THE MOST UNSKILFUL TEACHER.—In one man all his real virtues are implanted on the soil of his spirit of contradiction, in another on his incapacity to say “no”—in other words, on his spirit of acquiescence. A third has made all his morality grow out of his pride as a solitary, a fourth from his strong social instinct. Now, supposing that the seeds of the virtues in these four cases, owing to mischance or unskilful teachers, were not sown on the soil of their nature, which provides them with the richest and most abundant mould, they would become weak, unsatisfactory men (devoid of morality). And who would have been the most unskilful of teachers, the evil genius of these men? The moral fanatic, who thinks that the good can only grow out of the good and on the soil of the good. 71. THE CAUTIOUS STYLE.—_A._ But if this were known to _all_, it would be injurious to the _majority_. You yourself call your opinions dangerous to those in danger, and yet you make them public? _B._ I write so that neither the mob, nor the _populi_, nor the parties of all kinds can read me. So my opinions will never be “public opinions.” _A._ How do you write, then? _B._ Neither usefully nor pleasantly—for the three classes I have mentioned. 72. DIVINE MISSIONARIES.—Even Socrates feels himself to be a divine missionary, but I am not sure whether we should not here detect a tincture of that Attic irony and fondness for jesting whereby this odious, arrogant conception would be toned down. He talks of the fact without unction—his images of the gadfly and the horse are simple and not sacerdotal. The real religious task which he has set himself—to _test_ God in a hundred ways and see whether he spoke the truth—betrays a bold and free attitude, in which the missionary walked by the side of his God. This testing of God is one of the most subtle compromises between piety and free-thinking that has ever been devised.—Nowadays we do not even need this compromise any longer. 73.