Professor Frazer dedicates these anthropological lectures to examining the notion of immortality as it is held by almost all societies. His main concern is the conception of immortality held by ‘primitive’ communities of aborigines. His lectures are mainly descriptive and cover an extraordinary amount of sources and traditions from all the continents. The ultimate aim of his study is both to cast light on the development of magical beliefs into purer forms of religion as well as to clarify the origin of the notion of immortality our own conception of it.