“Of our noble selves, to be sure. Geologically, there is practically no limit backward, but we have been so fed up on individualism that we are only now beginning to abandon useless speculations as to the eternity of the future for a more definite study of the eternity of the past. Now you, with your animal language and your genuine far-seeing, have cleared the mist from a theory I have held nebulously for a year or more. Let me state it in progressive theses: (_a_) Human inventiveness is bounded only by the zone of human intelligence; (_b_) the capacity of the brain extends far beyond our present scientific comprehension; (_c_) every new discovery is, therefore, a mere quickening into activity of some special attribute latent in all properly regulated brains; (_d_) a time may come when man shall know all things, as nothing can happen, nor can have happened, which the brain is not capable of conceiving.” “An old Indian acquaintance, Sir William Macpherson, has told me that he has reached a similar conclusion. Nevertheless, your theorizing vaults a long way in advance of my experiences.” “Not a bit of it. You are merely a living testimony of faculties either undeveloped or deemed dead owing to disuse. Oddly enough, you, my friend, possess powers which we modern degenerates--beef-fed and stodgy with misapplied civilization--coolly relegate to the lower animals or, at the best, to savage tribes. Watch cattle in a field, birds in the air--are they not skilled weather prophets, far more reliable than any Meteorological Bureau? They don’t tap a glass cylinder of mercury or write learnedly about cirrus clouds and convex cumuli. No, the cows and horses just nibble the grass on the exposed hills, the birds skate about unconcernedly, if the advancing gloom simply heralds a passing shower; but see them all scoot for shelter before ever a leaf is stirred if a real storm is about to break. That is pure, undiluted, unquestioning knowledge. The power of transmitting news instantly over long distances, possessed by certain human nomads, is of the same type. Therefore, my dear Karl, you hark back in the centuries. You are away down the social scale. I, an up-to-date demigod, to whom the real meaning of nearly every word I use is unknown, tell you this unblushingly.” “Is that a part of your theory that the world is still in its infancy in its search after truth?” “Well hit, my prehistoric man, my vitalized fossil. You are old as many of the hills. Oh, if only I could put a date on you! Say, have you ever heard of Eridhu?” “Do you mean the Chaldean city?”