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A History of Magic and Experimental Science, Volume 1 (of 2)

Note 8 — Chapter I · INTRODUCTION

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Golden Bough, 1894, I, 420. W. I. Thomas, “The Relation of the Medicine-Man to the Origin of the Professional Occupations” (reprinted in his Source Book for Social Origins, 4th edition, pp. 281-303), in which he disputes Herbert Spencer’s “thesis that the medicine-man is the source and origin of the learned and artistic occupations,” does not really conflict with Frazer’s statement, since for Thomas the medicine-man is a priest rather than a magician. Thomas remarks later in the same book (p. 437), “Furthermore, the whole attempt of the savage to control the outside world, so far as it contained a theory or a doctrine, was based on magic.”

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