That the Mexican rite as described in our first group is sacramental, is clear. Of the rites which form our second group of instances, Dr. Frazer says that the corn-spirit, or god, "is killed in the person of his representative and eaten sacramentally," and that "the new corn is itself eaten sacramentally; that is, as the body of the corn-spirit" (p. 318). Of the North European rites, again, he says, "the animal is slain and its flesh and blood are partaken of by the harvesters"--"these customs bring out clearly the sacramental character of the harvest supper"--"as a substitute for the real flesh of the divine being, bread or dumplings are made in his image and eaten sacramentally." Finally, even when speaking of the Australians as men who have no gods to worship, and with whom the rite is pure and unadulterated magic, he yet describes the rite as a sacrament. Now if, on the one hand, from its beginning amongst the Australians to the form which it finally took amongst the Mexicans the rite is, as Dr. Frazer systematically calls it, a sacrament; and if, on the other, it is, in Dr. Frazer's words, "a magical rite intended to assure the revival of nature in spring," then the conclusion which the reader cannot help {201} drawing is that a sacrament, or this sacrament at least, is in its origin, and in its nature throughout, a piece of magic. Religion is but magic written in different characters; and for those who can interpret them it spells the same thing. But though this is the conclusion to which Dr. Frazer's argument leads, and to which in the first edition of his _Golden Bough_ it clearly seemed to point; in the preface to the second edition he formally disavows it. He recognises that religion does not spring from magic, but is fundamentally opposed to it. A sacrament, therefore, we may infer, cannot be a piece of magic. The Australian sacrament, therefore, as Dr. Frazer calls it, cannot, we should be inclined to say, be a piece of magic. But Dr. Frazer still holds that the Australian rite or sacrament is pure magic--religious it cannot be, for in Dr. Frazer's view the Australians know no religion and have no gods.