To watch a man who doesn’t know what to do with the incomprehensible

It is a terrible thing, Tolstoi said, to watch a man who doesn’t know what to do with the incomprehensible, because generally he winds up playing with a toy named God. Pasteur saw nothing particularly terrifying or unsatisfying about this situation, saying that the only thing to do in the face of the incomprehensible is to kneel before it. But that which is most incomprehensible of all is not a distant planet but the human mind it- self; kneeling under these circumstances may represent the ultimate vanity.
~ Norman Cousins