Thus, this book aims to trace Victor Hugo's point of view, as he explains in the second chapter of Book Five of Notre-Dame de Paris, on the development of representations of human thought through time in different cultures, from mythological primitive thought to complex philosophical systems, from dogma to freedom, from architecture to literature. At the end of his research, the author finds that architecture is mankind's first literature, and literature as we know it, in fact, is the second mode of expression of human thought, and has much in common with architecture. That's why he calls it "the edifice of literature" and "the second Tower of Babel".