When morales can no longer be validated above they must be validated below. By life ... of which it must be said, at the very least, there isn't anything else. What serves life, enlarges and enriches it, is good; what destroys or diminishes it is bad. Is this the source and meaning of morals?

But what life is meant? Cannot be all life. We go out of our way to save skylarks and otters, condors and the sabertooth tiger, but as indulgence not sacrifice. When it's we or they we chose ourselves, waste no tears over cancer cells or tubercle bacilli, bugs on our windshield, or sheep in the slaughterhouse. So who is "we"? All mankind? But men tear at men: where else but here do we need a guide? Do I, as a German in 1934, acquiesce to the Third Reich, fight it from underground, or flee?Do I, as an American in 1966, support my country's stand in Vietnam, oppose it, or do nothing? To stand above such conflict, holding hands with God, loving all men, is to dodge the question, walk out on the examination as if having wandered into the wrong classroom: "I didn't approve," said the German, "but what could I do? Anyway, I really didn't know what was going on."

Allen Wheelis