# Quote — James George Frazer, The Golden Bough

> If we analyze the principles of thought on which magic is based, they will probably be found to resolve themselves into two: first, that like produces like, or that an effect resembles its cause; and, second, that 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 former principle may be called the Law of Similarity, the latter the Law of Contact or Contagion. From the first of these principles, namely the Law of Similarity, the magician infers that he can produce any effect he desires merely by imitating it: from the second he infers that whatever he does to a material object will affect equally the person with whom the object was once in contact, whether it formed part of his body or not.

- Author: [James George Frazer](https://www.leafyquotes.com/james-george-frazer.md)
- Book: [The Golden Bough](https://www.leafyquotes.com/james-george-frazer/the-golden-bough.md)
- Source: [Wikiquote](https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/James_Frazer#The_Golden_Bough_(1890)) ([CC BY-SA 4.0](https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/))
- Quote page: https://www.leafyquotes.com/james-george-frazer/the-golden-bough/if-we-analyze

## More from this book

> The notion that we can transfer our guilt and sufferings to some other being who will bear them for us is familiar to the savage mind. It arises from a very obvious confusion between the physical and the mental, between the material and the immaterial.

[Quote page](https://www.leafyquotes.com/james-george-frazer/the-golden-bough/the-notion-that.md)

> Dwellers by the sea cannot fail to be impressed by the sight of its ceaseless ebb and flow, and are apt, on the principles of that rude philosophy of sympathy and resemblance...to trace a subtle relation, a secret harmony, between its tides and the life of man...The belief that most deaths happen at ebb tide is said to be held along the east coast of England from Northumberland to Kent.

[Quote page](https://www.leafyquotes.com/james-george-frazer/the-golden-bough/dwellers-by-the.md)

> With the advance of knowledge, therefore, prayer and sacrifice assume the leading place in religious ritual; and magic; which once ranked with them as a legitimate equal, is gradually relegated to the background and sinks to the level of a black art.

[Quote page](https://www.leafyquotes.com/james-george-frazer/the-golden-bough/with-the-advance.md)