“And do you not feel the beauty of visible creation, and does not the immutable law in everything fill you with admiration and humility?”

“For beauty,” replied Nebsecht, “I have never sought; the organ is somehow wanting in me to understand it of myself, though I willingly allow you to mediate between us.  But of law in nature I fully appreciate the worth, for that is the veritable soul of the universe.  You call the One ‘Temt,’ that is to say the total—­the unity which is reached by the addition of many units; and that pleases me, for the elements of the universe and the powers which prescribe the paths of life are strictly defined by measure and number—­but irrespective of beauty or benevolence.”

“Such views,” cried Pentaur troubled, “are the result of your strange studies.  You kill and destroy, in order, as you yourself say, to come upon the track of the secrets of life.  Look out upon nature, develop the faculty which you declare to be wanting, in you, and the beauty of creation will teach you without my assistance that you are praying to a false god.”

“I do not pray,” said Nebsecht, “for the law which moves the world is as little affected by prayers as the current of the sands in your hour-glass.  Who tells you that I do not seek to come upon the track of the first beginning of things?  I proved to you just now that I know more about the origin of Scarabei than you do.  I have killed many an animal, not only to study its organism, but also to investigate how it has built up its form.  But precisely in this work my organ for beauty has become blunt rather than keen.  I tell you that the beginning of things is not more attractive to contemplate than their death and decomposition.”

Pentaur looked at the physician enquiringly.

“I also for once,” continued Nebsecht, “will speak in figures.  Look at this wine, how pure it is, how fragrant; and yet it was trodden from the grape by the brawny feet of the vintagers.  And those full ears of corn!  They gleam golden yellow, and will yield us snow-white meal when they are ground, and yet they grew from a rotting seed.  Lately you were praising to me the beauty of the great Hall of Columns nearly completed in the Temple of Amon over yonder in Thebes.

   [Begun by Rameses I. continued by Seti I., completed by Rameses ii. 
   The remains of this immense hall, with its 134 columns, have not
   their equal in the world.]

How posterity will admire it!  I saw that Hall arise.  There lay masses of freestone in wild confusion, dust in heaps that took away my breath, and three months since I was sent over there, because above a hundred workmen engaged in stone-polishing under the burning sun had been beaten to death.  Were I a poet like you, I would show you a hundred similar pictures, in which you would not find much beauty.  In the meantime, we have enough to do in observing the existing order of things, and investigating the laws by which it is governed.”