This is our explanation, but those who merely follow the outward and obvious think that we have at this point a reference to the origin of the Greek and barbarian languages. I would not censure such persons, for perhaps the truth is with them also. Still I would exhort them not to halt there, but to press on to allegorical interpretations and to recognize that the letter is to the oracle but as the shadow to the substance and that the higher values therein revealed are what really and truly exist. Indeed the lawgiver himself gives openings for this kind of treatment to those whose understanding is not blinded, as he certainly does in the case now under discussion, when he calls what was then taking place a “confusion.” Surely if he had merely meant that different languages then originated, he would have applied a more correct term and called it “separation” rather than “confusion.” For when things are divided they are not “confused,” but quite the contrary, “separated.” And the contradiction is not merely one of name but of fact. Confusion—the process of fusing together—is, as I have said, the annihilation of the individual properties, and the production thereby of a single whole with its own properties, whereas separation is the division of one into several, as in the case of genus and the species, which form the genus. And therefore if the Sage’s command was to divide speech, the single whole, by section into several languages, he would have used more apposite and exact terms such as dissection or distribution or separation, and not their opposite, confusion. But his purpose and desire is to break up the company of vice, to make her agreements of none effect, to do away with her fellowship, to annihilate and destroy her powers, to overthrow the might of her queenship which by her abominable transgressions she had made so strong. Observe that he who fashioned the living being, brought none of its parts into fellowship with any other. The eyes cannot hear, nor the ears see; the palatal juices cannot smell, nor the nostrils taste; nor again can speech have any of the sensations which the senses produce, just as on the other hand the senses have no power of utterance. For the great Contriver knew that it was well for them that none should hear the voice of his neighbour. He willed rather in the interests of animal life, that each part of the living organism should have the use of its own particular powers without confusion with others, and that fellowship of part with part should be withdrawn from them, while on the other hand the parts of vice should be brought into confusion and complete annihilation, so that neither in unison nor separately by themselves should they become a source of injury to their betters. That is why he adds—The Lord dispersed them thence (Gen. 11:8), that is He caused them to be scattered, to be fugitives, to vanish from sight. For while sowing is the cause of good, dispersing or sowing broadcast is the cause of ill. The purpose of the first is to improve, to increase, to create something else; the purpose of the second is to ruin and destroy. But God the Master-planter wills to sow noble living throughout the All, and to disperse and banish from the Commonwealth of the world the impiety which He holds accursed. Thus the evil ways which hate virtue may at last cease to build the city of vice and the tower of godlessness. For when these are scattered, those who have been living in exile for many a day under the ban of folly’s tyranny, shall receive their recall under a single proclamation, even the proclamation enacted and ratified by God, as the oracles shew, in which it is declared that “if thy dispersion be from one end of heaven to the other he shall gather thee from thence” (Deut. 30:4). Thus it is a work well-befitting to God to bring into full harmony the consonance of the virtues, but to dissipate and destroy the consonance of vices. Yes, confusion is indeed a most proper name for vice, and a standing evidence of this is every fool, whose words and purposes and deeds alike are worthless and unstable.
On the Confusion of Tongues 38
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