In so far as religion assumes the world to be directed by conscious agents who may be turned from their purpose by persuasion, it ...stands in fundamental antagonism to magic as well as to science, both of which take for granted that the course of nature is determined, not by the passions or caprice of personal beings, but by the operation of immutable laws acting mechanically. In magic, indeed, the assumption is only implicit, but in science it is explicit. It is true that magic often deals with spirits, which are personal agents of the kind assumed by religion; but whenever it does so in its proper form, it treats them in exactly in the same fashion as it treats inanimate agents, that is, it constrains or coerces instead of conciliating or propitiating them as religion would do. Thus it assumes that all personal beings, whether human or divine, are in the last resort subject to those impersonal forces which control all things, but which nevertheless can be turned to account by any one who knows how to manipulate them by the appropriate ceremonies and spells.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
The awe and dread with which the untutored savage contemplates his mother-in-law are amongst the most familiar facts of anthropolo...gy.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
O Jesse had a wife, a mourner all her life And the children they were brave,... But the dirty little coward that shot Mr. Howard He laid Jesse James in his grave.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
Sir Walter, being strangely surprised and put out of his countenance at so great a table, gives his son a damned blow over the fac...e. His son, as rude as he was, would not strike his father, but strikes over the face the gentleman that sat next to him and said "Box about: 'twill come to my father anon."LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
"English! they are barbarians; they don't believe in the great God." I told him, "Excuse me, Sir. We do believe in God, and in Jes...us Christ too." "Um," says he, "and in the Pope?" "No." "And why?" This was a puzzling question in these circumstances.... I thought I would try a method of my own, and very gravely replied, "Because we are too far off." A very new argument against the universal infallibility of the Pope.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
Hume, and other skeptical innovators, are vain men, and will gratify themselves at any expense. Truth will not afford sufficient f...ood to their vanity; so they have betaken themselves to errour. Truth, Sir, is a cow that will yield such people no more milk, and so they are gone to milk the bull.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »