““There was a time when I looked at the tragic mess they’ve made of this earth, and I wanted to cry out, to beg them to listen—I could teach them to live so much better than they did—but there was nobody to hear me, they had nothing to hear me with. . . . Intelligence? It is such a rare, precarious spark that flashes for a moment somewhere among men, and vanishes. One cannot tell its nature, or its future . . . or its death. . . .””