The progress in industrial arts and the use of implements was, of necessity, very slow. Where the laboring man was considered of little value, treated as a mere physical machine, to be fed and used for mechanical purposes alone, it mattered little with what tools he worked. In the building of the pyramids we find no mighty engines for the movement of the great stones, we find no evidence of mechanical genius to provide labor-saving machines. The inclined plane and rollers, the simplest of all contrivances, were about the only inventions. Also, in the buildings of Babylon, the tools with which men worked must of necessity have been very poor. It is remarkable to what extent modern invention depends upon the elevation of the standard of 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.