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Myths and Rituals: A General Theory

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  31 August 2011

Clyde Kluckhohn
Clyde Kluckhohn
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Harvard University
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Extract

Nineteenth century students strongly tended to study mythology apart from associated rituals (and indeed apart from the life of the people generally). Myths were held to be symbolic descriptions of phenomena of nature. One prominent school, in fact, tried to find an astral basis for all mythic tales. Others, among whom Andrew Lang was prominent, saw in the myth a kind of primitive scientific theory. Mythology answered the insistent human How? and Why? How and why was the world made? How and why were living creatures brought into being? Why, if there was life must there be death? To early psychoanalysts such as Abraham and Rank myths were “group phantasies,” wish-fulfillments for a society strictly analogous to the dream and day-dream of individuals. Mythology for these psychoanalysts was also a symbolic structure par excellence, but the symbolism which required interpretation was primarily a sex symbolism which was postulated as universal and all-pervasive. Reik recognized a connection between rite and myth, and he, with Freud, verbally agreed to Robertson Smith's proposition that mythology was mainly a description of ritual. To the psychoanalysts, however, mythology was essentially (so far as what they did with it is concerned) societal phantasy material which reflected impulse repression. There was no attempt to discover the practical function of mythology in the daily behaviors of the members of a society nor to demonstrate specific interactions of mythology and ceremonials.

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Research Article
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Harvard Theological Review , Volume 35 , Issue 1 , January 1942 , pp. 45 - 79
Copyright
Copyright © President and Fellows of Harvard College 1942

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References

1 Based upon a paper read at the Symposium of the American Folklore Society at Chicago in December, 1939. My thanks are due to W. W. Hill, Florence Kluckhohn, A. H. Leighton, Arthur Nock, E. C. Parsons, and Alfred Tozzer for a critical reading and a number of suggestions, to Ruth Underhill and David Mandelbaum for supplying unpublished material on the Papago and Toda respectively.

2 Professor Nock has called my attention to the fact that the naturalistic theory actually works very well for the Vedic material.

3 See Traum und Mythus (Vienna, 1909)Google Scholar. Rank's final conclusion was that “myths are relics from the infantile mental life of the people, and dreams constitute the myths of the individual” (Selected Papers of Karl Abraham, London, 1927, p. 32). Cf. also Traum und Mythus, pp. 69, 71.

4 See Rank, Otto, Psychoanalytische Beiträge zur Mythenforschung (Vienna and Leipzig, 1919)Google Scholar and Der Mythus von der Geburt des Helden (2nd edition, Leipzig and Vienna, 1922). Rank attempts to show that hero myths originate in the delusional structures of paranoiacs.

5 Reik, Theodor, Das Ritual (Leipzig, Vienna, Zurich, 1928)Google Scholar.

6 Cf. Freud's statement in his introduction to Reik, op. cit., p. 11.

7 Many psychoanalysts today consider myths simply “a form of collective day-dreaming.” I have heard a prominent psychoanalyst say “Creation myths are for culture what early memories (true or fictitious) are to the individual.”

8 This has been done, even by anthropologists, only quite recently. Boas, as early as 1916 (Tsimshian Mythology, Bureau of American Ethnology, Annual Report for 1909–10, vol. 31, pp. 29–1037), did attempt to show how the origin of all folklore must be sought in imaginings based upon the ordinary social life of the society in question. But in this (as in his later publication on the Kwakiutl) he showed how mythology reflected social organization — not how mythology preserved social equilibrium or symbolized social organization.

9 Dr. Benedict in her Zuni Mythology (New York, 1935) follows a form of explanation which draws heavily from psychoanalytic interpretations. Thus, (p. xix) in discussing the compensatory functions of mythology, she speaks of “folkloristic day-dreaming.” But her treatment lacks the most objectionable features of the older psychoanalytic contributions because she does not deal in universalistic, pan-symbolic “meanings” but rather orients her whole presentation to the richly documented Zuni materials and to the specific context of Zuni culture.

10 Cf. e.g., Crossman, R. H. S., Plato Today (London, 1937), p. 88Google Scholar.

11 There are Aranda, Fijian, and Winnebago chants which are almost purely recitals of an origin myth.

12 This covers the differentia which is often suggested: namely, that myth is distinguished from legend or folktale by the circumstance that some (or perhaps most) of the actors in a myth must be supernatural beings — not simply human beings of however great a legendary stature. There are, of course, other distinctions which could — for other purposes — profitably be entered into. Thus, Professor Nock has suggested to me that there are differences of some consequence between an oral mythology and a written theology. “A true myth,” he says, “never takes form with an eye to the pen or to the printed page.”

These refinements are undoubtedly interesting and important, but they do not seem directly relevant to the issues dealt with in this paper. Here only the major contrast of sacred and profane appears crucial. Any segregation of myth from folktale, legend, fairytale, etc. which rests upon hair-splitting or upon special premises must be avoided. Thus Roheim's recent stimulating discussion (Myth and Folk-Tale, American Imago, vol. 2, 1941; pp. 266–279) is acceptable only insofar as one grants the major postulates of orthodox Freudian psychoanalysis. Roheim says: “A folktale is a narrative with a happy end, a myth is a tragedy; a god must die before he can be truly divine” (p. 276). “In the folk tale we relate how we overcome the anxiety connected with the ‘bad parents’ and grew up, in myth we confess that only death can end the tragic ambivalence of human nature. Eros triumphs in the folk-tale, Thanatos in the myth” (p. 279).

13 Rose, H. J., Review of “The Labyrinth” (Man, vol. 36, 1936, no. 87, p. 69)Google Scholar.

14 Dr. Mandelbaum writes me: “For the Todas do not have complex myths; myth episodes which take hours and days in the telling among Kotas, are told by Todas in less than three minutes.” Cf. Emeneau, M., The Songs of the Todas (Proceedings of the American Philosophical Society, vol. 77, 1937, pp. 543–560)Google Scholar; “… the art of storytelling is almost non-existent. In fact, imaginative story-telling hardly exists and the stories of traditional events in the life of the tribe do not seem to be popular…. Some of the songs are based on legendary stories, but even in the case of these some of my informants knew the songs without knowing the stories” (p. 543).

15 I am thinking here of public (non-cultist) mythology and of official and public ritual. Orphic ritual may have been more closely connected to the complicated Orphic myth. Cf. Guthrie, W. K. C., Who Were the Orphics? (Scientia, vol. 67, 1937, pp. 110–121)Google Scholar, esp. pp. 119–120.

16 Cf. Farnell, L. R., The Cults of the Greek States, vol. IV (Oxford, 1909), pp. 396–407Google Scholar.

17 Kroeber, A. L., Handbook of the Indians of California (Washington, 1925), p. 660Google Scholar.

18 Ibid., p. 755. The Mohave are, of course, also a classic case where myths, at least according to cultural theory, are dreamed. But even though we recognize the cultural patterning of the “dreaming” this in no sense justifies the inference that the myths are derived from the meagre rituals. Indeed Kroeber points out (p. 770) that some myths are not sung to — i.e. are not even ritualized to the extent of being connected with song recitals.

19 Personal communication from Dr. Ruth Underhill.

20 Certain contemporary classical scholars take a point of view which is very similar to that adopted in this paper. Thus Rose, H. J. (Modern Methods in Classical Mythology, St. Andrews, 1930, p. 12Google Scholar) says “… I postulate … a reciprocal influence of myth and ceremony….” Cf. also L. R. Farnell, The Value and the Methods of Mythologic Study (London, 1919), p. 11, “… occasionally myth is the prior fact that generates a certain ritual, as for instance the offering of horses to St. George in Silesia was suggested by the myth of St. George the horseman….”

21 Boas, F. and others, General Anthropology (New York, 1938), p. 617Google Scholar.

22 Hocart, A. M., Myth and Ritual (Man, vol. 36, no. 230), p. 167Google Scholar.

23 Cf. Tozzer, A. M., Social Origins and Social Continuities (New York, 1934), pp. 242–267Google Scholar, esp. p. 260 ff.

24 R. R. Willoughby gives good examples and discussions of these culturally unformalized divinatory practices. See Magic, and Cognate, Phenomena: An Hypothesis (In: A Handbook of Social Psychology, Murchison, Carl, ed., Worcester, Mass., 1935, pp. 461–520Google Scholar), pp. 480–482.

25 DuBois, C., Some Anthropological Perspectives on Psychoanalysis (Psychoanalytic Review, vol. 24, 1937, pp. 246–264)Google Scholar, p. 254.

26 In other words, in terms of patterns of behavior which are distinctive of an individual, not as a representative of a particular cultural tradition, but as a differentiated biological organism who — either because of inherited constitutional differences or because of accidents of the conditioning process — behaves differently in major respects from most individuals of the same age, sex, and status acculturated in the same culture.

27 Seligman, B. Z., The Part of the Unconscious in Social Heritage (In: Essays Presented to C. G. Seligman, London, 1934, pp. 307–319Google Scholar).

28 I am, of course, well aware that the rites of the Ghost Dance were not by any means identical in all tribes. But in spite of wide variations under the influence of pre-existent ideal and behavioral patterns certain new ritual practices which must be connected with the visions of the founder may be found in almost every tribe.

29 See Chamberlain, A. F., New Religions among the North American Indians (Journal of Religious Psychology, 1913, vol. 6, pp. 1–49Google Scholar).

30 Lincoln, J. S., The Dream in Primitive Cultures (Baltimore, 1935)Google Scholar.

31 Morgan, William, Human Wolves Among the Navaho (Yale University Publications in Anthropology, No. 11, 1936), p. 40Google Scholar. Dr. Henry A. Murray of the Harvard Psychological Clinic informs me that there is clinical evidence that an individual can be conditioned (in the technical psychological sense) by a dream.

32 van Gennep, A., La Formation des Légendes (Paris, 1910), p. 255Google Scholar. The peyote cult is, of course, an outstanding case where dreams determine variation in ritual.

33 Lowie, R. H., The History of Ethnological Theory (N. Y., 1937), p. 264Google Scholar.

34 Barber, Bernard, Acculturation and Messianic Movements (American Sociological Review, vol. 6, 1941, pp. 663–670)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; A Socio-Cultural Interpretation of the Peyote Cult (American Anthropologist, 1941, vol. 43, pp. 673–676)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

35 See Bonaparte, Marie, Princess of Greece, The Myth of the Corpse in the Car (The American Imago, 1941, vol. 2, pp. 105–127Google Scholar).

36 Benedict, Ruth in the Article “Myth” (Encyclopaedia of the Social Sciences, vol. IX, 1933)Google Scholar makes a similar point but distorts it by the implication that belief in a certain cosmology was the single crucial test of Christianity.

37 London, 1926.

38 Radcliffe-Brown's explanation, though useful, strikes me as too narrow in that it seems to deny to nonliterate man all bare curiosity and any free play of fancy, undetermined by societal necessities. He says (Andaman Islanders, Cambridge, England, 1933, pp. 380–381Google Scholar): “Natural phenomena such as the alternation of day and night, the changes of the moon, the procession of the seasons, and variations of the weather, have important effects on the welfare of the society … a process of bringing within the circle of the social life those aspects of nature that are of importance to the well-being of the society.”

39 “Configuration” is here used as a technical term referring to a structural regularity of the covert culture. In other words, a configuration is a principle which structures widely varying contexts of culture content but of which the culture carriers are minimally aware. By “configuration” I mean something fairly similar to what some authors have meant by “latent culture pattern” as distinguished from “manifest culture pattern.” The concept is also closely akin to what Sumner and Keller call a cultural “ethos.” For a fuller discussion of “configuration” and “covert culture” see Kluckhohn, Clyde, Patterning as Exemplified in Navaho Culture (In: Language, Culture, and Personality, Spier, L., ed., Menasha, 1941, pp. 109–131Google Scholar), esp. pp. 109, 124–129.

40 Op. cit., p. 19.

41 De Quelques formes primitives de classification (L'Année Sociologique, vol. 6).

42 Warner, W. L., A Black Civilization (New York, 1937), esp. pp. 371–411Google Scholar.

43 See especially F. Boas, Review of Locher, G. W., “The Serpent in Kwakiutl Religion: a Study in Primitive Culture” (Deutsche Literaturzeitung, 1933, pp. 1182–1186Google Scholar; reprinted in Race, Language, and Culture, New York, 1940, pp. 446–450).

44 Ibid., p. 450.

45 Hooke, S. H., The Origins of Early Semitic Ritual (London, 1938), pp. 2Google Scholar, 3, 8. See also Myth and Ritual (London, 1933)Google Scholar.

46 This statement is not to be interpreted as credence in “the aetiological myth” if by this one means that a myth “satisfies curiosity.” We are not justified, I believe, in completely excluding the aetiological (in this sense) motive in every case, but Whitehead's statement (Religion in the Making, New York, 1926) probably conforms to a rough induction: “Thus the myth not only explains but reinforces the hidden purpose of the ritual which is emotion” (p. 25).

47 Hooke, S. H. (ed.) The Labyrinth (New York, 1935), p. ixGoogle Scholar.

48 Op. cit., p. 405.

49 The best documentation of the fact that myths are constantly undergoing revision is probably to be found in various writings of Boas. See, for example, Race, Language, and Culture (New York, 1940), pp. 397–525Google Scholar, passim.

50 Op. cit., p. 180.

51 This appears to be the Papago case. (Underhill, personal communication.)

52 There are many striking and highly specific parallels between Navaho and Hopi ceremonial practices. For example, the mechanical equipment used in connection with the Sun's House phase of the Navaho Shooting Way chants has so much in common with similar gadgets used in Hopi ceremonials that one can hardly fail to posit a connection. Dr. Parsons has documented the intimate resemblances between the Male Shooting Way chant and Hopi Flute and Snake-Antelope ceremonies (A Pre-Spanish Record of Hopi Ceremonies; American Anthropologist, 1940, vol. 42, pp. 541–543, fn. 4, p. 541). The best guess at present would be that the Hopi was the donor culture, but the direction of diffusion is immaterial here: the significant point is that the supporting myths in the cases concerned show little likeness. For instance, Dr. Parsons regards the Flute Ceremony as a dramatization of the Hopi emergence myth, but the comparable ritual acts in Navaho culture are linked to chantway legends of the usual Holy Way pattern and not to the emergence story. In contrast, the White Mountain Apache seem to have borrowed both Snake myth and ritual from the Hopi. See Parsons, E. C., Pueblo Indian Religion (Chicago, 1939), p. 1060Google Scholar and Goodwin, G., Myths and Tales of the White Mountain Apache (Memoirs of the American Folklore Society, vol. 33, New York, 1939), p. viiGoogle Scholar.

53 Op. cit., p. 92.

54 That is, forms of behavior whose value or meaning is assigned by human beings — not inherent in the intrinsic properties of the words or acts.

55 Dollard, John, Culture, Society, Impulse, and Socialization (American Journal of Sociology, vol. 45, pp. 50–64)CrossRefGoogle Scholar, p. 52.

56 Roheim, G., The Riddle of the Sphinx (London, 1934), esp. pp. 173–174Google Scholar.

57 Casey, R. P., The Psychoanalytic Study of Religion (Journal of Abnormal and Social Psychology, vol. 33, 1938, pp. 437–453)CrossRefGoogle Scholar, p. 449.

58 Kardiner, A., The Individual and His Society (New York, 1939), esp. pp. 182–194Google Scholar, 268–270.

59 Some Navaho material has, of course, already been presented. See pp. 47, 51, 57, supra.

60 Hewett, E. L. (The Chaco Canyon and Its Monuments, Albuquerque, 1936, p. 139)Google Scholar records the dissemination of this tale among the Chaco Canyon Navaho. Drs. A. and D. Leighton and I have obtained independent evidence that the same story was told, and believed by many, among the Ramah Navaho (two hundred odd miles away) at the same time. Those who believed the tale carried out ceremonials but not new ceremonials. Rather the old ceremonials (especially Blessing Way rites) were carried out in unusual frequency. In 1936 in the Huerfano country a young woman reported that she had been visited by White Shell Woman who had been given instructions for Blessing Ways to be held — but with special additional procedures. These rites were widely carried out in the northeastern portion of the Navaho area. (See article by Will Evans in the Farmington, N. M., Times Hustler, under date-line of February 21, 1937.) Also in 1936 a woman in the Farmington region claimed to have been visited by Banded Rock Boy (one of the Holy People) and a similar story spread over the Reservation. A famous singer, Left-handed, refused to credit the tale and many Navahos attributed his death (which occurred soon thereafter) to his disbelief. See Mesa Verde Notes, March, 1937, vol. 7, pp. 16–19. F. Gilmor (Windsinger, New York, 1930) has used a story of the same pattern, obtained from the Navaho of the Kayenta, Arizona region as a central episode in a novel.

61 Jane Harrison (Themis, Cambridge, England, 1912) says: “It is this collective sanction and solemn purpose that differentiate the myth alike from the historical narrative and the mere conte or fairy-tale …” (p. 330), and many agreeing with her will doubtless assert that my argument here is invalid because these tales though unquestionably having “solemn purpose” lack “collective sanction.” Some would also contend that since living persons claim to have seen the supernatural beings these stories must be called “tales” or, at any rate, not “myths.” I see these points and, since I wish to avoid a purely verbal quarrel, I would agree, so far as present data go, that Navaho myths (in the narrow sense) are uniformly associated with ritual behaviors. Actually, the myth which most Navaho call their most sacred (the emergence story) is associated with rites only in a manner which is, from certain points of view, tenuous. The emergence myth is not held to be the basis for any single ceremonial, nor is it used to justify any very considerable portion of ceremonial practice. The emergence myth (or some part of it) is often prefaced to the chantway legend proper. In any case, I must insist (granting always that the line between secular and sacred folk literature must not be drawn too sharply) that the stories dealt with above are not part of the “profane” folklore of the Navaho in the sense in which the Coyote tales, for example, are. The origin legends of the various clans are certainly not secular literature, but I imagine that a purist would maintain that we must call these “legends” as lacking “solemn purpose” (in Harrison's sense). Nevertheless I repeat that “myths” in the broad sense of “sacred tale” are, among the Navaho, found quite dissociated from ritual.

62 A Note on the Navaho Visionary (American Anthropologist, vol. 42, 1940, p. 359)Google Scholar. This contains still another reference to the flood motif.

63 The assertion that ceremonials sometimes have their genesis in dreams and the like does not imply that this, any more than that between myth and ritual, is a one-way relationship. One can by no means dispose of the matter simply by saying “dreams cause myths and myths cause ceremonies.” Morgan, William (Navaho Dreams, American Anthropologist, vol. 34, 1932, pp. 390–406CrossRefGoogle Scholar), who was also convinced that some Navaho myths derive from dreams (p. 395), has pointed out the other aspect of the interdependence: “… myths … influence dreams; and these dreams, in turn, help to maintain the efficacy of the ceremonies…. Repetitive dreams do much to strengthen the traditional beliefs concerning dreams” (p. 400).

64 Parsons, E. C., Pueblo Indian Religion (Chicago, 1939), p. 968Google Scholar, footnote.

65 Hill, W. W., The Agricultural and Hunting Methods of the Navaho Indians (New Haven, 1938), p. 179Google Scholar.

66 Dr. Parsons has suggested (personal communication) an analogue from our own culture: “It was argued that because Eve was made from Adam's rib women should not have the vote.”

67 Wissler, C., The Function of Primitive Ritualistic Ceremonies (Popular Science Monthly, vol. 87, pp. 200–204)Google Scholar, p. 203.

68 Matthews, Washington, Some Illustrations of the Connection between Myth and Ceremony (International Congress of Anthropology, Memoirs, Chicago, 1894, pp. 246–251Google Scholar), p. 246.

69 How much a practitioner knows of both legend and ceremonial depends upon the demands he made upon his instructor during his apprenticeship. The instructor is not supposed to prompt his pupil. Many practitioners are satisfied with quite mechanical performances, and there is no doubt that much information (both legendary and ritualistic) is being lost at present owing to the fact that apprentices do not question their instructors more than superficially.

70 A transvestite is an individual who assumes the garb of the other sex. Transvestites are often, but apparently not always, homosexuals.

71 See Hill, W. W., The Status of the Hermaphrodite and Transvestite in Navaho Culture (American Anthropologist, vol. 37, 1935, pp. 273–280CrossRefGoogle Scholar), p. 279.

72 For a hint, however, that be?gočidí was so considered at an earlier time, see Matthews, W., Navaho Legends (New York, 1897), p. 226Google Scholar, footnote 78.

73 Cf. Kluckhohn, Clyde and Wyman, Leland C., An Introduction to Navaho Chant Practice (Memoir 53, American Anthropological Association, 1940), pp. 186–187Google Scholar.

74 Personal communication.

75 Why may the myths be recited only in winter? In Navaho feeling today this prohibition is linked in a wider configuration of forbidden activities. There is also, as usual, an historical and distributional problem, for this same prohibition is apparently widely distributed in North America. For example, it is found among the Berens River Salteaux (see Hallowell, A. I., Fear and Anxiety as Cultural and Individual Variables in a Primitive Society, Journal of Social Psychology, vol. 9, 1938, pp. 25–48CrossRefGoogle Scholar, p. 31) and among the Iroquois (Dr. William Fenton: personal conversation). But I wonder if in a certain “deeper” sense this prohibition is not founded upon the circumstance that only winter affords the leisure for telling myths, that telling them in summer would be unfitting because it would interfere with work activities?

76 Hocart, A. M., Ritual and Emotion (Character and Personality, vol. 7, 1939, pp. 201–211Google Scholar), p. 208.

77 This useful distinction I owe to my colleague, Dr. Hobart Mowrer. “Adaptation” is a purely descriptive term referring to the fact that certain types of behavior result in survival. “Adjustment” refers to those responses which remove the motivation stimulating the individual. Thus suicide is adjustive but not adaptive.

78 Cf. Malinowski (op. cit., p. 78): “They would screen with the vivid texture of their myths, stories, and beliefs about the spirit world, the vast emotional void gaping beyond them.”

79 There is, to be sure, at least a rough parallel in our own culture in “the Bible says so” and similar phrases.

80 Rasmussen, Knud, Intellectual Culture of the Hudson Bay Eskimos (Copenhagen, 1938), p. 69Google Scholar.

81 Modern Man (New York, 1936), p. 29Google Scholar.

82 Merton, R. K., Social Structure and Anomie (American Sociological Review, vol. 3, 1938, pp. 672–683CrossRefGoogle Scholar), p. 673.

83 Goldstein, Kurt, The Organism (New York, 1939), p. 57Google Scholar.

84 As a matter of fact, Allport has made it plain (Motivation in Personality: Reply to Mr. Bertocci, Psychological Review, 1940, vol. 47, pp. 533–555) that he contends only that motives may be autonomous in respect to their origins but never in respect to the satisfaction of the ego (p. 547).

85 Mowrer, O. H., A Stimulus-Response Analysis of Anxiety and its Role as a Reinforcing Agent (Psychological Review, vol. 46, 1939, pp. 553–566CrossRefGoogle Scholar), p. 561.

86 I have attended hundreds of Navaho ceremonials and I hare never yet seen a case where the patient at some point, at least, during the ceremonial did not profess to feel an improvement. This applies even to cases where the patient was actually dying.

87 The theory of this paragraph has been stated in the language of contemporary stimulus-response psychology. But it is interesting to note that E. S. Hartland (Ritual and Belief, New York) expressed essentially the same content in 1916: “Recurrence of the emotional stress would tend to be accompanied by repetition of the acts in which the reaction has been previously expressed. If the recurrence were sufficiently frequent, the form of the reaction would become a habit to be repeated on similar occasions, even where the stress was less vivid or almost absent. It can hardly be doubted that many rites owe their existence to such reactions” (pp. 116–117).

88 It is not possible to say adaptive here because there are not infrequent occasions on which ceremonial treatment aggravates the condition or actually brings about death (which would probably not have supervened under a more rational treatment or even if the patient had simply been allowed to rest). From the point of view of the society, however, the rituals are with little doubt adaptive. Careful samples in two areas and more impressionistic data from the Navaho country generally indicate that the frequency of ceremonials has very materially increased concomitantly with the increase of white pressure in recent years. It is tempting to regard this as an adaptive response similar to that of the Ghost Dance and Peyote Cult on the part of other American Indian tribes.

89 Freud, Anna, The Ego and the Mechanisms of Defence (London, 1937)Google Scholar.

90 See A. H. and D. C. Leighton, Some Types of Uneasiness and Fear in a Navaho Indian Community (to appear in the American Anthropologist, April, 1942).

91 It remains amazing that their population could have increased at such an extraordinary rate if health conditions have been so poor. Dr. A. Leighton suggests to to me that it is conceivable that when the land was less crowded their health was better.

92 It does not seem implausible that some disorders (especially perhaps those associated with acute anxieties) are examples of what Caner has called “superstitious self-protection.” See Caner, G. C., Superstitious Self-Protection (Archives of Neurology and Psychiatry, 1940, vol. 44, pp. 351–361CrossRefGoogle Scholar).

93 Dr. A. Leighton has pointed out to me that these disruptive tendencies are reinforced by one of the techniques for survival which those Navahos who have intimate and competitive relations with whites have developed. He writes: “A group threatened by a stronger group can swing to one of two poles, (a) They can coalesce and form a highly efficient, highly integrated unit that can act with swiftness, power, and precision, and in which all individuals stand or fall together. (b) They can disperse like a covey of quail so as never to present a united target to the foe. This is the Navaho method of dealing with the whites. It is every man for himself, and though individuals may fall, enough escape to survive. You don't rush to help your tribesman when trouble comes, you stay out of it, you ‘let it go.’ Such an attitude, however, does lead to mutual mistrust.”

94 Cf. Radcliffe-Brown (op. cit., p. 330): “… tales that might seem merely the products of a somewhat childish fancy are very far indeed from being merely fanciful and are the means by which the Andamanese express and systematize their fundamental notions of life and nature and the sentiments attaching to those notions.”

95 Reichard, Gladys, Navajo Medicine Man (New York, 1939), p. 76Google Scholar. Italics mine.

96 This is significantly reflected in ceremonial lore. Torlino, a singer of Beauty Way, said to Washington Matthews: “I am ashamed before the earth; I am ashamed before the heavens; I am ashamed before the dawn; I am ashamed before the evening twilight; I am ashamed before the blue sky; I am ashamed before the sun; I am ashamed before that standing within me which speaks with me (my conscience). Some of these things are always looking at me. I am never out of sight.” Matthews, Washington, Navaho Legends (American Folklore Society, Memoirs, 5, 1897), pp. 58–59Google Scholar. Italics are mine.

97 Matthews, W., The Mountain Chant (Annual Report of the Bureau of American Ethnology, vol. 5, Washington, 1887, pp. 379–467)Google Scholar, p. 417.

98 Cf. Radcliffe-Brown, A. R., Taboo (Cambridge, England, 1939), p. 44Google Scholar. “The primary value of ritual … is the attribution of ritual value to objects and occasions which are either themselves objects of important common interests linking together the persons of a community or are symbolically representative of such objects.”

99 This view is developed with full documentation in a forthcoming publication to be issued by the Peabody Museum of Harvard University in the spring of 1942.

100 Homans, G. C., Anxiety and Ritual (American Anthropologist, vol. 43, 1941), pp. 164–173CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

101 Hoagland, Hudson, Some Comments on Science and Faith (In: Conference on Science, Philosophy, and Religion, New York, 1941Google Scholar, mimeographed), p. 5.

102 But I was very much struck in reading Dr. Hallowell's recent article (A. I. Hallowell, The Social Function of Anxiety in a Primitive Society, American Sociological Review, vol. 6, December, 1941, pp. 869–882) — which I read only when this paper was in proof — at the similarity not only in the interpretations he reached but at that in the data from the Saulteaux, when he says “fear of disease is a major social sanction” (p. 871) that fits the Navaho case precisely — as does “illness due to having done bad things or to transgression of a parent” (p. 873).

103 This selective distribution of personality types may become established biologically, through the operation of genetic mechanisms, or through the processes of child socialization operative in the particular culture.