The Evolution of Human Government

70:6.1Ef­fec­tive state rule only came with the ar­rival of a chief with full ex­ec­u­tive au­thor­ity. Man found that ef­fec­tive gov­ern­ment could be had only by con­fer­ring power on a per­son­al­ity, not by en­dow­ing an idea.

70:6.2Ruler­ship grew out of the idea of fam­ily au­thor­ity or wealth. When a pa­tri­ar­chal kinglet be­came a real king, he was some­times called “fa­ther of his peo­ple.” Later on, kings were thought to have sprung from heroes. And still fur­ther on, ruler­ship be­came hered­i­tary, due to be­lief in the di­vine ori­gin of kings.

70:6.3Hered­i­tary king­ship avoided the an­ar­chy which had pre­vi­ously wrought such havoc be­tween the death of a king and the elec­tion of a suc­ces­sor. The fam­ily had a bi­o­logic head; the clan, a se­lected nat­u­ral leader; the tribe and later state had no nat­u­ral leader, and this was an ad­di­tional rea­son for mak­ing the chief-kings hered­i­tary. The idea of royal fam­i­lies and aris­toc­racy was also based on the mores of “name own­er­ship” in the clans.

70:6.4The suc­ces­sion of kings was even­tu­ally re­garded as super­nat­u­ral, the royal blood be­ing thought to ex­tend back to the times of the ma­te­ri­al­ized staff of Prince Cali­gas­tia. Thus kings be­came fe­tish per­son­al­i­ties and were in­or­di­nately feared, a spe­cial form of speech be­ing adopted for court us­age. Even in re­cent times it was be­lieved that the touch of kings would cure dis­ease, and some Uran­tia peo­ples still re­gard their rulers as hav­ing had a di­vine ori­gin.

70:6.5The early fe­tish king was of­ten kept in seclu­sion; he was re­garded as too sa­cred to be viewed ex­cept on feast days and holy days. Or­di­nar­ily a rep­re­sen­ta­tive was cho­sen to im­per­son­ate him, and this is the ori­gin of prime min­is­ters. The first cab­i­net of­fi­cer was a food ad­min­is­tra­tor; oth­ers shortly fol­lowed. Rulers soon ap­pointed rep­re­sen­ta­tives to be in charge of com­merce and re­li­gion; and the de­vel­op­ment of a cab­i­net was a di­rect step to­ward de­per­son­al­iza­tion of ex­ec­u­tive au­thor­ity. These as­sis­tants of the early kings be­came the ac­cepted no­bil­ity, and the king’s wife grad­u­ally rose to the dig­nity of queen as women came to be held in higher es­teem.

70:6.6Un­scrupu­lous rulers gained great power by the dis­cov­ery of poi­son. Early court magic was di­a­bol­i­cal; the king’s en­e­mies soon died. But even the most despotic tyrant was sub­ject to some re­stric­tions; he was at least re­strained by the ever-pres­ent fear of as­sas­si­na­tion. The med­i­cine men, witch doc­tors, and priests have al­ways been a pow­er­ful check on the kings. Sub­se­quently, the landown­ers, the aris­toc­racy, ex­erted a re­strain­ing in­flu­ence. And ever and anon the clans and tribes would sim­ply rise up and over­throw their despots and tyrants. De­posed rulers, when sen­tenced to death, were of­ten given the op­tion of com­mit­ting sui­cide, which gave ori­gin to the an­cient so­cial vogue of sui­cide in cer­tain cir­cum­stances.