There is, however, another side to the history of kingship, as the following considerations will help to make clear.
Public safety is construed by the ruder type of man not so much in terms of freedom from physical danger--unless such a danger, the onset of another tribe, for instance, is actually imminent--as in terms of freedom from spiritual, or mystic, danger.

The fear of ill-luck, in other words, is the bogy that haunts him night and day.

Hence his life is enmeshed, as Dr.Frazer puts it, in a network of taboos.

A taboo is anything that one must not do lest ill-luck befall.

And ill-luck is catching, like an infectious disease.