Rites so remarkable as those of the pair of criminals, supposed to have
played their parts in Babylon and Jerusalem, each with his female mate,
are not historically known, but are part of Mr. Frazer's theory, and
have analogies in folklore. Institutions so unparalleled as a whole,
in our knowledge of human religion, cannot have been evolved except
through a long series of grades of development. Mr. Frazer traces these
grades throughout the 1,500 pages of his book. There are, in accordance
with the method, large sections of the work devoted to illustrative
examples of matters which do not bear directly on the main stream
of the argument, and these are apt, by the very abundance of their
erudition, to distract attention from the central hypothesis. To that I
try to adhere through its numerous ramifications.
To account, then, for these hypothetical rites of the double pairs
of divinised human beings, we are to suppose that, before attaining
the earliest germs of religion, men were addicted to magic, a theory
which we have already examined in the essay 'Magic and Religion.' They
believed that by imitating the cosmic processes, they could control or
assist them. Thus the Arunta of Central Australia have magical rites,
by which they assist the development of larvæ into grubs, increase and
improve the breed and reproductive energies of kangaroos, foster the
growth of edible tubers, and bring down rain. These rites are harmless,
and involve no sacrifices, human or animal, for the Arunta, we are
to believe, have no god to accept offerings.[1] But as men advanced
from almost the lowest savagery, they gradually attained to higher
material culture, developing the hitherto unknown arts of agriculture,
developing also religion, in the despair of magic, developing gods, and
evolving social and political rank, with kings at the head of society.
In disgust with their old original magic (by which they had supposed
that they controlled cosmic forces and animal and vegetable life), they
invented gods and spirits who, as they fancied, did really exercise
cosmic control. These gods they propitiated by prayer and sacrifice.
But though it was in the despair of magic that men invented gods and
religion, yet, as men will, they continued to exercise the magic of
which they despaired. They persisted, like the godless Arunta, in
imitating the processes of nature, in the belief (which, after all,
they had not abandoned) that such imitation magically aided the efforts
of nature or of the gods of nature.
Men now evolved three species of god, from one or other of which
descends the godhead of the Persian criminal, whipped and hanged, and
the Divinity of Christ. First, there were gods 'of an order different
from and superior to man.' Second, there were men in whom these
superior gods became incarnate. Third, there were men who were merely
better magicians than their neighbours, 'sensitives' who trembled at
a touch of nature, and at whose touch nature trembled.[2] It is not,
in thought, difficult to draw a firm line between these two kinds of
man-gods, though magic and religion overlap and shade into each other.
The distinction of the two types, the man incarnating god, and the
sorcerer with no god to incarnate, is absolutely essential, and must
be kept firmly in mind. Mr. Frazer says 'In what follows I shall not
insist on it,' on this essential distinction.[3] Essential it is: for
the second sort, the magical sort, of man-god, may, by Mr. Frazer's
theory, be prior to all religion. He is only a high kind of sorcerer,
'a dealer in magic and spells.' The other kind of man-god comes in
after magic is despaired of and gods are invented. I shall insist on
the distinction.
The growth of society was advancing and developing at the same time
as religion and agriculture. The original sorcerer or medicine-man,
or magic-worker, through his influence on his neighbours, was apt
to acquire leadership, and to accumulate property, as, indeed, I
myself remarked long ago in an essay on the 'Origin of Rank.'[4] In
Mr. Frazer's theory these magic-men finally develop into both kings
or chiefs and man-gods. I have observed that there is often a lay or
secular king or chief, a war-leader, beside them. His position, if it
becomes hereditary, is apt to end in leaving the man-god-king on one
side in a partly magical, partly religious, but not secular kingship,
whence it may evolve into a priesthood, carrying the royal title. The
man is more or less a man-god, more or less a priest, more or less a
controller of cosmic processes, but is still a titular king. Of course
all sorts of varieties occur in these institutions. The general result
is the divinity of kings, and their responsibility for the luck of the
state, and for the weather and crops. If the luck, the weather, and
the crops are bad, the public asks 'Who is to be punished for this?'
Under a constitution such as our own, the public notoriously makes the
Government responsible for the luck; a general election dismisses the
representatives of the party in power. But, four hundred years ago,
and previously, executions took the place of mere loss of office: the
heads of the Boyds, of Morton, or of Gowrie fell when these nobles lost
office.
In the earlier society with which we are dealing, the king, as
responsible for the weather and crops, is sometimes punished in
bad times. The Banjars 'beat the king till the weather changes,'
elsewhere the king is imprisoned, or, in a more constitutional manner,
merely deposed.[5] There are traces of actually killing the unlucky
and responsible monarch. In Sweden he is said, in a time of public
distress, to have been not only killed, but sacrificed to Odin. This is
not, however, an historical statement.