About the Work
Folk Psychology represents Wilhelm Wundt’s ambitious attempt to synthesize his monumental research on the collective mental life of humanity into a single, accessible volume. Where his earlier five-volume Völkerpsychologie had examined the separate domains of language, myth, and custom in exhaustive detail, this later work adopts a different strategy: it studies the phenomena of human cultural development synchronously, seeking to exhibit the common conditions and reciprocal relations that bind together the various expressions of the collective mind. The book thus functions as both a condensation and a completion of Wundt’s life’s work in this field, offering readers a unified vision of how humanity progressed from its earliest mental states to the threshold of civilization.
The volume emerged from Wundt’s conviction, stated in his author’s preface, that the chief purpose of folk psychology investigations must be a synthetic survey. Just as the history of physical organism development aims not merely to understand the genesis of particular organs but primarily their co-operation and functional correlation, so too should any account of the mental development of human communities strive toward an integrated picture. The book’s subtitle, “Outlines of a Psychological History of the Development of Mankind,” signals this ambition clearly. Wundt pursued this synthetic method alongside his more analytic labors, having become convinced during his earlier work that such a procedure was required as a supplement to the detailed examination of individual fields.
The work as translated into English includes a substantial preface by the translator, Edward Leroy Schaub, who situates Wundt’s achievement within the broader reception of German scholarship in the English-speaking world. Schaub notes that Wundt first gained recognition through physiology, but that his later contributions to physiological psychology, logic, ethics, epistemology, and metaphysics secured his eminence. The translator hazards that history’s final verdict may ascribe significance to Wundt’s latest studies in folk psychology comparable to his earlier writings—a prediction that speaks to the importance Wundt himself attached to this dimension of his work.
Context
Wundt’s folk psychology must be understood against the backdrop of his extraordinary career and the intellectual ferment of late-nineteenth and early-twentieth-century German academia. By the time he turned systematically to questions of collective mental life, Wundt had already established himself as one of the most influential figures in the emerging science of psychology. His Leipzig laboratory had become a destination for scholars from across Europe and America, and his publications spanned an astonishing range: physiological psychology, logic, ethics, epistemology, and metaphysics. The translator’s preface acknowledges that many contributors to the field received their stimulus from Wundt’s Leipzig laboratory and classrooms, and that the world’s debt extends beyond Wundt the teacher to Wundt the investigator and writer.
The immediate context for the present volume was Wundt’s monumental Völkerpsychologie, a work of five volumes exceeding three thousand pages that analyzed language, art, mythology, and religion while offering criticisms of rival theories. Its publication had necessitated defensive and supplementary articles, two of which—revised—plus an early article on “The Aim and Methods of Folk Psychology” and an essay on “Pragmatic and Genetic Psychology of Religion,” appeared in 1911 as Probleme der Völkerpsychologie. The present work followed shortly thereafter, representing Wundt’s attempt to present his conclusions in a more compact and accessible form.
The intellectual context was one of intense debate about the proper methods for studying human culture. Wundt’s folk psychology depended fundamentally on his general psychology, specifically his system of physiological psychology. However, he argued that examining the mental processes underlying social experience supplements traditional psychological methods in crucial ways. The Völkerpsychologie stemmed from his conviction that certain mental phenomena resist interpretation by a psychology restricted to individual consciousness. Fundamental to this approach was the assumption of the reality of collective minds—an assumption Wundt presented not as dogmatic but as necessitated by the failure of opposing theories and sustained by its capacity to render intelligible a large body of facts.
The prevailing Anglo-American tendency, Schaub observes, retained the individual consciousness viewpoint even when considering the creations of social groups, often without justifying this procedure. This difference in approach illustrates what Schaub calls the barriers offered by foreign language—not merely linguistic barriers but conceptual ones that made it difficult for English-speaking scholars to appreciate what Wundt was attempting. The translation of Wundt’s work into English was itself part of a broader movement of intellectual exchange, following earlier translations of his Lectures on Human and Animal Psychology, the first volume of his Principles of Physiological Psychology, the briefer Outlines of Psychology, his Introduction to Psychology, and his work on Ethics.
Structure of the Book
The book is organized into four chapters that trace humanity’s development through successive cultural epochs. The first chapter, “Primitive Man,” examines the earliest stage of human mental culture, drawing on evidence from surviving primitive tribes to reconstruct the characteristics of humanity’s original condition. Wundt considers such topics as the nature of primitive language, including gesture-language and the phenomena of language loss and replacement; primitive religion and mythology, particularly beliefs in magic and demons; the origins of art in magical practices; and the intellectual and moral characteristics of primitive peoples.
The second chapter, “The Totemic Age,” represents the largest and most detailed section of the work. Wundt here examines the great transformation that occurred when humanity moved beyond the primitive condition into a stage characterized by totemic social organization. He distinguishes three great cultural stages within totemic culture, from the lowest exemplified by Australian peoples through the intermediate Malayo-Polynesian stage to the highest divisions represented by American and African cultures. The chapter treats tribal organization, the forms and origins of exogamy, the development of marriage institutions from group-marriage through polygamy to monogamy, the transition from maternal to paternal descent, the various developmental forms of totemism, the laws of taboo, soul-beliefs and customs regarding disposal of the dead, the origin of the fetish, amulets and talismans, and the great variety of cults that arose during this period—including those connected with birth, death, initiation into manhood, and the natural phenomena most important to human subsistence.
The third chapter, “The Age of Heroes and Gods,” continues the developmental narrative into the period when totemic organization gave way to new forms of social and religious life. The fourth chapter, “The Development to Humanity,” carries the account forward to the emergence of what Wundt regards as fully human culture. Throughout, Wundt’s method is to examine phenomena synchronously, exhibiting their common conditions and reciprocal relations rather than treating each domain in isolation.
Inside the Book
Translator’s Preface
The preface opens by observing that the modern age’s intense interest in interpreting human experience is both a product and a precondition of scholarly work. Professor Wundt’s influence on philosophical and psychological studies is acknowledged, with many contributors having received their stimulus from his Leipzig laboratory and classrooms. The world’s debt extends beyond Wundt the teacher to Wundt the investigator and writer, whose publications are numerous and wide-ranging. Credit for spreading his influence belongs partly to translators, beginning with the first English translation by Professors Creighton and Titchener of the Lectures on Human and Animal Psychology, followed by the first volume of the Principles of Physiological Psychology, the briefer Outlines of Psychology, the Introduction to Psychology, and the work on Ethics.
Though Wundt first gained recognition through physiology, his later contributions to physiological psychology, logic, ethics, epistemology, and metaphysics secured his eminence. The preface hazards that history’s final verdict may ascribe significance to his latest studies in folk psychology comparable to his earlier writings. The Völkerpsychologie is called monumental—five volumes exceeding three thousand pages analyzing language, art, mythology, and religion, with criticisms of rival theories. Its publication necessitated defensive and supplementary articles; two of these, revised, plus an early article on “The Aim and Methods of Folk Psychology” and an essay on “Pragmatic and Genetic Psychology of Religion,” appeared in 1911 as Probleme der Völkerpsychologie. In 1912 came the Elemente der Völkerpsychologie, here translated.
The translator notes that sketching “Outlines of a Psychological History of the Development of Mankind” incurs indebtedness to specialized sciences. Human beliefs, institutions, art products, labor modes, food-getting, marriage, and warfare—all cultural elements—are essentially mental processes despite natural conditions. No theory violating established psychological principles is acceptable, and the unpsychological character of many ethnological, sociological, and historical hypotheses necessitates this volume’s discussions. Wundt’s folk psychology depends on general psychology, specifically his physiological psychology system, yet examining mental processes underlying social experience supplements traditional psychological methods. Fundamental is the assumption of collective minds’ reality—not dogmatic but necessitated by opposing theories’ failure and sustained by rendering intelligible a large body of facts.
For general readers, the author aims not to discuss philosophical validity of ideas or ethical and religious value of customs, but merely to give a descriptive account of human development. The Elements answers what beliefs and practices actually prevailed at various developmental stages and their psychological explanation—distinct from whether they are justifiable, or whether ideas relate to trans-subjective realities or eternal truth. To the psychologist, all experiences—sacred or profane, true or delusional—are mental phenomena demanding observation, analysis, and reduction to mental laws. Wundt emphasizes his psychological account neither represents nor replaces a philosophy of history; similarly, the work is neither equivalent nor negation of ethics, jurisprudence, theology, epistemology, or metaphysics.
Regarding translation difficulties, President G. Stanley Hall suggested that German’s long, involved sentences may render language correspondent with actual thought—a fact causing translators despair. Schaub endeavored to reproduce meaning and spirit faithfully while taking liberties to clarify passages or avoid offending English. No absolutely satisfactory equivalents existed for some German terms. “Folk psychology” itself may not commend itself, but use seemed inescapable since the author’s Introduction rejects Sozialpsychologie and Gemeinschaftspsychologie for Völkerpsychologie. Bildende Kunst became “formative art” as preferable to “plastic,” “shaping,” or “manual” art. Given Wundt’s precise meanings for Märchen, Sage, Legende, and Mythus, the translation frequently uses “saga” and the necessary term “märchen.”
Author’s Preface
Wundt states that this volume pursues a different method from his more extensive treatment. Instead of successively considering the main forms of folk-mind expression, it studies phenomena synchronously, exhibiting common conditions and reciprocal relations. While engaged on his earlier task, he became convinced such a procedure was required as a supplement; he believed folk psychology investigations’ chief purpose must be a synthetic survey. The first prerequisite is separate examination of each field. The history of physical organism development aims to understand not just particular organs’ genesis but primarily their co-operation and functional correlation. An analogous purpose should underlie accounts of mental development of human communities and mankind itself. Beyond relations of separate processes, one faces whether mental development is subject to law—suggested by the subtitle.
Language Loss Among Primitive Tribes
The passage addresses why primitive tribes appear to lose their original language. The explanation offered is the struggle for existence applied to mental phenomena: the stronger race supplanted the weaker race’s language, which was probably meagre, with a more highly developed one. This seems to contradict the known isolation practices of primitive tribes. The text describes secret barter, where primitive man deposits captured game at night at a customary place, returning later to collect iron implements, weapons, clothing material, and adornments left by more civilized neighbors. Participants never see or speak to each other.
Kern, a Dutch scholar, studied the development of Malayan idioms. The Negritos of the Philippines presented a remarkable exception to the rule that primitive tribes adopt their civilized neighbors’ language. Their neighbors belong to the much-migrating Malayans. Comparing Negrito word-formations with neighboring Malayan vocabulary shows entirely different words. However, Kern traced these words against older stages of Malayan language and found counterparts invariably. The Negritos remained untouched by present-day Malays but derived their language from a much earlier Malayan influx. Evidence shows Malayan tribes undertook migrations at widely separated intervals, with at least two such migrations to the Philippines occurring at different times. The original Malayan dialect, now extinct, was assimilated by Negrito peoples who occupied the territory first.
If language was appropriated in prehistoric times but impossible under present conditions, former interrelations must have differed. Modern travellers describe primitive peoples’ fear and hatred of civilized neighbors, matched by the latter’s contempt. Only fear of the poisoned arrow restrains extermination. However, travellers admitted into primitive tribes’ lives in Malacca and Ceylon find good nature and readiness to assist once trust is gained. Seclusion was thus not original but grew from wars of extermination. Before this, barter lacked secrecy. Early intercourse led to language competition where the poorer language succumbed, though the primitive language may have reciprocally influenced the advanced one—the superior minority determines main vocabulary and grammatical form, while the majority influences pronunciation. The Bushmen’s language is essentially a Hottentot dialect with primitive thought traits; the Hottentots derived their clacking sounds from the Bushmen, who also gave these sounds to Bantu peoples’ languages.
Gesture-Language
Despite lost primitive languages, primitive forms of thought persist in language after external culture advances. The Soudan languages of Africa offer a typical field, with the Ewe language of Togo analyzed in a grammar by D. Westermann, a German missionary. Gesture-language is compared—formed anew before our eyes, using expressive, imitative, pantomimic movements rather than sounds. The least changeable form is deaf-mute communication. North American Indian tribes and Australians use gestures; Neapolitans use signs as secret language, excluded from consideration. Gestures for concrete objects are similar across cultures—European deaf-mute signs appear among Dakota Indians.
Gesture-language arises not from intellectual reflection or conscious purpose but from emotion and involuntary expressive movements.
The Totemic Age: Cultural Stages and Tribal Organization
The totemic period marks a profound transformation in human society, introducing forces entirely absent among primitive tribes. Chief among these is the reciprocal influence between peoples who occupy similar cultural planes yet possess qualitative differences. Migrations and the tribal warfare that accompanied them also emerge as decisive factors in this age. Disregarding qualitative differences, the author distinguishes three great cultural stages of totemic culture, with the third falling into two markedly different divisions. Isolated remnants of peoples are ignored in favor of compact cultural groups. The lowest stage is exemplified by the Australian region and some Melanesian peoples. The second level comprises the Malayo-Polynesian culture, connected to the lowest by transitional steps in Melanesian and Micronesian regions. The third stage falls into two divisions—the American and the African—including only those “natural peoples” still belonging to totemic culture in their social and religious development.
Australian Culture and Its Weapons
Despite its highly complex tribal organization, Australian culture occupies the lowest plane. The Australian was regarded as the typical primitive man. He is a gatherer and hunter with no agriculture or cattle-raising. The dog is rarely used for hunting, serving only as a companion. The woman uses a digging-stick for roots and bulbs, while man’s life centers on the chase. There is no systematic care for the future; food is prepared in ashes or between hot stones, and fire is produced by friction. A crucial difference from primitive man is the change of weapon. Primitive man has only a long-distance weapon—the bow and arrow—indicating relatively peaceful conditions. The Australian, however, lacks bow and arrow except in the far north, where it entered from Melanesia. His weapons are the wooden missile (boomerang) and the javelin, hurled from a grooved board with a peg for aim. He also possesses close-range weapons: the long spear, club, and the shield—specifically intended for battle, reflecting the reality of tribal warfare.
The Malayo-Polynesian Stage
This stage reverses the Australian relation: fairly developed culture exists alongside tribal organization in dissolution or transition, resulting from extensive racial fusion. Australia itself saw immigration from New Guinea, affecting northern Central Australia, while the extinct Tasmanian tribe was probably a remnant of the original population. The Negritos and Papuans of Melanesia possess near-primitive culture with pretotemic characteristics, while Papuans of New Guinea and Torres Straits show totemic traits. The Papuans first change the digging-stick into a hoe; the man makes furrows, the woman scatters seeds—a first provision for the future. The Micronesian population is intermediate between Melanesians and Polynesians. The Malays, originating probably in Central Asia, spread to Indo-China, Sumatra, Borneo, Malacca, and Oceania, mixing with natives to create the Polynesians. They perfected boat-building, enabling voyages from the Philippines to New Zealand. Maori legends show they migrated first and remained freest from mixture. Celestial mythology sprang up in Polynesia from navigation by the stars, breaking up tribal organization and creating new rulership. Totemism largely disappeared; taboo developed richly, transferred from the totem animal to sacred places, objects, names, and persons of chiefs and priests.
American and African Stages
American culture is a remarkable offshoot of totemic beliefs. The Iroquois tribal organization resembles the Australian, with animal-named clans and dual division, but the animal ancestor recedes. The American Indian does not abstain from totem animal flesh but observes expiation ceremonies; the buffalo is called “elder brother.” Agriculture exists in hoe-culture form with common clan labor and vegetation festivals. In South and Central America, cultural levels range from Brazilian forest Indians to New Mexican tribes influenced by Mexico, with celestial mythology and agricultural ceremonies. Art develops through ceramics and masks. African culture shows Hamitic and Semitic influences from the north, plus Papuan-Negritic elements via Madagascar to the Gold Coast. The Bantus are likely mixed from Soudan negroes and Hamites. Hamites introduced cattle-raising; cattle are prized but not used for agriculture, remaining between totem and breeding animal. Despotic government, polygyny, and slavery arose. Animism, fetishism, and ancestor worship replaced totemism. The totem animal in Australia is a cult object; in America it has become a mere coat of arms. Australian clan names differ from totem names, while American clans all have animal names. The author argues Australian totem groups are cult associations within clans, not clans themselves. The totem pole is an enlarged coat of arms. Dual division arises from tribes separating as numbers increase or food fails, not from totemism itself.
Forms of Exogamy
The passage distinguishes forms of exogamy. In the first, a man of Class A may marry any woman from subgroups of Class B, and conversely; he is barred only from his own class. This unrestricted form occurs only where tribal divisions number no more than two. Classes A and B represent the two tribal divisions; subgroups are totem groups, described as cult groups. Some Australian Dieri totem groups intermarry only with one particular group of the other division, showing transitions to limited exogamy. In the second form, a member of Class A may marry only from a specific subgroup of B. Both forms follow the same law of child affiliation. With maternal descent—dominant and probably original—children remain in the mother’s clan and totem; with paternal descent, they pass to the father’s. Paternal descent connects with external influences, such as the same totem groups appearing in both exogamous clans. Among American Indians, totem group and clan coincide; among the Iroquois with maternal descent, children count to the mother’s clan. In the third form, limited exogamy with indirect descent, children count to the parent determining descent but enter a different totem group. Form I prevents brother-sister marriage and son-mother marriage under maternal descent, while father-daughter marriage is permitted. Form II adds restrictions narrowing the marriage circle, representing a reapproach to endogamy, not stricter exogamy. Form III further prohibits father-daughter marriage and cousin marriage, exceeding restrictions in Germany; this may become galling where women are scarce. Some Australian tribes circumvent this by declaring a man the son of his paternal grandfather, transferring him to the father’s totem—reminiscent of Roman legal fictions.
Theories of Exogamy’s Origin
All forms prohibit brother-sister and son-mother marriage. Aversion to son-mother union exceeds that to father-daughter, as in the Oedipus tragedy. Peruvian Incas required kings to marry sisters; Ptolemaic rulers practiced sibling marriage; some negro states still do. Such customs likely result from subjugation by foreign rulers. Greeks permitted half-sibling marriage. The author argues aversion to relative-marriage is effect, not source, of exogamous institutions. Morgan’s Ancient Society and Frazer’s Totemism and Exogamy hold rationalistic views—that wise elders instituted exogamy to avoid relative-marriage evils. The author rejects this: tribes lacking number-names beyond four couldn’t foresee such results; effects are recognized only after occurring. Andrew Lang’s biological hypothesis fails to explain application to older members. MacLennan derives exogamy from war and marriage by capture, but the author objects that captured women are from strange tribes, while totemic exogamy occurs between same-tribe clans; captured women are secondary wives, not chief wives.
The Totemic Age: Soul-Beliefs and Disposal of the Dead
With the emergence of ideas about an embodied soul, totemism flows directly into soul-belief. Under totemism’s lingering influence, soul-ideas attach to a wider range of animals—not just the earliest soul-animals like the bird, snake, and lizard, but also animals of the chase. As interest in vegetable food production grows, similar ideas fasten onto plants, whose sprouting and growth suggest soul-powers. Plant totems emphasize a magical character, giving rise to ceremonies intended to magically increase the totem. Inanimate objects likewise become associated with magical ideas, mediating the transition from totem to fetish. As the totem animal becomes an ancestral animal and human forefathers gain prominence, the animal ancestor transforms into the human ancestor. Fetishism and ancestor worship are thus logical developments of totemism, not mutually exclusive alternatives.
Primitive man flees from corpses, dominated by fear of escaping demons, leaving the dead where they died. Totemic culture, accustomed to warfare, gradually loses this fear. The corpse is no longer abandoned at the place of death but stretched on a mound of earth—the “platform” method—forming a transition to burial. Decomposition products are interpreted as the departure of the soul; relatives partake of the liquid products of decomposition, much as they might drink the blood of the slain to appropriate their power. The first worm of decomposition is held to be the bearer of the soul. Among North American Indian tribes, the corpse is buried with a hole pierced in the mound to allow the psyche exit or return. Egyptian mummification was anticipated by the exsiccation of corpses in open air. Another usage, particularly in America, involved exhumation to preserve the skull or bones as vehicles of the soul. Head-hunting may relate to these ideas, though skulls and scalps became trophies.
Interment finally becomes adopted in many places—demons of the dead are to be banished into the earth. Customs include stamping down earth upon graves, weighting burial-mounds with stones, and speedy burial (ordained even in Israelitic law), all grounded in fear of demons. Binding the arms and legs of corpses points to the belief that binding constrains the demon—the origin of “crouching graves” found among Bushmen, Australian, and Melanesian tribes. Later the binding was omitted though the position retained. Interment alone survived among the many modes; cremation was largely unknown to the totemic age. Cremation was chiefly practised among Indo-Germanic peoples, while Semites adhered to interment. Cremation in ancient Babylonia probably represents a heritage from Sumerian culture. In Greece, interment existed as late as Mycenian culture; by Homer’s time cremation prevailed. Prehistoric remains show no cremation before the beginning of the bronze age. In India, two motives suggest themselves: purification by fire (the corpse regarded as taboo, requiring lustration), and the soul departing in smoke ascending to heaven. Semitic peoples adopted celestial migration of the soul only late, probably under Indo-Aryan influences, but continued burial, believing resurrection would occur at the end of time. Christianity took over these ideas from Judaism.
The Origin of the Fetish
A fetish is any natural or artificial inanimate object to which demoniacal powers are ascribed. In totemic clan cults, magic stones and wood are reverenced as instruments fashioned by magic beings of the distant past. The universal characteristic of the fetish is that it harbours a soul-like, demoniacal being. African fetishism, apparently independent of totemism, has given a characteristic stamp to the conception. Soudan negroes’ fetishes are artificially fashioned wooden objects with grimacing human faces; Australian churingas are natural objects of striking form. The kidney, blood, and hair (as in the Biblical legend of Samson) are held to possess magical powers. The fetish is solely the product of the mental activities of the fetish believer, completely assuming the character of a demon. Inanimate objects may embody the magical beliefs of whole generations. The fetish represents the transition from soul-beliefs to pure magic-beliefs. A fetish cult does not include reverence and thanksgiving as do soul, totem, and deity cults.
The fetish prepared the way for divine images. Among Greeks, the earliest divine images were wooden posts with suggestions of human faces. Divine images may degenerate into fetishes, as may religious cults. Psychologists of religion hold conflicting views: some assert fetishism is the lowest and earliest form of religion; others (the degeneration theory, championed particularly by Max Müller) hold fetishism represents decay of religious cults. The degeneration theory collapses when the entire course of development is considered—fetishistic ideas go far back into soul and demon beliefs. The churingal ceremony of Australians falls entirely within totemism’s development. The most primitive fetish is a natural object accidentally discovered, selected for its unusual form. Astonishment causes the belief that a soul-like being resides in the object. The theory that fetishism is a primitive mythology or the starting-point of all mythology is also untenable. Fetishism is a secondary phenomenon rooted in totemic ideas, a product of the totemic age.
Amulet and Talisman
The amulet and talisman are incidental products of fetishistic ideas. They are purely magical objects—means by which the possessor produces magical effects. The fetish is a magic-working subject, an independent demoniacal being. The amulet always serves protection, worn visibly about the neck. Originally the cord itself may have been the amulet. Australians wear dried kidneys suspended from such cords.
The Cults of the Totemic Age
The primitive stage of human development possessed no real cults, but the totemic age developed a great variety of them. Primitive magical customs included efforts to expel sickness demons and ceremonial dances, such as the Veddah dance about an arrow, which imitated animal movements to ensure a successful hunt. The cults of the totemic age are divided into two great classes: those relating to the most significant events of human life (birth, death, and initiation into manhood), and those concerned with natural phenomena most important to man (food supply, plant growth, and animal increase). Both classes spring from the emotions of hope, desire, and fear.
Regarding life events, no ceremony is connected with birth itself. However, the idea prevails that a child becomes capable of life only if parents endow it with life a second time. Many Polynesian tribes allow parents to put a new-born infant to death until it has lived several hours. Among early Germans, Romans, and Greeks, a child’s life was secure only after the father lifted it from the earth in a symbolic act. The act of laying the child on the ground symbolized that it owes its existence to mother earth. This recognition is bound up with the child’s unconditional obedience to its parents.
More cult acts attend death. Almost all cults of the dead originate in the totemic age. They appear when fear of the dead demon vanishes and reverence grows. Clansmen accompany the corpse to burial; death lamentations assume ceremonial forms with a special class of female mourners. The main feature becomes sacrifice to the dead. Usual articles are placed in the grave, and animals are slaughtered and buried with the corpse. Among Soudan and Bantu peoples, slaves and women follow a deceased chieftain into the grave. These sacrifices are intended for the deceased, to help him in his further life or prevent his return as a demon.
The Totemic and the Political Order
The contrast between totemic and political society is most visible in their organizing numbers, which reveal their inner motives. Totemic tribal organization follows simple, natural motives: territorial expansion leads to separation into groups, producing a customary division into two, four, and eight parts. Political society, by contrast, shows continuous fluctuation between contradictory phenomena and the frequent appearance of new motives.
The Duodecimal System
Early, partly legendary tradition describes an organization based on the number twelve, apparently emanating from the Babylonians. They first attempted to govern human affairs according to celestial phenomena, observed with astronomical instruments rather than the unsystematic mythological manner of Polynesian and American natural peoples. Babylonian science remained mythologically founded, but combined mythological features with an all-embracing divine rule of law. Observations of the starry sky became scientific and exact. The union of these ideas led with inner necessity to accepting twelve as a norm, applied to human relations from a belief in divine origin.
The Babylonian calendar first emphasized bringing solar and lunar courses into ordered numerical relation. Taking the sun’s position at the vernal equinox as a departure point, the Babylonians found twelve lunar revolutions approximately equivalent to one solar revolution. Though only approximately true, this appeared sufficiently exact as a divine world-order law. The year was divided into twelve months; the moon’s four phases—first quarter, full moon, last quarter, new moon—an observation predating astronomical calculation, divided each month into four parts. With approximately twenty-eight days per month, a seven-day week resulted. Seven was not derived from seven planets; conversely, the planet count was arbitrarily fixed at seven after twelve and seven became sacred through their relation to sun and moon movements.
Survivals of Number Twelve
The sky furnished a revelation of laws governing terrestrial life. Number twelve became the basis for organizing human society, though only meagre survivals remain: the legendary twelve tribes of pre-exilic Israel, twelve Greek gods, and twelve Apostles. Historical records show the Athenian population originally comprised twelve divisions—four clans, each composed of three phratries. Greek colonial territory in Asia Minor supposedly included twelve Ionic cities. The Amphictyonic League protecting the Delphic oracle consisted of twelve amphictyons, connected with time division: each tribal group guarded the shrine one month yearly.
The Decimal System
Number twelve lost influence, replaced by the decimal system dominating our entire culture. Even before Columbus, decimal organization appeared in certain civilized Western regions where duodecimal was unknown. Independent origin is likely since primitive man used ten fingers for counting despite lacking words for numbers beyond three or four. However natural this counting method, its application to group organization represents deliberate plan—more deliberately adopted than the duodecimal system. Totemic dual division resembles a natural process running its course apart from conscious intention. Decimal organization can only be interpreted as an intentional act. History associates it with individual lawgivers: Clisthenes of Athens and Servius Tullius of Rome. Though conditions were prepared by society progressing beyond the totemic stage, systematic introduction and decimal subdivisions require legislative acts from personal will. The decimal system prevailed over duodecimal in social application; ten fingers supplanted the firmament-suggested system everywhere except celestial phenomena and time reckoning. Ten was never sacred as twelve was—it has purely terrestrial, human origin. In the field of practical necessities of life, man was victorious over the gods. Decimal organization may reflect the triumph of the secular State over theocracy.
Decimal Influence on Time
Decimal influence on time division coincides with secularization epochs. Clisthenes in the sixth century B.C. attempted dividing the year into ten months instead of twelve—the attempt miscarried, as did the French Republic’s analogous ten-day week. Objective time measurements derive from the heavens, not from man. Terrestrial space measurement and population grouping depend on ourselves, naturally conforming to human characteristics.
Single Origin Question
Since ten was deliberately adopted, some believed it emanated from a single source. Clisthenes’ and Servius Tullius’ organizations falling within approximately the same century suggested borrowing. But the decimal system’s extensive distribution militates against this. The Book of Exodus speaks of only ten tribes, not the legendary twelve. Groups of one hundred and one thousand appear among Germanic peoples and Peruvian Incas. Among Incas, distinct traces of earlier totemic tribal organization existed; Inca kings reared decimal organization upon this foundation—groups of ten, one hundred, one thousand, even ten thousand. Some systems may have been introduced externally or acquired through imitation, but single-region origin is improbable.
Two Motives for Decimal Grouping
This new grouping depends on two motives becoming operative when political society arose. The first motive is subjective: increased facility in decimal counting permits conceiving groups of one hundred, one thousand, rarely one hundred thousand. The second motive is objective: external life conditions demand more comprehensive, highly organized divisions than natural tribal organization provided.
Mark-Community
The decimal system proves applicable in two directions. First: distribution of landed property. With plough-culture, land became personal property, making individual union necessary for protection—thus arose the mark-community, centred on territory not ploughed but reserved for common use: pasture and woodland. The mark-community resulted inevitably from new cultivation methods combining personal property with common ownership. Community size was determined by the proportion between these ownership forms—common property amount must correspond with the number of individual owners sharing its use. This proportion required experience and reflection; once ascertained, it was naturally adopted for more extensive groups. Decimal organization into tens and hundreds proved convenient from the standpoint of objective conditions.
Military Organization
Mark-communities might have permitted size diversity, but military organization created uniformity. Military divisions necessarily coincided with mark-communities while possessing an inherent tendency toward regular size.
The Age of Heroes and Gods
The differing development in Greece and Rome compared to Oriental realms is attributed largely to their early division into independent city-states. This reflects an Indo-Germanic character—an ancient disposition toward individual personality assertion, contrasting with the Semitic race’s inclination toward traditional norms. While Greek city cults remained practically identical, the cities became distinct political communities. The Delphic priesthood, expressing this cult unity, was reduced to an advisory council. Political struggles within narrow city circles deprived priesthoods of authority except over cult matters. Rome’s union of political order and religious cult was firmer because one city gained supremacy over other Italian cities. However, political expansion brought adoption of previously foreign cults, creating competing priest-associations—all servants of political power, none gaining leadership. City and State were closely bound in political society’s development—no city existed apart from a State, and doubtfully any State without a city as political center. This correlation held only during the State’s genesis. Secondary city foundations occurred when victorious States established cities in conquered provinces or transformed existing cities into political centers—frequent during Alexander’s world-dominion and the Roman Empire, later with Goths and Lombards occupying Italian cities. Medieval German cities reversed the original process: they began as market centers, gradually acquiring political privileges—the castle came first, market followed in original foundations; medieval cities began as markets, completed with castle-building. Medieval leadership vested not in cities but in rulers on isolated estates.
The Beginnings of the Legal System
The legal system possesses no independent content but provides social sanction to norms of action, protecting them against violation through external force. It does not create social order but singles out regulations already arising in social life, mostly maintained by custom. The family, classes, vocations, villages, cities, property relations, intercourse, and contract all existed before becoming constituents of the legal system.
The Apocalyptic Vision and the Beyond
The discussion turns to world-destruction myths, which appear in later Israelitic apocalyptic writings and the Apocalypse of John, showing influence from earlier sources. At this point, myth proper is left behind, for myth concerns past events or the immediate present, never the future. Its scene is the existing world, reaching its limit in cosmogonies that presuppose chaos before creation. The idea of creation out of nothing arises from religious needs, not mythology. Apocalyptic destruction myths combine cosmogonic elements with märchen and sagas but express a religious longing for a world beyond. They are products of religious reflection, aiming to strengthen the righteous and terrify adversaries. The Book of Daniel’s sea monster with iron teeth and ten horns exemplifies laborious invention lacking original mythological imagination.
Ideas of a beyond require an existing world-conception. Earlier mythological creations lack defined notions of a beyond, and cosmogonic myth and beyond-ideas mutually reinforce each other. Among primitive peoples, fear of the dead demon produces brief afterlife beliefs, while among Soudan peoples, Melanesian tribes, and South American forest Indians, prominent men enjoy longer afterlives. Disembodied souls remain in this world; no true yonder-world exists yet. Celestial märchen differ—they are adventure tales where travellers return home. The spirit-village concept, prevalent among American Indians, locates a village in secret earth places where spirits continue earthly existence. Rivers with impassable bridges, dense forests, and mountain caves render these villages inaccessible, while remote islands as spirit-dwellings appear in Polynesia and Homer.
Forms of the Beyond
Nether world myths form a second, later type—inaccessible except to privileged heroes like Hercules, Odysseus, and Æneas. Heaven myths constitute a third form, where heaven becomes the abode of the blessed and the underworld holds the majority. Underworld ideas are most common and permanent, partly from burial customs, though Homeric peoples burned corpses yet had clear underworld conceptions. Fear of death creates the ghostly, terrible region—cold and dark like the earth’s interior, containing subterranean animals such as toads and monstrous snakes. The Furies, Keres, and Harpies originated as underworld monsters, later transferred to the upper world through conscience. The underworld included brighter regions for pure souls; Walhalla was originally in the underworld, possibly transferred to heaven only with Christianity. Female beings predominate in nether world myths—the Norse Hel, Babylonian Ereksigal, and Greek Persephone. The setting sun influenced locating the dead in the west, though this was subordinate. Souls are visible but shadow-like, eluding grasp. Homer’s Hades shows Sisyphus and Tantalus, not yet retribution ideas, possibly later accretions in the Odyssey.
Cult Associations and Retribution
Religious cult gradually universalized distinctions in destinies. Cult associations arose from totemic groups, transcending limitations in deity cults—Greek mysteries and those of Mithra, Attis, Osiris, and Serapis. Elysium became an established region of the underworld for meritorious cult-associates, as Virgil’s sixth book of the Æneid portrays. Judgeship devolved upon Rhadamanthus. Subregions developed with gradations of terror and torment; punishment gradations preceded those of blessedness, for language is richer in suffering words than joy words. The righteous ascend to heaven while the godless descend. Among ancient Iranians, the cosmic war became a struggle between Ormuzd and Ahriman, a single hostile divine pair. Iranians neither buried nor burned dead but exposed them on high scaffolds for birds, facilitating soul ascent. The Avesta states exposure destroys the corporeal soul, freeing the spiritual soul to ascend, an antithesis appearing in Paul’s Epistles as flesh sinfulness.
Apocalyptic Imagery and Purgatory
The Book of Enoch presents apocalyptic accounts dividing heaven into graded regions, with numbers three and seven sacred. Paul’s Second Epistle mentions being caught up to the “third heaven.” Purgatory, apparently of Iranian origin, purifies sinners through transitory punishments and lustrations, especially fire. Dante’s “Divine Comedy” portrays these developed conceptions, with guides conducting visitors through the realms.
Distinguishing Religious from Magical Cult
The passage examines what distinguishes religious cult from mere mythological or magical practice. Not every cult relating to things beyond immediate reality is religious—winding a cord about a tree might be part of a magic cult, but this cannot be identified with deity cult. While every cult is originally magical, important differences exist regarding the objects upon which magic is exercised. In deity cult, cult activity partly assumes new forms and primarily gains new content. Prior to belief in gods, numerous demon cults existed and passed down into deity cult. A deity conception has religious significance if it possesses objectively an ideal worth and a supersensuous character, and if it satisfies man’s subjective need for an ideal purpose of life. Gods are always pictured in human form because man can only conceive his own characteristics magnified into highest values. Where deity does not reach this stage, the cult is prereligious or subreligious. Myth and cult date back to human beginnings but acquire religious character only at a specific time—earlier for cult than for myth. Gods are created by religious emotion expressed in cult; myth gives them character as ideal personalities patterned after heroic figures. The cults of Babylonians, Egyptians, Israelites, Greeks, Romans, Aryans, and Germans were religious in the full sense, as were those of the cultural peoples of the Andes, Mexicans, and Peruvians, though cruder.
Primacy of Cult over Myth
In individual soul-life, action with its feelings and emotions has primacy over ideation, accounting for deity cult’s superior importance over deity myth. Action influences ideas, changing and strengthening them, arousing new emotions stimulating further activities. The elevation of gods into ideal beings is largely due to religious cult. Intellectualism fails in psychology of religion—the intellectualist cannot explain even the fact of cult. While magic and demon cults may be called prereligious, there is no religion without cult. Cult moulds rather than merely expresses religious emotions; it is a source of religious ideas. Through prayer and sacrifice, man enjoys a foretaste of desire satisfaction, enhancing desires and mythological conceptions. In cult, the individual feels one with the object of worship—shown in primitive vegetation festivals where orgiastic dance participants regard themselves as one with vegetation spirits. These festivals prevail among North and Central American tribes. The original impelling motive was securing crop prosperity, man’s chief food-supply at this civilization threshold. Subsidiary cult motives gradually elevated vegetation cults to higher planes; concern for spiritual welfare supplanted materialistic purposes. Greek mystery cults were influenced by Egyptian, Babylonian, and western Asian cults.
The Beyond and Allegorical Interpretation
Vegetation cults came to combine with soul cults. Seasonal changes naturally associate with life and death ideas. The Eleusinian legend exemplifies this: Persephone, daughter of Demeter, is stolen by Pluto, ruler of the underworld. Demeter wanders seeking her child, yet protects vegetation. Zeus compacts with Pluto: Persephone remains in underworld half the year, returns to her mother the other half. Such allegorical character was probably acquired through poetical elaboration. Similar legends range from Babylonian Ishtar’s descent into hell to legends of Dionysius and Osiris. In transmitted form, they are products of priestly invention with conscious symbolism.
The Idea of World Empire and Its Motivations
The passage argues that the idea of establishing a world empire cannot be explained solely by a constant striving to augment means of power. Such an endeavor prevails in every State that has attained independent development of power. At present, only occasional Utopian dreamers adhere to creating an all-inclusive world State, and the modern ideal is antithetical to earlier times—involving not the extension of a single State but the dissolution of existing States and the establishment of a society of universal peace among nations.
Evidence Against Power as the Sole Motive
The author presents evidence that the impulse to increase power was not the only or decisive factor: while a world empire never existed except as an idea, the age dominated by this idea regarded it as reality. Other motives of an ideal nature must have bridged the chasm between idea and reality. Though limited knowledge of the real world might explain a Babylonian king calling himself ruler over the four quarters of the earth, this does not account for regarding universality as absolute rather than relative. Required was the idea of the unity of the world, similar to the idea of absolute unity of world-order centered on earth that dominated ancient astronomy. Both ideas sprang from the same mythological world-view expressing a divine State projected from earth into heaven.
Mythological Connection
Gods with a supreme deity at their head belonged to the rulership of the world. When changes in the central city resulted in new supreme deities, earthly conditions were mirrored in the divine kingdom—other gods became vassals. This picture was reflected back to earth, giving deeper significance to the ruler being himself a god or of divine lineage. Because of mythological connections, world empires were transitory; their zenith coincided with deity myth at its height. In an age of waning deity belief, only secular culture elements and adaptability enabled world empire realization, as the Roman mind acquired. Diocletian, the last powerful representative, invested the emperor with Oriental attributes and claimed worship due an earthly Jupiter.
World Culture
World empire belongs essentially to the age of deity cults, preparing for humanity’s idea rather than realizing it. With world empire disintegration come phenomena of world culture. Material aspects—world intercourse, multiplication of needs, exchange of means—appear first; spiritual phases appear as empire approaches its end. World culture is an after-effect of world empire rather than a direct result, due to one-sided striving for power and despotic pressure on members, plus migrations following dissolution. Alexander’s empire led to a great epoch of world culture, conditioned by its disintegration under the Diadochi. The Graeco-Roman kingdom’s downfall resulted in cultural movement from shifting peoples and Christianity’s spread.
Monumental Art and Technique
World empires were directly creative in the technique of mass and monumental art. Roman streets, viaducts, and edifices aroused wonder. Egyptian, Babylonian-Assyrian, and Persian constructions lacked Greek artistic execution but matched Roman immensity. Canals and roadways served agriculture and commerce. World empire extended intercourse, contributing to money’s institution and writing’s development for communicating decrees and recording deeds and laws.
Speech and Writing
In individual culture, speech precedes writing; in world culture, writing paved the way for verbal intercourse. Speech is a natural product of direct intercourse; writing is an invention disseminating ideas beyond spatial and temporal bounds. Writing is the first step from folk to world culture. Cuneiform writing history is instructive: Semitic people lost the Sumerian language but preserved written texts as sacred; cuneiform penetrated Asia Minor expressing new idioms. Tel-el-Amarna letters (fifteenth century BC) show correspondence between Babylonian kings and Egyptian Pharaohs, demonstrating commerce causing speech to follow writing.
Greek as World Language
Greek became a world language under the Diadochi. Alexander’s empire was too brief; it witnessed only beginnings. No age since attained such widespread uniform culture. Greek colonies retaining language and customs was preparatory; individual travellers followed—Pythagoras, Xenophanes, Herodotus, Xenophon, Democritus, and Plato travelled Mediterranean lands. Alexander’s Indian expedition culminated journeys to remote regions. In the Hellenistic period, warrior, tradesman, and physician shared the wandering impulse with scholar and artist. In the tribal age, tribes travelled fleeing want; in the heroic age, peoples left homes crowded by enemies or seeking power; in this age, individuals sought vocational opportunities or world experience. Alexandria, Pergamus, Athens, and Rome attracted all races—Greek, Egyptian, Syrian, Persian, Italic. Greek was the common language; Alexandria displaced Athens as science’s chief seat, fostered by non-Greeks, particularly Orientals.
Two Characteristics of World Culture
The first characteristic is a growing indifference to the State. The second is a high appreciation of individual personality. Emphasis shifts from the State to universally human culture and from political interests to individual personality and universal spiritual development. World culture is both cosmopolitan and individualistic. Preparatory stages existed in Greek culture: Sophists as wandering teachers proclaimed personal freedom and the dependence of social institutions on individual will. Epicurean and Stoic schools gave classic expression to humanity’s idea. In natural science (Alexandrian period), interest in universal laws coexisted with detailed observations. History fluctuated between abstract schematization (Aristotelian classification) and biographical accounts. Philology combined grammatical disputes of Peripatetic and Stoic schools with minute literary studies—”Alexandrianism.” Art manifested coincidentia oppositorum: colossal edifices alongside individualizing portraiture; pompous ruler drama alongside civic intrigue and mime.
Disintegration and the Renaissance
Hellenistic world culture disintegrated into Greek and Roman divisions. The West preserved remnants of Latin civilization, the East fragments of Greek. Western clergy developed scholars unsympathetic to national culture; Eastern barbarian nations benumbed culture. World religion subjected political powers to authority, out of which the modern world eventually emerged, carrying forward the individualistic and cosmopolitan seeds sown by world culture into the Renaissance and beyond.
Main Arguments
The central argument of Folk Psychology is that human mental development is subject to law—a claim signaled by the book’s subtitle and defended through the entire course of its investigation. Wundt seeks to demonstrate that the collective mental life of humanity, as manifested in language, mythology, custom, and social organization, follows discernible patterns of development that can be studied scientifically. This argument positions folk psychology as a supplement to individual psychology, extending the methods and principles of the latter to phenomena that resist interpretation when psychology is restricted to the individual consciousness.
A second major argument concerns the inadequacy of rationalistic explanations of cultural phenomena. Throughout the work, Wundt repeatedly rejects theories that attribute complex institutions to deliberate human foresight or conscious design. His treatment of exogamy exemplifies this pattern: he dismisses the view of Morgan and Frazer that wise elders instituted exogamy to avoid the evils of relative-marriage, noting that tribes lacking number-names beyond four could not possibly foresee such results. Similarly, he rejects Andrew Lang’s biological hypothesis and MacLennan’s derivation of exogamy from marriage by capture. The forms of exogamy, Wundt argues, were effects rather than causes—products of developmental processes that operated without conscious direction.
A third argument concerns the relationship between the simple and the primitive. Wundt contests the theory that primitive ideas are simpler, more perfect, and closer to higher religions—a view that supported claims that contemporary primitive peoples represented the “childhood peoples” of humanity. He examines and refutes William Schmidt’s attempt to prove that Pygmies are childhood peoples in mental culture, intellectually limited but morally innocent, as demonstrated by pure monogamy and monotheistic belief. Wundt shows that the most typical traits of primitive mental culture are found among peoples who are not Pygmies at all, and that mental culture cannot be measured by physical size. The identity of primitive man with the Pygmy cannot be maintained.
A fourth argument concerns the origin and development of religious ideas. Wundt traces the development from primitive beliefs in magic and demons, engendered by the two motives of death and sickness, through the totemic age’s elaboration of soul-beliefs, to the emergence of fetishism, ancestor worship, and eventually the higher forms of religious life. He argues that fetishism is not the lowest and earliest form of religion, as some psychologists of religion assert, nor does it represent a decay of religious cults, as the degeneration theory championed by Max Müller holds. Rather, fetishism is a secondary phenomenon rooted in totemic ideas, a product of the totemic age that prepared the way for divine images.
A fifth argument concerns the nature of primitive man himself. Wundt contends that the natural state of primitive man is one of peace, not a war of all with all as Hobbes sketched. The intelligence of primitive man is not inferior within his narrow sphere, and his morality depends on his environment. Uninfluenced tribes are frank and honest, with no lying or theft, but this is due to a lack of incentive rather than high morality. Primitive man at strife with surrounding peoples, by contrast, becomes characterized by fear, deception, and malice. The limited wants of primitive man and his contentment explain his lack of progress.
Key Concepts
The concept of the collective mind stands at the foundation of Wundt’s entire enterprise. He argues that certain mental phenomena resist interpretation by a psychology restricted to individual consciousness, necessitating the assumption that collective minds are real. This assumption is not dogmatic but is necessitated by the failure of opposing theories and sustained by its capacity to render intelligible a large body of facts. Folk psychology thus supplements individual psychology’s methods, principles, and laws.
The corporeal soul is Wundt’s term for the earliest conception of the soul, which emerges from primitive man’s experience of death. When a person dies, the changes in appearance, suspension of movements, pallor, and cessation of breathing engender fear. Primitive man cannot think of death except as the departure of that which brought life, yet the powers of life seem to remain in the body. This creates the contradictory idea of a life-generating something independent of, yet connected to, the body. The dead person becomes a demon, an invisible being capable of seizing, overpowering, or killing the living. No traces of a breath or shadow-like soul exist at this stage; that conception belongs to the transition to totemic culture.
The breath-soul and shadow-soul represent later developments of soul-ideas that emerge with totemic culture. The totem animal has its genesis in the transformation of the breath-soul into an animal, while the shadow-soul of the dream influences individual, conception, and sex totemism. These concepts connect totemism directly with animism, representing the branch of soul-belief that influenced tribal organization and beliefs.
Totemism itself is analyzed through its various developmental forms. Wundt distinguishes social forms—tribal, individual, conception, and sex totemism—and objects—animal, plant, and inanimate totems such as churingas. He argues that tribal totemism is likely older than individual totemism, using the analogy of Roman Catholic saint worship, where community saints precede personal patrons. The totem is the embodiment of a soul, and the most common totem animals are “soul animals” like the hawk, crow, lizard, eagle, falcon, and snake.
Taboo is a concept Wundt takes from Polynesian languages, noting that it combines two opposing ideas: the sacred (to be avoided due to sanctity) and the impure or loathsome (to be avoided due to harmful nature). Both spring from the same source of fear, from which awe and aversion later developed. The earliest object of taboo seems to have been the totem animal, with prohibitions against eating or hunting it. In Polynesia, man himself becomes the primary object of taboo—not every individual but the privileged ones: priests and chieftains.
Exogamy appears in three main forms that constitute a developmental series. In the first, unrestricted form, a man may marry any woman from the other tribal division but is barred from his own class. The second form restricts marriage to a specific subgroup of the other division. The third form, limited exogamy with indirect descent, involves children counting to the parent determining descent but entering a different totem group. Wundt argues that totem friendships—cult alliances where one totem may slay but not eat the totem animal while a friendly totem may—explain the rise of limited exogamy.
The fetish is defined as any natural or artificial inanimate object to which demoniacal powers are ascribed. Its universal characteristic is that it harbours a soul-like, demoniacal being. The most primitive fetish is a natural object accidentally discovered, selected for its unusual form; astonishment causes belief that a soul-like being resides in the object. The fetish represents the transition from soul-beliefs to pure magic-beliefs, and it prepared the way for divine images.
The amulet and talisman are incidental products of fetishistic ideas, distinguished from the fetish by being purely magical objects—means by which the possessor produces magical effects. The fetish is a magic-working subject, an independent demoniacal being, while the amulet always serves protection and is worn visibly about the neck.
The couvade, or father-confinement, is a custom that Wundt uses to demonstrate the power of ideational association. The father lies in bed, receives congratulations, and subjects himself to ascetic restrictions following the birth of his child. This results from an association between husband and wife, where both must obey regulations surrounding birth and are subject to the same taboo.
Themes
A recurring theme in Folk Psychology is the inadequacy of rationalistic explanations for human institutions. Again and again, Wundt shows that theories attributing cultural phenomena to deliberate design fail to account for the evidence. The “wise ancestors” hypothesis for the origin of exogamy is superfluous; the forms of exogamy were effects, not causes. This theme reflects Wundt’s broader conviction that human mental development follows laws that operate independently of conscious intention—a view that aligns his folk psychology with the natural sciences while distinguishing it from rationalistic philosophies of history.
The theme of development through stages pervades the entire work. Wundt traces humanity’s progress from the primitive condition through the totemic age to the age of heroes and gods and finally to the development to humanity. Each stage has its own characteristic mental formations, and each grows out of the preceding stage through processes that Wundt seeks to identify. This developmental framework gives the book its structure and its explanatory power, allowing Wundt to organize a vast array of ethnographic and historical material into a coherent narrative.
The relationship between fear and the origins of religion constitutes another important theme. Wundt traces religious ideas to the emotions engendered by death and sickness. The fear of the corpse, the terror of demoniacal powers, and the anxiety surrounding disease all contribute to the formation of beliefs in magic and demons. From these humble origins, Wundt shows, develop the elaborate structures of totemism, fetishism, ancestor worship, and eventually the higher religions. The theme of fear as a creative force in human culture runs throughout the book, appearing in discussions of taboo, sacrifice, purification rites, and the development of cults.
The theme of magic and its transformations is closely related. Wundt shows how magical thinking pervades primitive and totemic culture, appearing in art, medicine, agriculture, and social organization. The medicine-man, the predecessor of the physician and priest, exercises magical powers that are feared but valued. The decorations on women’s combs guard against diseases; the carving of an animal on a weapon is a magical means to bring the animal within range; the strewing of seeds to the winds is a magical act intended to increase the grasses. Magic and counter-magic spring from a common source, born from fear and terror.
The theme of cultural contact and its effects appears in Wundt’s discussions of language loss, migration, and the reciprocal influence between peoples. Primitive tribes lose their original language when the stronger race supplants the weaker race’s language with a more highly developed one. The seclusion of primitive tribes is not original but grew from wars of extermination. Early intercourse led to language competition where the poorer language succumbed, though the primitive language may have reciprocally influenced the advanced one. These themes connect Wundt’s folk psychology to broader questions of cultural change and interaction.
The theme of art as magic and adornment emerges from Wundt’s discussion of primitive and totemic art. The earliest aesthetic stimuli are symmetry and rhythm, derived from the pleasure of regular movement as in the dance. But primitive art is also one of magic: the artist attributes a hidden meaning to his creation, making it a magical object. The Bushmen, however, have transcended this stage, producing a memorial art that is neither magical nor decorative but preserves the memory of past experiences. This art, Wundt argues, is not primitive but was imported, depicting animals known only since the late eighteenth century and using European-like tools.
The Author’s Conclusions
Wundt concludes that human mental development is indeed subject to law, as the subtitle of his work suggests. The vast array of phenomena he examines—language, mythology, social organization, marriage customs, religious beliefs, artistic production—reveals patterns of development that can be systematically described and explained. This conclusion validates the enterprise of folk psychology as a scientific discipline supplementing individual psychology.
The development of humanity, Wundt shows, proceeds through stages that are neither arbitrary nor the product of conscious design. Each stage grows out of its predecessor through processes that can be identified and understood. The primitive condition, characterized by belief in magic and demons, gives way to the totemic age with its elaborate social and religious organization. The totemic age in turn prepares the way for the age of heroes and gods, and ultimately for the development to humanity. Throughout this progression, Wundt discerns the operation of psychological laws that govern the collective mind just as other laws govern individual mental life.
Wundt’s conclusions about specific institutions challenge many prevailing theories. Exogamy, he argues, was not instituted by wise ancestors to avoid the evils of relative-marriage but developed through the operation of totemic friendships and cult alliances. Group-marriage did not precede monogamy but developed from it through the customs of marriage by capture. Maternal descent was not a stage that humanity passed through on the way to the more natural paternal descent but was itself the natural arrangement, giving way to paternal descent only under the pressure of specific factors: the increasing authority of the man over his family, the dissolution of totemic tribal organization, and the increasing prominence of personal property.
The origin of religion, Wundt concludes, lies not in primitive monotheism or in the degeneration of higher religious ideas but in the emotions of fear engendered by death and sickness. From these humble beginnings, humanity developed the elaborate structures of totemism, taboo, fetishism, and ancestor worship that eventually gave rise to the higher religions. The theory that primitive peoples possess a belief in one god or many gods is refuted by the evidence: truly primitive peoples possess such beliefs in neither, and no coherent celestial mythology exists among them.
Wundt’s psychological account, he emphasizes, neither represents nor replaces a philosophy of history. Similarly, the work is neither equivalent nor negation of ethics, jurisprudence, theology, epistemology, or metaphysics. Yet such works stimulate empirical philosophical interest and supply carefully selected, psychologically interpreted facts—especially obvious for ethics and the science of religion. The book thus stands as a contribution to empirical science that nevertheless has profound implications for philosophical questions.
Significance
Folk Psychology represents a landmark attempt to place the study of human culture on a scientific footing. Wundt’s insistence that collective mental phenomena can be studied with the same rigor as individual mental phenomena opened new possibilities for understanding the development of humanity. His demonstration that rationalistic explanations of cultural institutions are inadequate, and that developmental processes operating independently of conscious design must be invoked instead, anticipated later developments in anthropology, sociology, and evolutionary psychology.
The book’s significance also lies in its synthetic ambition. Where Wundt’s earlier Völkerpsychologie had examined the separate domains of language, art, mythology, and religion in exhaustive detail, Folk Psychology seeks to exhibit their common conditions and reciprocal relations. This synthetic approach allows Wundt to show how phenomena that might seem unrelated—the decoration of women’s combs, the customs of marriage by capture, the ceremonies for increasing the food supply, the prohibitions of taboo—all participate in a single developmental process governed by common psychological principles.
Wundt’s influence on subsequent scholarship has been profound. The translator’s preface notes that many contributors to philosophical and psychological studies received stimulus from his Leipzig laboratory and classrooms, and that the world’s debt extends beyond Wundt the teacher to Wundt the investigator and writer. The Völkerpsychologie demonstrated the contribution that psychological analysis can make to metaphysical problems, as Professor Royce’s “The Problem of Christianity” shows. The present volume extends this contribution to a wider audience, presenting Wundt’s conclusions in a form accessible to general readers while retaining the rigor of his scientific method.
For the general reader, Wundt’s aim is not to discuss the philosophical validity of ideas or the ethical and religious value of customs, but merely to give a descriptive account of human development. The book answers what beliefs and practices actually prevailed at various developmental stages and their psychological explanation—distinct from whether they are justifiable, or whether ideas relate to trans-subjective realities or eternal truth. To the psychologist, all experiences—sacred or profane, true or delusional—are mental phenomena demanding observation, analysis, and reduction to mental laws.
The work’s significance is perhaps best captured by the translator’s suggestion that history’s final verdict may ascribe to Wundt’s studies in folk psychology a significance comparable to his earlier writings in physiological psychology. The book stands as a monument to a conception of psychology that refuses to be limited to the individual consciousness, insisting instead that the collective mental life of humanity is a proper and necessary object of scientific study. In this respect, Folk Psychology remains not merely a historical curiosity but a continuing challenge to any psychology that would restrict its attention to the individual mind, and a reminder that the deepest questions about human nature require an understanding of humanity’s collective mental development.
