He wrote, “I will tell you fairly that it is at present of no small consequence to me to get a respectable sum for my volume, not only to cover expenses for present and future projected campaigns, but because my making my hobby pay the additional costs which it entails, will alone justify my pursuing it with a mind sufficiently satisfied with itself, and so to feel independent and free to indulge in the enthusiasm necessary for success. I shall never hope to make money by geology, but not to lose, and _tax others_ for my amusement; and unless I can secure this, it would, in my circumstances, be selfish in me to devote myself as much as I hope to do to it.” These sentiments did Lyell great honour. “My work is in part written, and all planned. It will not pretend to give even an abstract of all that is known in geology, but it will endeavour to establish the principle of reasoning on the science. All my geology will come in as illustrative of my views of those principles, and as evidence strengthening the system necessarily arising out of the admission of such principles, which as you know, are neither more nor less than, that _no causes whatever_ have, from the earliest time to which we can look back to the present, ever acted, but those _now acting_; and that they never acted with different degrees of energy from that which they now exert. If I can but earn the wherewith to carry on the war, or rather, its _extraordinary costs_, depend upon it I will waste no time in book-making for lucre’s sake.”