life of labor, and how man through intelligence continually makes
certain contrivances for the perfection of human industry. However, if
we consider the ornaments used to adorn the person, or for the service
of the rich, or the elaborate clothing of the wealthy, we shall find
quite a high state of development in these lines, showing the greatest
contrast between the condition of the laboring multitudes on the one
hand and the luxurious few on the other. Along this line of the rapid
development of ornaments we find evidence of luxury and ease, and, in
the slow development of {181} industrial arts, the sacrifice of labor.
And all of the advancement in the mighty works of art and industry was
made at the sacrifice of human labor.

To sum this up, we find, then, that the influence of despotic
government, of the binding power of caste, of the prevalence of custom,
of the influence of priestcraft, the retarding power of a
non-progressive religion, concentration of intelligence in a privileged
class that seeks its own ease, the slow development of industrial
implements, and the rapid development of ornaments, brought decay. We
see in all of this a retarding of improvement, a stagnation of
organizing effort, and the crystallization of ancient civilization
about old forms, to be handed down from generation to generation
without progress.

_Records, Writing, and Paper_.--At an early period papyrus, a paper
made of a reed that grows along the Nile valley, was among the first
inventions. It was the earliest artificial writing material discovered
by any nation of which we have a record; and we are likely to remember
it from its two names, _biblos_ and _papyrus_, for from these come two
of our most common words, bible and paper. Frequently, however,
leather, pottery, tiles, and stone, and even wooden tablets, were used
as substitutes for the papyrus. In the early period the Egyptians used
the hieroglyphic form of writing, which consisted of rude pictures of
objects which had a peculiar significance. Finally the hieratic
simplified this form by symbolizing and conventionalizing to a large
extent the hieroglyphic characters. Later came the demotic, which was
a further departure from the old concrete form of representation, and
had the advantage of being more readily written than either of the
others.[1] These characters were used to inscribe the deeds of kings
on monuments and tablets, and when in 1798 the key to the Egyptia