What then is it in totemism from which, on Sir James Frazer’s view, something comes?  We might, perhaps, have expected that it was from the ‘mystic’ bond uniting man with the world which is not only around him but of which he is part, and in which he lives and moves and has his being.  To say so, however, would be to admit that in totemism there was something not only ‘mystic’ but potentially religious.  And Sir James Frazer does not follow that line of thought, so dangerous in his view.  On the contrary, he maintains that ’the aspect of the totemic system, which we have hitherto been accustomed to describe as religious, deserves rather to be called magical’.  The totem rites which Robertson Smith had interpreted as being sacramental and as being intended as a means of communion with the totem-gods Sir James Frazer regards as merely magical:  ‘totemism,’ he says, ’is merely an organized system of magic intended to secure a supply of food.’

We may remark, in passing, that if totemism is ‘mere’ magic, there is indeed (as Sir James holds) no worship in totemism, but in that case in totemism there can be no such ‘intimate and mystic ties’ between the totem and the totem-kin as Sir James at first maintained there was.  But be that as it may, according to Sir James Frazer, ’in the heart of Australia, amongst the most primitive savages known to us,’ we find totemism; and totemism on examination proves to be ’merely an organized system of magic’.  If now we start by assuming these premisses, or by granting these postulates for the sake of argument, we can, indeed, erect on them a theory of the evolution of religion.  But if we so start, we must do as Sir James Frazer did in the first edition of The Golden Bough:  we must hold that religion is but a developed form of magic. En route it may have changed considerably in appearance, but in fact and fundamentally it remains the same thing.  In all the lower forms of religion, and in most of the higher, there are practices which are by common consent and beyond doubt magical.  This indisputable fact lends colour to the view that religion was in its origin nothing but magic, and that religion is, to those who can see the facts as they are, nothing but magic to this day:  the magician was but a priest, and the priest, claiming superhuman power, is but a magician still.  Prayers were at first but spells, and even now are supposed, by simple repetition, to produce their effects.

If against this view it be objected that one of the most constant facts in the history of all religions, from the lowest to the highest, is that religion has at all times carried on war against sorcery, witchcraft, and magic, that in the lowest stages of man’s evolution witches have been ‘smelt out’ by the witch-finder, and that in the higher stages of civilization witches have been persecuted, tortured, and burnt, the reply made to the objection is that the war against witchcraft and magic is due simply