A Child’s Inducements to Learn––The story of Hillel, as illustrating the duty of acquiring knowledge, is very charming, and is deeply interesting to the psychologist, as illustrating that a naturally implanted desire for knowledge is one of the springs of action in the human breast. The motives proposed for seeking knowledge are poor and inadequate: to succeed in life, to gain esteem, to satisfy yourself, and even to be able, possibly, to benefit others, are by no means soul-compelling motives. The child, who is encouraged to learn, because to learn is his particular duty in that state or life to which it has pleased God to call him, has the strongest of conceivable motives, in the sense that he is rendering that which is required of him by the Supreme Authority.
This one note of feebleness runs through the whole treatment of the subject. The drowning man is supposed to counsel himself to ‘be brave, because as a human being you are superior to the forces of Nature, because there is something in you––your moral self––over which the forces of Nature have no power, because what happens to you in your private character is not important; but it is important that you assert dignity of humanity to the last breath.’ This reads rather well; but how much finer is the attitude the man who struggles manfully to save the life that God has given him!