Tuscul. Disput._ i. 12.

TO
MY OLD FRIEND

JOHN SUTHERLAND BLACK, LL.D.

I DEDICATE AFFECTIONATELY

A WORK

WHICH OWES MUCH TO HIS ENCOURAGEMENT

PREFACE

The following lectures were delivered on Lord Gifford's Foundation
before the University of St. Andrews in the early winters of 1911 and
1912. They are printed nearly as they were spoken, except that a few
passages, omitted for the sake of brevity in the oral delivery, have
been here restored and a few more added. Further, I have compressed the
two introductory lectures into one, striking out some passages which on
reflection I judged to be irrelevant or superfluous. The volume
incorporates twelve lectures on "The Fear and Worship of the Dead" which
I delivered in the Lent and Easter terms of 1911 at Trinity College,
Cambridge, and repeated, with large additions, in my course at St.
Andrews.

The theme here broached is a vast one, and I hope to pursue it hereafter
by describing the belief in immortality and the worship of the dead, as
these have been found among the other principal races of the world both
in ancient and modern times. Of all the many forms which natural
religion has assumed none probably has exerted so deep and far-reaching
an influence on human life as the belief in immortality and the worship
of the dead; hence an historical survey of this most momentous creed and
of the practical consequences which have been deduced from it can hardly
fail to be at once instructive and impressive, whether we regard the
record with complacency as a noble testimony to the aspiring genius of
man, who claims to outlive the sun and the stars, or whether we view it
with pity as a melancholy monument of fruitless labour and barren
ingenuity expended in prying into that great mystery of which fools
profess their knowledge and wise men confess their ignorance.

J. G. FRAZER.
Cambridge,
_9th February 1913._

CONTENTS

Dedication

Preface

Table of Contents

Lecture I.--Introduction

Natural theology, three modes of handling it, the dogmatic, the
philosophical, and the historical, pp. 1 _sq._; the historical method
followed in these lectures, 2 _sq._; questions of the truth and moral
value of religious beliefs irrelevant in an historical enquiry, 3 _sq._;
need of studying the religion of primitive man and possibility of doing
so by means of the comparative method, 5 _sq._; urgent need of
investigating the native religion of savage