The best in Greece was borrowed from them; the best we still possess is perhaps but a faint after-glow of their setting sun, and the cold and unfamiliar tone in which their art seems to appeal to modern men ought to prove to us how remote, how incalculably far off, they are from our insignificant age of progress and advancement, of feebleness and mediocrity, and of hopeless errors, in which "the prince proposes, but the shopkeeper disposes!"[75] I cannot go into the details of their society with you now. I can but assure you that the more you read about it in the works of men like Wilkinson, Petrie and Brugsch-Bey, the more convinced you will become of its transcendental superiority. And if, in praising their art above that of any other nation, I have been forced to deal all too hastily with their morals and their State, it is simply because I can conceive of no such perfect art being possible, save as the flower of the noble and man-exalting values which I find at the base of the Egyptian Pyramid. In identifying Nietzsche's art canon with that admired and respected by Egypt at its best, I have done nothing at all surprising to those who know Nietzsche's philosophy. Everything he says on Art in his maturest work, _The Will to Power_, drove me inevitably, not to Italy, not to Greece, not to Holland, and not to India--but to the Valley of the Nile; while in two books already published I forestalled these lectures, in one respect, by declaring Nietzsche's ideal aristocratic state to have been based symbolically upon the idea of the Egyptian Pyramid. Only a romantic idealist would have the sentimental fanaticism to stand up before you now to preach an Egyptian Renaissance. I wish to do nothing of the sort. I know too well to what extent the Art of Egypt was the product of a people reared by a definite set of inviolable values, to hope to transplant it with any chance of success on to our democratic and anarchical soil. What I do wish to advocate, however, is, that when you think of the best in Art, your mind should go back to the severe and vigorous culture of Egypt and not to that of any other country. This will at least give you a standard of measurement, according to which most of the culture of the present day will strike you as tawdry and putrescent. In this way a salutary change may be brought about, and the words of Disraeli concerning the Egyptians may also come true, in which he said: "The day may yet come when we shall do justice to the high powers of that mysterious and imaginative people."[76] Nothing can be done, however, until our type is purified,[77] until we have at least become a people. For until that time it will be impossible to discover a type which may become the subject-matter of the graphic arts. "Upwards life striveth to build itself with columns and stairs: into remote distances it longeth to gaze: and outwards after blissful beauties--_therefore_ it needeth height!