Out of these human life was framed;
for mankind were left to themselves, and ordered their own ways, living,
like the universe, in one cycle after one manner, and in another cycle
after another manner.
Enough of the myth, which may show us two errors of which we were guilty in
our account of the king. The first and grand error was in choosing for our
king a god, who belongs to the other cycle, instead of a man from our own;
there was a lesser error also in our failure to define the nature of the
royal functions. The myth gave us only the image of a divine shepherd,
whereas the statesmen and kings of our own day very much resemble their
subjects in education and breeding. On retracing our steps we find that we
gave too narrow a designation to the art which was concerned with command-
for-self over living creatures, when we called it the 'feeding' of animals
in flocks. This would apply to all shepherds, with the exception of the
Statesman; but if we say 'managing' or 'tending' animals, the term would
include him as well. Having remodelled the name, we may subdivide as
before, first separating the human from the divine shepherd or manager.
Then we may subdivide the human art of governing into the government of
willing and unwilling subjects--royalty and tyranny--which are the extreme
opposites of one another, although we in our simplicity have hitherto
confounded them.
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