Americans have known how to erect a superlative material achievement in the
midst of an untouched wilderness, against the resistance of savage tribes.
What we need today is to erect a corresponding philosophical structure,
without which the material greatness cannot survive. A skyscraper cannot stand
on crackerbarrels, nor on wall mottoes, nor on full-page ads, nor on prayers,
nor on meta-language. The new wilderness to reclaim is philosophy, now all but
deserted, with the weeds of prehistoric doctrines rising again to swallow the
ruins. To support a culture, nothing less than a new philosophical foundation
will do.