“Dost thou mean, O my father,” he said, “that I must leave this little room of ours and go out among the street-persons in the endless streets of the great city?”
“He who would understand the meaning of all things,” said his father, “must certainly go to school.”
“Yet are not all things to be learned from the ancient authors, my father?” asked the boy eagerly. “Is not every secret contained in those hundreds of books in the shop that it is not yet given to my mind to grasp?”
“There are many secrets, beloved, which no book has the power to reveal.”
“Not even those among them, my father, which are wrought of the great souls of heroes?” said the boy in dismay.
“Not even they.”
“Yet have I not heard you say, my father, that there were few things they did not understand?”
“True, beloved, but they had not the power to commit the whole of their knowledge to their writings.”
“But did you not say, my father, that each of these great ones communed with his peers constantly and faithfully in his little inner room?”
“What a prodigious memory is yours! But I ought to have made it clear to you that before these heroes could commune with their peers faithfully, they were compelled to leave their little rooms, adventure out among the streets of the great city and go to school.”