Wilhelm Max Wundt

“ How immense is the chasm between the secret barter of primitive man who steals out of the primeval forest by night and lays down his captured game to exchange it, unseen by his neighbours, for implements and objects of adornment, and the commerce of an age when fleets traverse the seas, and eventually ships course through the air, uniting the peoples of all parts of the world into one great commercial community! We cannot undertake to delineate all aspects of this development, for the latter includes the entire history of mankind. ”

“ The moment we see an object, hear a musical chord, &c., not only do the parts of the impression itself fuse together, but the impression also immediately gives rise to reproductive elements, which fill up any gaps in it, and arrange it among the ideas familiar to us. These processes continually overlap each other, and extend over all the regions of sense. What we imagine we perceive directly, really belongs in a great extent to our memory of innumerable previous impressions, and we are not aware of a separation between what is directly given us and what is supplied by assimilation. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Every one knows that the result of a chain of reasoning, made up of a row of single acts of thought, may be a product of those single thought-acts, which throws much light on some subject and which was before unknown to us, and yet which conclusively comes from those premises, if we analyse retrogressively its development. Upon this creative character of apperceptive combinations, above all, rests the regularity of psychical development, which is shown in the single consciousness during the individual life, and in the total mental development revealed to us by culture and history. ”

“ 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. ”

“ But in the midst of this märchen-world stands the absolutely human hero, contrasting with whom the fabulous events of the narrative run their course as a fantastic show. The hero overcomes all obstacles that block the course of his journey by his own never-failing shrewdness and resourcefulness. Herein again the märchen-myth gives evidence of being preparatory to the hero saga. At the time when the hero ideal arose, the old märchen ideas were as yet everywhere current. Together with the belief in demons and magic, they, also, found their way into the heroic age. ”

“ Religion alone was conceived as a phenomenon which was, on the one hand, independent of the limits of a single people, and yet, on the other, subject, in its development, to law. The idea that Christianity was destined to be a world religion, together with the fact that it had originated historically and had spread widely, did not admit of any other interpretation. Within this Christian circle of ideas, moreover, the historical development and growth of religion were, quite naturally, brought into connection with the world beyond, in which the development was thought to await its completion. ”

“ This purely human deity was no longer bound by national ties; he was not a guardian of the State and a helper in strife with other peoples, but a god of mankind. For every individual he was both an ideal and a helper, a saviour from the imperfections and limitations of earthly life. With this process of deification, the religions whose central object of cult was the suffering individual who secures for himself and for mankind redemption from suffering, opened their doors also to the gods and demons of earlier ages. ”

“ But we have further evidence that the impulse to increase the means of power could not have been the only, nor even the decisive, factor in the development of the idea of a world empire. This evidence is to be found in the fact that, while a world empire never existed except as an idea, the age in which this idea dominated history regarded the world empire as a reality. Hence there must have been other motives, of an ideal nature, to bridge over the chasm between idea and reality in such wise as to identify the former with the latter. ”

“ Nirvana does not represent the nothingness of eternal oblivion, but an eternal rest of the soul in pure knowledge, a peace which puts an end to all striving, just as does the heaven for which the Christian hopes. The difference between Nirvana and the Christian heaven is merely that, in the one case, the emphasis falls on knowledge, whereas, in the other, it is placed on feeling. This distinction, however, is not absolute. Buddha, also, preaches love of one's neighbour—indeed, sympathy with every suffering creature; and the Christian, as well as the Buddhist, seeks the knowledge of God. ”

“ According to a belief which has not entirely disappeared even among cultural peoples, the soul leaves the corpse in the form of a demon; the wandering ghost is a demon; demons dwell in the depths, in the neighbourhood of streams, in solitary ravines, in forests and fields, upon and beneath the earth. They are usually threatening, though sometimes beneficent, powers. In every instance, however, they are absolutely impersonal embodiments of the emotions of fear and hope, and it is these emotions, under the assimilative influences of impressions of external nature, that have given rise to them. ”

“ The man of nature knows only the present. Of the past he possesses merely fragmentary elements, legendary in character, and much altered by the embellishments of a myth-creating imagination; his provision for the future scarcely extends beyond the coming day. Hence, we should scarcely be justified in unqualifiedly calling peoples of nature 'peoples without a history.' In the broader sense of the term, they have a history, as well as have the solar system, the earth, the animal, and the plant. ”

“ Disregarding the bodily form in favour of the portrait, painting first acquires new means of characterization in colour and shading; then, passing from man to his natural environment, it wins from nature the secrets of perspective, and thus gains a far greater mastery over the depths of space than was possible to sculpture. Landscape painting, moreover, unlocks for art that rich world of emotions and moods which man may create from the impressions of nature, and which attain to purity of expression in proportion as man himself disappears from the artistic reproduction of his environment. ”

“ 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. ”

“ For him everything is as it is just because it has always been so. Just as he dances about an arrow because his father and his grandfather practised this custom in the past, so also does he hold that the sun rises to-day because it rose yesterday. ”

“ Antecedent to it were, first, the conception that this world is a preparation for the kingdom of God, and, later, the thought that life is an education in accordance with a predetermined plan. That the Hegelian conception is the result of such a development is evident from the very fact that it continues to regard the destinies of mankind as guided by a plan. This plan has, from stage to stage, merely passed from transcendence to immanence, inasmuch as it is finally thought to be present to the mind of the philosopher who interprets the meaning of history. ”

“ Indeed, if we go back still farther and inquire concerning those more primitive peoples of nature who are merely on the point of passing from tribal organization to a political Constitution, it might perhaps be nearer the truth to assert that democracy, and not monarchy, was the form of the early State. The fact is that the organization characteristic of the State as a whole is the product of historical factors of an exceedingly variable nature, and that it never adequately fits into any logical system that is based on merely a few political features. ”

“ But even at this stage of development the hero is a boy; at a somewhat later period, a young girl sometimes assumes the [Pg 280] rôle, or a youth wins a maiden after numerous adventures. At this point, the tale of fortune ceases to be a true märchen-myth. Just as the dance changes from a cult ceremony into a direct expression of lively emotions of pleasure, themselves heightened by the joy in the rhythm of the bodily movements, so also does the märchen develop into a narrative that ministers to the mere delight in fluctuations of life-events and in their happy outcome. ”

“ The advance to such an insight is inaugurated by world empires, in which the vicissitudes of peoples first begin to form a unified history; it reaches its completion in world culture, which creates a common mental heritage for mankind, and thus engenders the consciousness of a universal community.
Of the various elements of world culture that give impetus to this development, the world religions occupy the foremost place. In extent and permanence they surpass not only the world empires but also all other forms of material and spiritual interchange between peoples. ”

“ The gods, it is true, take a hand in the destinies of the heroes—they quarrel about them, or, when the need is greatest, descend to the earth and, though unrecognized, assist them in battles. As for the rest, however, their life lies outside the sphere of the epic narrative; it appears to be an even and undisturbed course of existence into which change enters only in so far as there is a participation in the affairs of the terrestrial world. Such is the epic at the zenith of its development and as it receives expression in the Homeric poems. ”

“ But it is precisely in this fact, Bachofen believes, that we have a clue to the origin of gynecocracy if only we bear in mind the actual characteristics of woman. Woman's nature is such that this universal promiscuity of the sexes must have become repulsive, first of all, to her. Turning away all other men, she accepted but a single one. In so doing, woman proved herself the champion of chastity and morals which she has since remained. To her, and not to man, is due the honour of having founded the monogamous family. At the outset she was also its natural preserver and guardian. ”