We may hope that a more exact acquaintance with
savage modes of thought will in time disclose this central mystery
of primitive society, and will thereby furnish the clue, not only to
totemism, but to the origin of the marriage system.
LXVIII. The Golden Bough
THUS the view that Balder's life was in the mistletoe is entirely in
harmony with primitive modes of thought. It may indeed sound like a
contradiction that, if his life was in the mistletoe, he should
nevertheless have been killed by a blow from the plant. But when a
person's life is conceived as embodied in a particular object, with
the existence of which his own existence is inseparably bound up,
and the destruction of which involves his own, the object in
question may be regarded and spoken of indifferently as his life or
his death, as happens in the fairy tales. Hence if a man's death is
in an object, it is perfectly natural that he should be killed by a
blow from it. In the fairy tales Koshchei the Deathless is killed by
a blow from the egg or the stone in which his life or death is
secreted; the ogres burst when a certain grain of sand--doubtless
containing their life or death--is carried over their heads; the
magician dies when the stone in which his life or death is contained
is put under his pillow; and the Tartar hero is warned that he may
be killed by the golden arrow or golden sword in which his soul has
been stowed away.
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