


: 
: 
re May 19, 1923] 
4 
oa | 
‘ 
- 
NATURE 
e659 

the ordinary manner. It would be as presumptuous 
to assess the value of ‘a universally acknowledged 
masterpiece of literary art and a classic of scholarship 
as it would be unnecessary to indicate the scope of a 
work known to every cultured man, a work which has 
exercised paramount influence over several branches 
of learning and has created new lines of scientific 
research. But though it is superfluous to praise the 
book or to explain it, the appearance of the abridged 
edition seems an opportune occasion for us anthropo- 
logists to undertake a little examination of conscience 
_ with regard to this classic. We all admit that we owe 
an immense debt to the author of the Golden Bough 
and to his work, but have we acquitted ourselves well 
of an obligation, have we given him his due in return ? 
By this I mean, have we taken all that has been offered 
to us and made the most of it? Have we followed his 
lead to the end of the road, have we searched every- 
where where the light of the Golden Bough has shone ? 
For this is the difference between the economic 
and the spiritual order of things: that in the former 
it is good to receive material benefits, and, speaking 
without cant, painful to give them; while in matters 
_ of the mind it is a joy to bestow but a burden to take, 
since this has to be done in an unselfish submission 
_ of the spirit, and requires obedience, discipline, and 
patience. 
Surveying the immense influence exercised hy this 
and Frazer’s other works on contemporary humanistic 
literature, it might appear as if this quarry of inspira- 
tion and fact, however rich, must have by now become 
nearly exhausted. Literally half the subjects of modern 
anthropological argument and controversy have been 
submitted by Frazer for discussion: totemism, 
problems of the taboo, origins of kinship and chieftain- 
ship, primitive conceptions of the soul and spiritual 
life—the list could be drawn out indefinitely by going 
into more detail. In Great Britain, in France, in 
Germany and the United States, whole schools of 
anthropological science have flourished or grown 
rankly, respectively, on the ground broken and first 
cultivated by Frazer. It is enough to mention the 
names of Crawley, Marett, Durkheim, Hubert and 
Mauss, Van Gennep, Wundt, Freud and his school (in 
their anthropological studies), who in their work, some 
of it of the very first rank, afe more or less dependent 
on Frazer and his initiative. Yet it would be easy to 
show that even this immense and most valuable 
Frazerian literature has left enormous areas within 
the enclosure of the Golden Bough ready for further 
cultivation. 
It is not from the side of theory, however, that I 
wish to approach this great work, but, as a field-worker, 
from the point of view of actual research among 
NO. 2794, VOL. 111] 
savage races. The test of a scientific achievement lies 
in its power of anticipation and of prophecy: a sound 
theory must be the forerunner of empirical discoveries, 
it must allow us to foreshadow new facts not yet 
ascertained by observation. It is not when a man 
talks to us about things we have seen already, but when, 
from his study, he can foretell unsuspected events, can 
direct us towards unforseen treasures of fact, and guide 
our researches in unexplored countries, it is only then 
that the value of his theories is put beyond doubt or 
cavil. This is well known in natural science, where the 
value of a theory is always gauged by its lead in the 
laboratory or in the field. In humanistic and historical 
science the honour of a prophetic voice has been 
reserved to its youngest off-shoot, anthropology. For 
though “ history never repeats itself”? when we watch 
it over a relatively brief span, interested in its detailed 
course of accidental happenings, yet the evolution of 
culture, taken as a whole, is submitted to definite rules 
and regularities, and human nature, broadly viewed, 
asit breaks through the media of various civilisations 
and stages of development, remains the same, and, being 
subject to laws, is thus capable of prediction. 
The Golden Bough has had a triumphant career in 
this respect. One after the other the main supports of 
the lofty edifice, which at first might have appeared 
entirely carved out of the author’s creative imagination, 
were traced to the solid bedrock of fact by subsequent 
discoveries among the backward races. The most 
fantastic feature in the ritual of Aricia, the succession 
by murder, led the author to the theory of the killing 
of divine kings, carried out by certain savages, in order 
to prevent their end by disease or senile decay. This 
theory, when first emitted, had only partial and meagre 
evidence in recorded fact. But the brilliant discoveries 
of Dr. and Mrs. Seligman about the divine kings of 
the Shilluk, about their violent end, regularly inflicted _ 
after a term of reigning, and about the spiritual suc-’ 
cession by the transmission of the soul, confirmed Sir 
James Frazer’s theoretical assumptions in every detail. 
Following this, field-work has brought, and is still 
bringing, fresh evidence, enough to prove that Frazer’s 
researches have revealed an institution of the greatest 
importance among backward races. 
Sir James Frazer was the first to express the view that 
before humanity had begun to worship spiritual beings 
there was a stage of belief and ritual, essentially magical, 
in which man assumed a fixed order of Nature, subject 
to the power of specific incantations and rites. Modern 
research among savages, in the measure as it penetrates 
more deeply into the comprehension of native ideas, 
tends to establish the correctness, not only of the 
general assumption of the magical stage in evolution, but 
also of Sir James’s detailed theories of the psychology 
