Perhaps Frazer’s own theories about the origin and development of religion hardly constitute a present-day challenge of any sort. There is ample evidence that he grew increasingly dissatisfied with them himself, and few students of the subject today would care to subscribe to them as adequate to account for all the facts—even for all the facts which he himself collected, let alone the enormous quantity which have been gathered since his time. It is not, however, of Frazer’s own theories in particular, or even of his own findings, that I propose to speak; I take his name rather as a symbol, for it is that of the leading representative of the widespread dissemination of the comparative study of religion. Comparative religion was studied before Frazer, and it has been studied since. Yet it was Frazer’s great work, more than any other, which aroused the interest of non-specialists. Jane Harrison recalls how, ‘Among my own contemporaries J. G. Frazer was soon to light the dark world of savage superstition with a gleam from The Golden Bough. The happy title of that great book ... made it arrest the attention of scholars.... Tylor had written and spoken; Robertson Smith had seen the Star in the East; in vain; we classical deaf-adders stopped our ears and closed our eyes; but at the mere sound of the magical words “Golden Bough’’ the scales fell—we heard and understood.’ But it was not only to classical scholars that Frazer’s work opened new worlds; and soon it was to become common knowledge that the beliefs and practices of Christian Europe were by no means so peculiar and unique as had been commonly assumed. A nodding acquaintance, at least, with other people’s religions became part of the equipment of any educated man.