“I thought how small and mortal and defenseless was man, how short-lived his youth, how uncertain his joy … how he is hurried through a narrow space called time, unable to turn or to retrace his steps — unable to look ahead or behind, seeing nothing, except what is under his nose — uncertain even if what he sees is what it seems to be. For the great pattern of the suns is repeated over and over again, in a blade of grass or in a drop of water; to the spider or the ant, man is as incomprehensible as God. How meager and meaningless the life of a beetle seems to us; how pitiful our own may seem to some undreamed-of power.”