The divine kings being thus responsible for rain and wind, and for the growth of crops, whose close dependence upon them we shall further understand hereafter, it is clear that they are persons of the greatest importance and value to the community. Moreover, in the ideas of early men, their spirit is almost one with that of external nature, over which they exert such extraordinary powers. A subtle sympathy seems to exist between the king and the world outside. The sacred trees which embody his ancestors; the crops, which, as we shall see hereafter, equally embody them; the rain-clouds in which they dwell; the heaven they inhabit;--all these, as it were, are parts of the divine body, and therefore by implication part of the god-king’s, who is but the avatar of his deified fathers. Hence, whatever affects the king, affects the sky, the crops, the rain, the people. There is even reason to believe that the man-god, representative of the ancestral spirit and tribal god, is therefore the representative and embodiment of the tribe itself--the soul of the nation. _L’état, c’est moi_ {237}is no mere personal boast of Louis Quatorze; it is the belated survival of an old and once very powerful belief, shared in old times by kings and peoples. Whatever hurts the king, hurts the people, and hurts by implication external nature. Whatever preserves the king from danger, preserves and saves the world and the nation. Mr. Frazer has shown many strange results of these early beliefs--which he traces, however, to the supposed primitive animism, and not (as I have done) to the influence of the ghost-theory. Whichever interpretation we accept, however, his facts at least are equally valuable. He calls attention to the number of kingly taboos which are all intended to prevent the human god from endangering or imperilling his divine life, or from doing anything which might react hurtfully upon nature and the welfare of his people. The man-god is guarded by the strictest rules, and surrounded by precautions of the utmost complexity. He may not set his sacred foot on the ground, because he is a son of heaven; he may not eat or drink with his sacred mouth certain dangerous, impure, or unholy foods; he may not have his sacred hair cut, or his sacred nails pared; he must preserve intact his divine body, and every part of it--the incarnation of the community,--lest evil come of his imprudence or his folly.