"Everything serves! But mould by itself can make no bread. One ought therefore not to be angry with the pagans, for they know no better. To enlighten them is difficult; one can locate a grey star, but not a black one. One ought not to fear them, for then they bite. But they must have their day. 'I have seen the wicked in great power, and spreading himself like a green tree in its native soil; but I passed by, and, lo, he was not; yea, I sought him, but he could not be found.'" =The Man of Development.=--The pupil asked: "Can the pagans really not be enlightened?" "Experience has shown that it is almost impossible. For a blockhead cannot understand the simplest things; he cannot see the self-evident nature of an axiom. If he is systematically followed by misfortune, he calls it 'bad-luck'; if he is prostrated with illness, he rises as stupid as he was before; if he gets into prison, he sits there and meditates new tricks; if he lies on the rack, he thinks he is suffering for his faith, although he has not got any; from warnings and trials he emerges as great a calf as he was before, for he has no intelligence. All the denizens of the dunghill praise his firmness of character, his strength of soul, his strong belief in his cause. He is sixty years old, and he has worked for 'development,' but he has not been able to develop himself. He hawks about the same rubbish as he did forty years ago, when he discovered what he called 'the truth' in the books of his teachers; he has never produced an original thought, nor obtained a new view of an old subject. He has stood still, but the world has gone forward; he believed he was leading the van, when he was bringing up the rear. Christianity beckoned, but crab-like he went backward to paganism. Such is the man of 'development.' Do you know him?" "I have known him, but renounced his acquaintance." =Sins of Thought.=--The teacher said: "According to Luther, man is a child till his fortieth year. I was a child till my fiftieth, _i.e._ unintelligent, conceited. I believed that I was inaccessible and irresponsible as regards my thoughts. But I was obliged to change my opinion when I began to observe myself. I discovered, that is, that when I had sinned, hated, killed, stolen, though only in thought, and then came into the company of friends, they treated me ruthlessly, as though I were a murderer or a thief. I could not explain, but finally believed that my evil thoughts were legible in my face. And when I observed that my friends began to touch on precisely the same unpleasant subject which had occupied my secret thoughts, I saw that so-called thought-reading is daily and hourly practised in social life.