Elements of Folk Psychology: Outline of a Psychological History of the Development of Mankind — John Shaqi
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
beyond the level here in question, it is especially in caves that
artistic productions may be found. These consist of crude drawings of
animals and, less frequently, of men. Among the Bushmen, such cave
pictures are frequently preserved from destruction for a considerable
period of time. Natural man, roaming at will through the forests, has
neither time nor opportunity to exercise his imagination except upon
relatively small objects or upon the adornment of his own body. But the
semi-darkness of the cave tends, as do few other places, to stimulate
the reproductive imagination. Undisturbed by external influences, and
with brightnesses and colours enhanced by the darkness, the memory
images of things seen in the open, particularly those of the animals
of the primeval forest, rise to consciousness and impel the lonely and
unoccupied inhabitant to project them upon the wall. Such activity is
favoured by the fact, verifiable by personal introspection, that memory
images are much more vivid in darkness and semi-darkness than in the
light of day. Thus, it was in the cave, the first dwelling-place of
man, that the transition was made, perhaps for the first time, from
the beginnings of a graphic art, serving the purposes of adornment or
magic, to an art unfettered except by memory. It was an art of memory
in a twofold sense: it patterned its objects after the memory of things
actually observed, and it sought to preserve to memory that which it
created.
From the consideration of dress and habitation we turn to that of
food. Primitive man was not bound to fixed hours for his meals.
Among civilized peoples, so close a connection has grown up between
meals and definite hours of the day that the German word for meal,
_Mahlzeit_, reminds us of this regularity by twice repeating the word
for time---for _Mahl_ also means time. Primitive man knew nothing of
the sort. If he found food and was hungry, he ate; if he found none, he
went hungry. Sometimes, moreover, in order to provide for the future,
he gorged to such an extent as to injure his health. As concerns the
food itself, there is an old theory which has led to misconceptions
concerning primitive man. He was a hunter, we are told; the chase
supplied him with food; only incidentally and occasionally did he
enjoy parts of plants or fruits that he had gathered or accidentally
discovered. It is scarcely correct, however, to assume that systematic
hunting was practised by primitive man. Doubtless he did engage in this
occupation. Yet this furnished him with only an incidental part of his
food supply--apart with which, living as he did from hand to mouth, he
satisfied only his momentary needs. It was with plant food, if at all,
that he made provision for the future. Here may be found also the first
traces of a division of labour: woman gathered the plant food--roots,
bulbs, and berries--while man occasionally found it necessary to hunt.
Plant food being capable of longer preservation, it was woman who
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