James G. Frazer
James G. Frazer
Sir James George Frazer OM FRS FRSE FBA, was a Scottish social anthropologist influential in the early stages of the modern studies of mythology and comparative religion. He is often considered one of the founding fathers of modern anthropology...
NationalityScottish
ProfessionScientist
Date of Birth1 January 1854
men practice class
In primitive society, where uniformity of occupation is the rule, and the distribution of the community into various classes of workers has hardly begun, every man is more or less his own magician; he practices charms and incantations for his own good and the injury of his enemies.
buddhism blow roots
Yet it would be unfair to the generality of our kind to ascribe to their intellectual and moral weakness the gradual divergence of Buddhism and Christianity from their primitive patterns. For it should not be forgotten that by their glorification of poverty and celibacy both these religions struck straight at the root not merely of civil society but of human existence. The blow was parried by the wisdom or the folly of the vast majority of mankind, who refused to purchase a chance of saving their souls with the certainty of extinguishing the species.
ideas mind vision
Small minds cannot grasp great ideas; to their narrow comprehension, their purblind vision, nothing seems really great and important but themselves.
dream strong powerful
Hence the strong attraction which magic and science alike have exercised on the human mind; hence the powerful stimulus that both have given to the pursuit of knowledge. They lure the weary enquirer, the footsore seeker, on through the wilderness of disappointment in the present by their endless promises of the future: they take him up to the top of an exceeding high mountain and show him, beyond the dark clouds and rolling mists at his feet, a vision of the celestial city, far off, it may be, but radiant with unearthly splendour, bathed in the light of dreams.
people soul might
It is a common rule with primitive people not to waken a sleeper, because his soul is away and might not have time to get back.
strong thinking magic
For there are strong grounds for thinking that, in the evolution of thought, magic has preceded religion .
men world levels
The world cannot live at the level of its great men.
men views two-sides
The man of science, like the man of letters, is too apt to view mankind only in the abstract, selecting in his consideration only a single side of our complex and many-sided being.
men afterlife race
The question whether our conscious personality survives after death has been answered by almost all races of men in the affirmative.
sacrifice doe would-be
For when a nation becomes civilized, if it does not drop human sacrifices altogether, it at least selects as victims only such wretches as would be put to death at any rate. Thus the killing of a god may sometimes come to be confounded with the execution of a criminal.
men religion human-life
By religion, then, I understand a propitiation or conciliation of powers superior to man which are believed to direct and control the course of nature and of human life.
distance magic principles
The second principle of magic: things which have once been in contact with each other continue to act on each other at a distance after the physical contact has been severed.