Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 18.djvu/757

Rh elective "is proved by the existence in later times of an office of interrex, which implies that the kingly power did not devolve naturally upon an hereditary successor." Later on it was thus with Western peoples. Up to the beginning of the tenth century "the formality of election subsisted. . . in every European kingdom; and the imperfect right of birth required a ratification by public assent." And it was once thus with ourselves. Among the early English the bretwaldship, or supreme headship over the minor kingdoms, was at first elective; and the form of election continued long traceable in our history.

The stability of the compound headship, made greater by efficient leadership in war and by establishment of hereditary succession, is further increased when there coöperates the additional factor—supernatural origin or supernatural sanction. Everywhere, up from a New Zealand king who is strictly tapu, or sacred, we may trace this influence; and occasionally, where divine descent or magical powers are not claimed, there is a claim to origin that is more than human. Asia yields an example in the Fodli dynasty, which reigned a hundred and fifty years in south Arabia—a six-fingered dynasty, regarded with awe by the people because of its continuously-inherited malformation. Europe of the Merovingian period yields an example. In pagan times the king's race had an alleged divine origin; but in Christian times, says Waitz, as they could no longer mount back to the gods, the myth still clung to the supernatural: "A sea-monster ravished the wife of Chlogio as she sat by the seashore, and from this embrace Merovech sprang." Later days show us the gradual acquisition of a sacred or semi-supernatural character where it did not originally exist. Divine assent to their supremacy was alleged by the Carlovingian kings. During the later feudal age, rare exceptions apart, kings "were not far removed from believing themselves near relatives of the masters of heaven. Kings and gods were colleagues." In the seventeenth century this belief was justified by divines. "Kings," says Bossuet, "are gods, and share in a manner the divine independence."

So that the headship of a compound group, first arising temporarily during war, becoming with frequent cooperation of the groups settled for life, by election, passing presently into the hereditary form, and becoming more stable as fast as the law of succession becomes well defined and undisputed, acquires its greatest stability only when the king becomes a deputy-god, or when, if his supposed godlike nature is not, as in primitive societies, derived from alleged divine descent, it is replaced by a divine commission guaranteed by ecclesiastical authority.

Where the political head has acquired this absoluteness which results from supposed divine nature, or divine descent, or divine commission, there is naturally no limit to his sway. In theory, and often Rh