 Chapter 6 of the Golden Bau. This is the LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer, please visit LibriVox.org. Recording by Monsbrew Helsingfors Finland. The Golden Bau by Sir James Fraser. Chapter 6. Magicians as Kings. The foregoing evidence may satisfy us that in many lands and many races, magic has claimed to control the great forces of nature for the good of man. If that has been so, the practitioners of the art must necessarily be personages of importance and influence in any society which puts faith in their extravagant pretensions. And it would be no matter for surprise if, by virtue of the reputation which they enjoy and the awe which they inspire, some of them should attain to the highest position of authority over their credulous fellows. In point of fact, magicians appeared to have often developed into chiefs and kings. Let us begin by looking at the lowest race of men, as to whom we possess comparatively full and accurate information, the aborigines of Australia. These savages are ruled neither by chiefs nor kings. So far as their tribes can be said to have a political constitution, it is a democracy or rather an oligarchy of old and influential men who meet in council and decide on all measures of importance to the practical exclusion of the younger men. Their deliberative assembly answers to the senate of later times. If we had to coin a word for such a government of elders, we might call it the gerontrocracy. The elders who in aboriginal Australia thus meet and direct the affairs of their tribe appear to be for the most part the headmen of their respective totem clans. Now in central Australia, where the desert nature of the country and the almost complete isolation from foreign influences have retarded progress and preserved the natives and the whole in their most primitive state, the headmen of the various totem clans are charged with the important task of performing magical ceremonies for the multiplication of the totems. And as the great majority of the totems are edible animals or plants, it follows that these men are commonly expected to provide the people with food, by means of magic. Others have to make the rain to fall or to render other services to the community. In short, among the tribes of central Australia the headmen are public magicians. Further, their most important function is to take charge of the sacred storehouse, usually a cleft in the rocks or a hole in the ground. Where I kept the holy stones and sticks, churinga, with which the souls of all the people, both living and dead, are apparently supposed to be in a manner bound up. Thus, while the headmen have certainly to perform what we would call civil duties, such as to inflict punishment for breaches of tribal custom, their principal functions are sacred or magical. When we pass from Australia to New Guinea, we find that, though the natives stand at a far higher level of culture than the Australian Aborigines, the constitutional society among them is still essentially democratic or oligarchic, and chieftainship exists only in Embryo. Thus Sir William McGregor tells us that in British New Guinea no one has ever risen wise enough, bold enough and strong enough to become the despot even of a single district. The nearest approach to this has been the very distant one of some person becoming a renowned wizard, but that has only resulted in levying a certain amount of blackmail. According to a native account, the origin of the power of Melanesian chiefs lies entirely in the belief that they have communication with mighty ghosts, and wield that supernatural power whereby they can bring the influence of the ghosts to bear. If a chief imposed a fine, it was paid because the people universally dreaded his ghostly power, and firmly believed that he could inflict calamity and sickness upon such as resisted him. As soon as any considerable number of his people began to disbelieve in his influence with the ghosts, his power to levy fines was shaken. Again Dr George Brown tells us that in New Britain a ruling chief was always supposed to exercise priestly functions, that is, he professed to be in constant communication with the Tiberans, spirits, and through their influence he was enabled to bring rain or sunshine, fair winds or foul ones, sickness or health, success or disaster in war, and generally to procure any blessing or curse for which the applicant was willing to pay a sufficient price. Still rising in the scale of culture we come to Africa where both the chieftainship and the kingship are fully developed, and here the evidence for the evolution of the chief out of the magician and especially out of the rainmaker is comparatively plentiful. Thus among the van Buugwe, a bond to people of East Africa, the original form of government was a family republic, but the enormous power of the sorcerers transmitted by inheritance soon raised them to the rank of petty lords or chiefs. Of the three chiefs living in the country in 1894, two were much dreaded as magicians, and the wealth of cattle they possessed came to them almost whole in the shape of presents bestowed for their services in that capacity. Their principal art was that of rainmaking. The chiefs of the Vataturu and other people of East Africa are said to be nothing but sorcerers destitute of any direct political influence. Again among the Vagogo of East Africa, the main power of the chiefs, we are told, is derived from their art of rainmaking. If a chief cannot make rain himself, he must procure it from someone who can. Again among the tribes of the upper Nile, the medicine men are generally the chiefs. Their authority rests above all upon their supposed power of making rain, for rain is the one thing which matters to the people in those districts. As if it does not come down at the right time, it means untold hardships for the community. It is therefore small wonder that men more cunning than their fellows should arrogate to themselves the power of producing it, or that having gained such a reputation, they should trade on the credulity of their simpler neighbors. Hence, most of the chiefs of these tribes are rainmakers, and enjoy a popularity in proportion to their powers to give rain to their people at the proper season. Rainmaking chiefs always build their villages on the slopes of a fairly high hill. As they no doubt know that the hills attract the clouds, and that they are, therefore, fairly safe in their weather forecasts, each of these rainmakers has a number of rainstones, such as rock, crystal, aventurine and amethyst, which he keeps in a pot. When he wishes to produce rain, he plunges the stones in water, and taking in his hand the peeled cane, which is split at the top, he beckons with it through clouds to come, or waves them away in the way they should go. Muttering and incantation the while. All he pours water and the entrails of a sheep or goat into a hollow in a stone, and then sprinkles the water towards the sky. Though the chief acquires wealth by the exercise of his supposed magical powers, he often, perhaps generally, comes to a violent end, for in time of drought the angry people assemble and kill him, believing that it is he who prevents rain from falling. Yet the office is usually hereditary and passes from father to son. Among the tribes which cherish these beliefs and observe these customs are the Latuka, Bari, Laluba and Lokoia. In central Africa, again, the Lendu tribe, to the west of Lake Albert, firmly believe that certain people possess the power of making rain. Among them the rainmaker, either as a chief or almost invariably, becomes one. The Banyoro also have a great respect for the dispensers of rain, whom they load with the profusion of gifts. The great dispenser, he who has absolute and uncontrollable power over the rain, is the king, but he can depute his power to other persons, so that the benefit may be distributed, and the heavenly water laid on over the various parts of the kingdom. In western as well as in eastern and central Africa, we meet with the same union of chiefly with magical functions. Thus, in the Fand tribe, the strict distinction between chief and medicine man does not exist. The chief is also a medicine man, and the smith debute, where the fans esteem the smith's craft sacred, and non-but chiefs may meddle with it. As to the relation between the offices of chief and rainmaker in South Africa, a well-informed writer observes. In very old days, the chief was the great rainmaker of the tribe. Some chiefs allowed no one else to compete with them, lest a successful rainmaker should be chosen as chief. There was also another reason, the rainmaker was sure to become a rich man if he gained a great reputation, and it would manifestly never do for the chief to allow anyone to be too rich. The rainmaker exerts tremendous control over the people, and so it would be most important to keep this function connected with royalty. Tradition always places the power of making rain as the fundamental glory of ancient chiefs and heroes, and it seems probable that it may have been the origin of chieftainship. The man who made the rain would naturally become the chief. In the same way Chaka, the famous Zulu despot, used to declare that he was the only diviner in the country, for if he allowed rivals, his life would be insecure. Similarly speaking of the South African tribes in general, Dr. Moffat says that the rainmaker is in the estimation of the people no mean personage, possessing an influence over the minds of the people superior even that of the king, who is likewise compelled to yield to the dictates of his arch-official. The foregoing evidence renders it probable that in Africa the king has often been developed out of the public magician, and especially out of the rainmaker, the unbounded fear which the magician inspires and the world which he amasses in the exercise of his profession may both be supposed to have contributed to his promotion. But if the career of a magician, especially of a rainmaker, offers great reward to the successful practitioner of the art, it is beset with many pitfalls into which the unskillful or unlucky artist may fall. The position of the public sorcerer is indeed a very precarious one, for where the people firmly believe that he has it in his power to make the rain to fall, the sun to shine, and the fruits of the earth to grow, they naturally impute drought and dearth to his culpable negligence or willful obstinacy, and they punish him accordingly. Hence in Africa the chief who fails to procure rain is often exiled or killed. Thus in some parts of West Africa when prayers and offerings presented to the king have failed to procure rain, his subjects bind him with ropes and take him by force to the grave of his forefathers that he may obtain from them the needed rain. The banjars in West Africa ascribe to their king the power of causing rain or fine weather. So long as the weather is fine they load him with presents of grain and cattle. But if long drought or rain threatens to spoil the crops, they insult and beat him till the weather changes. When the harvest fails or the surf on the beach is too heavy to allow of fishing, the people of Luongo accuse their king of a bad heart and depose him. On the grain coast the high priest or fetish king who bears the title of Bodio is responsible for the health of the community, the fertility of the earth and the abundance of fish in the sea and rivers. And if the country suffers in any of these respects, the Bodio is deposed from his office. In Usukuma, a great district on the southern banks of the Victoria and Jansa, the rain and locust question is part and parcel of the sultan's government. He too must know how to make rain and drive away the locusts. If he and his medicine men are unable to accomplish this, his whole existence is at stake in times of distress. On a certain occasion, when the rain so greatly desired by the people did not come, the sultan was simply driven out in Ututua, near Nasa. The people, in fact, hold that rulers must have power over nature and her phenomena. Again, we are told of the natives of the Nianasa region, generally that they appreciated that rain only falls as a result of magic and the important duty of causing it to descend devolves on the chief of the tribe. If rain does not come at the proper time, everybody complains. More than one petty king has been banished his country because of drought. Among the Latuka of the upper Nile, when the crops are withering and all the efforts of the chief to draw down rain have proved fruitless, the people commonly attack him by night, rob him of all he possesses and drive him away. But often, they kill him. In many other parts of the world, kings have been expected to regulate the course of nature for the good of their people and have be punished if they fail to do so. It appears that the Scythians, when food was scarce, used to put their king in bonds. In ancient Egypt, the sacred kings were blamed for the failure of the crops, but the sacred beasts were also held responsible for the course of nature. When pestilence and other calamities had fallen on the land, in consequence of long and severe drought, the priests took the animals by night and threatened them, but if the evil did not abate, they slew the beasts. On the Coral Island of Niue, or Savage Island in the South Pacific, they formerly reigned the line of kings, as the kings were also high priests and were supposed to make the food grow. The people became angry with them in times of scarcity and killed them. Till it lost, as one after another was killed, no one would be king, and the monarchy came to an end. Ancient Chinese writers inform us that in Korea, the blame was laid on the king whenever too much or too little rain fell and the crops did not ripen. Some said that he must be deposed, others that he must be slain. Among the American Indians, the furthest advance towards civilization was made under the monarchical and theocratic governments of Mexico and Peru, but we know too little of the early history of these countries to say whether the predecessors of their deified kings were medicine men or not. Perhaps a trace of such a succession may be detected in the oath which the Mexican kings, when they mounted the throne, swore that they would make the sun to shine, the clouds to give rain, the rivers to flow and the earth to bring forth fruits in abundance. Certainly, in Aboriginal America, the sorcerer or medicine man surrounded by a halo of mystery and an atmosphere of awe was a personage of great influence and importance, and he may well have developed into a chief or king in many tribes, though positive evidence of such development appears to be lacking. Thus, Kathleen tells us that in North America the medicine men are valued as dignitaries in the tribe and the greatest respect is paid to them by the whole community, not only for their skill in their materia medica, but more especially for their tact in magic and mysteries, in which they all deal to a very great extent. In all tribes, their doctors are conjurers, are magicians, are soothsayers, and I had liked to have said high priests inasmuch as they superintend and conduct all their religious ceremonies. They are looked upon by all as oracles of the nation. In all councils of war and peace, they have a seat with the chiefs, are regularly consulted before any public step is taken, and the greatest deference and respect is paid to their opinions. Similarly, in California, the shaman was, and still is, perhaps the most important individual among the Maidu. In the absence of any definite system of government, the word of a shaman has great weight, as a class they are regarded with much awe and as a rule are obeyed much more than the chief. In South America, also the magicians or medicine men seem to have been on the high road to chieftainship or kingship. One of the earliest settlers on the coast of Brazil, the Frenchman Thévi, reports that the Indians hold these pages or medicine men in such honor and reverence that they adore or rather idolize them. You may see the common folk go to meet them, prostrate themselves and pray to them saying, grant that I be not ill, that I do not die, neither I know my children, or some such request. And he answers, you shall not die, you shall not be ill, and such like replies. But sometimes if it happens that these pages do not tell the truth and things turn out otherwise than they predicted, the people make no scruple of killing them as unworthy of the title or dignity of pages. Among the lengua indians of the Grand Chaco, every clan has its casique or chief, but he possesses little authority. In virtue of his office he has to make many presence, so he seldom grows rich and is generally more shabbily clad than any of his subjects. As a matter of fact, the magician is the man who has most power in his hands and he is accustomed to receive presence instead of to give them. It is the magician's duty to bring down misfortune and plagues on the enemies of his tribe and to guard his own people against hostile magic. For these services he is well paid and by them he acquires a position of great influence and authority. Throughout the Malai region, the Raja or King is commonly regarded with superstitious veneration as the possessor of supernatural powers and there are grounds for thinking that he too, like apparently so many African chiefs, has been developed out of a simple magician. At the present day the Malais firmly believe that the King possesses a personal influence over the works of nature, such as the growth of the crops and the bearing of fruit trees. The same prolific virtue is supposed to reside though in a lesser degree in his delegates and even in the persons of Europeans who chance to have charge of districts. Thus in Selangor, one of the native states of the Malai peninsula, the success or failure of the rice crops is often attributed to a change of district officers. The Turadeas of southern Silebes hold that the prosperity of the rice depends on the behavior of their princes and that bad government, by which they mean a government which does not conform to ancient custom, will result in failure of the crops. The Diyaks of Sarawak believed that their famous English ruler, Raja Brook, was endowed with a certain magical virtue which, if properly applied, could render the rice crops abundant. Hence when he visited the tribe they used to bring him the seed which they intended to sow next year and he fertilized it by shaking it over the women's necklaces which had been previously dipped in a special mixture and when he entered the village the women would wash and bathe his feet first with water, then with the milk of a young coconut and lastly with water again and all this water which had touched his person they preserved for the purpose of distributing it on their farms believing that it ensured an abundant harvest. Tribes which were too off for him to visit used to send him a small piece of white cloth and a little gold or silver and when these things had been impregnated by his generative virtue they buried them in their fields and confidently expected a heavy crop. Once when a European remarked the rice crops of the Samban tribe were thin the chief immediately replied that they could not be otherwise since Raja Brook had never visited them and he begged that Mr. Brook might be induced to visit his tribe and remove the sterility of their land. The belief that kings possess magical or supernatural powers by virtue of which they can fertilize the earth and confer other benefits on their subjects would seem to have been shared by the ancestors of all the Aryan races from India to Ireland and it has left clear traces of itself in our own country down to modern times. Thus the ancient Hindu law book called The Laws of Manu describes as follows the effects of the king's reign. In that country where the king avoids taking the property of mortal sinners men are born in due time and are long lived and the crops of the husband men spring up each as it was sown and the children die not and no misshaped offspring is born. In Homeric Greece kings and chiefs were spoken of as sacred or divine their houses too were divine and their chariots sacred such as the black earth to bring forth wheat and barley the trees to be loaded with fruit the flocks to multiply and the sea to yield fish. In the middle ages when Waldemar the first king of Denmark travelled in Germany mothers brought their infants and husband men their seed for him to lay his hands on thinking the children would both thrive the better for the royal touch and for a like reason farmers asked him to throw their seed it was the belief of the ancient Irish that when their kings observed the customs of their ancestors the seasons were mild the crops perlentiful the cattle fruitful the waters abounded with fish and the fruit trees had to be propped up on account of the weight of their produce. A canon attributed to Saint Patrick enumerates among the blessings that attained the reign of a just king fine weather, calm seas crops abundant and trees laden with fruit on the other hand dirt, dryness of cows, blight of fruit and scarcity of corn were regarded as infallible proofs that the reigning king was bad perhaps the last relic of such superstitions which lingered about our English kings was the notion that they could heal scrufula by their touch the disease was accordingly known as the king's evil Queen Elizabeth often exercised this miraculous gift of healing on mid-summer day 1633 Charles I cured 100 patients at once whoop in the chapel royal at Holyrood but it was under his son Charles II that the practice seems to have attained its highest vogue it is said that in the course of his reign Charles II touched near 100,000 persons for scrufula the press to get near him was sometimes terrific on one occasion 6 or 7 of those who came to be healed were trampled to death the cool headed William III contemptuously refused to lend himself to the hocus pocus and when his palace was besieged by the usual unsavory crowd he ordered them to be turned away with a dole on the only occasion when he was importuned into laying his hand on a patient he said to him God give you better health and more sense however the practice was continued as might have been expected by the dull bigot James II and his dull daughter Queen Anne the kings of France also claimed to possess the same gift of healing by touch which they are said to have derived from Clovis or from St. Louis while our English kings inherited it from Edward the Confessor similarly the savage chiefs of Tonga were believed to heal scrufula in cases of indurated liver by the touch of their feet it was strictly homeopathic for the disease as well as the cure was thought to be caused by contact with the royal person or with anything that belonged to it on the whole then we seem to be justified in inferring that in many parts of the world the king is the linear successor of the old magician or medicine man when once a special class of sorcerers has been segregated from the community and entrusted by it with the discharge of duties and safety and welfare I believe to depend these men gradually rise to wealth and power till their leaders blossom out into sacred kings but the great social revolution which thus begins with democracy and ends in despotism is attended by an intellectual revolution which affects both the conception and the functions of royalty for as time go on the fallacy of magic becomes more and more apparent to the acutal minds and is slowly displaced by religion in other words the magician gives way to the priest who renouncing the attempt to control directly the processes of nature for the good of man seeks to attain the same end indirectly by appealing to the gods to do for him what he no longer fancies he can do for himself hence the king starting as magician tends gradually to exchange the practice of magic basically functions of prayer and sacrifice and while the distinction between the human and the divine is still imperfectly drawn it is often imagined that men may themselves attain to godhead not merely after their death but in their lifetime through the temporary or permanent possession of their whole nature by a great and powerful spirit no class of the community has benefited so much as kings by this belief in the possible the doctrine of that incarnation and with it the theory of the divinity of kings in the strict sense of the word will form the subject of the following chapter end of chapter 6 recording by Monsbru Helsingfors Finland chapter 7 of the golden bow this is a Librivox recording all Librivox recordings are in the public domain for more information or to volunteer please visit Librivox.org recording by Monsbru Helsingfors Finland the golden bow by Sir James Fraser chapter 7 incarnate human gods the instances which in the preceding chapters I have drawn from the beliefs and practices of rude people all over the world may suffice to prove that the savage fails to recognize those limitations to his power over nature which seems so obvious to us in a society where every man is supposed to be endowed more or less with powers which we should call supernatural it is plain that the distinction within gods and men is somewhat blurred or rather has scarcely emerged the conception of gods as superhuman beings endowed with powers to which man possesses nothing comparable in degree and hardly even in kind has been slowly evolved in the course of history by primitive peoples the supernatural agents are not regarded as greatly if at all superior to man for they may be frightened and coerced by him into doing his will at this stage of thought the world is viewed as a great democracy all beings in it whether natural or supernatural are supposed to stand on a footing of tolerable equality but with the growth of his knowledge man learns to realize more clearly the vastness of nature and his own littleness and feebleness in presence of it the recognition of his helplessness does not however carry with it a corresponding belief in the impotence of those supernatural beings with which his imagination peoples the universe on the contrary it enhances his conception of their power for the idea of the world as a system of impersonal forces acting in accordance with fixed and invariable laws has not yet fully dawned or darkened upon him the germ of the idea he certainly has and he acts upon it not only in magic art but in much of the business of daily life but the idea remains undeveloped and so far as he attempts to explain the world he lives in he pictures it as the manifestation of conscious will and personal agency if then he feels himself to be so frail and slight how vast and powerful must he deem the beings who control the gigantic machinery of nature thus as his old sense of equality with the gods slowly vanishes he designs at the same time the hope of directing the course of nature by his own unaided resources that is by magic and looks more and more to the gods as the sole repositories of those supernatural powers which he once claimed to share with them with the advance of knowledge therefore prayer and sacrifice assume the leading place in religious ritual and magic which once ranked with them as a legitimate equal is gradually relegated to the background and sings to the level of a black art it is now regarded as an encroachment that once vain an empires on the domain of the gods and as such encounters the steady opposition of the priests whose reputation and influence rise or fall with those of their gods hence when at a late period the distinction between religion and superstition has emerged we find that sacrifice and prayer are the resource of the pious and enlightened portion of the community while magic is the refuge of the superstitious and ignorant but when, still later the conception of the elemental forces as personal agents is giving way to the recognition of natural law then magic based as it implicitly is on the idea of a necessary and invariable sequence of cause and effect independent of personal will reappears from the obscurity and discredit into which it had fallen and by investigating the causal sequences in nature directly prepares the way for science alchemy leads up to chemistry the notion of a man god or of a human being endowed with divine or supernatural powers belongs essentially to that earlier period of religious history in which gods and men are still viewed as being of much the same order before they are divided by the impassable gulf which, to later thought opens out between them strange, therefore as may seem to us the idea of a god incarnate in human form it has nothing very startling for early man who sees in a man god or a god man only a higher degree of the same supernatural powers which he arrogates in perfect good faith to himself nor does he draw any very sharp distinction between a god and a powerful sorcerer his gods are often merely invisible magicians who, behind the veil of nature work the same sort of charms and incantations which the human magician works in a visible and bodily form among his fellows and as the gods are commonly believed to exhibit themselves in the likeness of men to their worshippers it is easy for the magician with his supposed miraculous powers to acquire the reputation of being an incarnate deity thus beginning as little more than a simple conjurer the medicine man or magician tends to blossom out into a full-blown god and king in one only in speaking of him as a god we must beware of importing into the savage conception of deity those very abstract and complex ideas which we attach to the term our ideas on this profound subject are the fruit of a long internal and moral evolution and they are so far from being shared by the savage that he cannot even understand them when they are explained to him much of the controversy which has raged as to the religion of the lower races has sprung merely from a mutual misunderstanding the savage does not understand the thoughts of the civilized man and few civilized men understand the thoughts of the savage when the savage uses his word for God he has in mind a being of a certain sort when the civilized man uses his word for God he has in his mind a being of a very different sort and if as commonly happens the two men are equally unable to place themselves at the other's point of view nothing but confusion and mistakes can result from their discussions if we civilized men insist on limiting the name of God to that particular conception of the divine nature which we ourselves have formed then we must confess that the savage has no God at all but we shall adhere more closely to the facts of history if we allow most of the higher savages at least to possess a rudimentary notion of certain supernatural beings who may fittingly be called Gods though not in the full sense in which we use the word that rudimentary notion represents in all probability the germ out of which the civilized peoples have gradually evolved their own high conceptions of deity and if we could trace the whole course of religious development we might find that the chain which links our idea of the Godhead with that of the savage is one and unbroken with these explanations and cautions I will now adieu some examples of Gods who have been believed by their worshippers to be incarnate in living human beings whether men or women the persons in whom a deity is taught to reveal himself are by no means always king or descendants of kings the supposed incarnation may take place even in men of the humble strength in India for example one human god started in life as a cotton bleacher and another as the son of carpenter I should therefore not draw my examples exclusively from royal personages as I wish to illustrate the general principle of the deification of living men in other words the incarnation of a deity in human form such incarnate gods are common in rude society the incarnation may be temporary or permanent in the former case the incarnation commonly known as inspiration or possession reveals itself in supernatural knowledge rather than in supernatural power in other words its usual manifestations are divination and prophecy rather than miracles on the other hand creation is not merely temporary when the divine spirit has permanently taken up its abode in the human body the god man is usually expected to vindicate his character by working miracles only we have to remember that by men at this stage of thought miracles are not considered as breaches of natural law not conceiving the existence of natural law primitive man cannot conceive a breach of it a miracle is to him merely an unusually striking manifestation of a common power the belief in temporary incarnation or inspiration is worldwide certain persons are supposed to be possessed from time to time by a spirit or deity while the possession lasts their own personality lies in abeyance and the presence of the spirit is revealed by convulsive shiverings and shaking so the man's whole body by wild gestures and excited looks all of which are referred not to the man himself but to the spirit which has entered into him and in this abnormal state all his utterances are accepted as the voice of the god or spirit dwelling in him and speaking through him thus for example in the sandwich islands the king personating the god uttered the responses of the oracle from his concealment in a frame of wicked work but in the southern islands of the pacific the god frequently entered the priest who inflated as it were with the divinity seeks to act or speak as a voluntary agent but moved and spoke as entirely under supernatural influence in this respect there was a striking resemblance between the rude oracles of the Polynesians and those of the celebrated nations of ancient Greece as soon as the god was supposed to have entered the priest the latter became violently agitated and worked himself up to the highest pitch of apparent frenzy the muscles of the limbs seemed convulsed the body swelled and became terrific the features distorted and eyes wild and strained in this state he often rolled on the earth foaming at the mouth as if laboring under the influence of the divinity by whom he was possessed and in shrill cries and violent and often indistinct sounds revealed the will of the god the priests who were attending and versed in the mysteries received and reported to the people the declarations which had been thus received when the priest had uttered the response of the oracle the violent paroxysm gradually subsided and comparative composure ensued the god did not however always leave him as soon as the communication had been made sometimes the same taura or priest continued for two or three days possessed by the spirit or deity a piece of native cloth of a peculiar kind worn around one arm was an indication of inspiration or the indwelling of the god with the individual who wore it the acts of the man during this period were considered as those of the god and hence the greatest attention was paid to his expressions and the whole of his deportment when uruhia under the inspiration of the spirit the priest was always considered as sacred as the god and was called during this period atua god atua times only denominated taura or priest but examples of such temporary inspiration are so common in every part of the world and are now so familiar through books on ethnology that it is needless to multiply illustrations of the general principle it may be well, however to refer to two particular modes of producing temporary inspiration because they are perhaps less known than some others and because we shall have occasion later on one of these modes of producing inspiration is by sucking the fresh blood of a sacrificed victim in the temple of apollo deodratis atargus a lamb was sacrificed by night once a month a woman who had to observe a rule of chastity tasted the blood of the lamb and thus being inspired by the god she prophesized or divine atayegira in akea the priestess of her drank the fresh blood of a bull before she descended into the cave to prophesy similarly among the kuru vicarans a class of bird catchers and beggars in southern india the goddess kali is believed to descend upon the priest and he gives oracular replies after sucking the blood which streams from the cutthroat of a goat at the festival of the alfours of minahasa in northern celibis after a pig has been killed the priest rushes furiously at it trusts his head into the carcass and drinks at the blood then he is dragged away from it by force and set on a chair whereupon he begins to prophesy how the rice crop will turn out that year a second time he runs at the carcass and drinks at the blood a second time he is forced into the chair and continues his predictions it is thought that there is a spirit in him which possesses the power of prophesy the other mode of producing temporary inspiration to which I shall here refer consists in the use of a sacred tree or plant thus in the hindukush a fire is kindled with twigs of the sacred cedar and the dynial or sible with a clot over her head inhales the thick pungent smoke till she is seized with convulsions and falls senseless to the ground soon she rises and raises a shrill chant which is caught up and loudly repeated by her audience so apollos prophetus ate the sacred laurel and was fumigated with it before she prophesized the bacchanals ate ivy and their inspired fury was by some believe to be due to the exciting and intoxicating properties of the plant in duganda the priest in order to be inspired by his god smokes a pipe of tobacco fiercely till he works himself into a frenzy the loud excited tones in which he then talks are recognized as the voice of the god speaking through him in madura an island off the north coast of java each spirit has its regular medium who is often a woman than a man to prepare herself for the reception of the spirit she inhales the fumes of incense sitting with her head over a smoking censer gradually she falls into a sort of trance accompanied by shrieks, grimaces and violent spasms which are now supposed to have entered into her and when she grows calmer her words are regarded as oracular being the utterances of the indwelling spirit while her own soul is temporarily absent the person temporarily inspired is believed to acquire not merely divine knowledge but also at least occasionally divine power in cambodia when an epidemic breaks out the inhabitants of several villages unite and go with a band of music at their head and look for the man whom the local god is supposed to have chosen for his temporary incarnation when found the man is conducted to the altar of the god where the mystery of incarnation takes place then the man becomes an object of veneration to his fellows who implore him to protect the village against the plague a certain image of apollo which stood in a sacred cave at heli near magnesia was thought to impart superhuman strength sacred men inspired by it leaped down precipices tore up huge trees by the roots and carried them on their backs along the narrowest defiles the feats performed by inspired dervishes belong to the same class thus far we have seen that the savage failing to discern the limits of his ability to control nature ascribes to himself and to all men certain powers which we should now call supernatural here we have seen that over and above this general supernaturalism some persons are supposed to be inspired for short periods by divine spirit and thus temporarily to enjoy the knowledge and power of the indwelling deity from beliefs like these it is an easy step to the conviction that certain men are permanently possessed by a deity or in some other undefined way are endued with so high a degree of supernatural power as to be ranked as gods and to receive the homage of prayer and sacrifice sometimes these human gods are restricted to purely supernatural or spiritual functions sometimes they exercise supreme political power in addition in the latter case they are kings as well as gods and the government is a theocracy thus in the Marquesas of Washington islands there was a class of men who were defied in their lifetime they were supposed to wield a supernatural power over the elements they could give abundant harvests or smite the ground with barrenness and they could inflict disease or death human sacrifices were offered to them to avert their wrath there were not many of them at the most one or two in each island they lived in mystic seclusion the powers were sometimes but not always hereditary a missionary has described one of these human gods from personal observation the god was a very old man who lived in a large house with an enclosure in the house was a kind of altar under the beams of the house under the trees around it hung human skeletons head down no one entered the enclosure except the persons dedicated to the service of the god only on days when human victims were sacrificed might ordinary people penetrate into the precinct this human god received more sacrifices than all the other gods and he would sit on a sort of scaffold in front of his house and call for two or three human victims at a time they were always brought for the terror he inspired was extreme he was invoked all over the island and offerings were sent to him from every side again of the south sea islands in general we are told that each island had a man who represented or personified the divinity such men were called gods and their substance was confounded with that of the deity the man god was sometimes the king himself oftener he was a priest or subordinate chief the ancient Egyptians far from restricting their adoration to cats and dogs and such small deer very liberally extended it to men one of these human deities decided at the village of Anabis and burnt sacrifices were offered to him on the altars after which he would eat his dinner just as if he were an ordinary motor in classic antiquity the Sicilian philosopher Impidocles gave himself out to be not merely a wizard but a god addressing his fellow citizens in verse he said oh friends in this great city that climbs the yellow slope of Aggregentum Citadel who make good works your scope who offer to the stranger quiet and fair all hail among you honored I walk with lofty air with garlands blooming garlands you crown my noble bro a mortal man no longer a deathless godhead now wherever I go the people crowd around and worship pay and thousands follow seeking to learn the better way some crave prophetic visions some smith with anguished sore would feign hear words of comfort and suffer pain no more he asserted that he could teach his disciples how to make the wind to blow obi still the rain to fall and the sun to shine how to banish sickness and old age and raise the dead when Demetrius Polio-Cartes restored the Athenian democracy in 307 BC the Athenians decreed divine honors to him and his father Antiguanus both of them being then alive under the title of the savior gods the altars were set up to the saviours and the priests appointed to attend to the worship the people went forth to meet their deliverer with hymns and dances with garlands and incense and libations they lined the streets and sang that he was the only true god for the other gods slept or dwelt far away or were not in the words of a contemporary poet which were chanted in public and sung in private of all the gods the greatest and the dearest to the city are come for Demeter and Demetrius together time has brought she comes to hold the maidens awful rites and he joys and fair and laughing as befits a god a glorious sight with all his friends about him he in their midst they like the stars and he the sun son of Poseidon the mighty Aphrodite's son all hail the other gods will far away or have no ears or are not or pay us no heed but thee we present see no god of wood or stone but God had true therefore to thee we pray the ancient Germans believed that there was something holy in women and accordingly consulted them as oracles their sacred women were told looked on the edying rivers and listened to the murmur of the roar of the water and from the sight and sound foretold what would come to pass but often the veneration of the men went further and they worshipped women as true and living goddesses for example in the reign of Vespasian a certain villada of the tribe of the Bruckteri was commonly held to be a deity and in that character reigned over her people her sway being acknowledged far and wide she lived in a tower on the river Libbe a tributary on the Rhine when the people of Cologne sent a treaty with her the ambassadors were not admitted to her presence the negotiations were contacted through a minister who acted as the mouthpiece of her divinity and reported her oracular utterances the example shows how easily among our root forefathers the idea of divinity and royalty coalesced it is said that among the Geti down to the beginning of our era there was always a man who personified a god and was called God by the people he was built on sacred mountain and acted as advisor to the king according to the early portuguese historian dos Santos the Tsimbas or Muzimbas a people of southeastern africa do not adore idols or recognize any god but instead they venerate and honor their king whom they regard as a divinity and they say he is the greatest and best in the world and the said king says of himself that he alone is god of the earth for which reason if it rains when he does not wish it to do so or is too hot he shoots arrows at the sky for not obeying him the Mashauna of southeastern africa informed their bishop that they had once had a god but that the matabilis had driven him away this last was in reference to a curious custom in some villages of keeping a man they called their god he seemed to be consulted by the people and had presence given to him there was one at the village belonging to a chief magundi in the old days we were asked not to fire off any guns near the village or we should frighten him away this Mashauna god was formally bound to render an annual tribute to the kingdom of the matabele in the shape of four black oxen and one dance a missionary has seen and described the deity discharging the latter part of his duty in front of the royal hut for three mortal hours without a break the banging of a tambourine the klikukastanets and the drone of a monotonous song the swordy god engaged in a frenzy dance crouching on his hams like a tailor sweating like a pig and bounding about with an agility which testified to the strength and the elasticity of his divine legs the baghanda of central africa believed in a god of lake Nianza who sometimes took up his abode the incarnate god was much feared by all the people including the king and the chiefs when the mystery of incarnation had taken place the man or rather the god removed about a mile and a half from the margin of the lake and there awaited the appearance of the new moon before he engaged in his sacred duties from the moment that the crescent moon appeared faintly in the sky the king and all his subjects were at the command of the divine man or Lubare god as he was called who reigned supreme not only in matters of fate and ritual but also in questions of war and state policy he was consulted as an oracle by his word he could inflict or heal sickness with whole reign or cause famine large presence were made him when his advice was sought the chief of Urua a large region to the west of lake Tanganyika arrogates to himself divine honors and powers and pretends to abstain from food for days without feeling its necessity and indeed declares that as a god he is all together above requiring food and only eats, drinks and smokes for the pleasure it affords him among the gallows when a woman grows tired of the cares of housekeeping she begins to talk incoherently and to demean herself extravagantly this is a sign of the descent of the Holy Spirit Kallop upon her immediately her husband prostrates himself and adores her she ceases to be the humble title of wife and is called lord domestic duties and her further claim on her and her will is divine law the king of Luangu is honored by his people as though he were a god and he is called sambi or pango which means god they believe that he can let them have reign when he likes and once a year in December which is the time they want reign it is a beg of him to grant it to them on this occasion the king standing on his throne shoots an arrow into the air which is supposed to bring on reign much the same is said of the king of Mombasa down to a few years ago when his spiritual reign on earth was brought to an abrupt end by the carnal weapons of English marines and bluejackets the king of Benin was the chief object of worship in his dominions he occupies a higher post than the pope does in Catholic Europe for he is not only god's vice-regent upon earth but the god himself who subjects both obey and adore him as such although I believe they are a duration to rise rather from fear than love the king of Idda told the English officers of the Niger expedition god made me after his own image I am all the same as god and he appointed me as king a peculiarly bloodthirsty monarch of Burma by name Badun Sachin whose very countenance reflected the inbred ferocity of his nature and under whose reign more victims perished by the executioner than by the common enemy conceived a notion that he was something more than mortal and that this high distinction had been granted him as a reward for his numerous good works accordingly he laid aside the title of king and aimed at making himself a god with this view and in imitation of Buddha who before being advanced to the rank of divinity had quitted his royal palace and seraglio and retired from the world Badun Sachin withdrew from his palace to an immense pagoda the largest in the empire which he had been engaged in constructing for many years here he held conferences with the most learned monks in which he sought to perciate them that the 5000 years assigned for the observance of the law Buddha were now elapsed and that he himself was the god who was destined to appear after that period and to abolish the old law by substituting his own but to his great mortification many of the monks undertook to demonstrate the contrary and this disappointment combined with his love of power and his impatience under the strains of an ascetic life quickly disabused him of his imaginary god head and drove him back to his palace and his harem the king of Siam is venerated equally with the divinity his subjects ought not to look him in the face they prostrate themselves before him when he passes and appear before him on their knees their elbows resting on the ground there is a special language devoted to his sacred person and attributes and it must be used by all who speak to or of him even the natives have difficulty in mastering this peculiar vocabulary the hairs of the monarch's head the souls of his feet the breath of his body indeed every single detail of his person both outward and inward have particular names when he eats or drinks sleeps or walks a special word indicates that these acts are being performed by the sovereign and such words cannot possibly be applied to the acts of any other person whatever there is no word in the Siamese language any creature of higher rank or greater dignity than a monarch can be described and the missionaries when they speak of God are forced to use the native word for king but perhaps no country in the world has been so prolific of human gods as India nowhere has the divine grace been poured out in a more liberal measure on all classes of society from kings down to milkmen thus among the Todas a pastoral tribe of the Nilgiri hills of southern India the day it is a sanctuary and the milkman who attends to it has been described as a god when being asked whether the Todas salute the son one of these divine milkmen replied those poor fellows do so but I tapping his chest I a god why should I salute the son everyone even his own father prostrates himself before the milkman and no one would dare to refuse him anything no human being except another milkman may touch him and he gives articles to all who consult him speaking with the voice of a god further in India every king is regarded as little short of the present god the Hindu law book of Manu goes further and says that even an infant king must not be despised from an idea that he is a mere mortal for he is a great deity in human form they said to have been a sect in Orissa some years ago who worshipped the late queen Victoria in her lifetime as the chief divinity and to this day in India all living persons remarkable for great strength or valor or for supposed miraculous powers run the risk of being worshipped as gods thus a sect in the Punjab worshipped the deity whom they called Nikalsen this Nikalsen was no other than the redoubt of general Nikalsen and nothing that the general could do or say damped the order of his adorers the more he punished them the greater grew the religious awe with which they worshipped him at Benares not many years ago a celebrated deity was incarnated in the person of a Hindu gentleman who rejoiced in the effonious name of swami Bhaskaranandaji Saraswati and looked uncommonly like the late general manning only more ingenious his eyes beamed with kindly human interest and he took what is described as an innocent pleasure in the divine honors paid him by his confiding worshippers at Chinchewad a small town about 10 miles from Pune in western India there lives a family of whom one in each generation is believed by a large proportion of the Maharatas to be an incarnation headed god Ganapati that celebrated deity was first made flesh about the year 1640 in the person of a Brahman of Pune by name Muraba Gosain who sought to work out his salvation by abstinence, mortification and prayer his piety had its reward the god himself appeared to him in a vision of the night and promised that a portion of his that is of Ganapati's holy spirit should abide with him with his seed after him even to the seventh generation the divine promise was fulfilled seven successive incarnations transmitted from father to son manifested the light of Ganapati to a dark world the last of the direct line a heavy looking god with very weak eyes died in the year 1810 but the course of truth was too sacred and the value of the church property too considerable so it allowed the Brahmans to contemplate with equanimity the unspeakable loss that would be sustained by a world which knew not Ganapati accordingly they sought and found a holy vessel in whom the divine spirit of the master had revealed itself anew and the revelation has been happily continued in an unbroken succession of vessels from that time to this but a mysterious law of spiritual economy whose operations in the history of religion we may deplore that we cannot alter as decreed that the miracles wrought by the god man in these degenerate days cannot compare with those which were wrought by his predecessors in days gone by and it is even reported that the only sign vowed saved by him to the present generation of vipers is the miracle of feeding the multitude whom he annually entertains to dinner at Chinchuvad a Hindu sect which has many representatives in Bombay and central India holds that its spiritual chiefs or Maharajas as they are called are representatives or even actual incarnations on earth of the god Krishna and as Krishna looks down from heaven with most favor on such as minister to the wants of his successors and vikers on earth a peculiar right called self-devotion has been instituted whereby his faithful worshippers make over their bodies, their souls and what is perhaps still more important their worldly substance to his adorable incarnations and women are taught to believe that the highest bliss for themselves and their families is to be attained by yielding themselves to the embraces of those beings in whom the divine nature mysteriously co-exists with the form and even the appetites of true humanity Christianity itself has not uniformly escaped the taint of these unhappy delusions indeed it has often been sullied by the extravagances of vain pretenders to a divinity equal to or even surpassing that of its great founder in the second century montanus the freigian claimed to be the incarnate trinity uniting in his single person god the father, god the son and god the holy ghost nor is this an isolated case the exorbitant pretensions of a single ill balanced mind from the earliest times down to the present day many sects have believed that Christ and God himself is incarnate in every fully initiated Christian and they have carried this belief to its logical conclusion by adoring each other tartulian records that this was done by his fellow Christians at cartag in the second century the disciple of saint colombo worshiped him as an embodiment of Christ and in the 8th century elipandus of toledo spoke of Christ as a god among gods meaning that all believers were gods just as truly as Jesus himself the adoration of each other was customary among the albicans and is noticed hundreds of times in the records of the inquisition of toloos in the early part of the 14th century in the 13th century there arose a sect called the brethren and sisters of the free spirit who held that by long and assiduous contemplation any man might be united to the deity in an ineffable manner and become one with the source and parent of all things and that he who had thus ascended to god and been absorbed in his beatific essence actually formed part of the god head was the son of god in the same sense and manner with Christ himself and enjoyed thereby a glorious immunity from the trammels of all laws human and divine inwardly transported by this blissful initiation though outwardly presenting in their aspects and manners a shocking air of lunacy and distraction the sectaries roamed from place to place and tired in the most fantastic apparel and begging their bread with wild shouts and clamor spurning indignantly every kind of honest labor and industry as an obstacle to divine contemplation and to the ascent of the soul towards the father of spirits in all their excursions the women with whom they lived on terms of the closest familiarity those of whom who conceived they had made the greatest proficiency in the higher spiritual life dispensed with the use of clothes all together in their assemblies looking upon decency and modesty as marks of inward corruption characteristics of a soul that still groveled under the dominion of the flesh and had not yet been elevated into communion with the divine spirit of the worshipers sometimes their progress towards this mystic communion was accelerated by the inquisition and they expired in the flames not merely with unclouded serenity but with the most triumphant feelings of cheerfulness and joy about the year 1830 they appeared in one of the states of the American Union bordering on Kentucky an impostor who declared that he was the son of God and that he had reappeared on the earth to recall the empires the unbelieving and sinners to their duty he protested that if they did not mend their ways within a certain time he would give the signal and in a moment the world would crumble to ruins these extravagant pretensions were received with favor even by persons of wealth and position in society at last the German humbly besought the new messiah to announce the dreadful catastrophe to his fellow countrymen in the German language as they did not understand English and it seemed a pity that they should be damned merely on that account there would be saviour and reply confessed with great candor that he did not know German what? retorted the German you the son of God and don't speak all languages and don't even know German come come you're a naive hypocrite and madman bedlam is the place for you the spectators laughed and went away ashamed of their credulity sometimes at the death of the human incarnation the divine spirit transmigrates into another man the buddhist tartars believe in a great number of living buddhas who officiate as great lamas at the head of the most important monasteries when one of these great lamas dies his disciples do not sorrow for they know that he will soon reappear being born in the form of an infant their only anxiety is to discover the place of his birth if at the time they see a rainbow they take it as a sign sent them by the departed lama to guide them to his cradle sometimes the divine infant himself reveals his identity I am the grand lama he says the living buddha of such and such a temple take me to my old monastery I am its immortal head in whatever way the birthplace of the buddhas revealed whether by the buddhas own a vowel or by the sign in the sky tensor struck and the joyful pilgrims often headed by the king or one of the most illustrious of the royal family set forth to find and bring home the infant god generally he is born in Tibet the holy land and to reach him the caravan has often to traverse the most frightful desert when at last they find a child to keep him before however he is acknowledged as the grand lama whom they seek he must satisfy them of his identity he is asked the name of the monastery of which he claims to be the head how far off it is and how many monks live in it he must also describe the habits of the deceased great lama and the manner of his death then various articles as prayer books tea pots and cups are placed before him and he has to point out that he is the head of the Buddhist life if he does so without a mistake his claims are admitted and he is conducted in triumph to the monastery at the head of all the lamas is the Dalai Lama of Lhasa the Rome of Tibet he is regarded as a living god and that death is divine and immortal spirit is born again in a child according to some accounts the mode of discovering the Dalai Lama is similar to the method already described of discovering an ordinary grand lama other accounts speak of an election by drawing lots from golden jar wherever he is born the trees and plants put forth green leaves at his bidding flowers bloom and springs of water rise and his presence diffuses heavenly blessings but he is by no means the only man who poses as a god in these regions a register of all the incarnate gods in the Chinese empire is kept in the Li Fan Yan or colonial office at Peking the number of gods who have thus taken out a license is 160 Tibet is blessed with 30 of them northern Mongolia rejoices in 19 and southern Mongolia basks in the sunshine of no less than 57 the Chinese government with a paternal solicitude for the welfare of its subjects forbids the gods and the register to be reborn anywhere but in Tibet they fear less the birth god in Mongolia should have serious political consequences by stirring the dormant patriotism and warlike spirit of the Mongols who might rally around an ambitious native deity of royal lineage and seek to win for him at the point of the sword a temporal as well as a spiritual kingdom but besides these publicly licensed gods there are a great many little private gods or unlicensed practitioners of divinity who work miracles and bless their people in holes and corners and of late years the Chinese government has winked at the rebirth of these pettifogging deities outside of Tibet however once they are born the government keeps its eye on them as well as on the regular practitioners and if any of them misbehaves is promptly degraded banished to a distinct monastery and strictly forbidden ever to be born again in the flesh from our survey of the religious position occupied by the king and rude societies we may infer that the claim to divine supernatural powers put forward by the monarchs of great historical emperors like those of Egypt Mexico and Peru was not the simple outcome of inflated vanity or the empty expressions of a groveling adulation it was merely a survival and extension of the old savage apotheosis of living kings thus for example as children of the sun the Incas of Peru were revered like gods they could do no wrong and no one dreamed of offending against the person honor or property of the monarch or of any of the royal race hence too the Incas did not like most people look on sickness as an evil they considered it a messenger sent from their father the son to call them to come and rest with him in heaven therefore the usual words in which he announced his approaching end were these my father calls me to come and rest with him they would not oppose their father's will by offering sacrifice for recovery but openly declared that he had called them to his rest issuing from the sultry valleys upon the lofty table land the Colombian Andes the Spanish conquerors were astonished to find in contrast to the savage hordes they had left in the sweltering jungles below enjoying a fair degree of civilization practicing agriculture and living under a government which humboldt has compared to the theocracies of Tibet and Japan these were the Chibchas Muskas or Moschas divided into two kingdoms with capitals at Bogota and Tunja but united apparently in spiritual allegiance to the high pontiff of Sogamosu or Iraqa by a long and ascetic novitiate this ghostly ruler was reputed to have acquired such sanctity that the waters and the rain obeyed him and the weather depended on his will the Mexican kings at their accession as we have seen took a note that they would make the sun to shine the clouds to give rain, rivers to flow and the earth to bring forth fruits in abundance we are told that Montezuma, the last king of Mexico was worshipped by his people as a god the early Babylonian kings from the time of Sargon I till the 4th dynasty of Ur or later claimed to be gods in their lifetime the monarchs of the 4th dynasty of Ur in particular had temples built in their honor they set up their statues in various sanctuaries and commanded the people to sacrifice to them the 8th month was especially dedicated to the kings and sacrifices were offered to them at the new moon and on the 15th of each month again the partial monarchs of the Arsaceid house styled themselves brothers of the sun and moon were worshipped as deities it was esteemed sacrifice to strike even a private member of the Arsaceid family in a brawl the kings of Egypt were deified in their lifetime sacrifices were offered to them and their worship was celebrated in special temples and by special priests indeed the worship of the kings sometimes cast the spirit of the gods into the shade thus in the reign of Myrinra a high official declared that he had built many holy places in order that the spirit of the king the ever living Myrinra might be invoked more than all the gods it has never been doubted that the king claimed actual divinity he was the great god the golden horus and son of Ra he claimed authority not only over Egypt but over all lands and nations the whole world and its length and its breadth the entire compass of the great circuit of the sun the sky and what is in it the earth and all that is upon it every creature that walks upon two or upon four legs or that fly or flutter the whole world offers her productions to him whatever in fact might be asserted of the sun god was dogmatically predictable of the king of Egypt his titles were directly derived from those of the sun god in the cause of his existence we are told the king of Egypt exhausted all the possible conceptions of divinity which the Egyptians had framed for themselves a superhuman god by his birth and by his royal office he became the defied man after his death thus all that was known of the divine was summed up in him we have now completed our sketch for it is no more than a sketch of the evolution of that sacred kingship which attained its highest form its most absolute expression in the monarchies of Peru and Egypt historically the institution appears to have originated in the order of public magicians or medicine men logically it rests on a mistaken deduction from the association of ideas men mistook the order of their ideas for the order of nature and hence imagine that the control which they have or seem to have over their thoughts permitted them to exercise as corresponding control over things the men who for one reason or another because of the strength or the weakness of their natural parts were supposed to possess these magical powers in the highest degree were gradually marked off from their fellows and became a separate class was destined to exercise a most far-reaching influence on the political religious and intellectual evolution of mankind social progress as we know consists mainly in a successive differentiation of functions or in simpler language a division of labor the work which in primitive society is done by all alike and by all equally ill or nearly so is gradually distributed among different classes of workers and executed more and more perfectly and so far as the products material or immaterial of this specialized labor are shared by all the whole community benefits by the increasing specialization now magicians or medicine men appear to constitute the oldest artificial or professional class in the evolution of society for sorters are found in every savage tribe known to us and among the lowest savages such as the australian amerigenes they are the only professional class that exists as time goes on and the process of differentiation continues the order of medicine men is itself subdivided into such classes as the healers of disease, the makers of rain and so forth while the most powerful member of the order wins for himself a position as chief and gradually develops into a sacred king his old magician functions falling more and more into the background and being exchanged for priestly or even divine duties in proportion as magic is slowly ousted by religion later a partition is affected between the civil and the religious aspect of the kingship the temporal power being committed to one man and the spiritual to another meanwhile the magicians who may be repressed but cannot be extirpated by the predominance of religion still addict themselves to their old occult arts in preference to the newer ritual of sacrifice and prayer and in time the most sagacious of their number perceived a fallacy of magic a more effectual mode of manipulating the sources of nature for the good of man in short the abandoned sorcery for science I am far from affirming that the course of development has everywhere rigidly followed these lines it has doubtless varied greatly in different societies I merely mean to indicate in the broadest outline what I conceive to have been its general trend regarded from the industrial point of view the evolution has been from uniformity to diversity of function regarded from the political point of view it has been from democracy to despotism with the later history of monarchy especially with the decay of despotism and its displacement by forms of government better adapted to the higher needs of humanity we are not concerned in this inquiry our theme is the growth not the decay of a great and in its time beneficent institution and of chapter 7 recording by Mones Brew Helsingfors Finland