ently, but the continuity secured is
appearance merely and is gained only at the price of ignoring the facts.

It is not surprising, therefore, that in the later, enlarged editions of
_The Golden Bough_, Sir James Frazer has given up the view that religion
evolved out of magic, being moved thereto by the fact, as he says, that
there is 'a fundamental distinction and even opposition of principle
between magic and religion'. There is, in Frazer's present view, no
continuity between the magic which came first and the religion which
came ages later: between them is an absolute breach of continuity, a
fundamental distinction, an opposition of principle. 'The principles of
thought on which magic is based,' Frazer says, 'resolve themselves into
two: first, that like produces like; and, second, that things which
have once been in contact with each other continue to act on each
other.' These beliefs are due to the association of ideas: if two things
are more or less like one another, or if two things have gone together
in our experience of the past, the sight of the one will make us think
of the other and expect to find it. So strong is the expectation which
is thus created that in the savage it amounts to absolute belief; and
magic consists in acting on that belief, in setting like to produce
like, with the firm conviction that thus (by magic) man can obtain all
that he desires. For long ages, according to Frazer, man acted on that
belief, and only eventually did he discover that magic did not always
act. This discovery set him thinking and led him to the inference that
at work in the world there must be supernatural powers or beings, that
the course of nature and of human life is controlled by personal beings
superior to man. And that inference, according to Sir James Frazer's
definition, constitutes religion.

The fundamental distinction, then, and even opposition of principle
between magic and religion, is that in the one case man thinks that he
can gain all that he desires by means of magic, and that in the other he
turns with offerings and supplication to the personal beings superior to
man whom he imagines to control the course of nature and of human life.

Whether the distinction which Sir James Frazer draws between magic and
religion will hold depends partly on whether his definitions of magic
and religion are acceptable. In his account of magic there at least
appears to be some confusion of thought. On the one hand, h