Answer: For once, at least, I grasped the mental operations of the Morlocks and I was surprised to find it had been carefully oiled and cleaned.
Explanation: In the given excerpt from "The Time Machine" by H. G. Wells, we can see two sentences that suggest that the Morlocks possess a degree of intelligence comparable to that of humans, the first one is "For once, at least, I grasped the mental operations of the Morlocks" because it suggests that the Morlocks have the capacity to think and reason, and the second one is "I was surprised to find it had been carefully oiled and cleaned" because it conveys something common in humans (cleaning and oiling the machine).