[ssf] Doctor Brodie's Report

[Frazer]

  "The instances
   which in the preceding chapters
   I have drawn from the beliefs and practices
   of rude peoples all over the world,
   may suffice to prove that the savage
   fails to recognise
   those limitations to his power
   over nature which seem so obvious to us.

   In a society
   where every man
   is supposed to be endowed
   more or less with powers
   which we should call supernatural,
   it is plain
   that the distinction between gods and men
   is somewhat blurred,
   or rather has scarcely emerged.

   The conception of gods as superhuman beings
   endowed with powers
   to which man
   possesses nothing comparable in degree
   and hardly even in kind,
   has been slowly evolved
   in the course of history.

   By primitive peoples
   the supernatural agents
   are not regarded as greatly,
   if at all,
   superior to man;
    for they may be frightened
     and coerced by him
      into doing his will.

   At this stage of thought
   the world is viewed
   as a great democracy;
    all beings in it,
     whether natural or supernatural,
      are supposed to stand
       on a footing of tolerable equality.

   But with the growth
   of his knowledge
   man learns to realise
   more clearly the vastness of nature
   and his own littleness and feebleness
   in presence of it.

   The recognition of his helplessness
   does not, however,
   carry with it
   a corresponding belief
   in the impotence
   of those supernatural beings
   with which his imagination
   peoples the universe.

   On the contrary,
   it enhances his conception of their power.

   For the idea of the world
   as a system of impersonal forces
   acting in accordance
   with fixed and invariable laws
   has not yet fully dawned
   or darkened upon him.

   The germ of the idea he certainly has,
   and he acts upon it,
   not only in magic art,
   but in much of the business
   of daily life.

   But the idea remains undeveloped,
   and so far as he attempts
   to explain the world he lives in,
   he pictures it
   as the manifestation
   of conscious will and personal agency.

   If then he feels himself
   to be so frail and slight,
   how vast and powerful
   must he deem the beings
   who control
   the gigantic machinery of nature!

   Thus
   as his old sense of equality
   with the gods
   slowly vanishes,
   he resigns
   at the same time
   the hope of directing
   the course of nature
   by his own unaided resources,
   that is, by magic,
   and looks more and more
   to the gods
   as the sole repositories
   of those supernatural powers
   which he once claimed to share with them.

   With the advance of knowledge,
   therefore,
   prayer and sacrifice
   assume the leading place
   in religious ritual;
    and magic,
     which once ranked with them
      as a legitimate equal,
       is gradually relegated
        to the background
         and sinks to the level
          of a black art.

           It is regarded
           as an encroachment,
           ( at once vain and impious )
           on the domain of the gods,
           and as such
           encounters the steady opposition
           of the priests,
           whose reputation and influence
           rise or fall
           with those of their gods.


   Hence,
   when at a late period
   the distinction
   between religion and superstition
   has emerged,
    we find that sacrifice and prayer
     are the resource of the pious
      and enlightened portion of the community,
    while magic
     is the refuge
      of the superstitious and ignorant.

   But when, still later,
   the conception
   of the elemental forces
   as personal agents
   is giving way
   to the recognition of natural law;
    then magic,
     based as it implicitly is
      on the idea of
       a necessary and invariable sequence
        of cause and effect,
         ( independent of personal will )
          reappears from the obscurity and discredit
           into which it had fallen,
            and by investigating
             the causal sequences in nature,
              directly prepares the way for science.

               Alchemy leads up to chemistry ..."

--
http://en.wikisource.org/wiki/The_Golden_Bough/Incarnate_Human_Gods