humanizing the world 97ception with the physical tools of science. We can develop our under-
standing of the relations among phenomena with the conceptual tools
of mathematics. When, however, we project our concerns unto nature,
and suppose it sympathetic to our purposes and intelligible from within,
as if animated, we deceive ourselves.
Viewed from one angle, nature has favored us because we live. Viewed
from another, it is set against us because we are doomed to die without
any chance to grasp the ultimate nature of reality or the origin and end
of time. We know, however, that our reckoning of the favors and bur-
dens of nature is wholly one- sided; there is no one here but us to whom
to make complaint or give praise. Th ere is no mind on the other side,
neither the universal mind invoked by the overcomers of the world nor
the transcendent mind of the living God. Mind exists exclusively as
embodied in the mortal organism.
Only our own eff orts can create meaningful order— meaningful to
us— within the meaningless void of nature. Meaning is constructed in
culture and expressed and sustained in society in networks of relations
among individuals. Each of us will die. Each of us stands at the edge of
the precipice of groundlessness. Each of us remains subject to the call
of wild desire. Each of us must content himself with a par tic u lar course
of life and a par tic u lar place in society, and resign himself to being de-
nied a second chance. However, within the space defi ned by these un-
surpassable limits, we can shape a collective order that is made in the
image of our humanity, and by the standards of our concerns, rather
than in the image of meaningless nature.
Th e supreme expression of the social creation of meaning within the
meaningless void of nature is law: law understood as the institutional-
ized life of a people, developed from the bottom up. Th rough the self-
regulation of society as well as from the top down, through state- made
order. It is in law that a coercive division of labor becomes an intelligi-
ble and defensible plan of cooperation.
Although the struggle over the terms of social life never ceases, it
can be contained. Law is the expression of this truce. However, if such
an armistice is all that law were, it could be understood only as the re-
pository of a haphazard correlation of forces between the winners and
the losers in earlier contests for advantage. Law must be revised and
reinterpreted as the repository of a way of or ga niz ing social life. Such a