10. +Rein, Georg Wilhelm+, editor. Encyklopädisches Handbuch der Pädagogik. 8 vols. Beyer, Langensalza, 1895-1906. Vol. II. 11. +Scherer, Heinrich.+ Die Pädagogik in ihrer Entwicklung im Zusammenhange mit dem Kultur- und Geistesleben und ihrem Einfluss auf die Gestaltung des Erziehungs- und Bildungswesens. Vol. II. Die Pädagogik als Wissenschaft von Pestalozzi bis zu Gegenwart. 3 parts. Brandstetter, Leipzig, 1897-1908. 12. +Sieler, Albien.+ Darstellung der Volkschulpädagogik. J. G. Fichte’s im Zusammenhange mit ihren individuellen, historischen und philosophischen Voraussetzungen. Siegismund, Leipzig, 1895. 75 pages. 13. +Strümpell, Ludwig H.+ Die Pädagogik Kant’s und Fichte’s. Pädagogische Abhandlungen. Diechert, Leipzig, 1894. Part II. 14. +Ziegler, Theobald.+ Geschichte der Pädagogik mit besonderer Rücksicht auf das höhere Unterrichtswesen. Beck, München, 1895. 361 pages. CHAPTER VIII. FRIEDRICH FROEBEL (1782-1852) James Munroe writes in his “The Educational Ideal”: “Practical yet dreamy, scientific yet credulous, analytic yet mystical, filled with fancies, symbols, extravagances, exuberant in thought and speech, the new-born German nation was like a child, with a child’s surplus of strength, a child’s ill-balanced imagination, a child’s elastic vision, limited to self, yet with a sudden illuminating glimpse into eternity. Froebel was the embodiment of this _Zeitgeist_, this exaggeration of yearning, this overestimate of self-promise, this glamour of existence, which characterized the Germany of sixty years ago” (15: p. 198). He was born the son of a pious, rigorous, and active orthodox Lutheran minister, who “never succeeded in understanding this troublesome, dreamy, and neglected child” (2: p. 7). Having lost his mother some four months after his birth, and having had an unkind stepmother, a mother’s love and care were practically unknown to him. Thus, as he writes, “unceasing self-contemplation, self-analysis, and self-education have been the fundamental characteristics of my life from the very first and have remained so until these later days” (7: p. 11). These circumstances of his age and his own childhood not only give us the key to his whole life, but also to his whole philosophy. His precocious and all-pervading religiosity, his passionate affection for Nature, were simply natural. From a lifeless and affectionless home he fled to the bosom of animated Nature, and thus to his mystic pantheism. He writes, in his recollections, of one of the incidents of his early childhood: