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
although in its agriculture it has not advanced beyond the level of
hoe-culture. As compared with Malayo-Polynesian culture, however,
it presents an important additional factor. This consists in the
community of labour, which is obviously connected with the more stable
tribal organization and with the development of more comprehensive cult
associations. It is this factor that accounts for those great cult
festivals that are associated with sowing and harvest and that extend
far down into the higher civilizations, as numerous rudimentary customs
still testify.
The changes which we likewise find in mythological conceptions also
carry us beyond the narrow circle of original totemism. Again there
appear elements of a nature-mythology, particularly of a celestial
mythology. These supplant the animal cult, but nevertheless retain
some connection with the totem animal; the culture is one in which the
totem animal never entirely loses its earlier significance. Thus, the
vegetation festivals, especially those of North and Central America,
exhibit many cult forms in which ideas that belong to a celestial
mythology combine with the worship of animals and of ancestors. The
conceptions of ancestors and of gods thus play over into one another,
and these god-ancestors are believed to have their seat in the clouds
and in the heavens above. However constantly, therefore, totemic ideas
may be in evidence within the field of external phenomena, a much
superior point of view is attained, by the American races, as regards
the inner life.
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