" How could we tell what we had to do, because we were very small, really, and our feet were stuck on the ground, and we could not see very far? And then the answer came. It had been there all along, of course, and she had always known it: we knew what we had to do because there were all those people, our ancestors, who had faced exactly the same problems as confronted us, and who had worked out what was the right thing to do. We only had to listen. We only had to close our eyes and wait for their voices to come to us on the wind, perhaps, or in the stillness of the night. That was all we had to do. "

― Alexander McCall Smith , To the Land of Long Lost Friends (No. 1 Ladies' Detective Agency, #20)