In the art of Egypt I recognized this principle of restraint, long before I discovered that it existed in their life and system of society, and I was not surprised to find it observed with greater severity by their rulers than by the mass of the people themselves.[61]
No one can command who has not first learnt to obey his own will. Nobody could command as that Man-God Khephrën commanded,[62] before he had become complete master of himself.
"He who cannot command himself shall obey," says Zarathustra.[63] And about five thousand years ago Ptahotep—the great moralist of the fifth dynasty of Egypt—said: "He that obeyeth his heart, shall command!"[64]
This atmosphere is strange to us. We, who are used to seeing liberty and authority granted indiscriminately as ends in themselves, to everybody and anybody, find it difficult to realize this manner of thought. If we know of it at all, we misunderstand it and confound the moderation of weak natures with the restraint of the strong.[65]
This art of life which takes as a fundamental principle that every joy is bought by some sacrifice, is strange and archaic now. The people it reared communicate little to our age, as their statues will prove if you look at them; the art it created leaves modern spectators cold; and yet, as every great legislator and artist should know, it is precisely upon the principle with which the Egyptian people of the fourth dynasty were reared, and with which the splendid statue of King Khephrën was carved, that all great life and art repose.
It cannot be said too often, therefore, that the Egyptians were a happy and contented people, and this they were because there was some power abroad in their world, and because he who wielded that power could make them believe that the human race was as high as a pyramid, although but one man perhaps could ever represent the apex.
But you may object that in some of the works of this period the Egyptian artists showed a lack of restraint, a lack of the instinct that knows how much to sacrifice, which far surpassed this same vice in the art of the Greeks. You may point to the perfectly stupendous realism of the Lady Nophret and her husband or brother, and declare with Fergusson that "nothing more wonderfully truthful and realistic has been done since that time, till the invention of photography."[66]