Darwin's Dangerous Idea - Evolution and the Meaning of Life

PART III
MIND, MEANING,
MATHEMATICS, AND
MORALITY
The new fundamental feeling: our conclusive transitoriness.—Formerly
one sought the feeling of the grandeur of man by pointing to his divine
origin, this has now become a forbidden way, for at its portal stands the
ape, together with other gruesome beasts, grinning knowingly as if to
say: no further in this direction! One therefore now tries the opposite
direction: the way mankind is going shall serve as proof of his grandeur
and kinship with God. Alas this, too, is vain! At the end of this way
stands the funeral urn of the last man and gravedigger (with the inscription
'nihil humani a me alienum puto'). However high mankind may
have evolved—and perhaps at the end it will stand even lower than at
the beginning!—it cannot pass over into a higher order, as little as the
ant and the earwig can at the end of its 'earthly course' rise up to
kinship with God and eternal life. The becoming drags the has-been
along behind it: why should an exception to this eternal spectacle be
made on behalf of some little star or for any little species upon it! Away
with such sentimentalities!
—FRIEDRICH NIETZSCHE 1881, p. 47