He did “not call this by the name usually given to similar institutions, that is, _Infant Schools_, because it is not to be a school, for the children in it will not be schooled, but freely developed” (2: p. 33). To use his favorite allegory, children are to be in it like _plants_, and the attendants are like the gardeners. The character of the kindergarten was essentially to be distinct from that of the school. Yet in the initial motive and conception of the kindergarten there lies the elements which allow his followers to make the two different interpretations of the nature of the kindergarten. One is to consider it simply as the place “to provide a condition of life for childhood that renders it pure and beautiful,” as Herr von Arnswald tells us--“a social nursery _par excellence_.” He says: “The gifts and games were offered by Froebel for the purpose of satisfying and directing the spontaneous impulse to work, but not as a sort of nourishment to feed the mind of the child. He preferred open pasture to stable feeding. In other words, the direction, ‘Come, let us live for our children,’ does not mean that we shall teach children by playing, but that we shall play with them in a sensible way. According to this view the original idea of the kindergarten can and should be realized in every family. It is not enough for parents, that have neither sense nor inclination to assimilate the principle of the Froebel system, to send their children to the kindergarten for no other purpose than that of keeping the little ones from home.... The transformation of the kindergarten into a children’s refuge with the appearance of a school would surely be a crime against the nature of the child” (8: pp. 23-24). He even goes so far as to say: “That a child, when watched over and cared for sympathetically, will develop more rapidly, may be an effect, but it is not the end of the kindergarten” (8: p. 23). The other interpretation is represented by Arnold H. Heinemann. He says: “It was his intention to make the kindergarten not only a, but the sole, ‘preparatory institution for the public school’” (8: p. 27). An English writer, Boardman, counts among the advantages of the kindergarten that it “increases their (the children’s) aptitude for the studies of later school life,” and that it “fosters a liking for school work.” According to him, everything should be disciplinary, educative, and carried out with “direct aim toward intellectual, moral, and physical development,” through “the strictly correct mode of procedure.” He understands that: