This unusual and highly successful species spends a great deal of time examining his higher motives and an equal amount of time ignoring his fundamental ones.

The idea that it is funny to see wild animals coerced into acting like clumsy humans, or thrilling to see powerful beasts reduced to cringing cowards by a whip-cracking trainer, is primitive and medieval. It stems from the old idea that we are superior to other species and have the right to hold dominion over them.

No matter how old we become, we can still call them 'Holy Mother' and 'Father' and put a child-like trust in them.

Monks, nuns, long-term spinsters and bachelors and permanent homosexuals are all, in a reproductive sense, aberrant. Society has bred them, but they have failed to return the compliment.

It is interesting that amongst children of preschool age, the more intelligent ones tend to sleep less than the dull ones. After the age of seven this relationship is reversed, the more intelligent schoolchildren sleeping more than the dull ones.

We never stop investigating. We are never satisfied that we know enough to get by. Every question we answer leads on to another question. This has become the greatest survival trick of our species.

We may prefer to think of ourselves as fallen angels, but in reality we are rising apes.