However,
these heavy restraints are laid in their entirety only on milkmen of
the very highest class.
2. Divorce of the Spiritual from the Temporal Power
THE BURDENSOME observances attached to the royal or priestly office
produced their natural effect. Either men refused to accept the
office, which hence tended to fall into abeyance; or accepting it,
they sank under its weight into spiritless creatures, cloistered
recluses, from whose nerveless fingers the reins of government
slipped into the firmer grasp of men who were often content to wield
the reality of sovereignty without its name. In some countries this
rift in the supreme power deepened into a total and permanent
separation of the spiritual and temporal powers, the old royal house
retaining their purely religious functions, while the civil
government passed into the hands of a younger and more vigorous
race.
To take examples. In a previous part of this work we saw that in
Cambodia it is often necessary to force the kingships of Fire and
Water upon the reluctant successors, and that in Savage Island the
monarchy actually came to an end because at last no one could be
induced to accept the dangerous distinction.
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