Nothing seems to me better adapted than this monistic perspective
to give us the proper standard and the broad outlook which we need
in the solution of the vast enigmas that surround us. It not only
clearly indicates the true place of a man in Nature, but it
dissipates the prevalent illusion of man's supreme importance and
arrogance with which he sets himself apart from the illimitable
universe, and exalts himself to the position of its most valuable
element. This boundless presumption of conceited man has misled him
into making himself "the image of God," claiming an "eternal life"
for his ephemeral personality, and imagining that he possesses
unlimited "freedom of will." The ridiculous imperial folly of
Caligula is but a special form of man's arrogant assumption of
divinity. Only when we have abandoned this untenable illusion, and
taken up the correct cosmological perspective, can we hope to reach
the solution of the Riddle of the Universe.
--_Haeckel_