"Yes, a genuine expert can always foretell a thing
that is five hundred years away easier than he can a
thing that's only five hundred seconds off."

"And yet in reason it should clearly be the other
way; it should be five hundred times as easy to fore-
tell the last as the first, for, indeed, it is so close by
that one uninspired might almost see it. In truth, the
law of prophecy doth contradict the likelihoods, most
strangely making the difficult easy, and the easy
difficult."

It was a wise head. A peasant's cap was no safe
disguise for it; you could know it for a king's under a
diving-bell, if you could hear it work its intellect.