326 The Evolution of Architecture. 



duce the methods of the past, and there must have come 

 some terrible experience to chill invention to the bone, and 

 it could have been no brief experience. Look at it any way 

 we will, the monuments of ancient Egypt have their founda- 

 tions in a past that baffles the imagination. From the time 

 they rise on our astonished gaze until the beginning of our 

 era that is to say, through the entire course of their history 

 they afford such an illustration of the principle of fixity of 

 type, so central to the doctrine of development, as only 

 China can begin to match in other fields of human nature's 

 self-expression. If we had to judge from their monuments 

 we might confound Egyptian dynasties one and two thou- 

 sand years apart. The most tremendous revolutions came 

 and went, and still the architectural type remained un- 

 changed. Pygmalion falling in love with the statue he had 

 carved would fain have given it life. Egypt reversed his 

 mood : falling in love with her creations, she fain would have 

 them stiffen into death, and so they did. The sameness of 

 her skies, her seasons' habits of invariable drought and flood, 

 no doubt expressed themselves in the uniformities of her in- 

 tellectual history. The temple, the obelisk, and the pyramid 

 are the three splendid forms in which she expressed the rul- 

 ing passions of her life for worship, for remembrance, and 

 for the mystery of death. The work of human hands pre- 

 sents no simpler illustration of the course of evolution than 

 the development of the pyramid from the little mound of 

 earth which the displacement of the body makes above a 

 new-made grave. The next step was to heap the earth a lit- 

 tle higher ; then, seeking greater permanence, men raised 

 the cairn the heap of stones. But from these rude begin- 

 nings what a march to the pyramids of Dashour and Gizeh ! 

 The final geometrical form with those long, slanting sides 

 was probably determined by its resistance to the desert's 

 stupid rage. Tenterden Steeple was the cause of the Good- 

 win Sands. Inversely the sands of Egypt were the cause of 

 the pyramids' unbroken lines and surfaces. Any irregularity 

 invited the blowing sand to come and bury the monument 

 and defeat the monarch's pride. No senseless piles are these 

 which ignorant slaves could heap course upon course with 

 stupid iteration ; nay, but marvels of a constructive genius 

 that must have loved its work as only the true artist can. 

 For intelligent adaptation of the artist's means to the ends 

 he clearly had in view, there is no work superior to this. 

 Egyptian monarchs did not monopolize the pyramidal 



