506 REMARKS ON THE ORIGIN 
and might have been derived from the clay 
character, in which the style had been rolled 
slightly from side to side ere it was lifted from 
the clay. Several slabs or tablets of marble, 
and other stoney material, exist in the British 
Museum, which are covered with inscriptions in 
these beautiful and striking characters, all of 
which are the result of the chisel. Here then 
we have an illustration of that important principle 
in the philosophy of architecture, namely the ten- 
dency which mankind have ever displayed to 
cling to certain forms, which however natural and 
due to the materials, the employment of which 
led to their adoption, have (yet in the case of 
marble or stone) no natural reference to the form 
in question. The arrow-head is essentially a clay 
character, and its transference to stone is the 
course due to its adoption as the conventional or 
alphabetic character of the people who employed 
it, and who would be the more induced to adopt 
it as their alphabet, inasmuch as it was possessed 
in so very remarkable a degree of all the great 
and important requisites, namely, its capability of 
infinite combination, together with its great faci- 
lity of production, whether by the style in clay 
or wax, or by the chisel in marble or stone, and 
even in precious stones and others, such as cor- 
