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

by Wilhelm Max Wundt

This multiplicity of cults, increasing with the advance of civilization both as regards the ends that are desired and the gods who are worshipped, is by no means paralleled by the number of cult agencies. The only possible exception might be in the case of the means which the cults of the beyond employed for arousing ecstasy. Even here the difference lies not so much in the means themselves as in the extent to which they were used. Moreover, the secrecy surrounding these cults is itself an external indication of the fact that they differed from the cults concerned with the things of this world, for the latter generally sought publicity. And yet there was no form of cult in which ecstatic features were altogether lacking; such features are inherent, to a certain extent, in cult practices as such and, in so far, are absolutely universal. Differences in the specific purposes of the cults and in the deities to whom the acts were dedicated did indeed cause certain variations. These, however, we may here neglect, inasmuch as they do not affect the essential nature of cult itself. From early times on, there were certain activities that were universally characteristic of deity cults, and their fundamental purposes remained the same, namely, to gain the favour of the deity and thereby to obtain the fulfilment of personal wishes. As regards this motive, the three cult agencies—prayer, sacrifice, and sanctification—are absolutely at one. In this order of sequence, moreover, these agencies represent a progressive intensification of the religious activity of cult.

In the records of ancient civilized peoples we meet with a great number of prayers, representing all the forms developed by this simplest and most common of the means of cult. The most primitive form of prayer is conjuration. Conjuration passed over from demon cult into the beginnings of deity cult, and is intermediate between a means of magic and a petition. This also indicates the direction of the further development of the prayer. Conjuration is succeeded by the prayer of petition, whose essential differentia consists in the fact that, however earnestly the suppliant may strive for the fulfilment of his desires, he nevertheless ultimately commits them to the will of the deity. The development of the prayer of petition out of conjuration becomes possible only because gods possess a characteristic which demons lack—namely, personality. Once this personality attains to its ideal sublimity, the exercise of magical power over the deity ceases to be possible, or is so only under the presupposition that the will of the deity is in itself favourably inclined toward the suppliant. The idea underlying conjuration nevertheless continues for a time to remain a supplementary factor in the prayer of petition; even where no clearly conscious trace of it appears, it survives in the depth of emotion that reinforces the petition. That conjuration blends with petition is particularly evident in the case of one characteristic, whose origin must be traced to magical conjuration. I refer to the fact that the words of the petition are repeated in the same or in a slightly changed form, and that, at a later stage of development, there is a constant recurrence of the same content, even though this is variously expressed. This is a derivative characteristic of the prayer of petition. Originally, it was thought that repetition brought about an intensification of the magical effect, particularly in the case of word-magic. We are already familiar with conjurations of this sort as elements of totemic cults. With but few changes, they recur in the older songs of the Avesta and Veda, as well as in some of the Biblical Psalms. In these cases, however, the repetitions are somewhat more extensive, for there is a more detailed statement of that which is desired. And yet the Biblical Psalms, particularly, are an illustration of the fact that, with submission to the will of the deity, the petition becomes less urgent in tone. Even when the petition is repeated the expression more and more assumes a somewhat altered form. It is probably this enhancement through repetition—itself, in turn, due to the dynamic character of the emotions of desire—that accounts for the so-called 'parallelism of members,' characteristic especially of Hebrew poetry. The view, once entertained, that this is a sort of substitute for the rhythm arising from emphasis and sentence arrangement is doubtless incorrect, for recent investigations demonstrate the ingenious rhythm of Hebrew poetry. We would not, of course, deny that the repetition of the thought in a changed form intensifies the rhythmic expression. The real basis of the repetition, however, lies not in this fact but in the motive underlying petition. This is clear, above all, from the fact that repetition is most pronounced particularly in those psalms and prophetic songs which are of the nature of a prayer of petition and of the praises closely connected with it. Later, repetition was also employed in other forms of religious expression. In the case of the hymn of praise, particularly, the tendency to repetition is augmented, by virtue of the enthusiastic exaltation of the divine personality whom the hymn extols.

Besides the prayer of petition we find the prayer of thanksgiving. Petition and thanksgiving are properly correlative, the one expressing a wish to the deity and the other acknowledging its fulfilment. Not infrequently, therefore, they are combined, particularly in the more advanced forms of the prayer cult, into a single prayer of thanksgiving and petition. He who prays returns thanks for the blessings which he has received and adds a request for further divine aid. This combination occurs very frequently in the Psalms, but it is to be found also in other hymnodies. The extent to which the request for further favours is subordinated to the thanksgiving for past aid, is a measure of the humility involved, and represents a fair criterion of the maturity of the religious feeling underlying the prayer. Nevertheless, it may also be noticed that he who prays always aims first to gain the divine favour through his thanksgiving, in the hope that the gods may thereby be rendered more disposed to grant his request. Typical examples of this are to be found, not only in the Biblical Psalms, but also in the ancient Babylonian texts which recent discoveries have brought to light. That the prayer of thanksgiving is a higher form of prayer than is petition, is shown by the very fact that it occurs in deity cult alone. More clearly even than petition does thanksgiving presuppose a personal being, capable of appreciating the feeling of gratitude. It is at most in the fact that the prayer of thanksgiving still seeks to obligate the deity to future favours, that demon-conjuration has left its traces upon it. And yet deity cult is characterized precisely by the fact that the compulsion of magical conjuration has entirely disappeared in favour of the free volition of the deity. That prayer is regarded as imposing an obligation upon the god no less than upon man, is extremely well brought out in the conception that the relation of the two is that of a contract, or of a covenant sealed in the cult. This idea, reinforced by the national significance of the deity, is fundamental in the Jahve cult of the Israelites.

Praise, or, as it is called in its poetic forms, the hymn, is an even more pronounced feature of deity cult than is the prayer of thanksgiving. The hymn is not usually classified as a form of prayer because, when externally regarded, it may entirely lack the motive of petition, and it is from the latter that the prayer has derived its name. In view, however, of the continuity of the development of the cult forms which find expression in speech, we cannot escape including also the song of praise. Indeed, it generally adduces the blessings conferred by the god as an evidence of his glory; not infrequently, moreover, it concludes with a hope for the future favour of the deity. Artistically perfect examples of such prayers are the compositions known as the Homeric Hymns, which, of course, belong to a much later age than the Homeric epics. They are pæans in praise of Demeter, Apollo, Dionysos, and Hermes, in which the laudation of the beneficent activity of these deities takes the form of a recital of some incident in their lives, followed by a prospective glance at the favour which they may be expected to bestow in the future.

In these cases, the song of praise clearly represents a development of the prayer of thanksgiving. The final and most mature form of prayer, however, the penitential prayer, or, as it is usually called, the penitential psalm, may in a certain sense be called a subform of the petitional prayer. In it, either external need or the consciousness of personal guilt leads the individual to call upon the gods for mercy and for forgiveness of the committed sin. Typical examples are again available in the Hebraic and Babylonian psalms. These psalms contain, in the first instance, prayers of cult, which were offered on the occasion of national disasters and needs, such as crop failure or drought, or, as in the case particularly of the Israelites, were repeated at stated times in penitence for the sins of the community. Such being the motives, the most universal form of prayer, that of petition, may here also be discerned in the background. Not only is the penitential psalm in and for itself a particular form of petition, containing as it does a plea for the forgiveness of committed sins, but it is frequently combined with a direct prayer for the favour of the deity and for renewed manifestations of grace through a fortunate turn of destiny. In spite of this egoistic strain, however, which, just as in the case of the song of praise, is seldom absent, the penitential prayer is, religiously speaking, the highest form of prayer, and may be found only at an advanced stage of deity cult. Above all other forms of prayer, its emphasis falls on the inner life; where it comes to expression in its purity, it seeks not external goods, but only peace of conscience. Moreover, more than anywhere else, we find in it a resignation to the will of the deity. This resignation, in turn, draws its strength from the belief that human destiny is in the absolute control of the gods, everything experienced by the individual or by the cult community being interpreted as a divine punishment or reward. Thus, the penitential prayer is closely bound up, on the one hand, with the idea of a divine providence and, on the other, with ideas of retribution. Neither the idea of providence nor that of retribution is to be found in early deity cult; both are products of the subsequent religious development. Moreover, the issue is not changed by raising the question whether the retribution is regarded as occurring here or in the beyond. As a matter of fact, the retributive idea is far from being implicated with other-world hopes. The conviction that punishment will overtake the guilty man even in this world, because of the direct connection between present fortune and misfortune and the worship of the gods, is itself the immediate source of the idea of a divine power ever controlling the destinies of mankind.

In addition to prayer, however, and usually bound up with it, there is a second important form of cult practice, namely, sacrifice. The usual conception of sacrifice is altogether too narrow—just as is the case with prayer. Hence the origin and significance of sacrifice have been misunderstood. In view of one of its prominent features in the more highly developed cults, sacrifice is usually regarded as a gift to the deity, and the various meanings that a gift may have are then simply held to apply to sacrifice itself. Accordingly, the purpose of sacrifice is limited either to disposing the god favourably toward the sacrificing individual or community, or to obtaining forgiveness for committed sins. In the Priests' Code of the Israelites, this second form of sacrifice—the trespass or sin-offering—also served the former purpose, thus acquiring the significance of an act of reconciliation which at the same time blotted out any transgressions of the past. The sin-offering, on the other hand, was concerned with purification from a single, definite sin for which the forgiveness of the deity had to be obtained. The peace-offering, therefore, was a cult that was celebrated in common and on a specific day, whereas the sin-offering was brought only on special occasions, when an individual or a restricted group felt the burdens of conscience because of a committed sin. Corresponding to the different purposes indicated by the words 'reconciliation' and 'forgiveness' was the manner in which the sacrifice was brought. The peace-offering was taken to definitely established centres of cult, primarily to the temple at Jerusalem. Those bringing the sacrifice shared its enjoyment with the deity in the sacrificial meal, which was an expression of the covenant concluded with the deity for the future. The sin-offering was made whenever occasion demanded, and the sacrifice was designed for the deity alone. After the removal of the portion reserved for the priesthood, the remainder was burned—those making the sacrifice could enjoy none of it. If we regard both kinds of sacrifice as forms of gift, the peace-offering would correspond more closely to an actual gift with a certain tinge of bribery, though this conception is rendered less crude by the fact that the sacrifice represents also a covenant which receives expression in the sacrificial meal. The sin-offering, on the other hand, is more of the nature of a penalty, similar to that which a judge imposes in satisfaction of a crime.

It must be granted that there is a stage in the development of sacrificial cult in which the gift motive is dominant. Nevertheless, even here there are concomitant phenomena which clearly indicate that the sacrifice cannot originally have had the significance of a gift. On the contrary, there has been, in part, a change in meaning and, in part, an arbitrary reinterpretation of phenomena. The Jewish peace-offering was not a true gift. This is evidenced by the fact alone that one of its chief features was the sacrificial feast, which involved the idea of the deity's participation in the meal. In connection with this idea of communion with the deity, the offering of parts of the consumed sacrifice was manifestly only a secondary motive. Nor was the renunciation required of the sacrificer in connection with the Jewish sin-offering a feature which had anything in common with a gift. It was similar rather to punishment. Moreover, all resemblance whatsoever to a gift disappears when we call to mind the earliest forms of sacrifice, as well as the objects that were offered. One of the oldest sacrifices, found even within totemic culture, was that offered to the dead. In its broadest sense, this comprehends everything that was given over to the deceased, or that was burned with him, in case cremation was practised. Such objects originally included some of the belongings of the deceased, particularly his weapons and personal decorations. After despotic forms of government arose, the death of a chief or of a person of influence demanded also the sacrifice of his animals, slaves, and wives. We are already familiar with the change of motives that here occurred. At first, the aim was to keep the deceased from approaching the living; later, it was to equip him with whatever might be of service in his future life. The sacrifice then became an offering to the demon of the deceased, designed to win his aid for the living. Finally, it was devoted to the gods, whose favour was sought both for the deceased and for the survivors. A survey of the development as a whole shows that the gift motive was at first entirely lacking, and that even later it was of relatively little importance. The idea of magic was predominant. The aim was to bring the power of magic to bear upon the deceased and his demon, and finally upon the gods. The demon was to be kept at a distance, just as in the case of burial and of the binding of the corpse, and the gods were to be won over to a friendly attitude. This appears even more clearly when we consider the objects that were sacrificed. In this respect, there was an important change, first mediated, probably, by the cult of the dead, and thence carried over to sacrifice in general. The sacrificer offered such parts of his own body as were held to be the specific vehicles of the soul. Homer tells us that Achilles deposited the two locks of hair, which he had once promised to his native river god, upon the dead body of Patroclus. The use as a sacrifice to the dead of a gift dedicated to a god, clearly indicates that the two forms of sacrifice possessed an identical significance. The deceased takes with him into the underworld part of the person of the sacrificer. Similarly, it was believed that the psychical powers of the deity are, on the one hand, strengthened through the soul which he receives in sacrifice, and are, on the other hand, inclined toward the one who brings the offering. In animal sacrifice, the blood was poured out beside the sacrificial stone for the enjoyment of the god. Of the inner parts of the bloody sacrifice, it was again those that were in ancient times regarded as the chief vehicles of the soul, the kidneys with the surrounding fat, that were particularly set aside for the god. Closely connected with this is the sacrifice which, through self-mutilation, the priests and temple servants offered in the case of ecstatic cults (pp. 294 f.). In all of these instances the ideas of magic and of gift intermingle. The soul-vehicles which are offered are also gifts to the deity, intended for his enjoyment. In partaking of them, however, a magical influence is released by means of which the will of the deity is controlled, or, in the view of a more advanced age, is favourably inclined toward the sacrificer. The same idea prevails when public sacrifice demands a human being, instead of an animal, as a vicarious offering for the sacrificing community. Indeed, human sacrifice also has its prototype in the sacrifice to the dead, though the sacrificial idea is in this case kept in the background, inasmuch as the dominant purpose is to equip the deceased with that which he requires for his further life. Human sacrifice proper, therefore, is at most connected with faint survivals of this older practice. In contrast with the latter custom, the individual sacrificed to the deity serves as a substitute for the community. In this form, however, human sacrifice does not antedate animal sacrifice, as has been believed, but follows upon it. Still later, of course, it was again displaced by the latter, as is graphically portrayed in the Biblical legend of Abraham and Isaac. The priority of animal sacrifice is attested, first of all, by its incomparably wider distribution. Human sacrifice, and traditions indicative of it, appear to be altogether restricted to the great agricultural festivals and solstice-cults in which the one who is sacrificed serves, on the one hand, as a substitute for the sacrificing community which offers itself to the deity in his person, and, on the other hand, as the representative of the god himself. Convincing proof of this is furnished by the traditions regarding the seasonal cults of the ancient Mexicans, as these have been reported by K. Th. Preusz. Prior to the sacred festival at which an individual was offered in sacrifice, he was himself reverenced as a god. The twofold significance of the human sacrifice becomes perfectly intelligible in the light of the above-mentioned fusion of the ideas of gift and of magic. Dedication to the deity and union with him merge so completely that they become a single conception. Even the blood poured out upon the sacrificial altar was not merely an offering, but, as a vehicle of the soul, was supposed to transfer to the deity who received it the desires of the offerer. What was true of the blood was quite naturally pre-eminently true when the object of sacrifice was the person himself. In this case, all the organs were offered, and, therefore, the entire soul. This is the most extreme form of the sacrificial idea, and occurs only in the sacrificial cult of fairly large political and religious communities. As is characteristic of legend, the 'Abraham and Isaac' story individualizes the ancient tradition, construing the latter as an account of a test of obedience to the god—an interpretation very obviously to be regarded as an invention of later priestly wisdom. On the other hand, the Roman Saturnalia, the Persian festival of Sacæa, and other agricultural cults of the ancient world, exhibit traces of the sacrifice of a human being who represents the deity himself. Along with these we might probably mention also the Babylonian festival of Tammuz and the Jewish feast of Purim. Finally, the Christian conception of the sacrificial death of Jesus combines the same ideas, though their religious significance is transformed and reinforced by the thought of redemption, which has displaced the older protective and fortune-bringing magic. The sacrificial community has here become the whole of mankind, and the one who by his death brings about a reconciliation with the deity is himself the god. For this reason dogma insists—with a logic that is perhaps unconscious and mystical in nature, yet all the more compelling—on the unity of the divine personality with that of the redeemer who died the sacrificial death. This fusion of sacrificial conceptions thus gave rise to the most impressive and effective story that the human mind ever conceived.

Herewith we reach the culminating point in the development of the idea of a gift offered to the deity, and here also the sacrificial object attains its highest worth. That the sacrificer, however, is little concerned with the value of the objects which he brings, is obvious from the fact that these are frequently without any objective value whatsoever. Such, for example, are the small pictures offered in Chinese ancestor cult, and also the miniature representations of desired objects which are placed on votive altars—instances in which, of the two ideas combined in sacrifice, that of the gift again entirely vanishes, leaving as the sole motive the more primitive idea of magic, which never completely disappears. Wherever sacrifice is dominated by the idea of a gift offered to the deity, the sacrificer, in turn, seeks to gain certain ends in return for the value of his gifts. The scale of values may be either quantitative or qualitative, or both combined. Even in the case of the bloody sacrifice both criteria are, as a rule, involved. At the great festivals of Athens and other Greek cities, one hundred steers were sacrificed to the gods, the greater part of the sacrifice, of course, serving as food for the people. In Israel, the rich man sacrificed his bullock, the poor man, his young goat. It was the conception of value that caused especially the fruits of the field, as well as the products of the cattle industry, milk and butter, to become objects of sacrifice. Later, sacrificial offerings were also made in terms of jewels and money. These were brought to the temple for the decoration of the house of the god and for the support of the cult or the relief of the poor. This development was influenced by another change, connected with the transition from the earlier bloody sacrifice to the bloodless sacrifice. Prior to the influence of the sacrificial customs, the bloody sacrifice involved the loss of the sacrificial animals. These were either entirely burned and thus given to the gods, or their flesh was consumed by the cult members at the sacrificial feast, the god receiving only those parts that were prized as the vehicles of the soul. Now, bloodless sacrifice belongs to a higher stage both of culture and of cult. In general, it presupposes an advanced agricultural and cattle industry, as well as the existence of more extensive cult-needs whose satisfaction the sacrifice is designed to secure. Thus, the two conditions mutually reinforce each other. The products of agriculture cannot be directly offered to the deity as can the burnt offering, which ascends to heaven in the smoke. On the other hand, the cult cannot dispense with certain means, and these are obtained by utilizing in its interests the economic foresight which has been acquired by the agriculturist and the cattle-raiser in the course of their work. In place of the direct products of husbandry, the succeeding age more and more substitutes costly jewels and money. Thus, the development which began with the burnt offering concludes with the money offering. This later offering is no longer made directly to the deity, or, at most, this occurs in the accompanying prayer; the offerer bestows his gifts upon the temple, the priests, or the poor. By so doing he hopes to win the divine favour indirectly, through the merit which such gifts possess or through the cult activities which are purchased by means of them.

The earliest forms of sacrifice are thus more and more displaced by cult agencies which, to a certain extent, themselves approximate to purification ceremonies. This transformation, however, cannot suppress the original sacrificial purpose, which was solely that of exercising a direct magical influence upon the deity. We now meet with phenomena in which this purpose asserts itself all the more potently, because of the above development—phenomena from which the idea of a gift possessing objective value is entirely absent. We refer particularly to votive and consecration gifts. These very names, indeed, are evidence of the confusion which a one-sided emphasis of the gift-idea has introduced into the interpretation of sacrifice. For votive and consecration gifts generally consist of artificial objects which are ordinarily devoid of any artistic or other value. They are deposited on the altars of the gods, or, in the Catholic cult, on those of the saints, either to make known a wish, as does the 'gift of consecration,' or, less frequently, to render thanks for the fulfilment of a desire, as in the case of the 'votive offering.' Although these offerings, even in their beginnings, are inseparable from a fairly developed deity cult—since they presuppose altars upon which they are placed, and, therefore, temples consecrated to the gods—it is practically the amulet alone that may be said to rival them in extent of distribution. They occur in ancient Egypt, as well as in Greece and Rome. They were known also to Germanic antiquity, from whence they probably found their way into the Catholic cults of Mary and the saints. The consecration gift corresponds to the prayer of petition, the votive offering to the prayer of thanksgiving; these prayers, accordingly, are spoken when the object is placed upon the altar. The gift of consecration is the earlier and more common, just as the prayer of petition precedes that of thanksgiving. The peculiarity of this cult, however, consists in the fact that the object offered as a sacrifice is an artificially fashioned image, usually reduced in size, of the object in connection with which aid is sought. This obviously gives it a certain relationship with the fetish, on the one hand, and with the amulet, on the other. As a matter of fact, the so-called 'consecration gifts' are not in the least real gifts. The sick man presents a figure of the diseased part of his body, fashioned of clay, bronze, or wax, and the peasant who has suffered a loss of cattle brings a representation of the animal. In themselves, these objects are valueless; nor can they be of service to the deity to whom they are brought, as was doubtless believed by the sacrificers to be true in the case of the animal that was slaughtered, as well as of the blood, and doubtless also of the fruits which were offered. The significance of such a gift of consecration lies solely in its subjective value, just as does that of the primitive amulet, which is likewise an article without any objective worth. To believe, however, that this value consists in the fact that the consecration gift symbolizes the submissive reverence of the offerer would be to read back a later stage of religious thought into an age to which such symbols are entirely foreign. Moreover, the purposes of this sacrifice make such an interpretation impossible. The vast majority of consecration sacrifices have another similarity to amulets, in addition to that just mentioned; those who bring them seek healing from disease. Hence, in ancient times, such offerings were brought chiefly to the temple of Æsculapius. Just as the amulet, in its most common forms, is designed as a protection against dreaded sicknesses, so also does the consecration gift aim at relief from actual suffering. The amulet, however, may be traced far back into the period of demon-cult, and its characteristic types, therefore, are patterned on the more prevalent expressions of demon-belief, such as cord magic. The consecration gift, on the other hand, is associated with deity cult, and takes the form of sacrifice. Moreover, it reverts to the most primitive kind of sacrifice, to the purely magical offering. The leg of wax offered by the lame is simply a means of magic. Since it possesses no objective value, it is worthless as a gift, and, as a means of magic, it is again of the most primitive sort. The sacrificial object is regarded as having a soul, quite in the sense of early animism. Through its immanent psychical power it is to exercise magical coercion over the soul of the god or the saint. Its potency is precisely the same as that which the soul of the sacrificial animal or human being is supposed to possess. The only difference is that the external characteristics of animistically conceived objects ordinarily force into the background the idea that the sacrifice magically becomes identical with the deity who receives it, whereas this conception comes out with especial clearness when the offering consists of an animal or of a human being. This is strikingly shown by the above-mentioned sacrificial festivals, in which, prior to being offered as a sacrifice, the individual was himself reverenced as the god to whom he was to be offered. True, the fact that the human individual, as well as the animal, possesses a value for those who bring the sacrifice, also introduces the idea of a gift; added to this, moreover, in the case of human sacrifice, is the further thought that the sacrifice is a substitution for the sacrificial community.

Thus, the idea of a magical effect upon the deity is combined with that of a gift designed to gain his favour. This appears also in connection with the sacrifice of the first-fruits of the harvest or, with what is only a transference from the fruits of the field to the animal used in its cultivation, that of the first-born of the cattle. From the standpoint of the gift theory, such an offering is regarded as a particularly valuable gift. But this greater value is again exclusively of a subjective nature. Objectively speaking, the mere fact that it is the first of the fruits or the first-born of the cattle that is offered, does not give the sacrifice any additional value. Very probably the decisive factor is the preference which man gives the gods in the enjoyment of the fruits of the field. It certainly cannot be denied that this motive is operative, particularly in later development. That it was the original notion, however, is improbable. Obviously, this offering is closely related to the custom, common even to-day, of leaving the last sheaf in the harvest-field. This custom, which W. Mannhardt was able to trace from ancient times down to rural festivals that are still prevalent, is also of the nature of a sacrifice. On such occasions, an egg, a piece of bread, or the picture of a human being or of an animal, is sometimes tied to the first or to the last sheaf of the harvest and left upon the field. Such acts are obviously due to the need of attributing to the garnered grain life and a soul, as well as the ability to influence by its soul the vegetation demons of the field, and, in later times, the gods who protect the cultivated soil. The custom could scarcely have originated except for the presence, from the very outset, of the idea of a psychical power resident in the sprouting seed. Later, the idea of a gift here also forced the magical motive into the background. Indeed, it may well be that this caused the sacrificial usages which originally, as it appears, marked the end of the harvest, to be put forward to its beginning.