But in the time of Cheops nothing of this kind was done, nor could it have been. It is true that the nation could then produce a great deal more food than it needed for consumption, but, at the end of the year, it was none the richer. Its surplus labour had not been fixed and preserved in a reconvertible form for future needs. Its surplus production had not been thus stored up for future uses. To repeat ourselves there were, speaking generally, no ways open to them for bottling up this surplusage either in the temporarily barren, or in the continuously fruitful fashion. But there were ways open to them by which they might squander, or consume, their imperfect chances. They might, for instance, throw away their surplus food, and capacity for surplus labour, by doing no productive work for a portion of the year. They were engaged in this way in the long and numerous festivals of their gods, in their funeral processions, and other matters of this kind. The effect was the same when they made military raids on their neighbours. To this method also of using up their surplus labour and food they had frequent recourse. To these matters they were disposed more than ourselves, because, unlike ourselves, they could not save what they were thus squandering. Or they might spend much of it in excavating, sculpturing, and painting acres of tombs; or in piling up Pyramids; or in building incredible numbers of magnificent temples. This explains the magnitude and costliness of many of the works, and undertakings, of the old world elsewhere, as well as in Egypt. The point which it is essential to see is, that they could not bottle up their surplus labour of any kind in the time of Cheops; while with us every form of surplus labour, even every odd half-hour of every form of it, may be bottled up, and the interest on what has been secured in this way may itself also be secured in like manner. The only approach to this among them was made by the king when he built a treasury, which we know was sometimes done by the Pharaohs, and locked up in it his ingots of silver, and what gold, precious stones, and costly stuffs he had acquired. But this form of bottling up labour, and which only one man in the kingdom could practise, had two objections. It was of the utterly barren sort: it paid no dividends. He had no enjoyment of any kind from it. This was the first objection; and the other was, that if it was continued too long—and this might be the result at any moment—the man who was thus hoarding up his treasures would prove to have been hoarding them up for others, and not for himself; and so he would get no particle of advantage from them.