, involving all his capabilities, fills his soul with joy? Since play thus approaches work, when pleasure in the activity as such, as well as its practical aim, becomes a motive power (as in the gymnastic games of adults), so may work become like play, when its real aim is superseded by enjoyment of the activity itself. And it can hardly be doubted that this is the highest and noblest form of work.”[37]