true, not merely of many of the problems of folk psychology, but in the last analysis of almost all questions relating to the beginning of particular phenomena. In such cases, the result is seldom based on actually given data--these are inaccessible to direct observation, leaving psychological probability as our only guide. That is to say, we are driven to that hypothesis which is in greatest consonance with the sum total of the known facts of individual and of folk psychology. It is this empirical task, constituting a part of psychology and, at the same time, an application of it, that chiefly differentiates a psychological history of development, such as the following work aims briefly to present, from a philosophy of history. In my opinion, the basis of a philosophy of history should henceforth be a psychological history of development, though the latter should not intrude upon the particular problems of the former. The concluding remarks of our final chapter attempt, in a few sentences, to indicate this connection of a psychological history of development with a philosophy of historical development, as it appears from the point of view of the general relation of psychology to philosophical problems. W. WUNDT. LEIPZIG, _March_ 31, 1912. CONTENTS TRANSLATOR'S PREFACE PREFACE INTRODUCTION History and task of folk psychology--Its relation to ethnology--Analytic and synthetic methods of exposition--Folk psychology as a psychological history of the development of mankind--Division into four main periods. CHAPTER I--PRIMITIVE MAN 1. THE DISCOVERY OF PRIMITIVE MAN Early philosophical hypotheses--Prehistoric remains--Schweinfurth's discovery of the Pygmies of the Upper Congo--The Negritos of the Philippines, the inland tribes of Malacca, the Veddahs of Ceylon. 2. THE CULTURE OF PRIMITIVE MAN IN ITS EXTERNAL EXPRESSIONS Dress, habitation, food, weapons--Discovery of bow and arrow--Acquisition of fire--Relative significance of the concept 'primitive.' 3. THE ORIGIN OF MARRIAGE AND THE FAMILY Bachofen's "Mother-right" and the hypothesis of an original promiscuity--Group-marriage and the Malayan system of relationship--Erroneous interpretation of these phenomena--Polygyny and polyandry--The monogamy of primitive peoples. 4. PRIMITIVE SOCIETY The primitive horde--Its relation to the animal herd--Single family and tribe--Lack of tribal organization. 5. THE BEGINNINGS OF LANGUAGE Languages of primitive tribes of to-day--The gesture-language of the deaf and dumb, and of certain peoples of nature--natural gesture-language--Its syntax--General conclusions drawn from gesture-language.