Prof. Smith has made out a case for the view that sacrifice among the Semites was in its origin a blood-bond between god and worshipper. The most favourable verdict that can be given for such a contribution is the Scotch one of “Not proven”. Perhaps some of the want of conviction which Prof. Smith’s book produces is due to its style and arrangement. The retention of the lecture-form has given a dogmatic tone to the presentation which is signally inappropriate in a field where facts are so scanty and theories so hypothetical. Little attention has been paid to the reader’s needs for explanation, and the book, as a whole, is decidedly hard reading.
Prof. Smith’s book suffers much by contrast with that of Mr. Frazer, whose literary skill is to be recognised throughout, both in arrangement and his clear and careful summaries at appropriate pauses of his argument. So great is his skill in this respect that one scarcely notices that his book is made up of somewhat incongruous elements. The avowed object of the book is to explain the curious rule of succession to the Arician priesthood, the priest of Aricia being succeeded by the man who managed to slay him after plucking the Golden Bough from the tree under which he lived. But besides this, Mr. Frazer has desired to make known to English readers Mannhardt’s remarkable views and facts about agricultural deities. And beyond this, it is clear that Mr. Frazer has also seized the opportunity of putting into print some of the vast materials of primitive custom and belief that he has been collecting for many years. In noticing his book we may, perhaps, separate these three threads of this cunningly woven weft.
Mr. Frazer’s explanation of the Arician rule is, briefly, that the Priest-king of Aricia had to be slain by his successor, as he represented the sacred life of the fields around him, and this would be kept at its highest point of efficiency by being passed on when the priest’s powers began to fail. He gives elaborate parallels for the existence of priestly kings or royal priests, and for their being
