One may certainly admire man as a mighty genius of construction, who succeeds in piling an infinitely complicated dome of concepts upon an unstable foundation, and, as it were, on running water.

The body of the earth is of the nature of a fish, a grampus or sperm whale, because it draws water as its breath instead of air.

The bird thinks it a favor to give the fish a lift in the air.

Everything which distinguishes man from the animals depends upon this ability to volatilize perceptual metaphors in a schema, and thus to dissolve an image into a concept.

Consider the cattle, grazing as they pass you by. They do not know what is meant by yesterday or today, they leap about, eat, rest, digest, leap about again, and so from morn till night and from day to day, fettered to the moment and its pleasure or displeasure, and thus neither melancholy nor bored. [...] A human being may well ask an animal: 'Why do you not speak to me of your happiness but only stand and gaze at me?' The animal would like to answer, and say, 'The reason is I always forget what I was going to say' - but then he forgot this answer too, and stayed silent.

It is even a difficult thing for him [humans] to admit to himself that the insect or the bird perceives an entirely different world from the one that man does.