, I intend to. Let's take the statistics first. You're four-feet
eleven-inches tall, you weigh one-hundred and three pounds, and you're a
few weeks over fourteen. I suppose you know that you've still got one
more spurt of growth, sometimes known as the post-puberty-growth. You'll
probably put on another foot in the next couple of years, spread out a
bit across the shoulders, and that fuzz on your face will become a
collection of bristles. I suppose you think that any man in this room can
handle you simply because we're all larger than you are? Possibly true,
and one of the reasons why we can't give you a ticket and let you
proclaim yourself an adult. You can't carry the weight. But this isn't
all. Your muscles and your bones aren't yet in equilibrium. I could find
a man of age thirty who weighed one-oh-three and stood four-eleven. He
could pick you up and spin you like a top on his forefinger just because
his bones match his muscles nicely, and his nervous system and brain have
had experience in driving the body he's living in."

"Could be, but what has all this to do with me? It does not affect the
fact that I've been getting along in life."

"You get along. It isn't enough to 'get along.' You've got to have
judgment. You claim judgment, but still you realize that you can't handle
your own machine. You can't even come to an equitable choice in selecting
some agency to handle your machine. You can't decide upon a good outlet.
You believe that proclaiming your legal competence will provide you with
some mysterious protection against the wolves and thieves and ruthless
men with political ambition--that this ruling will permit you to keep it
to yourself until you decide that it is time to release it. You still
want to hide. You want to use it until you are so far above and beyond
the rest of the world that they can't catch up, once you give it to
everybody. You now object to my plans and programs, still not knowing
whether I intend to use it for good or for evil--and juvenile that you
are, it must be good or evil and cannot be an in-between shade of gray.
Men are heroes or villains to _you_; but _I_ must say with some
reluctance that the biggest crooks that ever held public office still
passed laws that were beneficial to their people. There is the area in
which you lack judgment, James. There and in your blindness."

"Blindness?"

"Blindness," repeated Judge Carter. "As Mark Twain once said, 'When I was
seventeen, I wa