Given the dust of the earth, God created Adam; given my article, you created this. It was with pleasure and confusion that I read your response for the first time: pleasure, for while I must wonder if we will convince no one other than our friends and the others’ enemies, this exchange must represent some blip to public intellectual debate at Princeton; confusion, because I have struggled to understand several of your arguments. But that is my fault. Finding myself in the post-earthquake world that you mention in your letter, I shall content myself with playing the Candide to your Pangloss.