"In some remote corner of the universe, effused into innumerable solar-systems, there was once a star upon which clever animals invented cognition. It was the haughtiest, most mendacious moment in the history of this world, but yet only a moment. After Nature had taken breath awhile, the star congealed and the clever animals had to die."
"It is possible that our race may be an accident, in a meaningless universe, living its brief life uncared for, on this dark, cooling star; but even so-- and all the more-- what marvelous creatures we are! What fairy story, what tale from the Arabian Nights of the jinns, is a hundredth part as wonderful as this true fairy story of simians? It is so much more heartening, too, than the tales we invent.
"A universe capable of giving birth to many such accidents is-- blind or not-- a good world to live in, a promising universe."
--Clarence Day, This Simian World (1920)
page by Geoffrey A. Landis, 2009.