Humanly Possible: Seven Hundred Years of Humanist Freethinking, Inquiry, and Hope

by Sarah Bakewell

The Old Testament story of Babel told of how the denizens of that great city, speaking the same language, designed and built a tower that reached almost to heaven itself. God looked down and 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.” Not liking this prospect, he smashed the tower, sent the builders off in all directions, and multiplied their languages so that in future they would always have difficulty working together for the common good. Ever since then, linguistic and cultural incomprehension continued to keep humanity weak, unable to achieve what Forster would call a way to “connect,” or what Erasmus called “friendship among many.”