were men to whom this whisper had come of hidden things about them.  They could no longer lead ordinary lives nor content themselves with the common things of this world once they had heard this voice.  And mostly they believed not only that all this world was as it were a painted curtain before things unguessed at, but that these secrets were Power.  Hitherto Power had come to men by chance, but now there were these seekers seeking, seeking among rare and curious and perplexing objects, sometimes finding some odd utilisable thing, sometimes deceiving themselves with fancied discovery, sometimes pretending to find.  The world of every day laughed at these eccentric beings, or found them annoying and ill-treated them, or was seized with fear and made saints and sorcerers and warlocks of them, or with covetousness and entertained them hopefully; but for the greater part heeded them not at all.  Yet they were of the blood of him who had first dreamt of attacking the mammoth; every one of them was of his blood and descent; and the thing they sought, all unwittingly, was the snare that will some day catch the sun.

Section 3

Such a man was that Leonardo da Vinci, who went about the court of Sforza in Milan in a state of dignified abstraction.  His common-place books are full of prophetic subtlety and ingenious anticipations of the methods of the early aviators.  Durer was his parallel and Roger Bacon—­whom the Franciscans silenced—­of his kindred.  Such a man again in an earlier city was Hero of Alexandria, who knew of the power of steam nineteen hundred years before it was first brought into use.  And earlier still was Archimedes of Syracuse, and still earlier the legendary Daedalus of Cnossos.  All up and down the record of history whenever there was a little leisure from war and brutality the seekers appeared.  And half the alchemists were of their tribe.

When Roger Bacon blew up his first batch of gunpowder one might have supposed that men would have gone at once to the explosive engine.  But they could see nothing of the sort.  They were not yet beginning to think of seeing things; their metallurgy was all too poor to make such engines even had they thought of them.  For a time they could not make instruments sound enough to stand this new force even for so rough a purpose as hurling a missile.  Their first guns had barrels of coopered timber, and the world waited for more than five hundred years before the explosive engine came.

Even when the seekers found, it was at first a long journey before the world could use their findings for any but the roughest, most obvious purposes.  If man in general was not still as absolutely blind to the unconquered energies about him as his paleolithic precursor, he was at best purblind.

Section 4

The latent energy of coal and the power of steam waited long on the verge of discovery, before they began to influence human lives.