Elements of Folk Psychology: Outline of a Psychological History of the Development of MankindWundt, Wilhelm Max
Science
Elements of Folk Psychology: Outline of a Psychological History of the Development of Mankind
Wundt, Wilhelm Max
Ethnopsychology
The medicine-man who
exercises counter-magic must also be familiar with magic. The two are
but divergent forms of the same magical potency that has its birth in
the emotions of fear and terror.
In summary of what we have thus far learned with regard to the art of
drawing among primitive men, it may be said that this art is throughout
one of _magic_ and _adornment_. These are the _two_ motives from which
it springs, and which, apparently, co-operate from the outset. The mere
drawing of lines in regular and symmetrical repetition is due to that
regularity of movement which also finds expression in the dance and,
even prior to this, in ordinary walking and running. But the artist
himself then attributes a hidden meaning to that which he has created.
Astonishment at his creation fuses with his pleasure in it, and his
wonder at the picture that he has produced makes of it, when animated
and retransformed by the imagination, a magical object. The pictures
carried about on the person, or wrought on an object of daily use,
assist in guarding against diseases and other injuries, or they assure
the success of the weapon and the implement.
In view of these characteristics of a purely magical and decorative
art, it may perhaps at first glance cause surprise that there should
be a people which, although primitive in other essential respects, has
far transcended this stage in artistic attainment, and has, apparently,
followed an entirely different direction in its pathway to art. Such
are the Bushmen. The primitive tribes mentioned above show no traces
of an art of drawing; beyond suggestions of a single object, it is
absolutely impossible to find representations of objects and their
groupings such as are common in the pictures of the Bushmen, which
portray particularly animals and, to a less extent, men. This is all
the more significant in view of the fact that, while the Bushmen
also decorate their weapons and utensils with magical and ornamental
designs, these are of far less importance than in the case of the
primitive tribes referred to above. The painting of the Bushmen,
however, is obviously neither magical nor decorative in character.
Originally these pictures seem to have been drawn in caves; at any
rate, it is here that many of them have been found. We have already
indicated the importance of this primitive dwelling for the beginnings
of a memorial art. When external impressions are absent, as in the
cave, the imagination is all the more impelled to preserve memories
in self-created pictures. The simpler of these resemble, in their
characteristics, the drawings and paintings of present-day children.
But we can plainly distinguish the more primitive work from that which
is more advanced; the latter frequently reproduces its objects with
accuracy, particularly animals, such, for example, as the elk and also
the giraffe, which is a favourite object, probably because of its long
neck. Occasionally, indeed, a quadruped is still represented in profile
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