Men have set their mark on mankind forever, as they thought; but time has washed it out as it has washed out mountains and continents." She raised herself on her elbow.

"And what if we could help mankind, and leave the traces of our work upon it to the end?
Mankind is only an ephemeral blossom on the tree of time; there were others before it opened; there will be others after it has fallen.

Where was man in the time of the dicynodont, and when hoary monsters wallowed in the mud?
Will he be found in the aeons that are to come?
We are sparks, we are shadows, we are pollen, which the next wind will carry away.

We are dying already; it is all a dream.
"I know that thought.

When the fever of living is on us, when the desire to become, to know, to do, is driving us mad, we can use it as an anodyne, to still the fever and cool our beating pulses.