Wilhelm Wundt (1832 - 1920) - German philosopher and psychologist, one of the founders of experimental psychology. In 1879, at the University of Leipzig, he organized the world's first laboratory of experimental psychology, which became the most important international scientific center and a unique school of experimental psychology for researchers from many countries of Europe and America. However, the main business of his life Wundt considered the creation of the so-called `Volkerpsychologie` -` the psychology of peoples`, a descriptive and historical psychology of higher mental processes, the method of which is the analysis of the manifestations of the human spirit in the forms of culture (in language, religion, customs, myths). The ten-volume Psychology of Nations (1900-1920), written by him, had a tremendous impact on world science. The proposed book, first published in 1911, was conceived by the author as an introduction to the study of this work.
Wilhelm Wundt
The first of four articles, combined into one whole in this collection, is a program in a slightly modified form, published in 1886, in which I tried to give an account of the tasks of the psychology of peoples, developed according to the plan outlined here. It was printed in the fourth volume of the journal Philosophische Studien, which I am publishing, and is reprinted in this collection with some additions and with a concluding section serving as a transition to the next lectures. The second and third articles are an extended revision of the critical objections, of which one was published in the supplement to the Munich Allgemeine Zeitung, 1907, no. 40, the other shortly before that in the Indogermanische Forschungen, volume 28. Both works are intended to bring under general psychological points of view, the issues raised in these objections, in particular the dispute between the individualistic and collectivist theories of society, explained in the third article. The fourth article, perhaps, can be called an apology of German psychology against the American-English pragmatism so much extolled in theological circles at the present time. All four articles, taken together, aim to illuminate the general attitude of the psychology of peoples to the historical sciences of the spirit by analyzing some of the problems of linguistics and philosophy of religion, which are at the same time the main problems of the psychology of peoples.
W. Wundt
Translator's foreword.
In 1900, Wundt published the first part of his major work, Völkerpsychologie, a two-volume psychology of language. This work had a great influence on linguists and gave rise to a whole literature on criticism of Wundt's views or their further development. Such an outstanding linguist as Professor F. Zelinsky says in his critical abstract of this work ("W. Wundt and the Psychology of Language", Questions of Phil. And Psych., Vol. 61 and 62) that in the person of Wundt is an experimental, strong and rich hopes, the psychological system for the first time went to meet linguistics. "When studying this work, the reader is imbued with both respect and direct reverence for the author: here, he feels that the limit of human energy in the field of scientific work has been reached ... From the last point reached by Wundt, a new horizon for understanding linguistic phenomena opened up for me." The main task of this work, crowning the Wundt system, is to pave the way for the creation of a psychology of peoples, which serves as a continuation and addition of individual psychology. The psychology of peoples, as Lazarus and Steinthal understood it, the founders of this new scientific branch, does not stand up to criticism, since it is based on something incompatible with the concept of "the soul of the people" substantial teaching about the nature of the soul. The famous linguist Hermann Paul rightly objected to Lazarus and Steinthal, saying that all mental processes occur exclusively in the individual soul. Neither the "national spirit" (Volksgeist or Volksseele) - a concept that originated in the depths of romance - nor its elements, therefore, have a concrete existence. "Therefore, let us eliminate all abstractions"! But then the very psychology of nations is destroyed. Wundt disagrees with this last conclusion. In his opinion, Hermann Paul himself did not go far from Herbartianism: the concept of the soul, too, is inextricably linked with the concept of a certain substantial unity, of a special substratum of mental phenomena. Since there is no such substratum in the psychology of peoples, the "soul of the people" is declared an abstraction, a myth. But for empirical psychology, the soul is nothing more than a directly given connection of psychological phenomena. It is only in this empirical meaning that the psychology of nations can use the concept of "soul" and from this point of view, the concept of "national spirit" has the same real meaning as the individual soul. Consequently, only on the basis of the actual, and not a substantial understanding of the nature of the soul, it is possible to substantiate the psychology of peoples. Thanks to the doctrine of the relevance of the soul, no one at the present time will begin to understand the "national spirit" like a subconscious soul or an oversoul, in the sense of an incorporeal, abiding essence independently of individuals.
The psychology of peoples should embrace those mental phenomena that are products of the joint existence and interaction of people. It cannot, therefore, capture those areas in which the predominant influence of individuals is felt, for example, literature. Excluding such areas, we find that the object of the psychology of nations will be language, myths(with the beginnings of religion) and customs(with the rudiments of morality). On the basis of such an understanding of the tasks of the psychology of peoples, Wundt managed to combine into an organic whole the articles included in the collection "Problems of the Psychology of Nations" offered to readers, despite the fact that they were written at different times and on different occasions. The first article defends the right of the psychology of peoples to exist and clarifies its tasks and methods. The second deals with the ancient most difficult problem of the emergence of language, Fuўsei or Jeўsei it arose. The third article discusses the same alternative, extending it to all areas of social life: does spiritual culture in its primitive beginnings, as well as the further evolution of its products, emanate from a single center, perhaps even from a single individual, or is it due to joint life humanity? This question is elucidated with the help of specific examples, again mainly from the analysis of the language. Finally, the last article is an apology for the psychology of nations against the pragmatism of James and related movements in German theology. The psychology of nations, in contrast to the individualism of the pragmatic philosophy of religion, tries, relying on ethnology and the comparative study of religions, to find out the general conditions of certain forms of faith and cult. Wundt's criticism of James' The Variety of Religious Experience is original and interesting.
"Problems of the Psychology of Nations" can therefore serve as an excellent introduction to the study of the difficult and voluminous main work of Wundt on the psychology of language, and give the reader the opportunity for the first time to navigate difficult and controversial issues of a new and interesting - due to its connection with many other disciplines, especially linguistics - industry psychology.
N. Samsonov
I. Tasks and methods of peoples' psychology.
1. The task of the psychology of peoples.
It is quite understandable that new areas of knowledge or - if there is no new area in the strict sense of the word yet - new forms of scientific research must struggle for their existence for some time; to a certain extent, this may even be useful: in this way, the newly emerging discipline receives the most powerful impetus to ensure its position with acquisitions in the field of facts and to more accurately understand its tasks by differentiating with areas of knowledge close to it, and it tempered too far reaching claims and more precisely delimits legitimate claims.
In Russia, supporters of natural-scientific and humanitarian psychology fought among themselves, in which there were winners and losers, but there was no place for ethnopsychology among other branches of psychology. And in Germany, both orientations crossed in the work of one researcher - W. Wundt (1831-1920), the creator of not only the experimental psychology of consciousness built on the model of physiology, but also psychology of peoples as one of the first forms of socio-psychological knowledge.
Wundt published his first ethnopsychological article in 1886, then reworked it into a book translated into Russian [p. 43] was published in 1912 under the title "Problems of the Psychology of Nations". The last twenty years of his life, the scientist devoted entirely to the creation of a ten-volume "Psychology of Nations". Wundt's predecessors in the creation of a new science were Lazarus and Steinthal, at first his disagreements with him were barely perceptible, but then he seriously deviated from the path they proposed.
First, as we remember, for Lazarus and Steinthal, the study of the national spirit is reduced to the study of the same psychological phenomena as the study of the individuals who make up the people. Wundt agrees with them that soul of the people is not at all an incorporeal entity, independent of individuals. Moreover, it is nothing outside of the latter. But he consistently pursues the idea, fundamental for social psychology, that the joint life of individuals and their interaction with each other should generate new phenomena with peculiar laws that, although they do not contradict the laws of individual consciousness, are not contained in them. And as these new phenomena, in other words, as the content of the soul of the people, he considers the general ideas, feelings and aspirations of many individuals. From this, only one conclusion can be drawn: for the German scientist, the psychology of peoples is an independent science that not only uses the services of individual psychology, but also itself assists the latter, providing material about the spiritual life of individuals and thus influencing the explanation of individual states of consciousness.
Secondly, Wundt seeks to narrow down the program of study of the psychology of peoples proposed by Lazarus and Steinthal. Although, according to him, in real research it is impossible to completely distinguish between description and explanation, the science of the soul of the people is designed to explain the general laws of its development. And ethnology, which is an auxiliary discipline for the psychology of peoples, should describe the mental properties of individual peoples. Incidentally, Steinthal, in his later writings, agreed with Wundt's point of view on this issue and left descriptive psychological ethnology at the mercy of ethnographers.
Thirdly, according to Wundt, the general ideas of many individuals are manifested in language, myths and customs, and the rest of the elements of spiritual culture are secondary and are reduced to them. So, art, [p. 44] science and religion for a long time in the history of mankind have been associated with mythological thinking, therefore, as a subject of study, they should be excluded from the psychology of peoples. True, in his multivolume work, Wundt is not always consistent, for example, quite often he considers religion and art as part of the psychology of peoples.
But in the early works of the German scientist, we find a clear structure of the products of the creative spirit of the peoples:
· language contains the general form of ideas living in the soul of the people and the laws of their connection;
· myths , understood by Wundt in a broad sense as the entire primitive world outlook and even the beginnings of religion, conceal the original content of these ideas in their conditioning by feelings and impulses;
· customs include actions arising from these ideas, characterized by general directions of will and the rudiments of a legal order.
“Language, myths and customs are general spiritual phenomena, so closely intertwined with each other that one of them is unthinkable without the other.<…>Customs express in actions the same views of life that are hidden in myths and are made common property thanks to language. And these actions, in turn, make them more durable and develop further the ideas from which they flow ”[ Wundt, 1998, p. 226].
After getting acquainted with the basic ideas of Wundt, it is easy to guess that the main method of the psychology of peoples he considers the analysis of concrete historical products of spiritual life, that is, language, myths and customs, which, in his opinion, are not fragments of the creativity of the folk spirit, but himself this spirit. Of course, the products of spiritual culture are studied by other, in particular, historical, sciences. Moreover, psychological and historical research go hand in hand. But the psychology of peoples - as an explanatory science - analyzes them from the side of the general laws of spiritual development expressed in them. She strives to psychologically explain the laws that objectively appear in language, myths and customs. If a psychologist studies the cult of tree spirits, which exists among the Germanic and Slavic peoples, he needs to answer the questions of what psychological reasons lie at the basis of this cult and related ideas and how psychologically it is possible to justify changes in ideas with the development of culture.
In Russia, supporters of natural-scientific and humanitarian psychology fought among themselves, in which there were winners and losers, but there was no place for ethnopsychology among other branches of psychology. And in Germany, both orientations crossed in the work of one researcher - W. Wundt (1831-1920), the creator of not only the experimental psychology of consciousness built on the model of physiology, but also psychology of peoples as one of the first forms of socio-psychological knowledge.
Wundt published his first ethnopsychological article in 1886, then reworked it into a book translated into Russian [p. 43] was published in 1912 under the title "Problems of the Psychology of Nations". The last twenty years of his life, the scientist devoted entirely to the creation of a ten-volume "Psychology of Nations". Wundt's predecessors in the creation of a new science were Lazarus and Steinthal, at first his disagreements with him were barely perceptible, but then he seriously deviated from the path they proposed.
First, as we remember, for Lazarus and Steinthal, the study of the national spirit is reduced to the study of the same psychological phenomena as the study of the individuals who make up the people. Wundt agrees with them that soul of the people 1 is not at all an incorporeal entity, independent of individuals. Moreover, it is nothing outside of the latter. But he consistently pursues the idea, fundamental for social psychology, that the joint life of individuals and their interaction with each other should generate new phenomena with peculiar laws that, although they do not contradict the laws of individual consciousness, are not contained in them. And as these new phenomena, in other words, as the content of the soul of the people, he considers the general ideas, feelings and aspirations of many individuals 2. From this, only one conclusion can be drawn: for the German scientist, the psychology of peoples is an independent science that not only uses the services of individual psychology, but also itself assists the latter, providing material about the spiritual life of individuals and thus influencing the explanation of individual states of consciousness.
Secondly, Wundt seeks to narrow down the program of study of the psychology of peoples proposed by Lazarus and Steinthal. Although, according to him, in real research it is impossible to completely distinguish between description and explanation, the science of the soul of the people is designed to explain the general laws of its development. And ethnology, which is an auxiliary discipline for the psychology of peoples, should describe the mental properties of individual peoples. Incidentally, Steinthal, in his later writings, agreed with Wundt's point of view on this issue and left descriptive psychological ethnology at the mercy of ethnographers.
Thirdly, according to Wundt, the general ideas of many individuals are manifested in language, myths and customs, and the rest of the elements of spiritual culture are secondary and are reduced to them. So, art, [p. 44] science and religion for a long time in the history of mankind have been associated with mythological thinking, therefore, as a subject of study, they should be excluded from the psychology of peoples. True, in his multivolume work, Wundt is not always consistent, for example, quite often he considers religion and art as part of the psychology of peoples.
But in the early works of the German scientist, we find a clear structure of the products of the creative spirit of the peoples:
language contains the general form of ideas living in the soul of the people and the laws of their connection;
myths , understood by Wundt in a broad sense as the entire primitive world outlook and even the beginnings of religion, conceal the original content of these ideas in their conditioning by feelings and impulses;
customs include actions arising from these ideas, characterized by general directions of will and the rudiments of a legal order.
“Language, myths and customs are general spiritual phenomena, so closely intertwined with each other that one of them is unthinkable without the other.<…>Customs express in actions the same views of life that are hidden in myths and are made common property thanks to language. And these actions, in turn, make them more durable and develop further the ideas from which they flow ”[ Wundt, 1998, p. 226].
After getting acquainted with the basic ideas of Wundt, it is easy to guess that the main method of the psychology of peoples he considers the analysis of concrete historical products of spiritual life, that is, language, myths and customs, which, in his opinion, are not fragments of the creativity of the folk spirit, but himself this spirit. Of course, the products of spiritual culture are studied by other, in particular, historical, sciences. Moreover, psychological and historical research go hand in hand. But the psychology of peoples - as an explanatory science - analyzes them from the side of the general laws of spiritual development expressed in them. She strives to psychologically explain the laws that objectively appear in language, myths and customs. If a psychologist studies the cult of tree spirits, which exists among the Germanic and Slavic peoples, he needs to answer the questions of what psychological reasons lie at the basis of this cult and related ideas and how psychologically it is possible to justify changes in ideas with the development of culture.
- psychology peoples. It arose and turned out to be the most developed in Germany in the second half of the XIX. - the beginning of the XX century. The most famous representatives are M. Lazarus, H. Steinthal. W. Wundt. Psychology peoples- a direction that arose at the intersection of sociology and social psychology. Its essence lies in the fact that the main driving force of the historical process is the people, the ethnos, which is characterized by an active principle in the form of a "people's spirit", which manifests itself in culture, religion, language, myths, customs, morals. This "national spirit" determines the individual consciousness, the psyche of people who are representatives of a given people (ethnos). It ("the people's spirit") has specific common moments inherent in an ethnos, manifests itself in similar structures of national culture, in certain coinciding character traits. Based on the analysis of the "folk spirit" it is permissible to draw a certain socio-psychological portrait of a given ethnos, which will include its mythology, folk customs, national culture and thus may be subject to specific research.
The most substantive psychology peoples analyzed by Wilhelm Wundt (1832-1920), who devoted the main (ten-volume) work of his life - "Psychology peoples"(1900-1920). An abridged presentation of the main ideas of this work was published in Russian * 29. The ten-volume edition contains not only and not so much theoretical as empirical material about the features of the psychology of different peoples and ethnic groups, about the specific manifestations of their "folk spirit" in culture, art, language, myths, customs, morals, habits, etc. Wundt was famous both for his scientific works and for the fact that he created the first the world's psychological laboratory, which has turned into an international center for experimental psychology. For his services to world, including Russian, science in 1902 he was elected in St. Petersburg an honorary member of the Academy of Sciences. The glory of the founder of empirical ethnopsychology has been entrenched in the world for the scientist.
* 29 Wundt V. Problems of Psychology peoples... M .. 1912.)
Wundt considered mental processes in close connection with physical ones, believing that they constitute two sides of one real being, which manifests itself from the outside as a body, and from within as a soul. Studying consciousness by self-observation of its phenomena and facts, he came to the conclusion that many mental processes, primarily thinking, speech, will, are inaccessible to experiment. They should be studied using the cultural-historical method, especially since they belong to the field not of individual psychology, but of psychology. peoples.
He believed that " psychology peoples is an independent science along with individual psychology, and although it uses the services of the latter, it itself renders significant assistance to individual psychology. " peoples assuming that they are interconnected, the latter in this interconnection acts as a complex creative synthesis of individual consciousnesses [Ibid. S. 6-7].
According to Wundt, psychology peoples covers three large areas and three main problems that require special psychological research: language, myths, customs. They "represent common spiritual phenomena, so closely intertwined with each other that one of them is inconceivable without the other" [Ibid. P. 26]. The study of their interaction is an important task of psychology. peoples... Its other important task is the desire to psychologically cognize the essence of the spirit of the people and discover the laws by which its spiritual activity proceeds.
Language, myths and customs, as Wundt writes, are a direct product of the creativity of the spirit of the people, and they are not some fragments of this creativity, but represent "the very spirit of the people in its relatively unaffected by the individual influences of individual historical processes. development form "[Ibid. p. 27]. Wundt seeks to prove that language, myths and customs do not depend on individual consciousness and individual volitional acts. Moreover, this consciousness and this will are influenced by the spirit of the people as the content of its psychology. That's why psychology peoples- primary, and psychology individuals - secondary to her.
Wundt examines language, myths and customs not only in aggregate, in "company", in interconnection, but also separately, giving a characteristic to each of these three main components of the "spirit of the people". He's writing:
"Language contains the general form of ideas living in the spirit of the people and the laws of their connection. Myths conceal the original content of these ideas in their conditioning by feelings and drives. Finally, customs are general directions of will that arose from these ideas and drives" [Ibid ... P. 25]. As you can see, both language, myths, and customs are interpreted in a purely psychological spirit, as elements of consciousness, the spiritual life of people, linking individuals in a certain way to each other. Therefore, it is no coincidence that Wundt argues that the relationship between psychology and the three above-mentioned areas of research is carried out in full.
Considering psychology peoples as a part of general psychology, the scientist believes that its development gives enough for individual psychology, because language, myths and customs provide material about the mental life of individuals. “For example,” Wundt writes, “the structure of language, which, taken by itself, is a product of the spirit of the people, sheds light on the psychological laws of individual thinking. The evolution of mythological concepts provides a model for analyzing the creations of individual fantasy, and history customs illuminates the development of individual motives of the will "[Ibid. pp. 22-23].
Wundt strove to give psychology peoples a more concrete, realistic view due to his proposed program of empirical studies of the language, myths, customs of a number of ethnic groups. By doing so, he created a kind of sociology of everyday consciousness. Such a proposal later turned out to be just as possible, by the way, with the emergence of phenomenological sociology and ethnomethodology and the proclamation of the daily, everyday life of people and ethnic groups as the object of their research interests. The empirical research program was supposed to transform psychology peoples into a descriptive scientific discipline that studies the inner, deep features of their spiritual life.
It should be noted that in general psychology peoples played a positive role, posing a number of sociological problems of the spiritual life of ethnic groups and managing to involve linguists, historians, ethnographers, philologists, and most importantly, psychologists and sociologists in their study. This was one of the first attempts to study the interaction of culture and individual consciousness. But the theoretical concept of this interaction has not been created. As for the large descriptive material used by psychologists, it was far from being used in the creation of explanatory concepts. Research carried out within the framework of psychology peoples, were of considerable importance for the process of the emergence and convergence of such branches of knowledge as historical psychology, ethnopsychology, cultural anthropology, psycholinguistics. However, sociology received from psychology peoples much less than the above-mentioned scientific disciplines.
Federal Agency for Education of the Russian Federation
State educational institution
higher professional education
Belgorod State University
Department of the second foreign language
Course work
topic: The psychology of peoples by Wilhelm Wundt
Belgorod - 2010
Introduction
In 1900, Wundt published the first part of his work, a two-volume psychology of language. This work greatly influenced linguists who criticized Wundt's ideas. Some linguists said that thanks to Wundt, the psychological system began to come into contact with linguistics.
The main task of Wundt's work is considered to be the creation of a system of peoples' psychology, which will continue and complement individual psychology. Lazarus and Steinthal argued that the psychology of peoples does not stand up to criticism, because it is indivisible with the concept of the nature of the soul. And the linguist Hermann Paul said that all mental processes occur only in the soul of each person.
The psychology of peoples includes mental phenomena that represent the products of coexistence and interaction of people. She cannot capture such areas as, for example, literature, since they are affected by the predominant influence of personalities. Consequently, the object of the psychology of peoples is language, myths and customs.
The psychology of nations, based on ethnology and the comparative study of religions, is trying to find out the general conditions of certain forms of faith and cult.
"The Psychology of Nations" can serve as an excellent introduction to the study of Wundt's main work on the psychology of language, and also gives the reader an opportunity for the first time to navigate the difficult and controversial issues of a new and interesting branch of psychology.
Wundt singled out two disciplines in the science of the "national spirit": "historical psychology of peoples" and "psychological ethnology". The first is an explanatory discipline and the second is descriptive.
Relevance This work is to convey the importance of the works and achievements of Wilhelm Wundt, as well as the psychology of peoples.
Research object is the psychology of peoples.
The subject of research is the problem of the psychology of peoples.
Target This work consists in identifying such a phenomenon as the psychology of peoples, assessing the general attitude of the psychology of peoples to the historical sciences by analyzing some of the problems of linguistics and philosophy of religion.
To achieve this goal, it is necessary to solve a number of tasks:
1) explore the origin of the psychology of peoples;
2) study the tasks of the psychology of peoples;
3) identify the main areas of the psychology of peoples.
1. The origin of the psychology of peoples
Romanticism opposes the individualism of the previous era and carries out the idea that the people, which give rise to language, morals and law, are themselves a person. At the same time, this is the basis of the concept of "national spirit", which for Hegel and the representatives of the historical school of law serves as an addition and completion of the traditional concept of the individual soul. In particular, Hegel used the general word "spirit" when applied to human society, which forces us to mentally abstract ourselves from the bodily basis of mental life. At the same time, he did not think that material conditions in this case were completely absent. It is clearly expressed in the sense that society is made up of individuals, and the national spirit is made up of individual souls. But the larger the circle encompasses spiritual life, the more its ideal content rises in value and enduring significance above the inevitable material substrate of life processes.
Consequently, the common national spirit is opposed to individual souls, not in the sense of a qualitative difference, but in the sense of a modified predicate of value; likewise, representatives of the historical school of law use this term in the same sense. At the same time, in the understanding of the state, they still remained closed within the framework of the old theory of the contract, so that the idea of the national spirit remained immersed in a mystical twilight. Moreover, just because of the outstanding importance that an individual has for the precise definition of legal concepts, it easily led to a too close rapprochement of that individual of the highest degree, who was considered the bearer of the national spirit, with a real individual. This ambiguity of the concept also influenced the beginnings of a new psychology of peoples. In substantiating this new discipline, Steinthal proceeded from the philosophy of Hegel and the ideas of Wilhelm Humboldt akin to it. When he subsequently became friends with the Herbartian Lazarus, he considered it necessary to submit in his judgments to his more knowledgeable colleague in philosophy. Thus, it happened that Hegel's idea of the national spirit was clothed in the attire of a philosophy that was completely inappropriate for it.
To create a psychology of nations that would truly justify the hopes placed on it, it was necessary to transform the Hegelian dialectic of concepts into an empirical psychology of actual mental processes. Herbartan atomism of the soul and Hegel's "national spirit" related to each other like water and fire. The individual substance of the soul in its inert isolation left room only for individual psychology. The concept of it could be transferred to society only with the help of a dubious analogy. Just as in his mechanics of representations Herbart deduces mental life from the play of imaginary representations, so in this image, it was possible to think of individual members of society as something analogous to representations in individual consciousness.
In the sense of this dubious analogy, one could speak of the "soul of the people" - an analogy, of course, is as empty and external as the analogy of ideas with members of human society. Thus, a deeper basis for the ineffectiveness of the psychology of peoples in its original form can be seen in this combination of irreconcilable premises. And since Lazarus, in essence, never went further than the unfulfilled program of future science, then Steintal - as a scientist incomparably more significant and influential than Lazarus - always remained within the boundaries of individual psychological research, with which his studies in the field of linguistics and mythologies have no connection. Hermann Paul is credited with clarifying the inner impossibility of combining Herbart's mechanics of the soul with the idea of the national spirit, which has its roots in romanticism, and therefore the ineffectiveness of the psychology of nations operating with such a combination. Being himself a supporter of Herbartian psychology, armed at the same time with a thorough acquaintance with the history of the language, Paul, more than anyone else, was able to notice the incompatibility of the psychological point of view adopted by Lazarus and Steinthal with the program of the future psychology of peoples. Therefore, criticism of their program was quite a fitting introduction at the time for the first edition of Paul's Prinzipien der Sprachgeschichte, published in 1880. But Paul kept this view unchanged in all subsequent editions of his work. Several newly added notes directly confirm that the author continues to take the same point of view that he held thirty years ago. Of course, he has every right to do so. However, it seems to me that Paul is sinning in this in two ways: firstly, modern psychology in his eyes is still identical with the psychology of peoples in the spirit of Lazarus and Steinthal: secondly, in his opinion, the psychology of Herbart, in essential features, is all is still the last word in psychology in general. I deny both. Not only I personally defend the latest psychology of peoples: it is represented in a whole series of ethnological and philological works that draw attention to the psychological side of problems. But this psychology of peoples will no longer be identical with the ethnopsychology of Lazarus-Steinthal; and Herbart's conceptual mechanics belongs to the past. It is just an interesting page in the history of the development of a new psychology. But to stand on the point of view of its premises for explaining the facts of mental life at the present time is just as inadmissible as it is to deny psychological problems only because they do not agree with these premises. And not only the psychology of peoples and general psychology have now become different than they were at the time when Hermann Paul first expressed his thoughts about the impossibility of the psychology of peoples: - much has changed since then in philology. "Wörter und Sachen" is the landmark title of a new journal whose motto is an exploration of the past, extending to all aspects of culture. Thus, it seems to me, the conviction gradually begins to penetrate everywhere that the linguist should interpret language not as a manifestation of life isolated from human society; on the contrary, assumptions about the development of forms of speech should to a certain extent agree with our views about the origin and development of man himself, about the origin of forms of social life, about the rudiments of customs and law. No one at the present time will begin to understand the "national spirit" like the subconscious soul or the oversoul of modern psychologists-mystics - in the sense of an incorporeal, abiding essence, independently of individuals, as the founders of the historical school of law believed in their time. Even the rationalization of this concept on a dialectical canvas by Hegel became unacceptable for us. But the idea that served as the basis for this concept of the national spirit, that language is not an isolated phenomenon, that language, customs and law are manifestations of the joint life of people inextricably linked with each other - this idea remains as true today as in the past. the time when Jacob Grimm made her the guiding star of his entire area of the past of the Germanic people covering works. Whoever claims that a common language arose through the fusion of a certain number of individual languages, then, willy-nilly, must also return to the fictions of the previous rationalism about a secluded primitive man who, through an agreement with his neighbors, created a legal order and realized the state.
Thomas Hobbes's individualistic theory of society was not afraid of this conclusion. In the question of the origin of language, she was dealing with a problem that in those days could generally be solved only with the help of arbitrary constructions. However, at present, the working conditions, largely due to the development of philology, have changed significantly. Is it just one language, and even then with a stretch, can be interpreted in such a constructive way, since it is the oldest and least accessible product of the common life of people for the study of genesis. But in the study of language this is possible only if, relying on the division of labor so far-reaching in our days, we consider linguistics as a completely separate kingdom governed by its own historical "principles": then the linguist can just as little care about the history of culture, as well as about psychology. However, F. Kaufman brilliantly showed by several examples that the individualistic theory fails even when explaining those phenomena of the history of language that relate to the above broader areas of common life of people. If we compare with each other in the history of the German language the initial meanings of such words that express the mutual relations of members of society, for example, gemein (general) and geheim (secret), Geselle (comrade, originally in the sense of home, your own person, Hausgeselle) and Genosse (comrade in general), then we note that not only, as is observed in other cases, the once living, visual meaning of the word fades and weakens, but at the same time everywhere there is a change in meaning, in which the concept, which previously expressed a closer connection of the members society, now admits a freer relationship between them.
In the history of human society, the first link is not the individual, but precisely their community. From the tribe, from the circle, relatives through gradual individualization, an independent individual is singled out, contrary to the hypotheses of the rationalistic Enlightenment, according to which individuals partly under the yoke of need, partly through reflection, united into society.
2. Tasks and methods of the psychology of peoples
2.1 Tasks of the psychology of peoples
It is quite understandable that new areas of knowledge or - if there is no new area in the strict sense of the word yet - new forms of scientific research must struggle for their existence for some time; to a certain extent, this may even be useful: in this way, the newly emerging discipline receives the most powerful impetus to ensure its position with acquisitions in the field of facts and to more accurately understand its tasks by differentiating with areas of knowledge close to it, and it tempered too far reaching claims and more precisely delimits legitimate claims.
Thus, throughout the nineteenth century, we observed the separation of comparative anatomy from zoology, linguistics from philology, anthropology from anatomical-physiological sciences and from ethnology. But even these, already recognized at the present time, areas have not everywhere poured into a finished form. Thus, in the presentation of comparative anatomy, for the most part, the methods of the zoological system are still adhered to. No matter how undoubted the object of research in linguistics seems, however, linguists are far from unanimous in their opinions about its relation to other objects of historical research. Finally, anthropology only recently recognized the natural history of man and the history of primitive man inextricably linked with it as its specific area. In any case, all of these areas of knowledge already have a relatively secure wealth. If opinions regarding their significance and tasks may still fluctuate, then it is hardly possible to doubt their right to existence and relative independence.
The situation is completely different with the science whose name is often mentioned, although a clear concept is not always associated with it - with the psychology of peoples. For a long time, its objects - the cultural state, languages, customs, religious ideas - are not only the task of special scientific branches, such as: the history of culture and customs, linguistics and philosophy of religion, but at the same time, there has been a need to study these objects in their general relation to human nature, which is why they, for the most part, are included, as an integral part, in anthropological studies. In particular, Pritchard, in his now outdated, but made in its time an era in anthropology, work drew due attention to the mental differences of races and peoples. But since anthropology examines these differences only in their genealogical and ethnographic meaning, it overlooks the only point of view from which all mental phenomena associated with the joint life of people can be considered - the psychological one. And since the task of psychology is to describe these states of individual consciousness and explain the connection between its elements and stages of development, then a similar genetic and causal study of facts that presuppose spiritual relationships that exist in human society for their development, undoubtedly, should also be considered as an object of psychological research.
Indeed, Lazarus and Steintal contrasted in this sense individual psychology - the psychology of peoples. It was supposed to serve as a supplement and a necessary continuation of individual psychology and, therefore, only in connection with it should completely exhaust the task of psychological research. But since all the individual areas of knowledge, the problems of which are secondarily affected by the psychology of peoples - linguistics, mythology, the history of culture in its various ramifications - have themselves tried for a long time to find out the psychological conditions of development, the attitude of the psychology of peoples to these individual disciplines becomes to a certain extent controversial, and a doubt arises whether others have already taken care of the comprehensive solution of the task that she sets herself. To weigh the solidity of this doubt, let us first take a closer look at the program created by Lazarus and Steinthal.
Indeed, the program is as extensive as possible: the object of this future science should serve not only language, myths, religion and customs, but also art and science, the development of culture in general and in its individual ramifications, even historical destinies and the death of individual peoples, as well as the history of all mankind. But the entire area of research should be divided into two parts: the abstract one, which tries to clarify the general conditions and laws of the "national spirit", leaving aside individual peoples and their history, and the concrete one, the task of which is to characterize the spirit of individual peoples and their special forms of development. The entire field of the psychology of peoples is divided into "the historical psychology of peoples."
Lazarus and Steinthal by no means overlooked the objections that may first of all occur to the mind about this program. First of all, they rebel against the assertion that the problems posed by the psychology of peoples have already found their solution in history and its individual ramifications: although the subject of the psychology of peoples and history is the same in its various branches, the method of research is different. The history of mankind is "an image of the past reality in the kingdom of the spirit"; it refuses to establish laws governing historical events. Just as descriptive natural history needs to be supplemented by explanatory natural history - physics, chemistry and physiology, so history, in the sense of a kind of natural history of the spirit, needs to be supplemented by the physiology of the historical life of mankind, and this is precisely the psychology of peoples. Since historians, especially cultural historians, philologists, linguists try to achieve a psychological understanding of the facts they are studying, they provide valuable preliminary work. These arguments, aimed at protecting the right to exist of the psychology of peoples and its independence, in turn, very easily lead to objections. It is unlikely that the representatives of history and various other sciences of the spirit are content with the role assigned to them in such reasoning: in essence, it is reduced to the fact that historians must serve the future psychology of peoples and work for it. In fact, this division of labor, proposed in order to provide a special area for the psychology of peoples, does not correspond to the actual conditions of scientific work. Of course, any history, if you like, is "an image of the past reality in the kingdom of the spirit." But such a depiction by no means renounces a causal explanation of events. Any historical discipline therefore strives, along with the widest possible seizure of external collateral conditions, for a psychological explanation. Of course, it is quite possible to doubt whether it will ever be possible to find the "laws of historical events" in the sense of the laws of natural science. But if this were possible, the historian, of course, would never give up his right to deduce them from the widest possible knowledge of the very facts he is investigating. Comparison with natural history does not stand up to criticism simply because the opposition of purely descriptive and explanatory processing of the same object or state is not considered correct at the present time, perhaps, by any of the naturalists. Zoology, botany, mineralogy, no less than physics, chemistry and physiology, strive to explain the objects of their research and, as far as possible, to understand them in their causal relationships. The difference between these sciences lies rather in the fact that zoology, botany, mineralogy deal with the knowledge of individual objects of nature in their mutual connection, and physics, chemistry and physiology - with the knowledge of the general processes of nature. These more abstract disciplines can, to a certain extent, be compared with general linguistics, comparative mythology or general history, and with more specific disciplines - zoology, botany, mineralogy - the systematic study of individual languages, individual mythological cycles and the history of individual peoples. But here the objection immediately comes to mind that areas so different in nature, in essence, do not at all admit of comparison with each other, since they arise and develop in completely different conditions.
This is especially clearly manifested, in this case, in the incomparably closer connection of general disciplines with special ones in the sciences of the spirit. The evolution of individual languages, mythological cycles and the history of individual peoples are so integral parts of general linguistics, mythology and history that general and specific disciplines presuppose each other, and abstract disciplines in particular depend on concrete ones. You can be a good physicist or physiologist without having a particularly deep knowledge of mineralogy and zoology, but specific areas here require general knowledge. On the contrary, it is impossible to study general linguistics, general history without a thorough acquaintance with individual languages and individual historical epochs - here even the opposite case is rather possible: the study of the particular does not, to a certain extent, need the foundation of the general. In the development of psychic life, the particular, the individual, is incomparably more directly a component of the whole than in nature. Nature breaks up into many objects, which, along with the general laws of their emergence and decay, should serve as objects of independent research, while spiritual development in each of its main areas constantly decomposes only into a large number of partial development processes that form integrating components of the whole. Therefore, both the object and the method of research remain the same both in individual areas and in the general sciences based on them. Already unsatisfactory from the point of view of the natural sciences, the opposition of a purely descriptive and explanatory study of phenomena in the sciences of the spirit thus completely does not stand up to criticism. Where it is not a question of a different content, but only of a different volume of objects under study, there can no longer be a question of a difference in the main methods or general tasks. The general task everywhere consists not only in describing facts, but at the same time in indicating their connection and, as far as possible in each given case, in their psychological interpretation. Whatever area, therefore, the psychology of nations embarks on with its research, everywhere it finds that its functions are already being performed by individual disciplines.
Nevertheless, it can be assumed that in one respect there is still a gap that needs to be filled through especially subtle and in-depth research. Each of the individual historical sciences traces the historical process in only one direction of mental life. Thus, language, myths, art, science, state structure and the external destinies of peoples are separate objects of various historical sciences. But is it not clear that it is necessary to collect these separate rays of spiritual life, as it were, in a single focus, to once again make the results of all individual developmental processes the subject of a historical study that unites and compares them? Indeed, for a long time this problem has attracted the attention of many researchers. In part, the representatives of general history themselves felt the need to include various aspects of culture and mores in their presentation of historical events. In particular, this kind of comprehensive study has always been considered the true task of the philosophy of history. Both Lazarus and Steintal did not at all overlook the close connection of the program of peoples' psychology proposed by them with the philosophy of history; but the fact is that, in their opinion, the philosophy of history has always tried to give until now only a condensed, resonant image of the spiritual content, a kind of quintessence of history, and have never paid attention to the laws of historical development. I do not think that this reproach was true in such a general form. Both Herder and Hegel, whom we must first recall when it comes to the philosophy of history, tried to indicate certain laws of development in the general course of history. If, in our modern opinion, they did not come to a satisfactory result, then the reason for this lay not in the fact that they did not attempt to generalize the laws, but in the imperfection or inexpediency of the auxiliary means and methods they used, that is, in those conditions , which in essence give any attempt in this so difficult area a more or less transient character. If, on the other hand, neither Herder nor Hegel sought, in particular, to establish purely psychological laws of historical development, then in this they were probably right, since psychic forces are still only one of the elements, which must be taken into account for a causal explanation in history: in addition to psychic forces, the influence of nature and external influence play a significant role in the historical process.
2.2 Major areas of peoples psychology
Apparently, the end result of the reasoning will be complete uncertainty in the answer to the question of what, in fact, should be considered the true task of the psychology of nations. On the one hand, it must be admitted that the program proposed by Lazarus and Steinthal is unacceptable. The complete distinction between description and explanation that they admitted is not justified in any science, and the new discipline they require, wherever it turns, everywhere finds all the places occupied. On the other hand, one cannot agree with the objections to the right of the psychology of peoples to exist, drawn from the concept of individual psychology and its tasks. The individual, no less than any group or society, depends on external influences and on the process of historical development; therefore, one of the main tasks of psychology will forever remain the study of the interaction of the individual with the environment and the elucidation of the development process. If we leave aside the metaphysical concept of the soul, which is unsuitable for empirical research, and the fiction about "laws" associated with it, and we understand by "soul" only the aggregate content of emotional experiences, and by psychic laws - the regularity observed in these experiences, then "the soul of the people "will be as acceptable and even necessary an object of psychological investigation as the individual soul. And since the pattern is also noticeable in those mental processes that are associated with the interaction and relationship of individuals, the psychology of nations with no less than individual psychology, the right can claim the title of "science of laws."
Under such conditions, it can be assumed that the program of the psychology of peoples proposed by Lazarus and Steinthal is unacceptable not because such a science with an independent program does not exist at all, but because of the too wide scope of the program and the imperfect limitation of the task of this new discipline.
Indeed, in the latter respect, the formulation of the problem special or specific parts of the psychology of peoples. It should investigate "the really existing national spirit of one or another people (Volksgeister) and the special forms of development of each of them", therefore, give a psychological description and characteristics of individual peoples. But such an undertaking is the true challenge. ethnology, which rightfully strives for the simultaneous depiction of the physical and mental properties of this or that people in their mutual relation and in their dependence on nature and history. Of course, temporarily isolating the psychological part of this study can be helpful in the interests of the division of labor. But in this case, a fundamental division should never be allowed, and even those researchers who worked primarily in the field of psychological ethnology spoke out positively against such a division. True, ethnology, first of all, can provide material for the general characteristics of the mental properties of a person, why it is, in any case, an important auxiliary discipline for the psychology of peoples - however, the corresponding general discipline will not be the psychology of peoples, but anthropology... But anthropology also occupies a middle place between the physiological and psychological research of man, since it, as a natural history of man, considers him simultaneously in his physical and spiritual qualities.
If we single out these ethnological and anthropological problems, then, nevertheless, in what, according to Lazarus and Steinthal, constitutes the content of the general part of the psychology of peoples, there will still be areas that, it seems to me, should be excluded, at least from the main , her general research. First of all, this includes General history... Psychology is an important auxiliary tool for her, since psychological interpretation is necessary for any deeper penetration into the connection of historical events. On the contrary, history, taken by itself, can in no case be - due to the complex nature of historical processes - ranked among the main areas of the psychology of peoples. The historical destinies of an individual people have such a peculiar character that they admit only analogies between different epochs, and not the guidance of universally significant psychological laws of development. In research in the field of general history, spiritual motives are combined, on the contrary, with a mass of natural-historical and sociological conditions that go far beyond the scope of the tasks of psychological analysis, since all these elements, taken as a whole, tend to pass already into philosophical study. Therefore, always and in all attempts to formulate the general laws of historical development, the latter, regardless of the degree of success in their formulation, due to internal necessity, have the character philosophical principles. In those cases when the psychology of peoples also takes part in the establishment of these laws - which is inevitable, if we do not want the philosophy of history to go down the wrong path of speculative constructions - they will certainly be subject to discussion. particular problems... Thus, the problems of elucidating the laws of evolution of society, customs and law, art, religion, etc., are primarily related to the psychology of peoples and then, in a more general connection, to the philosophy of history. But these individual processes of development become the subject of consideration from the side of the psychology of peoples only because in them - due to the properties of human nature common to all peoples - features that coincide in essence are manifested. This applies primarily to initial period social life, while at the later stages of development, along with the growth of external and internal private influences, the variety of evolutionary processes increasingly pushes aside generally significant mental motives and makes them dissolve in the totality of historical conditions; therefore, universal history and the psychology of peoples come into contact only in the sense that both of these disciplines must unite with each other in order to achieve a philosophical study of historical humanity. But the development of art and science deviates significantly from evolution in history.
Art, in its beginnings, is not an independent area of social life; it is still so closely merged in the initial period of development with myths and customs that it is possible to delimit it from them only by general forms, and not by the main motives of its origin and initial evolution. If, along with external natural conditions, there are technical and early independent aesthetic motives that determine artistic creativity, then they themselves are partly from the need for mythology, which must be objectified in mimic and plastic representations or in song and narration in order to achieve original development. And science initially completely merges with mythological thinking, and it affects it for a long time. For an even longer time, the third area of social life, at last, remains associated with myths - religion why the problem of its development from mythology is generally one of the most important problems of the psychology of peoples, which coincides at the same time completely with the problem of the development of mythology itself. It is mortifying to all these three areas that from the moment of their separation from myths and customs and the beginning of independent existence, the individual person begins to influence the overall development more decisively, and at the same time, the distinctive, characteristic signs of individual cycles of evolution begin to appear more and more sharply. At the same time, studies related specifically to the psychology of peoples stand out from general historical research. But since there is no shortage of common motives in the psychology of nations, which for the most part can be considered as a direct continuation of the forces acting in the initial period of the spiritual development of mankind, a new task arises before this new discipline - to indicate the paths along which one can go to these historical differentiations of general spiritual development. Here the psychology of peoples again comes into contact, on the one hand, with the aesthetics and philosophy of religion, and on the other, with the philosophy of history.
According to this remain, in the end, three large areas, apparently requiring a special psychological study - three areas, which - in view of the fact that their content exceeds the volume of individual consciousness - at the same time embrace three main problems of the psychology of peoples: language, myths and customs.
These three areas are also objects of purely historical research, and psychological explanation in this study, as in any history, is taken into account only as an auxiliary means of interpretation. But these three areas differ from history in the proper sense of the word. generally valid the nature of certain spiritual processes of development, manifested in them. However, this character is by no means manifested in all facts: every language, every national mythological cycle and evolution of customs are dependent on peculiar conditions that cannot be reduced to any generally valid rules. But along with the manifestation of this peculiar character inherent in them, as in any historical process, they obey, in contrast to the products of historical development in the narrow sense of the word, the general spiritual law of development.
The reason for this phenomenon lies in the fact that the evolution of these creatures of his creative spirit common to all mankind is based on a community of spiritual forces, the manifestations of which also therefore agree in certain general features. In history, a similar attitude is observed only in certain individual motives of behavior, which are equally repeated everywhere due to our common organization to all mankind. However, in this case, individual motives, due to the repeated crossing of interests, can never provide the actions caused by them of universal significance for the general course of historical development: and in the results that are obtained from them in the field of the psychology of peoples, these motives retain their individual character. Thus, individual psychology in relation to the external history of peoples always plays the role of an auxiliary means, and there are no objects of independent psychological research anywhere in history.
On the contrary, between psychology and the three above-mentioned fields of study (language, myths, customs), this kind of relationship is carried out in full. And in this case, psychology naturally serves to clarify individual phenomena; on the other hand, language, myths, customs are themselves spiritual products of development, in the generation of which peculiar psychological laws are manifested. Although the properties of individual consciousness already contain the last motives for the emergence of these laws, it cannot be said that these laws themselves were already predetermined in the motives. Therefore, all the processes of evolution arising from the community of spiritual life become problems of independent psychological research; and it makes sense for him to keep the name psychology of peoples for the reason that the nation is the most important of those concentric circles in which a common spiritual life can develop. The psychology of nations, for its part, is a part of general psychology, and its results often lead to valuable conclusions in individual psychology, since language, myths and customs, these products of the spirit of nations, at the same time provide material for conclusions about the mental the lives of individuals. So, for example, the structure of the language, which, taken by itself, is a product of the spirit of the people, sheds light on the psychological laws of individual thinking. The evolution of mythological concepts provides a model for the analysis of the creatures of individual fantasy, and the history of customs illuminates the development of individual motives of will. As individual psychology, on the one hand, serves to illuminate the problems of the psychology of peoples, so, in turn, the facts gleaned from the psychology of peoples acquire the value of valuable objective material for explaining the states of individual consciousness.
The psychology of nations is an independent science, along with individual psychology, and although it uses the services of the latter, it itself renders significant assistance to individual psychology. It could be argued against such a statement of the psychology of peoples that language, myths and customs in this case would simultaneously serve as objects of various sciences: the history of language, myths and mores, on the one hand, and the psychology of peoples, on the other. However, such an objection does not hold water. This duality of research is common in other fields of knowledge. In geology and paleontology, anatomy and physiology, philology and history, art history and aesthetics, in the system of knowledge and its methodology, in all these areas, objects of coordinated forms of scientific processing are either completely or partially common, and the difference between disciplines is reduced only to a particular point of view from which the problems are discussed. Even the life of an individual can, in a similar sense, be the subject of a twofold way of consideration: it can be viewed in its individual, unrepeatable nature and in its peculiar course of development that is unique to it, and then it will serve as an object biographies, this most narrow and limited form of history, very important, nevertheless, if the person's life depicted in it is significant in its content. But it is possible to investigate individual experiences also from the point of view of their general meaning or the general laws of psychic life that are manifested in them; - this will already be the point of view of individual psychology, completely ignoring the specific value of this individual life, since in individual experiences it sees only material in which the general laws of spiritual development are manifested.
In language, myths and customs, the same elements are repeated, as if at the highest stage of development, that make up the given, available states of individual consciousness. However, the spiritual interaction of individuals, from the general ideas and inclinations of which the spirit of the people is formed, introduces new conditions. It is these new conditions that force the people's spirit to manifest itself in two different directions, which relate approximately to each other, like form and matter - in language and in myths. Language gives the spiritual content of life that external form, which for the first time enables it to become a common property. Finally, in customs, this general content is expressed in the form of similar motives of the will. But, just as in the analysis of individual consciousness, ideas, feelings and will should be considered not as isolated forces or abilities, but as inseparable components of the same stream of emotional experiences, in the same way language, myths and customs represent themselves are common spiritual phenomena, so closely intertwined with each other that one of them is unthinkable without the other. Language not only serves as an auxiliary means for uniting the spiritual forces of individuals, but, moreover, takes a lively part in the content that finds expression in speech; the language itself is completely imbued with that mythological thinking, which is initially its content. Likewise, myths and customs are everywhere closely related to each other. They relate to each other in the same way as motive and deed: customs express in deeds the same views of life that are hidden in myths and are made common property thanks to language. And these actions, in turn, strengthen and develop further the ideas from which they flow. The study of such interaction is therefore, along with the study of the individual functions of the soul of the people, an important task of the psychology of peoples.
At the same time, one should not completely lose sight of the main difference between the history of language, myths and customs from other processes of historical development. In relation to language, they thought to find this difference in the fact that its development was supposedly not a historical, but a natural-historical process. However, this expression is not entirely apt; it is based on the recognition that language, myths and customs in the main moments of their development do not depend on the conscious influence of individual volitional acts and are a direct product of the creativity of the spirit of the people. The individual will can always make only insignificant changes in these products of the common spirit. But this feature is due not so much to real independence from individuals, as to the fact that their influence in this case is infinitely more fragmented and therefore does not manifest itself as noticeably as in the history of political life and higher forms of development of spiritual life. But due to this invisibility of individual influences, each of them can be lasting only if it meets the aspirations already acting in the general spirit of the people. Thus, these processes of historical development, going back to the very rudiments of human existence, do indeed acquire a certain affinity with processes in nature, since they seem to arise from widespread drives. Volitional impulses are compounded in them into integral forces, showing a certain similarity with the blind forces of nature also in the fact that it is impossible to resist their influence. Due to the fact that these primitive products of the common will are derivatives of widespread spiritual forces, it becomes clear and generally significant character inherent in phenomena in their known basic forms. It becomes clear that this nature makes them not only objects of historical research, but at the same time gives them the importance of general products of the human common spirit, requiring psychological research.
If at first glance it may seem strange that language, myths and customs are recognized by us as the main problems of the psychology of peoples, then this feeling, in my opinion, will disappear if the reader weighs the fact that the nature of the general significance of the basic forms of phenomena is observed mainly in the indicated areas, in the rest - only insofar as they are reduced to the three indicated. The subject of psychological research - which has its content in popular consciousness in the same sense that individual psychology has content in individual consciousness - perhaps therefore, in a natural way, only that which for the national consciousness has the same general meaning as for individual consciousness has facts investigated in individual psychology. In reality, therefore, language, myths and customs do not represent any fragments of the creativity of the people's spirit, but the very spirit of the people in its form, relatively unaffected by the individual influences of individual processes of historical development.
Conclusion
Wilhelm Wundt is considered the founder of experimental psychology. He was a versatile researcher, like many other prominent psychologists of his contemporaries. Wilhelm Wundt is known as a linguist, physiologist and philosopher. But his name immortalized the creation in 1878 of the first experimental psychological laboratory, which became a "Mecca" for psychologists of all countries. Wundt believed that external mental processes were inaccessible to experimental study and proposed a cultural-historical method.
During 1900-1920. W. Wundt undertook the publication of the grandiose 10-volume "Psychology of Nations". He considered the main manifestation of the "national spirit" to be linguistic activity (in contrast to the linguistic system - the subject of linguists' research). This work, along with the "Fundamentals of Physiological Psychology" became the main contribution of W. Wundt to psychology. "Problems of the Psychology of Peoples" is a collection of articles that provide a summary of the research program of W. Wundt and served as an introduction to the multivolume "Psychology of Peoples".
The laws of the "psychology of peoples" are the essence of the laws of development, and its basis is three areas, the content of which "exceeds the volume of individual consciousness: language, myths and customs." W. Wundt was least of all interested in mass behavior and the problem of "personality and mass", and more - in the content of the "national spirit", which, incidentally, corresponded to the idea of psychology as a "science of consciousness". He emphasizes the genetic priority of the "national spirit" over the individual. W. Wundt, using examples of the assimilation of two languages by individuals, shows that imitation is not the main, but only an accompanying factor in interactions in human society, and he subjects the "theory of individual invention" to similar criticism. In their place, he puts the processes of "common creativity", "assimilation" and "dissimilation", but does not fully disclose their nature.
Undoubtedly, Wundt possessed the most powerful organizational and critical intelligence, as well as the ability to generate research programs. However, meaningful intuitive creativity was not his element. And, in my opinion, today Wundt's deep and verbose works are read with less interest than the more “journalistic”, but also more “creative” works of a number of his contemporaries. Still, psychologists will always honor Wilhelm Wundt as the "founding father" of experimental and cultural-historical versions of psychology.
Pavlenko V.N., Taglin S.A. 2005: 323
Pavlenko V.N., Taglin S.A. 2005: 327
Wundt W. 1912: 12
Wundt W. 1912: 14
Wundt W. 1912: 17
Wundt W. 1912: 19
Sukharev V.A., Sukharev M.V. 1997: 21
Krysko V.G. 2002: 303
Pavlenko V.N., Taglin S.A. 2005: 408