“Man has created gods in his own likeness and being himself mortal he has naturally supposed his creatures to be in the same sad predicament.”

Source: The Golden Bough (1890), Chapter 24, The Killing of the Divine King.

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James Frazer 50
Scottish social anthropologist 1854–1941

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Context: "Behold yon miserable creature. That Point is a Being like ourselves, but confined to the non-dimensional Gulf. He is himself his own World, his own Universe; of any other than himself he can form no conception; he knows not Length, nor Breadth, nor Height, for he has had no experience of them; he has no cognizance even of the number Two; nor has he a thought of Plurality; for he is himself his One and All, being really Nothing. Yet mark his perfect self-contentment, and hence learn this lesson, that to be self-contented is to be vile and ignorant, and that to aspire is better than to be blindly and impotently happy. Now listen."He ceased; and there arose from the little buzzing creature a tiny, low, monotonous, but distinct tinkling, as from one of your Spaceland phonographs, from which I caught these words, "Infinite beatitude of existence! It is; and there is none else beside It."

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Half in irony gives man a dreadful choice.
The role is his, it says, Man makes and loads his own strange dice,
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