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 snake itself and the snake-like reptiles are
taboo, as well as numerous birds--all of which were at a very early
period totem animals. Heading the list of the animals that may be
eaten, on the other hand, are the ox, the sheep, the goat--in short,
the animals of an agricultural and sheep-raising culture. Thus, as
the original magical motives of taboo disappear, their place is taken
by the emotion of fear, which causes the object arousing it to appear
as unclean. Whoever touches such an object is polluted in a physical
as well as a moral sense, and requires a cleansing purification
according to rites prescribed by cult. We cannot avoid the impression,
accordingly, that the unclean animals held to be taboo by the Priests'
Code, are the same as those which this same people regarded as sacred
soul and totem animals at an earlier stage of culture. Thus, these
prohibitions with reference to food are analogous to the impassioned
preaching against false idolatry--both refer back to an earlier cult.
In this category belongs also the prohibition of consuming the blood of
animals in the eating of their flesh. This likewise is the survival of
a very common belief--certainly prevalent also among the Israelites at
one time--that with the blood of an animal one might appropriate its
spirit-power. The priestly law transforms this motive into its direct
opposite. For the text expressly says: "In the blood is the life; but
ye shall not destroy the life together with the flesh."
Thus, the significance of the taboo shifts from the sacred, which
evokes man's fear, to the unclean and demoniacal, which also arouse
fear but in the form of aversion. Closely related to this change is
a group of views and customs resulting from this last form of taboo
and reaching down, as its after-effects, far into the later religious
development. These are the _purification rites_ connected with the
ideas of clean and unclean. The word _lustratio_, by which the Romans
designated these rites, is really more appropriate than the German
word _Reinigung_, since it suggests more than merely the _one_ aspect
of these usages. Indeed, the idea of purification is not even primary,
any more than the conception of the unclean is the initial stage in the
development of the taboo. On the other hand, the idea that a man might
be exposed to demoniacal powers by touching an object or by eating a
certain food, such, for example, as the flesh of certain animals, is in
entire accord with such primitive notions as are expressed in the fear
of the corpse and of sickness, as well as in other similar phenomena.
The essential thing is to escape the demon who is harboured in the
particular object of concern. This impulse is so irresistible that,
whenever the idea of taboo arises, the conception of lustration, of a
magic counteraction to the demoniacal power, is also evolved. Thus,
magic and counter-magic, here, as everywhere, stand in antithesis. The
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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