Nevertheless in simple societies the wizard is a leader or a chief. The predominance of old men in council depends upon their occult powers rather than upon their worldly wisdom: even hereditary chiefs may have greater prestige through Magic than through royal descent.[392] I conceive that after the organisation of the primitive hunting-pack had, by various causes, been weakened or destroyed, it was through belief in Magic that some sort of leadership and subordination were re-established: perhaps in many experimental social forms, of which some specimens may be found in Australia and survivals of others in all parts of the world. Among the Massim of the Trobriand Islands, hereditary chieftainship is better developed than anywhere to the south or west; yet “at the back of every chief’s power over his people is the dread of sorcery, without which I feel sure he is little more than a cypher.”[393] Or the medicine-man may appear as the chief’s rival, as among the Indians of the upper Amazons described by Capt. Whiffen, who observes that in a contest between the medicine-man and the chief the odds are in favour of the former, since to his opponents death comes speedily (by poison). He has great influence over international policy: war is never made without his advice. Here we see the beginning of that struggle between the temporal and spiritual powers which continues with alternate victory and defeat through the whole course of history. Callaway[394] describes a Bantu chief as inducted to his office by diviners that he may be “really a chief” not merely by descent. A dangerous concession! But other Bantu chiefs are themselves wizards, and strive to collect all the medicine of the tribe in their own hands; and Chaka declared he was the only diviner in the country.[395] The rise and spread of the political power of wizards, however, has been fully illustrated by Sir J. G. Frazer in the sixth chapter of _The Magic Art_.