We think of them as omniscient, these gods, but the truth is they know very little, and what they know know only in the most general of ways. No body of learning they can call their own, no philosophy, properly speaking. Their cosmology an assortment of commonplaces. Their sole expertise in astral flight, their sole homegrown science anthropology. They specialize in humankind because of what we have and they lack; they study us because they are envious.

J. M. Coetzee, Elizabeth Costello (2003)