Prophecy 215 "Simon Newcomb, famous American astronomer, on the possibilities of flight: No possible combination of known substances, known forms of machinery and known forms of force, can be united in a practical machine by which men shall fly long distances." Toffler, Future Shock. A prophet who wasn't.
Prophets 122 "All the armed prophets conquered, all the unarmed ones perished." Machiavelli. 1513. Gross, ed.
Projects 245 "…every man amuses himself with projects which he knows to be improbable, and which, therefore, he resolves to pursue without daring to examine them." Sam. Johnson. 1753. Gross, ed.
Comment: The things that people collect would be examples of such projects. I knew a guy who collected baseball hats. Another collected the toy trucks from Hess gasoline stations at Christmas time. He never took them out of the boxes they came in. Another collected model trains that he kept packed neatly away in their original boxes. The list goes on. RayS.
Progress 561 "If we were not provided with the knack of being wrong, we could never get any thing useful done." Lewis Thomas. “To Err Is Human.” 1979. Gross, ed. Essays.
Progress 561 "What is needed, for progress to be made, is the move based on the error. "Lewis Thomas. “To Err Is Human.” 1979. Gross, ed. Essays.
Progress 562 "The lower animals do not have this splendid freedom [to make mistakes]…are limited, most of them, to absolute infallibility." Lewis Thomas. “To Err Is Human.” 1979. Gross, ed. Essays.
Comment: One thing seems to be necessary for progress: the ability to learn from mistakes. RayS.
Profession 93 Edmund: "…and it will, I believe, be everywhere found, that as the clergy are, or are not what they ought to be, so are the rest of the nation." Austen,
Professions 234 "I would say of metaphysicians what Scaliger said of the Basques: They are supposed to understand each other, but I do not believe it." Chamfort. 1805. Gross, ed.
Professions 238 "There is only one thing a philosopher can be relied on to do, and that is to contradict other philosophers." Wm. James. Gross, ed.
Professions 266 "People who have taken no intellectual food for ten years, except for a few tiny crumbs from the journals, are found even among the professors; they aren’t rare at all." Lichtenberg. 1764-99. Gross, ed.
Process 20 " All “things”—from the tiniest virus to the greatest galaxy are, in reality, not things at all, but processes." Toffler, Future Shock. "Things" just will not remain inactive.
Some worthwhile thoughts on problem solving.
Problem solving 322 "The (theoretical) problem is solved by action (the practical)." Latin. Dictionary of Foreign Terms
Problem solving 567 "We are at our human finest, dancing with our minds, when there are more choices than two." Lewis Thomas. “To Err Is Human.” 1979. Gross, ed. Essays.
Problem solving 54 "He had seen ten thousand men die from bullets, but he had no notion of why people die from disease." DeKruif, Microbe Hunters.
Problem-solving 207 "I had always been confident that every problem could be solved, but now I found myself confronting one…that could not." McNamara’s In Retrospect. The first part of this sentence seemed to be the theme of the Kennedy administration from 1961 to November 1963.
Problem-solving 362 "All [simplistic solutions] dangerously evade the rich complexity of reality." Toffler, Future Shock.
Problem-solving 374 "…turn crisis into opportunity." Toffler, Future Shock.
Problem-solving 461 " …difficulties ought to chasten and challenge, not paralyze." Toffler, Future Shock.
Prison 79 "The misery of jails is not half their evil; they are filled with every corruption which poverty and wickedness can promote...." Samuel Johnson. “Debtors’ Prison.” 1758. Gross, ed. Essays. As true today as it was then.
Principles 256 " It is easier to fight for one’s principles than to live up to them". Alfred Adler. 1939. Gross, ed.
Fires, Birth Trees and Souls in All of Nature.
Primitive practice 723 " …in Flanders a great log of wood…is still put on the fire; all the lights in the house are extinguished, and the whole family gathers round the log to spend part of the night in singing, in telling stories, especially about ghosts, werewolves and so on, and also in drinking gin…customary to set fire to the remainder of the gin at the moment when the log is reduced to ashes." Frazer, The New Golden Bough. A beautiful custom.
Primitive practice 25 "…kindle fire by friction of wood on Christmas Eve and keep it burning till Twelfth Night." Frazer, The New Golden Bough.
Primitive practice 726 "…need-fire [ritual fire in seasons of distress and calamity]… sometimes… known as 'wildfire' …necessary preliminary to the kindling of the need-fire all other fires and lights in the neighborhood were extinguished, so that not so much as a spark remained alight; for so long as even a night light burned in a house, it was imagined that the need-fire could not kindle." Frazer, The New Golden Bough.
Primitive practice 730 "…brands taken from bonfires are commonly kept in the houses to guard them against conflagration…homeopathic magic, one fire being thought to act as a preventive of another." Frazer, The New Golden Bough.
Primitive practice 733 "…king of Aix, who reigned for a year and danced the first dance round the Midsummer bonfire, may perhaps in days of old have discharged the less agreeable duty of serving as fuel for that fire which in later times he only kindled."
Primitive practice 760 "It is a Jewish custom to plant a cedar at the birth of a boy and pine at that of a girl; when they marry, the trees are cut down to provide wood for the 'wedding bower.' ” Frazer, The New Golden Bough.
Primitive society 108 "To the savage the world in general is animate, and trees and plants are no exception to the rule…thinks they have souls like his own, and treats them accordingly…why should the slaughter of an ox or a sheep be a greater wrong than the felling of a fir or an oak, seeing that a soul is implanted in these trees also?" Frazer, The New Golden Bough.
Comment: A very entertaining book. RayS.
Bonfires and Yule Logs.
Primitive practice 696 "All over Europe the peasants have been accustomed from time immemorial to kindle bonfires on certain days of the year, and to dance round or leap over them." Frazer, The New Golden Bough.
Primitive practice 697 "…[fires] consisted of pyramids of sticks and faggots, which had been collected some days earlier by young folks going from door to door." Frazer, The New Golden Bough.
Primitive practice 701 "On the first Sunday in Lent, bonfires are lit, round which the young people dance and sing old songs; the children, in one very popular song, demand fritters, and the quaint refrain runs thus: 'If my mother does not give me fritters, I shall set fire to her petticoats.' ” Frazer, The New Golden Bough.
Primitive practice 712 "…the girls throw the wreaths across the flames to the men, and woe to the awkward swain who fails to catch the wreath thrown him by his sweetheart." Frazer, The New Golden Bough.
Primitive practice 722 "…the custom of the Yule log, clog or block, as it was variously called in England…was only the winter counterpart of the Midsummer bonfire, kindled within doors instead of the open air on account of the cold and inclement weather of the season…lent it the character of a private or domestic festivity, which contrasts strongly with the publicity of the summer celebration, at which the people gathered on some open space or conspicuous height, kindled a huge bonfire in common, and danced and made merry round it together." Frazer, The New Golden Bough.
Scapegoats, bonfires, "birth trees," and adding to the sun's fire.
Primitive practice 622 "Whenever Marseilles, one of the busiest and most brilliant of Greek colonies, was ravaged by a plague, a man of the poorer classes used to offer himself as a scapegoat…whole year he was maintained at the public expense, being fed on choice and pure food…expiry of the year he was dressed in sacred garments, decked with holy branches, and led through the whole city, while prayers were uttered that all the evils of the people might fall on his head…then cast out of the city or stoned to death by the people outside of the halls." Frazer, The New Golden Bough.
Primitive practice 623 "As practiced by the Greeks of Asia Minor in the sixth century before our era, the custom of the scapegoat was as follows: When a city suffered from plague, famine, or other public calamity an ugly or deformed person was chosen to take upon himself all the evils which afflicted the community." Frazer, The New Golden Bough.
Primitive practice 677 "But the other main incident of the myth, the burning of Balder’s body on a pyre, has also its counterpart in the bonfires which still blaze…till lately, in Denmark." [Encarta Balder, in Norse mythology, the god of light and joy, son of Odin and Frigga, king and queen of the gods. Having dreamed that Balder's life was threatened, Frigga extracted an oath from the forces and objects in nature, animate and inanimate, that they would not harm Balder, but she forgot the mistletoe. The gods, thinking Balder safe, cast darts and stones at him. The malicious giant Loki put a twig of mistletoe in the hands of Balder's twin, the blind Hoder, god of darkness, and directed his aim against Balder, who fell pierced to the heart. After the death of Balder, Odin sent another son, the messenger Hermod, to the underworld to plead for Balder's return. The god would be released only if everything in the world would weep for him. Everything wept except one old woman in a cave, and Balder could not return to life.] Frazer, The New Golden Bough.
Primitive practice 685 "It is said that there are still families in Russia, Germany, England, France and Italy who are accustomed to plant a tree at the birth of a child…tree, it is hoped, will grow with the child…an apple tree is planted for a boy and pear tree for a girl…." Frazer, The New Golden Bough.
Primitive practice 692 " The old Aryans perhaps kindled…ceremonial fires in part as sun-charms, that is, with the intention of supplying the sun with fresh fire." Frazer, The New Golden Bough.
On getting rid of devils, evils, ills, etc.
Primitive practice 610 "Sometimes in an Estonian village a rumor will get about that the Evil One himself has been seen in the place…the entire population, armed with sticks, flails and scythes, turns out to give him chase…generally expel him in the shape of a wolf or a cat, occasionally they brag that they have beaten the devil to death." Frazer, The New Golden Bough.
Primitive practice 612 "Often the vehicle which carries away the collected demons or ills of a whole community is an animal or scapegoat." Frazer, The New Golden Bough.
Primitive practice 614 "On New Year’s Day people in Korea seek to rid themselves of all their distresses by painting images on paper, writing against them their troubles of body or mind, and afterwards giving the papers to a boy to burn." Frazer, The New Golden Bough.
Primitive practice 617 "…the effigy of the devil, painted black, with a pair of horns and a lolling red tongue, had been dangling from the church tower, to the delight of a gaping crowd of spectators gathered before the church…now flung down into their midst, and a fierce struggle for possession of it took place among the rabble…carried out of the town….and burned on a neighboring height, 'in order that the foul fiend might do no harm to the city.' ” Frazer, The New Golden Bough.
Primitive practice 618 "When the ancient Egyptians sacrificed a bull, they invoked upon its head all the evils that might otherwise befall themselves and the land of Egypt…either sold the bull’s head to the Greeks or cast it into the river." Frazer, The New Golden Bough.
Protecting against Witches and Epidemics
Primitive practice 607 "…all the young fellows of the village assemble after sunset on some height, especially at a crossroad, and crack whips…in unison with all their strength…drives away the witches; for so far as the sound of the whips is heard, these maleficent beings can do no harm." Frazer, The New Golden Bough.
Primitive practice 607 "…the village youth go out to crossroads and there beat the ground with boards, no doubt for the purpose of thrashing the witches who are commonly supposed to assemble at such spots." Frazer, The New Golden Bough.
Primitive practice 607 …troops of children go from house to house on Walpurgis Evening, making a great clatter with tin cans and kettles, while they scream, 'Witch, go out, your house is burning.' ” Frazer, The New Golden Bough.
Primitive practice 608 "…people burn pine-resin all night long between Christmas and the New Year in order that the pungent smoke may drive witches and evil spirits far away from house and homestead, and on Christmas Eve and New Year’s Eve they fire shots over fields and meadows, into shrubs and trees, and wrap straw around the fruit trees to prevent the spirits from doing them harm." Frazer, The New Golden Bough.
Primitive practice 610 "Russian villagers seek to protect themselves against epidemics…by drawing a furrow with a plough right round the village." Frazer, The New Golden Bough.
The blood of kings, harvests, devils and visiting spirits.
Primitive practice 384 "…in old days gods, like kings, often married their sisters, and probably for the same reason, namely to ensure their own title to the throne under a rule of female kinship which treated women and not men as the channel in which the royal blood flowed." Frazer, The New Golden Bough.
Primitive practice 521 "For at harvest a number of wild animals, such as hares, rabbits and partridges, are commonly driven by the progress of the reaping into the last patch of standing corn, and make their escape from it as it is being cut down…reapers and others often stand round the last patch of corn armed with sticks or guns, with which they kill the animals as they dart out of their last refuge among the stalks." Frazer, The New Golden Bough.
93. Primitive practice 604 "When the last devil has taken his departure, the uproar is succeeded by a dead silence, which lasts during the next day also…devils, it is thought, are anxious to return to their old homes, and in order to make them think that Bali is not Bali but some desert island, no one may stir from his own abode for twenty-forty hours." Frazer, The New Golden Bough.
Primitive practice 605 "At the present time it is customary in every part of China to fire off firecrackers on the last day and night of the year for the purpose of terrifying and expelling the devils…." Frazer, The New Golden Bough.
Primitive practice 605 "…smeared the doors of their houses with pitch, apparently thinking that any rash spirits who might attempt to enter would stick fast in the pitch and be glued, like so many flies, to the door." Frazer, The New Golden Bough.
All about kings.
Primitive point of view 694 "We can never completely replace ourselves at the standpoint of primitive man, see things with his eyes, and feel our hearts beat with the emotions that stirred his." Frazer, The New Golden Bough.
Primitive practice 122 "King's race: a pole with a cloth tied to it is set up in a meadow, and the young men ride past it on horseback, each trying to snatch the cloth as he gallops by…one who succeeds in carrying it off and dipping it in the neighboring River Oder is proclaimed king." Frazer, The New Golden Bough.
Primitive practice 123 "…the youth who succeeded in climbing the smooth pole and bringing down the prize was proclaimed the Whitsuntide king…. "Frazer, The New Golden Bough.
Primitive practice 277 "When in the opinion of the big men the king has reigned long enough, they give out that ‘the king is sick’—a formula understood by all to mean that they are going to kill him, though the intention is never put more plainly." Frazer, The New Golden Bough.
Primitive practice 278 "…a slight bodily blemish such as the loss of a tooth was considered a sufficient cause for putting one of these god-men to death." Frazer, The New Golden Bough.
Primitive belief 720 "…Halloween, the night which marks the transition from autumn to winter, seems to have been of old the time of year when the souls of the departed were supposed to revisit their old homes in order to warm themselves by the fire and to comfort themselves with the good cheer provided for them in the kitchen or parlor by their affectionate kinfolk." Frazer, The New Golden Bough.
Primitive belief 723 "The embers of the Yule log were kept carefully, for they were believed to be a protection against lightning." Frazer, The New Golden Bough.
Primitive belief 219 "For the savage commonly conceives animals to be endowed with 'souls' and intelligences like his own, and hence he naturally treats them with similar respect." Frazer, The New Golden Bough.
Primitive belief 267 "Widespread also is the belief that the soul resides in the pupil of the eye." Frazer, The New Golden Bough.
Primitive custom 564 "Plough Monday in
Primitive belief 685 " In folk tales the life of a person is sometimes so bound up with that of a plant that the withering of the plant will immediately follow or be followed by the death of the person." Frazer, The New Golden Bough.
Primitive belief 686 "The same bond, it is supposed, may exist between a man and an animal, so that the welfare of the one depends on the welfare of the other, and when the animal dies the man dies also." Frazer, The New Golden Bough.
Primitive belief 687 "The people of Leo believe that when one kills a crocodile in the river, one also kills a man in the village." Frazer, The New Golden Bough.
Primitive belief 693 " A tree which has been struck by lightning is naturally regarded by the savage as charged with a double or triple portion of fire…a plausible theory that the reverence which the ancient peoples of Europe paid to the oak was derived from the much greater frequency with which the oak appears to be struck by lightning…supposing that the great sky-god, whom they worshipped and whose awful voice they hear in the roll of thunder, loved the oak above all trees…and often descended into it from the murky cloud in a flash of lightning…." Frazer, The New Golden Bough.
Primitive belief 697 " …kindling of the bonfires was deemed a protection against conflagrations throughout the year." Frazer, The New Golden Bough.
Of Witches, Mistletoe and External Souls.
Primitive belief 608 " Another witching time is the period of twelve days between Christmas…and Epiphany (the sixth of January)." Frazer, The New Golden Bough.
Primitive belief 647 "Thus we infer with some probability that the sacred twelve days or nights at midwinter derive their peculiar character in popular custom and superstition from the circumstance that they were originally an intercalary period inserted annually at the end of a lunar year of three hundred and fifty-four days for the purpose of equating it to a solar year reckoned at three hundred and sixty-six days." Frazer, The New Golden Bough.
Primitive belief 679 "The mistletoe was viewed as the seat of life of the oak, and so long as it was uninjured nothing could kill or even wound the oak…conception of the mistletoe as the seat of life of the oak would naturally be suggested to primitive people by the observation that while the oak is deciduous, the mistletoe which grows on it is evergreen; in winter the light of its green foliage among the bare branches must have been hailed by the worshippers of the tree as a sign that the divine life which had ceased to animate the branches yet survived in the mistletoe, as the heart of a sleeper still beats when his body is motionless." Frazer, The New Golden Bough.
Primitive belief 681 "External soul: In a tale told by the Saxons of Transylvania it is said that a young man shot at a witch again and again…bullets went clean through her but did her no harm, and she only laughed and mocked at him: 'Silly earthworm,' she cried, 'shoot as much as you like…does me no harm…know that my life resides not in me but far, far away; in a mountain is a pond, on the pond swims a duck, in the duck is an egg, in the egg burns a light, that light is my life; if you could put out that light, my life would be at an end…can never, never be.' ” Frazer, The New Golden Bough.
Primitive belief 683 "The…Indians of British Columbia tell of an ogress who could not be killed because her life was in a hemlock branch." Frazer, The New Golden Bough.
Primitive belief 594 "Animals are often employed as a vehicle for carrying away or transferring the evil." Frazer, The New Golden Bough.
Primitive belief 598 "But perhaps the thing most commonly employed in
Primitive belief 601 "Sometimes, instead of chasing the demon of disease from their homes, savages prefer to leave him in peaceable possession, while they themselves take to flight and attempt to prevent him from following in their tracks." Frazer, The New Golden Bough.
Primitive belief 601 "When the Indians of New Mexico were decimated by smallpox or other infectious diseases, they used to shift their quarters every day, retreating into the most sequestered parts of the mountains and choosing the thorniest thickets they could find, in the hope that the small pox would be too afraid of scratching himself on the thorns to follow them." Frazer, The New Golden Bough.
Primitive belief 603 "When the festivities were over, all the people gathered together and expelled the spirits from the village by shouting, beating the posts of the houses, and overturning everything under which a wily spirit might be supposed to lurk." Frazer, The New Golden Bough.
Primitive belief 549 …the tiger is another of those dangerous beasts whom the savage prefers to leave alone, lest by killing one of the species he should excite the hostility of the rest. Frazer, The New Golden Bough.
Primitive belief 550 "…the Seminole Indians spared the rattlesnake because they feared that the soul of the dead rattlesnake would incite its kinfolk to take vengeance." Frazer, The New Golden Bough.
Primitive belief 553 "Cherokee hunters ask pardon of the deer they kill; if they fail to do so, they think that the Little Deer, the chief of the deer tribe, who can never die or be wounded, would track the hunter to his home by the blood drops on the ground and would put the spirit of rheumatism into him; sometimes the hunter, on starting home, lights a fire in the trail behind him to prevent the Little Deer from pursuing him." Frazer, The New Golden Bough.
Primitive belief 558 "It has been shown that the sharp line of demarcation which we draw between mankind and the lower animals does not exist for the savage." Frazer, The New Golden Bough.
Primitive belief 588 "…the result is an endless number of very unamiable devices for palming off on someone else the trouble which a man shrinks from bearing himself." Frazer, The New Golden Bough. Scapegoat?
Primitive belief 589 "In Vedic times a younger brother who married before his older brother was thought to have sinned in so doing, but there was a ceremony by which he could purge himself of his sin." Frazer, The New Golden Bough.
Primitive belief 524 "Primitive peoples are usually reluctant to taste the annual first-fruits of any crop, until some ceremony has been performed which makes it safe…a belief that the first-fruits either belong to or actually contain a divinity." Frazer, The New Golden Bough.
Primitive belief 532 "As usual, the corn-spirit is believed to reside in the last sheaf; and to eat a loaf made from the last sheaf is, therefore, to eat the corn-spirit itself." Frazer, The New Golden Bough.
Primitive belief 540 "The savage commonly believes that by eating the flesh of an animal or man he acquires not only the physical, but even the moral and intellectual qualities which were characteristic of that animal or man…." Frazer, The New Golden Bough.
Primitive belief 540 "The Creeks, Cherokee and kindred tribes of North American Indians believe that…he who feeds on venison is…swifter and more sagacious than the man who lives on the flesh of the clumsy bear, or helpless dunghill fowls, the slow-footed tame cattle or the heavy wallowing swine." Frazer, The New Golden Bough.
Primitive belief 541 "The Bushmen will not give their children a jackal’s heart to eat, lest it should make them timid like the jackal; but they give them a leopard’s heart to make them correspondingly brave." Frazer, The New Golden Bough.
