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Frazer, James George, Sir, 1854-1941

"The Golden Bough"

They too, like so much that
to common eyes seems solid, may melt into air, into thin air.
Without dipping so far into the future, we may illustrate the course
which thought has hitherto run by likening it to a web woven of
three different threads--the black thread of magic, the red thread
of religion, and the white thread of science, if under science we
may include those simple truths, drawn from observation of nature,
of which men in all ages have possessed a store. Could we then
survey the web of thought from the beginning, we should probably
perceive it to be at first a chequer of black and white, a patchwork
of true and false notions, hardly tinged as yet by the red thread of
religion. But carry your eye farther along the fabric and you will
remark that, while the black and white chequer still runs through
it, there rests on the middle portion of the web, where religion has
entered most deeply into its texture, a dark crimson stain, which
shades off insensibly into a lighter tint as the white thread of
science is woven more and more into the tissue.


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