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. B. The Lady Nophret. 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] [Illustration: The Lady Nophret (Cairo Museum)] I confess that when I drew near to these statues in the Museum at Cairo, it is no exaggeration to say that I was literally startled by their lifelike appearance. Like Miss Jane Harrison, I felt that the "Lady Nophret," at least, must be able to rise and come forward,[67] so ridiculously fresh and warm did she appear in her spotless white dress and her majestic wig. I soon realized that I was in the presence of a kind of realism which transcended anything I had ever seen in ancient or modern art, for its convincingness and truth; and it was difficult to believe that this piece of wholesale deception--certainly more perfect than any waxwork figure I had ever known,--like the statue of the Man-God Khephrën, was a product of the pyramid period.