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
wise long crime
If mankind had always been logical and wise, history would not be a long chronicle of folly and crime.
facts fit accepting
The slow, the never ending approach to truth consists in perpetually forming and testing hypotheses, accepting those at which at the time seem to fit the facts and rejecting the others.
development study influence
Indeed the influence of music on the development of religion is a subject which would repay a sympathetic study.
summer spring autumn
In course of time the slow advance of knowledge, which has dispelled so many cherished illusions, convinced at least the more thoughtful portion of mankind that the alterations of summer and winter, of spring and autumn, were not merely the result of their own magical rites, but that some deeper cause, some mightier power, was at work behind the shifting scenes of nature.
sacrifice men useless
Yet perhaps no sacrifice is wholly useless which proves there are men who prefer honour to life.
men predicaments creatures
Man has created gods in his own likeness and being himself mortal he has naturally supposed his creatures to be in the same sad predicament.
religious art prayer
With the advance of knowledge, therefore, prayer and sacrifice assume the leading place in religious ritual; and magic; which once ranked with them as a legitimate equal, is gradually relegated to the background and sinks to the level of a black art.
kings facts chiefs
In point of fact magicians appear to have often developed into chiefs and kings.
law littles world
The moral world is as little exempt as the physical world from the law of ceaseless change, of perpetual flux.
people may sin
The scapegoat upon whom the sins of the people are periodically laid, may also be a human being.
family mother men
The awe and dread with which the untutored savage contemplates his mother-in-law are amongst the most familiar facts of anthropology.
cities two numbers
The Athenians regularly maintained a number of degraded and useless beings at the public expense; and when any calamity, such as plague, drought, or famine, befell the city, they sacrificed two of these outcast scapegoats.
powerful struggle opportunity
For extending its sway, partly by force of arms, partly by the voluntary submission of weaker tribes, the community soon acquires wealth and slaves, both of which, by relieving some classes from the perpetual struggle for a bare subsistence, afford them an opportunity of devoting themselves to that disinterested pursuit of knowledge which is the noblest and most powerful instrument to ameliorate the lot of man.
soul tribes doctrine
This doctrine of transmigration or reincarnation of the soul is found among many tribes of savages