Perceiving that, in the remotest ages, crowns and kingships were worn by heroes, brigands, and knight-errants, they confound the two things,--royalty and despotism.

But royalty dates from the creation of man; it existed in the age of negative communism.
Ancient heroism (and the despotism which it engendered) commenced only with the first manifestation of the idea of justice; that is, with the reign of force.

As soon as the strongest, in the comparison of merits, was decided to be the best, the oldest had to abandon his position, and royalty became despotic.
The spontaneous, instinctive, and--so to speak--physiological origin of royalty gives it, in the beginning, a superhuman character.

The nations connected it with the gods, from whom they said the first kings descended.

This notion was the origin of the divine genealogies of royal families, the incarnations of gods, and the messianic fables.