In its vain ignorance, the terrible child wanted to play with the unknown, it has made a false step, and it has fallen head first on the angle of absurdity. Toddler’s mutiny, wound of youth, of which it will long bear the scar!…

Man, – what pride, and at the same time what childishness! – man has thus proclaimed a God, creator of all things, an idiotic and ferocious God, a God in his own image. That is to say that he had made himself the creature of God. He has laid the egg, he has incubated it and he began to adore his chick, – I was going to say his droppings, – for man must have had a very violent diarrhea of the brain the day when he does the necessary… with such foolishness.

The Humanisphere, 1858