The earliest presage of future strength, the earliest bounty of time, confers upon him nought but the resemblance to a quadruped.[844] How soon does man gain the power of walking? How soon does he gain the faculty of speech? How soon is his mouth fitted for mastication? How long are the pulsations of the crown of his head to proclaim him the weakest of all animated beings?[845] And then, the diseases to which he is subject, the numerous remedies which he is obliged to devise against his maladies, and those thwarted every now and then by new forms and features of disease.[846] While other animals have an instinctive knowledge of their natural powers; some, of their swiftness of pace, some of their rapidity of flight, and some again of their power of swimming; man is the only one that knows nothing, that can learn nothing without being taught; he can neither speak, nor walk, nor eat,[847] and, in short, he can do nothing, at the prompting of nature only, but weep. For this it is, that many have been of opinion, that it were better not to have been born, or if born, to have been annihilated[848] at the earliest possible moment. To man alone, of all animated beings, has it been given, to grieve,[849] to him alone to be guilty of luxury and excess; and that in modes innumerable, and in every part of his body. Man is the only being that is a prey to ambition, to avarice, to an immoderate desire of life,[850] to superstition,[851]—he is the only one that troubles himself about his burial, and even what is to become of him after death.[852] By none is life held on a tenure more frail;[853] none are more influenced by unbridled desires for all things; none are sensible of fears more bewildering; none are actuated by rage more frantic and violent. Other animals, in fine, live at peace with those of their own kind; we only see them unite to make a stand against those of a different species. The fierceness of the lion is not expended in fighting with its own kind; the sting of the serpent is not aimed at the serpent;[854] and the monsters of the sea even, and the fishes, vent their rage only on those of a different species. But with man,—by Hercules! most of _his_ misfortunes are occasioned by man.[855]