ent; and if, on the other, it
is, in Dr. Frazer's words, "a magical rite intended to assure the
revival of nature in spring," then the conclusion which the reader
cannot help {201} drawing is that a sacrament, or this sacrament at
least, is in its origin, and in its nature throughout, a piece of
magic. Religion is but magic written in different characters; and for
those who can interpret them it spells the same thing. But though this
is the conclusion to which Dr. Frazer's argument leads, and to which in
the first edition of his _Golden Bough_ it clearly seemed to point; in
the preface to the second edition he formally disavows it. He
recognises that religion does not spring from magic, but is
fundamentally opposed to it. A sacrament, therefore, we may infer,
cannot be a piece of magic. The Australian sacrament, therefore, as
Dr. Frazer calls it, cannot, we should be inclined to say, be a piece
of magic. But Dr. Frazer still holds that the Australian rite or
sacrament is pure magic--religious it cannot be, for in Dr. Frazer's
view the Australians know no religion and have no gods.

Now if the rite as it occurs in Australia is pure magic, and if
religion is not a variety of magic but fundamentally different from it,
then the rite which, as it occurs everywhere else, is religious, cannot
be derived from, or a variety of, the Australian piece of magic; and
the spring and harvest customs which are found in Australia cannot be
"based on the {202} same ancient modes of thought or form part of the
same primitive heathendom" as the sacramental rites which are found
everywhere else in the world. The solemn annual eating of the totem
plant or animal in Australia must have a totally different basis from
that on which the sacrament and communion stands in every other part of
the globe: in Australia it is based on magic, elsewhere on that which
is, according to Dr. Frazer, fundamentally different and opposed to
magic, viz. religion. Before, however, we commit ourselves to this
conclusion, we may be allowed to ask, What is it that compels us thus
to sever the Australian from the other forms of the rite? The reply
would seem to be that, whereas the other forms are admittedly
religious, the Australian is "a magical rite intended to assure the
revival of nature in spring." Now, if that were really the nature of
the Australian rite, we might have to accept the conclusion to which we
hesitate to commit ourselves. But, as a matt