been 'smelt out' by the witch-finder, and that in the higher stages of
civilization witches have been persecuted, tortured, and burnt, the
reply made to the objection is that the war against witchcraft and magic
is due simply to the jealousy and resentment which regular practitioners
of any art, e.g., medicine, have ever displayed and do still display
towards irregular, unprofessional practitioners. This reply, however, is
now generally admitted to be one which it is impossible to accept in
the case of religion for the simple reason that it does not account for
the facts. The plain fact which wrecks this attempted explanation is
that magic is punished and witches are burnt not because witch-finders
or priests are jealous of them, but because the community dreads them
and feels their very existence to be a danger. It is the community which
feels the world of difference there is between magic and religion.

The attraction of the view that religion is but magic under another
name, that prayers are to the end but spells, that 'priest' is but
'magician' written differently, is that it is a simplicist theory. It
simplifies things. It exhibits religion as evolved out of magic and as
containing at the end nothing more or other than was present at the
beginning in magic. It is but a variant of the pre-formation theory of
the evolution of religion. In fine, the notion that in magic we have
religion pre-formed is the counterpart of the idea that we can find
religion pre-formed in totemism. In both cases we secure continuity in
the process of evolution apparently, but the continuity secured is
appearance merely and is gained only at the price of ignoring the facts.

It is not surprising, therefore, that in the later, enlarged editions of
_The Golden Bough_, Sir James Frazer has given up the view that religion
evolved out of magic, being moved thereto by the fact, as he says, that
there is 'a fundamental distinction and even opposition of principle