The Schoolboy: Saint-Leons 



mit it to-day. When it is hard enough to earn 

 one's bit of bread, does not improving one's mind 

 but render one more meet for suffering? Of what 

 avail is the torment of learning to the derelicts 

 of life? 



A deal better off am I, at this late hour, dogged 

 by poverty and knowing that the diamonds of the 

 duck-pool were rock-crystal, the gold-dust mica, 

 the stone horn an Ammonite, and the sky-blue Bee- 

 tle a Hoplia! We poor men would do better to 

 mistrust the joys of knowledge : let us dig our fur- 

 row in the field of the commonplace, flee the 

 temptations of the pond, mind our ducks and leave 

 to others, more favoured by fortune, the job of 

 explaining the world's mechanism, if the spirit 

 moves them. 



And yet no! Alone among living creatures man 

 has the thirst for knowledge; he alone pries into 

 the mysteries of things. The least among us will 

 utter his whys and his wherefores, a fine pain un- 

 known to the brute beast. If these questionings 

 come from us with greater persistence, with a more 

 imperious authority, if they divert us from the 

 quest of lucre, life's only object in the eyes of 

 most men, does it behove us to complain ? Let us 

 be careful not to do so, for that would be deny- 

 ing the best of all our gifts. 



Let us strive, on the contrary, within the meas- 

 ure of our capacity, to force a gleam of light from 

 the vast unknown ; let us examine and question 

 and, here and there, wrest a few shreds of truth. 

 We shall sink under the task; in the present ill- 

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