As to participation in the domestic occupations, it should become wider and more real than before. In the former period it was mere imitation, but now it is a voluntary share; formerly it was a part of play, but now it begins to become work. “What formerly the child did only for the sake of the activity, the boy does now for the sake of the results or products of his activity; the child’s instinct of activity has, in the boy, become a formative instinct, and this occupies the whole outward life, the outward manifestation of boy-life in this period” (5: p. 99). This creative instinct is, for Froebel, the pledge of the divine essence of the human soul, and its exercise secures the child the best development of his spirituality and the highest felicity. “We become truly Godlike in diligence and industry, in working and doing, which are accompanied by the clear perception, or even by the vaguest feeling, that we thereby represent the inner in the outer; that we give body to spirit, and form to thought; that we render visible the invisible; that we impart an outward, finite, transient being to life in the spirit. Through this Godlikeness we rise more and more to a true knowledge of God, to insight into His Spirit; and thus, inwardly and outwardly, God comes ever nearer to us. Therefore, Jesus so truly says in this connection of the poor, ‘Theirs is the kingdom of heaven’ if they could but see and know it and practice it in diligence and industry, in productive and creative work. Of children, too, is the kingdom of heaven; for, unchecked by the presumption and conceit of adults, they yield themselves in childlike trust and cheerfulness to their formative and creative instincts” (5: p. 31). Froebel pictures what a variety of materials a country home presents for the strengthening and developing of this instinct, and how these various occupations again stimulate our intellectual activity. “The son accompanies his father everywhere--to the field and to the garden, to the shop and to the counting house, to the forest and to the meadow; in the care of domestic animals and in the making of small articles of household furniture; in the splitting, sawing, and piling of the wood; in all the work his father’s trade or calling involves. Question upon question comes from the lips of the boy thirsting for knowledge--How? Why? When? What for? Of what?--and every somewhat satisfactory answer opens a new world to the boy” (5: pp. 101-102). Froebel’s insight is confirmed by modern child-study, as in many other points, in the emphasis which he laid on stories, legends, and fairy tales as necessary food for a boy’s inner being. He says: