'...These two masses of matter, the dictionary and the lady, thought he, were once but gases floating in the primitive nebulosity. Though now they are strangely different from one another in look, in nature and in function, they were once for long ages exactly similar.
"For," thought he to himself, "Madame Bergeret once swam in the vasty abyss of the ages, shapeless, unconscious, scattered in light gleams of oxygen and carbon. At the same time, the molecules that were one day to make up this Latin dictionary were whirling in this same vapour, which was destined at last to give birth to monstrous forms, to minute insects and to a slender thread of thought. These imperfect and often harrassing creations, these monuments of my weary life, my wife and my dictionary, needed the travail of eternity to produce them. Yet Amelie is just a paltry mind in a coarsened body, and my dictionary is full of mistakes. We can see from this example alone that there is very little hope that even new aeons of time would ever give us perfect knowledge and beauty. As it is, we live but for a moment, yet by living for ever we should gain nothing..."'
from The Wicker-Work Woman by Anatole France (Chapter I)
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