iSyi.] The Great Pyramid in Egypt. 195 



broad day-light measures, that the Great Pyramid's base, 

 which these hands have handled and these eyes have seen, 

 has not three, but four, sides ; and that the whole Pyramid 

 has therefore of necessity not four, but five, points or 

 corners, and five bounding sides or surfaces, the base being 

 mathematically and crystallographically included as one. 



Hence springs up not a quaternary, but a quinary, arith- 

 metic ; and a quinary, too, so combining two sets of five 

 into one whole, as to lead on just as naturally to a com- 

 plete decimal system, as the two so-called five-fingered 

 hands belonging to one body of a man are usually held to 

 have led to the world's present decimal arithmetic. The 

 parallel, too, is all the closer, because, if the human hands 

 contain really not five, but four tapering fingers and one 

 broad thumb, does not the Pyramid exhibit four taper 

 triangles and one broad square. Or, again, to take it in a 

 higher manner by its points or corners, are there not four 

 lower, earthly, ordinary foundation corner-stones, and one 

 upper, topmost, skyward, unique head-corner-stone, the very 

 " head of the corner," and in which, as we read in a higher 

 than any German authority, " all the building fitly framed 

 together, groweth unto an holy temple in the Lord." 



Poor Schelling was, therefore, in a manner not so very far 

 out after all, at least as to having a vision of certain prin- 

 ciples ; but he should assuredly have tabled the number five in 

 place of four, and ought to have been thinking about the one 

 true God of Scripture, and not of the unlawful theotechnic 

 inventions of later idolatrous Egyptian minds. Had he only 

 so acted, he could at once have counted St. Paul, St. Peter, 

 David, and Isaiah (themselves lower foundation corner- 

 stones) on his side,* and would have enjoyed a priority over 

 the late John Taylort in giving the modern world their 

 first full interpretation and only perfectly satisfactory me- 

 chanical explanation of the figurative expression both of 

 the Old and the New Testament "head-corner-stone;" 

 for it can be exactly paralleled nowhere else than in the 

 capping-stone of a pyramid similar to the Great one. 



There yet remains, however, the question as to the 

 angular slope of the Great Pyramid's sides, for that forms 

 equally a part in the decision of shape. 



* Psalm cxviii., 22 ; Isaiah xxviii., 16 ; Zechariah iv., 7 ; Job xxxviii., 6; 

 Ephesians ii., 20, and iv., 15, 16; 1 Peter ti., 4, 5, 6,7; Luke xx., 17, 18; 

 Matt, xxi., 42, 44. 



f Long the publisher to the London University ; died in 1864. The book 

 here referred to is by name " The Great Pyramid ; Why was it Built, and 

 Who Built it." Longmans and Co., London. 



