Section 2. Divorce of the Spiritual from the Temporal Power.
THE BURDENSOME observances attached to the royal or priestly office
produced their natural effect. Either men refused to accept the office, which
hence tended to fall into abeyance; or accepting it, they sank under its
weight into spiritless creatures, cloistered recluses, from whose nerveless
fingers the reins of government slipped into the firmer grasp of men who
were often content to wield the reality of sovereignty without its name. In
some countries this rift in the supreme power deepened into a total and
permanent separation of the spiritual and temporal powers, the old royal
house retaining their purely religious functions, while the civil government
passed into the hands of a younger and more vigorous race. 1
To take examples. In a previous part of this work we saw that in Cambodia
it is often necessary to force the kingships of Fire and Water upon the
reluctant successors, and that in Savage Island the monarchy actually
came to an end because at last no one could be induced to accept the
dangerous distinction. In some parts of West Africa, when the king dies, a
family council is secretly held to determine his successor. He on whom the
choice falls is suddenly seized, bound, and thrown into the fetish-house,
where he is kept in durance till he consents to accept the crown.
Sometimes the heir finds means of evading the honour which it is sought to
thrust upon him; a ferocious chief has been known to go about constantly
armed, resolute to resist by force any attempt to set him on the throne. The
savage Timmes of Sierra Leone, who elect their king, reserve to themselves
the right of beating him on the eve of his coronation; and they avail
themselves of this constitutional privilege with such hearty goodwill that
sometimes the unhappy monarch does not long survive his elevation to the
throne. Hence when the leading chiefs have a spite at a man and wish to
rid themselves of him, they elect him king. Formerly, before a man was
proclaimed king of Sierra Leone, it used to be the custom to load him with
chains and thrash him. Then the fetters were knocked off, the kingly robe
was placed on him, and he received in his hands the symbol of royal
dignity, which was nothing but the axe of the executioner. It is not therefore
surprising to read that in Sierra Leone, where such customs have
prevailed, "except among the Mandingoes and Suzees, few kings are
natives of the countries they govern. So different are their ideas from ours,
that very few are solicitous of the honour, and competition is very seldom
heard of." 2
The Mikados of Japan seem early to have resorted to the expedient of
transferring the honours and burdens of supreme power to their infant
children; and the rise of the Tycoons, long the temporal sovereigns of the
country, is traced to the abdication of a certain Mikado in favour of his
three-year-old son. The sovereignty having been wrested by a usurper
from the infant prince, the cause of the Mikado was championed by
Yoritomo, a man of spirit and conduct, who overthrew the usurper and
restored to the Mikado the shadow, while he retained for himself the
substance, of power. He bequeathed to his descendants the dignity he had
won, and thus became the founder of the line of Tycoons. Down to the
latter half of the sixteenth century the Tycoons were active and efficient
rulers; but the same fate overtook them which had befallen the Mikados.
Immeshed in the same inextricable web of custom and law, they
degenerated into mere puppets, hardly stirring from their palaces and
occupied in a perpetual round of empty ceremonies, while the real
business of government was managed by the council of state. In Tonquin
the monarchy ran a similar course. Living like his predecessors in
effeminacy and sloth, the king was driven from the throne by an ambitious
adventurer named Mack, who from a fisherman had risen to be Grand
Mandarin. But the king's brother Tring put down the usurper and restored
the king, retaining, however, for himself and his descendants the dignity of
general of all the forces. Thenceforward the kings, though invested with the
title and pomp of sovereignty, ceased to govern. While they lived secluded
in their palaces, all real political power was wielded by the hereditary
generals. 3
In Mangaia, a Polynesian island, religious and civil authority were lodged
in separate hands, spiritual functions being discharged by a line of
hereditary kings, while the temporal government was entrusted from time to
time to a victorious war-chief, whose investiture, however, had to be
completed by the king. Similarly in Tonga, besides the civil king whose
right to the throne was partly hereditary and partly derived from his warlike
reputation and the number of his fighting men, there was a great divine
chief who ranked above the king and the other chiefs in virtue of his
supposed descent from one of the chief gods. Once a year the first-fruits of
the ground were offered to him at a solemn ceremony, and it was believed
that if these offerings were not made the vengeance of the gods would fall
in a signal manner on the people. Peculiar forms of speech, such as were
applied to no one else, were used in speaking of him, and everything that
he chanced to touch became sacred or tabooed. When he and the king
met, the monarch had to sit down on the ground in token of respect until his
holiness had passed by. Yet though he enjoyed the highest veneration by
reason of his divine origin, this sacred personage possessed no political
authority, and if he ventured to meddle with affairs of state it was at the risk
of receiving a rebuff from the king, to whom the real power belonged, and
who finally succeeded in ridding himself of his spiritual rival. 4
In some parts of Western Africa two kings reign side by side, a fetish or
religious king and a civil king, but the fetish king is really supreme. He
controls the weather and so forth, and can put a stop to everything. When
he lays his red staff on the ground, no one may pass that way. This division
of power between a sacred and a secular ruler is to be met with wherever
the true negro culture has been left unmolested, but where the negro form
of society has been disturbed, as in Dahomey and Ashantee, there is a
tendency to consolidate the two powers in a single king. 5
In some parts of the East Indian island of Timor we meet with a partition of
power like that which is represented by the civil king and the fetish king of
Western Africa. Some of the Timorese tribes recognise two rajahs, the
ordinary or civil rajah, who governs the people, and the fetish or taboo
rajah, who is charged with the control of everything that concerns the earth
and its products. This latter ruler has the right of declaring anything taboo;
his permission must be obtained before new land may be brought under
cultivation, and he must perform certain necessary ceremonies when the
work is being carried out. If drought or blight threatens the crops, his help is
invoked to save them. Though he ranks below the civil rajah, he exercises
a momentous influence on the course of events, for his secular colleague is
bound to consult him in all important matters. In some of the neighbouring
islands, such as Rotti and eastern Flores, a spiritual ruler of the same sort
is recognised under various native names, which all mean "lord of the
ground." Similarly in the Mekeo district of British New Guinea there is a
double chieftainship. The people are divided into two groups according to
families, and each of the groups has its chief. One of the two is the war
chief, the other is the taboo chief. The office of the latter is hereditary; his
duty is to impose a taboo on any of the crops, such as the coco-nuts and
areca nuts, whenever he thinks it desirable to prohibit their use. In his office
we may perhaps detect the beginning of a priestly dynasty, but as yet his
functions appear to be more magical than religious, being concerned with
the control of the harvests rather than with the propitiation of higher
powers. 6
