The end result of our reasoning will be, our complete uncertainty in answering the question of what should actually be considered the true task of the psychology of peoples. On the one hand, one cannot but admit that the program proposed by Lacarus and Steinthal is unacceptable. The complete demarcation of description and explanation that they permitted is not justified in any science, and the new discipline they demand, wherever they turn, everywhere finds all the places occupied. On the other hand, one cannot, however, agree with 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 process of development. If we leave aside the metaphysical concept of the soul unsuitable for empirical research and the associated fiction about “laws” and understand as “soul” only the cumulative content of spiritual experiences, and by mental laws - the regularity noted in these experiences "Will be as acceptable and even necessary object of psychological research, as the individual soul. And since the regularity is noticeable in those mental processes that are associated with the interaction and interrelation of individuals, the psychology of peoples with a right no less than individual psychology can claim to be a “science of laws.”

Under such conditions, it can be assumed that the program of peoples psychology proposed by Latsarus and Steinthal is unacceptable not because there is no such science with an independent program at all, but because of the too wide scope of the program and the imperfect delimitation of the task of this new discipline.
In fact, in the last respect, the formulation of the task of a special or concrete part of the psychology of peoples raises just objections. It should explore the “truly existing national spirit of a particular people (Volksgeister) and the special forms of development of each of them,” therefore, give a psychological description and characterization of individual peoples. But such an enterprise is the true task of ethnology, which rightfully seeks to simultaneously depict the physical and mental properties of one or another people in their mutual relation and in their dependence on nature and history.

Of course, a temporary allocation of the psychological part of this study may be useful in the interests of the division of labor. But one should never allow a principled division in this case, and even those researchers who have worked primarily in the field of psychological ethnology have positively opposed such a division. True, ethnology can first of all deliver material for the general characterization of a person’s psychic properties, why it is in any case an important auxiliary discipline for the psychology of peoples, but 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 a person, since it, as a natural history of a person, considers it both in its physical and spiritual qualities.

The psychology of peoples developed in the 19th century in Germany. Its origins were Hegel's ideas and Herbart's psychology. The founders of the psychology of peoples are considered Maurice Lacarus and Heinrich Steintal. The central idea of ​​their psychology of peoples was that there is a "supra-individual soul" with "supra-individual integrity" - a people (nation).
Subsequently, the ideas of the psychology of peoples were developed in the views of William Wundt (1832-1920). Wundt contrasted individual psychology with the psychology of peoples (following Lacarus and Steinthal). Physiological psychology = individual, this is an experimental discipline. An experiment is not suitable for the study of speech and thinking. From this “point” begins the psychology of peoples. Thinking and speech and other psychological phenomena cannot be understood outside the psychology of peoples.
It must grasp the general in the psychology of large masses. According to W. Wundt, the object of the psychology of peoples is what he calls the "soul of the people", by analogy with the soul of an individual individual. If we look at the object of study of psychology as the totality of all internal experiences of the individual, then what is commonly called the “soul”, then the object of the psychology of peoples is the general formation of ideas, feelings and aspirations. According to Wundt, the soul of a people cannot be reduced to the totality of actions of individual individuals: the joint life of many individuals gives rise to new, specific laws, which, although they do not contradict the laws of individual consciousness, are not reduced to the latter.
The main areas of the psychology of peoples are language, myths and customs. Language, myth, custom - these are not fragments of the national spirit, but this very spirit of the people in its relatively unaffected individual form, which determines all other processes.
The language contains the general form of representations living in the spirit of the people and the laws of their connection; myths are the content of these representations; customs - the general direction of the will arising from these ideas. The word "myth" means all the primitive worldview, the word "custom" - all the rudiments of the legal order. The psychology of peoples explores these three areas and, no less important, their interaction: language is a form of myth; custom expresses a myth and develops it.
Thus, the methods of the psychology of peoples according to V. Wundt are an analysis of cultural products (language, myths, customs, art, everyday life). Moreover, the psychology of peoples uses exclusively descriptive methods. She does not pretend to open laws. Any psychology, including the psychology of peoples, is not a science of laws, in any case, not only of them. It focuses on the development problem (an important category for Wundt), in the case of the psychology of peoples, the development of the "soul of the people."

Psychology of nations

It is quite clear 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 fight for their existence for some time; to a certain extent it may even be useful: in this way, the newly emerging discipline receives the most powerful impetus to secure its position with acquisitions in the field of facts and more accurately understand its tasks by distinguishing from areas of knowledge close to it, and it tempers too far marching claims and more precisely delimits legitimate claims.
Thus, during the nineteenth century, we observed the separation of comparative anatomy from zoology, linguistics from philology, anthropology from anatomical and physiological sciences, and from ethnology. But these, already recognized at the present time, the area is not everywhere poured into a complete form. So, in the presentation of comparative anatomy for the most part still adhere to the methods of the zoological system. However undoubted the object of research in linguistics seems to be, however, linguists are far from unanimous in their opinions about its relation to other objects of historical research. Finally, anthropology has only recently recognized the natural history of man and the history of primitive man intimately connected with it as a specific area. In any case, all these areas of knowledge are already at the present time relatively wealthy. If opinions regarding their values ​​and tasks can still fluctuate, then doubt about their right to existence and relative independence is hardly possible.
The situation is completely different with the science, the name of which is often mentioned, although a clear concept is not always associated with it - with the psychology of nations. Since ancient times, its objects — cultural condition, languages, customs, religious ideas — have not only been the task of special scientific branches, such as the history of culture and customs, linguistics, and the philosophy of religion, but at the same time, the need to explore these objects in their general relation to human nature, why they are for the most part and are included, as an integral part, in anthropological research. In particular, Pritchard, in his now obsolete epoch, which has made an epoch in anthropology in its time, paid due attention to the mental differences of races and peoples. But since anthropology explores these differences only in their genealogical and ethnographic meaning, it omits the only point of view from which all mental phenomena related to the common life of people can be considered - psychological. And since the task of psychology is to describe these states of individual consciousness and to explain the connection of its elements and stages of development, then a similar genetic and causal study of facts that presuppose spiritual relationships for their development, existing in human society, undoubtedly, should also be considered as an object.