Part Three

Bacteria have been, are and will remain the dominant group of organisms on our planet.

Essentially subterranean, living off the chemical energy contained even in rocks, they are also sustained in the atmospheric milieu through the subterfuge of intracellular symbiosis in two unimportant superstructures: plants and animal. In this vision of evolution, even human beings are a sort of efflorescence of bacterial origin!

STEPHEN JAY GOULD

I hate Nature

this passionless spectator this unbreakable iceberg-face

that can bear everything.

MARQUIS DE SADE,

in PETER WEISS, Marat/Sade, act 1, scene 12

The eyes have fallen into disuse in their method of stringing them. Nor is the notch placed frontally in the middle of the ends of the bow staff….

LEO FROBENIUS, The Voice of Africa, vol. 1