still valid

"has some vast imbecility,
mighty to build and blend,
but impotent to tend,
framed us in jest, and left us now to hazardry?

"or come we of an automaton
unconscious of our pains?...
or are we live remains
of godhead dying downwards, brain and eye now gone?"

-- thomas hardy (1840–1928), nature's questioning, from wessex poems and other verses, 1875.