The philosophical conclusion of our historic analysis of dance leads back to the same axioms that actuated the savage in his practice of agility: the sexual selection and primitive sport, both necessary for evolution and the existence of the race. However, there is neither sexual motive nor instinct for ‘physical culture’ in the ‘Heavenly Alchemy’ of evolution that has created the poetic movements of Taglioni and her successors. The ancient racial propensities have developed into more spiritual ideas. Like the tendency of evolution generally, to universalize an individual and individualize the universe, so in dance the racial characteristics are transformed into cosmic motives. In this stage beauty becomes symbolic and concrete emotions take on a more and more abstract form. The survival value of the greatest art of the dance lies in ennobling the intellect and soul, which has necessarily an indirect bearing upon the physical. Ultimately this means perfection of the whole human organism. It inspires the mind and influences the body. Civilization has brought humanity to a state where the physical needs depend upon the psychical. We have devised a more complicated form of sexual selection and more complicated means of existence than the primitive dances employed in our animal past. Beauty in the long course of evolution has grown more spiritual, accordingly dancing as an art has become an evolutionary medium of the intellect. CHAPTER II DANCING IN ANCIENT EGYPT Earliest Egyptian records of dancing; hieroglyphic evidence; the Astral dance; Egyptian court and temple rituals; festival of the Sacred Bull--Music of the Egyptian dances; Egyptian dance technique; points of similarity between Egyptian and modern dancing; Hawasis and Almeiis; the Graveyard dance; modern imitations. I Long before the rest of the world had emerged from barbarism Egypt had reached a high state of civilization. But the history of Egyptian civilization was hidden behind a curtain of mysteries, until the key to the hieroglyphs was discovered. Then, the imposing pyramids opened suddenly their sealed lips and the world stood aghast at their revelations. The ruins of Memphis and Thebes became books of interesting reading. The discovered inscriptions and papyri revealed the high state of development that the dance had reached in the ancient Egyptian temples. The first dancing in Egyptian history is recorded by Manetho, the priest of Heliopolis who lived in 5004 B. C.,--which is approximately one thousand years before the creation of the world, according to Biblical chronology. Plato alludes to Egyptian art and dancing performed ten thousand years before his time. Schliemann, the great archeologist, maintained that the history of Egypt was written in various dance-phases, as can be seen from the inscriptions of their ancient sarcophagi and pyramids.