And I shall not confine myself to my sphere. I hate my sphere. I like everything that is outside of it,--or, better still, my sphere rounds out infinitely into space. _Nihil humani a me alienum puto._ I was born into the whole world. I am monarch of all I survey. Wherever I see symptoms of a pie, thither shall my fingers travel. Wherever a windmill flaps, it shall go hard but I will have a tilt at it. I shall not wait till I know what I am talking about. If I did, I never should talk at all. It is a well-known principle in educational science, that the surest way to learn anything is to teach it. How fast would Geology get on, if its professors talked only of what they knew? Planting their feet firmly on facts, they feel about in all directions for theories. By carefully noting, publishing, comparing, discussing their uncertainties, they presently arrive at a certainty. Horace might advocate nine years' delay. He was building for himself a monument that should defy the rolling years. He was setting to work in cool blood to compass immortality, and a little time, more or less, made no difference. Apollo and Bacchus could afford to wait. Beautiful daughters of beautiful mothers will exist to the world's end, and their praises will always be in order. But when, unmindful of the next generation, which will have its books and its memories, though you are unread and forgotten, mindful only of this generation which groans and travails in pain, you look on suffering that you yearn to assuage, danger of which you long to warn, sadness which you would fain dispel, burdens which you would strive, though ever so little, to lighten, delay, even for things so desirable as complete knowledge and perfect polish, becomes not only absurd, but impossible. Better shoot into the cavern, even if you don't know in what precise part of it the dragon lies coiled. The flash of your powder may reveal his whereabouts to a surer marksman. A transient immortality is of no importance; it is of importance that hearts be purified, homes made happy, paths cleared, clouds dispelled. Is that ignoble? Very well. But the noblest way to benefit posterity is to serve the present age,--to serve it by doing one's best, indeed, but by doing it now, not waiting for some distant day when one can do it better. A writer deserves no pardon for careless or hurried writing. As much time as he has mental ability to spend on it, so much time he should devote to it. But then speed it on its way. Shut it up for a term of years, and you will perhaps have a manuscript that says _begin_ where it used to say _commence_, but in the mean time all the people whom you wished to save have died of a broken heart,--or lived with one, which is still worse. Besides, even for improvement, it is better to publish your paper than to keep it in the drawer. There, all the amendments it can receive will come from the few feeble advances in knowledge which you may be so fortunate as to make.