170 DIVINE HYBRIDS. 



women, to torment their enemies, to converse with 

 their favourites and friends. On the other hand, there 

 are men who possess the power of leaving their bodies 

 in their beds and of passing into the other world to 

 obtain divine poisons which they malignantly employ. 

 The ghosts of the dead often come and sit by their old 

 fire-sides and eat what is set apart for them. Some- 

 times a departed spirit will re-enter the family, assum- 

 ing a body which resembles in its features the one he 

 previously wore. Distinguished heroes and prophets 

 are often supposed to be hybrids or mulattoes, the 

 result of a union between a woman and a god. Some- 

 times it is believed that a god has come down on earth, 

 out of love for a certain nation, to offer himself up as 

 a sacrifice, and so to quench the blood-thirst of some 

 sullen and revengeful god who has that nation in his 

 power. Sometimes a savage people believe that their 

 kings are gods, who have deigned to take upon them 

 a perishable body for a time ; and there are countries in 

 which a still more remarkable superstition prevails. 

 The royal body even is immortal. The king never 

 eats, never sleeps, and never dies. This kind of 

 monarch is visible only to his priests. When the 

 people wish to present a petition, he gives them 

 audience seated behind a curtain, from beneath which 

 he thrusts out his foot in token of assent. When he 

 dies, he is secretly buried by the priests, and a new 

 puppet is elected in his stead. 



The savage lives in a strange world, a world of 

 special providences and divine interpositions, not hap- 

 pening at long intervals and for some great end, but 

 every day and almost at every hour. A pain, a dream, 

 a sensation of any kind, a stroke of good or bad luck, 

 whatever, in short, does not proceed from man, what- 



