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

Yet it would be unfair to the generality of our kind to ascribe to their intellectual and moral weakness the gradual divergence of Buddhism and Christianity from their primitive patterns. For it should not be forgotten that by their glorification of poverty and celibacy both these religions struck straight at the root not merely of civil society but of human existence. The blow was parried by the wisdom or the folly of the vast majority of mankind, who refused to purchase a chance of saving their souls with the certainty of extinguishing the species.

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.

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

The world cannot live at the level of its great men.

Small minds cannot grasp great ideas; to their narrow comprehension, their purblind vision, nothing seems really great and important but themselves.

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.