Evolution of Magic and Religion
Frazer accepted the idea, proposed in 1871 by E. B. Tylor (Psychic Unity of mankind ) that the process of evolution was just as active in our mental and spiritual lives as in the material products of our industries and institutions . Frazer, who was interested exclusively in the development of the mind, saw this evolution as passing through three distinct, sequential stages, which he characterized by the world-view that they allegedly embodied all his work published in “Golden Bough “
The development of the psyche . The Golden Bough, a reconstruction of the whole history of modes of human thought, orders a vast range of exotic beliefs and customs in terms of man’s search for true knowledge and effective control of his environment and his condition. Frazer posited three elements in the development of the human psyche, and in the spirit of the evolutionary thinking of his time, he saw these as characterizing three stages in human mental advance: magical, religious, and scientific thought.
Magical thought assumed that the universe is regulated by impersonal and unchanging laws (in this respect, Frazer believed, magic is like science). These laws were known to the magician through his art and applied by him in a quasi-technical way to control events. But magical beliefs and procedures (unlike scientific ones) were derived from faulty reasoning by analogy and from superficial associations: the qualities of one object were supposed to induce similar qualities in another. (One of the many examples given by Frazer is the ancient Greek custom of eating ravens’ eggs to produce black hair.) This homeopathic magic assumed a “law of sympathy,” which operates in such a way that like produces like. In addition, there was “contagious magic,” which assumed that things once in intimate contact would subsequently act upon one another: a man’s hair or nail clippings, for example, were used to work evil upon him. Although Frazer oversimplified the problems of symbolic thought that such beliefs now present to anthropologists, his distinctions continue to have some elementary taxonomic value.
Magical thought, which was gradually discredited, in Frazer’s opinion, because its failures became apparent, gave way to religious thought. In this phase superhuman beings were thought to control the world. The uniformity of nature ceased to be taken for granted, since the occurrence of natural events was assumed to depend upon the will of conscious personal agents. Man sought to gain the help of these agents by acts of supplication and propitiation. Magicians replaced by priests
Finally, recognizing more clearly the limits of his own powers of control and applying logic experimental methods, man achieved the scientific stage. Priests replaced by scientists.
Magic (Magicians-Savagery)> Religion (Priests- Barbarism) > Science (Scientists-civilization)
Criticisms :
- Frazer depicted early men and contemporary primitives as rather irrational beings, although he wouldn’t deny that they had some capabilities as modern men. While it is true that science is a modern sense is late in appearance in the history of mankind, But it doesn’t follow that non-literate people are wholly ignorant of natural causation. As Malinowski showed later on that Trobriander Islanders implied magic to increase their crops but they also carried out all other rational tasks necessary for increased production. The early men had similar capabilities of thinking also highlighted by Levi-Strauss in his “Savagery Mind” work.
- Frazer stages can’t be found in ethnographic reality and both magic and religion certainly coexisted with science . Tylor also made this point. Further, Evan-Pritchard observed that no distinction between magic and religion exist among Azandes.