Millsap’s Fable: the Globe-Maker

Here’s a fable.

A fine and renowned globe-maker one day visits the seashore. As he contemplates the ceaseless motion of the sea, a horror overcomes him.

He realizes that the totality of his stock and trade—to build models of the Earth—is impossible, because the Earth is eternally, ceaselessly changing.

Remorse overcomes him. He stops making globes altogether.

So ashamed is he now of the globes he’s made, he spends his life’s savings buying back the globes that he’s sold.

He devotes the remainder of his life proving that globes cannot be good because they are imperfect.

The moral of the story is…