Froebel's Gifts

"A correct comprehension of external, material things is a preliminary to a just comprehension of intellectual relations." Friedrich Froebel. "The A, B, C of things must precede the A, B, C of words, and give to the words (abstractions) their true foundations. It is because these foundations fail so often in the present time that there are so few men who think independently and express skillfully their inborn divine ideas." Friedrich Froebel. "Perception is the beginning and the preliminary condition for thinking. One's own perceptions awaken one's own conceptions, and these awaken one's own thinking in later stages of development. Let us have no precocity, but natural, that is consecutive, development." Friedrich Froebel.