CHAPTER I

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ELEMENTS OF FOLK PSYCHOLOGY

Outlines of a Psychological History of the Development of Mankind

by

WILHELM WUNDT

Authorized Translation by Edward Leroy Schaub, Ph.D.

Professor of Philosophy in Northwestern University

London: George Allen & Unwin Ltd.

New York: The Macmillan Company

_First published: July 1916._

_Revised edition: April 1921._

TRANSLATOR'S PREFACE

The keen interest which the present age is manifesting in problems

connected with the interpretation of human experience is no less a

result than it is a precondition of the fruitful labours of individual

scholars. Prominent among these is the distinguished author of the

volume which is herewith rendered accessible to English readers. The

impetus which Professor Wundt has given to the philosophical and

psychological studies of recent years is a matter of common knowledge.

Many of those who are contributing richly to these fields of thought

received their stimulus from instruction directly enjoyed in the

laboratory and the classrooms of Leipzig. But even more than to Wundt,

the teacher, is the world indebted to Wundt, the investigator and the

writer. The number and comprehensiveness of this author's publications,

as well as their range of subjects, are little short of amazing. To

gauge the extent of their influence would require an examination of a

large part of current philosophical and psychological literature. No

small measure of this influence, however, must be credited to those

whose labours have made possible the appearance of Wundt's writings

in other tongues. Of the English translations, we owe the first to

Professors Creighton and Titchener. Succeeding their translation of

the "Lectures on Human and Animal Psychology," came the publication,

in English, of the first volume of the "Principles of Physiological

Psychology," of the two briefer treatises, "Outlines of Psychology" and

"Introduction to Psychology," and, in the meantime, of the valuable

work on "Ethics."

Though Professor Wundt first won recognition through his investigations

in physiology, it was his later and more valuable contributions to

physiological psychology, as well as to logic, ethics, epistemology,

and metaphysics, that gained for him his place of eminence in the world

of scholarship. One may hazard the prophecy, however, that the final

verdict of history will ascribe to his latest studies, those in folk

psychology, a significance not inferior to that which is now generally

conceded to the writings of his earlier years. The _Völkerpsychologie_

is a truly monumental work. The analysis and interpretation of

language, art, mythology, and religion, and the criticisms of rival

theories and points of view, which occupy its five large volumes of

over three thousand pages, are at once so judicial and so suggestive

that they may not be neglected by any serious student of the social

mind. The publication of the _Völkerpsychologie_ made necessary a

number of defensive and supplementary articles. Two of these, in a

somewhat revised form, together with an early article on "The Aim and

Methods of Folk Psychology," and an additional essay on "Pragmatic

and Genetic Psychology of Religion," were published in 1911 under

the title, _Probleme der Völkerpsychologie_. Finally, in 1912, there

appeared the book which we are now presenting in translation, the

_Elemente der Völkerpsychologie_. As regards the difference in method

and character between the _Elemente_ and the _Völkerpsychologie_,

nothing need be added to what may be gleaned from the author's Preface

and Introduction to this, his latest, work. Here, too, Professor

Wundt indicates his conception of the nature and the problem of folk

psychology, a fuller discussion of which may be found both in the

_Völkerpsychologie_ and in the first essay of the _Probleme_.

He who attempts to sketch the "Outlines of a Psychological History of

the Development of Mankind" necessarily incurs a heavy indebtedness,

as regards his material, to various more specialized sciences. The

success with which the data have been sifted in the present instance

and the extent to which the author has repaid the special sciences in

terms of serviceable principles of interpretation, must, to a certain

extent, be left to the determination of those who are engaged in these

specific fields. Human beliefs and institutions, however, as well as

all products of art and modes of labour, of food-getting, of marriage,

of warfare, etc.--in short, all elements of human culture--even though

subject to natural conditions of various sorts, are essentially mental

processes or the expression of psychical activities. Hence no theory

relating to these phenomena is acceptable, or even respectable,

that does violence to well-established psychological principles.

The unpsychological character of many of the hypotheses that still

abound in ethnological, sociological, and historical literature, in

itself renders necessary such discussions as those comprised within

the present volume. One of the very valuable, even though not novel,

features of the "Elements," therefore, is its clear exposure of the

untenability of rationalistic and other similarly erroneous types of

explanation.

The dependence of folk psychology, as conceived by Professor Wundt,

upon general psychology--or, in this particular case, upon the author's

system of physiological psychology--will be apparent. It should not

be overlooked, however, that the examination of the mental processes

that underlie the various forms in which social experience comes to

expression involves a procedure which supplements, in an important

way, the traditional psychological methods. More than this. Wundt's

_Völkerpsychologie_ is the result of a conviction that there are

certain mental phenomena which may not be interpreted satisfactorily by

any psychology which restricts itself to the standpoint of individual

consciousness. Fundamental to the conclusions of the present volume,

therefore, is the assumption of the reality of collective minds. For

Professor Wundt, however, this assumption is not in the least of a

dogmatic character. On the contrary, its acceptance is necessitated by

the failure of opposing theories, and its validity is sustained by the

fact that it renders intelligible a large and important body of facts.

If this be admitted, it follows that folk psychology supplements not

merely the methods of individual or physiological psychology, but also

its principles and its laws. As yet, however, the prevailing tendency

of psychologists, both in England and in America, is to retain the

point of view of individual consciousness even when dealing with those

phenomena which Wundt considers to be creations of the social group.

That this occurs so frequently without any apparent thought of the

necessity of justifying the procedure is--whether the position itself

be right or wrong--an illustration of the barriers offered by a foreign

language.

For the general reader who professes no acquaintance with the nature or

the viewpoint of psychological science, it may not be amiss to remark

that the author aims, in this book, to present, not a discussion of

the philosophical validity of ideas or of the ethical or religious

value of customs and institutions, but merely a descriptive account

of human development. The "Elements" is an attempt to answer the

question as to what beliefs and practices actually prevailed at the

various stages of human development and what psychological explanation

may be given of them. Such an investigation is quite distinct from an

inquiry as to whether these beliefs and practices are justifiable. It

is equally foreign, moreover, to the question as to whether the ideas

that are entertained may be held either to bring us into relation with

trans-subjective realities or to acquaint us with a truth that is, in

any significant sense, eternal. However sacred or profane, true or

delusional, experiences may be to the philosopher, the theologian, or

the man of practical affairs, to him who is psychologizing they all

alike are mental phenomena demanding, not evaluation, but observation,

analysis, and reduction to mental laws. Wundt explicitly emphasizes

the fact that his psychological account neither represents nor renders

unnecessary a philosophy of history; similarly, it may be added, the

present work is neither the equivalent nor the negation of ethics,

jurisprudence, theology, epistemology, or metaphysics. Nevertheless,

while the distinctions which we have suggested should be strictly kept

in mind, a just appreciation of the significance of such books as the

"Elements" demands that we recognize their notable value to all the

various philosophical disciplines. Works of this sort succeed above all

others in stimulating and sustaining a keen empirical interest on the

part of philosophy, and they supply the latter with a fund of carefully

selected and psychologically interpreted facts. Doubtless it is in

connection with ethics and the science of religion that these services

are most obvious. Even the epistemologist, however, will find much

that is suggestive in Wundt's account of the origin and development of

language, the characteristics and content of primitive thought, and

the relation of mythological and religious ideas to the affective and

conative life. That the _Völkerpsychologie_ may contribute largely

toward the solution of metaphysical problems has been strikingly

demonstrated by Professor Royce in his profound volumes on "The Problem

of Christianity."

The trials of the translator have been recounted too often any longer

to require detailed mention. President G. Stanley Hall has suggested

that the German proclivity to the use of long, involved sentences,

loaded with qualifying words and phrases, and with compounds and

supplementary clauses of every description, may perhaps be said to

have the merit of rendering language somewhat correspondent with the

actual course of thought. The significance of this statement can be

appreciated by no one quite so keenly as by a translator, for whom the

very fact which President Hall mentions causes many German sentences to

be objects of despair. In the present instance, the endeavour has been

to reproduce as faithfully as possible both the meaning and the spirit

of the original, while yet taking such liberties as seemed necessary

either to clarify certain passages or to avoid any serious offence to

the English language. In a number of cases, no absolutely satisfactory

equivalent of the German term seemed available. The very expression

'folk psychology,' for example, may scarcely be said to commend itself

in every respect. Its use seemed unescapable, however, in view of

the fact that the author, in his Introduction, expressly rejects the

terms _Sozialpsychologie_ and _Gemeinschaftspsychologie_ in favour of

_Völkerpsychologie. Bildende Kunst_ has been rendered 'formative art,'

not in the belief that this translation is wholly unobjectionable, but

because it seemed preferable to all possible alternatives, such as

'plastic,' 'shaping,' or 'manual' art. Those who are familiar with, or

who will take notice of, the very precise meaning which the present

author gives to the terms _Märchen, Sage, Legende,_ and _Mythus_ will

understand without explanation our frequent use of the word 'saga'

and the necessity of the term 'märchen' in the translation. Wundt has

always attached great significance to the distinctions which he has

drawn between the various forms of the myth, and, more especially,

to his contention that the earliest and, in a sense, the progenitor

of these was the märchen. The crying need of exact definition and

of clear thinking in a field so confused as that of mythology led

him, on one occasion, to enter a plea for a clear-cut and consistent

terminology such as that which he was attempting to maintain (_vide

Völkerpsychologie, Band V, Zweiter Teil, Zweite Auflage, s._ 33). In

this instance again, therefore, it seemed best to give to the author's

own terms a preference over words which, while more familiar to the

English reader, are less suited to convey the precise meaning intended.

The most pleasant of the translator's duties consists in acknowledging

the very material assistance which he has received from his wife, whose

preparation of an enlarged index for this English edition is but the

last of many services which she has rendered in connection with the

present undertaking.

EDWARD LEROY SCHAUB.

NORTHWESTERN UNIVERSITY,

EVANSTON, ILLINOIS,

_October_ 1915.

PREFACE

This volume pursues a different method, in its treatment of the

problems of folk psychology, from that employed in my more extensive

treatment of the subject. Instead of considering successively the main

forms of expression of the folk mind, the present work studies the

phenomena, so far as possible, synchronously, exhibiting their common

conditions and their reciprocal relations. Even while engaged on my

earlier task I had become more and more convinced that a procedure of

this latter sort was required as its supplement. Indeed, I believed

that the chief purpose of investigations in folk psychology must

be found in a synthetic survey. The first prerequisite of such a

survey is, of course, a separate examination of each of the various

fields. The history of the development of the physical organism aims

to understand not merely the genesis of the particular organs but

primarily their co-operation and the correlation of their functions. An

analogous purpose should underlie an account of the mental development

of any human community and, finally, of mankind itself. In addition to

the problem of the relations of the separate processes to one another,

however, we must in this case face also the broader question as to

whether or not mental development is at all subject to law. This it

is, therefore, that the sub-title of the present volume is intended to

suggest. That we can be concerned only with outlines, moreover, and not

with an exhaustive presentation of details, follows from the very fact

that our aim is a synthetic survey. An exhaustive presentation would

again involve us in a more or less detached investigation of single

problems. A briefer exposition, on the other hand, which limits itself

to arranging the main facts along lines suggested by the subject-matter

as a whole, is, without doubt, better adapted both to present a clear

picture of the development, and to indicate its general amenability to

law, the presence of which even the diversity of events cannot conceal.

This being my main purpose, I believed that I might at once reject

the thought of giving the various facts a proportionate degree of

attention. In the case of the better known phenomena, it appeared

sufficient to sketch their place in the general development. That

which was less familiar, however, or was still, perhaps, generally

unknown, seemed to me to require a more detailed discussion. Hence the

following pages deal at some length with the forms of original tribal

organization and of the consummation of marriage, with soul, demon, and

totem cults, and with various other phenomena of a somewhat primitive

culture. On the other hand, they describe in barest outline the social

movements that reach over into historical times, such as the founding

of States and cities, the origin of legal systems, and the like. No

inference, of course, should be drawn from this with regard to the

relative importance of the phenomena themselves. Our procedure, in this

matter, has been governed by practical considerations alone.

The above remark concerning the less familiar and that which is as yet

unknown, will already have indicated that folk psychology in general,

and particularly a history of development in terms of folk psychology,

such as this book aims to give, are as yet forced to rely largely

on suppositions and hypotheses, if they are not to lose the thread

that unites the details. Questions similar to the ones which we have

just mentioned regarding the beginnings of human society, or others,

which, though belonging to a later development, nevertheless still

fall within the twilight dawn of history--such, for example, as those

concerning the origin of gods and of religion, the development of myth,

the sources and the transformations in meaning of the various forms

of cult, etc.--are, of course, as yet largely matters of dispute. In

cases of this sort, we are for the most part dealing not so much with

facts themselves as with hypotheses designed to interpret facts. And

yet it must not be forgotten that folk psychology rests on precisely

the same experiential basis, as regards these matters, as do all other

empirical sciences. Its position in this respect is similar, more

particularly, to that of history, with which it frequently comes into

touch in dealing with these problems of origin. The hypotheses of folk

psychology never refer to a background of things or to origins that

are by nature inaccessible to experiential knowledge; they are simply

assumptions concerning a number of conjectured empirical facts that,

for some reason or other, elude positive detection. When, for example,

we assume that the god-idea resulted from a fusion of the hero ideal

with the previously existing belief in demons, this is an hypothesis,

since the direct transition of a demon into a god can nowhere be

pointed out with absolute certainty. Nevertheless, the conjectured

process moves on the factual plane from beginning to end. The same is

true, not merely of many of the problems of folk psychology, but in

the last analysis of almost all questions relating to the beginning

of particular phenomena. In such cases, the result is seldom based on

actually given data--these are inaccessible to direct observation,

leaving psychological probability as our only guide. That is to say,

we are driven to that hypothesis which is in greatest consonance with

the sum total of the known facts of individual and of folk psychology.

It is this empirical task, constituting a part of psychology and, at

the same time, an application of it, that chiefly differentiates a

psychological history of development, such as the following work aims

briefly to present, from a philosophy of history. In my opinion, the

basis of a philosophy of history should henceforth be a psychological

history of development, though the latter should not intrude upon the

particular problems of the former. The concluding remarks of our final

chapter attempt, in a few sentences, to indicate this connection of a

psychological history of development with a philosophy of historical

development, as it appears from the point of view of the general

relation of psychology to philosophical problems.

W. WUNDT.

LEIPZIG,

_March_ 31, 1912.

CONTENTS

TRANSLATOR'S PREFACE

PREFACE

INTRODUCTION History and task of folk psychology--Its relation

to ethnology--Analytic and synthetic methods of exposition--Folk

psychology as a psychological history of the development of

mankind--Division into four main periods.

CHAPTER I--PRIMITIVE MAN

1. THE DISCOVERY OF PRIMITIVE MAN Early philosophical

hypotheses--Prehistoric remains--Schweinfurth's discovery of the

Pygmies of the Upper Congo--The Negritos of the Philippines, the

inland tribes of Malacca, the Veddahs of Ceylon.

2. THE CULTURE OF PRIMITIVE MAN IN ITS EXTERNAL EXPRESSIONS Dress,

habitation, food, weapons--Discovery of bow and arrow--Acquisition

of fire--Relative significance of the concept 'primitive.'

3. THE ORIGIN OF MARRIAGE AND THE FAMILY Bachofen's "Mother-right"

and the hypothesis of an original promiscuity--Group-marriage and

the Malayan system of relationship--Erroneous interpretation of

these phenomena--Polygyny and polyandry--The monogamy of primitive

peoples.

4. PRIMITIVE SOCIETY The primitive horde--Its relation to the

animal herd--Single family and tribe--Lack of tribal organization.

5. THE BEGINNINGS OF LANGUAGE Languages of primitive tribes of

to-day--The gesture-language of the deaf and dumb, and of certain

peoples of nature--natural gesture-language--Its syntax--General

conclusions drawn from gesture-language.

6. THE THINKING OF PRIMITIVE MAN The Soudan languages as examples

of relatively primitive modes of thinking--The so-called 'roots'

as words--The concrete character of primitive thought--Lack of

grammatical categories--Primitive man's thinking perceptual.

7. EARLIEST BELIEFS IN MAGIC AND DEMONS Indefiniteness of the

concept 'religion'--Polytheistic and monotheistic theories of

the origin of religion--Conditions among the Pygmies--Belief

in magic and demons as the content of primitive thought--Death

and sickness--The corporeal soul--Dress and objects of personal

adornment as instruments of magic--The causality of magic.

8. THE BEGINNINGS OF ART The art of dancing among primitive

peoples--Its importance as a means of magic--Its accompaniment

by noise-instruments---The dance-song--The beginnings of

musical instruments--The bull-roarer and the rattle--Primitive

ornamentation--Relation between the imitation of objects and

simple geometrical drawings (conventionalization)--The painting of

the Bushmen--Its nature as a memorial art.

9. THE INTELLECTUAL AND MORAL CHARACTERISTICS OF PRIMITIVE

MAN Freedom from wants--Significance of isolation--Capacity

for observation and reflection--No inferiority as to original

endowment demonstrable--Negative nature of the morality of

primitive man--Dependence upon the environment.

CHAPTER II--THE TOTEMIC AGE

1. THE GENERAL CHARACTER OF TOTEMISM The word 'totem'--Its

significance for cult--Tribal organization and the institution of

chieftainship--Tribal wars--Tribal ownership of land--The rise of

hoe-culture and of the raising of domestic animals.

2. THE STAGES OF TOTEMIC CULTURE Australian culture--Its low level

of economic life--Its complicated tribal organization--Perfected

weapons--Malayo-Polynesian culture--The origin and migrations

of the Malays--Celestial elements in Malayo-Polynesian

mythology--The culture of the American Indians and its distinctive

features--Perfection of totemic tribal organization--Decline of

totem cults--African cultures--Increased importance of cattle

raising--Development of despotic forms of rulership--Survivals of

totemism in the Asiatic world.

3. TOTEMIC TRIBAL ORGANIZATION Similarity in the tribal

organizations of the Australians and the American Indians--Totem

groups as cult associations--Retrogression in America--The totem

animal as a coat of arms--The principle of dual division--Systems

consisting of two, four, and eight groups.

4. THE ORIGIN OF EXOGAMY Unlimited and limited exogamy--Direct

and indirect maternal or paternal descent--Effects upon

marriage between relatives--Hypotheses concerning the origin of

exogamy--Hygienic theory--Marriage by capture.

5. MODES OF CONTRACTING MARRIAGE Marriage by peaceful

capture within the same kinship group--Exogamous marriage by

barter--Marriage by purchase and marriage by contract--Survivals

of marriage by capture.

6. THE CAUSES OF TOTEMIC EXOGAMY Relation of clan division to

totem groups--Totem friendships--Parental and traditional totem

alliances--The rise of exogamy with direct and with indirect

maternal or paternal descent.

7. THE FORMS OF POLYGAMY Origin of group-marriage--Chief wife and

secondary wives--Polyandry and polygyny and their combination--The

prevalence and causes of these forms of marriage.

8. THE DEVELOPMENTAL FORMS OF TOTEMISM Two principles of

classification--Tribal and individual totemism--Conception

and sex totemism--Animal and plant totemism--Inanimate totems

(churingas)--Relation to ancestor worship and to fetishism.

9. THE ORIGIN OF TOTEMIC IDEAS Theories based on names--Spencer

and Lang--Frazer's theory of conception totemism as the origin of

totemism--The animal transformations of the breath soul--Relations

to soul belief--Soul animals as totem animals.

10. THE LAWS OF TABOO The concept 'taboo'--The taboo in Polynesia

--The taboo of mother-in-law and father-in-law--Connection with

couvade--The sacred and the impure--Rites of purification--Fire,

water, and magical transference.

11. SOUL BELIEFS OF THE TOTEMIC AGE The psyche as a breath and

shadow soul--Its relation to the corporeal soul--Chief bearers of

the corporeal soul--Modes of disposition of the dead.

12. THE ORIGIN OF THE FETISH Fetishes in totem cult--Attainment of

independence by fetishism--Fetishes as the earliest forms of the

divine image--Retrogressive development of cult objects--Fetish

cult as a cult of magic and demons--Amulet and talisman.

13. THE ANIMAL ANCESTOR AND THE HUMAN ANCESTOR The Mura-Mura

legends of the Australians--The animal ancestor--Transition to the

human ancestor--Relation to disposal of the corpse and to cults of

the dead--Surviving influences of totemism in ancestor cult.

14. THE TOTEMIC CULTS Customs relating to disposition of

the corpse and to sacrifices to the dead--Initiation into

manhood--Vegetation cults--Australian Intichiuma festivals--Cults

of the soil at the stage of hoe-culture--Underlying factor of

community of labour--Unification of cult purposes and their

combination with incipient deity cults.

15. THE ART OF THE TOTEMIC AGE Tatooing--Ceramics--Construction

of dwellings--Pole-houses--The ceremonial dance--Instruments of

concussion and wind Instruments--Cult-songs and work-songs--The

märchen-myth and its developmental forms.

CHAPTER III--THE AGE OF HEROES AND GODS

1. GENERAL CHARACTER OF THE HEROIC AGE Significance of the

individual personality--The hero an ideal human being, the god an

ideal hero--Changes in economic life and in society--The rise of

the State.

2. THE EXTERNAL CULTURE OF THE HEROIC AGE Folk migration and

the founding of States--Plough-culture--Breeding of domestic

animals--The wagon--The taming of cattle--The ox as a draught

animal--The production of milk--Relation of these achievements to

cult--Warfare and weapons--Rise of private property--Colonization

and trade.

3. THE DEVELOPMENT OF POLITICAL SOCIETY The place of the State

in the general development of society--The duodecimal and the

decimal systems in the organization of political society--The mark

community and military organization.

4. FAMILY ORGANIZATION WITHIN POLITICAL SOCIETY The joint

family--The patriarchal family--Paternal descent and paternal

dominance--Reappearance of the monogamous family.

5. THE DIFFERENTIATION OF CLASSES Common property and private

property--The conquering race and the subjugated population--

Distinction in rank and property--The influence of State and of

legal system.

6. THE DIFFERENTIATION OF VOCATIONS The priesthood as combining

class and vocation--Military and political activity--Agriculture

and the lower vocations---The gradual equalization of respect

accorded to vocations.

7. THE ORIGIN OF CITIES The original development of the

city--Castle and temple as the signs of a city--The guardian deity

of city and State--Secondary developments.

8. THE BEGINNINGS OF THE LEGAL SYSTEM Custom and law--Civil law as

the original province of law--Political and religious factors--The

council of elders and the chieftain--The arbitrator and the

appointed judge--The religious sanction of legal practices.

9. THE DEVELOPMENT OF PENAL LAW Blood revenge and its

replacement--Wergild--Right of sanctuary--Development of

imprisonment out of private custody of wrongdoer--The _Jus

Talionis_--Increase in complexity of rewards and punishments.

10. THE DIFFERENTIATION OF LEGAL FUNCTIONS Division of the

judicial function--Influence of social organization--Logical

classification of forms of the State lacking in genetic

significance--Development of constitutions out of history and

custom.

11. THE ORIGIN OF GODS Degeneration theories and developmental

theories--Hypotheses of an original monotheism or

polytheism--Theory based on nature-mythology--Demon theory of

Usener--Characteristics distinguishing the god from the demon and

the hero--The god as the result of a fusion of ideal hero and

demon.

12. THE HERO SAGA The hero of saga and the hero of märchen--The

purely mythical and the historical hero saga--Magic in märchen and

saga--The religious legend--The saint legend.

13. COSMOGONIC AND THEOGONIC MYTHS The gods as demoniacal

beings--Their struggle with the demons of earliest times--Myths of

creation--Sagas of flood and of universal conflagration--Myths of

world-destruction.

14. THE BELIEF IN SOULS AND IN A WORLD BEYOND Sequence of

ideas of the beyond--The spirit-village--The islands of

the blessed--Myths of the underworld--Distinction between

dwelling-places of souls--Elysium--The underworld and the

celestial regions--Purgatory--Cults of the beyond--The conception

of salvation--Transmigration of souls.

15. THE ORIGIN OF DEITY CULTS Relation of myth and cult--Religious

significance of cult--Vegetation cults--Union of cult

purposes--Mystery cults.

16. THE FORMS OF CULT PRACTICES Prayer--Conjuration and the prayer

of petition--Prayer of thanksgiving--Praise--The penitential

psalm--Sacrifice--Purpose of sacrifice originally magical--Jewish

peace-offering and sin-offering--Development of conception

of gift--Connection between value and sacrifice--Votive and

consecration gifts--Sacrifice of the first fruits--Sanctification

ceremonies--Means of lustration as means of sanctification--Water

and fire--Baptism and circumcision--Magical sanctification--Human

sacrifice as a means of sanctification.

17. THE ART OF THE HEROIC AGE Temple and palace--The human

figure as the subject of formative art--Art as generic and as

individualizing--The appreciation of the significant--Expression

of subjective mood in landscape painting--The epic--Its influence

upon the cult-song--The drama--Music as an accessory and as an

independent art.

CHAPTER IV--THE DEVELOPMENT TO HUMANITY

1. THE CONCEPT 'HUMANITY' Herder's idea of humanity as the goal of

history--The concepts 'mankind' and 'human nature'--Humanity as a

value-concept--The idea of a cultural community of mankind and its

developmental forms.

2. WORLD EMPIRES The empires of Egypt and of Western Asia--The

monarch as ruler of the world--The ruler as deity--Apotheosis

of deceased rulers--Underlying cause of formation of

empires--Disappearance of world empires from history.

3. WORLD CULTURE The world dominion of Alexander--Greek

as the universal language--Writing and speech as factors

of culture--Travel as symptomatic of culture--Hellenistic

world culture and its results--The culture of the

Renaissance--Cosmopolitanism and individualism.

4. WORLD RELIGIONS Unity of the world of gods--Cult of Æsculapius

and cults of the beyond--Their transition into redemption

cults--Buddhism and Christianity--Development of the idea of a

superpersonal deity--The incarnate god as the representative of

this deity--Three aspects of the concept 'representative.'

5. WORLD HISTORY Twofold significance of the concept

'history'--History as self-conscious experience--The rôle of

will in history--Prehistoric and historic periods--Influence of

world culture and world religions on the rise of the historical

consciousness--The philosophy of history--Its relation to a

psychological history of the development of mankind.

INDEX

ELEMENTS OF FOLK PSYCHOLOGY

INTRODUCTION

The word '_Völkerpsychologie_'(folk psychology) is a new compound in

our [the German] language. It dates back scarcely farther than to about

the middle of the nineteenth century. In the literature of this period,

however, it appeared with two essentially different meanings. On the

one hand, the term 'folk psychology' was applied to investigations

concerning the relations which the intellectual, moral, and other

mental characteristics of peoples sustain to one another, as well as

to studies concerning the influence of these characteristics upon the

spirit of politics, art, and literature. The aim of this work was a

characterization of peoples, and its greatest emphasis was placed on

those cultural peoples whose civilization is of particular importance

to us--the French, English, Germans, Americans, etc. These were the

questions of folk psychology that claimed attention during that period,

particularly, to which literary history has given the name "young

Germany." The clever essays of Karl Hillebrand on _Zeiten, Völker und

Menschen_ (collected in eight volumes, 1885 ff.) are a good recent

example of this sort of investigation. We may say at the outset that

the present work follows a radically different direction from that

pursued by these first studies in folk psychology.

Practically coincident with the appearance of these earliest studies,

however, was a radically different use of the term 'folk psychology.'

The mental sciences began to realize the need of a psychological

basis; where a serviceable psychology did not exist, they felt it

necessary to establish an independent psychological foundation for

their work. It was particularly in connection with the problems of

philology and mythology, and at about the middle of the century, that

the idea gradually arose of combining into a unified whole the various

results concerning the mental development of man as severally viewed

by language, religion, and custom. A philosopher and a philologist,

Lazarus and Steinthal, may claim credit for the service of having

introduced the term 'folk psychology' to designate this new field of

knowledge. All phenomena with which mental sciences deal are, indeed,

creations of the social community. Language, for example, is not the

accidental discovery of an individual; it is the product of peoples,

and, generally speaking, there are as many different languages as there

are originally distinct peoples. The same is true of the beginnings of

art, of mythology, and of custom. The natural religions, as they were

at one time called, such as the religions of Greece, Rome, and the

Germanic peoples, are, in truth, folk religions; each of them is the

possession of a folk community, not, of course, in all details, but in

general outline. To us this fact has come to appear somewhat strange,

because in our age these universal mental creations have already long

transcended the limits of a single people. Though this is true, it does

not imply that the folk community is not really the original source

of these mental creations. Now, in the works of Lazarus and Steinthal

and in the _Zeitschrift für Völkerpsychologie und Sprachwissenschaft_

edited by them and appearing in twenty volumes from 1860 on, the

conception had not as yet, it is true, received the precise definition

that we must give it to-day. Nevertheless, a beginning was made, and

the new venture was successfully launched along several different

lines. Some uncertainty still prevailed, especially with regard to the

relation of these studies to philosophy, and as to the method which

psychology must follow when thus carried over into a new field. It was

only gradually, as the psychological point of view gained ground in the

special fields of research, that this condition was improved. To-day,

doubtless, folk psychology may be regarded as a branch of psychology

concerning whose justification and problem there can no longer be

dispute. Its problem relates to those mental products which are created

by a community of human life and are, therefore, inexplicable in

terms merely of individual consciousness, since they presuppose the

reciprocal action of many. This will be for us the criterion of that

which belongs to the consideration of folk psychology. A language can

never be created by an individual. True, individuals have invented

Esperanto and other artificial languages. Unless, however, language

had already existed, these inventions would have been impossible.

Moreover, none of these languages has been able to maintain itself,

and most of them owe their existence solely to elements borrowed from

natural languages. How, again, could a religion have been created by

an individual? There have, indeed, been religions whose founders were

individual men: for example, Christianity, Buddhism, and Islamism. But

all these religions rest on earlier foundations; they are elaborations

of religious motives arising within particular folk communities.

Thus, then, in the analysis of the higher mental processes, folk

psychology is an indispensable supplement to the psychology of

individual consciousness. Indeed, in the case of some questions the

latter already finds itself obliged to fall back on the principles

of folk psychology. Nevertheless, it must not be forgotten that just

as there can be no folk community apart from individuals who enter

into reciprocal relations within it, so also does folk psychology, in

turn, presuppose individual psychology, or, as it is usually called,

general psychology. The former, however, is an important supplement to

the latter, providing principles for the interpretation of the more

complicated processes of individual consciousness. It is true that the

attempt has frequently been made to investigate the complex functions

of thought on the basis of mere introspection. These attempts,

however, have always been unsuccessful. Individual consciousness is

wholly incapable of giving us a history of the development of human

thought, for it is conditioned by an earlier history concerning which

it cannot of itself give us any knowledge. For this reason we must

also reject the notion that child psychology can solve these ultimate

problems of psychogenesis. Among cultural peoples, the child is

surrounded by influences inseparable from the processes that arise

spontaneously within its own consciousness. Folk psychology, however,

in its investigation of the various stages of mental development still

exhibited by mankind, leads us along the path of a true psychogenesis.

It reveals well-defined primitive conditions, with transitions leading

through an almost continuous series of intermediate steps to the more

developed and higher civilizations. Thus, folk psychology is, in an

important sense of the word, _genetic psychology_.

In view of the general nature of the task of the science, objection

has sometimes been raised to its being called folk psychology. For,

the study is concerned, not merely with peoples but also with more

restricted, as well as with more comprehensive, social groups. Family,

group, tribe, and local community, for example, are more restricted

associations; on the other hand, it is to the union and reciprocal

activity of a number of peoples that the highest mental values and

attainments owe their origin, so that, in this case, folk psychology

really becomes a psychology of mankind. But it is self-evident that, if

it is not to fade into indefiniteness, a term such as 'folk psychology'

must be formulated with reference to the most important conception

with which it has to deal. Moreover, scarcely any of the proposed

emendations are practicable. '_Gemeinschaftspsychologie_' (community

psychology) may easily give rise to the misconception that we are

concerned primarily with such communities as differ from the folk

community; _Sozialpsychologie_ (social psychology) at once reminds us

of modern sociology, which, even in its psychological phases, usually

deals exclusively with questions of modern cultural life. In an account

of the total development of mental life, however--and this is the

decisive consideration--the 'folk' is the most important collective

concept and the one with which all others are associated. The 'folk'

embraces families, classes, clans, and groups. These various

communities are not excluded from the concept 'folk,' but are included

within it. The term 'folk psychology' singles out precisely the folk

as the decisive factor underlying the fundamental creations of the

community.

When this point of view is taken, the question, of course, arises

whether the problem thus assigned to folk psychology is not already

being solved by ethnology, the science of peoples, or whether it ought

not to be so solved. But it must be borne in mind that the greatly

enlarged scope of modern ethnology, together with the increased

number and the deepened character of its problems, necessarily

precludes such a psychological investigation as falls to the task of

folk psychology. I may here be allowed to refer to one who, perhaps

more than any other recent geographer, has called attention to this

extension of ethnological problems--Friedrich Ratzel. In his treatise

on anthropography and in a number of scattered essays on the cultural

creations of peoples, Ratzel has shown that ethnology must not only

account for the characteristics and the habitats of peoples, but

must also investigate how peoples originated and how they attained

their present physical and mental status. Ethnology is the science

of the origin of peoples, of their characteristics, and of their

distribution over the earth. In this set of problems, psychological

traits receive a relatively subordinate place. Apparently insignificant

art products and their modifications may be of high importance in the

determination of former migrations, fusions, or transferences. It is

in this way that ethnology has been of valuable service to history,

particularly in connection with prehistoric man. The central problem

of ethnology concerns not only the present condition of peoples, but

the way in which they originated, changed, and became differentiated.

Folk psychology must be based on the results of ethnology; its own

psychological interest, however, inclines it to the problem of mental

development. Though of diverse origins, peoples may nevertheless

belong to the same group as regards the mental level to which they

have attained. Conversely, peoples who are ethnologically related

may, psychologically speaking, represent very different stages of

mental culture. The ethnologist, for example, regards the Magyars and

the Ostiaks of Obi as peoples of like origin. Psychologically, they

belong to different groups: the one is a cultural people, the other

is still relatively primitive. To the folk psychologist, however,

'primitive' always means the psychologically primitive--not that which

the ethnologist regards as original from the point of view of the

genealogy of peoples. Thus, folk psychology draws upon ethnology, while

the latter, in turn, must invoke the aid of the former in investigating

mental characteristics. The problems of the two sciences, however, are

fundamentally different.

In fulfilling its task, folk psychology may pursue different

methods. The course that first suggests itself is to single out one

important phenomenon of community life after another, and to trace

its development after the usual pattern of general psychology in its

analysis of individual consciousness. For example, an attempt is made

to trace the psychological development of language by the aid of the

facts of linguistic history. This psychology of language is then

followed by a study of the development of art, from its beginnings

among primitive races down to its early manifestations among cultural

peoples, at which point its description is taken up by the history

of art. Myth and religion are similarly investigated as regards the

development of their characteristics, their reciprocal relations, etc.

This is a method which considers in longitudinal sections, as it were,

the total course of the development described by folk psychology.

For a somewhat intensive analysis this is the most direct mode of

procedure. But it has the objection of severing mental development into

a number of separate phases, whereas in reality these are in constant

interrelation. Indeed, the various mental expressions, particularly

in their earlier stages, are so intertwined that they are scarcely

separable from one another. Language is influenced by myth, art is

a factor in myth development, and customs and usages are everywhere

sustained by mythological conceptions.

But there is also a second path of investigation, and it is this

which the present work adopts. It consists--to retain the image used

above--in taking transverse instead of longitudinal sections, that

is, in regarding the main stages of the development with which folk

psychology is concerned in their sequence, and each in the total

interconnection of its phenomena. Our first task, then, would be

the investigation of _primitive man_. We must seek a psychological

explanation of the thought, belief, and action of primitive man on

the basis of the facts supplied by ethnology. As we proceed to more

advanced stages, difficulties may, of course, arise with regard to

the delimitation of the various periods; indeed, it will scarcely be

possible to avoid a certain arbitrariness, inasmuch as the processes

are continuous. The life of the individual person also does not fall

into sharply distinct periods. Just as childhood, youth, and manhood

are stages in a continuous growth, so also are the various eras in the

development of peoples. Yet there are certain ideas, emotions, and

springs of action about which the various phenomena group themselves.

It is these that we must single out if the content of folk psychology

is to be classified, with any measure of satisfaction, according to

periods. Moreover, it should be particularly noticed that, in starting

our discussion with primitive man, as we naturally must, the term

'primitive' is to be taken relatively, as representing the lowest

grade of culture, particularly of mental culture. There is no specific

ethnological characteristic that distinguishes this primitive stage

from those that are more advanced; it is only by reference to a number

of psychological traits, such as are indicative of the typically

original, that we may determine that which is primitive. Bearing in

mind this fact, we must first describe the external traits of primitive

culture, and then consider the psychological factors of primitive life.

Of the second period in the development of civilization, we may

safely say that in many respects it represents a newly discovered

world. Historical accounts have nothing, to say concerning it. Recent

ethnology alone has disclosed the phenomena here in question, having

come upon them in widely different parts of the earth. This period

we will call the _totemic age_. The very name indicates that we are

concerned with the discovery of a submerged world. The word 'totem,'

borrowed from a distant American tongue, proves by its very origin

that our own cultural languages of Europe do not possess any word

even approximately adequate to designate the peculiar character of

this period. If we would define the concept of totemism as briefly

as possible, it might perhaps be said to represent a circle of ideas

within which the relation of animal to man is the reverse of that

which obtains in present-day culture. In the totemic age, man does not

have dominion over the animal, but the animal rules man. Its deeds

and activities arouse wonder, fear, and adoration. The souls of the

dead dwell within it; it thus becomes the ancestor of man. Its flesh

is prohibited to the members of the group called by its name, or,

conversely, on ceremonial occasions, the eating of the totem-animal

may become a sanctifying cult activity. No less does the totemic idea

affect the organization of society, tribal division, and the forms

of marriage and family. Yet the elements that reach over from the

thought-world of this period into later times are but scanty fragments.

Such, for example, are the sacred animals of the Babylonians,

Egyptians, and other ancient cultural peoples, the prophetic

significance attached to the qualities or acts of animals, and other

magical ideas connected with particular animals.

Totemic culture is succeeded--through gradual transitions--by a _third_

period, which we will call the _age of heroes and gods_. Initial steps

towards the latter were already taken during the preceding period,

in the development of a rulership of individuals within the tribal

organization. This rulership, at first only temporary in character,

gradually becomes permanent. The position of the chieftain, which

was of only minor importance in the totemic age, gains in power when

the tribal community, under the pressure of struggles with hostile

tribes, assumes a military organization. Society thus develops into the

_State_. War, as also the guidance of the State in times of peace,

calls out men who tower far above the stature of the old chieftains,

and who, at the same time, are sharply distinguished from one another

through qualities that stamp them as typical personalities. In place of

the eldest of the clan and the tribal chieftain of the totemic period,

this new age gives rise to the _hero_. The totemic age possesses

only fabulous narratives; these are credited myths dealing, not

infrequently, with animal ancestors who have introduced fire, taught

the preparation of food, etc. The hero who is exalted as a leader in

war belongs to a different world, a world faithfully mirrored in the

heroic song or epic. As regards their station in life, the heroes of

Homer are still essentially tribal chieftains, but the enlarged field

of struggle, together with the magnified characteristics which it

develops, exalt the leader into a hero. With the development of poetry,

the forms of language also become modified and enriched. The epic is

followed by formative and dramatic art. All this is at the same time

closely bound up with the origin of the State, which now displaces

the more primitive tribal institutions of the preceding period. When

this occurs, different customs and cults emerge. With national heroes

and with States, national religions come into being; and, since these

religions no longer direct the attention merely to the immediate

environment, to the animal and plant world, but focus it primarily upon

the heavens, there is developed the idea of a higher and more perfect

world. As the hero is the ideal man, so the god becomes the ideal hero,

and the celestial world, the ideally magnified terrestrial world.

This era of heroes and gods is finally succeeded by a _fourth_

period. A national State and a national religion do not represent the

permanent limits of human striving. National affiliations broaden into

humanistic associations. Thus there begins a development in which we

of the present still participate; it cannot, therefore, be referred to

otherwise than as an age that is coming to be. We may speak merely of

an advance _toward_ humanity, not of a development _of_ humanity. This

advance, however, begins immediately with the fall of the barriers

that divide peoples, particularly with regard to their religious

views. For this reason, it is particularly the transcendence of the

more restricted folk circle on the part of religions that constitutes

one of the most significant events of mental history. The national

religions--or, as they are generally, though misleadingly, called, the

natural religions--of the great peoples of antiquity begin to pass

beyond their original bounds and to become religions of humanity.

There are three such world religions--Christianity, Islamism, and

Buddhism--each of them adapted in character and history to a particular

part of mankind. This appears most clearly in the contrast between

Christianity and Buddhism, similar as they are in their endeavour to

be world religions. The striving to become a world religion, however,

is also a symptomatic mental phenomenon, paralleled externally by the

extension of national States beyond the original limits set for them

by the tribal unit. Corresponding to this expansion, we find those

reciprocal influences of cultural peoples in economic life, as well as

in custom, art, and science, which give to human society its composite

character, representing a combination of national with universally

human elements. Hellenism and the Roman Empire afford the first and,

for Occidental mental development, the most important manifestations of

these phenomena. How immense is the chasm between the secret barter of

primitive man who steals out of the primeval forest by night and lays

down his captured game to exchange it, unseen by his neighbours, for

implements and objects of adornment, and the commerce of an age when

fleets traverse the seas, and eventually ships course through the air,

uniting the peoples of all parts of the world into one great commercial

community! We cannot undertake to delineate all aspects of this

development, for the latter includes the entire history of mankind.

Our concern is merely to indicate the outstanding psychological

factors fundamental to the progression of the later from that which

was original, of the more perfect from the primitive, partly under the

pressure of external conditions of life and partly as a result of man's

own creative power.

CHAPTER I

PRIMITIVE MAN

1. THE DISCOVERY OF PRIMITIVE MAN.

Who is the primitive man? Where is he to be found? What are his

characteristics? These are the important questions which here at

once confront us. But they are questions to which, strangely enough,

the answer has, up to very recent times, been sought, not in the

facts of experience, history, or ethnology, but purely by the path

of speculation. At the outset the search was not, for the most part,

based on investigations of primitive culture itself, but took as

its starting-point contemporary culture and present-day man. It was

primarily by means of an abstract opposition of culture to nature

that philosophy, and even anthropology, constructed natural man. The

endeavour was not to find or to observe, but to _invent_ him. It was

simply by antithesis to cultural man that the image of natural man took

shape; the latter is one who lacks all the attainments of culture.

This is the negative criterion by means of which the philosophy of the

Enlightenment, with its conceited estimate of cultural achievements,

formed its idea of primitive man. Primitive man is the savage; the

savage, however, is essentially an animal equipped with a few human

qualities, with language and a fragment of reason just sufficient to

enable him to advance beyond his deplorable condition. Man in his

natural state, says Thomas Hobbes, is toward man as a wolf. He lives

with his fellow-beings as an animal among animals, in a struggle for

survival. It is the contrast of wild nature with peaceful culture,

of ordered State with unorganized herd or horde, that underlies this

conception.

But this antithesis between the concepts of culture and of nature,

as objectively considered, is not the only factor here operative;

even more influential is the contrast between the subjective moods

aroused by the actual world and by the realm disclosed by imagination

or reason. Hence it is that the repelling picture of primitive man is

modified as soon as the mood changes. To an age that is satiated with

culture and feels the traditional forms of life to be a burdensome

constraint, the state of nature becomes an ideal once realized in a

bygone world. In contrast to the wild creature of Thomas Hobbes and his

contemporaries, we have the natural man of Jean Jacques Rousseau. The

state of nature is a state of peace, where men, united in love, lead a

life that is unfettered and free from want.

Alongside of these constructions of the character of natural man,

however, there early appeared a different method of investigation,

whose aim it was to adhere more closely to empirical facts. Why should

we not regard those of our human institutions which still appear to be

a direct result of natural conditions as having existed in the earliest

period of our race? Marriage and the family, for example, are among

such permanent cultural institutions, the one as the natural union of

the sexes, the other as its necessary result. If marriage and family

existed from the beginning, then all culture has grown out of the

extension of these primitive associations. The family first developed

into the patriarchal joint family; from this the village community

arose, and then, through the union of several village communities, the

State. The theory of a natural development of society from the family

was first elaborated by Aristotle, but it goes back in its fundamental

idea to legend and myth. Peoples frequently trace their origin to an

original pair of ancestors. From a single marriage union is derived the

single tribe, and then, through a further extension of this idea, the

whole of mankind. The legend of an original ancestral pair, however, is

not to be found beyond the limits of the monogamous family. Thus, it

is apparently a projection of monogamous marriage into the past, into

the beginnings of a race, a tribe, or of mankind. Wherever, therefore,

monogamous marriage is not firmly established, legend accounts for the

origin of men and peoples in various other ways. It thinks of them as

coming forth from stones, from the earth, or from caverns; it regards

animals as their ancestors, etc. Even the Greek legend of Deukalion and

Pyrrha contains a survival of such an earlier view, combined with the

legend of an original ancestral pair. Deukalion and Pyrrha throw stones

behind them, from which there springs a new race of men.

The thought of an original family, thus, represents simply a projection

of the present-day family into an inaccessible past. Clearly,

therefore, it is to be regarded as only an hypothesis or, rather,

a fiction. Without the support which it received from the Biblical

legend, it could scarcely have maintained itself almost down to the

present, as it did in the patriarchal theory of the original state

of man to which it gave rise. The Aristotelian theory of the gradual

origin of more comprehensive organizations, terminating in the State,

is no less a fiction; the social communities existing side by side in

the period of Greece were arbitrarily represented as having emerged

successively in the course of history. Quite naturally, therefore, this

philosophical hypothesis, in common with the corresponding legend of

the original family, presupposes primitive man to have possessed the

same characteristics as the man of to-day. Thus, it gives no answer at

all to the question concerning the nature of this primitive man.

When, therefore, modern anthropology made the first attempt to answer

this question on the basis of empirical facts, it was but natural to

assume that the characteristics of original man were not to be learned

from a study of existing peoples, nor, indeed, from history, but that

the data for the solution of the problem were of a _prehistoric_

nature, to be found particularly in those human remains and those

products of man's activity that have been preserved in the strata of

the earth's crust. What we no longer find _on_ the earth, so it was

held, we must seek _under_ the earth. And thus, about six decades

ago, _prehistoric anthropology_ began to gather material, and this

has gradually grown to a considerable bulk. Upon the completion of

this task, however, it appeared, as might, of course, have been

expected, that psychology could gain but little in this way. The only

source from which it might derive information lay in the exhumed

objects of art. Then, however, the very disappointing discovery was

made that, as regards implements of stone, drawings on the walls of

caves which he inhabited, and pictures cut into horn or bone, the

artistic achievements of the man of diluvial times did not differ

essentially from those of the present-day savage. In so far as physical

characteristics are concerned, however, the discovered remains of

bones seemed to point to certain differences. While these differences,

of course, were incapable of establishing any direct psychological

conclusions, the fact that the measurements of the skeletal parts

more closely resembled those of animals, and, in particular, that the

measurements of the interior of the skull were smaller than those of

the savages of our own time, offered indirect evidence of a lower

development. Because of the close relation of cranial capacity to size

of brain, moreover, a lower degree of intelligence was also indicated.

Nevertheless, the remains that have been brought to light have not

as yet led to any indubitable conclusions. There have been fairly

numerous discoveries pointing to races that resemble the lower tribes

among contemporary peoples, and but a few cases in which uncertainty

is possible, and concerning which, therefore, there exists a conflict

of opinions. A typical instance is the history of one of the first

discoveries made in Europe of the remains of a prehistoric man. It was

in 1856, in German territory, that there was discovered, in a grotto or

cave in the Neander valley, near Duesseldorf, a very remarkable skull,

though only, of course, the bones of the cranium and not the facial

bones. All were at once agreed that these were the remains of a very

primitive man. This was indicated particularly by characteristics which

are still to be found, though scarcely in so pronounced a form, among

certain lower races of men. Of special significance were the strongly

developed, prominent bone-elevations above the eye-sockets. Some of the

investigators believed that the long-sought '_homo primigenius_' had

perhaps at last been discovered. It was generally agreed that the form

of the skull resembled most closely that of the modern Australian. In

more recent years, however, anthropologists have developed somewhat

more exact methods of measurement and of the reconstruction of a

skeleton from parts only incompletely given. When Hermann Klaatsch,

equipped with this knowledge, carried out such a reconstruction of the

Neanderthal skull, he came upon the surprising fact that its capacity

was somewhat greater than that of the present-day Australian. Little

as this tells us concerning the actual intelligence of these primitive

men, it nevertheless clearly indicates how uncertain the conclusions

of prehistoric anthropology still are. A number of other recent

discoveries in Germany, France, and elsewhere, have proved that several

prehistoric races of men once lived in Europe. Some of these, no doubt,

date back far beyond the last glacial period, and perhaps even beyond

the period preceding this, for we now know that several glacial periods

here succeeded one another. Nevertheless, no important divergencies

from still existent races of men have been found. This, of course,

does not imply that no differences exist; it means merely that none

has as yet been positively detected, and that therefore the anatomy of

prehistoric man can give us no information concerning the psychological

aspect of the question regarding the nature of primitive man.

Considerably more light is thrown on this question when we examine the

products of human activity, such as implements, weapons, and works of

art. Traces of man, in the form of objects hammered out of flint and

shaped into clubs, chisels, knives, and daggers, capable of serving

as implements of daily use no less than as weapons, are to be found

as far back as the first diluvian epoch, and, in their crudest forms,

perhaps even as early as the tertiary period. The more polished

objects of similar form belong to a later age. Still more remarkable

are the works of art--in particular, the cave pictures of prehistoric

animals, such as the cave bear and the mammoth. Nevertheless, none of

these achievements is of such a nature as to afford positive evidence

of a culture essentially different from, or lower than, that of the

primitive man of to-day. Two outstanding facts, especially, make a

comparison difficult. On the one hand, wood plays an important rôle

in the life of modern primitive man, being used for the construction

of tools, weapons, and, in part, also of baskets and vessels. But the

utensils of wood that may have existed in prehistoric times could not

have withstood the destructive forces of decomposition and decay. All

such utensils, therefore, that prehistoric man may have possessed have

been lost. Thus, for example, it will be difficult ever to ascertain

whether or not he was familiar with the bow and arrow, since the arrow,

as well as the bow, was originally made of wood. Secondly, there is at

the present time no primitive tribe, however much shut off from its

more remote environment, into which barter, which is nowhere entirely

absent, may not introduce some objects representing a higher form of

civilization, particularly metals and metal implements. If, however, we

bear in mind that, in the one case, products have suffered destruction

and that, in the other, articles have been introduced from without, the

impression made by prehistoric utensils and products of art--aside from

certain doubtful remains dating back beyond the diluvial epoch--is not

essentially different from that made by the analogous products of the

Negritos of the Philippines or the inland tribes of Ceylon. Though the

material of which the implements are constructed differs, the knives,

hammers, and axes in both instances possess the usual form. Thus, the

wooden knife which the Veddah of Ceylon still carves out of bamboo

is formed precisely like some of the stone knives of the diluvial

period. We find a similar correspondence when we examine the traces of

dwellings and decorations that have been preserved, as well as certain

remains that throw light upon customs. The oldest prehistoric people

of Europe dwelt in caves, just as the primitive man of the tropics

does to-day in the rainy season. In a rock cavern near Le Moustier,

in France, there was discovered a skeleton whose crouching position

points to a mode of burial still prevalent among primitive peoples,

and one which is doubtless always a fairly positive indication of a

belief in demons such as arises in connection with the impression

made by death. The dead person is bound in the position that will

best prevent his return. Thus, all these prehistoric remains suggest

a culture similar to that of primitive tribes of to-day. But, just

because they reveal conditions not essentially different from those

of the present, these remains make another important contribution to

our knowledge of primitive man. They indicate the great stability of

primitive culture in general, and render it probable that, unless there

are special conditions making for change, such as migrations and racial

fusions, the stability increases in proportion to the antiquity. Though

this may at first glance seem surprising, it becomes intelligible

when we consider that isolation from his surroundings is an important

characteristic of primitive man. Having very little contact with other

peoples, he is in no wise impelled to change the modes of action to

which his environment has led him from immemorial times.

Thus, the correspondence of the prehistoric with that which is

to-day primitive indicates a high degree of permanence on the part

of primitive culture. But, even apart from this consideration, it is

apparent that we must really seek primitive man in the inhabited world

of the present, since it is here alone that we can gain a relatively

accurate knowledge of his characteristics. Our information concerning

primitive man, therefore, must be derived from ethnology. We must not

seek him _under_ the earth, but _on_ the earth. Just where, however,

is he to be found? For decades the natives of Australia were believed

to represent a perfect example of primitive culture. And, as a matter

of fact, their material culture and some of their mythological

ideas still seem to be of a very primitive character. Because of

the conjecture that it was here dealing with a relatively primitive

type of man, modern anthropology has for two decades applied itself

with great partiality to the study of Australian tribes. English and

German investigators have given us many works, some of them excellent,

treating of the continent of Australia, which appears almost as unique

with respect to its population as in its flora and its fauna. From

these investigations, however, which are reported particularly in

the volume by Howitt published in 1900, in the works of Spencer and

Gillen, and, finally, in those of Strehlow, a German missionary, it

is apparent that the Australian culture is anything but primitive: it

represents, rather, a stage of development already somewhat advanced.

In certain respects, indeed, it may contain very primitive elements,

such as are not to be found even among tribes that are, on the whole,

on a lower level. Australian culture, however, possesses an enormously

complex social organization, and this places it above that which may

be called primitive. In its present form, it presupposes a development

of probably thousands of years. Assuredly, therefore, the Australian

should not be included in a chapter on primitive man. He will rather

claim our attention in the next chapter, as a well-defined type of

the totemic age. Indeed, he is beginning, in part, to lose even the

characteristics of this age, mainly, no doubt as a result of racial

fusion, whose influence is here also in evidence.

Although the races of Australia are unquestionably not primitive, as

was formerly believed and is still held in certain quarters, there are

other parts of the earth which, in all probability, really harbour

men who are primitive in that relative sense of the term which alone,

of course, we are justified in using. If one were to connect the

discovery of this primitive man with any single name, the honour would

belong to a German traveller and investigator, George Schweinfurth.

He was the first to discover a really primitive tribe--that is, one

which remained practically untouched by external cultural influences.

When Schweinfurth, sailing up the Upper Nile in 1870, listened to the

narratives of the Nubian sailors in charge of his boat, he repeatedly

heard accounts of a nation of dwarfs, of people two feet tall (so the

exaggerated reports went), living in the impenetrable forests beyond

the great lakes which constitute the source of the Nile. Schweinfurth

was at once reminded of the old legends regarding pygmies. Such legends

are mentioned even by Homer and are introduced also into the writings

of Herodotus and of Aristotle. Aristotle, indeed, expressly says that

these dwarf peoples of Central Africa exist in reality, and not merely

in tales. When Schweinfurth arrived in the country of the Monbuttus,

he was actually fortunate enough to gain sight of these pygmies. It is

true, they did not exactly correspond to the fantastic descriptions

of the sailors--descriptions such as are current here and there even

to-day. The sailors represented the pygmies as having long beards,

reaching to the earth, and gigantic heads; in short, they imputed to

them the characteristics of the dwarf gnome, who appears also in German

folk-lore. In reality, it was found that the pygmies are, indeed,

small--far below the average normal size of man--but that they are of

excellent proportions, have small heads, and almost beardless faces.

Subsequent to Schweinfurth's discovery, similar tribes were found in

various parts of the earth. Emin Pasha, together with his companion

Stuhlmann, had the good fortune to be able to observe the pygmies of

the Congo more closely even than had been possible for Schweinfurth. In

the Negritos of the Philippines a similar dwarf people was discovered.

They also are of small stature, and, according to their own belief

and that of the neighbouring Malays, are the original inhabitants of

their forests. Besides these, there are the inland tribes of the Malay

Peninsula, the Semangs and Senoi, and, finally, the Veddahs of Ceylon,

studied particularly by the cousins Paul and Fritz Sarasin. All of the

peoples just mentioned live in forests and have probably been isolated

from civilization for thousands of years. The Bushmen of South Africa,

of whom we have long known, also belong to this group, although they

have not to the same extent been free from the influence of surrounding

peoples. In all these cases we have to do with tribes which at one time

probably occupied wider territories, but which have now been crowded

back into the forest or wilderness. In addition to these tribes,

furthermore, there are remnants of peoples in Hindustan, in Celebes,

Sumatra, the Sunda Islands, etc. Concerning these, however, we as yet

have little knowledge. In some respects, doubtless, the inhabitants of

the Andaman Islands should also be here included, although they cannot,

on the whole, be regarded as primitive in the strict sense of the word.

This is precluded by their external culture, and especially by their

legends, the latter of which point to the influence of Asiatic culture.

Observations of these relatively most primitive tribes--and this is

especially worth noting---show them to be remarkably similar. If we

read a description of the characteristics, habits, and customs of

the Negritos of the Philippines and then pass on to the Malaccans,

to the Semangs and Senoi, or, further, to the Veddahs of Ceylon,

we constantly meet with almost the same phenomena, there being but

slight differences depending on the specific character of the natural

environment. We are thus in possession of data that are now observable.

The statements and conclusions which these enable us to make are more

than mere speculations with regard to the past; and they are more than

inferences drawn from the silent fragments of the bones and from a

few of the art products of primitive man. According as the phenomena

are simpler in character and require fewer antecedent conditions for

their explanation, may we be confident that we are really dealing with

primitive conditions. This in itself implies that the criteria of

primitive culture are essentially _psychological_ in nature, and that

racial characteristics and original tribal relationships are probably

negligible so far as this question is concerned. A culture would be

absolutely primitive if no antecedent mental development whatsoever

could be presupposed. Such an absolute concept can never be realized

in experience, here any more than elsewhere. We shall, therefore,

call that man primitive in the relative sense of the term--our only

remaining alternative--whose culture approximates most nearly to

the lowest mental achievements conceivable within the limits of

universal human characteristics. The most convenient measure of these

achievements, and the one lying nearest at hand, is that afforded by

_external_ culture, as expressed in dress, habitation, and food, in

self-made implements, weapons, and other productions serving to satisfy

the most urgent needs of life.

2. THE CULTURE OF PRIMITIVE MAN IN ITS EXTERNAL EXPRESSIONS.

Following the above-mentioned criteria as to what may be regarded as

primitive, the question concerning the external culture of primitive

man may, in general, be briefly answered. Of dress there are only

meagre beginnings: about the loins a cord of bast, to which twigs

of trees are attached to cover the genitals--that is generally all,

unless, through secret barter with neighbouring peoples, cotton

goods, leather, and the like, have been imported. As regards personal

decoration, conditions are much the same. On the next stage of

development, the totemic, there is, as we shall later see, a desire for

lavish decoration, especially as regards the adornment of the body by

painting and tatooing. Little of this, however, is to be found among

primitive tribes, and that which exists has probably been introduced

from without. Some examples of such decoration are the scanty tatooing

in single lines, the painting of the face with several red and white

dots, and the wooden plug bored through the bridge of the nose. The

Negritos of the Philippines bore holes through their lips for the

insertion of a row of blades of grass. Other decorations found are

necklaces and bracelets, fillets, combs, hair ornaments made of twigs

and flowers, and the like.

What is true of his dress holds also of the dwelling of primitive man.

Everything indicates that the first permanent dwelling was the cave.

Natural caves in the hillsides, or, less frequently, artificially

constructed hollows in the sand, are the places of refuge that

primitive man seeks when the rainy season of the tropics drives him

to shelter. During the dry season, no shelter at all is necessary; he

makes his bed under a tree, or climbs the tree to gain protection from

wild animals. Only in the open country, under the compulsion of wind

and rain, does he construct a wind-break of branches and leaves after

the pattern supplied by nature in the leafy shelter of the forest. When

the supports of this screen are inclined toward one another and set up

in a circle, the result is the original hut.

Closely connected with the real dwelling of primitive man, the cave,

are two further phenomena that date back to earliest culture. As his

constant companion, primitive man has a single animal, the _dog_,

doubtless the earliest of domestic animals. Of all domestic animals

this is the one that has remained most faithful to man down to the

present time. The inhabitant of the modern city still keeps a dog

if he owns any domestic animal at all, and as early as primitive

times the dog was man's faithful companion. The origin of this first

domestic animal remains obscure. The popular notion would seem to be

that man felt the need of such a companion, and therefore domesticated

the dog. But if one calls to mind the dogs that run wild in the

streets of Constantinople, or the dog's nearest relative, the wolf,

one can scarcely believe that men ever had a strong desire to make

friends of these animals. According to another widely current view,

it was man's need of the dog as a helper in the chase that led to its

domestication. But this also is one of those rationalistic hypotheses

based on the presupposition that man always acts in accordance with a

preconceived plan, and thus knew in advance that the dog would prove a

superior domestic animal, and one especially adapted to assist in the

chase. Since the dog possessed these characteristics only after its

domestication, they could not have been known until this had occurred,

and the hypothesis is clearly untenable. How, then, did the dog and

man come together in the earliest beginnings of society? The answer

to this question, I believe, is to be found in the cave, the original

place of shelter from rain and storm. Not only was the cave a refuge

for man, but it was equally so for animals, and especially for the

dog. Thus it brought its dwellers into companionship. Furthermore, the

kindling of the fire, once man had learned the art, may have attracted

the animal to its warmth. After the dog had thus become the companion

of man, it accompanied him in his activities, including that of the

chase. Here, of course, the nature of the carnivorous animal asserted

itself; as man hunted, so also did the animal. The dog's training,

therefore, did not at all consist in being taught to chase the game.

It did this of itself, as may be observed in the case of dogs that

are not specifically hunting dogs. The training consisted rather in

breaking the dog of the habit of devouring the captured game. This was

accomplished only through a consciously directed effort on the part of

man, an effort to which he was driven by his own needs. Thus, it is

the cave that accounts for the origin of the first domestic animal,

and also, probably, for the first attempt at training an animal. But

there is still another gain for the beginnings of culture that may

probably be attributed to the cave in its capacity of a permanent

habitation. Among primitive peoples, some of whom are already advanced

beyond the level here in question, it is especially in caves that

artistic productions may be found. These consist of crude drawings of

animals and, less frequently, of men. Among the Bushmen, such cave

pictures are frequently preserved from destruction for a considerable

period of time. Natural man, roaming at will through the forests, has

neither time nor opportunity to exercise his imagination except upon

relatively small objects or upon the adornment of his own body. But the

semi-darkness of the cave tends, as do few other places, to stimulate

the reproductive imagination. Undisturbed by external influences, and

with brightnesses and colours enhanced by the darkness, the memory

images of things seen in the open, particularly those of the animals

of the primeval forest, rise to consciousness and impel the lonely and

unoccupied inhabitant to project them upon the wall. Such activity is

favoured by the fact, verifiable by personal introspection, that memory

images are much more vivid in darkness and semi-darkness than in the

light of day. Thus, it was in the cave, the first dwelling-place of

man, that the transition was made, perhaps for the first time, from

the beginnings of a graphic art, serving the purposes of adornment or

magic, to an art unfettered except by memory. It was an art of memory

in a twofold sense: it patterned its objects after the memory of things

actually observed, and it sought to preserve to memory that which it

created.

From the consideration of dress and habitation we turn to that of

food. Primitive man was not bound to fixed hours for his meals.

Among civilized peoples, so close a connection has grown up between

meals and definite hours of the day that the German word for meal,

_Mahlzeit_, reminds us of this regularity by twice repeating the word

for time---for _Mahl_ also means time. Primitive man knew nothing of

the sort. If he found food and was hungry, he ate; if he found none, he

went hungry. Sometimes, moreover, in order to provide for the future,

he gorged to such an extent as to injure his health. As concerns the

food itself, there is an old theory which has led to misconceptions

concerning primitive man. He was a hunter, we are told; the chase

supplied him with food; only incidentally and occasionally did he

enjoy parts of plants or fruits that he had gathered or accidentally

discovered. It is scarcely correct, however, to assume that systematic

hunting was practised by primitive man. Doubtless he did engage in this

occupation. Yet this furnished him with only an incidental part of his

food supply--apart with which, living as he did from hand to mouth, he

satisfied only his momentary needs. It was with plant food, if at all,

that he made provision for the future. Here may be found also the first

traces of a division of labour: woman gathered the plant food--roots,

bulbs, and berries--while man occasionally found it necessary to hunt.

Plant food being capable of longer preservation, it was woman who

first learned to economize and to make provision for the future. In

part, indeed, the influence of these cultural beginnings persists even

to-day. Moreover, just as mixed food, part plant and part animal, is by

far the most common to-day, so also was it the original diet of man.

The proportion, however, varied more than in later times, according as

the external conditions of life were propitious or otherwise. Of this

the Bushmen afford a striking illustration. Fifty years ago they were

still by preference huntsmen. Armed with their bows, they dared to

hunt the elephant and the giraffe. But after the surrounding peoples

of South Africa--the Hottentots, Betschuans, and Herero--came into the

possession of firearms, which the Bushman scornfully rejects, the game

was, in part, exterminated, and to-day the Bushmen, crowded back into

rocky wastes, derive but a small part of their living from the chase.

They gather bulbs, roots, and other parts of plants, such as can be

rendered edible by boiling or roasting. Their animal food, moreover, is

no longer wild game, but consists, for the most part, of small animals

found while gathering the plant food--frogs, lizards, worms, and even

insects. Hunting, therefore, was never more than one of the customary

means of providing food; and primitive man, especially, was a gatherer

rather than a hunter. The word 'gatherer' implies also that he took

from nature only what it directly offered, and that he was familiar

neither with agriculture nor with the raising of animals. In procuring

his food, moreover, he was aided by a knowledge, often surprising, of

the properties of the objects gathered. This knowledge, probably gained

as a result of many disastrous experiences in his search for food,

enabled primitive man to utilize even such roots and fruits as are not

wholesome in their raw state, either because they are not edible until

prepared by means of fire, or because they are poisonous. Primitive man

learned to overcome the injurious effects of many of these plants.

By reducing them to small pieces, washing them in a solution of lye,

and heating them, he converted them into palatable food. The bulbs and

roots were secured from beneath the surface of the ground by means of

the most primitive of all agricultural implements and the progenitor of

all succeeding ones, the _digging-stick_. This is a wooden stick, with

a pointed end that has been hardened by fire.

Connected with the removal of poison, by means of water and fire, from

parts of plants that are otherwise edible, is still another primitive

discovery--the utilization of the poisons themselves. Only when the

arrow is smeared with plant poisons does the bow become a real weapon.

In itself the arrow wound is not sufficient to kill either game or

enemy; the arrow must be poisoned if the wound is to cause death

or even temporary disability. The Veddahs and the inland tribes of

Malacca therefore use the juice of the upas-tree mixed with that of

strychnos-trees. The best known of these arrow poisons, curare, used in

South America and especially in Guiana, is likewise prepared from the

juice of strychnos-trees.

This brings us to the _weapons_ of primitive man. In this connection it

is highly important to note that all of the primitive peoples mentioned

above are familiar with the use of bow and arrow, but we must also

bear in mind that this is practically their only weapon. Contrary to

what archæological excavations would suggest concerning the earliest

age of peoples, primitive culture, in respect to implements and

weapons, depended only to a small extent upon the working of stone. We

might better speak of this period as an age of wood. Wood is not only

decidedly easier to manipulate than stone, but it is always more easily

obtainable in shapes suitable for constructive purposes. Possibly even

the arrow-head was originally always made of wood, as it sometimes is

even to-day. Only in later times was the wood replaced by a sharpened

stone or by iron acquired through barter.

It is not difficult to see how wood, in the forms which it possesses

by nature, came to be fashioned into clubs, axes, and digging-sticks,

and how bones, horns, shells, and the like were converted into tools

and objects of adornment. But how did primitive man acquire _bow and

arrow_? The general belief seems to be that this weapon was invented

by some resourceful mind of an early age. But an inventor, in the

proper sense of the word, must know in advance what he wishes to

invent. The man, therefore, who constructed the bow and arrow for the

first time must already have had some previous idea of it. To effect

a combination of existing implements, or to improve them in useful

ways, is a comparatively easy matter. But no one can manufacture

implements if he possesses nothing over and above material that is in

itself somehow suitable for the purpose. The most primitive implements,

therefore, such as the digging-stick, the club, and the hammer, are

all products of nature, at most changed slightly by man as their

use requires. But this is obviously not true of bow and arrow. We

may, perhaps, find a suggestion for the solution of our problem in a

hunting weapon which, though belonging, of course, to the later totemic

culture, is in principle simpler than the bow and arrow--the boomerang

of the Australians. The word is probably familiar to all, but the

nature of the weapon is not so well known, especially its peculiarly

characteristic form by virtue of which, if it fails to strike its

object, it flies back to the one who hurled it. The boomerang, which

possesses this useful characteristic, is, in the first place, a bent

wooden missile, pointed at both ends. That this curved form has a

greater range and strikes truer to aim than a straight spear, the

Australian, of course, first learned from experience. The boomerang,

however, will not return if it is very symmetrically constructed; on

the contrary, it then falls to the ground, where it remains. Now it

appears that the two halves of this missile are asymmetrical. One of

the halves is twisted spirally, so that the weapon, if thrown forward

obliquely, will, in accordance with the laws of ballistics, describe

a curve that returns upon itself. This asymmetry, likewise, was

discovered accidentally. In this case, the discovery was all the more

likely, for primitive weapons were never fashioned with exactitude.

That this asymmetry serves a useful purpose, therefore, was first

revealed by experience. As a result, however, primitive man began to

copy as faithfully as possible those implements which most perfectly

exhibited this characteristic. Thus, this missile is not a weapon that

required exceptional inventive ability, though, of course, it demanded

certain powers of observation. The characteristics, accordingly, that

insured the survival of the boomerang were discovered accidentally

and then fixed through an attentive regard to those qualities that

had once been found advantageous. Now, can we conceive of the origin

of bow and arrow in an analogous way? Surely this weapon also was not

devised in all its parts at a single time. The man of nature, pressing

his way through the dense underbrush of the forest and experiencing

in person the hard blows of branches that he has bent back, gains a

lively impression of the elastic power of bent wood. How easily the

attention is forced to the observation that this effect increases when

the wood is bent out of its natural shape, appears strikingly in the

case of a kind of bow found in Asia and the Asiatic islands. The bow

is here constructed out of a piece of wood bent by nature, not in such

a way, however, that the natural curve of the wood forms the curve

of the bow, but contrariwise. Thus arises a _reflexive_ bow, whose

elastic power is, of course, considerably increased. In order that such

a bow may be bent back more easily, some people of a more advanced

culture construct it out of several layers of wood, horn, sinew, or

the like. Having first observed the powerful impulsive force which a

rod gains through being bent, it was a simple matter to render this

force permanently available by bending the rod back and binding its

ends together with a cord of bast, or, if bamboo was used, with strips

torn from the bamboo itself. Thus originated the common form of the

bow. Next, it was, of course, easy to observe that the bowstring thus

contrived would communicate a powerful impetus to a lighter piece of

wood placed against it. In addition to the bow, we then have the arrow,

which is hurled into the distance by the combined propelling power

of the bow and its string. But at this point a new factor appeared,

clearly indicating that several motives generally co-operated in the

case of such so-called primitive inventions. In these inventions nature

itself played no less a part than did the inventive genius of the

individual. The arrow but rarely consists merely of a piece of wood one

of whose ends is somehow pointed or provided with a stone head, or, at

a later period, with an iron head. As is well known, the other end is

feathered, either with genuine bird feathers or, as in the case of the

pygmies of Central Africa, with an imitation of bird feathers made of

palm-leaves. The feathers are usually supposed to have been added to

insure the accurate flight of the arrow. And this accuracy is, indeed,

the resultant effect. As in the case of the boomerang, however, we must

again raise the question: How did man come to foresee this effect,

of whose mechanical conditions he had, of course, not the slightest

knowledge? The solution of this problem probably lies in the fact of an

association of the discharged arrow with a flying bird that pierces the

air by the movement of its feathers. Thus, in the arrow, man copied the

mode of movement of the bird. He certainly did not copy it, however,

with the thought that he was causing movement in a mechanical way. We

must bear in mind that for primitive man the image of a thing is in

reality always equivalent to the thing itself. Just as he believes

that his spirit resides in his picture, with the result that he is

frequently seized with fright when a painter draws his likeness and

carries it away with him, so also does the feathered arrow become for

him a bird. In his opinion, the qualities of the bird are transferred

by force of magic to the arrow. In this case, indeed, the magical

motive is in harmony with the mechanical effect.

Nature directly supplies primitive man not only with the patterns of

his implements and weapons, but also with those of the _vessels_ which

he uses. Of the primitive tribes none is familiar, at the outset,

with pottery. In its stead, suitable natural objects are utilized for

storing what is gathered. The Negritos of the Philippines, for example,

employ coconut shells. The inland tribes of the Malay Peninsula use

bamboo, whose varying thicknesses, and, particularly, whose internodes

enable it to be converted into the desired vessels by cutting the

stem at the upper end of an internode and immediately below it, thus

securing a vessel with a bottom. Wherever primitive peoples cut vessels

out of wood, as occurs among the Veddahs and the Bushmen, we may be

sure that this represents a comparatively late acquirement, following

upon a knowledge of metals and the use of stone implements. Primitive

man possesses no vessels for cooking purposes. He prepares his food

directly in the fire or in hot ashes.

We are now confronted by a final and an especially interesting

question of primitive culture, that of the _acquisition of fire_. This

acquisition made a deep impression on the human mind, and one whose

effects long survived in legend. The totemic age, as we shall see,

is replete with legends of beneficent animals which brought fire to

man. In the heroic age, the fire-bringing animal is displaced by the

fire-bringing hero. We may call to mind Prometheus, who brought fire

from heaven, and by so doing drew upon himself the vengeance of the

gods. Nevertheless, the question concerning the original production

of fire is a very simple one. As in the case of very many utensils

and tools, we must look to natural conditions that present themselves

in the course of experience. Man did not invent the art of kindling

fire; it would be nearer the truth to say that he found it, inasmuch

as he discovered it while making his utensils. In this connection,

particularly, it is highly important to note that the first age, if we

would designate it by its tools, was not an age of stone but an age of

wood. We have already referred to the way in which bamboo was worked

up into vessels for the storing of fruits and liquids. With a sharp

sliver of bamboo, a bamboo-stem is sawed into pieces in order that its

parts may be utilized. If this sawing occurs during dry weather, the

wood is pulverized and the heated sawdust finally becomes ignited. As

soon as it begins to glow, the worker blows upon it and the fire flames

up. This mode of kindling fire has been called that of _sawing_, and

is probably the oldest in origin. After fire was thus accidentally

produced, it became possible to kindle it at will, and this developed

into a skilful art. At a later stage, however, there came the further

need of drilling holes into wood. This gave rise to a second method of

kindling fire, that of drilling. A piece of wood is bored through with

a sharpened stick of hard wood, and the same results occur as in the

case of the sawing. The method of drilling is the more effective; it

produces fire more quickly. Nevertheless, both methods are laborious

and tedious, and we cannot blame the savage for regarding as a magician

the European who before his very eyes lights a match by friction.

Because of the difficulty in producing fire, its preservation plays

an important rôle in the life of the savage. When he changes his

dwelling-place, his first consideration, as a rule, is to take with him

some live fire so that he will not be obliged to kindle it anew.

In conclusion, we may supplement these sketches of external culture

by mention of a feature that is particularly characteristic of the

relation of primitive man to his environment. Primitive man lives in

close association with his fellow-tribesmen, but he secludes himself

from other tribes of the neighbourhood. He is led to do so because they

threaten his means of subsistence; indeed, he himself may fall a prey

to them, as do the Pygmies of Central Africa to the anthropophagic

customs of the Monbuttus. And yet, primitive man early feels the need

of such useful articles as he cannot himself produce but with which

he has, in some accidental manner, become acquainted. This gives rise

to what is generally called 'secret barter.' An illuminating example

of this occurs in the records of the Sarasin cousins as relating to

the Veddahs. The Veddah goes by night to the house of a neighbouring

Singhalese smith and there deposits what he has to offer in barter,

such as captured game, ivory, etc. With this he places a representation

of an arrow-head, made of palm-leaves. The next night he returns and

finds real arrows of iron which the smith has laid out in exchange for

the proffered goods. It might be thought that such a system of barter

would imply an excessive measure of confidence. The smith, however,

knows that, should he take away that which was brought to him without

delivering the arrows, he would himself be struck by an arrow shot from

some sheltered ambush. Thus, many things, especially iron, materials

for clothing, and articles of adornment, come into the possession of

primitive man through secret barter, raising his external culture to a

somewhat higher level.

A retrospective survey of this culture brings to notice especially

the fact that the concept 'primitive' is never valid, as applied to

man, except in a _relative_ sense. Of an absolutely primitive man we

know nothing at all. Moreover, the knowledge of such a being could

hardly render explicable his further development, since he would

really belong to the animal level and therefore to the prehuman

stage of existence. Primitive man is _relatively_ primitive, for,

while he does possess certain beginnings of culture, these are in no

respect more than mere beginnings, all of which are borrowed from

nature and from the direct means of assistance which it offers. It

is precisely these elementary acquisitions, however, that already

differentiate primitive man from the animal. He has the beginnings of

a dwelling and of dress, even though he does no more in either case

than merely to utilize the means which nature offers, or than partly

to imitate and partly to combine these means, as he does in the case

of the leafy wind-break and of the weapons which doubtless represent

the highest achievement of this age--namely, the bow and arrow. But

these are all beginnings which already contain within themselves the

possibilities of higher achievements. The development of the hut out

of the wind-break, of the lance out of the staff and the arrow, of

the woven basket out of the coconut or the gourd, severally represent

easy steps in the advance from nature to culture. Next there comes

the preparation of food by means of fire. This is closely connected

with the discovery of the art of kindling fire, which, in its turn,

was partly an accidental discovery connected with the manufacture of

primitive tools out of wood and partly a real invention. Thus, the

manufacture of tools, on the one hand, and the kindling of fire, which

was connected with it, on the other, are the two primary features

which from early times on distinguished primitive man from animals.

Furthermore, there is the bow and arrow, which is the first real weapon

and differs markedly from all other implements. Its construction also

was dependent upon the assistance of nature. The fact that this was

the only weapon of primitive society throws an important light on the

nature of the latter. The bow and arrow continued to be used for a

long time afterwards--indeed, even down to the appearance of firearms;

it served not only as a weapon of warfare but also as an implement

for hunting. With it alone, however, no organized strife or warfare

of any sort is possible. While, therefore, it is true that the archer

appears on the earliest monuments of cultural peoples, it is only

as the fellow-combatant of the warrior who is armed with shield and

lance. With lance and shield it is possible to fight in closed ranks.

The archer must fight single-handed. Primitive man, therefore, does

not engage in tribal wars; he is familiar only with the strife of

individual with individual. In fact, wherever the bow and arrow is used

exclusively, open warfare is impossible. With it, primitive man slays

his enemy from behind a sheltering bush. It is thus that the Veddah of

nature serves the cultural Veddah, or the Singhalese who has deceived

him in secret barter, or even the fellow-tribesman who steals his wife.

Just as secret barter is carried on in concealment, so also is warfare.

This, however, indicates that the bow and arrow was originally

intended for hunting and not for warfare. From this consideration alone

it is evident that primitive life was not a war of all against all, as

it was described by Thomas Hobbes. On the contrary, there doubtless

existed a state of peace, interrupted only occasionally by the strife

of individual with individual--a strife that resulted from a conflict

of interests, such as occurred even during this early period.

3. THE ORIGIN OF MARRIAGE AND THE FAMILY.

That the origin of marriage and the family really constitutes a

problem, long failed to be recognized. Because of the natural relations

of the sexes it was supposed that man lived in a state of marriage

from the very beginning. Furthermore, the monogamous marriage of the

present was projected back into an indefinite past, where it found

final termination in the idea of a primal pair of ancestors. But, even

apart from this mythological belief, there were also positive grounds

for supposing an original state of monogamy. Do not many animals live

in monogamous union? In addition to nest-building birds, monogamy

prevails particularly among mammals, and, of the latter, among those

that have the closest physical relationship to man. We might cite the

gorilla, the primate that most resembles man, and probably also the

chimpanzee, although in this case we lack positive proof. Why, then,

should not man have carried over monogamous marriage from his animal

state into his primitive culture? This theory, therefore, was regarded

as almost self-evident until after the middle of the last century.

But in 1861, a Swiss jurist and antiquarian, J. Bachofen, published a

remarkable work on "Mother-right." In this book Bachofen attempted to

prove the falsity of the doctrine--previously almost uncontested--that

monogamy was the original form of marriage, and to refute the view,

regarded as equally self-evident, that within this marriage union

man held the supremacy--in brief, the patriarchal theory. Bachofen

started with a discussion of the Lycians as described by Herodotus.

According to this writer, the kinship of the children, among the

Lycians, was determined by the mother, not by the father. The sons

and daughters belonged to the family of the mother, and descent was

traced through her instead of through the father. Bachofen found

similar indications among other peoples also. He called attention, for

example, to Tacitus's reports in the _Germania_ of some of the German

tribes in which a son stands closer to the brother of his mother than

he does to his father. Similar statements occur in Cæsar's _Bellum

Gallicum_ concerning the Britons. Bachofen collected other examples

of the same nature, and also especially emphasized certain elements

in myth and legend that seemed to indicate a like ascendancy of woman

in early times. In his opinion, legend is esteemed too lightly if, as

occurred in his day, it is regarded as entirely meaningless. Of course,

legend is not history; yet it gives a picture, even though in fanciful

terms, of the real conditions of earlier times. On the basis of these

detached observations, Bachofen at once constructed a general theory.

Preceding the patriarchal period of paternal rule, there was maternal

rule, gynecocracy. In earliest times the mother was the head of the

family. In romantic colours Bachofen pictures the era in which the fair

sex guided the destinies of humanity. Later, man, with his rougher

nature but greater intelligence, displaced her and seized the dominion

for himself. Bachofen then asks, How did it come about that, in spite

of this natural superiority of man, woman ruled the family earlier

than he? To this he gives an extremely prosaic and realistic reply,

contrasting sharply with his romantic ideas in connection with the

dominance of woman. We must find a clue, he believes, in those cases

of our own day in which mothers still determine the name, descent,

etc., of their children. This happens when the children are born out of

wedlock. Under such conditions, the child does not know its father, nor

does, perhaps, even the mother. To understand the origin of maternal

descent, therefore, we must suppose that children were universally

born out of wedlock. Thus, prior to the ascendancy of woman, there

existed a state of agamy, in which there was no marriage but only a

promiscuous relation of the sexes. We thus have, as it were, a picture

whose outlines are determined by contrast with the family of civilized

peoples, and which reminds us of Hobbes's account of the earliest

political relations, there being in both cases an entire absence of

order. But it is precisely in this fact, Bachofen believes, that we

have a clue to the origin of gynecocracy if only we bear in mind the

actual characteristics of woman. Woman's nature is such that this

universal promiscuity of the sexes must have become repulsive, first of

all, to her. Turning away all other men, she accepted but a single one.

In so doing, woman proved herself the champion of chastity and morals

which she has since remained. To her, and not to man, is due the honour

of having founded the monogamous family. At the outset she was also its

natural preserver and guardian. The children were counted to her kin;

her kin determined descent; and, in Bachofen's view, this condition,

which arose out of causes of a universal nature, long prevailed

throughout the world generally. But why was it not maintained? It was

not possible, so runs the answer, because, though woman alone was

psychically fitted to establish it--man could never have instituted

monogamy--she was not equally fitted to render it permanent. Woman is

not born to rule. In intelligence, as well as in physical strength,

she is inferior to man. Altogether, therefore, there are three periods

of development: agamy or promiscuity, followed by female supremacy or

mother-right, and, finally, by the dominance of man, or father-right.

These hypotheses of Bachofen created much dispute in succeeding years.

Some of the facts could not be denied from the standpoint of the

antiquarian. Nevertheless, the supposition of the universality of an

early mother-right was quite rightly questioned, and its origin out

of the completely unrestrained condition of the horde was even more

vigorously contested. And so the theory of the Swiss jurist, which was

based essentially on philologic-antiquarian arguments, gradually fell

into the background, until, in the seventies of the nineteenth century,

it suddenly seemed to find important corroboration and a new basis

from an entirely different quarter. It was ethnology that supplied the

new facts, and these were again derived from a study of Australia,

that field of ethnological observation which was generally regarded as

more particularly exemplifying primitive culture. Bachofen believed

to have demonstrated that maternal descent was originally a universal

custom, even in the case of those who are now cultural peoples.

Ethnology revealed the fact that this system of kinship is still very

prevalent in Australia. Indeed, it is so prevalent that even to-day

about three-fifths of the tribes trace descent through the mother and

only two-fifths through the father. In some of the cases in which

the system of paternal descent is now established, moreover, it is

probable that the mother once determined the kinship of the children.

It was on the basis of these facts that, in his volume on the natives

of south-eastern Australia, Howitt, the most thorough investigator of

the social conditions of the Australians, came to a conclusion similar

to that previously reached by Bachofen on the basis of his antiquarian

investigations. In Howitt's view, all family relations were originally

based on the system of maternal descent. This system, though generally

restricted to narrower bounds than in Australia, is likewise to be

found in America, Melanesia, Polynesia, and in several parts of the

Old World, especially among the peoples of northern Siberia and among

the Dravidian tribes in the southern part of Hindustan. These facts

have more and more led present-day ethnologists to a view that is in

essential agreement with Bachofen's theory. Again the question was

raised how such a system of maternal descent was possible. The answer

was that it could be possible only if the mother, but not the father,

was known to son and daughter--again an analogical conclusion from

conditions prevailing in present-day society outside the marriage tie.

Accordingly, the idea was again adopted that, anteceding marriage,

there was an original state of promiscuity. It was believed that there

was originally neither marriage nor family, but merely a condition in

which there were sexual relations of all with all--a picture of the

relations between man and woman suggested by the idea of an original

state of natural rights and of freedom from political restraints, and

forming, as it were, the counterpart of the latter.

But ethnology then discovered other phenomena also that seemed to

favour this view. _Two_ lines of argument, particularly, have here

played an important rôle, and still retain a measure of influence.

The first argument was again derived from the ethnology of Australia.

This region possesses a remarkable institution, describable neither

as monogamy nor as agamy, but appearing, at first glance, to be

an intermediate form of association. This is the so-called _group

marriage_; several men are united in common marriage with several

women. Either a number of brothers marry a number of sisters, or a

number of men belonging to one kinship group marry in common women

of another. Group marriage, therefore, may seem to represent a sort

of transitional stage between promiscuity and monogamy. At first, so

we might picture it to ourselves, the union of all with all became

restricted to more limited groups, and only later to the union of one

man with one woman.

But had not a further argument been added, perhaps neither female

descent alone nor group marriage would have attracted to this theory so

many prominent ethnologists, including, besides Howitt, the two able

investigators of Australia, Spencer and Gillen, the learned exponent

of comparative ethnology, J. G. Frazer, and a number of others. This

further argument was presented with particular thoroughness by the

American ethnologist Lewes Morgan, in his history of primitive man,

"Ancient Humanity" (1870). It is based upon what Morgan has termed

the 'Malayan system of relationship.' We are not, of course, familiar

with this as a system of actual relationship; it occurs only in the

languages of certain peoples, as a system of names--in short, as a

nomenclature--referring in part to relations of kinship, but chiefly

to age-relations within one and the same kinship group. The name

'Malayan' is not entirely appropriate as applied to this system. The

nomenclature is found particularly on the island of Hawaii, though it

also occurs in Micronesian territory. Its essential characteristic may

be very simply described. It consists, or consisted, in the fact that

a native of Hawaii, for example, calls by the name of 'father,' not

only his actual father but also every man of an age such that he could

be his father--that is, every man in the kinship group of the next

older generation. Similarly, he calls by the name 'mother,' not only

his own mother but every woman who might possibly, as regards age, be

his mother. He calls brother and sister the men and women of his own

generation, son and daughter those of the next younger generation, and

so on up to grandfather and grandmother, grandson and grand-daughter.

The Hawaiian native does not concern himself about more distant

generations; great-grandfather is for him the same as grandfather, and

great-grandchild the same as grandchild. The terms, thus, are of the

simplest sort. The brothers and sisters of a man, whom we designate in

the accompanying diagram by M, are placed alongside of him in the same

generation; above, as an older generation, are fathers and mothers;

still

Grandparents

|

Fathers\ | /Mothers

\ | /

Brothers---- M ----Sisters

/ | \

Sons/ | \Daughters

|

Grandchildren

higher, are grandfathers and grandmothers; below, are sons and

daughters and the grandsons and granddaughters. The same, of course,

holds also for women. Thus, the system as a whole comprises five

generations.

Now, it was maintained that this system could have arisen only out of

a previous condition of general promiscuity. For, unless the actual

father were universally unknown, how could it be possible that a

person would call by the name of father every man within the same

kinship group who might, as regards age, be his father? If, however,

we propose this argument, we immediately strike a weak point in the

hypothesis, since all women of the older generation are called mother

just as its men are called father. We should certainly expect that the

real mother would be known, because the child derives its nourishment

from her during a period which is especially long among primitive

peoples, and because it grows up close to her. And, furthermore, the

hypothesis is hardly reconcilable with the fact that, for the most

part, Malayo-Polynesian languages differentiate relations by marriage

even more sharply than do our own. An Hawaiian man, for example, calls

the brother of his wife by a different name than does a woman the

brother of her husband. Thus, in place of our word 'brother-in-law'

they have two expressions. In any event, the term 'brother-in-law'

is applied to an individual, and therefore implies marriage. To meet

this point, we would be obliged to fall back on the supposition that

these terms represent later additions to the original nomenclature

of relationship. But even then the fact would remain that, in their

direct reference, these terms are merely names for differences in age.

It therefore remains an open question whether the terms also designate

relationship; to the extent of our observation, this is certainly not

the case. The native of Hawaii, so far as we know anything about him,

knew his father and mother: what he lacked was merely a specific name

for them. Whenever he did not call his father by his given name, he

evidently called him by the same name that he applied to the older men

of his immediate group. Among European peoples also, the terms 'father'

and 'mother' are sometimes used in connection with men and women

outside this relationship. For example, the Russians, particularly,

have a custom of addressing as 'little father' and 'little mother'

persons who are not in the least related to them. That which makes it

highly probable that in the so-called Malayan system of relationship we

are dealing not with degrees of relationship but with age-periods, is,

in the last event, a different phenomenon--one that has hitherto been

overlooked in connection with these discussions. In the very regions

whose languages employ this nomenclature, custom prescribes that the

youths and men live in separation from the women and children from

their earliest years on. This is the institution of the men's club with

its age-groups. Its social rôle is an important one, crowding even

the family association into the background. Under such circumstances,

the individual is naturally interested first of all in his companions

of the same age-group, for each of these usually occupies a separate

apartment in the men's house. Thus, the so-called Malayan system of

relationship is really not a system of relationship at all, but a

nomenclature of age-groups based on social conditions. These conditions

bring it about that companions of the same sex are more closely

associated than are men and women. In the men's houses a companion of

the same group is a brother, one of the next older group, a father.

Together with these men the individual goes to war and to the hunt.

Thus, these phenomena cannot be said to belong to the lowest stage of

culture. Nor, obviously, does this terminology, which has reference

to differences of age, exclude any particular form of marriage. In

this case it is a mistake to associate the names 'father,' 'mother,'

'brother,' etc., with the concepts that we attach to these words.

The hypothesis that the family, whether of monogamous or of polygamous

organization, was preceded by a state of unrestricted sexual

intercourse, so-called agamy or promiscuity, is, however, as was

remarked above, based not only on the fact of maternal descent and of

the Malayo-Polynesian method of designating ages, but also on that

of group-marriage. In this form of marriage, a number of men marry

in common a number of women. This is interpreted as a transitional

stage between an unrestricted sexual intercourse within the tribe and

the limited marriage unions of later times. At first glance, indeed,

this might appear probable. In order, however, to decide whether

such a transition could take place, and how it might occur, we must

first of all consider the relation which group-marriage sustains,

among the peoples who practise it, to the other forms of marriage. It

then appears at once that it is a particular form of polygamy. True,

it is not identical with the form of polygamy most familiar to us,

in which one man possesses several wives. But there is also a second

form, which, though less frequent, is of greatest importance for an

interpretation of group-marriage. One woman may have several husbands.

The two forms of polygamy may conveniently be called _polygyny_ and

_polyandry_, and these terms should always be distinguished in any

attempt at a precise account of polygamous marriage. Polygyny is very

prevalent even in our day, occurring particularly in the Mohammedan

world, but also among the heathen peoples of Africa, and in other

regions as well. It was likewise practised by the ancient Israelites,

and also by the Greeks, although the Indo-Germanic tribes for the most

part adhered to monogamy from early times on. Polyandry is much less

common, and is, indeed, to be found only among relatively primitive

peoples. It occurs in Australia and, in the southern part of Hindustan,

among the Dravidians, a tribe of people crowded back to the extreme end

of the continent by peoples who migrated into India; it is found also

far in the north among the Esquimos of Behring Strait and among the

Tchuktchis and Ghilyaks of Siberia, and, finally, here and there in the

South Sea Islands.

If, now, we wish to understand the relation of these two forms of

polygamy to each other, we must first of all attempt to picture to

ourselves the motives that underlie them, or, wherever the custom has

become fixed through age, to bring to light the motives that were

originally operative. In the case of polygamy, the immediate motive is

evidently the sexual impulse of man which is more completely satisfied

by the possession of several wives than by that of a single one. This

motive, however, does not stand alone; as a rule other contributing

circumstances are present. Two such important factors, in particular,

are property rights and the power of authority. Polygyny flourishes

particularly wherever the general conceptions of property and of

authority, and, connected with the latter, that of the supremacy of

man within the family, have attained undue importance. Under the

co-operation of these motives, the wife becomes the absolute property

of the husband, and may, therefore, wherever polygyny prevails among

barbaric peoples, be given away or exchanged. Bound up with this,

moreover, is the fact that, wherever there are considerable social

differences, dependent on differences in property and rank, it is

principally the wealthy or the aristocratic man who possesses many

wives. In the realm of Islam, the common man is, as a rule, content

with a _single_ wife, so that monogamy here prevails in the lowest

stratum of society.

With polyandry the case is essentially otherwise. In it, entirely

different motives are operative; it might, indeed, be said that they

are the exact opposite of those that bring about polygyny. It is

particularly significant that polyandry is found in regions where there

is a scarcity of women. This scarcity, however, is, in turn, generally

due to an evil custom of barbaric culture, namely, infanticide. In

Polynesia, where polyandry was very prevalent, this custom was at

one time fairly rampant. Even to-day infanticide still appears to

be practised by some of the Dravidian tribes of Hindustan. Similar

conditions prevail among the Australians. In Polynesia, however,

and probably in other localities as well, it was chiefly the female

children who were the victims of infanticide. The natural result was

a decrease in women and a striking numerical disproportion between

the sexes. Thus, Ellis, one of the older English investigators of

conditions in these territories, estimated the relation of men to women

as about six to one. Under such circumstances the custom of polyandry

is intelligible without further explanation. It was not possible for

every one to possess a wife of his own, and so several men united to

win one wife in common.

We might ask why it was chiefly girls who fell victims to this murder.

That children in general should be sacrificed, under the rough

conditions of nature, is not inexplicable. It is due to the struggle

for the necessities of life and to the indolence that shrinks from the

labour of raising children. The desire is to preserve the lives of only

a limited number; the remainder are killed immediately after birth. In

Polynesia, the murder was forbidden if the child had lived but a single

hour. Occasionally, magical motives are operative, as in the case of

the horror which the man of nature feels towards deviations from the

normal and towards the birth of twins. That male children are more

often spared than female, however, can scarcely be explained otherwise

than on the ground that a particular value is placed on men. The man

is a companion in sport and in the chase, and is regarded as more

valuable for the further reason that he aids in tribal warfare. This

higher value reverts back even to the child. It is evidenced also in

the fact that, in the case of women, the arrival of adolescence is not

celebrated with the same solemn ceremonies as are held in the case of

young men. Whereas great celebrations are held when the youth reaches

the age of manhood, little notice is taken, as a rule, of the maiden's

entrance into womanhood. By means of these celebrations, the youths

are received into the society of men, and, together with companions of

their own age, are initiated into the traditional ceremonies. In these

ceremonies women are not allowed to participate.

Though the causes of polyandry are thus entirely different from those

of polygyny, it does not at all follow that these forms of marriage

are mutually exclusive. On the contrary, they may very well exist

side by side, as, indeed, they actually do in many places. But how,

then, is so-called group-marriage related to these two forms? It is

obviously nothing but a combination of polyandry and polygyny. In fact,

whenever a group of men marries a group of women, these two forms of

polygamy are both involved. Every man has several wives, and every

wife has several husbands. Only, indeed, on the basis of a purely

external and superficial consideration could one look upon polygyny

and polyandry as unconjoinable, because they are, in a certain sense,

opposing ideas. As a matter of fact, they do not really exclude each

other. If we bear in mind the causes mentioned above, it is obvious

that under certain conditions of life, such as occur particularly

in a more primitive environment, their combination is more probable

than their mutual exclusion. If, especially among tribes who have

not yet developed sharply defined distinctions based on property and

power, as, for example, among the Australians, every man strives to

obtain several wives (which is the state of polygyny), while, on the

other hand, there actually exists a dearth of women (which means that

motives to polyandry are present), the two forms naturally combine

with each other. This is frequently verified, moreover, whenever we

are able to gain any degree of insight into the particular conditions

surrounding the origin of such group-marriages, and also whenever their

forms undergo a modification of details. Among Australian tribes, for

example, particularly in the southern part of the continent, there is

a common form of group-marriage, in which a man possesses either one

or several chief wives, together with secondary wives; the latter are

the chief wives of other men, whereas his own chief wife is in turn the

secondary wife of those men or of others. This custom is very similar

to what is probably the most common form of polygyny, namely, the

possession by a man of only _one_ chief wife in addition to several

secondary wives,--a form of marriage that is obviously derived from

monogamy. One agency that is particularly apt to bring about such a

form of marriage, transitional between monogamy and polygyny, is war.

We know from the Iliad that in barbaric times woman was the booty

of the conqueror, and became his slave or secondary wife. So also,

according to the Biblical legend, Abraham possessed a chief wife,

Sarah, who belonged to his own tribe, but also a secondary wife, Hagar,

who was an Egyptian slave. Wherever the concept of property became

prominent, the purchase of women proved to be a further source of

polygyny. In this case also, there was generally _one_ chief wife,

wherever polyandry did not interfere. When the Mohammedan of modern

times calls his chief wife 'favourite,' it is merely another indication

that this form of polygyny developed from monogamy, since, according

to the old custom, there was but _one_ chief wife. Here, however, the

chief wife is no longer necessarily the wife belonging to a man's own

tribe, as was the case among the ancient Israelites; the favour of the

master determines which wife shall be given the privileged place.

Thus, from whatever angle we view group-marriage, its polygyny and

its polyandry seem to rest on monogamy. This is true also of forms

of group-marriage other than those mentioned above. Where the theft

of women still continues to be a practice more serious than are the

somewhat playful survivals that occur in the marriage ceremonies of

cultural peoples, the one who wishes to steal a wife not infrequently

secures confederates for his undertaking. Custom then commonly gives

these companions a certain right to the stolen woman. This right, of

course, is for the most part temporary, but it may nevertheless come

to approximate the conditions of group-marriage in case the first man

assists his confederates in the same way in which they have aided him.

There is still another and a related motive that may lead to the same

result. When a woman enters into marriage with a man of a certain

tribe, she at once enters into very close relations with the tribe

itself. Where tribal association has gained a preponderant importance,

custom sometimes grants to all the male members of the tribe certain

transient rights with respect to the woman on the occasion of her

marriage. This occurs particularly when the man and woman belong to

different tribes--that is, in the case of exogamy, an institution

characteristic of the totemic age and to be considered later. For,

the lively consciousness of kinship differences naturally tends to

strengthen the right of appropriation belonging to the entire tribe.

A similar thought is reflected in the mediæval _jus primæ noctis_ of

certain provinces of France and Scotland, except that in place of the

right of the kinship group to the possession of the individual we here

find the authority of the lord over his vassals.

Thus, all these phenomena, belonging in part to the transitional

stage between monogamy and polygamy and in part to a combination of

the two forms of polygamy, namely, polygyny and polyandry, point to

monogamy as the basal form of marriage, and that form from which, under

the influence of particular conditions, all others have developed.

Whether or not we regard it as probable that the system of maternal

descent was at one time universal, no argument for the existence of

an original promiscuity can be based upon it. If we call to mind

the close association of the youths and men of the kinship group in

the men's house, it will be apparent that such conditions of social

intercourse make for a particularly intimate bond between mother and

children. Before his entrance into the community of men, the boy lives

in the company of the women. This close association between mother and

children is sufficient to account for the origin of maternal descent.

But, owing to the gradual change of cultural conditions, it is to be

expected that maternal descent should pass over into paternal descent

as soon as more positive conceptions of authority and property are

formed. Moreover, the possibility also remains that among some tribes

paternal descent prevailed from the very outset; positive proof is

here not available. We cannot, of course, deny the possibility that

under certain cultural conditions man exercised the decisive influence

from the very beginning, as early, indeed, as one may speak of clan

membership and hereditary succession. The most primitive stage of

culture, as we shall see in the following discussion, lacks the

conditions for either maternal or paternal descent, inasmuch as it

possesses neither clearly defined clans nor any personal property worth

mention.

Thus, the arguments based on the existing conditions of primitive

peoples, and contending that the original condition of mankind was that

of a horde in which both marriage and the family were lacking, are

untenable. On the contrary, the phenomena, both of group-marriage,

valued as the most important link in the chain of proof, and of the

simpler forms of polygamy, everywhere point to _monogamy_ as their

basis. Furthermore, these arguments all rest on the assumption that

the peoples among whom these various phenomena occur, particularly

the combination of polygyny and polyandry in group-marriage, occupy a

primitive plane of social organization. This presupposition also has

proven fallacious, since it has become evident that this organization,

especially among the Australian tribes, is an extremely complicated

one, and points back to a long history involving many changes of custom.

Meanwhile, primitive man, in so far as we may speak of him in the

relative sense already indicated, has really been discovered. But the

Australian does not belong to this class, nor, even less, can many of

the peoples of Oceania be counted within it. It includes only those

tribes which, having probably been isolated for many centuries and

cut off from the culture of the rest of the world, have remained on

the same primitive level. We have become familiar with them in the

preceding account of the external culture of primitive man. We find

them to be forest peoples who have, for the most part, been crowded

back into inaccessible territory and who have entered but slightly

into intercourse with the outside world, inasmuch as their needs are

limited. They generally call themselves, whether rightly or wrongly

we need not inquire, the original inhabitants of these regions,

and they are regarded as such by their neighbours. They include,

in addition to several tribes of Hindustan (as yet insufficiently

studied), particularly the Semangs and Senoi of the interior of the

Malay Peninsula, the Veddahs of Ceylon, the Negritos of the Philippines

and Central Africa, and, finally, to some extent, also the Bushmen.

This is certainly a considerable number of peoples, some of whom live

at great distances from the others. In spite of this, however, even

their external culture is largely the same. Considering the primitive

character of their social institutions and customs, it would seem safe

to say that without doubt they approach the lowest possible level of

human culture. Besides bow and arrow they have scarcely a weapon, no

vessels of clay, and practically only such implements as are presented

directly by nature herself. At this stage there is scarcely anything

to distinguish man from the animal except the early discovered art of

kindling fire, with its influence on the utilization of the food that

is gathered. Briefly summarized, these are the main traits of primitive

culture that are known to us.

What, now, is the status of marriage and the family at this period? The

answer to this question will come as a surprise to those who are imbued

with the widespread hypotheses that presuppose the primitive state to

be that of the horde. And yet, if these hypotheses be regarded in the

proper light, our answer might almost be expected. Among the primitive

tribes that we have mentioned, monogamy is everywhere found to be not

only the exclusive mode of marriage, but that which is always, so to

speak, taken for granted; and this monogamy, indeed, takes the form of

single marriage. It is but rarely that related families live together

more or less permanently, forming the beginning of the joint family.

The Bushmen alone offer something of an exception to this rule. Among

them, polygyny, together with other practices, has been introduced.

This is probably due to the influence of neighbouring African peoples,

such as the Hottentots and the Bantus. Elsewhere conditions are

different. This is true especially of the Semangs and Senoi, whose

isolation has remained more complete, and of the Veddahs of nature,

as the Sarasin cousins call them in distinction from the surrounding

Veddahs of culture. Among these peoples, monogamy--indeed, lifelong

monogamy--has remained the prevailing form of marriage. Connected with

it is found the original division of labour, which is based on sex.

Man provides the animal food by hunting; woman gathers the vegetable

food--fruits, tubers, and seeds--and, by the employment of fire, if

necessary, renders both it and the game edible. This basis of division

of labour, which appears natural and in harmony with the endowment of

the sexes, contrasts with the conditions of later culture in that it

indicates an approximate equality of the sexes. Furthermore, Rudolf

Martin and the two Sarasins, investigators of the primitive Asiatic

tribes of Malacca and Ceylon, commend the marriage of these peoples

as being a union of husband and wife strictly guarded by custom.

In forming a moral estimate of these conditions, it should not be

overlooked that the exclusive possession of the wife is probably due to

jealousy as much as it is to mutual faithfulness. Among the Veddahs,

the intruder who threatens this possession is struck to earth by a

well-aimed arrow shot from behind ambush, and custom approves this act

of vengeance as a justifiable measure on the part of the injured man.

Therefore, even though a French traveller and investigator may, to a

certain extent, have confused cause and effect when he stated that the

monogamy of these tribes had its origin in jealousy, the exercise of

the right of revenge may, nevertheless, have helped to strengthen the

custom. But, of course, in view of the primitive state of culture that

here prevails, this custom of revenge is itself merely an indication of

the undisputed supremacy of monogamy. Even as the individual, and not

the clan, exercises this vengeance, so also does marriage continue to

be restricted to single marriage. Of the formation of joint families,

which arise out of the union of immediate blood relations, we find at

most, as has been remarked, only the beginnings.

4. PRIMITIVE SOCIETY.

The more extensive social groups generally result from the fact that

during the rainy season families withdraw into caves among the hills.

The larger caves are frequently occupied in common by a number of

families, particularly by such as are most closely related. Yet the

groups of co-dwellers are not so much determined by considerations

of kinship as by the size of the places of refuge; a single family

occasionally occupies a small cave by itself. Nevertheless, this

community life plainly furnishes the incentive to a gradual formation

of wider social groups. This, no doubt, accounts for the fact that

during the favourable season of the year several families of the

Veddahs claim for themselves a specific plot of ground, whose supply of

game, as well as of the products of the soil, which the women gather,

belongs exclusively to them. Thus, there is a division of the people

into districts, and these are determined geographically rather than

ethnologically. Every one is entitled to obtain his food, whether game

or products of the soil, from a specified territory. Custom strictly

guards this communal property, just as it protects the single marriage.

The Veddah, for example, who encroaches upon the territory belonging to

a group other than his own, is in no less danger of falling a victim to

an arrow shot from an ambush than is the one who trespasses on marriage

ties.

These various institutions form the beginnings of social organization,

but as yet they do not represent developed clan groups or established

joint families of the patriarchal type. On the contrary, as they

arise through the free association of individuals, so also may they

be freely dissolved. Each man has exclusive possession of his wife.

Without interference on the part of his clan, moreover, he exercises

absolute control over his children, who remain with the individual

family just as in the case of a developed monogamy. There is no trace

of sex-groups, such as are later to be found in the case of the men's

houses and the age-groups. Only temporarily, on the occasion of common

undertakings, such as the hunting of large animals, which requires a

considerable measure of strength, or when new hunting-grounds are being

sought, is a leader appointed from among the older men. His leadership,

however, ceases with the completion of the undertaking. There are no

permanent chiefs, any more than there are clans or tribal organizations.

Thus, in summary, we might say: Whenever the social organization

of primitive man has remained uninfluenced by peoples of a higher

culture, it consists in a firmly established monogamy of the form of

_single marriage_--a mode of existence that was probably carried over

from a prehuman stage resembling that of the present-day anthropoids.

There are also scanty beginnings of social groups. If we consider

these tribes as a whole, they still continue to lead the life of a

_horde_, meaning by this an unorganized, in contrast to an organized,

tribe of people. Indeed, it was through a curious change of meaning

that this word acquired its present significance. It is supposed to

have originated in a Mongolian idiom, whence it found its way first

into the Russian and later into other European languages. The Tartars

called a division of warriors a _horda_. First used in this sense, the

word apparently did not receive its present meaning in Germany until

the beginning of the eighteenth century. Having in mind the "Golden

Horde" of the Tartars, a horde was understood to mean a particularly

dreaded division of warriors. The furious force of these Asiatic

hordes, and the terror which they spread, later caused the concept

to be extended to all unorganized, wild, and unrestrained masses of

men. Taking the word in this wider significance, we may now say that

the horde, as a fairly large social group in which only very meagre

suggestions of an organized tribal system occur, is characteristic of

primitive times, no less than are the isolated single family and the

beginnings of the joint family. Thus defined, however, the horde does

not differ essentially from the animal _herd_, in the meaning which the

latter concept would possess when applied to human-kind. And it is not

impossible that in the extension of the meaning of the term 'horde,'

this association of the foreign word with the original Germanic word

'herd' played a part. A horde, we might say, is a human herd, but it is

precisely a _human_ herd. Between the members of a horde, therefore,

there exists a relation that is lacking in the animal herd, in flocks

of migratory birds, for example, or in herds of sheep and cattle. This

relation is established and preserved through a community of language.

Herder, therefore, truthfully remarks that man was from the beginnings

a 'herding animal,' in so far as he possessed social instincts. Even

in the formation of language these social instincts were operative.

Without a community life, and, we may add, without the mental

interaction of individuals, language would be impossible. Language,

however, in turn, strengthened this community life, and elevated it

above the status of the animal herd or of an association concerned

merely with momentary needs.

Thus, these reflections concerning the social relations of primitive

man lead us to a further field of phenomena which likewise affords

a glimpse into the mental characteristics of primitive peoples. For

that which differentiates the horde from the herd is the _language_ of

primitive man, together with the activity most closely bound up with

language, namely, _thinking_.

5. THE BEGINNINGS OF LANGUAGE.

Our knowledge of those peoples whom we, avoiding the errors of the

past, may now regard as primitive, led to the conviction that the

Asiatic and African tribes described above were actually primitive,

in the above-mentioned relative sense of the word. Naturally the

question concerning the language of these peoples then began to arouse

considerable attention, on the part, not only of ethnologists, but also

of those interested in philology. The question is of equal importance,

to say the least, for the psychologist. For language is bound up

with thought. From the phenomena of language, therefore, we may draw

inferences concerning the most general characteristics of thought. Such

fundamental differences of language as exist, for example, between the

Chinese and the Indo-Germanic tongues do not, of course, allow the

direct conclusion that there are quantitative differences in mental

culture. They do imply, however, that there are divergent directions

and forms of thought. In their ceaseless change, the latter react upon

language, and this, in turn, again influences mental characteristics.

We cannot suppose that, in the period of Old High German, much less

in that of the original German, our ancestors employed the same forms

of thought with which we of to-day are familiar. To a lesser degree,

similar changes have undoubtedly transpired within much shorter spaces

of time.

These considerations make the question concerning the language of

primitive man of the utmost psychological importance. Linguistic

investigations, however, so far as they, in their early attempts,

had been able to survey the field, had brought to light a fact which

discouraged all efforts to discover an original language. Indeed, it

was inevitable that at first glance this discovered fact should have

appeared exceedingly strange, particularly when viewed in connection

with the life of primitive man. It appeared that, for the most part,

the original languages of primitive tribes no longer exist. It is true

that in the vocabularies of the Semangs and Senoi of Malacca, of the

Veddahs of Ceylon, of the Negritos of the Philippines, and in other

vocabularies that have been collected, single words may be found which

do not occur in the languages of the neighbouring tribes; and it is

noteworthy that the bow and arrow are the objects most frequently

designated by such words, a proof of the fact that these are really

relatively primitive inventions. On the whole, however, the Veddahs

speak the language of the Singhalese and Tamils; the Semangs and Senoi,

as well as the Negritos of the Philippines, that of their neighbours,

the Malays; similarly, among the African tribes, the Pygmies of Central

Africa have apparently appropriated the language of the Monbuttus and

other negro races, and the Bushmen that of the Hottentots.

How may this remarkable fact be explained? That these tribes formerly

possessed languages of their own can scarcely be doubted. For, as

respects physical characteristics, they are absolutely distinct races.

Considering their characteristics as a whole, moreover, it is utterly

impossible that they could have lacked language before coming into

contact with the peoples who entered the country at a later period.

How, then, did these people come apparently to lose their original

language? To this we may briefly reply that there here transpired

what always occurs when the well-known principle of the struggle for

existence is applied to the field of mental phenomena. The stronger

race crowded out the most important mental creation of the weaker, its

language. The language of the weaker race, which was probably very

meagre, succumbed to a language that was more highly developed. At

first glance, this explanation would appear to contradict what we know

concerning the life of these primitive tribes. With what anxiety they

isolate themselves from their neighbours! A striking proof of this is

offered by the practice of secret barter, in which primitive man sets

out from the forest, if possible by night, and deposits his captured

game at a place which custom has set apart for this purpose, returning

the next night to take whatever the more civilized neighbouring tribes

have left in exchange--iron implements and weapons, material for

clothing, and especially articles of adornment. The participants in

this barter do not see each other, much less speak with each other. But

where such seclusion exists, how is it possible for a strange language

to penetrate? This problem appears almost insoluble. Nevertheless,

a solution that appears at least probable was suggested by the

investigations of Kern, an able Dutch scholar. His studies were based

mainly on the development of the various Malayan idioms. A remarkable

exception to the rule that primitive tribes have adopted the language

of their more civilized neighbours came to light in the case of the

Negritos of the Philippines. Their neighbours, as well as those of

the tribes of the interior of Malacca, belong to that much-migrating

race, the Malayans. If we compare the Negrito word-formations that

have been collected during the past forty years with the vocabulary

of the neighbouring Malayans, it is evident that all the words are

entirely different, or at least seem to be so with few exceptions.

When, however, Kern traced the probable development of these words, and

compared them, not with the present-day usage of the Malays but with

older stages of their language, he found that the latter invariably

contained the counterparts of the Negrito words. Thus, while these

Negritos have remained untouched by the present-day Malays, who

probably entered the country at least several centuries ago, they have

evidently derived their language from a Malayan influx that occurred

much earlier still. To this may be added the demonstrable fact,

gleaned from another source, that from very early times the Malayan

tribes undertook migrations at widely separated intervals. Traversing

the seas in their unsteady boats, they at various times peopled such

islands, in particular, as were not too remote from the mainland. Now

the testimony of language, to which we have referred, demonstrates

that there were at least two such migrations to the Philippines, and

that they occurred at widely different times. The original Malayan

dialect, which has now become extinct or unknown to the modern Malays,

was assimilated by the Negrito peoples, who probably occupied this

territory before the arrival of any of the Malays. But this leads to

a further inference. If the language was appropriated in prehistoric

times and if the conditions of the present are such as would make this

scarcely possible, we must conclude that the interrelations of the

immigrants and the original inhabitants were formerly not the same as

those that now prevail. And, as a matter of fact, this seems altogether

probable, if we call to mind the descriptions which modern travellers

give of their experiences among these primitive peoples. The traits of

character that particularly distinguish them are fear and hatred of

their more civilized neighbours; corresponding to this, is the contempt

felt by the latter, because of their higher culture, for the more

primitive peoples. The only thing that restrains the immigrant people

from waging a war of extermination against the original inhabitants

is the fear of the poisoned arrow which the Negrito directs against

his enemy from behind an ambush. In view of these facts it is not

difficult to understand the almost universal isolation of primitive

man at the present time. On the other hand, travellers who have

been admitted into the lives of the primitive tribes of Malacca and

Ceylon and have sought to gain their friendship, unanimously assure us

that, whenever a person has once succeeded in coming close to these

people and in overcoming their distrust, he finds their outstanding

characteristics to be good nature and readiness to render assistance.

We may, therefore, be justified in assuming that the seclusion of

primitive man was not an original condition, but that it grew up, here

and elsewhere, as a result of the war of extermination to which he was

exposed on the part of the races attempting to crowd him out of a large

part of his territory. Before this state of affairs arose, barter also

could scarcely have possessed that character of secrecy which only fear

and hatred could give it. In all probability the intercourse which

necessarily took place in early times between the older inhabitants

and the newer peoples, led to a competition of languages in which

the poorer and less developed language of primitive man inevitably

succumbed. Nevertheless, the primitive language may also have quietly

exercised a reciprocal influence upon the more advanced language.

An observation that we cannot escape, even on far higher stages of

linguistic development, is the fact that, in such a struggle between a

superior minority and a less civilized majority, the former determines

the main stock of words, and even, under favourable conditions, the

grammatical form, whereas the latter exercises a decisive influence

on pronunciation. That a similar process occurred in connection with

the displacement of primitive languages, the language of the Bushmen

offers proof. This is essentially a Hottentot dialect, even though

it is characterized by certain traits of primitive thought. The

Hottentots, however, have derived their well-known clacking sounds from

the Bushmen, who also gave these sounds to the languages of the Bantu

peoples.

But are we deprived of all knowledge concerning the most primitive

grammatical forms and concerning the related question of the origin

of language, by virtue of the fact that the languages of primitive

peoples have, with the exception of meagre remnants, apparently been

lost? There is a consideration touching the question of primitive forms

of thought and language that enables us, in spite of the difficulty

suggested, to answer this question in the _negative_. The development

of language does not at all keep pace with that of the other forms of

culture. Primitive forms of thought especially, and the corresponding

expression which they receive in language, may long persist after

external culture is relatively advanced. And thus, among tribes that

are in general far beyond the primitive stage, linguistic forms may

still be found which are exact counterparts of phenomena that, from a

psychological point of view, must be regarded as primitive. As regards

this point, it is especially the African languages of the Soudan that

offer a typical field for linguistic study. If we analyse the syntax of

such a language and the forms of thought which the sentence structure

allows us to infer, we gain the impression that it is hardly possible

to imagine a form of human thought whose essential characteristics

could be more primitive. This is clearly apparent from a consideration

of the Ewe language of the peoples of Togo, a German colonial

possession. This is a Soudan language, on whose grammar D. Westermann,

a German missionary, has given us a valuable treatise. While the

Ewe language does not contain all the essential features apparently

characteristic of relatively primitive thought, it does exemplify some

of them. We are led to this conclusion particularly when we compare

it, together with other Soudan languages, with a form of language

which, though it arises under highly advanced cultural conditions, may

nevertheless be regarded as primitive, since it is actually formed anew

before our very eyes. I refer to _gesture-language_. In this case, it

is not sounds, but expressive movements, imitative and pantomimic, that

form the means by which man communicates his thoughts to man. Though

we may regard gesture-language as an original form of language, in so

far as we can observe it at the moment of its creation, we must not, of

course, forget that the genesis of the forms of gesture communication

familiar to us belongs to a higher culture whose conditions differ

widely from those of primitive thought.

Now, of the various forms of gesture-language, the one that is least

subject to change is doubtless the means of communication employed

by those who are bereft of hearing, and therefore of speech as well,

namely, the _deaf and dumb_. A similar means of communication through

signs and gestures may also be observed among peoples of low culture.

Especially when they consist of tribes with markedly different

dialects, do such peoples make use of gestures in communicating

with one another. Investigations of the spontaneously arising

gesture-language of deaf-mutes date largely from the first half of

the nineteenth century. More recent studies have been made of the

gestures of the North American Indian tribes, and similar, though less

complete, observations have been reported concerning the Australians.

In these cases, however, gestures sometimes serve also as a sort of

secret language. This is even more true of certain signs that occur

among some of the peoples of southern Europe, as, for example, among

the Neapolitans. In considering the question before us, such cases

must, of course, be excluded, since the motive of communicating ideas

may here be entirely displaced by that of keeping them secret; instead

of a language that arises spontaneously, we have a means which is, on

the whole, consciously elaborated for purposes of mutual understanding.

If we disregard these cases, which belong to an entirely different

order of facts, and examine the data gathered from widely different

parts of the earth and from very diverse conditions of culture, we

find a remarkable agreement. In certain details, of course, there are

differences. The ideas of the Indian are not in all respects like those

of the civilized European or those of the Australian. Nevertheless,

the gestures that refer to specific concrete objects are frequently so

similar that many of the signs employed by the gesture-language of the

deaf-mutes of Europe may be found among the Dakota Indians. Could we

transfer one of these deaf and dumb persons to this group of Indians,

he would probably have no difficulty at all in communicating with them.

In more recent times the opportunity of investigating spontaneous

gesture-language has not been so great, because deaf-mutes have become

more and more educated to the use of verbal language. The principal

material for the study of the natural gesture-language of deaf-mutes

is, therefore, still to be found in the older observations of Schmalz

(1838, 2nd ed. 1848), a German teacher of people thus afflicted, and in

the somewhat later reports of an Englishman by the name of Scott (1870).

What, now, do these observations teach us concerning the origin of

gesture-language, and therefore probably also concerning the factors

underlying the origin of language in general? According to the

popular notion, a so-called impulse for communication or, perhaps,

certain intellectual processes, voluntary reflections, and actions,

account for the fact that the contents of one's own consciousness

come to be communicated to other individuals. If, however, we observe

gesture-language in its origin, we obtain an entirely different

view. This mode of communication is not the result of intellectual

reflections or conscious purposes, but of emotion and the involuntary

expressive movements that accompany emotion. Indeed, it is simply a

natural development of those expressive movements of human beings

that also occur where the intention of communicating is obviously

absent. As is well known, it is not only emotions that are reflected

in one's movements, particularly in mimetic movements of the face,

but also ideas. Whenever ideas strongly tinged with feeling enter

into the course of emotions, the direct mimetic expressions of the

face are supplemented by movements of the arms and hands. The angry

man gesticulates with movements which clearly indicate the impulse

to attack that is inherent in anger. Or, when we have an ideational

process of an emotional nature, and ideas arise referring to objects

that are present to us, we point to the objects, even though there be

no intention of communicating the ideas. Directions in space, likewise,

as well as past time and futurity, are involuntarily expressed by

means of backward and forward pointing movements; 'large' and 'small'

are expressed by the raising and lowering of the hands. When further

movements are added, indicating the form of an object by describing its

image in the air with the hands, all the elements of a gesture-language

are complete. What is lacking is only that the emotionally coloured

idea be not a mere expression of one's own emotion, but that it evoke

the same emotion and, through this, the same idea, in the minds of

others. Under the influence of the emotion aroused within them, those

addressed must then reply with the same, or slightly different,

expressive movements. When this occurs, there is developed a common

thinking in which impulsive movements are more and more displaced

by voluntary actions, and ideational contents, together with the

corresponding gestures, enter into the foreground of attention. By

virtue of this ideational content, movements expressive of emotions

come to be expressions of ideas; the communication of an individual's

experiences to others results in an exchange of thought--that is, in

language. This development, however, is influenced by that of all

the other psychical functions, and especially by the transition of

emotional and impulsive movements into voluntary actions.

Of what nature, now, is the content of such a gesture-language as

arises independently within a community, and which may, in so far,

be regarded as primitive? To this we may briefly reply that all

elements of this language are perceptible to the senses, and therefore

immediately intelligible. Hence it is that deaf-mutes, though of

different nationalities, can make themselves understood without

difficulty, even upon meeting for the first time. This intelligibility

of gesture-language, however, rests upon the fact that the signs it

employs--or, translated into the terminology of spoken language, its

words--are direct representations of the objects, the qualities, or

the events referred to. Whenever the object discussed is present, the

gesture of _pointing_ with the hand and finger is itself the clearest

way of designating the object. Thus, for instance, 'I' and 'you' are

expressed by the speaker's pointing to himself or to the other person.

This suggests a similar movement to designate a 'third person' who

is not present. The sign in this case is a backward movement of the

finger. Whenever the objects of conversation are present in the field

of vision, the dumb person, as a rule, dispenses with every other form

of representation but that of merely pointing to them.

Since the objects under discussion are, on the whole, only rarely

present, there is a second and important class of gestures, which,

for the sake of brevity, we may call _graphic_. The deaf-mute, as

also the Indian and the Australian, represents an absent object by

pictures outlined in the air. What he thus sketches in only very

general outlines is intelligible to one practised in gesture-language.

Moreover, there is a marked tendency for such gestures to become

permanent within a particular social group. For the word 'house,'

the outlines of roof and walls are drawn; the idea of walking is

communicated by imitating the movements of walking with the index and

middle fingers of the right hand upon the left arm, which is held out

horizontally; the idea of striking is represented by causing the hand

to go through the movements of striking. Not infrequently, however,

several signs must be combined to make a gesture intelligible. In the

German and English deaf and dumb language, the word 'garden,' for

example, is expressed by first describing a circle with the index

finger to indicate a place, and by then lifting the thumb and the index

finger to the nose as the gesture for smelling. 'Garden,' thus, is, as

it were, a place where there are flowers to smell. The idea 'teacher'

cannot, of course, be directly represented or pictured; it is too

complicated for a language of representation. The deaf and dumb person,

therefore, is likely to proceed by first making the gesture for man.

For this purpose, he singles out an incidental characteristic, his

gesture being that of lifting his hat. Since women do not remove their

hats in greeting, this gesture is highly typical. The distinctive sign

for woman consists in laying the hands upon the breast. Now, in order

to communicate the idea of 'male teacher,' the hat is first lifted as

the above gesture for man, and then the index finger is raised. This is

done either because pupils in school raise the index finger to indicate

their knowledge of a certain thing or, perhaps, because the teacher

occasionally raises his finger when he wishes to command attention or

to threaten punishment.