Some of the old laws of Israel are clearly savage taboos of a familiar type thinly disguised as commands of the Deity.

This doctrine of transmigration or reincarnation of the soul is found among many tribes of savages

By religion, then, I understand a propitiation or conciliation of powers superior to man which are believed to direct and control the course of nature and of human life.

The second principle of magic: things which have once been in contact with each other continue to act on each other at a distance after the physical contact has been severed.

It is a common rule with primitive people not to waken a sleeper, because his soul is away and might not have time to get back.

The awe and dread with which the untutored savage contemplates his mother-in-law are amongst the most familiar facts of anthropology.

The moral world is as little exempt as the physical world from the law of ceaseless change, of perpetual flux.