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
of its sphere of usefulness, to draw the plough across the fields.
This hypothesis, which presupposes the joint influence of orgiastic
vegetation cults and ancient sacrificial usages, is, of course, not
susceptible of positive demonstration. Nevertheless, to one concerned
with the transition from ancient field cults to the agriculture
of later times, the combination of conditions just indicated may
reasonably be regarded as affording the basis of an hypothesis that is
psychologically not improbable.
Whether the raising of the milch cow was coincident with the taming
of the ox for the purposes of agriculture, and whether it came about
as the result of a similar transformation of motives, it is hardly
possible to determine. Though such changes are of more importance
for the development of culture than are many of the campaigns and
ancient folk wars of which history has preserved a record, no positive
clue as to their origin has anywhere survived. All that we know with
certainty is that the taming of the ox to draw the plough and the
raising of the milch cow are not necessarily bound up with one another.
For plough-culture and the milk industry are by no means always to
be found together. In spite of his highly developed agriculture, the
Chinaman loathes milk, whereas the Hindoo regards it as a valuable
gift of civilization, prizing it not only because of the butter which
he secures from it but especially as a food and as a sacrifice to the
gods. The Israelites received the promise that Canaan was to be a land
"that floweth with milk and honey." The latter expression suggests the
cultural conditions of two widely different periods. Milk represents
the most valuable product of later culture, while even primitive man
regarded the honey which he gathered from the hives of wild bees as his
most precious article of food.
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