Note 1097 — Chapter I · THE NEGATIVE CULT AND ITS FUNCTIONS THE ASCETIC RITES

See Jevons, Introduction to the History of Religions, pp. 67-68. We say nothing of the recent, and slightly explicit, theory of Crawley (Mystic Rose, ch. iv-vii), according to which the contagiousness of taboos is due to a false interpretation of the phenomena of contagion. It is arbitrary. As Jevons very truly says in the passage to which we refer, the contagious character of sacredness is affirmed a priori, and not on a faith in badly interpreted experiences.