John Wilmot

1647-1680

Homo sapiens

Were I (who to my cost already am

One of those strange, prodigious creatures, man)

A spirit free to choose, for my own share,

What case of flesh and blood I pleased to wear,

I’d be a dog, a monkey, or a bear,

Or anything but that vain animal

Who is so proud of being rational.

The senses are too gross, and he’ll contrive

A sixth, to contradict the other five,

And before certain instinct, will prefer

Reason, which fifty times for one does err ;

Reason, an ignis fatuus in the mind,

Which, leaving light of nature, sense, behind,

Pathless and dangerous wandering ways it takes

Through error’s fenny bogs and thorny brakes ;

Whilst the misguided follower climbs with pain

Mountains of whimseys, heaped in his own brain ;

Stumbling from thought to thought, falls headlong down

Into doubt’s boundless sea, where, like to drown,

Books bear him up awhile, and make him try

To swim with bladders of philosophy ;

In hopes still to o’ertake the escaping light,

The vapour dances in his dazzling sight

Till, spent, it leaves him to eternal night.

Then old age and experience, hand in hand,

Lead him to death, and make him understand,

After a search so painful and so long,

That all his life he has been in the wrong.

Huddled in dirt the reasoning engine lies,

Who was so proud, so witty, and so wise. ***** ...and yet.  Reason is also Light! The problem comes when it is so bright we can no longer see what's before our eyes.  The paradox is then, why are we now Homo sapiens sapiens!  To me, that's like saying: Let us add more cement to this bridge, it will be stronger.  But... it'll also be heavier, increasing the chances it might collapse.  Couldn't we come up with another word after sapiens? Why not if we're so sapient?  Goethe wrote Faust when Marlowe had already written it, but Goethe changed the ending.