The Bearing of Genetics on Theories of Evolution

WE are all familiar with the story of the Tower of Babel, one of the strangest and most dramatic of the Old Testament. The peoples of the earth, having, at that time, a single universal language, and constituting apparently a single nation, arrive, under the leadership of the heroic Nimrod, on the fertile plains of Shinar. There they determine to erect a central city, and a colossal tower, worthy of a world-metropolis, and reaching even as far as heaven. Whether the motive of this grandiose project was merely, as the text says, to make a name for themselves, as in the case of the transatlantic sky-scrapers, or whether it was the ambition of the leaders to establish a colony in the Utopian region beyond the clouds, is not made altogether clear, for the Deity, we are told, put a stop to the entire project by confounding the language of the builders, so that they could no longer understand each other. A common metaphor represents the labours of men of science as the construction of a gigantic edifice, upon the wings and annexes of which workers in different branches of natural knowledge are engaged. The various methods and techniques in which we have been trained correspond to the crafts of the different classes of artisans, the stone-cutters, masons, plasterers, sculptors, and painters, whose co-operation is needed to produce a finished and habitable building. The contemplation of this similitude, of the savants of all nations proving, by their example, that man is capable of something better, and more fruitful, than the pursuit of international rivalries, or mutually destructive contests, whether by economic or by military methods, has certainly in it something both elevating and encouraging. Yet the old story of the Tower of Babel, itself a noble, though doubtless a presumptuous and misguided, enterprise, bears a sufficient resemblance to the edifice of science for it to contain, perhaps, some hints to guide us in our own endeavours.