All this having been said, if I were to pick a single word to describe [Joseph] Greenberg's apparent motivation in doing megalocomparison, it would h… - James Alan Matisoff

In the Beginning was the Sino-Tibetan monosyllable, arrayed in its full consonantal and vocalic splendor. And the syllable was without tone and devoid of pitch. And monotony was on the face of the mora. And the Spirit of Change hovered over the segments flanking the syllabic nucleus.
And Change said, "Let the consonants guarding the vowel to the left and the right contribute some of their phonetic features to the vowel in the name of selfless intersegmental love, even if the consonants thereby be themselves diminished and lose some of their own substance. For their decay or loss will be the sacrifice through which Tone will be brought into the world, that linguists in some future time may rejoice."
And it was so. And the Language saw that it was good, and gradually began to exploit tonal differences for distinguishing utterances – yea, even bending them to morphological ends. And the tones were fruitful and multiplied, and diffused from tongue to tongue in the Babel of Southeast Asia.

I decided to start with the reproductive system, not only because of its prurient interest but also because it seemed like the point of departure for all things.

There can be no more solemn duty for the comparative linguist than to reconstruct his language family's word for the Supreme Being.