660 
of magic. The nature of primitive kingship and power ; 
the paramount role played by the taboo and its 
psychology ; the importance of harvest ritual and cere- 
monies among savages—in all this it would be easy to 
show what copious results recent field-work has pro- 
duced by following the suggestions and inspirations of 
the Golden Bough. 
An irrefutable though somewhat external proof of 
this is to be found in the ever-increasing bulk of the 
book as it passes through successive editions, a score of 
new instances appearing to testify to the truth of some 
of Frazer’s fundamental propositions, where previous 
evidence was able only to supply a few. 
To mention only the other masterpiece of Sir James 
Frazer, ‘‘ Totemism and Exogamy,” we find again, after 
some thirty years, a small volume expanded into four 
large ones by the rich harvest of facts which followed the 
theoretical forecasts of the author. The ignorance of 
paternity, at first observed by Spencer and Gillen among 
one tribe only, was at once recognised by Frazer as of 
extreme importance for the early forms of totemic 
belief and organisation and kinship. Here again 
this forecast was confirmed, not only by further re- 
searches of Sir Baldwin Spencer in the north of Australia, 
but also by the discoveries of Dr. Rivers in the New 
Hebrides, and by the findings of the present reviewer 
among a number of Papuo-Melanesian tribes of Eastern 
New Guinea. There this ignorance is of extreme 
importance in shaping the matrilineal ideas and 
institutions of the natives, and is also closely connected 
with their totemism, . 
There seems to be some need of emphasising this 
empirical fecundity of the book—that is, its essentially 
scientific value. The great admiration which this 
work has inspired as a literary masterpiece and as a 
classic of comparative history, folk-lore, and archeology, 
seems to have overshadowed the merits of the book as 
an organiser and director of field-work. These merits 
are due, not only to the learning and to the constructive 
craft of Sir James, but also mainly to his genius in under- 
standing the fundamentals of human nature, especially 
of the nature of primitive man, such as we see him 
represented by the peasant and the savage. 
other work can we find the same intimate understanding 
of savage modes of thought and behaviour, the same 
unfailing capacity to interpret the savage’s customs, 
ideas, and traditions from his own point of view, the 
same prophetic intuition of what is really impor- 
tant with the native and what is secondary. It is 
because of that that no other work of anthropological 
theory has received such brilliant confirmation from 
later researches in the field, nor is any one of them 
likely to stimulate future research to the same degree 
as the Golden Bough. 
NO. 2794, VOL. 111] 
In no 
NATURE 

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[May-19, 79230 
To substantiate this last forecast I should like to 
indicate, on one more point, this suggestive quality of ) 
Frazer’s theories. I mean the very Leitmotiv of the 
book, the importance of vegetable cults for primitive 
magic and religion, the enormou§ concern of primitive 
mankind for the soil’s fertility and for its conditions, 
the sun, the rain, and the weather. Over and over 
again, in the course of the long and devious explanations 
of the ritual of Nemi, we meet with the magic of the 
skies and of the soil, with the worship of trees, with the 
belief in the influence of sex on vegetable fertility, with 
harvesting customs and superstitions, with Gods and 
Goddesses of the teeming forces of Nature. 
The reader remains under the impression that the 
interest in the vegetable world has exercised an over-_ 
whelming influence over the formation of magical and 
religious belief and ritual ; that these, like the luxuriant 
mantle of green which covers our earth, have grown out 
of the union of the skies with the earth’s fertility. 
This view, indeed, is not expressed by the author, 
who even, in the preface to this new, abridged edition, © 
repudiates an extreme form in which this opinion has 
been imputed to him, the view, namely, that all religion 
starts from tree worship. “I am so far from regarding 
the reverence for trees as of supreme importance for 
the evolution of religion, that I consider it to have been 
altogether subordinate to other factors.” This, of — 
course, is quite true, but if, instead of tree worship, we 
take the wider complex of religious phenomena, the 
cult of vegetation, or rather of vegetable fertility and 
its conditions, I for one would fully endorse the view 
that here we have one of the very taproots of religious 
growth. I perceive, moreover, that this aspect of the 
Frazerian theories opens up new lines of empirical 
research of the greatest promise and importance. 
The Golden Bough, in this regard, shows us primitive 
man as he really is, not an idle onlooker on the vast and 
varied spectacle of Nature, evolving by reflection a 
sort of speculative philosophy as to its meaning and 
origins, but an eager actor, playing his part for hisown 
benefit, trying to use all the means in his power towards _ 
the attainment of his various needs and desires : supply 
of food, shelter, and covering; satisfaction of social 
ambitions and of sexual passions ; satisfaction of some — 
eesthetic impulses and of sportive and playful necessities. 
He is interested in all things which subserve these ends 
and are thus immediately useful. Round these he 
develops not only his material technique, his imple- — 
ments, weapons, and methods of economic pursuit, but 
also his myths, incantations, rites, and ceremonies, the 
whole apparatus of primitive science and superstition. 
Among all forces of Nature useful to man, the earth’s ] 
fertility occupies quite a privileged and special position 
in the mind of the savage. Vegetable life—in its 
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