Epistemological Problems of Economics

1. Vierkandt’s Instinct Sociology

None of the objections that have been raised for thousands of years against hedonism and utilitarianism has the least bearing upon the theory of action. When the correlative concepts of pleasure and pain, or utility and disutility, are grasped in their formal sense and are deprived of all material content, all the objections that have been repeated ad nauseam for ages have the around cut from under them. It requires a considerable unfamiliarity with the present state of the argument to raise once again the old charges against “immoral” hedonism and “vulgar” utilitarianism.

Today it is customary, when one finds oneself compelled to acknowledge the logical impossibility of any other view, to say that the formal conception of pleasure and utility is devoid of all cognitive value. In grasping these ideas in their purity, the concept of action, it is said, becomes so empty that nothing more can be done with it. To answer this criticism one need only point to all that economic theory has been able to deduce from the allegedly empty concept of action.

If one attempts to engage in the scientific investigation of what, in our view, constitutes the subject matter of the science of human action without resort to the proscribed principle of hedonism, one falls unawares into empiricism, which cannot succeed in connecting into a system the multiplicity of facts it encounters or in using them for the explanation of the phenomena that are to be comprehended. An example may make this clear. in his endeavor to construct a theory of society, Vierkandt knows no other means than to ascribe to men a series of “social propensities.” In this regard he follows the procedure of a great number of investigators. He understands by the social propensities of man

such innate instincts (e.g., the instinct to be of help) and other innate characteristics and modes of behavior (e.g., understanding and susceptibility to influence) as presuppose for their manifestation the presence of other men, or, more precisely, the condition of society.

In addition, there are still other propensities such as also or only “manifest themselves in relation to other entities.”1  And here Vierkandt goes on to enumerate and describe a series of instincts, propensities, and impulses.

Such an enumeration can never, of course, be complete. The distinction between one instinct and another must necessarily be arbitrary. To be quite consistent one would have to link a corresponding instinct with every goal that has ever been aimed at anywhere and at any time. If, for example, one assumes the existence of an instinct for food, from which one distinguishes the instinct for means of enjoyment, there is no reason why one should not go further and speak also of an instinct for meat or, even more specifically, of an instinct for beef or, still more specifically, of an instinct for beefsteak. What one has in view in speaking simply of the instinct for food is a summary statement in terms of the end aimed at by the actions of men directed toward the provision of different foods. If one represents, in summary form, actions directed toward the consumption of carbohydrates, fats, and proteins as the result of the instinct for food, one can, in the same way and with the same justification, also look upon actions directed toward providing food, shelter, and clothing, as well as a great many other actions, as the result of the instinct for self-preservation. How far one goes in this process of generalization is entirely a matter of arbitrary choice, unless one makes a radical change in one’s whole mode of reasoning and passes to the level of broadest generality, i.e., to the formal concept of the end devoid of all material content. Because Vierkandt rejects utilitarianism and hedonism and therefore does not take this decisive step, he comes to a stop at an arbitrary division of the various human wants.

The innate social propensities appear, Vierkandt goes on to explain, “frequently in pairs of opposites.” Thus, pitted against the “instinct of self-esteem” is “its opposite, the instinct of obedience”; against the “instinct to be of help,” the “fighting instinct”; against the “sociable instinct,” an “instinct of avoidance” ; against the “communicative instinct,” an “instinct of secretiveness and concealment.”2  Since nothing can be said about the strength with which these opposed instincts make themselves felt, one cannot understand how the rise of social cooperation is to be explained on the basis of them. Even if we pass over the impermissible hypostasis involved in the statement that the “social propensities” lead to the development of social cooperation, we still lack any adequate explanation for the fact that the social instincts are victorious over the antisocial instincts. Why is it that the fighting instinct, the instinct of self-esteem, and the instinct of avoidance do not frustrate the formation of social bonds?

The “instinct of self-esteem,” Vierkandt maintains, cannot manifest itself “without the instinct of subordination being active at the same time.” Here, he continues, one has to deal with the “characteristic coalescence of opposed instincts; in this regard the total picture is, of course, modified by the instinct of domination.”3  Assuming an “instinct of subordination,” one is forced, if one does not choose to be completely blind to reality, to assume an opposite instinct: Vierkandt calls it the instinct of self-esteem. (Wiese objected with good reason that Vierkandt, when he recognizes an instinct of subordination, would have to “allow no less for an instinct of rebellion, which is, of course, very important in history and in the life of the individual.”4 ) Yet Vierkandt is unable to produce any other proof that the instinct of subordination is victorious over the instinct of self-esteem than the fact that in his presentation he labels the former the stronger and better instinct. “Subordination,” he asserts, “is a condition which is healthy, normal, and conducive to happiness; a condition in which the situation demands the replacement of self-esteem by the opposite attitude.”5 It is, after all, noteworthy that Vierkandt, the opponent of eudemonism, attributes to subordination effects conducive to happiness. Here Feuerbach’s observation becomes pertinent: “Every instinct is an instinct for happiness.”6

The self-esteem that Vierkandt has in mind is, however, of a peculiar kind. It is, as it were, a by-product of subordination. “Everywhere, acceding to the will of the superior means at the same time that one elevates oneself to his level: subordination means simultaneously an inner sharing of the greatness of the superior.” He cites as an example “the relationship of the servant to his master under patriarchal conditions.”7  In another place Vierkandt again speaks of the “servant who shows off the castle of his master with enhanced self-esteem” because he feels “inwardly at one with his lord, his family, and their splendor.”8

The self-esteem that Vierkandt has in view reveals itself, therefore, as nothing more than the pride of a flunky. Then, of course, there is no wonder that it does not stand in the way of the instinct of subordination. This subordination is tantamount to “unconditional obedience.” The subordinate makes himself “blindly dependent within.” He

submits completely to his superior’s judgment, especially his value judgments: he receives his worth from his superior in that he regulates his conduct according to his superior’s standards and by so doing satisfies his self-esteem. The subordinate is, as it were, absorbed by the superior: he loses his personality, but finds in community with the superior a new one again, which he experiences as his own personality ennobled.9

Vierkandt is able to point with particular satisfaction to the fact that all these instincts are to be found in animals.

In the dog the truly human inner devotion to its master shows itself in an elementary, but very powerful, form, e.g., enlivenment in the master’s presence and the polarization brought about by him in general.

Vierkandt considers as very noteworthy

also the satisfaction of self-esteem shown by a dog and probably by other animals too when they succeed in the performance of a task for which they have been trained, because of the connection of this instinct with the instinct of subordination in the human being.10

Thus, as Vierkandt sees it, human society is, so to speak, already foreshadowed in the relationship of the master to the dog he trains. The relationship of leader and led corresponds to the relationship of master and dog: it is healthy and normal, and it is conducive to the happiness of both, the master as well as the dog.

One cannot argue this point further with Vierkandt because, in his view, the ultimate source of cognition is

phenomenological insight, i.e., what we directly experience personally in ourselves and can convey to our consciousness with apodictic evidence.11

Therefore, we do not doubt that he really has inwardly experienced all this. Indeed, we shall go still further and not deny his qualification to speak from direct personal experience and insight about the “truly human inner devotion of the dog to his master.” But what if someone were to affirm that he had personally experienced and intuited something different? Suppose one chose to call “healthy, normal, and conducive to happiness” not the self-esteem of lackeys and dogs, but that of men? What if one chose to seek the basis of “inner communion” not in the “desire for subordination,” like Vierkandt,12  but in the desire for joint action?

Vierkandt rejects the individualist theory of action because he wants to champion a political program that appears senseless when viewed from the standpoint of scientific economics and sociology. He is unable to support his rejection of the latter except by repeatedly referring to the rationalist, individualist, and atomistic character of everything that does not meet with his approval.13  Rationalism, individualism, and atomism are today condemned by all ruling parties for easily recognizable reasons; and so this mode of argumentation suffices for the sphere in which the official doctrine is accepted. In place of the sciences he attacks without having understood their teachings, Vierkandt provides an arbitrary enumeration and description of innate primary instincts and impulses that he alleges to have experienced and intuited just so and not otherwise, in order to found a political program on a basis that suits his purposes. Here we can disregard all this. What is noteworthy for us is that he who wants to avoid the path taken by the universally valid science of human action can explain the social cooperation of men in no other way than by reference to the working of inborn propensities that lead to association; that is, if he does not prefer to represent it still more simply as a work of God or Nature.

If anyone believes that he can explain every human want, or every class of human wants constructed by him, by correlating with it a particular impulse, instinct, propensity, or feeling, then he is certainly not to be forbidden to do so. Not only do we not deny that men desire, want, and aim at different things, but we start precisely from this fact in our reflections. When science speaks of pleasure, happiness, utility, or wants, these signify nothing but what is desired, wished for and aimed at, what men regard as ends and goals, what they lack, and what, if procured, satisfies them, These terms make no reference whatever to the concrete content of what is desired: the science is formal and neutral with regard to values. The one declaration of the science of “happiness” is that it is purely subjective. In this declaration there is, therefore, room for all conceivable desires and wants. Consequently, no statement about the quality of the ends aimed at by men can in any way affect or undermine the correctness of our theory.

The point at which the science of action begins its work is the mutual incompatibility of individual desires and the impossibility of perfect satisfaction. Since it is not granted to man to satisfy all his desires completely, inasmuch as he can attain one end only by forgoing another, he must differentiate among instincts: he must decide in favor of one thing and against something else; he must choose and value, prefer and set aside—in short, act. Even for one who calls the happiness of subordination desirable, a moment can come in which he has to choose between devotion to the leader and the satisfaction of another instinct, e.g., the instinct for food; as when a republican party at the head of the government threatens monarchist officials with dismissal. Everyone again and again finds himself confronted with a situation in which his conduct—whether it consist in an overt deed, an act of omission, or acquiescence—helps to determine whether or not his goals are attained.

However, a doctrine that rejects rationalism, individualism, and eudaemonism can say nothing about human action. It stops at the enumeration and description of a number of instincts. To be sure, it tells us that men love and hate, that they are garrulous and taciturn, that they are cruel and compassionate, that they are sociable and that they shun society. But it can say nothing about the fact that they act, work, labor, and toil to achieve goals. For one can speak of action only if one starts from the individual, if one takes rationality into consideration, and if one recognizes that the goal of action is the removal of dissatisfaction. If one wants to explain society without reference to the actions of men, the only expedient that remains is to view it as the outcome of mysteriously operating forces. Society is then the result of the instinct of association; it is “inner communion”; it is basic and intrinsic; it is not of this world.

2. Myrdal’s Theory of Attitudes

Still another example may help to show how vain are all objections raised against the atomism, individualism, utilitarianism, and rationalism of the science of action. No less clearly than in the case just discussed, it will be seen here too that attempts to explain human action in terms of such psychological factors as the striving for power are incapable of refuting the conclusions that economics reaches by cogent logical reasoning. Under the guise of nonpartisan criticism of all the social sciences hitherto developed, an effort is made to justify interventionism, a policy whose inexpedience and futility (as seen from the standpoint of the goals that its advocates hope to attain by it) has been demonstrated by economics.

Myrdal thinks one understands

the pathos of the labor movement poorly if one believes that it fights chiefly for higher real wages. Viewed from the standpoint of social psychology, something else is involved here . . . The demands for higher wages, shorter working time, etc. are, of course, important in and of themselves, but viewed more deeply, they are only an expression of far more general strivings for power and demands for justice on the part of a social class which simply feels oppressed. Even if there were no hope of forcing through higher wages, the battle would go on. Even if the workers had reason to believe that a decline in productivity and wages would result, they would nevertheless demand more power and codetermination in the conduct of business. In the last analysis, more is at stake for them than money; their joy of labor is involved, their self-esteem, or, if one will, their worth as men. Perhaps no great strike can be explained merely as a strike for higher wages.14

With this argument Myrdal, of course, believes he has deprived of its importance—from the point of view of the workers’ judgment of the goals of trade unionism—the irrefutable proof provided by economics that trade-union policy can never permanently raise wages for all workers. For whoever knows how to examine the matter “more deeply” or from the standpoint of “social psychology” will realize, he thinks, that in the eyes of the workers organized in unions, what is at issue is by no means the height of wages or a question of money; on the contrary, quite different things are at stake, such as their “joy of labor,” their “self-esteem,” and their “worth as men.”

If this were really so, it would be impossible to understand why union leaders and the socialists of the chair who give them support place so much emphasis on again and again upholding in their public declarations the contention, pronounced untenable by economics, that wages can be raised permanently for all workers by trade unionism; and why they so ardently endeavor to proscribe and silence all who are of a different opinion. The reason for this behavior on the part of union leaders and their literary allies is that the unionized workers expect an increase in their real income. No worker would join a union if he were unable to hope for a wage increase from it, but, on the contrary, would have to reckon with a loss of wages. Even the prospect of being compensated through joy of labor, self-esteem, human worth and the like could not make him a friend of the unions. Union leaders know quite well that the expectation of an increase in income is the one and only factor that has brought the unions into existence and still holds them together.

However, even if Myrdal were right in saying that the unions really do not fight chiefly for higher wages, but rather for other things, the statements of economics on the question of the influence that the combination of workers into trade unions has on the height of wages would remain unaffected. Economics is neither for nor against unions. It seeks only to show how the specific policy of trade unions affects the labor market.

Myrdal’s position is not improved by his avoidance of plain and open speaking. In explaining that the demand for higher wages is “of course, important in and of itself,” he no doubt thinks he has sufficiently protected himself against all criticism. We encounter here the vicious practice on the part of the socialists of the chair of concealing an inadequacy of logic by means of an imprecise and inexact mode of expression. Inasmuch as, in the further course of his argument, Myrdal goes so far as to assert that workers would adhere to trade unions even if they were to discover that this involved a sacrifice of wages, he holds the view that the wage increase—which, in his opinion and in that of all socialists of the chair and union leaders, union policy makes inevitable—is valued by the workers only as an agreeable, but secondary, success of measures directed at the attainment of other goals. However, such a statement makes no contribution whatever toward advancing the discussion of the question whether the employment of union tactics can result in a general and permanent wage increase, which is the only aspect of the matter that has any importance for economic theory and—as all unbiased critics will, of course, admit—in actual practice as well.

Myrdal is familiar with neither the history nor the present state of economics and is therefore fighting against windmills. According to him, economics maintains that only “economic interests” guide human action. By “economic interests” Myrdal understands “the desire for higher income and lower prices.” This, he contends, is an error: “Regrettably—or perhaps fortunately—the motives of human action are not exhausted with the mere recording of economic interests.”15

The economists of an earlier age took the view that there is a definable province of the “economic” and that it is the function of economics to investigate this province. Modern economists adhered to this view for some time, although the line of demarcation between “economic” and “noneconomic” ends must have appeared still less clearly visible in the light of their subjectivism than in that of the objectivism of the classical economists. Even today this view has not yet been given up by everyone. But more and more the realization is spreading that neither the motivations nor the ends of action can be differentiated as economic and noneconomic. What is economic is only the conduct of acting men. Economic action consists in the endeavor to remedy the state of dissatisfaction or, expressed differently, to satisfy wants as far as the scarcity of means allows.

It cannot be maintained that either of these two views saw in the pursuit of economic interests (in the sense in which Myrdal employs this term) the only motive of human action. The older view distinguished between economic and noneconomic goals. According to the modern view, all action is economic. Modern economics makes no distinction among ends because it considers them all equally legitimate, even those that the older view and the popular mode of expression (adopted also by Myrdal) regard as noneconomic. Modern economists do not want valuations to be smuggled into their science. For example, they do not want efforts to obtain “ideal” goods to be considered different in any way from the striving for “material” goods. The fact that frequently a financial gain is eschewed or expenditures are made in order to attain political or other ends, which are usually called noneconomic, is not only not denied, but emphasized.

Myrdal works with a concept of “interest” that he equates with that of “economic interest” and thus with “the desire for higher income and lower prices.” The conduct of men, he maintains, is not determined by interests alone, but by “attitudes.” The term “attitude” is to be understood as “the emotional disposition of an individual to respond in certain ways toward actual or potential situations.” There are “happily,” he adds, “enough men with attitudes which do not at all coincide with their interests.”16  It certainly does not require a book of over three hundred pages to point this out. No one has denied, least of all economists, that there are men who aim at other things besides “higher incomes and lower prices.” Böhm-Bawerk, for instance, explicitly stated that he used the word “well-being” in the broadest sense, in which it does “not embrace merely the self-centered interests of a subject, but everything that appears to him worthy of pursuit.”17  All the arguments advanced by Myrdal against the utilitarianism of economics collapse completely, because he has not understood the fundamental ideas of the modern doctrines he undertakes to criticize.

3. The Critique of Rationalism by Ethnology and Prehistory

Attempts to undermine the “rationalistic” starting point of economic theory by drawing on the research findings of ethnology and the history of primitive peoples also miss the mark.

Eduard Hahn traces the origin of the plow and plow farming back to ancient myths. Tillage with the Plow, he tells us, was originally a ceremony in which the plow represented the phallus of the ox who drew it impregnating mother earth. The wagon, according to him, was not originally an “economic” means of conveyance. On the contrary, it was a sacred implement whose purpose was “to repeat on earth the wanderings of the rulers of fate in heaven.” Only later did “the wagon sink to a commonplace implement of farming.”18

By means of these discoveries, which, to be sure, are by no means uncontested, Hahn thinks he has cut the ground from under the utilitarian position and furnished complete proof of the correctness of his political program, which demands the “re-establishment of an active social aristocracy.”19  ”Modern ethnology,” Hahn believes,

finds itself again and again and again in the strongest opposition to the current view, which, in the most regrettable contradiction of the facts of the real world, is bent on setting out pure utility as the only operative mainspring of all the economic activity of men, and, indeed, of all historical events in general. Gradually, however, it will have to be recognized that the ideal aspect certainly deserves very great consideration; that it is not true for all ages and peoples, as it is said to be for us, the children of the second half of the nineteenth century, that the result of every activity?whether it is a matter of a sack of potatoes or the greatest discovery in philosophy or physics?can be expressed in marks and pfennigs, or, for that matter, in dollars and cents.20

The peoples whose culture Hahn has studied had different ideas of the relationship between cause and effect from those of the men of the nineteenth century. Whereas today we are guided in our conduct by ideas derived from modern chemistry, biology, and physiology, they had notions that we are now accustomed to call beliefs in magic and myths. They were, says Hahn, imbued with the idea that

the life of the vegetable or the animal kingdom could be influenced by efficacious rites.21

The oldest agricultural botany, he further maintains, also certainly stemmed from the idea that

before one could demand something of the land, something would have to be done to further the growth of the vegetable kingdom; one had to have first contributed something to it.22

Thus, Hahn himself admits that the primitive husbandman practiced their rites because of their supposed utility and their anticipated results. Their customs and magical rites were, according to Hahn’s own presentation, actions consciously aiming at ends. When we call their technology “magic” and ours “scientific,” all we are saying is that the fundamental orientation of men’s conduct is the same in both cases and that the difference is determined by the disparity in their concrete ideas concerning the relationship between cause and effect. These mythological views saw a causal relationship between, for example, the nudity of the plowman and a rich harvest, and between many other customs that are offensive to us today and the fertility of the Soil;23  and rites were performed in accordance with these ideas in order to ensure the success of agricultural labor. But surely no one can find any support in all this for the statement that men of primitive times differed from us in that the mainspring of their actions was not utility, but idealism. Obviously the result of economic activity could not be computed in marks and pfennigs in an age that was not yet familiar with the use of money. But what the men of primitive times strove for, what they valued alone, and what they sought to attain precisely by means of their rites, religious acts, exorcisms, prayers, and orgies was the satisfaction of the “common” exigencies of life: the need for food, clothing, shelter, health, and safety. For the other things we value today they would have had no understanding?not even for “the greatest discovery in philosophy or physics.”

The progress of civilization, Frobenius thinks, derives not from “need” and “uneasiness,” but from “ideals.” Among other things the history of cultivation with the hoe proves this.

The first step was apparently a gathering of grain that grew wild. Out of thankfulness, and in order to propitiate mother earth, who was wounded by the grain harvest, the custom arose, as an ideal, of again restoring grain to her, the fruits of which flowed back not so much to the profane life, but as holy testimony of sacrifice. Not until a later age did cultivation with the hoe assume a more and more profane and rational character . . . Only when provident causality let ideals atrophy, when sober facts came to dominate the spirit, did the practical, expedient utilization of the “discovery” of cultivation with the hoe appear as profane farming.24

It may well be true that cultivation with the hoe and the plow arose as ritual acts out of a technology of magic and mythology and that later, after the inefficacy of the rites was realized, these methods of tillage were retained because their suitability came to be recognized as a result of the knowledge of agricultural botany that had been acquired in the meantime. This discovery may be welcomed as a very interesting contribution to the history of technology and the application of technological knowledge. Yet for the purposes of the subject under discussion it tells us nothing beyond the fact that the technological notions of primitive ages were different from ours. It would be impermissible to infer from this that the action of men of distant times and lands was categorially different from the action of modern men. Berthold Schwarz intended to make gold, and in attempting to do so is said to have discovered the preparation for gunpowder. Columbus set sail to seek a sea route to the Indies and discovered America. Can one therefore maintain that these two men acted in ways fundamentally different from the way we act today? It has never been denied that human action does not always attain the ends it has set for itself and occasionally has results that would have appeared worth aiming at if they had been known earlier.

When the husbandman of remote antiquity sought to increase the produce of their land by means of symbolic rites, their action was based on the prevailing “technological” notions of their time. When today we proceed differently, our action conforms to the technological notions prevailing at the present time. He who considers them erroneous might attempt to uncover their errors and replace a useless theory by a more suitable one. If he is unable to do so, he should not criticize the procedure of those who work for the dissemination of the knowledge of modern agricultural technology. It is futile to criticize statements such as “the shortsighted rationalism of the nineteenth century regarded the acts and dispensations of the old ritual . . . simply as superstition and thought it was to be pushed aside by instruction in the public schools.”25  If one goes through the long list of rites—not very commendable from the standpoint of present-day sentiment that Eduard Hahn has assembled in his writings on the basis of astonishingly extensive research, one finds scarcely any whose elimination would be regretted.26  For what purpose should the empty forms of a technology whose fruitlessness no one can deny be retained?

In the behavior of men we can distinguish only two basic forms, between which there is a sharp conceptual division: unconscious behavior, or vegetative reaction, and conscious behavior, or action. All action, however, is necessarily in accord with the statements of the a priori theory of human action. Goals change, ideas of technology are transformed, but action always remains action. Action always seeks means to realize ends, and it is in this sense always rational and mindful of utility. It is, in a word, human.

• 1Vierkandt, Gesellschaftslehre (2nd ed.; Stuttgart, 1928), p. 23.
• 2Ibid.
• 3Op, cit., p. 37.
• 4Kölner Vierteljahrschefte für Soziologie III, (1923), 179.
• 5Vierkandt, op. cit., p. 61.
• 6Feuerbach, Sämtliche Werke (republished by Bolin and Jodl, Stuttgart, 1907), X, 231. “Happiness,” says Feuerbach (ibid.), is “nothing but the healthy, normal condition of a being.”
• 7Vierkandt, op. cit., p. 48.
• 8Vierkandt, op. cit., pp. 31 f.
• 9Vierkandt, op. cit., p. 47.
• 10Vierkandt, op. cit., p. 60.
• 11Vierkandt, op. cit., p. 41.
• 12Vierkandt, op. cit., p. 63.
• 13Cf. also Vierkandt’s article “Kultur des 19. Jahrhunderts und Gegenwart,” Handwörterbuch der Soziologie, pp. 141 ff.
• 14Cf. Myrdal, Das politische Element in der nationalökonomischen Doktrinbildung, translated by Mackenroth (Berlin, 1932), pp. 299 f. [Translator’s note: The quotations are from the German edition of Myrdal’s book, published under the title cited. In the English-language edition, which, as the title indicates, was translated from the German by Paul Streeten and published by Routledge and Kegan Paul, Ltd. in London in 1953, the quoted passages, perhaps in consequence of Mises’s critique in this text, have been considerably weakened.]
• 15Myrdal, op. cit., p. 299.
• 16Myrdal, op. cit., p. 299.
• 17Böhm-Bawerk, Kapital und Kapitalzins (4th ed.; Jena, 1921), Part II, Vol. I, p. 236, footnote.
• 18Hahn, Die Entstehung der Pflugkultur (Heidelberg, 1909), pp. 40 ff., 105 ff., 139 ff., 152 ff.; Frobenius, Paideuma, Umrisse einer Kultur und Seelenlehre (Munich, 1921), pp. 72 f.
• 19Hahn, Die Entstehung der wirtschaftlichen Arbeit (Heidelberg, 1909), pp. 102 ff.
• 20Hahn, Die Entstehung der Pflughultur, p. 63.
• 21Ibid., p. 86.
• 22Ibid., p. 87.
• 23Ibid., p. II 7 ff.
• 24Cf. Frobenius, Paideuma, pp. 70 ff.
• 25Cf. Hahn, Die Entstehung der Pflugkultur, p. 87.
• 26A few examples from a compilation by Hahn (Die Entstehung der Pflugkultur, pp. 118 ff.): sacred prostitution; lewd jokes, especially on the part of women, at agricultural festivals; the singing of licentious songs by the most eminent women of Bautzen; running around the fields naked by Wendish female flax-workers until as late as 1882.