stands and knows his own power." Conscious development of
one's own power is the triumph of spirit over matter, therefore human
development is spiritual development. So while man is the most perfect
earthly being, yet, with regard to spiritual development he has returned
to a first stage and "must raise himself through ascending degrees of
consciousness" to heights as yet unknown, "for who has measured the
limits of God-born mankind?"

Self-consciousness is the special characteristic of man. No other animal
has the power to become conscious of himself because man alone has the
chance of failure. The lower animals have definite instincts and cannot
fail, _i.e._ cannot learn.[9] Man wants to do much, but his instincts
are less definite and most actions have to be learned; it is by striving
and failing that he learns to know not only his limitations but the
power that is within him--his self.

[Footnote 9: This would nowadays be considered too sweeping an
assertion.]

According to Froebel, "the aim of education is the steady progressive
development of mankind, there is and can be no other"; and, except as
regards physiological knowledge inaccessible in his day, he is at one
with the biologist as to how we are to find out the course of this
development. First, by looking into our own past; secondly, by the
observation of children as individuals as well as when associated
together, and by comparison of the results of observation; thirdly, by
comparison of these with race history and race development.

Froebel makes much of observation of children. He writes to a cousin
begging her to "record in writing the most important facts about each
separate child," and adds that it seems to him "most necessary for the
comprehension of child-nature that such observations should be made
public,... of the greatest importance that we should interchange the
observations we make so that little by little we may come to know the
grounds and conditions of what we observe, that we may formulate their
laws." He protests that even in his day "the observation, development
and guidance of children in the first years of life up to the proper age
of school" is not up to the existing level of "the stage of human
knowledge or the advance of science and art"; and he states that it is
"an essential part" of his undertaking "to call into life _an
institution for the preparation of teachers trained for the care of
children through observation of their l