CHAPTER III

WILL AND ITS EARLY MANIFESTATIONS

It is open to doubt whether any modern psychologist has yet given a better definition of fully developed Will than that given by Froebel eighty-seven years ago:

“Will is the mental activity of man ever consciously proceeding from a definite point, in a definite direction, to a definite conscious end and aim, in harmony with the whole nature of humanity.”--_E., p. 96._

With this definition compare what Professor Stout has to say:

“In its most complex developments, mental activity takes the form of self-conscious and deliberate volition, in which the starting-point is the idea of an end to be attained, and the desire to attain it; and the goal is the realization of this end, by the production of a long series of changes in the external world … it belongs to the essence of will, not merely to be directed towards an end, but to ideally anticipate this and consciously aim at it.”[12]

Between these two definitions the difference is in the omission in Froebel’s definition of any mention of desire, and this is supplied a little later, when, having stated that “by school here is meant neither the schoolroom, nor school-keeping, but the conscious communication of knowledge for a definite purpose, and in definite connection,” he ends up with:

“By this knowledge, instruction and the school are to lead man _from desire to will_, from activity of will to firmness of will, and thus continually advancing, to the attainment of his destiny, of his earthly perfection.”--_E., p. 139._

Now Professor Stout’s whole psychology is founded on his conception of mental activity. Towards the end of his second volume he says: “The reader is already familiar with my general doctrine. It has pervaded the whole treatment of psychological topics in this work. The aim of the present chapter is to present it in a more systematic form, and to guard it against objections. Our starting-point lies in the conception of mental activity as the direction of mental process towards an end.”

It is distinctly significant, therefore, to find how closely Froebel’s ideas on the subject resemble Professor Stout’s conception of mental activity.

“Conscious process,” writes Professor Stout, “is in every moment directed towards an end, whether this end be distinctly or vaguely recognized by the conscious subject, or not recognized at all.”

Froebel writes:

“In all activity, in every deed of man, even as a child, yes the very smallest, an aim is expressed, a reference to something, to the furthering or representing of something; … thus the child strives, even if unconsciously, to make his inner life objective, and through that perceptible, that so he may become conscious of it.”--_P., pp. 237-240._

The same idea, that conscious process is directed to an end, though there may be no consciousness of that end, is given in another passage, where Froebel is speaking of the need for satisfying a child’s normal desire for playthings.

“Very often the child seeks for something, nevertheless he himself does not know at all what he seeks; at another time he puts something away from him and again knows not why.”--_P., p. 168._

Of the earliest mental activity Professor Stout writes:

“In its earliest and simplest form, mental activity consists in those simple reactions which without being determined by any definite idea of an end to be realized, tend on the whole to the maintenance of immediate pleasure and the avoidance of immediate pain.”

The movements of the organism at this earliest stage “seem primarily adapted to the conservation and furtherance of vital process in general.”[13]

Froebel speaks of the child’s efforts:

“to put far from him that which is opposed to the needs of his life and yet would break in upon it.”--_P., p. 167._

He tells the mother that, in the first stages at least, the restlessness and tears of the infant will warn her of the presence of anything in his surroundings hurtful to his development, while his laughter and movements of pleasure will show “what according to the feeling of the child is suited to the undisturbed development of his life as an immature human being.”

Mr. Stout goes on to say that such simple reactions are adapted “secondarily and by way of necessary corollary to the conservation and furtherance of conscious life.” He tells us that: “The primary craving with which the education of the senses begins, so far as it does not involve such practical needs as that of food, may be described as a general craving for stimulation or excitement … this conation being in the first instance in the highest degree indeterminate.”

Froebel, who speaks of the nurse “soothing the restless child _vaguely striving_ for definite and satisfactory outward activity,” tells us that:

“if his bodily needs are satisfied and he feels himself well and strong, the first spontaneous employment of the child is spontaneous taking in (selbstthätiges Aufnehmen) of the outer world.”--_P., p. 29._

He writes to Madame Schmidt, the cousin for whose assistance he has begged in observing children:

“This spontaneous activity of limb and vividness of sensation natural to infancy, and I may say inseparable from it, must also be carefully studied.”--_L., p. 110._

And, in the Mother Songs, he says:

“You can see how his bodily activity, the movement and use of his limbs, like the activity of his senses, all turn towards one point: Life must be grasped, experienced and perceived … he wants to appropriate the outer and to re-embody it … his susceptibility for all that gives and takes up life will strike you as something that elevates his life in every way; even as young plants and animals are susceptible to the faintest workings of light and warmth, or the impressions of their environment, however delicate. Moreover, this receptivity is most closely related to great general excitability and sensibility (Erregbarkeit, Reizbarkeit).”--_M., pp. 119-121._

Froebel’s views as to the nature both of early and of later mental activity then bear a strong resemblance to the modern view as stated by Professor Stout.[14]

In searching Froebel’s writings to find what he has to say about the stages lying between early mental activity and fully developed will, between what he calls “natural activity of the will, and true genuine firmness of will,” it soon becomes clear that it is impossible to separate what is said about will development, from what is said about intellectual development.[15] This is a natural consequence of Froebel’s constant insistence on the unity of consciousness, and it is the position of modern psychology, whether written from the analytic or the genetic point of view. Mr. Irving King writes: “The functional point of view emphasizes first of all the intimate inter-relation of all forms of mental activity and the impossibility of describing any one aspect of consciousness except with reference to consciousness as a whole.” Professor Stout, in his “Analytic Psychology,” has a section entitled “Conation and Cognition developed co-incidentally,”[16] while Froebel says:

“Thought must form itself in action, and action resolve and clear itself in thought.”--_P., p. 42._

Froebel speaks of his projected institution at Helba as “fundamental,”

“inasmuch as in training and instruction it will rest on the foundation from which proceed all genuine knowledge and all genuine practical attainments; it will rest on life itself and on creative efforts, _on the union and interdependence of doing and thinking_, representation and knowledge, art and science. The institution will base its work on the pupil’s personal efforts in work and expression, making these, again, the foundation of all genuine knowledge and culture. Joined with thoughtfulness, these efforts become a direct medium of culture.”--_E., p. 38._

Professor Stout’s account of how the unconscious mental activity of early childhood becomes transformed into the definite and conscious activity of fully developed will is, stated briefly, something to this effect. It is of the essence of conation to seek its own satisfaction, and this is only possible as the conation becomes definite. “Blind craving gives place to open-eyed desire,” as the original conation tends to define itself. So “the gradual acquisition of knowledge through experience is but another expression for the process whereby the originally blind craving becomes more distinct and more differentiated.” The grouping of cognitions is not produced by the conscious needs: “It is the way in which the conation itself grows and develops.”

For this account we can find a wonderfully exact parallel in one of Froebel’s less well-known papers, that on “Movement Plays.”

“All outer activity of the child has its ultimate and distinctive foundation in his inmost nature and life. The deepest craving of this inner activity is to behold itself mirrored in some outward object. In and through such representation, the child himself grasps and perceives the nature, direction and aim of his own activity, and learns also further to regulate and determine his life, that is his activity, according to these outward phenomena.”--_P., p. 238._

This craving for outward representation, by satisfaction of which the child gains knowledge of the ends of his activity, is an exact equivalent of Stout’s blind craving which gives place to open-eyed desire as it tends to define itself. Froebel’s conclusion, that only as this unconscious or blind craving for action is satisfied does the child become “conscious of the nature, direction and ends of his own activity,” is but another way of stating Professor Stout’s conclusion, that the grouping of cognitions, which is the gradual acquirement of knowledge through experience, is “the way in which the conation itself grows and develops.” So, cognition and conation are developed simultaneously, or, to repeat Froebel’s own phrase, “Thought forms itself in action, and action resolves and clears itself in thought.”

Professor Stout goes on to say that in this defining process one conation springs out of another, whereby as one conation is satisfied and so comes to an end, another becomes in its turn the end of activity. He takes as illustration the child learning to walk, saying, “The mental attitude of the child learning to walk is one of conscious endeavour. When he has become habituated to the act, he performs it without attending to his movements, his mind being fixed on the attainment of other ends.” Froebel proceeds in the same way, using the very same example. He has already said that at first the child:

“cares for the use of his body, his senses and limbs, merely for the sake of their use and practice, but not for the sake of the results of this use. He is wholly indifferent to this; _or, rather, he has as yet no idea whatever of this_.”--_P., p. 48._

Now, in the paper on movement, he goes on:

“Each sure and independent movement gives the child pleasure, because of the feeling of power which it arouses in him. Even simple walking produces this effect, for it gives the child a threefold feeling, a threefold consciousness: First, the consciousness that he _moves_ himself; secondly, that he moves himself from one place to another; third, that through this movement he attains or reaches something.… It is a well-established fact that his first walking gives the child pleasure as an expression of his power. _To this pleasure, however, are soon added the two joy-bringing perceptions of coming to something, and of being able to attain something._ These several perceptions should all be fostered at the same time … he should get his limbs, and indeed his whole body, into his own power. He should learn to use his bodily strength and the activity of his limbs for definite purposes.… _The effort to reach a particular object may have its source in the child’s desire to hold himself firm and upright by it, but we also observe that it gives him pleasure to be actually near the object, to touch it, to feel it, to grasp it, and perhaps also--which is a new phase of activity--to be able to move it._ Hence we see that the child when he has reached the desired object, hops up and down before it, and beats on it with his little arms and hands, in order, as it were, to assure himself of the reality of the object and to notice its qualities. It is well, _while the child is making these experiments_, to name the object and its parts. _The object of giving these names is not primarily the development of the child’s power of speech, but to assist his comprehension of the object_, its parts and its properties, _by defining his sense-impressions_.”--_P., p. 241._

Another passage runs:

“The present effort of mankind is an endeavour after freer self-development.… Therefore the more or less clear aim of the individual is to attain to clearness about himself and about life, to comprehension and right use of life, to both insight and accomplishment.… Therefore the educator must understand the earliest activity and encourage the impulse to self-culture, through independent doing, observing and experimenting.”--_P., p. 16._

To say that a conation tends to define itself is only to say that unconscious ends tend to be replaced by conscious ends, and we have seen that both Froebel and Professor Stout give unconsciousness or consciousness of the end, as the difference between earlier and later forms of mental activity. Professor Stout’s conclusion is that “apart from the perpetual germination of one conation out of another, the characteristic features of the mental life of human beings would be inexplicable.”

Now, to be conscious of one’s ends or aims is, in a certain sense, to be self-conscious, so the transition from earlier to later forms of mental activity is practically the development of self-consciousness. It is interesting, therefore, to see that just as Professor Stout gives as his explanation of human life, the perpetual germination of one conation out of another, so Froebel gives as his explanation, his meaning of life, the gradual development of self-consciousness.

Self-consciousness, involving true volition, or self-determination, is to Froebel “the end of man, for which he first was planned.” It is, as he constantly put it, man’s “destination.”

“To become clearly conscious of all the conditions and relations in which and by means of which man exists makes man first become man in consciousness and in action.”--_P., p. 12._

“For man is destined for consciousness, for freedom, for self-determination.”--_E., p. 136._

“Self-consciousness belongs to the nature of man, is one with it; to become conscious of itself is the first task in the life of the child as a human being, as it is the task of his whole life.”--_P., p. 40._

“Who amongst us,” exclaims Professor Royce, “conceives himself in his uniqueness except as the remote goal of some ideal process of coming to himself and of awakening to the truth about his own life? Only an infinite process can show me who I am.”[17]

Froebel never loses sight of this. In his Autobiography he tells how he began “unwillingly” to write something in the album of a friend who was the owner of a beautiful farm, and he concludes: “Then my thoughts grew clear and I continued, ‘Thou givest man bread; let my aim be to give man himself.’” That he verily believed that the gradual development of self-consciousness is the first task in the life of the child is abundantly evident. In the very beginning of his Mother Songs he tells the mother to give her child something to push against, “to bring the child to self-knowledge as soon as possible,” and at the end he says, “When a child or human being has found himself and has firm hold over himself, he is ready to walk joyfully through life.”

In “The First Action of a Child,” Froebel writes:

“The nature of man, as man, is that he is self-conscious, and this is stamped with distinctness enough to be observed in the quite peculiar character of childish activity,[18] in his impulse to busy himself self-actively, spontaneously: an impulse which awakens simultaneously with mind, and which is in harmony with feeling and perception. If this tendency to spontaneous activity is fostered, man’s triune nature--energy, emotion and intellect--is satisfied.”--_P., p. 21._

A realization of what Sir Oliver Lodge calls “the universal struggle for self-manifestation and corporeal realization, which plays so large a part in all activity,” underlies all that Froebel has to say of the progress from unconscious activity to self-conscious volition. His view of the Universe is exactly that tentatively suggested by Professor Lodge, viz. that something akin to this universal struggle “is exhibited in a region beyond and above what is ordinarily conceived of as ‘Nature.’ The process of evolution can be regarded as the gradual unfolding of the Divine Thought or Logos, throughout the universe, by the action of Spirit upon matter.”

This takes us out of the region of psychology, but Froebel’s subject was not psychology, _per se_, but child development, as a part of the whole plan of evolution, man being the most highly developed of creatures.

The whole universe is an expression of the Divine, but man alone can become conscious of his origin.

“All things are destined to reveal God in their external and transient being.… It is the special destiny of man, as an intelligent and rational being to become conscious of his divine essence and to render this active, to reveal it in his life, with self-determination and freedom.”--_E., p. 2._

“Made in the image of God,” meant to Froebel self-conscious and self-determined. The relation of man to God is expressed by Froebel as the relation of the thought to the thinker “_could the thought but become conscious of itself_.” In a letter of 1843, he says:

“At the basis of the Kindergarten lies an idea which serves alike for all the interstellar spaces, for all systems of the sun; the fulfilment of the divine will and the manifestation of the same. _In order to become such a manifestation of the divine, man has first to attain the basis of self-consciousness_; to which end serves the early culture of the spirit of humanity in the world of childhood.”--_L., p. 133._

In a paper entitled “A Second Review of the Plays,” which really deals chiefly with evolution, we read:

“We must see clearly the conditions of development in Nature and then employ them in life. Thus only can we raise man upon his own plane, that is, the spiritual plane, at least to such a degree of perfection as is shown on their plane by the types of Nature.

“Man--the all-surveying--must develop himself by gradual growth of consciousness, must raise himself eventually to clear consciousness of the foundation, conditions and goal of his life.”--_P., p. 198._

It was as clear to Froebel as to Professor Lloyd Morgan that the lower animals are kept from reaching self-consciousness by the definiteness of their instincts,[19] but to Froebel as to Browning “in completed Man begins anew a tendency to God.” Like Browning again, Froebel finds that man has “somewhat to cast off, somewhat to become,” he, too, “finds Progress man’s distinctive mark alone, not God’s, and not the beasts’; God is, they are, man partly is, and wholly hopes to be.”

“Man in his first period of life on earth is to be regarded while a child in three separate relations, which are united in themselves.

“(_a_) As a child of Nature, that is according to his earthly and natural conditions and connections, and in this relation bound, chained, unconscious, subject to impulses (als ein gebundenes, gefesseltes, unbewusstes, den Trieben unterworfenes).

“(_b_) As a child of God, and in this relation as a free being, destined to self-consciousness.

“(_c_) As a child of Humanity, and in this relation, as a being struggling from bondage toward freedom, toward consciousness.”--_P., p. 11._

And the beginning of all he finds in “The First Action of the Child.” In the paper to which he gives this title Froebel writes:

“Helplessness and personal will, a mind of one’s own, soon become therefore the turning-points of child-life, the fulcrum of which is free spontaneous activity, self-employment.”--_P., p. 27._

It is because Froebel believes this, that we hear so much of creative activity. Consciousness, which Meredith calls “the great result of mortal suffering,” is the outcome of all the unconscious striving.

“The child, although unconsciously, strives to make his life outwardly objective, and thus perceptible and so to become conscious of it.”--_P., p. 240._

“Man only comes to the power of self-examination and self-knowledge in any relation whatever with the greatest difficulty, and must first learn to study himself … in the mirror of Nature and of all creation.”--_L., p. 57._

“The child must perceive and grasp his own life in an objective manifestation before he can perceive and grasp it in himself. Such mirroring of the inner life, such making of the inner life objective, is essential, for through it, the child comes to self-consciousness and learns to order, determine and master himself.”--_P., p. 238._

Froebel realizes then, that true volition is the outcome of unconscious striving, that it can only come through action, and, what is most important, through action which is the outcome of feeling, “worthy his effort.” So, while stating that the formation of “a pure, strong and enduring will” is the main object of education, he takes care to point out that unless the boy is allowed to carry out in action “that which is within,” ideas which have appealed to him, and which he has already made his own, that main object will not be easily attainable.

“To raise activity of will to firmness of will, and so to arouse, and form a pure, strong and enduring will, for the representation of a characteristic humanity, is the chief aim, the main object of the school.… The starting-point of all mental activity in the boy should be energetic and healthy, the direction should be simple and definite, the aim certain and conscious, and worthy of his effort. Therefore to raise the natural activity of the will to true genuine firmness of will, all the boy’s activities should have reference to the development and accomplishment of what is within him. Activity of will proceeds from activity of the feelings, and firmness of will from firmness of the feelings, and where the first is lacking, the second will be difficult of attainment.”--_E., p. 96._