"It has taken man eons of time," Hector MacNairn said, thinking it out
as he spoke--"eons of time to reach the point where he is beginning to
know that in every stock and stone in his path may lie hidden some
power he has not yet dreamed of. He has learned that lightning may be
commanded, distance conquered, motion chained and utilized; but he, the
one CONSCIOUS force, has never yet begun to suspect that of all others
he may be the one as yet the least explored. How do we know that there
does not lie in each of us a wholly natural but, so far, dormant power
of sight--a power to see what has been called The Unseen through all the
Ages whose sightlessness has made them Dark? Who knows when the
Shadow around us may begin to clear? Oh, we are a dull lot--we human
things--with a queer, obstinate conceit of ourselves."

"Complete we think we are," Angus murmured half to himself. "Finished
creatures! And look at us! How many of us in a million have beauty
and health and full power? And believing that the law is that we must
crumple and go to pieces hour by hour! Who'd waste the time making a
clock that went wrong as often? Nay, nay! We shall learn better than
this as time goes on. And we'd better be beginning and setting our minds
to work on it. 'Tis for us to do--the minds of us. And what's the mind
of us but the Mind that made us? Simple and straight enough it is when
once you begin to think it out. The spirit of you sees clearer than we
do, that's all," he said to me. "When your mother brought you into the
world she was listening to one outside calling to her, and it opened the
way for you."

At night Hector MacNairn and his mother and I sat on the terrace under
stars which seemed listening things, and we three drew nearer to one
another, and nearer and nearer.