ABSTRACT
Although Tylor considered magic to be ‘one of the most disastrous illusions of humanity’, he did not examine it as a heresy or superstition, but rather as a sort of ‘pseudo-science’, through which ‘primitive’ man sought a cause and e ect relation between the act he performed and the event he wanted to realize. Frazer in his Golden Bough further improved upon and elaborated Tylor’s views on magic, by studying its relation to religion and science, and incorporating all three in a grand evolutionary scheme. Frazer regarded magic as an early and primitive form both of religion and of science. In his view, man initially believed that he could master the forces of nature in the same way as he had mastered certain gestures (magic). His failure made him see that the world resisted his wishes, so he then endowed it with godly powers, which until then he had reserved for himself. He produced gods and began to relate to them devotionally through prayer and sacri ce (religion). When he perceived the pitfalls of his religious relationship to the world, he turned once more to the principle of causality, this time not in its magical guise but in a form which was empirically founded (science).
