Elements of Folk Psychology Outline of a Psychological History of the Development of Mankind · Wilhelm Max Wundt
13. COSMOGONIC AND THEOGONIC MYTHS.
Under the influence of expiatory rites, which were zealously practised even by the ancient mystery cults, these two worlds, the subterranean hell and the celestial paradise, were supplemented by a _third_ region. This development was also apparently of Iranian origin. The region was held to be a place of purification, where the soul of the sinner might be prepared, through transitory punishments and primarily through lustrations, for entrance into the heavenly realm. Purgatorial lustration, after the pattern of terrestrial cult ceremonies, was believed to be effected by means of fire, this being regarded as the most potent lustrical agency, and as combining the function of punishment with that of purification. Dante's "Divine Comedy" presents a faithful portrayal of these conceptions as they were finally developed by the religious imagination of mediæval Christianity out of a mass of ideas which go back, in their beginnings, to a very ancient past, but which continually grew through immanent psychological necessity. Dante's account of the world beyond incorporates a further element. It tells of a _guide_, by whom those exceptional individuals who are privileged to visit these realms are led, and by whom the various souls are assigned to their future dwelling-places. The first of the visitors to Hades, Hercules, was accompanied by deities, by Athena and Hermes. Later it was one of the departed who served as guide. Thus, Virgil was conducted by his father, and Dante, in turn, was led by Virgil, though into the realms of blessedness, closed to the heathen poet, he was guided by the transfigured spirit of Beatrice. The rôle of general conductor of souls to the realms of the underworld, however, came to be given to Hermes, the psychopomp. Such is the capacity in which this deity appears in the Odyssey, in an exceedingly charming combination of later with very ancient soul-conceptions. After Odysseus has slain the suitors, Hermes, with staff in hand, leads the way to the underworld, followed by the souls of the suitors in the form of twittering birds.
These external changes in the ideas of the beyond, leading to the separation of the two realms, heaven and hell, and finally to the conception of purgatory, an intermediate realm, are dependent also on the gradual development of the _idea of retribution_. This is not a primitive idea. It arises only in the course of the heroic age, as supplementary to the very ancient experiences associated with the fear of death and to the notions concerning the breath and shadow souls. Moreover, it is especially important to notice that at the outset the idea was not ethical in character, but _purely religious_--a striking proof that morality and religion were originally distinct. The transference of the idea from religion to morals represents the final stage of the development, and occurred long after other-world mythology had reached its zenith. The first traces of the retributive idea are to be found in connection with those unusual dispensations of favour by which a hero who has won the favour of the gods is either taken up into their midst or is granted admittance to some other region of blessedness; the conception may, however, also take the form of punishments attached to certain particular offences directed against the gods.
These latter exceptions already form a prelude to the more general application of the retributive idea in later times. But, even at this stage, the idea did not at once include _all_ men within its scope, but found expression only in the desire to gain some exceptional escape from future suffering or some peculiar claim to eternal joy in the future. True, the natural impulse toward association, and the hope that united conjurations would force their way to the ears of the gods more surely than individual prayers could do, early led to cult alliances, whose object it was to minister to these other-worldly hopes. None of these alliances, however, was concerned with obtaining salvation for all; on the contrary, all of them sought to limit this salvation to a few, in the belief that by such limitation their aim would be more certain of realization. These cults, therefore, were shrouded in secrecy. This had a twofold purpose.
On the one hand, it increased the assurance of the members in the success of their magical incantations--a natural result of the fact that these rites were unavailable to the masses; on the other hand, it augmented the magical power of the incantations, inasmuch as, according to an associative reaction widely prevalent in the field of magical ideas, the mysterious potency of magic led to a belief in the magical effect of secrecy. The influence of these ideas had manifested itself in much earlier times, giving rise, on the transitional stage between totemism and the deity cults, to the very numerous secret societies of cultural and semi-cultural peoples. At this period, these societies were probably always the outgrowth of the associations of medicine-men, but later they sometimes included larger circles of tribal members. As is evident particularly in the case of the North American Indians, such societies frequently constituted restricted religious groups within the clans--groups which appear to have taken the place of the earlier totemic associations. In harmony with this, and, perhaps, under the influence of the age-groups in the men's clubs, there was originally a gradation of the members, based on the degree of their sanctification and on the extent of their participation in the mystic ceremonies. In peculiar contradiction to the secrecy of such associations, membership in one of its classes was betrayed, during the festivals of the cult groups, by the most striking external signs possible, such as by the painting of the body or by other forms of decoration. Moreover, on the earlier stages of culture, the interest of all these secret societies was still centred mainly on things connected with this world, such as prosperity of crops, protection from sickness, and success in the chase. Nevertheless, there was also manifest a concern regarding a future life, especially wherever a pronounced ancestor worship or an incipient deity cult had been developed.
It is the idea of the beyond, however, that gradually crowds out all secondary motives and that gives to the mystery cults proper their characteristic stamp, bringing them into sharp contrast with the dominant ideas of the early heroic age. In the earlier period, the idea of the beyond had been enveloped in hopeless gloom; now, it fills the mystic with premonitions of eternal happiness. In striving for this experience, the mystic wishes for a bliss that is not granted to the majority of mortals. Once more all the magic arts of the past are called into play in order that the initiate may secure entrance into the portals of the yonder world; it is thither that he is transported in the ecstasy induced by these magical means. No longer is admiration bestowed upon the heroes of the mythical past, upon a Hercules and a Theseus, as it was in ancient times. The change came about slowly, and yet at the great turning-point of human history, marked by the Hellenistic age, it spread throughout the entire cultural world. Radiating far beyond the Eleusinian and Orphic mysteries, which these hopes of a yonder-world raised to new life, the same idea was appropriated by the cults of Osiris, Serapis, Attis, and Mithra. The _idea of redemption_, born of the longing to exchange this world, with its sufferings and wants, for a world of happiness in the beyond, took possession of the age. It is the negation of the heroic age, of the heroes which it prized, and of the gods which it revered. Along with this world, these cults of the beyond repudiate also the previously existent values of this world. The ideals of power and of property fade. Succeeding the hero ideal, as its abrogation and at the same time its consummation, is the ideal of humanity.
At first it is only _religious_ ideals that manifest this shift in values. The enjoyment of the present gives way to hopes for the future, the portrayal of which welds religious feelings into a power that proves supreme over all other impulses. It is for this very reason that the future, which the mystic already enjoys in anticipation, comes to be exclusively the reward of the _devout_. It is not vouchsafed to the moral man who stands outside the pale of these religious associations, for his activity centres about this world. At a much earlier period, however, these ideas became combined with ethical motives of retribution. If, accordingly, the two motives again become entirely distinct at this decisive turning-point of religious development, this only signifies that, in themselves, they are of different origin, and not that from early times forward there were no forces making for their union. These forces, however, were not so much internal as external in character. They did not spring from the religious experiences themselves, nor, least of all, from the ideas of the beyond.
Their source is to be found primarily in a transference of the relations of the earthly State to the divine State, as a result of which the ruler of the latter was exalted to the position of lawgiver in the kingdom of men no less than in that of the gods. Proofs of this transference are to be found in the most ancient customs and legal enactments of all regions. Either the ethical and religious commandments are, both alike, supposed to be the very utterances of the deity, as in the case of the Mosaic decalogue, or, as is illustrated by the Babylonian code of Hammurabi, an earthly ruler expressly promulgates his law in the name of the deity, even though this law is essentially restricted to legal and ethical norms. Thus it came about that every ethical transgression acquired also a religious significance. The ethical norm was not, at the outset, religious in sanction, as is usually believed; it acquired this character only through the medium of the world-ruling divine personality. Nevertheless, the union of the ethical and the religious gradually caused the idea of retribution, which originally had no ethical significance whatsoever, to force its way into the conceptions of the beyond. It was essentially in this way that ethical transgressions came to be also religious offences, whereas, on the other hand, the rewards of the other-world continued to be restricted to the devout, or were granted to the moral man only on condition that he be devout as well as moral.
In conclusion, we must consider an offshoot of other-world ideas--the belief in the _transmigration of souls_. This belief is ultimately grounded in the more general ideas of soul-belief, even though its developed form appears only as a product of philosophical speculation, and has, therefore, found only a limited acceptance. In its motives, the belief most closely resembles the conception of purgatory, in so far as the latter involves the notion that the occupation of animal bodies is a means, partly of transitory punishment, and partly of purification. The idea of lustration, however, is not involved in that of metempsychosis. In its place, there is a new and unique element. It consists in the thought, expressed in Plato's "Republic," that it is proper that man should retain after death the character manifested during life, and that he should therefore assume the form of the animal which exhibits this character. There is thus manifested the idea of a relationship between man and the animal. In the distant past this idea gave rise to the animal totem; in this last form of the animal myth, it leads to the conception of the transmigration of souls. Thus, a complete inversion of values has here taken place.
The significance of the totem as an ancestral animal and as an object of cult caused it to be regarded as superior to man. The animal myth, on the other hand, represents transformation into an animal as degrading, even as a severe punishment. It is precisely this difference which makes it probable that the idea of transmigration was not a free creation of Hindoo philosophers--for it was they who apparently first developed it, and from whom it passed over to the Pythagorean school and thence to Plato--but that it, also, was connected with the general development of totemic conceptions. Of course, it is not possible to trace a direct transition of the totem animal into the animal which receives the soul of a human being who is expiating sins that he has committed. It is not probable, moreover, that such a transition occurred. Doubtless, however, the idea of transmigration is connected with the fact that, beginning with the totemic age and extending far down into the period of deity beliefs, the value placed on animals underwent a change.
For the Australian, the animal is an object of cult, and the totem animal is frequently also regarded as the incarnation of an ancestor or of some magical being of antiquity; the American Indian calls the animals his elder brothers; Hercules, the hero of the heroic age, is honoured because, among other things, he was instrumental in exterminating wild animals. This change, moreover, is reflected in animal myths even more than in these general evaluations. Indeed, transformation into animals is a dominant characteristic of these myths. Tracing the conception of this magical process, however, we find, step by step, a progressive degradation of the animal. In Australian legends, animal and man are either absolute equals or the animal is the superior, being endowed with special magical powers. In American märchen-myths also, we still frequently find the same conception, although transformation into an animal is here sometimes regarded as a disgrace. Finally, in many African myths, and, particularly, in those of the cultural peoples of the ancient world, such a transformation is regarded either as a serious injury resulting from evil magic or as a punishment for some crime.
We may well suppose, therefore, that the Brahmans, who first incorporated this idea into the religious conceptions of retribution, were influenced by the ideas current in popular belief, which, on their part, represented the last development of earlier totem conceptions. These ideas may also have been reinforced by the belief (not even yet entirely extinct) in soul animals, into which the psyche disappears at the moment of death. Whether the Brahmans had as yet come to the notion that transformation into an animal is a simpler and more natural way of conceiving the future of the soul than ideas of a supermundane and a subterranean beyond, need not concern us. In any event, it is noteworthy that, after science had closed the path to heaven as well as that to Hades, Lessing and, in a broader sense, taking into account nature as a whole, Goethe himself, regarded metempsychosis as the most probable hypothesis concerning the way in which the desire for an endless survival of the soul will be satisfied.
Ideas discussed in this chapter
Text from Project Gutenberg, public domain in the United States.