[140] During this leave they assembled at Burgdorf,
mutually communicated their experiences, and enriched their culture with
various studies. Froebel had to preside over the debates and to conduct
the studies, which were pursued in common. His own observations and the
remarks of the teachers brought him anew to the conviction that all
school education was as yet without a proper foundation, and, therefore,
that until the education of the nursery was reformed nothing solid and
worthy could be attained. The necessity of training gifted capable
mothers occupied his soul, and the importance of the education of
childhood's earliest years became more evident to him than ever. He
determined to set forth fully his ideas on education, which the tyranny
of a thousand opposing circumstances had always prevented him from
working out in their completeness; or at all events to do this as
regards the earliest years of man, and then to win over the world of
women to the actual accomplishment of his plans. Pestalozzi's "Mothers'
Book" (_Buch der Muetter_) Froebel would replace by a complete
theoretical and practical system for the use of women in general. An
external circumstance supervened at this point to urge him onwards.
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