The Untamed Tongue [antikvár]

PrefaceSalvation, piety, power, love of God or country, money, fame, sex, procreation, health, happiness, peace of mind, honest and useful labor, helping the poor and oppressed: is there a common denominator among these diverse aspirations that men and women have viewed as the ultimate aim of life? The quest for legitimacy seems to be such a common demoninator: Everyone tries to legitimize his existence to himself, his parents, his peers, the pillars of society, posterity, God. Indeed, for us human beings, the struggle for legitimacy seems to be as elementary and indispensable as is, for non-human animals, the struggle for life itself.How, then, do we gain or lose legitimacy? In the Age of Faith men gained and lost it by pleasing and displeasing God. In those daysbygone for many of us, resurrected or never relinquished by others only God was unconditionally legitimate. All else in the universe was legitimate only if its existence pleased Him and accorded with His will. If it did not, whatever it wasman or beast or inanimate objectwas illegitimate and hence unworthy of existence. Since God was the Grand Legitimizer, nothing was more important than divining and faithfully observing His will.Having decided that God is dead, where does modern man locate the ultimate source of legitimacyin particular, the legitimacy of human behavior? Since ours is the Age of Reason, our ultimate source of legitimacy is Science. Beliefs about the behavior of non-human animals, plants, and inanimate objects, governed by the laws of biology.mi