In the seafaring tradition of Defoe and Sabatini, The Prodigal is a tale of the shipwreck and struggle for survival of a young American ship’s carpenter who escapes one captivity only to fall into more dangerous circumstances. The story unfolds as he makes his way to Boston, then to Jamaica, Mexico, Cuba, Africa, and back with adventures at each point. At critical moments a mysterious stranger appears to lend a hand and guide him to his destiny.

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Even though at times I point out obvious errors in the languages as they are currently structured, I realize that the rules of grammar and usage in English or any other living language are, or can be, subject to change. This may not be true of, say, ancient Sanskrit, but then we note that despite its perfection—or perhaps because of it—ancient Sanskrit ceased to be a spoken tongue many centuries ago. Over the ages thinkers have pondered the qualities that define humanity and set mankind apart from other species. In my view, no stronger case than language can be made for human uniqueness. Animals can communicate and mimic but they cannot speak. Language, sung, recited, or spoken, is archly human, and for that reason also deeply mysterious, beautiful, and fascinating.

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Most of the essays in this book first appeared as newspaper columns and differ from the originals only in minor, editorial ways. The real challenge for me, used as I was to academic and fiction writing, was the necessary brevity of the essays. The discipline of having to compress my ideas into a finite word count troubled me at first. Later, however, I was grateful for the experience because it forced me to get to the point and stay strictly on task. Instead of grumbling, I came to relish the challenge and to appreciate journalistic brevity as a special literary form more fitting for our hurried times than the ponderous writings of earlier, more leisurely times. The themes treated are an entirely different matter. They are far-ranging, and the freedom I surrendered in linguistic spaciousness I gained back in the latitude I had to treat many topics as fairly and clearly in space permitted. But there is method in what may appear to be unrelated themes. At a near or far remove, and from a variety of perspectives, all rest on the master concepts that undergird all my philosophical work: the uniqueness of human reality, the dignity, humor, and pathos of the person, and the possibilities of life that set it far apart and high above all other earthly realities. A noted thinker once said that clarity is the courtesy an author extends to the reader. Insofar as my abilities permit, I have tried to add another kindness: word economy, which I understand to mean saying as much as possible in the fewest words. In those cases in which there is neither clarity nor economy, I alone take the blame. Most of the essays in this book first appeared as newspaper columns and differ from the originals only in minor, editorial ways.

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A celebrated philosopher once said that in order to understand anything human we must tell a story. However, this human narrative is not about what we are. That kind of information is the business of science, which teaches us about our physical nature. But the real story of our life, the human portion, is who we are, and it begins where science and nature end. Biography, not biology, is the true human narrative.

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