Note: Project Gutenberg also has an HTML version of this file which includes the original illustrations. See 44138-h.htm or 44138-h.zip: (http://www.gutenberg.org/files/44138/44138-h/44138-h.htm) or (http://www.gutenberg.org/files/44138/44138-h.zip) Images of the original pages are available through Internet Archive. See https://archive.org/details/elementsoffolkps010475mbp Transcriber's note: Text enclosed by underscores is in italics (_italics_). A carat character is used to denote superscription. A single character following the carat is superscripted (example: C^1). 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."