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

by Wilhelm Max Wundt

[14. THE BELIEF IN SOULS AND IN A WORLD BEYOND.]

Closely connected with the cosmogonic myth are the ideas of a world beyond into which man may enter at the close of the present life. Before such ideas could arise, there must have been some general world-conception into which they could be fitted. The ideas of a beyond, therefore, are but constituent elements of cosmogonic conceptions; indeed, they are confined to relatively advanced forms of the latter. This is indicated by the fact that the earlier mythological creations contain no clearly defined notions of a beyond. Where there is no definite world-view, such conceptions, of course, are impossible. Thus, the two ideas mutually reinforce each other. The cosmogonic myth gives a large setting to the ideas of a beyond; the latter, in turn, contribute to the details of the world picture which the cosmogonic myth has created. At any rate, when poetry and philosophy, in their endeavour to construct a coherent cosmogony, began to appropriate celestial myths, ideas of a life after death and of a world beyond were already in existence. Some of these ideas, indeed, date back to an early period.

It is an extremely, significant fact that, wherever we can trade their development at all, these ideas of a beyond follow the same definite and orderly course. The direction of this development is determined not only by the cosmogonic myth but also by the ideas regarding the soul. The formation of ideas of a beyond is impossible without a world-view transcending the limits of earthly existence; the latter, however, results from the need of ascribing to the soul a continuance after death. This need, of course, is not an original one, but is essentially conditioned by the age of gods. Among primitive peoples, the beginnings of a belief in a life after death are to be found chiefly in connection with the fear of the demon of the dead, who may bring sickness and death to the living. But just as the fear is of short duration, so also is the survival after death limited to a brief period. On a somewhat more advanced stage, as perhaps among the Soudan peoples, most of the Melanesian tribes, and the forest-dwelling Indians of South America, it is especially the prominent men, the tribal chiefs, who, just as they survive longest in memory, are also supposed to enjoy a longer after-life. This conception, however, remains indefinite and of a demoniacal character, just as does that of the soul. In all of these conceptions, therefore, the disembodied soul is represented as remaining within this world. It continues its existence in the environment; as yet there is no yonder-world in the strict sense of the word. It is important, moreover, to distinguish the early ideas of a beyond from the above-mentioned celestial märchen which narrate how certain human beings ascended into heaven. The latter are purely märchen of adventure, in which sun, moon, stars, and clouds, as well as the terrestrial monsters, dwarfs, gnomes, etc., are conceived of as belonging to the visible world. Indeed, these celestial travellers are not infrequently represented as returning unharmed to their terrestrial home. Thus, these tales generally lack the idea which, from the outset, is essential to the conception of a yonder-world—the idea, namely, of the sojourn of the soul at definite places, whether these be thought of as on, under, or above the earth. Here again, it is characteristic that at first this region is located approximately midway between this world and the one beyond. The belief takes the form of a spirit-village, a conception prevalent especially among the tribes of American Indians. Inaccessible to living beings and in some secret part of the earth, there is supposed to be a village. In this village the spirits of the dead are thought to assemble, and to continue their existence in precisely the same manner as before death, hunting and fighting just as they did in their earthly life. The spirit-village itself is described as exactly like an ordinary village. Characteristic of the totemic setting which all of these ideas still possess, is the fact that among many of the Indians of the prairies there is thought to be not only a spirit-village but also a buffalo-village, where the dead buffaloes congregate, and into which, according to the märchen, an adventurous youth may occasionally stray. Sometimes, moreover, these tales give more specific accounts of the way in which such villages are rendered inaccessible. A river spanned by an almost impassable bridge, or a dense, impenetrable forest, separates the spirit-village from the habitations of the living. Ravines and mountain caves may either themselves serve as the dwelling-places of the spirits or form the approaches to them. In addition to these conceptions, there are also others, which have, in part, found a place, even in later mythology. The dead are, represented as dwelling, not in some accessible part of the earth, but on remote islands. Such ideas are common in Polynesia, and also in other island and coast regions. Even in Homer we come upon the picture of a distant island. It is here that Menelaus found rescue on his return from Troy. The island is described as a place of happiness, where only the privileged among mortals are granted a blessed future.

A second and, on the whole, an obviously later form of ideas of a beyond, are the myths of the nether world. These for the first time tell of a beyond which is by its very nature inaccessible to human beings, or which is visited by only a few divinely privileged heroes, such as Hercules, Odysseus, and Æneas. As a third and last form of ideas of a beyond, we may mention those of a heaven, where dwell the dead, in the presence of the gods. As a rule, however, this heavenly beyond does not lead to the disappearance of the nether world. Rather are the two worlds set over against each other, as the result of the enhancement of an antithesis which arose even in connection with the realms of the nether world. The heaven becomes the abode of the blessed, of the devout and righteous, the favoured of the gods; the underworld continues, at the outset, to be the lot of the majority of human beings. The growing desire to participate in the joys of blessedness, then causes the privilege which was at first enjoyed only by a minority to become more universal, and the underworld is transformed into the abode of the guilty and the condemned. Finally, heaven becomes possible even for the latter, through the agency, more particularly, of magical purification and religious ecstasy.

Of the various ideas of the beyond that successively arise in this development, those regarding the underworld are the most common and the most permanent. This is probably due in no small measure to the custom of burying the corpse. Here the entrance into the underworld is, to a certain extent, directly acted out before the eyes of the observers, even though the mythological imagination may later create quite a different picture of the event. The custom of burial, however, cannot have been the exclusive source of these ideas, nor perhaps even the most important one. In the Homeric world, the corpse was not buried, but burned. And yet it is to Homer that we owe one of the clearest of the older descriptions of the underworld, and it can scarcely be doubted that the main outlines of this picture were derived from popular conceptions. As a matter of fact, there is another factor, purely psychological in character, which is here obviously of greater force than are tribal customs. This is the fear of death, and the terror of that which awaits man after death. This fear creates the idea of a ghostly and terrible region of the dead, cold as the corpse itself and dark as the world must appear to its closed eyes. But that which is thought of as dark and cold is the interior of the earth, for such are the characteristics of mountain caves that harbour uncanny animals. The underworld, also, is stocked with creations of fear, particularly with subterranean animals, such as toads, salamanders, and snakes of monstrous and fantastic forms. Many of the terrible beings which later myths represent as living on the earth probably originated as monsters of the underworld. Examples of this are the Furies, the Keres, and the Harpies of the Greeks. It was only as the result of a later influence, not operative at the time of the original conceptions of Hades, that myth permitted these beings to wander about the upper world. This change was due to the pangs of conscience, which transforms the ghosts of the underworld into frightful, avenging beings, and then, as a result of the misery visited even upon the living because of the crimes which they have committed, transfers them to the mundane world. Here they pursue particularly the one who has committed sacrilege against the gods, and also him whose sin is regarded as especially grievous, such as the parricide or matricide. Thus, with the internalization of the fear impulse, the demoniacal forms which the latter creates are brought forth from the subterranean darkness and are made to mingle with the living. Similarly, the joyous and hope-inspiring ideas of a beyond are projected still farther upward, and are elevated beyond the regions of this earth into heavenly spaces that seem even more inaccessible than the underworld. Prior to the age, however, which regards the heaven as the abode of the blessed, many peoples—possibly all who advanced to this notion of two worlds—entertained a different conception. This conception represents, perhaps, the surviving influence of the earlier ideas of spirit-islands. For the underworld was itself regarded as including, besides places of horror, brighter regions, into which, either through the direct favour of the gods or in accordance with a judgment pronounced upon the dead, the souls of the pure and righteous are received. As a result of the division which thus occurred, and of the antithesis in which these images of the beyond came to stand, pain and torment were added to the impressions of horror and hopelessness which the original conceptions of the underworld aroused. The contrasts that developed, however, did not prevent the underworld from being regarded as including both the region of pain and that of bliss. This seems to have been the prevalent notion among Semitic as well as Indo-Germanic peoples. The Walhalla of the Germans was also originally thought to be located in the underworld, and it is possible that it was not transferred to the heavens until the advent of Christianity. For, indeed, we are not familiar with Germanic mythology except as it took form within the period in which Christianity had already become widespread among the German tribes.

An important change in the ideas of the beyond now took place. The separation of the abodes of spirits gradually led to a distinction between the deities who were regarded as the rulers of the two regions. Originally, so long as only the fear of death found expression in the unvarying gloom of the underworld, these deities were but vaguely defined. The conceptions formed of them seem to have reflected the ideas of rulership derived from real life, just as was true in the case of the supermundane gods. Indeed, the origin of the more definite conception that the underworld is a separate region ruled by its own gods, must probably be traced to the influence of the ideas of celestial gods. But there is a still more primitive feature of myths of the beyond, one that goes back to their very beginnings, and that long survives in saga and märchen. This is the preference shown by myths of the nether world for female beings, whether as subordinate personifications of fear or as deities. Not only is the ideal of beauty and grace thought of as a female deity, an Aphrodite perhaps, but the psychological law of the intensification of contrasts causes also the fearful and terrifying sorts of deities to assume the feminine form. Such a gruesome and terrible goddess is exemplified by the Norse Hel, or, widely remote from her in time and space, by the Babylonian Ereksigal. In the Greek underworld also, it is Persephone who rules, and not Pluto, her consort. The latter seems to have been introduced merely in order that the underworld might have a counterpart to the celestial pair of rulers, Zeus and Hera. If the fear-inspiring attributes are not so pronounced in the Greek Persephone, this is due to the fact that in this case agricultural myths have combined with the underworld myths. To this combination we must later recur, inasmuch as it is of great significance for cult. The dominant place given to the female deity in the underworld myth, again brings the nether world into a noteworthy contrast with the supermundane realm of gods. In the latter, male gods, as the direct embodiments of a superhuman hero-ideal, are always predominant.

It is not alone the inner forces of fear and horror that cause the realm of the dead to be thought of as located in the interior of the earth. There is operative also an external influence imparted by Nature herself, namely, the perception of the setting sun. Wherever particular attention is called to some one entrance to the underworld, or where a distant region of the earth is regarded as the abode of the dead, this is located in the west, in the direction of the setting sun. We have here a striking example of that form of mythological association and assimilation in which the phenomena of external nature, and particularly those of the heavens, exert an influence upon myth development. It would, of course, be incorrect to assert that the setting sun alone suggested the idea of an underworld. We must rather say that this phenomenon was obviously a subordinate and secondary factor. Its influence was not clearly and consciously apprehended even as affecting the location of the underworld, though this location was determined solely by it. Because of its connection with approaching night, the setting sun came to be associated with all those feelings that caused the underworld to be regarded as a realm of shadows and of terrifying darkness. It was the combination of all these factors, and not any single one of them—least of all, a relatively secondary one, such as the sunset—that created and so long maintained the potency of this most permanent of all the ideas of a beyond.

Mention should also be made of the influence exerted, even at an early time, by soul-ideas. At the beginning of the heroic age, it was almost universally believed that after death all human beings lead a dull, monotonous life under the earth, or, as Homer portrayed it, heightening the uniformity, that all lapse into an unconscious existence. Obviously these ideas were determined, in part, by the phenomena of sleep and dreams. Just as death seemed a protracted sleep, so did the dream come to foreshadow the life after death. The characteristics of dream images, therefore, came to be attributed to the souls of the underworld. The latter, it was thought, are visible, but, like shadows, they elude the hand that grasps them and move about fleetly from place to place. This shadow-existence is a fate that is common to all. It is only exceptionally flagrant transgressions against the gods that call forth punishments which not merely overtake the guilty in this world but may also continue in the next. Such figures, therefore, as are described in connection with Odysseus' journey to Hades—Sisyphus, who must unceasingly roll uphill a stone that is constantly rolling back, and Tantalus, who languishes with hopeless desire for the fruits suspended above his head—are not as yet to be regarded as expressing ideas of retribution, even though they may be anticipatory of them. Perhaps, also, it is not without significance that these accounts are probably later accretions, of which the Homeric poems contain a considerable number, particularly the Odyssey, which is so rich in märchen elements.

Gradually, however, that which at first occurs only in occasional instances becomes more universal; the distinction in destinies comes to be regarded as applying generally. The earlier and exceptional cases of entrance into a world of the blessed or of particular punishments in Hades were connected with the favour or anger of the gods. Similarly, that which finally makes the distinction a universal one is religious cult. The object of cult is to propitiate the gods; their favour is to be won through petitions and magical acts. The gods are to grant not merely a happy lot in this world but also the assurance of permanent happiness in the next. Before this striving the shadows of the underworld give way. Though the underworld continues, on the whole, to remain a place of sorrow, it nevertheless comes to include a number of brighter regions in which the righteous may enjoy such happiness as they experienced in this world, without suffering its distresses and evil. It was this that early led to the formation of cult associations. Even during the transition of totemic tribal organization into States and deity cults, such religious associations sprang up out of the older totemic groups. During this period, the conditions of descent and of tribal segregation still imposed limitations upon the religious associations. These limitations, however, were transcended on the stage of deity cults, as appears primarily in the case of the Greek mysteries and of other secret cults of the Græco-Roman period, such as the mysteries of Mithra, Attis, Osiris, and Serapis. No doubt, the extreme forms of the cults prevalent in an age thoroughly conscious of a deep need for salvation were bound up with the specific cultural conditions of that age. And yet these cults but bring out in particularly sharp relief certain traits which, though they are not clearly apparent until later, are quite universally characteristic of the deity-worship of the heroic era. These cults arise only when the early heroic ideal, embodying certain external characteristics, has disappeared, having given way more and more to inner ideals, connected with religion and morality. This, however, occurs at the very time when minds are beginning to be more deeply troubled by the terrors of the underworld, and when, in contrast with this, the imagination creates glowing pictures of the future, for whose realization it turns to the gods. Thus arises the idea of a special region of the underworld, allotted to those cult-associates who have been particularly meritorious in the performance of religious duties. These will enter into Elysium, a vale of joy and splendour which, though a part of the underworld, is nevertheless remote from the regions of sorrow. Here the blessed will abide after death. This Elysium is no longer a distant island intended as a refuge for occasional individuals, but belongs to the established order of the underworld itself. In the sixth book of the Æneid, Virgil has sketched, with poetic embellishments, a graphic picture of this abode of the blessed as it was conceived, in his day, under the confluence of ancient mythical traditions and new religious impulses—a portrayal which forms perhaps the most valuable part of the whole poem. For, in it, the poet presents a living picture of what was believed and was striven for by many of his contemporaries.

In closest connection with this separation of realms in the underworld, is the introduction of judgeship. It devolves upon the judge of the underworld to determine whether the soul is to be admitted to the vale of joy or is to be banished into Orcus. It is significant that, in his picture of the underworld, Virgil entrusts this judgeship to the same Rhadamanthus with whom we are familiar from the Odyssey as the ruler of the distant island of the blessed. Obviously the poet himself recognized that these later conceptions developed from the earlier idea that salvation comes as a result of divine favour. After the separation of the region of the blessed from that of the outcasts, a further division is made; the two regions of the underworld are partitioned into subregions according to degrees of terror and torment, on the one hand, and of joy and blessedness, on the other. Gradations of terror are first instituted, those of blessedness following only later and in an incomplete form. The subjective factor, which precludes differences in degree when joy is at the maximum, is in constant rivalry with the objective consideration that the merits of the righteous may differ, and, therefore, also their worthiness to enjoy the presence of the deity. In contrast with this, is the much stronger influence exerted by the factor of punishment. The shadowy existence of souls in Homer's Hades is not regarded as a penalty, but merely as the inevitable result of departure from the circle of the living. Only when the hope of Elysium has become just as universal as the fear of Hades, does the latter become a place of punishment, and the former a region of rewards. Just as language itself is very much richer in words denoting forms of suffering than in those for joy, so also does the mythological imagination exhibit much greater fertility in the portrayal of the pains of the underworld than in the glorification of the Elysian fields. All the horrors that human cruelty can invent are carried over from the judicial administration of this world into that of the beyond. Gradations in the magnitude of punishments are reflected in the location of the regions appointed for them. The deepest region of the underworld is the most terrible. Above this, is the place where those sojourn who may enter Elysium at some future time, after successfully completing a period of probation.