"These employments aim at and produce, first of all, in man, an all-sided development and presentation of his nature; they are, in general, the needful food for the spirit; they are the ether in which the spirit breathes and lives that it may gain power, strength, and, I might add, extent, because the spiritual qualities given by God to man, which proceed from his spirit in all directions with irresistible necessity, necessarily appear as manifoldness, and must be satisfied as such, and met in manifold directions."<br><br>The gifts, occupations, and recreative exercises of the kindergarten were devised by Froebel to satisfy what he terms the eight instinctive activities of the child, "for play, for producing, for shaping, for knowledge, for society, and for cultivating the ground."