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a people enjoying a fair degree of civilisation, practising agriculture, and living under a government which Humboldt has compared to the theocracies of Tibet and Japan. These were the Chibchas, Muyscas, or Mozcas, divided into two kingdoms, with capitals at
Bogota and Tunja, but united apparently in spiritual allegiance to the high pontiff of Sogamozo or Iraca. By a long and ascetic novi-
tiate, 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 an oath 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. 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 fourth dynasty of Ur or later, claimed to be gods in their lifetime. The
monarchs of the fourth dynasty of Ur in particular had temples built in their honour; they set up their statues in various sanctuaries
and commanded the people to sacrifice to them; the eighth month was especially dedicated to the kings, and sacrifices were offered
to them at the new moon and on the fifteenth of each month. Again, the Parthian monarchs of the Arsacid house styled themselves
brothers of the sun and moon and were worshipped as deities. It was esteemed sacrilege to strike even a private member of the
Arsacid 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 that of the gods into the shade. Thus in the reign of Merenra
a high official declared that he had built many holy places in order that the spirits of the king, the ever-living Merenra, 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 in its length and
its breadth, the east and the west,''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, all that fly or flutter, the whole world offers her productions to him.' Whatever in fact might be asserted of the Sun-god, was dogmatically predicable of the king of Egypt. His titles were directly derived from those of the Sun-god." "In the course 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 deified 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 high-
est 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 imagined that the control which they have, or seem to have, over
their thoughts, permitted them to exercise a 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, who were 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 differentia-
tion of functions, or, in simpler language, a division of labour. 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 specialised labour are shared by all, the whole community benefits by the increasing
specialisation. Now magicians or medicine-men appear to constitute the oldest artificial or professional class in the evolution of soci-
ety. For sorcerers are found in every savage tribe known to us; and among the lowest savages, such as the Australian aborigines, 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 magical 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.
Still later, a partition is effected 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
more sagacious of their number perceive the fallacy of magic and hit upon a more effectual mode of manipulating the forces of
nature for the good of man; in short, they abandon 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 broad-
est 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 enquiry: our theme is the growth, not the decay, of a great and, in its time,
beneficent institution.
VIII. Departmental Kings of Nature
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THE PRECEDING investigation has proved that the same union of sacred functions with a royal title which meets us in the King
of the Wood at Nemi, the Sacrificial King at Rome, and the magistrate called the King at Athens, occurs frequently outside the limits
of classical antiquity and is a common feature of societies at all stages from barbarism to civilisation. Further, it appears that the
royal priest is often a king, not only in name but in fact, swaying the sceptre as well as the crosier. All this confirms the traditional
view of the origin of the titular and priestly kings in the republics of ancient Greece and Italy. At least by showing that the combina-
tion of spiritual and temporal power, of which Graeco-Italian tradition preserved the memory, has actually existed in many places,
we have obviated any suspicion of improbability that might have attached to the tradition. Therefore we may now fairly ask, May not
the King of the Wood have had an origin like that which a probable tradition