"In primitive society the rules of ceremonial purity observed by divine kings, chiefs, and priests agree in many respects with the rules observed by homicides, mourners, women in childbed, girls at puberty, hunters and fishermen, and so on. To us these various classes of persons appear to differ totally in character and condition; some of them we should call holy, others we might pronounce unclean and polluted. But the savage makes no such moral distinction between them; the conceptions of holiness and pollution are not yet differentiated in his mind. To him the common feature of all these persons is that they are dangerous and in danger, and the danger in which they stand and to which they expose others is what we should call spiritual or ghostly, and therefore imaginary. The danger, however, is not less real because it is imaginary; imagination acts upon man as really does gravitation, and may kill him as certainly as a dose of prussic acid."
Quote Details
Added by wikiquote-import-bot
Unverified quote
0 likes
Lawyers from ScotlandUniversity of Cambridge facultyPeople from GlasgowAnthropologists from ScotlandNon-fiction authors from Scotland
Original Language: English
Available Languages (1)
Sources
Chapter 21, Tabooed Things, § I : The Meaning of Taboo.
https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/James_Frazer
Revision History
No revisions have been submitted for this quote.
Categories
James Frazer
Sir James George Frazer (January 1, 1854 – May 7, 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.
76 quotes on TrueQuotesView all quotes by James Frazer →
Related Quotes
"Dwellers by the sea cannot fail to be impressed by the sight of its ceaseless ebb and flow, and are apt, on the princ…"
"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 …"
"For there are strong grounds for thinking that, in the evolution of thought, magic has preceded religion."
"When a tree comes to be viewed, no longer as the body of the tree spirit, but simply as its abode which it can quit a…"
"In point of fact magicians appear to have often developed into chiefs and kings."
"For the present we have journeyed far enough together, and it is time to part."
"With the advance of knowledge, therefore, prayer and sacrifice assume the leading place in religious ritual; and magi…"
"The slow, the never ending approach to truth consists in perpetually forming and testing hypotheses, accepting those …"
"The natives of British Columbia live largely upon the fish which abound in their seas and rivers. If the fish do not …"
"The old notion that the savage is the freest of mankind is the reverse of the truth. He is a slave, not indeed to a v…"