NATURE 



20I 



THURSDAY, JUNE 27, 1901. 



STUDIES IN COMPARA TIVE RELIGION. 

 The Golden Bough : a Study in Magic and ReHgion. By 

 J. G. Frazer, D.C.L., LL.D., Litt.D. Second Edition. 

 Revised and enlarged. Three volumes. Vol. i., pp. 

 xxviii + 467 ; vol. ii., pp. x + 471 ; vol. ill., pp. x + 490. 

 (London ; Macmillan and Co., Ltd., 1900.) Price 

 30J-. net. 



WITHIN recent years few books have exercised 

 more influence on the study of comparative re- 

 (igion than Mr. Frazer's "Golden Bough," the first 

 edition of which appeared in 1890. Working in the main 

 on the lines laid down by Prof E. B. Tylor, he applied 

 the results obtained from a prolonged study of the beliefs 

 and practices of primitive races to explain the meaning 

 and origin of a strange rule of an ancient Italian priest- 

 hood. Near the lake of Nemi in the Alban hills, at some 

 distance from the ancient town of Aricia, stood a grove 

 and sanctuary sacred to Diana, and the strange rule of 

 the priesthood attached to the grove finds no parallel in 

 classical antiquity. The priest, who bore the title of 

 " King of the Wood," watched night and day with a drawn 

 sword, always ready to defend his life against the attack of 

 a possible assailant. .A candidate for the priesthood had 

 first to break off a bough from a certain tree in the wood, 

 and, if successful, he was entitled to fight the priest in 

 single combat ; should he slay the priest he reigned in 

 his stead until he in his turn was slain. Mr. Frazer's 

 book takes its title from the tradition that the branch 

 guarded by the priest was the Golden Bough which 

 yEneas plucked before he attempted his journey to the 

 realm of the dead. Put briefly, Mr. Frazer's explanation 

 of the rule amounts to this : the King of the Wood was 

 an incarnation of the tree-spirit, or spirit of vegetation, 

 which was also inherent in the Golden Bough, or mistle- 

 toe, growing on the tree, probably an oak, in the Arician 

 grove. The only way of preserving the tree-spirit from 

 decay necessitated the priest's violent death ; the divine 

 life by this means was transferred to a suitable successor 

 — that is to say, to the stronger man who should slay 

 him. But in his character of a tree-spirit, the priest's 

 life was bound up with that of the mistletoe on the tree ; 

 hence it was necessary for the slayer first to break the 

 Golden Bough. The exposition of this theory furnished 

 the thread on which Mr. Frazer skilfully arranged a series 

 of exhaustive essays dealing with many phases of 

 primitive superstition and belief. 



In our review of the first edition of the book (see 

 Nature, September 25, 1890, vol. .xlii. pp. 513 ff) we 

 described in detail the various steps in Mr. Frazer's 

 argument, and we shall not, therefore, go over the same 

 ground again, but rather confine ourselves to noticing 

 the most important additions which Mr. Frazer has in- 

 corporated. The book has been considerably expanded, 

 for it now consists of three instead of two volumes, and a 

 rather smaller type has been used. The system of 

 arrangement and the division into four chapters has 

 been retained, but there are le.w parts of the work to 

 which considerable additions have not been made. 

 During the ten years that have elapsed since the pub- 

 NO. 1652, VOL. 64] 



lication of the first edition, most valuable researches have 

 been carried on by Messrs. Spencer and Gillen in Central 

 Australia, by Mr. Skeat in the Malay Peninsula, by Mr. 

 van der Toorn in Sumatra, and by the late Miss Kingsley 

 in West Africa, to mention but a few names among the 

 growing band of practical anthropologists ; and the store 

 of new material thus collected has furnished Mr. Frazer 

 with a host of fresh examples to illustrate his theory. 

 Great advances have also been made in our knowledge of 

 the ancient Egyptian and Babylonian religions, and Mr. 

 Frazer has availed himself of the recently published works 

 on these subjects. Such additions have considerably in- 

 creased the subsidiary and illustrative portions of the book, 

 but they only affect the main argument in so far as they 

 furnish additional proofs and instances. Two sections, 

 howe\ er, have not only been expanded, but have been re- 

 cast and rewritten, and with these we propose to deal in 

 greater detail. In the first edition a short section of a few 

 pages was devoted to a description of primitive man and 

 his conception of things supernatural ; in the second 

 edition this has been expanded into a regular treatise, in 

 which Mr. Frazer for the first time formulates his theory 

 of the relation of magic to religion. Again, in the first 

 edition the author only hinted at the bearing which his 

 researches might have upon some of the central tenets 

 of the Christian religion ; in the second edition he has 

 worked out his theory in detail. 



Speaking broadly, Mr. Frazer has come into line with 

 the majority of anthropologists and students of religion 

 in regarding magic and religion as totally distinct from 

 one another, the former representing a lower intellectual 

 stratum which has probably everywhere preceded the 

 latter. When writing his first edition, Mr. Frazer tells 

 us, he did not accurately define, even to himself, his notion 

 of religion, and he was disposed to class magic loosely 

 under it as one of its lower forms. He has now framed 

 his definition of religion, not by collecting the opinions 

 of the learned on the subject, but directly from his own 

 study of the facts. Mr. Frazer's position among con- 

 temporary writers would ensure for any view he might 

 propound the most careful study and consideration ; we 

 note with the greater pleasure, therefore, that his mature 

 opinion on the relation of magic to religion does not 

 necessitate the recasting of the theory at present in the 

 field. In his opinion the movement of man's thought 

 has, on the whole, been from magic, through religion, to 

 science. In magic man depends on his own strength 

 to meet the difficulties and dangers that beset him. 

 He believes in an established order of nature which by 

 certain actions of his own (i.e. magic) he can manipulate 

 for his own ends. When he discovers his mistake and 

 finds he cannot control nature as he believed, he ceases 

 to rely on his ow-n unaided efforts and ascribes to certain 

 great invisible beings behind the veil of nature the far- 

 reaching powers which he once arrogated to himself. 

 Thus magic is gradually superseded by religion, and 

 natural phenomena are believed to be regulated by 

 beings who are like men in kind and are swayed by 

 human passions, but are endowed by powers vastly 

 superior to his. As time goes on this explanation in its 

 turn proves unsatisfactory. The longer nature is studied 

 the succession of natural events appears less and less 

 variable and irregular. 



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