"When a child is born, its sense organs are brought in contact with the outer world. The waves of sound, heat and light beat against its feeble body, its sensitive nerve fibres quiver, the muscles contract and relax in obedience—a gasp, a breath, and in this act a wonderful little engine, of structure, is hitched to the wheelwork or the universe. Left to itself the engine stops; it has no power to draw energy from Nature’s inexhaustible store.

“The little engine moves and works, changes size and shape, performs more and more varied operations, becomes sensitive to more and more different influences, and now there begins to manifest itself in it a mysterious force. It becomes capable of responding to stimuli of a more subtle nature and of drawing, for its own use, energy from the environment. Gradually the engine has been transformed into a being possessed of intelligence, which perceives, discerns, does like others of its kind.

“The experiences multiply, the knowledge increases, the discernment becomes keener, the human being responding to the faintest influences, is awakened to the consciousness of Nature and its grandeur, and in its breast there is kindled a desire to imitate Nature, to create, to work itself the wonders it perceives.

”But the exercise of this power does not satisfy the mind, which rises to still higher, undefinable perceptions, not of this world, and inspired by them the artist, the inventor and the man of science give expression to the longing of the soul."

–Nikola Tesla