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James G. Frazer Biography

James G. Frazer

Sir James George Frazer OM FRS FRSE FBA (/ˈfreɪzər/; 1 January 1854 – 7 May 1941) 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.

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James G. Frazer Quotes

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.

Consideration, Men, Selecting, Single, Two Sides, Views

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.

Class, Community, Distribution, Men, Practice, Workers

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.

Blow, Buddhism, Patterns, Religions, Roots, Unfair

Yet perhaps no sacrifice is wholly useless which proves there are men who prefer honour to life.

Men, Proves, Sacrifice, Useless, Wholly

This doctrine of transmigration or reincarnation of the soul is found among many tribes of savages

Among, Doctrine, Reincarnation, Savages, Soul, Tribes

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.

Conciliation, Course, Direct, Human Life, Men, Religion

From the earliest times man has been engaged in a search for general rules whereby to turn the order of natural phenomena to his own advantage, and in the long search he has scraped together a great hoard of such maxims, some of them golden and some of them mere dross. The true or golden rules constitute the body of applied science which we call the arts; the false are magic.

Advantage, Art, Magic, Man, Men, Order

I am a plain practical man, not one of your theorists and splitters of hairs and choppers of logic.

Choppers, Hair, Hairs, Logic, Men, Theorists

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.

Civilized, Come, Criminals, Doe, Execution, Sacrifice

The abundance, the solidity, and the splendor of the results already achieved by science are well fitted to inspire us with a cheerful confidence in the soundness of its method.

Already, Cheerful, Inspire, Science, Solidity, Splendor

But once a fool always a fool, and the greater the power in his hands the more disastrous is likely to be the use he makes of it. The heaviest calamity in English history, the breach with America, might never have occurred if George the Third had not been an honest dullard.

America, Breach, English History, Hands, Honest, Occurred

If mankind had always been logical and wise, history would not be a long chronicle of folly and crime.

Wise, Long, Crime, Mankind, History

The natives of British Columbia live largely upon the fish which abound in their seas and rivers. If the fish do not come in due season, and the Indians are hungry, A Nootka wizard will make an image of a swimming fish and put it into the water in the direction from which the fish generally appear. This ceremony, accompanied by a prayer to the fish to come, will cause them to arrive at once.

Accompanied, Cause, Due, Prayer, Sea, Swimming

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.

Continue, Distance, Magic, Principles, Things

Some of the old laws of Israel are clearly savage taboos of a familiar type thinly disguised as commands of the Deity.

Atheism, Clearly, Familiar, Israel, Law, Laws

Dwellers by the sea cannot fail to be impressed by the sight of its ceaseless ebb and flow, and are apt, on the principles of that rude philosophy of sympathy and resemblance. . . to trace a subtle relation, a secret harmony , between its tides and the life of man. . . The belief that most deaths happen at ebb tide is said to be held along the east coast of England from Northumberland to Kent.

Ceaseless, Ebb And Flow, Harmony, Men, Philosophy, Resemblance

Even the recognition of an individual whom we see every day is only possible as the result of an abstract idea of him formed by generalization from his appearances in the past.

Appearances, Formed, Ideas, Individual, Past, Recognition

The awe and dread with which the untutored savage contemplates his mother-in-law are amongst the most familiar facts of anthropology.

Family, Mother, Men, Familiar, Untutored, Amongst

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.

Powerful, Struggle, Men, Perpetual, Pursuit, Disinterested

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.

Creatures, Gods, Man, Men, Predicaments, Sad

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