The Belief in Immortality and the Worship of the Dead, Volume I

The Belief in Immortality and the
Worship of
by Sir James
George Frazer

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Worship of
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Title: The Belief in Immortality and the Worship of the Dead, Volume
I (of 3) The Belief Among the Aborigines of Australia, the Torres
Straits Islands, New Guinea and Melanesia
Author: Sir James George Frazer

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IN IMMORTALITY AND THE WORSHIP OF THE DEAD,
VOLUME I (OF 3)***
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0001.001

THE BELIEF IN IMMORTALITY AND THE WORSHIP OF THE
DEAD
by
J. G. FRAZER, D.C.L., LL.D., Litt.D.
Fellow of Trinity College, Cambridge Professor of Social
Anthropology in the University of Liverpool.
VOL. I
The Belief Among the Aborigines of Australia, the Torres Straits
Islands, New Guinea and Melanesia
The Gifford Lectures, St. Andrews 1911-1912

MacMillan and Co., Limited St. Martin's Street, London 1913

Itaque unum illud erat insitum priscis illis, quos cascos appellat Ennius,
esse in morte sensum neque excessu vitae sic deleri hominem, ut
funditus interiret; idque cum multis aliis rebus; tum e pontificio jure et
e caerimoniis sepulchrorum intellegi licet, quas maxumis ingeniis
praediti nec tanta cura coluissent nec violatas tam inexpiabili religione
sanxissent, nisi haereret in corum mentibus mortem non interitum esse
omnia tollentem atque delentem, sed quandam quasi migrationem
commutationemque vitae.
Cicero, Tuscul. Disput. i. 12.

TO MY OLD FRIEND
JOHN SUTHERLAND BLACK, LL.D.
I DEDICATE AFFECTIONATELY
A WORK
WHICH OWES MUCH TO HIS ENCOURAGEMENT

PREFACE
The following lectures were delivered on Lord Gifford's Foundation
before the University of St. Andrews in the early winters of 1911 and
1912. They are printed nearly as they were spoken, except that a few
passages, omitted for the sake of brevity in the oral delivery, have been
here restored and a few more added. Further, I have compressed the
two introductory lectures into one, striking out some passages which on
reflection I judged to be irrelevant or superfluous. The volume
incorporates twelve lectures on "The Fear and Worship of the Dead"
which I delivered in the Lent and Easter terms of 1911 at Trinity
College, Cambridge, and repeated, with large additions, in my course at
St. Andrews.

The theme here broached is a vast one, and I hope to pursue it hereafter
by describing the belief in immortality and the worship of the dead, as
these have been found among the other principal races of the world
both in ancient and modern times. Of all the many forms which natural
religion has assumed none probably has exerted so deep and
far-reaching an influence on human life as the belief in immortality and
the worship of the dead; hence an historical survey of this most
momentous creed and of the practical consequences which have been
deduced from it can hardly fail to be at once instructive and impressive,
whether we regard the record with complacency as a noble testimony to
the aspiring genius of man, who claims to outlive the sun and the stars,
or whether we view it with pity as a melancholy monument of fruitless
labour and barren ingenuity expended in prying into that great mystery
of which fools profess their knowledge and wise men confess their
ignorance.
J. G. FRAZER. Cambridge, 9th February 1913.

CONTENTS
Dedication
Preface
Table of Contents
Lecture I.--Introduction
Natural theology, three modes of handling it, the dogmatic, the
philosophical, and the historical, pp. 1 sq.; the historical method
followed in these lectures, 2 sq.; questions of the truth and moral value
of religious beliefs irrelevant in an historical enquiry, 3 sq.; need of
studying the religion of primitive man and possibility of doing so by
means of the comparative method, 5 sq.; urgent need of investigating
the native religion of savages before it disappears, 6 sq.; a portion of
savage religion the theme of these lectures, 7 sq.; the question of a
supernatural revelation dismissed, 8 sq.; theology and religion, their

relations, 9; the term God defined, 9 sqq.; monotheism and polytheism,
11; a natural knowledge