Does not the boy take pleasure in
building, and what else are the earliest fixed forms of Nature but
built-up forms? However, this indication that a higher meaning underlies
the occupation and games which children choose out for themselves must
for the present suffice. And since these spontaneous activities of
children have not yet been thoroughly thought out from a high point of
view, and have not yet been regarded from what I might almost call their
cosmical and anthropological side, we may from day to day expect some
philosopher to write a comprehensive and important book about them.[66]
From the love, the attention, the continued interest and the
cheerfulness with which these occupations are plied by children other
important considerations also arise, of quite a different character.
A boy's game necessarily brings him into some wider or fuller
relationship, into relationship with some more elevated group of ideas.
Is he building a house?--he builds it so that he may dwell in it like
grown-up people do, and have just such another cupboard, and so forth,
as they have, and be able to give people things out of it just as they
do. And one must always take care of this: that the child who receives a
present shall not have his nature cramped and stunted thereby; according
to the measure of how much he receives, so much must he be able to give
away.
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