The growth of society was advancing and developing at the same time as religion and agriculture. The original sorcerer or medicine-man, or magic-worker, through his influence on his neighbours, was apt to acquire leadership, and to accumulate property, as, indeed, I myself remarked long ago in an essay on the 'Origin of Rank.'[4] In Mr. Frazer's theory these magic-men finally develop into both kings or chiefs and man-gods. I have observed that there is often a lay or secular king or chief, a war-leader, beside them. His position, if it becomes hereditary, is apt to end in leaving the man-god-king on one side in a partly magical, partly religious, but not secular kingship, whence it may evolve into a priesthood, carrying the royal title. The man is more or less a man-god, more or less a priest, more or less a controller of cosmic processes, but is still a titular king. Of course all sorts of varieties occur in these institutions. The general result is the divinity of kings, and their responsibility for the luck of the state, and for the weather and crops. If the luck, the weather, and the crops are bad, the public asks 'Who is to be punished for this?' Under a constitution such as our own, the public notoriously makes the Government responsible for the luck; a general election dismisses the representatives of the party in power. But, four hundred years ago, and previously, executions took the place of mere loss of office: the heads of the Boyds, of Morton, or of Gowrie fell when these nobles lost office. In the earlier society with which we are dealing, the king, as responsible for the weather and crops, is sometimes punished in bad times. The Banjars 'beat the king till the weather changes,' elsewhere the king is imprisoned, or, in a more constitutional manner, merely deposed.[5] There are traces of actually killing the unlucky and responsible monarch. In Sweden he is said, in a time of public distress, to have been not only killed, but sacrificed to Odin. This is not, however, an historical statement. II. THE ALLEGED MORTALITY OF GODS There were other magico-religious reasons for killing kings. Mr. Frazer writes:[6] 'Lacking the idea of eternal duration, primitive man naturally supposes the gods to be mortal like himself.'