If we succeed in giving the love of learning, the learning itself is sure
to follow.

We should therefore endeavor to educate our children so that every country
walk may be a pleasure; that the discoveries of science may be a living
interest; that our national history and poetry may be sources of
legitimate pride and rational enjoyment. In short, our schools, if they
are to be worthy of the name--if they are to fulfil their high
function--must be something more than mere places of dry study; they must
train the children educated in them so that they may be able to appreciate
and enjoy those intellectual gifts which might be, and ought to be, a
source of interest and of happiness, alike to the high and to the low, to
the rich and to the poor.

A wise system of education will at least teach us how little man yet
knows, how much he has still to learn; it will enable us to realize that
those who complain of the tiresome monotony of life have only themselves
to blame; and that knowledge is pleasure as well as power. It will lead us
all to try with Milton "to behold the bright countenance of truth in the
quiet and still air of study," and to feel with Bacon that "no pleasure is
comparable is the standing upon the vantage ground of truth."

We should then indeed realize in part, for as yet we cannot do so fully,
the "sacred trusts of health, strength, and time," and how thankful we
ought to be for the inestimable gift of life.

[1] Bacon.

[2] Goethe.