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 first stages of the domestication of cattle, it was possible to
gain only a small supply of milk, since its over-production could be
developed but slowly; just for this reason, however, milk was all the
more valuable. This may probably also throw light on the high value
which was long placed on butter as a sacrificial gift. The attempt to
secure this valuable product for sacrificial purposes may then itself
in turn have reacted upon the milk industry. Thus, the two great
advances in material culture that attend the heroic age--the tilling of
the soil with the plough and the systematic endeavour to secure milk
and its products--seem to be, in part, directly due to, and, in part,
closely bound up with, motives of cult. External culture and inner
religious impulses have always attested themselves to be elements of a
totality all of whose parts are interrelated.
Of the new forms of industry which thus arose, the cultivation of the
soil by means of the plough led to a further important change. This
change was just as much an effect of the new conditions of life as it
was an expression of the altered spirit of the times. The guidance
of the plough is a task which prevents the field work from being any
longer done in common, as it was at the height of hoe-culture and
during the time of the origin of the great vegetation festivals of
totemism. The individual must guide his own plough. The appearance of
plough-culture _individualizes labour_. Just as the individual comes
to the fore in political development and is extolled in legend as
the founder of cities and States, so also is it the individual who
cultivates the land. This individualistic tendency also gradually makes
itself felt in the raising of domestic animals. Plough-culture gives
rise to _private property_ as regards both the soil and its products.
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