Supplement 1918 27 



thousand years ago, we may be sure that we would now be 

 inhabitants of a desert of hideous uniformity. It is this that 

 we are leaving as a legacy to posterity; and it will not be retarded 

 bv Man rivalling both the Eagle and the Whale in their own 

 elements. 



But the further question may be asked: What would have 

 prevented the invention and development of the steam-engine? 

 Evidently nothing but some fundamental difference in the nature 

 of man. 



positive cause suggests itself; but, in the absence of the 

 !tv of speech, it is hardly conceivable that an invention such 

 as that of the steam-engine, with its developments, could have 

 n place. 



There is evidence in very ancient history that interference 

 with freedom of communication by speech can produce a corre- 

 <liiiL; interference with the realisation of great enterprises, 

 undertaken in the service of the spread of civilisation. 



The story of the Tower of Babel is the record of an enter- 

 this kind. It is told in very few words in the eleventh 

 chapter of the book of Genesis. Beginning at the fourth verse, 

 'iere read: 



"And they," the people of Shimar, "said Go to, let us build us a city, 

 and a tower, whose top may reach unto heaven; and let us make us a 

 name, lest we be scattered abroad upon the face of the whole earth. 



And the Lord came down to see the city and the tower which the 

 < hildren of men builded. 



1 the Lord said, Behold, the people is one, and they have all one 

 language; and this they begin to do; and now nothing will be restrained 

 from them, which they have imagined to do. 



Go to, let us go down, and there confound their language, that they 

 may not understand one another's speech. 



So the Lord scattered them abroad from thence upon the face of all the 

 earth; and they left off to build the city." 



Thus \\vn- .ill inventions indefinitely d-layrd; .m<i th<* \\<>rM 



It in be fnr^i.ttrn tli.it tin- I ; .ill "t M.Mi WBB <linvtlv 



; >lr tn his possessing tlir f.ullltv of Speech ; .111(1 the 



,'M'i best "t in- creation 



h.nl t> punish. 



