“How salutary would it be for parents and child, for their present and future, if the parents believed in this symbolism of childhood and boyhood, if they heeded the child’s life in reference to this. It would unite parents and children by a new living tie. It would establish a new living connection between their present and future life” (5: pp. 18-19). But “To see and respect in the child and boy the germ and promise of the coming youth and man is very different from considering and treating him as if he were already a man; very different from asking the child or boy to show himself a youth or a man; to feel, to think, and conduct himself as a youth or man” (5: p. 29). Then what are the nature and requirements of each successive stage? Froebel teaches us that the child is the only teacher as to his nature and requirements. Go and observe him, then you will learn, is his motto. But his own child psychology was as much the product of self-introspection as of objective observation. He read his own mentality into every child. Yet we cannot but discern the gems of immortal insight shining from among the rubbish of obsolete speculation and magnified symbolism. Infancy is God in slumber. The eyes of consciousness have not yet opened. “The external world comes to the child at first out of its void--as it were, in misty, formless indistinctness, in chaotic confusion--even the child and the outer world merge into each other” (5: p. 40). Senses and limbs are the organs by which we determine the nature and relationship of external objects. Yet, “at this stage of development the young, growing human being cares for the use of his body, his senses, his limbs, merely for the sake of their use and practice, but not for the sake of the _results_ of their use.” He simply “_plays_ with his limbs--his hands, his fingers, his lips, his tongue, his feet, as well as the expression of his eyes and face” (5: p. 48). Therefore education at this stage is merely to offer to him various objects to “secure occupation for the senses and mind,” and to prevent mental enervation and weakness.