their species. In wild, tropical countries, at the first glance there
appears to be some consideration for him, but it is on the surface only. The
lion pounces on him, the rhinoceros crushes him, the serpent bites, insects
torture, diseases rack him. Disease worked its dreary will even among the
flower-crowned Polynesians. Returning to our
own country, this very thyme which scents my fingers did not grow for that
purpose, but for its own. So does the wheat beneath; we utilise it, but its
original and native purpose was for itself. By night it is the same as by
day; the stars care not, they pursue their courses revolving, and we are
nothing to them. There is nothing human in the whole round of nature.
All nature, all the universe that we can see, is absolutely indifferent to
us, and except to us human life is of no more value than grass. If the
entire human race perished at this hour, what difference would it make to
the
earth? What would the earth care? As much as for the extinct dodo, or for
the fate of the elephant now going.

On the contrary, a great part, perhaps the whole, of nature and
of the universe is distinctly anti-human. The term inhuman does
not express my meaning, anti-human is better; outre-human, in
the sense of beyond, outside, almost grotesque in its attitude
towards, would nearly convey it. Everything is anti-human. How
extraordinary, strange, and incomprehensible are the creatures
captured out of the depths of the sea! The distorted fishes; the ghastly
cuttles; the hideous eel-like shapes; the crawling shell-encrusted things;
the centipede-like beings; monstrous
forms, to see which gives a shock to the brain. They shock the
mind because they exhibit an absence of design. There is no
idea in them.