Is Man so different from any of these Apes that he must form an order by himself? Or does he differ less from them than they differ from one another,… - Thomas Henry Huxley

I suppose that, so long as the human mind exists, it will not escape its deep-seated instinct to personify its intellectual conceptions. The science of the present day is as full of this particular form of intellectual shadow-worship as is the nescience of ignorant ages. The difference is that the philosopher who is worthy of the name knows that his personified hypotheses, such as law, force and ether, and the like, are merely useful symbols, while the ignorant and the careless take them for adequate expressions of reality.

È proprio vero che il Poeta, o il Filosofo, o l’Artista il cui genio è la gloria della sua epoca, viene ad essere diminuito per il fatto che senza dubbio è storicamente probabile, per non dire certo, che egli è il diretto discendente di qualche selvaggio nudo e bestiale, la cui intelligenza appena bastava a farlo un po’ più furbo della volpe, e per ciò stesso molto più pericoloso della tigre?

I have never had the least sympathy with the a priori reasons against orthodoxy, and I have by nature and disposition the greatest possible antipathy to all the atheistic and infidel school. Nevertheless I know that I am, in spite of myself, exactly what the Christian would call, and, so far as I can see, is justified in calling, atheist and infidel.