Elsie Clews Parsons

“ For then, in course of time, came the movement historians call nationalism, a movement which subordinated church to state, the faithful to the patriotic, a movement which made of God at most a national hero. ”

“ It is true that in time of war, or under threat of ruin by fire, earthquake, glacier or volcano, we could remove a portion of our works of art, our relics of state, and our rarest collections to some safer quarter of the country. ”

“ If a great people does not believe that the truth is only to be found in itself alone (in itself alone and exclusively) ; if it does not believe that it alone is fit and destined to raise up and save all the rest by its truth, it would at once sink into being—not a great people. ”

“ Sympathetic magic is due to a sense of participation. Things that have been in contact affect each other both during and after the contact, and like affects like, these are the two leading principles of sympathetic magic. It is an analogous principle of association, an analogous sense of participation which prompts the family vendetta, the tribal feud, the wars of hamlets or hordes and, may I add, the wars of nations or races. The individual's sense of participation in his group, in his family, tribe or nation, is disturbed when any other fraction of the group is disturbed. ”

“ Our modes of recording history and noteworthy events seem to be at the height of perfection, and the preservation of photographs, moving-picture films, as well as the voices of our leading national figures is to add to the future an untold wealth of interest in us and what we have done, together with a better under- standing. ”

“ The object of every national movement in every people and at every period of its existence is only the seeking for its god, who must be its own god, and the faith in Him as the only true god. God is the synthetic personality of the whole people, taken from its beginning to its end. ”

“ Let us determine that what we do leave shall be as well pre- served as the remains of the trilobites of fifty million years ago, and that our mode of preservation shall contain less of accident and more of thoughtful design. Looking forward, can we see this as a portion of our duty to the future? If we can, let us set about the fulfilment of our duty, as becomes true Americans. ”

“ At the close of the fourth day the would-be mother receives from the Chakwena the two ears of corn she has carried in the hunt and gives in turn to the Chakwena two other ears—four ears of corn figuring in that give and take.
There are other ways to promote conception, but in this connection I need refer only to the conception of twins or rather to the means taken to inhibit it. The woman who eats of the wafer bread her husband brings back with him from his deer hunt will bear twins—since the deer have twins—unless the bread is passed around the rung of her house ladder four times. ”

“ Not only are some of the methods of war magical, not only are war leaders the magicians par excellence of their people, the heads of the church; but the very motives and impulses of war arise in part from the same kind of association with which magic is likewise concerned, at least, what is called sympathetic magic. ”

“ Mourning usage is ever a very conservative usage, perhaps the most unchanging of all social practises, and so I infer from the prevalence of four in it as well as from its prevalence in all the Zuñi sacerdotal rites and traditions, beds of conservatism too, that the possession of the Zuñi mind by their favorite numeral is very, very ancient. ”

“ Nations are built up and moved by another force [a force other than science and reason] which sways and dominates them, the origin of which is unknown and inexplicable: that force is the force of an insatiable desire to go on to the end, though at the same time it denies that end. ”

“ Four times the rabbits are run out from the surrounded areas, four times before the hunt turns into a secular and comparatively individualistic activity.
The hunt over, the Chakwena retires to one of the kewitsine or sacred club-houses, [3] where for four days she lies in on a warmed-up sand-bed as would a woman in her confinement, and where she is taken care of by the woman who expects by this rite of imitative magic to conceive the offspring she desires. ”

“ Piety too is non-logical, subjective, craving union, but the union it desires is not with humans, its sense of participation is with deity; so long as that sense is intact, piety is unconcerned about human relations. Piety is unconcerned about human relations in themselves, but, as the sense of union with deity is immensely strengthened by the sense of common worship, the pious are in fact concerned about the body of the faithful. What that body is to consist of is a matter of circumstance. ”

“ To paraphrase a well-known quotation, we can not predict in what century the "New Zealander will gaze on the ruins of Brooklyn Bridge.** Nor can we say at what moment the hand of the invader will be stretched out to destroy or snatch away our treasures. ”

“ A comparison of male and female brains fails to establish the superiority of either sex. With the removal of folk- psychological prejudices, and with the advance of psychological ex- periment, a corresponding conclusion is gaining ground as to the aver- age mental equipment. And while the scarcity of female geniuses, and corresponding infrequency of epoch-making achievement, has been at- tributed to greater male variability, a sex difference in variability has never been scientifically demonstrated. ”

“ Into the disciplinary effect of these terrifying personages we need not go, noting only that four times they have to advance upon a house before its adult inmates stop beating upon their pans and drums to pretend to scare them away.
Into Zuñi marriage practises i. e., into a first marriage I have found no numeral obtrusion, but here my observations are by no means final. In the marriage of the widowed the favorite number does occur. Early in the morning after the couple has first slept together the second spouse gives to the remarried one something of value. ”

“ It is amusing to note how every sex difference that has been dis- covered or alleged has been interpreted to show the superiority of males. When students of institutional statistics discovered that there are more males among inmates of idiot asylums, and supposed this to mean that there must be more males than females among the feeble-minded, this apparently unfavorable fact was at once interpreted as confirmatory evi- dence of greater male variability; and as such it became immediately favorable to the theory of male superiority. ”

“ The restrictions of woman's sphere on the groimd that certain occupations are not natural for woman because they are not customary feminine oc- cupations in modern civilization, rests on sheer ignorance of history and ethnology, which reveal a very considerable range of activity under vary- ing social conditions. ”

“ The initiated, i. e., all the men and some of the women, plant plumes every moon and on many other ceremonial occasions. ↑ The death trip takes this time among many American tribes. (Brinton, p. 90.) ↑ Zuñi who have represented the koko live after death in a hill-side, in a four-roomed dwelling. To the Sacred Lake southwest of Zuñi a quadrennial ceremonial journey is made. ↑ If they hear sounds of the river roaring or of an owl hooting or of lips smacking or of horse hoofs, it is well. To hear nothing is not well. ”

“ It expresses the same aversion to killing another human being that taboos on the savage homicide betray. After a Pima killed an Apache he had to fast for sixteen days, touching neither meat nor salt, nor looking at a fire blaze, nor speaking to a human being. ”

“ He himself feels injured when the group in any part suffers injury. He therefore proceeds to protect his nation, his people, his home, i. e., himself by retaliation upon the injurious group or any part of it. ”

“ He passes the plant under his right leg and again strikes downward, murmuring spells the while to cause the enemy to sleep heavily. Just before reaching the village he crouches on the ground, blocking his ears with his fingers to induce deafness in the enemy. Then, as the rush is made, each warrior jumps over the crouching faia chief. ”

“ Our review of de- structive agents, noting what they have done and still may do, as well as the consideration of the amount of resistance to these agents pos- sessed by our present materials, causes us to confront the problem with some degree of anzieiy, since no one of the materials known to man will serve for all the requirements of the problem^s solution. ”

“ The verdict of present-day science is thus an uncompromisingly negative one: no rational grounds have yet been established that should lead to artificial limitation of woman's activity on the ground of inferior efiSciency. ”

“ The Kaiser makes speeches and issues proclamations about the motives and purposes of the God of the Fatherland and of his royal house. Even the British recruit is asked to enter into partnership with God. ”