Page:Philosophical Review Volume 26.djvu/679

No. 6.] and to chieftainship as a regular institution. From the latter comes the political organization which culminates in the State, which thus appears as itself one of the last products of totemic culture. We have now also organized warfare and new weapons for its prosecution, migrations of peoples, trade and barter, the cultivation of the land by agricultural implements, the care and breeding of cattle. The animal, sacred at the beginning, becomes a work animal, its cult significance gradually vanishes, and the totemic era passes over into that of heroes and gods. The culture of this age is not as uniform as that of the age preceding. Wundt distinguishes three stages, the Australian, the Malayo-Polynesian, and the American and African. Each has features which, in Wundt's view, derive from a similar totemic basis, but there are also marked differences; thus, the Malayo-Polynesian mythology is peculiar in being largely celestial, and here the totemic basis has almost entirely disappeared.

The characteristic of the age of heroes and gods is the predominance of individual personality. This distinguishes the hero, whether of Märchen or of saga, whether legendary or purely mythical, from the little personalized subjects of earlier myths. The god is a fusion of hero and demon. Here first we have what Wundt thinks may properly be termed religion—belief in and worship of the gods. The culture of the age is marked by many changes in belief about the higher powers and about the soul and its destiny, and by corresponding changes in economic life and in society. Among its phenomena are the differentiation of classes and of vocations, the rise of cities, the founding of states, the development of political and military organizations and the growth of the institution and administration of law. Its relatively most distinguishing characteristic is art, as that of the preceding age was the satisfaction of wants, and as that of more fully developed humanity is science.

The trend of this whole movement is to develop the idea of man, of the whole of humanity, as the subject of culture, and to lead to an age in which this idea, "having come to clear consciousness, exercises an influence on the various phases of culture, and is entertained by a sufficiently large portion of mankind to ensure its permanent effectiveness." This age of the development to humanity, in which the most civilized part of the world now lives, has been especially conditioned by four great factors,—world-empires, world-culture, world-religions and world-history. The first have disappeared, the second and third remain. All together have powerfully influenced the growth of the historical consciousness and have given rise to various