ur Honor, you may not ask that question."

"I may not?" asked Judge Carter with a lift of his eyebrows.

"No sir. You may not."

"And just why may I not?"

"If this were a criminal case, and if you could establish that some of my
knowledge were guilty knowledge, you could then demand that I reveal the
source of my guilty knowledge and under what circumstance it was
obtained. If I refused to disclose my source, I could then be held in
contempt of court or charged with being an accessory to the corpus of the
crime. However, this is a court hearing to establish whether or not I am
competent under law to manage my own affairs. How I achieve my mental
competence is not under question. Let us say that it is a process that is
my secret by the right of inheritance from my parents and as such it is
valuable to me so long as I can demand payment for its use."

"This information may have a bearing on my ruling."

"Your Honor, the acquisition of knowledge or information _per se_ is
concomitant with growing up. I can and will demonstrate that I have the
equivalent of the schooling necessary to satisfy both this Court and the
State Board of Education. I will state that my education has been
acquired by concentration and application in home study, and that I admit
to attendance at no school. I will provide you or anybody else with a
list of the books from which I have gleaned my education. But whether I
practice Yoga, Dianetics, or write the lines on a sugarcoated pill and
swallow it is my trade secret. It can not be extracted from me by any
process of the law because no illegality exists."

"And what if I rule that you are not competent under the law, or withhold
judgment until I have had an opportunity to investigate these ways and
means of acquiring an accelerated education?"

"I'll then go on record as asking you to disbar yourself from this
hearing on the grounds that you are not an impartial judge of the justice
in my case."

"Upon what grounds?"

"Upon the grounds that you are personally interested in being provided
with a process whereby you may acquire an advanced education yourself."

The judge looked at James thoughtfully for a moment. "And if I point out
that any such process is of extreme interest to the State and to the
Union itself, and as such must be disclosed?"

"Then I shall point out that your ruling is based upon a personal opinion
because you don't know anything about the process. If I am ruled a leg