No one would have believed, in the last years of the nineteenth century,
that human affairs were being watched keenly and closely by intelligences
greater than man's and yet as mortal as his own; that as men busied themselves
about their affairs they were scrutinized and studied, parhaps almost as
narrowly as a man with a microscope might scrutinize the transient creatures
that swarm and multiply in a drop of water. (from "The War of the Worlds"
By: H.G. Wells)