"Darwin and Freud took God out of the big picture, leaving nothing between humankind and nature. Their ideas were met with righteous indignation. But today, whether or not we read Darwin and Freud, we speak a version of their languages."

"Yet, as Adam Phillips argues, we are not merely trapped in a world of continuous loss. Taking as his examples Darwin's lifelong fascination in lowly earthworms, and Freud's lifelong antipathy to grubbing biographers, he unexpectedly finds much to celebrate. For both of these writers are interested, above all, in how destruction conserves life. They take their inspiration from fossils or from half-remembered dreams, and show how life is about what can be done with these humble remnants from the past. Darwin and Freud render aging, accident and death integral, not alien, to our sense of ourselves. They teach us the art of transience."--Jacket.