Knowing not whence he came, why he is here, or whither he is going, man feels himself of supreme importance, and certainly is of interest--to himself.

Let us hope that he has indeed a potency and importance out of all proportion to his somatic insignificance.

We know of toxins of such strength that an amount too infinitesimal to be gauged may kill; and we know that "the unit adopted in certain scientific work is the amount of emanation produced by one million-millionth of a grain of radium, a quantity which itself has a volume of less than a million-millionth of a cubic millimetre and weighs a million million times less than an exceptionally delicate chemical balance will turn to" (Soddy, 1912).

May not man be the radium of the Universe?
At any rate let us not worry about his size.
For us he is a very potent creature, full of interest, whose mundane story we are only beginning to unravel.
Civilization is but a filmy fringe on the history of man.

Go back as far as his records carry us and the story written on stone is of yesterday in comparison with the vast epochs of time which modern studies demand for his life on the earth.