once upon a time... there was a star upon which clever beasts invented knowing. 
that was the most arrogant and mendacious minute of “world history,” 
but nevertheless, it was only a minute. 
after nature had drawn a few breaths, the star cooled and congealed, 
and the clever beasts had to die.

one might invent such a fable, 
and yet he still would not have adequately illustrated how miserable, 
how shadowy and transient, how aimless and arbitrary the human intellect 
looks within nature. 
there were eternities during which it did not exist. 
and when it is all over with the human intellect, 
nothing will have happened. 
for this intellect has no additional mission 
which would lead it beyond human life. 
rather, it is human, 
and only its possessor and begetter takes it so solemnly — 
as though the world’s axis turned within it. 
but if we could communicate with a gnat, we would learn 
that he likewise flies through the air with the same solemnity, 
that he feels the flying center of the universe within himself. 
there is nothing so reprehensible and unimportant in nature 
that it would not immediately swell up like a balloon 
at the slightest puff of this power of knowing. 

fred nietsche