it is absurd … to hope that maybe another Newton may some day arise, to make intelligible to us even the genesis of but a blade of grass ("Dialectic of Teleological Judgment" §75)

Perdiccas threatened to put him to death unless he came to him, "That's nothing wonderful," Diogenes said, "for a beetle or a tarantula would do the same.

It was as though some stubborn god spent their time in an immutable and absurd balancing act between life and death, prosperity and poverty.