Next we arrive at an absolutely necessary hypothesis, which I find it
difficult to accept. 'In some places it appears that the people could
not trust the king to remain in full mental and bodily vigour for more
than a year; hence at the end of a year's reign he was put to death,
and a new king appointed to reign in his turn a year, and suffer death
at the end of it.... When the time drew near for the king to be put
to death (in Babylon this appears to have been at the end of a single
year's reign), he abdicated for a few days, during which a temporary
king reigned and suffered in his stead.'[48]
Later we read of 'the time when the real king used to redeem his own
life by deputing his son to reign for a short time and die in his
stead.'[49]
The hypothesis is, then, that at Babylon the king used to be sacrificed
once a year. Later he appointed a son, or some other member of the
royal family, or some one else, to die for him, while, last of all, a
criminal was chosen.
Is not this a startling hypothesis? Yet on it the whole argument
about the Divinity of Christ depends. Mr. Frazer overestimates human
ambition. We wonder that Moray, Lennox, and Morton pined to be Regents
of Scotland. Yet at least they had a faint chance of escaping death
within the year. But the kings of Babylon had no chance: they were
sacrificed annually. Mr. Frazer asks us to suppose that any men of
royal race, anywhere, men free and noble, not captives, not condemned
criminals, would accept a crown, followed, in 365 days, by a death of
fire! A child knows that no men have ever acted in this way. Even if
they were so incredibly unlike all other human beings as to choose a
year's royalty, followed by burning to death, how was the succession
regulated? Even the primitive Arunta, naked savages in Central
Australia, have a kind of magistrate, merely a convener, called the
Alatunja, 'the head man of a local totemic group.' He is an hereditary
official, inheriting in the male line.[50] Does any one believe that a
poor black man would accept the Alatunjaship if he knew he was to be
roasted, and so die, at the end of a year? Now the Babylonians (or
rather the Persians) were infinitely more civilised than the Arunta.
Their kings were hereditary kings. How, then, would Mr. Frazer's system
work? The king is sacrificed; his eldest son succeeds; is sacrificed
next year; they soon work through the royal family. Thus, in Scotland,
Darnley is sacrificed (1567). Next year you sacrifice the baby, James
VI. Next year you begin on the Hamiltons. Chatelherault lasts a year:
then Arran, then Lord John, then Lord Claude. Beginning in 1567 you
work out that result in 1572. Then you start on the Lennox Stewarts.
You have Lennox offered up in 1573, his son Charles in 1574, and by
the end of the century you have exhausted the female and illegitimate
branches of the royal family. You can only sacrifice males, and these
must be adults, for each sacrificed man, by Mr. Frazer's theory, has to
consort before his death with a lady, probably 'a sacred harlot.'[51]
Mr. Frazer perhaps will say 'these Babylonian kings were polygamous,
and had large families of sons.' But think of the situation! When the
king comes to providing a son as a substitute, to reign for a few days
and be sacrificed in his stead, he may be a young king, just married.
Even if he could count on a male baby, or a score of them, annually,
they would be of no use: they could not consort with the sacred harlot,
which is indispensable.[52] So, after the young king is sacrificed,
we are in a quandary. We must overlook primogeniture, and begin
sacrificing the king's brothers; they will not last long; we fall back
on the cousins. Soon we need a new dynasty. Now no government could be
carried on in the circumstances imagined by Mr. Frazer. The country
would not stand it. No individual king would ever accept the crown.
Human beings never had such a preposterous institution. But, if they
had not, Mr. Frazer's whole theory of the Crucifixion is baseless, for
it all hangs on the yearly sacrifice of the divine king in Babylon.
Where there is no historical evidence of annual regicide, we must
appeal to our general knowledge of human nature. The reply is that
the thing is impossible. Moreover, that sacrifice is wholly without
evidence.
The only reason for believing that the kings of the great Babylonian
Empire, or even the kings of Babylon when it may have been a small
autonomous town, were sacrificed once a year, is the faint testimony
existing to show that once a year at a Persian feast a mock-king was
hanged. To account for that _hanging_ Mr. Frazer has to invent the
hypothesis that real kings, in olden times, were annually _sacrificed_.
The only corroboration of actual fact is in the savage instances of
king killing, _not_ annual, which we have explained as, in most cases,
a rude form of superannuation; in no case as certainly the deliverance
of a recognised god incarnate in the king There are also instances
in folklore of yearly mock executions of a king of the May, or the
like, and a dubious case in Lower Mœsia. These do not prove annual
sacrifices of actual kings in the past, if they prove any sacrifice
at all. In these circumstances, I venture to hold, science requires
us, if we must explain the alleged yearly hanging of a mock-king at
Babylon, to look for a theory, an hypothesis, which does not contradict
all that we know of human nature. For all of human nature that we
know is contradicted by the fancy that the kings of Babylon were
once sacrificed annually. I shall later produce a theory which, at
least, does not run counter to the very nature of man, and so far is
legitimate and scientific.
Mr. Frazer says that his theory 'will hardly appear extravagant or
improbable' when we remember that, in Ngoio, the chief who puts on the
cap of royalty one day is, by the rule, killed the next day.[53] So
nobody puts on the cap. And nobody would have put on the Babylonian
crown under the condition of being roasted to death at the end of the
year.
If the theory were correct, the king incarnating a god would be slain
yearly. But he would not like that, and would procure a substitute,
who would yearly be slain (_a_) as a proxy of the king, or (_b_) as
the god of vegetation, incarnate in the king, or as both. Yet, I
repeat, not a single instance has been given of a king who is slain for
magico-religious reasons, and who is also the incarnation of any god
whatever. The slain kings in the instances produced were, as a rule,
superannuated because they were old, or got rid of because they were
unpopular, or because a clerical cabal desired their destruction, or
for some other reason: at most, and rarely, because they were outworn
'sensitives.' We know scores of cases of god-possessed men, but none
are killed because they are god-possessed.
The argument has thus made no approach to Mr. Frazer's theory of the
origin of the belief in the divine character of Christ and of his
doctrine.
At this point Mr. Frazer's theory turns from god-mankings slain to
preserve their _mana_, or cosmic _rapport_, to persons who suffer for
these kings. Not one single historical proof that there ever was such
a custom is adduced. All is a matter of inference and conjecture.
There is, we saw, a region Ngoio, in Congo, where the throne is
perpetually vacant, because whoever occupied it was killed the day
after coronation day--no substitute is suggested, and no one sits in
the Siege Perilous.[54] There are cases of 'temporary kings,' as King
February, for three days in Cambodia--the temporary king being of a
cadet branch of the royal family. He is not killed. In Siam a temporary
king for three days conducted a _quête,_ or jocular pillaging, like our
Robin Hood in Scotland. This is an example of the _Period of Licence_
when law is in abeyance, and the importance of this period we shall
later prove. The mock-king also ploughed nine furrows, and stood later
with his right foot on his left knee. He did the same thing on a later
occasion, and omens were drawn from his steadiness; he was supposed,
if firm, to conquer evil spirits, and had another _quête_. In Upper
Egypt a king of unreason for three days holds mock tribunals, then is
condemned, and his 'shell' is burned; probably, as I shall show, to
mean that 'the gambol has been shown' and is over.[55] There are two
or three similar cases, and Mr. Frazer suggests that the mock-king is
invested with the 'divine or magical functions' of the real king. But
the local Pacha, on the Nile, has no such functions, and his august
representative wears 'a tall fool's cap.' None are put to death: the
Upper Egyptian case alone and dimly, if at all, suggests the proxy
supposed (as in Ibn Batuta's tale interpreted by Mr. Frazer) to die for
the king.
Next we approach instances of sons of kings who are sacrificed, but
these are cases of sin offerings (as when the King of Moab sacrificed
his son on the wall), and, even if the lads were substitutes for
their royal fathers, there is no presumption raised that the fathers
were habitually killed year by year, to keep their cosmic _rapport_
unimpaired, or to release the god incarnate within them, a custom of
which I find no example at all.
One instance of what he conjectures to be a proxy sacrifice for a king
Mr. Frazer finds in a festival at Babylon called the Sacæa.[56] To this
we return in due order. We must first examine cases of similar customs,
or inferred customs, in Greece and Borne.
Meanwhile we hope to have shown that Mr. Frazer's theory of the origin
of the belief in the Divinity of Christ already rests on three scarcely
legitimate hypotheses. First, there is the hypothesis that kings were
slain to release a known deity, incarnate in them, and to provide a
better human vehicle. Of this rite no instances were given. Next, there
is the hypothesis that the King of Babylon was annually sacrificed, and
succeeded by a new king, who was sacrificed at the end of the year.
Historical evidence does not exist, and the supposed custom is beyond
belief. Thirdly, we are to believe in proxies or substitutes who die
annually for the king. Of this practice no actual example is adduced.
Here, perhaps, the reader may be invited to ask himself whether he
believes that there ever was, anywhere, a custom of yearly killing the
king, the head of the state. If he cannot believe this, in the entire
lack of proof, he may admire the faith which can move this mountain
in the interests of Mr. Frazer's conclusions. For my part I may say
that I was so hypnotised, after first reading through the long roll of
Mr. Frazer's 'sad stories of the deaths of kings,' that I could only
murmur 'But there is no historical evidence for the yearly Babylonian,
or rather Persian, regicides.' Then I woke out of the hypnotic trance;
I shook off the drowsy spell of suggestion, and exclaimed 'The king is
killed _annually_!' Next, I asked myself whether mortal men would take
the crown, and how the arrangement would work, and, alas! it was my
belief in Mr. Frazer's theory that was shattered.
But the 'general reader,' perusing an argument of 1,400 pages, may
fall under the hypnotic spell of numerous 'cases,' though none are to
the point, and may accept an hypothesis, however violently opposed
to his knowledge of human nature. To that test we are, in a case
like this, compelled to appeal, however little we may value 'common
sense' in other fields of speculation. Ours is the field of normal
human nature, motive, and action, in which every man may be a judge.
I cannot but think that the author of the theory would have been
stopped by considerations so obvious and obstacles so insuperable.
But first he had the remote analogy of the Aztec war-prisoner who
personated a god, and to a god was sacrificed. That example is of no
real service: the man was a captive and could not help himself; he was
not King of Anahuac. Moreover, he was sacrificed: he was not put to a
death of special shame. Again, there was the Saturnian victim, if we
believe the legend about to be narrated. But he too was sacrificed:
he was not stripped, scourged, and hanged. Our author, however, was
fascinated by the Cross at the end of the long vista of the argument.
In place, therefore, of seeking, or at least in place of finding, a
simple explanation of the Persian custom, or leaving it unexplained,
he accepted the impossibility of the annual regicide at Babylon, and
was launched into a new wilderness of conjectures and inferences to
explain the absence, in the Persian case, of sacrifice and religion,
the presence of a merrymaking and a hanging.