H G Wells

The War of the Worlds H G Wells

No one would have believed in the last years of the nineteenth century that this worldwas being watched keenly and closely by intelligences greater than man's and yet as mortalas his own; that as men busied themselves about their various concerns they werescrutinised and studied, perhaps almost as narrowly as a man with a microscope mightscrutinise the transient creatures that swarm and multiply in a drop of water. With infinitecomplacency men went to and fro over this globe about their little affairs, serene in theirassurance of their empire over matter. It is possible that the infusoria under themicroscope do the same. No one gave a thought to the older worlds of space as sources ofhuman danger, or thought of them only to dismiss the idea of life upon them as impossibleor improbable. It is curious to recall some of the mental habits of those departed days. Atmost terrestrial men fancied there might be other men upon Mars, perhaps inferior tothemselves and ready to welcome a missionary enterprise. Yet across the gulf of space, minds that are to our minds as ours are to those of the beasts that perish, intellects vastand cool and unsympathetic, regarded this earth with envious eyes, and slowly and surelydrew their plans against us. And early in the twentieth century came the greatdisillusionmen