Missionary writers have cast it at him, that were of old he had preached against rebellion, now he was willing enough to "have rebels for his patrons";--"adversity had not stiffened his back, but had made him pliable." Which shows how blind such minds are to real greatness. "They have nothing to draw with, and this well is deep." He sought no "patrons," now or at another time; but tools with which to work for the redemption of China; and he was prepared to find them anywhere, and take what came to hand. His keynote was _duty._ The world went on snubbing, ignoring, insulting, traducing, and persecuting him; and he went on with the performance of his duty;--rather, with the more difficult task of searching for the duty he was to perform. This resorting to rebels, like that conversing with Nantse, shows him clearly not the formalist and slave of conventions he has been called, but a man of highest moral courage. What he stood for was not forms, conventions, reules, proprieties, or anything of the sort; but the liens of least resistance in his high endeavor to lift the world: lines of least resistance; middle lines; common sense.--As ususal, there was nothing to be done with the Duke of Ts'ae. Wandering from state to state, he came on recluses in a field by the river, and sent Tse Lu forward to ask one of them the way to the ford. Said the hermit:--"You follow one who withdraws from court to court; it would be better to withdraw from the world altogether."--"What!" said Confucius when it was told him; "shall I not associate with mankind? If I do not associate with mankind, with whom shall I associate?"