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

nswered. Of dress there are only meagre beginnings: about the loins a cord of bast, to which twigs of trees are attached to cover the genitals-that is generally all, unles

es, and that which exists has probably been introduced from without. Some examples of such decoration are the scanty tatooing in single lines, the painting of the face with several red and white dots, and the wooden plug bored through the bridge

primitive man seeks when the rainy season of the tropics drives him to shelter. During the dry season, no shelter at all is necessary; he makes his bed under a tree, or climbs the tree to gain protection from wild animals. Only in the open country, under the compulsi

le. How, then, did the dog and man come together in the earliest beginnings of society? The answer to this question, I believe, is to be found in the cave, the original place of shelter from rain and storm. Not only was the cave a refuge for man, but it was equally so for animals, and especially for the dog. Thus it brought its dwellers into companionship. Furthermore, the kindling of the fire, once man had learned the art, may have attracted the animal to its warmth. After the dog had thus become the companion of man, it accompanied him in his activities, including that of the chase. Here, of course, the nature of the carnivorous animal asserted itself; as man hunted, so also did the animal. The dog's training, therefore, did not at all consist in being taught to chase the game. It did this of itself, as may be observed in the case of dogs that are not specifically hunting dogs. The training consisted rather in breaking the dog of the habit of devouring the captured game. This was accomplished only through a consciously directed effort on the part of man, an effort to which he was driven by his own needs. Thus, it is the cave that accounts for the origin of the first domestic animal, and also, probably, for the first attempt at training an animal. But there is still another gain for the beginnings of culture that may probably be attributed to the cave in its capacity of a permanent habitation. Among primitive peoples, some of whom are already adv

es 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 first learned to economize and to make provision for the future. In part, indeed, the influence of these cultural beginnings persists even to-day. Moreover, just as mixed food, part plant and part animal, is by far the most common to-day, so also was it the original diet of man. The proportion, however, varied more than in later times, according as the external conditions of life were propitious or otherwise. Of this the Bushmen afford a striking illustration. Fifty years ago they were still by preference huntsmen. Armed with their bows, they dared to hunt the elephant and the giraffe. But after the surrounding peoples of South Africa-the Hottentots, Betschuans, and Herero-came into the possession of firearms, which the Bushman scornfully rejects, the game was, in part, exterminated, and to-day the Bushmen, crowded back into rocky wastes, derive but a small part of their living from the chase. They gather bulbs, roots, and other parts of plants, such as can be rendered edible by boiling or roasting. Their animal food, moreover, is no longer wild game, but consists, for the most part, of small

oisons does the bow become a real weapon. In itself the arrow wound is not sufficient to kill either game or enemy; the arrow must be poisoned if the wound is to cause death or even temporary disability. The Veddahs and the inland tribes

ical excavations would suggest concerning the earliest age of peoples, primitive culture, in respect to implements and weapons, depended only to a small extent upon the working of stone. We might better speak of this period as an age of wood. Wood is not only decidedly easier to manipulate t

h the laws of ballistics, describe a curve that returns upon itself. This asymmetry, likewise, was discovered accidentally. In this case, the discovery was all the more likely, for primitive weapons were never fashioned with exactitude. That this asymmetry serves a useful purpose, therefore, was first revealed by experience. As a result, however, primitive man began to copy as faithfully as possible those implements which most perfectly exhibited this characteristic. Thus, this missile is not a weapon that required exceptional inventive ability, though, of course, it demanded certain powers of observation. The characteristics, accordingly, that insured the survival of the boomerang were discovered accidentally and then fixed through an attentive regard to those qualities that had once been found advantageous. Now, can we conceive of the origin of bow and arrow in an analogous way? Surely this weapon also was not devised in all its parts at a single time. The man of nature, pressing his way through the dense underbrush of the forest and experiencing in person the hard blows of branches that he has bent back, gains a lively impression of the elastic power of bent wood. How easily the attention is forced to the observation that this effect increases when the wood is bent out of its natural shape, appears strikingly in the case of a kind of bow found in Asia and the Asiatic islands. The bow is here constructed out of a piece of wood bent by nature, not in such a way, however, that the natural curve of the wood forms the curve of the bow, but contrariwise. Thus arises a reflexive bow, whose elastic power is, of course, considerably increased. In order that such a bow may be bent back more easily, some people of a more advanced culture construct it out of several layers of wood, horn, sinew, or the like. Having first observed the powerful impulsive force which a rod gains through being bent, it was a simple matter to render this force permanently available by bending the rod back and binding its ends together with a cord of bast, or, if bamboo was used, with strips torn from the bamboo itself. Thus originated the com

r example, employ coconut shells. The inland tribes of the Malay Peninsula use bamboo, whose varying thicknesses, and, particularly, whose internodes enable it to be converted into the desired vessels by cutting the stem at the upper end of an internode and immediately below it, thus securing a vessel with a bottom. Wherever primitiv

h to say that he found it, inasmuch as he discovered it while making his utensils. In this connection, particularly, it is highly important to note that the first age, if we would designate it by its tools, was not an age of stone but an age of wood. We have already referred to the way in which bamboo was worked up into vessels for the storing of fruits and liquids. With a sharp sliver of bamboo, a bamboo-stem is sawed into pieces in order that its parts may be utilized. If this sawing occurs during dry weather, the wood is pulverized and the heated sawdust finally becomes ignited. As soon as it begins to glow, the worker blows upon it and the fire flames up. This mode of kindling fire has been called that of sawing, and is probably the oldest in origin. After fire was thus accidentally produced, it became possible to kindle it at will

eful articles as he cannot himself produce but with which he has, in some accidental manner, become acquainted. This gives rise to what is generally called 'secret barter.' An illuminating example of this occurs in the records of the Sarasin cousins as relating to the Veddahs. The Veddah goes by night to the house of a neighbouring Singhalese smith and there deposits what he has to offer in barter, such as captured game, ivory, etc. With this he places a representation of an arrow-head, made of palm-leaves. The next night he returns and finds real arrows o

t out of the wind-break, of the lance out of the staff and the arrow, of the woven basket out of the coconut or the gourd, severally represent easy steps in the advance from nature to culture. Next there comes the preparation of food by means of fire. This is closely connected with the discovery of the art of kindling fire, which, in its turn, was partly an accidental discovery connected with the manufacture of primitive tools out of wood and partly a real invention. Thus, the manufacture of tools, on the one hand, and the kindling of fire, which was connected with it, on the other, are the two primary features which from early times on distinguished primitive man from animals. Furthermore, there is the bow and arrow, which is the first real weapon and differs markedly from all other implements. Its construction also was dependent upon the assistance of nature. The fact that this was the only weapon of primitive society throws an important light on the nature of the latter. The bow and arrow continued to be used for a long time afterwards-indeed, even down to the appearance of firearms; it served not only as a weapon of warfare but also as an implement for hunting. With it alone, however, no organized strife or warfare of any sort is possible. While, the