Do you realize what has happened?
You, sir, you in your insignificant person," the professor continued, shaking his finger at his visitor, "have tasted the result of thousands of years of unceasing study.

Wise men in their cells, before Athens was built, before the Pyramids were conceived, were thinking out this matter in strange parts of Egypt, in forgotten parts of Syria and Asia.

For generations their dream has been looked upon as a thing elusive as the philosopher's stone, the transmutation of metals--any of these unsolved problems.

For five hundred years--since the days of a Russian scientist who lived on the Black Sea, but whose name, for the moment, I have forgotten--the whole subject has lain dead.

It is indeed true that the fairy tales of one generation become the science of the next.