The Golden Bough: A Study in Magic and Religion (Third Edition, Vol. 09 of 12)

The Golden Bough
A Study in Magic and Religion
James George Frazer, D.C.L., LL.D., Litt.D.
Fellow of Trinity College, Cambridge
Professor of Social Anthropology in the University of Liverpool
Vol. IX. of XII.
Part VI: The Scapegoat.
New York and London
MacMillan and Co.
1913

With The Scapegoat our general discussion of the theory and practice of the Dying God is brought to a conclusion. The aspect of the subject with which we are here chiefly concerned is the use of the Dying God as a scapegoat to free his worshippers from the troubles of all sorts with which life on earth is beset. I have sought to trace this curious usage to its origin, to decompose the idea of the Divine Scapegoat into the elements out of which it appears to be compounded. If I am right, the idea resolves itself into a simple confusion between the material and the immaterial, between the real possibility of transferring a physical load to other shoulders and the supposed possibility of transferring our bodily and mental ailments to another who will bear them for us. When we survey the history of this pathetic fallacy from its crude inception in savagery to its full development in the speculative theology of civilized nations, we cannot but wonder at the singular power which the human mind possesses of transmuting the leaden dross of superstition into a glittering semblance of gold. Certainly in nothing is this alchemy of thought more conspicuous than in the process which has refined the base and foolish custom of the scapegoat into the sublime conception of a God who dies to take away the sins of the world.