took an official post in Weimar, and continued to write from time to time.  Meanwhile he completed his studies in Jena and Berlin under Karl von Ritter, the great authority on cosmography, and under the distinguished naturalist, Alexander von Humboldt.  In 1833 he became Professor at the Polytechnic School in Zurich; but his literary avocations eventually drew him to Dresden.  Here he was chosen Deputy to the National Assembly at Frankfurt in 1848.  After the dissolution of that Assembly, Julius Froebel, in common with many others of the more advanced party, was condemned to death.  He escaped to Switzerland before arrest, and fled to New York.  In after life he was permitted to return to Germany, and eventually he was appointed Consul at Smyrna.

Karl Froebel, the next son, went to Jena also.  He then took a tutorship in England, and it was at this time (1831) that his pamphlet, “A Preparation for Euclid,” appeared.  He returned to the Continent to become Director of the Public Schools at Zuerich.  He left Zuerich in 1848 for Hamburg, where he founded a Lyceum for Young Ladies.  Some years later, when this had ceased to exist, he went again to England, and eventually founded an excellent school at Edinburgh with the aid of his wife; which, indeed, his wife and he still conduct.  His daughters show great talent for music, and one of them was a pupil of the distinguished pianist, Madame Schumann (widow of the great composer).

[103] Or, as we say, A is A.

[104] A great deal of Froebel’s irony might all too truly be still applied to current educational work.

[105] Empiricism—­that is, a posteriori investigations, based on actual facts and not a priori deductions from theories, or general laws, did good service before Froebel’s time, and will do good service yet, Froebel notwithstanding.  In Froebel’s time the limits Kant so truly set to the human understanding were overstepped on every side; Fichte, Schelling, and Hegel were teaching, and the latter especially had an overpowering influence upon all science.  Every one constructed a philosophy of the universe out of his own brain.  Krause, the recipient of this letter, never attained to very great influence, though had he been in Hegel’s chair he might perhaps have wielded Hegel’s authority, and there was for a long time a great likelihood of his appointment.  Meanwhile he reconstructed the university at Goettingen.  Even practical students of Nature, such as Oken, did homage to the general tendency which had absorbed all the eager spirits of the vanguard of human advancement, amongst them Froebel himself.  We see how firmly set Froebel was against experience-teaching, a posteriori work, or, as he calls it, empiricism.  The Kantist, Arthur Schopenhauer, was not listened to, and dwelt apart, devouring his heart in bitter silence; breaking out at last with the dreary creed of Pessimism.