The beneficial effects of drawing are “more than I can enumerate--a clear conception of forms, the power to represent the forms independently, the fixing of the forms as such, strengthening and practice of the arm and hand”; it “increases knowledge, awakens the judgment and reflection, which avoids so many blunders, and which, _in a natural way_, cannot be aroused too soon” (5: pp. 76-79). Counting is also looked upon by Froebel as an instinct springing from the nature of the child--“an essential need of his inner being, a certain yearning of his spirit which should be given due expression” (5: p. 80). “Mathematics is,” he thinks, “neither foreign to actual life nor something deduced from life; it is the expression of life as such: therefore its nature may be studied in life, and life may be studied with its help” (5: p. 206). Therefore the conception of number should not be forced in abstract form. It originates from the reappearance of similar objects, and, according to Froebel, “the drawing of the object leads to the discovery of number” (5: p. 80). As to the child’s participation in the domestic activities, Froebel lays great stress upon this since he regards it as a great source of knowledge, the basis of the family and social bond, the soil in which the habit of work and industry grows. Do not impose any domestic or professional tasks upon the child for the sake of the results, but allow his meddling with them for the sake of the activity in itself. “The child--your child, ye fathers--feels this so intensely, so vividly, that he follows you wherever you are, wherever you go, in whatever you do. Do not harshly repel him; show no impatience about his ever-recurring questions. Every harshly repelling word crushes a bud or shoot of his tree of life. Do not, however, tell him in words much more than he could find himself without your words.... To have found one fourth of the answer by his own effort is of more value and importance to the child than it is to half hear and half understand it in the words of another; for this causes mental indolence. Do not, therefore, always answer your children’s questions at once and directly; but _as soon as they have gathered sufficient strength and experience_, furnish them with the means to find them answers in the sphere of their own knowledge” (5: pp. 86-87). This early childhood is essentially the period of growth, of life, of nursing, and thus its education is the duty of parents. A child’s life at this stage is already rich and real; our task is “to guard, nurse, and develop the inner germ of his life” by quickening all his powers and natural gifts and to enable all his members and organs to fulfil the requirements of these. Many “suppose the child to be empty, wish to inoculate him with life, make him as empty as they think him to be, and deprive him of life, as it were” (5: p. 70).