Law, the authorized Word of God, and its Prophetical and Rabbinical
developments, was man's supreme duty. "If thou hast learned much Torah,
ascribe not any merit to thyself, for therefor wast thou created." Man
was created to learn; literature was the aim of life. We have already
seen what kind of literature. Jochanan once said to his five favorite
disciples: "Go forth and consider which is the good way to which a man
should cleave." He received various answers, but he most approved of
this response: "A good heart is the way." Literature is life if it be a
heart-literature--this may be regarded as the final justification of the
union effected in the Mishnah between learning and righteousness.

Akiba, who may be taken to represent the second generation of Tannaim,
differed in character from Jochanan. Jochanan had been a member of the
peace party in the years 66 to 70; Akiba was a patriot, and took a
personal part in the later struggle against Rome, which was organized by
the heroic Bar Cochba in the years 131 to 135. Akiba set his face
against frivolity, and pronounced silence a fence about wisdom. But his
disposition was resolute rather than severe. Of him the most romantic of
love stories is told. He was a herdsman, and fell in love with his
master's daughter, who endured poverty as his devoted wife, and was
glorified in her husband's fame. But whatever contrast there may have
been in the two characters, Akiba, like Jochanan, believed that a
literature was worthless unless it expressed itself in the life of the
scholar. He and his school held in low esteem the man who, though
learned, led an evil life, but they took as their ideal the man whose
moral excellence was more conspicuous than his learning. As R. Eleazar,
the son of Azariah, said: "He whose knowledge is in excess of his good
deeds is like a tree whose branches are many and its roots scanty; the
wind comes, uproots, and overturns it. But he whose good deeds are more
than his knowledge is like a tree with few branches but many roots, so