For they believe, as we have seen, that the
king's life or spirit is so sympathetically bound up with the
prosperity of the whole country, that if he fell ill or grew senile
the cattle would sicken and cease to multiply, the crops would rot
in the fields, and men would perish of widespread disease. Hence, in
their opinion, the only way of averting these calamities is to put
the king to death while he is still hale and hearty, in order that
the divine spirit which he has inherited from his predecessors may
be transmitted in turn by him to his successor while it is still in
full vigour and has not yet been impaired by the weakness of disease
and old age. In this connexion the particular symptom which is
commonly said to seal the king's death-warrant is highly
significant; when he can no longer satisfy the passions of his
numerous wives, in other words, when he has ceased, whether
partially or wholly, to be able to reproduce his kind, it is time
for him to die and to make room for a more vigorous successor. Taken
along with the other reasons which are alleged for putting the king
to death, this one suggests that the fertility of men, of cattle,
and of the crops is believed to depend sympathetically on the
generative power of the king, so that the complete failure of that
power in him would involve a corresponding failure in men, animals,
and plants, and would thereby entail at no distant date the entire
extinction of all life, whether human, animal, or vegetable.
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