These rules, as an examination of them has
shown, are nothing but the maxims with which, on the primitive view,
every man of common prudence must comply if he would live long in
the land. But while in the case of ordinary men the observance of
the rules is left to the choice of the individual, in the case of
the god-man it is enforced under penalty of dismissal from his high
station, or even of death. For his worshippers have far too great a
stake in his life to allow him to play fast and loose with it.
Therefore all the quaint superstitions, the old-world maxims, the
venerable saws which the ingenuity of savage philosophers elaborated
long ago, and which old women at chimney corners still impart as
treasures of great price to their descendants gathered round the
cottage fire on winter evenings--all these antique fancies
clustered, all these cobwebs of the brain were spun about the path
of the old king, the human god, who, immeshed in them like a fly in
the toils of a spider, could hardly stir a limb for the threads of
custom, "light as air but strong as links of iron," that crossing
and recrossing each other in an endless maze bound him fast within a
network of observances from which death or deposition alone could
release him.
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