Plough Quarterly • Winter 2018 45 Pieter Bruegel the Elder, Construction of the Tower of Babel, 1563 Images from Wikimedia Commons (public domain) flea, and yet he will be making gods by dozens.” Yet many people have the question in their hearts, and many, many people are haunted by the fear of another war. . . . All this leads to a further question: Is man himself making spiritual progress; is he, together with his indisputable intellectual enlightenment, becoming a more noble creature? Today man can speak and his voice be carried instantaneously to a hundred million listeners, thousands of miles apart – but has he anything to say that is more vital for the welfare of humanity than what Isaiah, or Plato, proclaimed with the unaided voice? Let it never be denied that sometimes a word of shining wisdom is spoken and printed. There is gold amongst the dross. But if one speaks of mankind making progress, one speaks and dreams of mankind as a whole: in one’s mind is a vision of the human race, very gradually, and perhaps even