Lectures and Addresses Delivered Before the Departments of Psychology and Pedagogy in Celebration of the Twentieth Anniversary of the Opening of Clark University. September, 1909 Volume 1-2; Lectures Before the Department of Psychology (Paperback)

This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1910 Excerpt: ...of fruitful investigation are those of object and attribute. The concepts of primitive man make it quite clear that the classes of ideas which we consider as attributes are often considered as independent objects. The best-known case of this kind, one to which I have referred incidentally before, is that of sickness. While we consider sickness as a condition of an organism, it is believed by primitive man, and even by many members of our own society, to be an object which may enter the body, and which may be removed. This is exemplified by the numerous cases in which a disease is extracted from the body by sucking or by other processes, in the belief that it may be thrown into people, or that it may be enclosed in wood in order to prevent its return. Other qualities are treated in the same way. Thus the condition of hunger, exhaustion, and similar bodily feelings, are considered by certain primitive tribes as independent objects which affect the body. Even life is believed to be a material object that may become separated from the body. The luminosity of the sun is considered as an object that the Sun himself may put on or lay aside. I have indicated before that the concept of anthropomorphism seems to be one of the important categories underlying primitive thought. It would seem that the power of motion of the self and the power of motion of an object have led to the inclusion of man and movable objects in the same category, with the consequent imputation of human qualities to the moving objective world. While in many cases we can see with a fair degree of clearness the fundamental concepts underlying these categories, in other cases these are not by any means clear. Thus the concept of incest groups--those groups in which intermarriage is strictly forbidd...