A billion years of instinct must lead to uncertainty and mixed feelings. We great apes are a strange apparition in the cosmos, capable of glimpsing the absurdity of our own existence.

"What a piece of work is a man! How noble in reason, how infinite in faculty! In form and moving how express and admirable! In action how like an angel, in apprehension how like a god! The beauty of the world. The paragon of animals. And yet, to me, what is this quintessence of dust?"