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The Elementary Forms of the Religious Life

Note 1185 — Chapter III · THE POSITIVE CULT—continued II.—Imitative Rites and the Principle of Causality

Joseph Ward Swain translation

We do not wish to say that there was ever a time when religion existed without magic. Probably as religion took form, certain of its principles were extended to non-religious relations, and it was thus supplemented by a more or less developed magic. But if these two systems of ideas and practices do not correspond to distinct historical phases, they have a relation of definite derivation between them. This is all we have sought to establish.

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