We have seen that in savage or barbarous
society there are often found men to whom the superstition of their
fellows ascribes a controlling influence over the general course of
nature. Such men are accordingly adored and treated as gods. Whether
these human divinities also hold temporal sway over the lives and
fortunes of their adorers, or whether their functions are purely
spiritual and supernatural, in other words, whether they are kings
as well as gods or only the latter, is a distinction which hardly
concerns us here. Their supposed divinity is the essential fact with
which we have to deal. In virtue of it they are a pledge and
guarantee to their worshippers of the continuance and orderly
succession of those physical phenomena upon which mankind depends
for subsistence. Naturally, therefore, the life and health of such a
god-man are matters of anxious concern to the people whose welfare
and even existence are bound up with his; naturally he is
constrained by them to conform to such rules as the wit of early man
has devised for averting the ills to which flesh is heir, including
the last ill, death.
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