The pyramidal form has ever possessed peculiar fascinations for men,
and, from its simplicity, grandeur, and power, has been used in all ages
with innumerable modifications in those structures whose object was to
impress and overawe,--as in the pyramids of Egypt, the temples of India
and Mexico, and in all the earliest funereal monuments. It involved a
rude symbolism, which recommended itself to the barbarous childhood
of nations. But it was not until the pyramid was sharpened and
spiritualized into the spire that it gained its completest triumph over
the secret emotions of men. The Egyptians made the nearest approach
to it in the obelisk. That mysterious people felt very keenly the
suggestiveness of the pyramidal form, and refined the language of
its sentiment into some very beautiful expressions. Yet between the
mausoleums of Gizeh and the hieroglyphic shafts of Luxor and Karnac
there existed a modification, the intensity of whose meaning they
were not prepared to understand. Neither their civilization nor their
religion required such an exponent; so they exhausted themselves with
their mountainous bulks of stone and their pictured monoliths.
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