Autobiography of Friedrich Froebel | Page 5

and ignorance of child-nature and
insufficient education wrought their influence upon me. Soon after my
birth my mother's health began to fail, and after nursing me nine
months she died. This loss, a hard blow to me, influenced the whole
environment and development of my being: I consider that my mother's
death decided more or less the external circumstances of my whole life.
The cure of five thousand souls, scattered over six or seven villages,
devolved solely on my father. This work, even to a man so active as my
father, who was very conscientious in the fulfilment of his duty as
minister, was all-absorbing; the more so since the custom of frequent
services still prevailed. Besides all this, my father had undertaken to
superintend the building of a large new church, which drew him more
and more from his home and from his children.
I was left to the care of the servants; but they, profiting by my father's
absorption in his work, left me, fortunately for me, to my brothers, who
were somewhat older than myself.[2] This, in addition to a
circumstance of my later life, may have been the cause of that

unswerving love for my family, and especially for my brothers, which
has, to the present moment, been of the greatest importance to me in
the conduct of my life. Although my father, for a village pastor, was
unusually well informed--nay, even learned and experienced--and was
an incessantly active man, yet in consequence of this separation from
him during my earliest years I remained a stranger to him throughout
my life; and in this way I was as truly without a father as without a
mother. Amidst such surroundings I reached my fourth year. My father
then married again, and gave me a second mother. My soul must have
felt deeply at this time the want of a mother's love,--of parental
love,--for in this year occurs my first consciousness of self. I remember
that I received my new mother overflowing with feelings of simple and
faithful child-love towards her. These sentiments made me happy,
developed my nature, and strengthened me, because they were kindly
received and reciprocated by her. But this happiness did not endure.
Soon my step-mother rejoiced in the possession of a son of her own;[3]
and then her love was not only withdrawn entirely from me and
transferred to her own child, but I was treated with worse than
indifference--by word and deed, I was made to feel an utter stranger.
I am obliged here to mention these circumstances, and to describe them
so particularly, because in them I see the first cause of my early habit of
introspection, my tendency to self-examination, and my early
separation from companionship with other men. Soon after the birth of
her own son, when I had scarcely entered my boyhood, my step-mother
ceased to use the sympathetic, heart-uniting "thou" in speaking to me,
and began to address me in the third person, the most estranging of our
forms of speech. And as in this mode of address the third person, "he,"
isolates the person addressed, it created a great chasm between my
step-mother and me.[4] At the beginning of my boyhood, I already felt
utterly lonely, and my soul was filled with grief.
Some coarse-minded people wished to make use of my sentiments and
my mood at this time to set me against my step-mother, but my heart
and mind turned with indignation from these persons, whom I
thenceforth avoided, so far as I was able. Thus I became, at an early age,
conscious of a nobler, purer, inner-life, and laid the foundation of that

proper self-consciousness and moral pride which have accompanied me
through life. Temptations returned from time to time, and each time
took a more dangerous form: not only was I suspected as being capable
of unworthy things, but base conduct was actually charged against me,
and this in such a way as left no doubt of the impropriety of the
suspicion and of the untruthfulness of the accusation. So it came to pass
that in the first years of my boyhood I was perforce led to live to
myself and in myself--and indeed to study my own being and inner
consciousness, as opposed to external circumstances. My inward and
my outward life were at that time, even during play and other
occupations, my principal subjects for reflection and thought.
A notable influence upon the development and formation of my
character was also exercised by the position of my parents' house. It
was closely surrounded by other buildings, walls, hedges, and fences,
and was further enclosed by an outer courtyard, a paddock, and a
kitchen garden. Beyond these latter I was strictly forbidden to pass. The
dwelling had no other outlook than on to the