Elements of Folk Psychology / Outline of a Psychological History of the Development of Mankind

ich, strangely enough, the answer has, up to very recent times, been sought, not in the facts of experience, history, or ethnology, but purely by the path of speculation. At t

This is the negative criterion by means of which the philosophy of the Enlightenment, with its conceited estimate of cultural achievements, formed its idea of primitive man. Primitive man is the savage; the savage, however, is essentially an animal equipped with a few human qualities, with language and a fragment of reason just sufficient to en

on or reason. Hence it is that the repelling picture of primitive man is modified as soon as the mood changes. To an age that is satiated with culture and feels the traditional forms of life to be a burdensome constraint, the state of nature becomes an ideal once rea

e associations. The family first developed into the patriarchal joint family; from this the village community arose, and then, through the union of several village communities, the State. The theory of a natural development of society from the family was first elaborated by Aristotle, but it goes back in its fundamental idea to legend and myth. Peoples frequently trace their origin to an original pair of ancestors. From a single marriage union is derived the single tribe, and then, through a further extension of this idea, the whole of mankind. The legend of an original ancestral pair, however, is not to be found beyond the limits of the m

t, as it did in the patriarchal theory of the original state of man to which it gave rise. The Aristotelian theory of the gradual origin of more comprehensive organizations, terminating in the State, is no less a fiction; the social communities existing side by side in the period of Greece were arbitrarily represented as having emerged suc

nclusions, the fact that the measurements of the skeletal parts more closely resembled those of animals, and, in particular, that the measurements of the interior of the skull were smaller than those of the savages of our own time, offered indirect evidence of a lower development. Because of the close relation of cranial capacity to size of brain, moreover, a lower degree of intelligence was also indicated. Nevertheless, the remains that have been brought to light have not as yet led to any indubitable conclusions. There have been fairly numerous discoveries pointing to races that resemble the lower tribes among contemporary peoples, and but a few cases in which uncertainty is possible, and concerning which, therefore, there exists a conflict of opinions. A typical instance is the history of one of the first discoveries made in Europe of the remains of a prehistoric man. It was in 1856, in German territory, that there was discovered, in a grotto or cave in the Neander valley, near Duesseldorf, a very remarkable skull, though only, of course, the bones of the cranium and not the facial bones. All were at once agreed that these were the remains of a very primitive man. This was indicated particularly by characteristics which are still to be found, though scarcely in so pronounced a form, among certain lower races of men. Of special significance were the strongly developed, prominent bone-elevations above the eye-sockets. Some of the investigators believed that th

cult ever to ascertain whether or not he was familiar with the bow and arrow, since the arrow, as well as the bow, was originally made of wood. Secondly, there is at the present time no primitive tribe, however much shut off from its more remote environment, into which barter, which is nowhere entirely absent, may not introduce some objects representing a higher form of civilization, particularly metals and metal implements. If, however, we bear in mind that, in the one case, products have suffered destruction and that, in the other, articles have been introduced from without, the impression made by prehistoric utensils and products of art-aside from certain doubtful remains dating back beyond the diluvial epoch-is not essentially different from that made by the analogous products of the Negritos of the Philippines or the inland tribes of Ceylon. Though the material of which the implements are constructed differs, the knives, hammers, and axes in both instances possess the usual form. Thus, the wooden knife which the Veddah of Ceylon still carves out of bamboo is formed precisely like some of the stone knives of the diluvial period. We find a similar correspondence when we examine the traces of dwellings and decorations that have been preserved, as well as certain remains that throw light upon customs. The oldest prehistoric people of

of a very primitive character. Because of the conjecture that it was here dealing with a relatively primitive type of man, modern anthropology has for two decades applied itself with great partiality to the study of Australian tribes. English and German investigators have given us many works, some of them excellent, treating of the continent of Australia, which appears almost as unique with respect to its population as in its flora and its fauna. From these investigations, however, which are reported particularly in the volume by Howitt published in 1900, in the works of Spencer and Gillen, and, finally, in those of Strehlow, a German missionary, it is apparent that the Australian culture is anything but primitive: it represents, rather, a stage of developme

up the Upper Nile in 1870, listened to the narratives of the Nubian sailors in charge of his boat, he repeatedly heard accounts of a nation of dwarfs, of people two feet tall (so the exaggerated reports went), living in the impenetrable forests beyond the great lakes which constitute the source of the Nile. Schweinfurth was at once reminded of the old legends regarding pygmies. Such legends are mentioned even by Homer and are introduced also into the writings of Herodotus and of Aristotle. Aristotle, indeed, expressly says that these dwarf peoples of Central Africa exist in reality, and not merely in tales. When Schweinfurth arrived in t

nsula, the Semangs and Senoi, and, finally, the Veddahs of Ceylon, studied particularly by the cousins Paul and Fritz Sarasin. All of the peoples just mentioned live in forests and have probably been isolated from civilization for thousands of years. The Bushmen of South Africa, of whom we have long known, also belong to this group, although they have not to the same extent been free from the influence of surrounding peoples. In all these cases we have to do with tribes which at one time probably occupied wider territories, but which have now been crowde

to the past; and they are more than inferences drawn from the silent fragments of the bones and from a few of the art products of primitive man. According as the phenomena are simpler in character and require fewer antecedent conditions for their explanation, may we be confident that we are really dealing with primitive conditions. This in itself implies that the criteria of primitive culture are essentially psychological in nature, and that racial characteristics and original tribal relationships are probably negligible so far as this question is concerned. A culture would be absolutely primitive if no antecedent mental development wha