Froebel thinks that everything in nature is developing. Man is a part of nature, and like nature, it is constantly developing and perfecting. But man is different from nature. People can clearly understand this process and promote it through education. Therefore, education is an evolutionary process determined by internal factors. If children are allowed to develop naturally, the spirit of God will appear in children's activities. Children can be "automatic" because they have hidden this instinct from the beginning. Froebel believes that there are four kinds of children's instinct: the instinct of activity, the instinct of cognition, the instinct of art and the instinct of religion. The function of education is to provide conditions for freedom, automaticity and self-awareness, so that the spirit of God hidden in children can be better manifested outward. Therefore, "the teaching and training of education must be passive and sequential in basic principles, not imperative, absolute and interfering." The teacher's task is to conform to nature, guide the child to grow up and provide all help, rather than forcing it and interfering with it.

Froebel believes that development is phased, continuous and endless. Human development starts from a little bit, and then continues to evolve step by step. In the process of development, each stage is a continuation of the previous stage; Jumping and mutation are not development. Therefore, in education, we can only help and guide children's development according to the stages of their life development, and promote children's precocity with leap-forward rapid education, which is an imperfect precocity and has no educational value. Moreover, development is endless. "Human beings are always in the process of formation, always moving forward, from one stage of development to another at a higher level."