as+,
the fleece not of a ram, but of Zeus.[24:2]

The _mana_ of the slain beast is in the hide and head and blood and fur,
and the man who wants to be in thorough contact with the divinity gets
inside the skin and wraps himself deep in it. He begins by being a man
wearing a lion's skin: he ends, as we have seen, by feeling himself to
be a lion wearing a lion's skin. And who is this man? He may on
particular occasions be only a candidate for purification or initiation.
But _par excellence_ he who has the right is the priest, the
medicine-man, the divine king. If an old suggestion of my own is right,
he is the original +theos+ or +thesos+, the incarnate medicine or spell
or magic power.[24:3] He at first, I suspect, is the only +theos+ or
'God' that his society knows. We commonly speak of ancient kings being
'deified'; we regard the process as due to an outburst of superstition
or insane flattery. And so no doubt it sometimes was, especially in
later times--when man and god were felt as two utterly distinct things.
But 'deification' is an unintelligent and misleading word. What we call
'deification' is only the survival of this undifferentiated human
+theos+, with his _mana_, his +kratos+ and +bia+, his control of the
weather, the rain and the thunder, the spring crops and the autumn
floods; his knowledge of what was lawful and what was not, and his
innate power to curse or to 'make dead'. Recent researches have shown us
in abundance the early Greek medicine-chiefs making thunder and
lightning and rain.[25:1] We have long known the king as possessor of
Dike and Themis, of justice and tribal custom; we have known his effect
on the fertility of the fields and the tribes, and the terrible results
of a king's sin or a king's sickness.[25:2]

What is the subsequent history of this medicine-chief or +theos+? He is
differentiated, as it were: the visible part of him becomes merely
human; the supposed supernatural part grows into what we should call a
God. The process is simple. Any particular medicine-man is bound to
have his failures. As Dr. Frazer gently reminds us, every single
pretension which he puts forth on every day of his life is a lie, and
liable sooner or later to be found out. Doubtless men are tender to
their own delusions. They do not at once condemn the medicine-chief as a
fraudulent institution, but they tend gradually to say that he is not
the real all-powerful +theos+. He is only his representative. The real