“The true or golden rules constitute the body of applied science which we call the arts; the false are magic.”

—  James Frazer , book The Golden Bough

Source: The Golden Bough (1890), Chapter 4, Magic and Religion.
Context: From the earliest times man has been engaged in a search for general rules whereby to turn the order of natural phenomena to his own advantage, and in the long search he has scraped together a great hoard of such maxims, some of them golden and some of them mere dross. The true or golden rules constitute the body of applied science which we call the arts; the false are magic.

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James Frazer 50
Scottish social anthropologist 1854–1941

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