"The author of The Golden Bough holds a unique position in our present world. There are few men of letters writing to-day of whom it can be said with greater certainty that their works will be collected. For Sir James is both a man of letters and also an historian; and, as Bury said when he edited The Decline and Fall and noted how Gibbon had endured, this is a combination which makes a man immortal. Indeed Sir James's position may, when men look back, appear even more commanding than Gibbon's. For Gibbon only made ordered and more amusing for the polished world what was known to every contemporary scholar about the ancient world. But Frazer revealed a completely strange world, and strove to interpret, not to mock, its strangeness."
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Lawyers from ScotlandUniversity of Cambridge facultyPeople from GlasgowAnthropologists from ScotlandNon-fiction authors from Scotland
Original Language: English
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Gerald Heard, quoted in R. Angus Downie, James George Frazer: The Portrait of a Scholar (1940), p. 125
https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/James_Frazer
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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.
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