This doctrine of transmigration or reincarnation of the soul is found among many tribes of savages.

The second principle of magic: things which have once been in contact with each other continue to act on each other at a distance after the physical contact has been severed.

By religion, then, I understand a propitiation or conciliation of powers superior to man which are believed to direct and control the course of nature and of human life.

For when a nation becomes civilized, if it does not drop human sacrifices altogether, it at least selects as victims only such wretches as would be put to death at any rate. Thus the killing of a god may sometimes come to be confounded with the execution of a criminal.

The question whether our conscious personality survives after death has been answered by almost all races of men in the affirmative.

The man of science, like the man of letters, is too apt to view mankind only in the abstract, selecting in his consideration only a single side of our complex and many-sided being.

The world cannot live at the level of its great men.

For there are strong grounds for thinking that, in the evolution of thought, magic has preceded religion .

It is a common rule with primitive people not to waken a sleeper, because his soul is away and might not have time to get back.

Small minds cannot grasp great ideas; to their narrow comprehension, their purblind vision, nothing seems really great and important but themselves.