SCIENTIFIC MATERIALISM 87 



essay with the express object of refuting this notion. 

 We now regard the Pyramids as the work of men's 

 hands, aided probably by machinery of which no record 

 remains. We picture to ourselves the swarming workers 

 toiling at those vast erections, lifting the inert stones, 

 and, guided by the volition, the skill, and possibly at 

 times by the whip of the architect, placing them in their 

 proper positions. The blocks, in this case, were moved 

 and posited by a power external to themselves, and the 

 final form of the pyramid expressed the thought of its 

 human builder. 



Let us pass from this illustration of constructive 

 power to another of a different kind. When a solution 

 of common salt is slowly evaporated, the water which 

 holds the salt in solution disappears, but the salt itself 

 remains behind. At a certain stage of concentration the 

 salt can no longer retain the liquid form; its particles, 

 or molecules, as they are called, begin to deposit them- 

 selves as minute solids — so minute, indeed, as to defy all 

 microscopic power. As evaporation continues, solidifica- 

 tion goes on, and we finally obtain, through the cluster- 

 ing together of innumerable molecules, a finite crystalline 

 mass of a definite form. What is this form? It some- 

 times seems a mimicry of the architecture of Egypt. We 

 have little pyramids built by the salt, terrace above ter- 

 race from base to apex, forming a series of steps resem- 

 bling those up which the traveller in Egypt is dragged 

 by his guides. The human mind is as little disposed to 

 look without questioning at these pyramidal salt-crystals, 

 as to look at the Pyramids of Egypt, without inquiring 

 whence they came. How, then, are those salt-pyramids 

 built up? 



