Kielland the knowledge which is offered in the guise of
intellectual nourishment is poison. It is the dry and dusty
accumulation of antiquarian lore, which has little or no
application to modern life--it is this which the young man of the
higher classes is required to assimilate. Apropos of this, let me
quote Dr. G. Brandes, who has summed up the tendency of these two
novels with great felicity:

"The author has surveyed the generation to which he himself
belongs, and after having scanned these wide domains of
emasculation, these prairies of spiritual sterility, these vast
plains of servility and irresolution, he has addressed to himself
the questions: How does a whole generation become such? How was it
possible to nip in the bud all that was fertile and eminent? And
he has painted a picture of the history of the development of the
present generation in the home-life and school-life of Abraham
Loevdahl, in order to show from what kind of parentage those most
fortunately situated and best endowed have sprung, and what kind of
education they received at home and in the school. This is, indeed,
a simple and an excellent theme.

"We first see the child led about upon the wide and withered common
of knowledge, with the same sort of meagre fodder for all; we see
it trained in mechanical memorizing, in barren knowledge concerning
things and forms that are dead and gone; in ignorance concerning
the life that is, in contempt for it, and in the consciousness of
its privileged position, by dint of its possession of this doubtful
culture. We see pride strengthened; the healthy curiosity, the
desire to ask questions, killed."