Froebel, again, sums up the ideas he intends the child to gain from play with the ball: “The ball shows contents, mass, matter, space, form, size and figure; it bears within itself an independent power (elasticity) and hence it has rest and movement, and consequently stability and spontaneity; it offers even colour, and at least calls forth sound; it is indeed heavy--that is, it is attracted--and thus shares in the general property of all bodies.… Therefore, it places man, on his entrance into the world, furnished with activity of limbs and senses, in the midst of all phenomena and perceptions of Nature and of all life … to place man through a skilful education in the understanding of Nature and life, and to maintain him in it with consciousness and circumspection cannot be done too early.”--_P., p. 53._ The soft ball of the first gift is supposed to be given to the child when he is three or even two months old, but when he reaches six or eight months, he is supposed to be ready for something which “makes itself known especially through noise, sound, tone, as it were through speech.” The second gift therefore consists of a wooden sphere and a cube, which are intended not only to please the child by the noise they make, but to serve as material for comparison. The mother is told to roll the sphere and then, in order to make this oppositeness between sphere and cube perceptible to the child, to place the cube steadily before him and presently to take one of his little hands, pushing gently at first, but “finally overcoming the gravity of the cube and pushing it away with the child’s hand and fingers … drawing the child’s strength, although yet so feeble, into the play, that his limbs may be trained, his strength increased, and that he may experience and perceive much through his own activity.”--_P., p. 77._ By even these few representations the mother can present to her child: “The quiet, firm sure-standing on a relatively larger surface; the filling of space by each object; heaviness which is expressed by pressure; the final overcoming of heaviness (gravity); and the possibility of moving away the body by the use of a proportionately greater strength. The perception of all these and many other facts, showing themselves merely as changing phenomena in oft-recurring repetition, will give pleasure even to the child who is scarcely half a year, or at least not a whole year old, especially when the play is placed in intimate connection with the child’s life, and with his impulse to activity.”--_P., p. 78._ Many plays are suggested, all to be accompanied by song or rhyme, only, says Froebel, “one must not go on in opposition to the wish of the child, but always follow his requirements and needs and his own expressions of life and activity.” It is in this connection that Froebel notices how early a child begins to note cause.