The Belief in Immortality and the Worship of the Dead

Of all the many forms which natural religion has assumed none probably has exerted so deep and far-reaching an influence on human life as the belief in immortality and the worship of the dead. This first volume of Frazer's book comprises the Gifford Lectures he gave at the University of St. Andrews in the years 1911 and 1912, and deals with the belief in immortality and the worship of the dead, as these are found among the aborigines of Australia, the Torres Straits Islands, New Guinea, and Melanesia. In the second volume, the author describes the corresponding belief and worship among the Polynesians, a people related to their neighbors the Melanesians by language, if not by blood.
Contents:
Introduction
The Savage Conception of Death
Myths of the Origin of Death
The Belief in Immortality among the Aborigines of Central Australia
The Belief in Immortality among the other Aborigines of Australia
The Belief in Immortality among the Natives of the Torres Straits Islands
The Belief in Immortality among the Natives of British New Guinea
The Belief in Immortality among the Natives of German New Guinea
The Belief in Immortality among the Natives of German and Dutch New Guinea
The Belief in Immortality among the Natives of Southern Melanesia (New Caledonia)
The Belief in Immortality among the Natives of Central Melanesia
The Belief in Immortality among the Natives of Northern and Eastern Melanesia
The Belief in Immortality among the Natives of Eastern Melanesia (Fiji)
The Belief in Immortality among the Maoris
The Belief in Immortality among the Tongans
The Belief in Immortality among the Samoans
The Belief in Immortality among the Hervey Islanders
The Belief in Immortality among the Society Islanders
The Belief in Immortality among the Marquesans
The Belief in Immortality among the Hawaiians

Auteur
James George Frazer (1854-1941) was a Scottish social anthropologist and folklorist influential in the early stages of the modern studies of mythology and comparative religion. His most famous work, The Golden Bough (1890), documents and details the similarities among magical and religious beliefs around the globe. Frazer posited that human belief progressed through three stages: primitive magic, replaced by religion, in turn replaced by science.