For if the
man-god dies what we call a natural death, it means, according to
the savage, that his soul has either voluntarily departed from his
body and refuses to return, or more commonly that it has been
extracted, or at least detained in its wanderings, by a demon or
sorcerer. In any of these cases the soul of the man-god is lost to
his worshippers, and with it their prosperity is gone and their very
existence endangered. Even if they could arrange to catch the soul
of the dying god as it left his lips or his nostrils and so transfer
it to a successor, this would not effect their purpose; for, dying
of disease, his soul would necessarily leave his body in the last
stage of weakness and exhaustion, and so enfeebled it would continue
to drag out a languid, inert existence in any body to which it might
be transferred. Whereas by slaying him his worshippers could, in the
first place, make sure of catching his soul as it escaped and
transferring it to a suitable successor; and, in the second place,
by putting him to death before his natural force was abated, they
would secure that the world should not fall into decay with the
decay of the man-god.
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