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Unlike the author's larger Völkerpsychologie, which consisted in the main of a psychological interpretation of the several products of the folk-mind—language, myth and customs, art—each in turn, the present volume aims at a reconstruction from the psychological point of view of the cultural development of man himself. The reshaping of the material involves considerable change of emphasis; instead of the two volumes formerly devoted to language, the subject is here dismissed in twenty pages and is not carried beyond its beginnings; art is treated in connection with successive stages of the development; the chief stress is placed on myth, customs, institutions. The new main purpose and the more compendious handling of the subject-matter add to the interest; the book is bulky, but readable.

According to Wundt, man has passed through three principal stages on the way to humanity, the goal of which is still in the future. These three stages are those of primitive man, of the totemic age and of the age of heroes and gods. Among the most primitive races, he reckons the Veddahs of Ceylon, the South African Bushmen, the Bantus, the Hottentots, and the Negritos of the Philippines, but not the natives of Australia, who possess a relatively high degree of social organization. The characteristic of the primitive is its relative simplicity. The intelligence of primitive man is restricted to a narrow sphere of action, but within that sphere is not notably inferior to that of civilized man. He has few wants, his conditions of life are relatively stable, and he is in general peaceable and contented. The picture we get of him is the very opposite of that drawn by Hobbes. His only weapon is the bow and arrow. His constant companion is the dog. His morality is dependent on his environment. Where his life is free, he has few motives to immoral conduct in our sense of the word; his state might almost be called ideal. When he is hunted and hard pressed, he possesses no moral principles whatever. His characteristic beliefs are in magic and demons, the motives to which are found in the emotions aroused by sickness and death. With these beliefs are connected the beginnings of his art.

The totemic age is the period pervaded by the culture directly or indirectly dependent on ideas of the totem, now taken as a group name, now as an indication of ancestry, these ideas variously interplaying. They give rise to exogamy, to tribal division and