# Quote — James George Frazer, The Golden Bough

> In the ages to come man may be able to predict, perhaps even to control, the wayward courses of the winds and the clouds, but hardly will his puny hands have strength to speed afresh our slackening planet in its orbit or rekindle the dying fire of the sun. Yet the philosopher who trembles at the idea of such distant catastrophes may console himself by reflecting that these gloomy apprehensions, like the earth and the sun themselves, are only parts of that unsubstantial world which thought has conjured up out of the void, and that the phantoms which the subtle enchantress has evoked to-day she may ban to-morrow. They too, like so much that to the common eye seems solid, may melt into air, into thin air.

- 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/in-the-ages

## 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)