The moment the instinct for survival gives way to the instinct for possession, reasonable human beings lose all sense of their probable life span and day-to-day equilibrium. They grow hostile to small chills in the atmosphere and aquiesce without further ado to whatever evil and deceit might require of them. - Rene' Char, *Fueillets d'Hypnos*, 1946 (in Harper's Magazine, August 2003, p.27)