Wundt begins by emphasizing the unity, to primitive observation, of the bodily and the mental life. The notion of psyche, a mind or soul, could hardly have arisen, were it not for two phenomena which bear witness to a separation of mind and body, namely, death and dreaming. Once the notion has taken shape, we find three main trends of primitive thought. If the idea of the unity of life is dominant, we have the bodily soul (Körperseele], a soul which remains in the body after death, or returns to it after intervals of absence. This conception gives rise to two secondary conceptions: to the idea that the first worm which leaves the dead body carries the soul with it Seelenwurm}, an idea that may account for the long-continued belief that the departed soul finds embodiment in a snake; and to the idea of a seat of the soul in various bodily organs, the doctrine of Organseelen. If, again, the idea of death is dominant, we have the breathsoul (Hauchseele). The departing spirit, psyche, anima, spiritus, Geist, ghost, leaving the body on the last breath, then finds embodiment in animals, particularly in creeping, fluttering, or quick-moving forms. We are here at the beginning of the belief in metempsychosis, as we are also on the path which leads to totemism. If, finally, the idea of dream is dominant, we have the shadow-soul (Schattenseele}, the eidolon, umbra or shade. This shadow-soul acquires a certain stability, in the primitive mind, partly from the frequent recurrence of dream-experience, and partly from what we may call the ratification of that experience in states of disease, more especially in the delirium of fever.
In reality, these three ideas occur only in combination, although now one and now another may receive the greatest emphasis. In the last resort, the shadow-soul gains the upper-hand. The notion of a circumscribed seat of the soul, in some particular bodily organ, serves, so to say, to break up the general bodily soul, to free it of its dependence in totality upon the body. The soul accordingly passes from the body, at death, with the breath. This breath-soul, in its turn, changes to the insubstantial shadow-soul familiar to us, e. g.> from the Homeric psychology. Finally, the shadow-soul attains to complete independence; it ceases to be considered as the soul of some dead person, and assumes an existence in its own right. As ghost or demon it becomes a natural force, terrible or protective. In this way primitive psychology passes over without break into a primitive philosophy of nature.
This summary account is, of course, very far from doing justice to Wundt's exposition. It presents, however, an outline of the views which, in the original, are set forth with all the convincing force of a practised literary style. Even there, much of detail 'had necessarily to be omitted; Wundt's theory of totemism must, for instance, be sought elsewhere. On the other hand, space has been found for a number of interesting facts. Thus, as regards the seat of the soul, we are told that the oldest Organseelen resided in the kidneys and the blood. The importance of the blood is obvious; that of the kidneys Wundt finds in their close association with the organs of sex. The placing of the soul in the saliva is explained by reference to the breath-soul. Later, the soul has its local habitation in diaphragm and heart; here, evidently, the expression of emotion is the key to the situation. One wonders, indeed, whether the phenomena of emotive expression were not the starting-point of all concrete psychological observation; whether, if death and dream were the occasion of psychology, emotion and its expression were not the occasion of the first efforts to psychologise. TH. WAI/TERS.
