Elements of Folk Psychology

The keen interest which the present age is manifesting in problems connected with the interpretation of human experience is no less a result than it is a precondition of the fruitful labours of individual scholars. Prominent among these is the distinguished author of the volume which is herewith rendered accessible to English readers. The impetus which Professor Wundt has given to the philosophical and psychological studies of recent years is a matter of common knowledge. Many of those who are contributing richly to these fields of thought received their stimulus from instruction directly enjoyed in the laboratory and the classrooms of Leipzig. But even more than to Wundt, the teacher, is the world indebted to Wundt, the investigator and the writer. The number and comprehensiveness of this author's publications, as well as their range of subjects, are little short of amazing. To gauge the extent of their influence would require an examination of a large part of current philosophical and psychological literature. No small measure of this influence, however, must be credited to those whose labours have made possible the appearance of Wundt's writings in other tongues. Of the English translations, we owe the first to Professors Creighton and Titchener. Succeeding their translation of the "Lectures on Human and Animal Psychology," came the publication, in English, of the first volume of the "Principles of Physiological Psychology," of the two briefer treatises, "Outlines of Psychology" and "Introduction to Psychology," and, in the meantime, of the valuable work on "Ethics."

Though Professor Wundt first won recognition through his investigations in physiology, it was his later and more valuable contributions to physiological psychology, as well as to logic, ethics, epistemology, and metaphysics, that gained for him his place of eminence in the world of scholarship. One may hazard the prophecy, however, that the final verdict of history will ascribe to his latest studies, those in folk psychology, a significance not inferior to that which is now generally conceded to the writings of his earlier years. The _Völkerpsychologie_ is a truly monumental work. The analysis and interpretation of language, art, mythology, and religion, and the criticisms of rival theories and points of view, which occupy its five large volumes of over three thousand pages, are at once so judicial and so suggestive that they may not be neglected by any serious student of the social mind. The publication of the _Völkerpsychologie_ made necessary a number of defensive and supplementary articles. Two of these, in a somewhat revised form, together with an early article on "The Aim and Methods of Folk Psychology," and an additional essay on "Pragmatic and Genetic Psychology of Religion," were published in 1911 under the title, _Probleme der Völkerpsychologie_. Finally, in 1912, there appeared the book which we are now presenting in translation, the _Elemente der Völkerpsychologie_. As regards the difference in method and character between the _Elemente_ and the _Völkerpsychologie_, nothing need be added to what may be gleaned from the author's Preface and Introduction to this, his latest, work. Here, too, Professor Wundt indicates his conception of the nature and the problem of folk psychology, a fuller discussion of which may be found both in the _Völkerpsychologie_ and in the first essay of the _Probleme_.

He who attempts to sketch the "Outlines of a Psychological History of the Development of Mankind" necessarily incurs a heavy indebtedness, as regards his material, to various more specialized sciences. The success with which the data have been sifted in the present instance and the extent to which the author has repaid the special sciences in terms of serviceable principles of interpretation, must, to a certain extent, be left to the determination of those who are engaged in these specific fields. Human beliefs and institutions, however, as well as all products of art and modes of labour, of food-getting, of marriage, of warfare, etc.--in short, all elements of human culture--even though subject to natural conditions of various sorts, are essentially mental processes or the expression of psychical activities. Hence no theory relating to these phenomena is acceptable, or even respectable, that does violence to well-established psychological principles. The unpsychological character of many of the hypotheses that still abound in ethnological, sociological, and historical literature, in itself renders necessary such discussions as those comprised within the present volume. One of the very valuable, even though not novel, features of the "Elements," therefore, is its clear exposure of the untenability of rationalistic and other similarly erroneous types of explanation.