No one would have believed in the last years of the nineteenth century that this world was being watched keenly and closely by an intelligence greater than man's and yet as mortal as his own; that as men busied themselves about their various concerns they were scrutinized and studied, perhaps almost as narrowly as a man with a microscope might scrutinize the transient creatures that swarm and multiply in a drop of water.
But this intellect, terrible and vast and timeless as it was, could...