work, was the first project I read of; and, no question, seemed so
ridiculous to the graver heads of that wise, though wicked, age that
poor Noah was sufficiently bantered for it: and, had he not been
set on work by a very peculiar direction from heaven, the good old
man would certainly have been laughed out of it as a most senseless
ridiculous project.

The building of Babel was a right project; for indeed the true
definition of a project, according to modern acceptation, is, as is
said before, a vast undertaking, too big to be managed, and
therefore likely enough to come to nothing. And yet, as great as
they are, it is certainly true of them all, even as the projectors
propose: that, according to the old tale, if so many eggs are
hatched, there will be so many chickens, and those chickens may lay
so many eggs more, and those eggs produce so many chickens more, and
so on. Thus it was most certainly true that if the people of the
Old World could have built a house up to heaven, they should never
be drowned again on earth, and they only had forgot to measure the
height; that is, as in other projects, it only miscarried, or else
it would have succeeded.

And yet, when all is done, that very building, and the incredible
height it was carried, is a demonstration of the vast knowledge of
that infant age of the world, who had no advantage of the
experiments or invention of any before themselves.


"Thus when our fathers, touched with guilt,
That huge stupendous staircase built;
We mock, indeed, the fruitless enterprise